Then where were you when I was in danger of having my power sucked out in New York? I thought angrily.

"We know, of course, what happened to you in New York," Eoife said, and I wondered if she was aware of my thoughts. It was incredibly irritating. "It was appalling," she went on quietly. "It must have been horrific for you. Someday the council would like to hear the whole story—not just what Hunter knows."

A cold fist gripped my heart. Hunter. Of course. He was a seeker for the council. What else had he told them? He knew more about me than anyone else. I felt sick.

I took a sip of tea, trying to calm down. It didn't have the life-affirming jolt that Diet Coke had, but I was getting used to it. It was a very witchy drink.

"Okay, so Hunter's been reporting on me." I tried to sounds casual. "Fine. But why, exactly, are you so interested in me now?" Three months ago I would have been too insecure and intimidated to be this direct. Almost being killed more than once had put insecurity into perspective.

"Hunter is your loyal friend," Eoife said. "And we're interested in you for several reasons. First, because you've impressed several of out contacts with your remarkable power. Some of the things you're apparently capable of are simply unfathomable, coming from an uninitiated witch who's been studying only three months. Second, because you're the daughter of two extremely powerful witches—a daughter we didn't know either of them had. Bradhadair was the strongest witch Belwicket had seen in generations."

Badhadair had been Maeve's coven name. It meant "Fire Fairy."

"We know about Ciaran's other children, of course," Eoife went on. "To tell you the truth, none of them has caused waves of excitement."

Ciaran had three children with is estranged wife, back in Scotland. I had met one of them, Killian, in New York. My half brother. Ciaran and Maeve had been lovers, and I was the illegitimate result. Ciaran hadn't even known I existed until a few days ago.

"The council needs you to find Ciaran."

Eoife dropped this bomb right after I had taken a sip of tea, and almost spit it out all over her. I gulped and swallowed, trying not to cough.

"What?" I asked.

"Do you know what a dark wave is?" Eoife asked.

"It's… devastation," I said. "I read about it in my mother's Book of Shadows. A dark wave can kill people, level houses, destroy whole villages, whole covens."

"You have Maeve's of Belwicket's Book of Shadows?" Eoife's eyes practically gleamed.

"Yes," I said quietly, feeling a little resentful of her excitement. "But it's private."

She sat back and looked at me. "You're very… interesting," she said, as if speaking to herself. "Very interesting." The she remembered where we were in the conversation. "Yes. In essence, a dark wave is destruction. Utter destruction. Belwicket was obliterated by one. Until recently, no one knew Maeve and Angus had survived."

Angus Bramson had been Maeve's lover also. They had know each other since childhood and had lived together after they had fled to America. But Angus wasn't her m`uirn beatha d`an. Maeve loved him, but she never felt the connection to him that she did to Ciaran. Maeve had never married Angus, and he wasn't my father. But he had died by Maeve's side in a barn in upstate New York. Ciaran had locked them inside the barn and set on fire.

"Belwicket isn't the only coven that had been decimated by a dark wave," Eoife went on. She took a picture out of her black leather brief case. "This was Riverwarry," she said, handing me the photograph. It was a black-and-white shot of a charming village. I couldn't tell if it was Irish, English, Scottish or Welsh.

"This is Riverwarry now," she went on, handing me another photograph.

My heart filled with sadness as I saw what had happened to Riverwarry. It looked like a bomb had gone off right in the center village. Only rubble remained: bits of wall, shiny, melted lumps of glass that had once been windows, blackened remains of trees and shrubs. I was afraid to look too closely—in Maeve's BOS, she had described how she had seen the body of her cat among the ruins and her mothers hand beneath a crumpled wall.

"There are many others," Eoife said, gesturing to a stack of photographs in her briefcase. "Chip Munding, Bett's Field, The MacDouglas, Knifewind, Crossbrig, Hollysberry, Incdunning. Among others."

"Why were these covens destroyed?"

"Because they had knowledge and power," Eoife said simply. "They had books, spells, tools, charts, or maps that Amyranth wanted. Amyranth gathers knowledge at any price. As you know, they are willing to steal power from witches outside their coven to make themselves stronger. We call them old Woodbanes because they conform more closely to the traditional Woodbane tenets: knowledge is power, and power above all."

Of course she knew I was Woodbane. Belwicket had been a coven of «new» Woodbane, those who had renounced dark magick and sworn to make only good an positive magick. Ciaran was one of the old Woodbanes. Yet he and Maeve had slept together and made me, a Woodbane who had one foot in darkness and one foot in light.

"These pictures are awful. But what do they have to do with me?" I asked.

"We've recently received information that Amyranth is planning on calling another dark wave," Eoife said. She tucked the photographs back into her briefcase. "Here, in Widow's Vale. They plan to wipe out the Starlocket coven."