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was nearly to term and as the family legend goes ‘blessed him with a healthy boy’.” She glanced over her shoulder to see Wayne tracing the grain in the wood table top. “He’d given his vow to you in good faith,” she added.
    Wayne grunted in disgust.
    She spun around, her spatula punctuating her words. “What would you rather he do, leave the woman to bear his child alone? Kill her?”
    He had the grace to look horrified at those suggestions. “Of course not.”
    She turned back to stir the eggs in the pan. “Then be grateful he had the foresight to prepare his progeny - all of my superfluous cousins - for your possible return.”
    Scooping the scrambled, herbed eggs onto a plate, she added several slices of bacon and placed the dish firmly in front of Wayne. “For the record, I’m well within my rights to dump this in your lap.”
    He arched one golden eyebrow as if daring her to do just that. She resisted. Barely. Being childish wouldn’t help anything. When she returned to the table with her own plate, they ate in a tense silence, the dog resting like a sphinx on the floor between them. She studied Wayne surreptitiously, marveling that his presence was possible, even as he annoyed her. “What did you intend with your squire and the dagger?”
    “It was to be buried with Peter. As the last of his line, the blood I used in the spell should have kept bound a terrible witch whose followers were gaining in strength and number.”
    “What happened?”
    “It would seem one child followed by many more.”
    She bit back the sharp retort dancing on the tip of her tongue. Patience had never been her longest suit. “I meant what happened when you cast the spell?” She pointed at him, circling a finger. “To you .”
    “The hound -”
    “Sterling,” she corrected with a smile for the dog in question.
    “We fought the witch and her closest guards and devotees. When it became clear we could not win by force and strategy, I employed magic, casting the binding spell as a last resort.”
    She waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t. “Whatever you did agrees with you,” she said, clearing away the plates. “Why did Nick want you to go by a different name?”
    “Names have power and I am not prepared for the enemy to know I am here. The wards around this place -”
    “Wards?”
    “Magic that protects and -”
    “I know the term,” she interrupted. “If we can put them on a house, why didn’t you or, or anyone else put one on the dagger?”
    “By my intention such a ward was not necessary.” His voice carried a sharp edge. “I must believe Peter smartly avoided tampering with the magic I imbedded in the blade.”
    She didn’t know enough about magic to argue the point. “What can I do?”
    “Not a thing,” Wayne said, crunching the last slice of his bacon. “We must track it down of course. If, as you say, generations of good-intended O’Malleys have kept the dagger out of evil’s sight I have hope it will be difficult for the thief to use it.”
    “So the thief stole the dagger to break a centuries-old spell? To what end?”
    “I suppose that depends on who stole it,” he said in a superior tone. “I would not be here if I was not needed. Knowing the dagger has survived and been protected by your family, knowing preparations were maintained for my return, it seems likely in the way of powers finding balance, that one or more persons from the cult I sought to destroy have also survived.”
    Tara finished her meal in silence and weighed his logic as she cleared the table and handled the dishes. She didn’t know of any cults in New York City, none at all near the family pub, though she knew people could get into all kinds of trouble that went unspoken. No one in the pub’s employ knew the dagger existed since few had access to the office. In fact, though her family made a production out of ancestral legend, she now knew only the oldest learned the whole truth of Peter O’Malley.
    And