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door opened a moment later, and Fiona stepped through the threshold, a basket of tomatoes and fresh herbs on her arm. She stopped short when she saw Birdie and said, “Oh, my. Birdie, are you all right? You look as if you’ve been in a footrace.”
    Fiona never had that problem. The middle Geraghty Girl always looked as if she’d stepped off the cover of a magazine. It was her most ethereal gift.
    “Something has happened,” Birdie said. “We need a strong elixir for Lolly. She must be at her sharpest.”
    Fiona didn’t need to be told twice. She reached into the cupboard for a bottle of twelve-year-aged Jameson Reserve—the most powerful medicine to bring Lolly back to reality—and poured a shot.
    Birdie called for her older sister, and Lolly came shuffling into the kitchen, her tangerine ball gown on backward.
    “Take care of Lolly and then meet me in my quarters,” Birdie told Fiona.
    Birdie rushed up the back stairs and into her bedroom. She went straight to the scrying mirror. It was flashing, indicating three calls had been missed. While the mirror recorded all conversations, it was not equipped to retain messages. Birdie wondered if that technology existed in newer models. She went to her closet and pulled out the surprise she had made for her granddaughter—a small broom fashioned from the same twigs and branches as the first one Birdie herself had made. Which meant it also had materials from her mother’s broom, her grandmother’s, and her great-grandmother’s. All three living Geraghty Girls had charged the piece she held in her hands, but it also held the power of centuries of witches.
    It was to be a special surprise—the only surprise of the day—for Anastasia.
    But the gods so often have other plans.
    Fiona and a freshly coiffed Lolly came into Birdie’s bedroom then and shut the door behind them, both looking concerned.
    Fiona said, “Birdie, what’s happened? What is it?”
    Birdie paced as she spoke. “Aedon O’Neil contacted me. He said that one of the treasures is missing.”
    Fiona gasped.
    Lolly sat on Birdie’s bed.
    “That is all I know for now. I’m about to call him.” She looked from Lolly to Fiona. “Are you ready?”
    Fiona said, “Are you? There’s a lot of history between you two. Should we leave?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. That was a lifetime ago.” Birdie shifted her mirror forty-five degrees to the right, the angle programmed to dial Aedon’s mirror directly. Then she waited.
    Soon, the mirror sparked and sputtered, and in a flash of blinding light, Aedon O’Neil’s handsome face appeared. He was seated at a long, carved table, surrounded by the rest of the council. Birdie could tell by the stonework, the oil paintings, and the light fixtures that they were in the forum room of the castle.
    “Birdie, thank you for getting back to me so quickly. Now, as I mentioned before, one of the four hallows gifted to Ireland by the Tuatha Dé Danann has gone missing, specifically, the Cauldron of Bounty. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you what happened the last time the cauldron was stolen.”
    Indeed, Birdie needed no reminding. The Great Famine was the reason her family had been forced to leave the Old World and come to America. So many of her people had suffered. Countless lives lost.
    “Of course not.”
    Aedon nodded. “With the new year approaching and the veil so close to the transparent time, we feel it is of the utmost importance the cauldron be retrieved before Samhain.”
    Samhain, the day when this world and the Otherworld meet. The cauldron had a dual power and was also knownas the Cauldron of Rebirth. In the early times, it had been a great source of resurrection and had breathed new life into many a fallen warrior.
    In these times, that power could be very, very dangerous in the wrong hands.
    “Do you suspect dark arts at play?” Birdie asked.
    Aedon said, “Nothing is off the table at this point. We simply don’t know.” He looked at his