Free Dance of the Gods by Nora Roberts Page B

something he asked for. But she felt a kind of understanding. Following the feeling, she drew the stake out of her belt, keeping the point toward her, and handed it to him. A look of bemusement passed over his face as he studied it.
    â€œI’m not going to have to start calling you Uncle Cian, am I?”
    He managed to grin and looked pained at the same time. “Please don’t.”
    They parted ways, with Cian going downstairs, then into the kitchen. He found Glenna fussing with tea trays. She looked a little hollowed out, he thought, and shadowed around the eyes.
    â€œHave you ever considered having someone else play mother?”
    She jerked at his voice, clattering the cup she was holding onto the tray. “Guess I’m jumpy.” She reset the cup carefully in its saucer. “What did you say?”
    â€œI wonder why one of the others can’t deal with food now and then.”
    â€œThey do. Well, Larkin’s slippery, but the others do. Anyway, it keeps me busy.”
    â€œFrom what I’m told you’ve been busy with things nondomestic.”
    â€œHoyt spoke to you.”
    â€œHe seems to enjoy waking me in the middle of the day. Which is why I want coffee,” he added as he moved to the counter to make it. When he saw her frowning at the stake he set beside the pot, he shrugged. “A sort of peace offering, you could say, from Blair.”
    â€œOh, well, that’s good, isn’t it?”
    He shifted, caught her chin in his hand. “Go lie down, Red, before you fall down.”
    â€œThat’s what the tea’s about. It’s a restorative. We need it. Batteries dead low here.” She managed a smile, but it faded quickly. “She brought a storm, Cian. She has someone with her who has enough power to call a storm, to block the sun, so we need to recharge those batteries. Hoyt and I have to work, and we need to work with Moira. We need to pull out what she has, help her hone it.”
    She turned back, began to arrange cookies on pretty little plates, anything to keep her hands moving. “We were separated today, the three of us on the high cliffs, Blair and Larkin below. They could’ve been killed, and we couldn’t have helped them, couldn’t have stopped it. We didn’t see it coming because we were so focused on the transportation spell. And when it came, when the power whipped around and slapped us down, we were already tapped out.”
    Suffering for it now, he thought. Humans always would suffer for what they’d done, and for what they hadn’t. “Now you have a better idea of your limits.”
    â€œWe’re not allowed to have limits.”
    â€œOh, bugger that, Glenna.” He snatched up a cookie. “Of course you have limits. You’ve expanded them, and likely you’ll push the box a bit wider before you’re done.She has limits as well, and that’s what you’re forgetting. Lilith has weaknesses, and is neither invulnerable nor omnipotent. Which you proved today by slipping five of her trophies out from under her.”
    He bit into the cookie as he got down a mug.
    â€œI know I should think of the five we saved. Blair said to take the victory.”
    â€œAnd she’d be right.”
    â€œI know. I know. But oh God, I wish I didn’t see the ones we left behind. I wish their faces, their screams weren’t in my head. We can’t save them all, and I said as much to Hoyt when we were in New York. It was easy to say it then.”
    She shook her head. “And you’re right, I need some rest. I have to take this tray up, see that the others get some of it inside them. You could do me a favor.”
    â€œI probably could.”
    â€œYou could take this one into the library. Moira’s in there.”
    â€œShe’ll likely think it’s poisoned if I take it into her.”
    â€œOh stop.”
    â€œAll right, all right. But don’t blame me if she