our magic. Something much more powerful than anything someone like her should have had."
He looked at me and gave me a tired smile. "We are a secretive people, and even the risk of disobeying the Gray Lords' orders is not worth giving up all of our secrets. If something you possess is too powerful, They will confiscate it. If They had known that she had something of power, she'd have been forced to give it to someone who could take care of it."
"So O'Donnell gets it instead." I closed the book and set it beside me.
"And the list she had compiled for the Gray Lords, of the items they wanted recorded." He spread his hands. "We aren't sure that she had a copy in her house. One of her friends saw it, but Connora might have turned it over to the Gray Lords without keeping a copy."
That didn't sound like the woman whose house I'd searched. A woman like that would have kept a copy of everything. She loved the storage of knowledge.
"So O'Donnell takes that list," I said. "After playing with whatever toys he stole from Connora, he decided he wanted more. He looks at the list and goes after the things he wants." My sample size was limited, but - "It seemed to me that he was killing the least powerful, Connora, to the most, the forest fae who was last killed. Is that right?"
"Yes. She might have told him or maybe she had the list organized that way. He didn't get it quite right, by the way, but close enough. I suppose whatever items he stole allowed him to kill people he would otherwise never have been able to touch."
"Do you have any idea at all what things O'Donnell's killer might have?" Samuel growled.
Uncle Mike sighed. "No. But he doesn't either. The list said things like 'one walking stick' or 'a silver bracelet, but it didn't explain what they were. Mercy, the walking stick wasn't in your car. The Fideal says that he didn't touch it. I suspect it will show up again - it has been persistent in following you."
"It is the walking stick that would make all my ewes have twins, isn't it?" I asked, though I was almost certain. The stories about the others had worried me enough to be grateful the stick was useless to me.
He laughed. It started from his belly and worked its way to his eyes, until they twinkled merrily. "You have some ewes you plan on breeding?"
"No, but I'd like to be able to travel more than five miles from home without finding myself on my own doorstep - or worse, be able to see all the faults in the people around me without any of the goodness." Not that any of that had been happening, but for all I knew, the stick had to be activated somehow in order to work.
"Not to worry," he said, still grinning. "If you decide to be a sheep farmer, all of your sheep would have healthy twins until the stick decided to roam again."
I let out a sigh of relief and turned back to what I needed to know. "When O'Donnell was killed, were you and Zee the only ones who knew he was the killer?"
"We hadn't told anyone else."
"Were you the only ones who knew the murderer was stealing artifacts?" I caught a whiff of something magical and tried to keep my face from showing my sudden alertness.
"No. It wasn't talked about, but as soon as we discovered that Connora's list had been taken, we started asking around. Anyone would have made the obvious connection."
Beside me, Samuel nodded in happy agreement. Not that he should have objected to anything Uncle Mike said but...
"Quit that," I told Uncle Mike. I noticed that the tiredness I'd seen in him when he came was gone and he once more appeared to be a kindly man who made his living making people happy.
"What?"
I narrowed my gaze at him. "I don't like you right now, and no fae magic is going to change that." Samuel jerked his head toward me. Maybe he hadn't caught that Uncle Mike was using some kind of charisma magic - or maybe he smelled that I was lying. I did like Uncle Mike, but Uncle Mike didn't need to know that. He'd be easier to pry information out of as long as I could keep him feeling guilty.
"My apologies, lass," he said, sounding as appalled as he looked. "I'm tired and