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In Cathbad’s private quarters of TÅμr Medb

Cathbad had never spent a lot of time around children, but he found Phoedra interesting. He could feel power seeping out of her, but he had no idea how much or what form it would take.

She might prove to be a more intriguing experiment than Ossian now that he’d shielded his mind from her random zaps of power.

She didn’t even know she was affecting anyone.

Oh, yes, this one would be special.

He could compel her to answer his questions, but he’d rather leave that as his last option. He’d much rather hear her uninfluenced answers.

Phoedra sat across from him at a table covered with succulent meat, fresh fruit and enticing vegetables.

He’d warded this area of TÅμr Medb to prevent the queen from showing up whenever she chose. She might like all that traffic through her personal quarters, but he did not.

Phoedra cast a stony look his way. “What is this place?”

“It’s a safe house of sorts.”  He’d gleaned that term from his visits to the human world and thought it might sound familiar to her. He admired the way she’d handled the strange things happening to this point, but his Scáth Force warrior had said she’d been in an enclosed vehicle, so she probably hadn’t seen a lot of preternatural activity during her travels.

There was no reason to upset her, but he couldn’t imagine possessing power and not realizing it on some level. Still, finding out she was not sitting in the human realm she’d lived in since birth would likely cause her distress.

Did she know yet that she was different from mere humans?

“How’d I get here?” she asked, face glum.

“My assistant brought you to me.”

“Is he a cop?”

Cathbad found that amusing. “More of a special operative.”

“Did he drug me? I don’t remember how I got here.”

“No. Do you feel drugged?”

“Not really.”  She continued to stew while her gaze flitted around the room fashioned for fine dining with furniture from the early eighteen hundreds of the human world. Candles gently lit the space from eight different spots. He could snap his fingers and replace it all with modern implements, but this was where he felt most at home.

Sounding defeated, she asked in a small voice, “Are you going to kill me?”

“Killing you would be a terrible way to start a friendship.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, no one is going to pay a lot of money to get me back.”

Did she really not know her value?

Her stomach growled for the third time since she’d become lucid again, but she had yet to drink the water or touch the food he’d arranged to have ready for her.

Avoiding his face this time, she asked, “What are you going to do to me?”

She feared him.

He knew it without asking her, but she kept her fear hidden fairly well. Of course, he’d been doing everything he could to make her relax.

Smiling with a splash of majik to up his charm, he said, “I have nothing bad planned for you.”

Phoedra looked surprised for a moment, then recovered. “Why should I believe you?”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

Her face scrunched up with confusion. “Because I believed that jerk, Joey, who was some kind of thing. His weird friends helped him kidnap me. I don’t know who to trust now.”  Her eyes filled with water, but she sniffed hard and fought against crying.

Cathbad would pay a king’s war chest of gold if she managed not to turn on the waterworks.

He had caught her reference to Joey being a thing, which meant she at least suspected everyone was not entirely human.

He kept his voice in a soft, grandfatherly tone. “You are correct to question all of this, because it is unusual. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in a bad place. You’re not. I will keep you safe. You’re far better off with me than the person who sent Ossian to retrieve you.”

“That freak? He ... he ... his face changed. That was crazy stuff. I don’t think he could control it. He got upset when Turbo pointed out his head wasn’t on tight. Ick. Made me sick to look at him.” 

Cathbad took offense at any criticism of Ossian, who had been a work of art before Veronika got her claws into him. Oh, yes, he had figured out what happened to Ossian. When Cathbad could not reach him telepathically, he put every Scáth Force warrior on tracking Ossian, which resulted in getting answers from his polymorph’s computer.

The odd thing was that Ossian hadn’t protected access to his computer. In fact, he’d left an interesting note about this child’s mother.

Had he gone there after Veronika got her hands on him and left his electronic security weak so that someone would discover his activities? Quite possible since Ossian had to know Cathbad would come for him.

Cathbad regretted not developing Ossian further to the point of giving the polymorph teleportation ability. If he had, Ossian might have escaped the witch.

On the other hand, Veronika would have taken advantage of that power, which would have given her unlimited possibilities for moving around. She’d have escaped before anyone could have locked her up, and Cathbad would have missed the chance to nab Phoedra.

But she did have a way to shield Ossian from Cathbad when Ossian returned to Atlanta.

For now, only for now.

There would be time to deal with finding Ossian. At the moment, Cathbad had a majikal prodigy to study and develop.

He explained to Phoedra, “If my man had not intervened when he did, you would have been handed over to an insane woman instead of sitting here, having a peaceful dinner.”  When Phoedra’s stomach grumbled yet again, Cathbad said, “Please eat. You are hungry, right?”

She stared with heavy suspicion at the perfectly prepared steak.

Giving her a sigh worthy of any disgruntled father, he lifted a fork and knife. After slicing a piece of steak, he ate that bite, then stabbed a broccoli floret and consumed it, too.

After swallowing, he said, “I will test the rest of this if you’re still concerned about being poisoned or drugged. It’s very good. I have an excellent chef and I would not go to this much trouble if I wanted to harm you.”

“Guess you have a point.” Making a sound of frustration the young had perfected over centuries, she started eating. After the first bite, her face gave away how much she enjoyed it.

Finally, she might be more open to chatting. “Now, let’s talk so we can get to know each other, Phoedra.”

“I want to go home.”

“I understand that and perhaps we can work something out.”

That got her attention. “Really?”

Lying had always come easily to Cathbad. “Of course. I’m not an ogre.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Cathbad.”

Another scrunched up look. “What kind of name is that?”

The young in this era had no manners. “The only one you need at the moment.”

Putting her fork down and wiping her mouth on the cloth napkin, she said, “What I want to know is, why did you send someone for me? Who are you to me?”

“I will explain that, but not right this second. Just know that I am the only person who can protect you from some very dangerous and powerful people.” He watched her face as that sank in.

“You mean those weird guys?”

That opened the door for him to test just how much she knew about the preternaturals. “That is exactly who I’m talking about. By the way, have you experienced anything unusual recently?”

Phoedra had started eating a six-layer parfait. She paused with a bite halfway to her mouth. “What do you mean?”

“Like a supernatural ability or gift?”

She shrugged, and that action alone told him something. If she had not experienced powers, she would probably have said something tart or condescending.

Interesting. She truly didn’t know?

Cathbad lifted a handful of nuts, munched on them, then took a drink of his wine. “Let’s talk about something else first. Do you know anything about your mother or father?”

“No.” The word had slipped out on a sullen note.

“Who raised you?”

“My foster mother, Donella. She said she doesn’t know anything about my background other than I was handed to her as an infant. She was surprised when no one adopted me.”

“I see.” Cathbad kept casually snacking on nuts. Donella could not be human. Human babies were adopted quickly, especially a beautiful infant, and this child would have been one. No, this girl had been shielded from anyone with powers.

He hadn’t believed Ossian’s computer notation about Phoedra’s mother being a Medb, but it all made sense now. Kizira was Phoedra’s mother. His mind gathered pieces of the puzzle, adding to it the image of the Belador known as Quinn holding Kizira as she died.

The queen would kill to know what Cathbad had discovered. She should not have crossed him.

He allowed a pleasant silence to drift along until Phoedra felt the need to speak.

Staring at her food, she asked, “What would an ability feel like?”

There it was—that sound of curiosity rising up and forcing her to ask a question she had probably been keeping to herself. “Have you felt anything unusual that you can’t explain, Phoedra?” 

She didn’t answer while she finished eating. Once she put her fork down, she murmured, “You’ll think I’m a freak.”

“No, child. On the contrary. I would never think that, because I possess gifts and abilities. I’ve also known gifted people my entire life and feel certain you are one of a special breed.”

For the first time, she looked at him as something other than a kidnapper. “Really? What kind of abilities? Show me.”

He considered all the things he could show her and realized small would work best. Anything large might destroy this fragile moment of building trust.

Pointing at the fork in her hand, he said, “Allow me.” Using his kinetic ability carefully, he moved the fork out of her hand and dished up a small piece of cake that he floated back up to her lips.

Her eyes got so large they threatened to pop out of the sockets. She whispered, “No way.”

He waited for her to eat the dessert. “You may take the fork back. It won’t bite you.”

She tentatively reached for the utensil. When she grasped it, she lifted the utensil up and down a couple of times, then placed it on the plate.

Fearful at first, she sat there staring at the fork as if trying to decide what had happened. Then she started grinning. “I’m not a freak?”

What fool had told her that? “Of course, you’re not. You belong to a very special group of beings.”

“Beings?” Now she was back to sounding wary.

“Yes. Human beings,” he corrected for her benefit.

“Oh. Got it. So it’s normal for me to have premonitions?”

“Absolutely. How do you think I was able to find you? I was given a vision of you in that location.” Not really, but she loved hearing that additional confirmation.

Cathbad’s own ability with true foresight was unreliable, but until Veronika had messed with Ossian, Cathbad had been able to view through Ossian’s eyes when he chose. Still, it took a great deal of power from him and the polymorph so he avoided it most of the time. He’d tried, though, after Ossian had dropped out of his reach. Cathbad had tried every way to locate him before turning to his backup plan and sending out the Scáth Force.

Phoedra was probably just gaining her ability to see into the future, which Kizira had been able to do according to what he’d heard about the deceased priestess. TÅμr Medb occupants who had known Kizira claimed her visions were never wrong.

Offering Phoedra a smile of camaraderie, Cathbad said, “Having visions or premonitions is more common in females.”

“Ugh.” She lifted both hands as if a rat had run across the table in front of her, which hadn’t been the case at all. She had a dramatic way with her hands.

She said, “Please don’t make this about being hormonal.”

Cathbad chuckled out loud. He couldn’t recall the last time someone had given him a true reason to laugh. This one would be a delight to train.

“No, I’m talking about genetics and lineage,” he explained. “Clairvoyants tend to inherit that gift from their mothers.”

“You think my mom could do this?”

“Yes.” Cathbad snapped his fingers. Servants dressed in white tunics and pants trimmed in gold and black entered from a door at the end of the room and cleared the table, leaving their drinks.

Once that was out of the way, Cathbad suggested, “Tell me what you’ve seen and I’ll help you figure out what it means.”

She said, “I’ve had these, uh, weird images. In one, this big flying beast is attacking a woman.”

That could be a vision of what happened to her mother, but Cathbad did not want to influence Phoedra so he just let her talk.

“I know that’s too crazy to understand, so just forget about that one. The other dream or vision or whatever it is I keep having is about a red dragon fighting a bunch of people, but I can only see it with blurry edges. Some amped-up woman throws a laser or something bright at the dragon. They fight and he falls from the sky. Hits the ground like a ton of bricks.”

Cathbad couldn’t contain his excitement. “Does she kill the dragon?”

Phoedra turned glum. “I think so. I don’t remember past that point when he was on the ground not moving. It makes me feel bad.”

“Why?”

She looked at him as though he were a dunce. “He was this big, beautiful red dragon. I mean, dreams have meanings, right? So what could it mean if I see a dragon die in my vision?” 

Cathbad sat back. It meant she’d seen the end of the Treoir dragon king.

This child would bring Cathbad even more joy once he had groomed her to be a lethal weapon against all others.