glass of Paddy’s Irish Whiskey he’d been handed, then held it out for a refill.
Odell obliged with a grin. “I didn’t expect to see you, Rune. With the Awakening upon us, I thought you’d be out after your witch.”
He shrugged. “She hasn’t awakened to her powers yet.”
“Neither has mine,” Odell admitted, stretching out his long legs in front of him. “When last I checked in on her, she was burying herself in research books, looking, if you can believe it, for a ‘cure’ to witchcraft.” He shook his head solemnly. “Riona’s a bloody scientist in this lifetime. Don’t know how I’ll put up with her when it’s our time.”
Rune laughed. He knew Odell was as anxious for his witch to call to him as Rune himself was. After centuries of waiting, of torment, the end was in sight. These last few weeks of waiting were going to be a trial.
He studied the amber liquid in the Waterford crystal tumbler, took a sip of the smooth, rich whiskey and said, “I can beat that. My witch gives guided tours of the Mexican desert.”
Odell’s eyebrows lifted. “A desert, you say? Better you than me. All that sand? No cold winds? No soft rains? No. It’s all I can do to live here, in England, rather than in Ireland where me and my witch belong.”
With ties to ancient Eire, Odell and his witch, as if by design, had yet to return to Ireland. In all her incarnations, Riona had never returned to the land of her birth—as if her spirit were deliberately punishing her. Taking the atonement one step further by keeping her from the country she loved.
Rune couldn’t seem to relax, despite the comfort of Odell’s home. He’d sought Egan and had come up empty. More, there had been no trail of him. No hint of where he might have gone or who might have seen him last.
“I don’t understand it,” he muttered, staring at his whiskey as if looking for the answer to his question in the bottom of his glass. “There was no trace of Egan in Scotland. Anywhere.”
Odell laughed shortly and shook his head. “Did you expect to find him standing on his doorstep, waiting for you?”
Rune scowled at his old friend. “No, but I expected there to be some sign of him. Some clue to where he might be.”
“He’s not a child,” Odell snapped, then took a breath and leashed his temper. “You said yourself that the waiting is an agony, Rune. Is it any wonder that some of us disappear from time to time? Centuries we’ve been kept waiting, dangling on the end of the witches’ leashes. We’re Eternals, man, not tame dogs to be told when to come and when to go.”
“I didn’t say that,” Rune argued, realizing that he’d said the very same things all too recently to Torin. “But with the Awakening on us now, we should all be aware of where our witch is and what’s happening to her.”
“What makes you think he isn’t?” Odell leapt up from his chair, stalked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself another splash of Irish. He kicked it back, then slammed the tumbler onto the closest table. “He owes no one an explanation of where he goes and what he does, Rune. He’s no doubt keeping an eye on this Kellyn from afar. Waiting for her powers to awaken, just like the rest of us damn fools.”
Rune stood up too, facing down the man he’d called friend for thousands of years. “Her powers are awakening. She’s a teleporter, and a damn strong one, from what I saw. So if it’s all kicking into place, where the hell is Egan?”
Odell scowled at him, fierceness carved into his features. “How am I to know? You come to my home and start fuming at me over another Eternal’s problems? What sense is that, man?”
“I didn’t start fuming until you started shouting, dumb shit.”
Instantly, the fury on Odell’s face drifted into an expression of amusement. “Well, you have me there. All right, then. Since you can’t find your stray Eternal and you’ve clearly nothing better to do with your time than drink my whiskey . . .”
Wary, Rune watched his friend. “What?”
Odell slapped his palms together and scrubbed them briskly. “I thought I might convince you to come along with me on an adventure of sorts.”
He’d been on an adventure with Odell once before, in 1014. He’d ended up a part of the battle against the Ulstermen and was witness