The sun was shining in my eyes when I opened them again. I couldn’t see Cate anywhere, but I was still in my chair, and my shoulder didn’t hurt. Well, not quite as much. The pain was now at the level of a twinge. I rotated my shoulder and was surprised it worked.
My energy level was almost back to full. I got away from that fight better than I expected. “Coffee I need coffee.”
“What?” Cate’s voice came from my bedroom.
“I said, coffee, would you like some?” The thought of Cate in my bed made me feel a bit weak. “How are you feeling?”
She came into the kitchen pulling her hair into a ponytail and yawning. “Yes, please. I feel fine. Before you put the coffee on, do you have any food? If not, we should go out for breakfast. We need to get a good meal in us or we’ll collapse at the first sign of resistance.”
I opened the cupboards and took down a tin of steel-cut oatmeal. “This will do it. I’ll make the coffee, will you make the oatmeal?”
Cate took the tin from me and poured water in a pot. I measured out the coffee and put the espresso maker on the stove. I could tell the oatmeal would be heavy so I checked the fridge. “Here’s some cream. And I think there’s some dried fruit in that container.”
Between us we got breakfast on the table without any injuries, but I realized she was right. Just getting food on the table had made me tired and more than a little dizzy.
“I’ve never used up so much of myself. How long will it take us to get back to normal?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. And, even if I did know, what if I said a week? We can’t wait. I think if we just eat every few hours, we can keep our energy high enough to do what needs to be done.”
I marked a luck rune on the table. If we ran out of energy, then we might as well give up now. There was no point in annoying the Sidhe if we couldn’t bring the point home.
“What did you put in that tea? It healed my shoulder like a miracle.”
“It wasn’t the tea. I just put you to sleep so I could examine your shoulder.” She held her coffee cup up to me in salute. “I’m impressed you managed to get home. Your shoulder was dislocated. No permanent damage but it must have been a lot of pain. I popped it back in while you were asleep.”
“Thanks.” I felt like a big he-wizard.
“Olan is gone.” Cate picked a sliced of dried apple out of her oatmeal and chewed it.
“He does that. I remember him raking the face of the Sidhe but I don’t remember anything after that.”
“How do you know when to worry about him?”
“I don’t worry about him. Nothing can hurt him for long.” I was starting to feel the benefit of the coffee and oatmeal.
“But he can be hurt, right. Can we do this without him?”
“You don’t know Olan. He can be as much hindrance as help.” I felt mean saying that, he’d saved my life after all. “I mean he has his own agenda, like everyone.”
“I’m still worried.” Cate finished her oatmeal and put the bowl in the sink.
“Okay if he doesn’t show up soon, we can try to seek him. I’ve got some good seeker spells I haven’t tried.”
Cate smile at me and I felt warm all over. “I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“I’m impressed; I thought you were going to pass out in my lap last night.”
“Well, your bed is very comfortable.” She blushed and I thought about making my big move, wasn’t now the right time? She’d just called me a hero after all. Before I could say anything, she spoke again. “What if we looked at this from a different point of view? We have been trying to stop Fionuir, right?”
“Well, she is the one responsible for this problem.”
She shook her head. “Actually, the problem is the fairies not having babies.”
“That’s a symptom of what Fionuir is doing.”
“No, I mean what if the fairies started having babies again? It would at least buy us some time. If Fionuir has to change the spell on the amulet, we might be able to get it away from her.”
“But they aren’t.” She was right we needed a way to get the amulet, but the fairies were stuck.
She rolled her eyes at me and started tidying up the kitchen. “Are you sure you didn’t get hit in the head? Look, what I’m saying is, what if I found a way to at least temporarily get the fairies fertile again?”
“I didn’t think that was possible.”
“It occurred to me when I made your willow bark. What if I combined a few things then distilled the spell down to strengthen it?”
It felt like this was one of those things that in retrospect seem like a good idea at the time. “And what if you go overboard and we find ourselves knee deep in baby fairies. Do you have any idea how much trouble a baby fairy can be?”
“I would be very careful.” She twisted her lips in thought. “I could test it on something. I could make the potion for something short lived and then adjust it if we find it’s too strong or too weak. What about on fruit flies?”
“Crap, I don’t want an infestation of fecund fruit flies.”
“Very mature.” Cate poked my shoulder. “Keep that up and I’ll dislocate it again, buster.”
I dug for a good idea. “We can do it in a jar. That way we know we can keep control of the population.”
Cate went back to the bedroom and came out pulling on her coat. “I’ll have to do this at home, all my stuff is there and you don’t have what I need downstairs.”
“Just make sure you don’t let your apprentice help. Remember when we helped Vollont with that snow spell.”
She laughed. “Yes, we were digging the house out from the blizzard for a week. I think that’s why he had such a remote house; a blizzard in July would raise more than eyebrows in any town in California.”