Prince of Hazel and Oak. John Lenahan

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      Getting Brendan an audience with my mother wasn’t easy. Once Dad had stabilised, Fand had ordered Mom to rest. She agreed and slept but as soon as she woke up she threw herself into the task of queening Castle Duir. It took me a couple of days to get the cop in to see her.

      Mom stared hard at the detective when he walked into the room. ‘I remember you,’ she said with narrowing eyes. ‘You are the man that imprisoned my son. You pointed a weapon at me. Conor, what is he doing here?’

      ‘I need to get back,’ Brendan said.

      Mom shot him a spectacularly dirty look and said, ‘You will speak when spoken to.’

      Wow, even I took an involuntary step back. I had forgotten how menacing Mom can be when she is in her bear cub guarding mode. She turned her back on Brendan and took a step towards me. ‘Now, Conor, what is he doing here?’

      Brendan said, ‘You don’t understand,’ and then did that really foolish thing. He grabbed her wrist.

      I guess I should have warned Brendan about touching a woman in The Land when she doesn’t want or expect it. I had learned that lesson the hard way with Essa but it didn’t even come close to how hard Brandon’s lesson was with my mother. In a matter of nanoseconds she turned her wrist, broke the detective’s grasp, grabbed his arm, placed her foot in his stomach, and then vaulted him clear over her head. Brendan sailed a good seven feet in the air before luckily hitting the back of a sofa. If the manoeuvre had been in any other direction he would have hit a wall. I ran over and righted the couch and then helped the dazed Brendan into it.

      ‘Sit here and don’t say a word,’ I said.

      Brendan’s reply was a predictable, ‘Owww.’

      I approached my mother slowly. She was still in an attack stance and was breathing heavily.

      ‘Someone should teach him not to do that.’

      ‘I think you just did, Mom – and very impressively too, I might add. Let’s all take a deep breath and calm down a little.’

      Mom unclenched her fists. I took a seat and motioned for her to do the same. As she sat, she kept an eye on Brendan.

      ‘Relax, Mom, I’m sure he won’t try anything again. Will you, Brendan?’

      ‘Owww,’ Brendan repeated.

      Mom finally turned to me. I smiled at her but she wasn’t quite ready to return it. ‘You still haven’t told me what he is doing here.’

      It’s not like she had given me much of a chance but I decided to keep that comment to myself – enough feathers had been ruffled already. ‘Brendan followed us through that portal you made.’

      ‘That’s impossible.’

      ‘Why do you say that?’

      ‘The portal was designed for the three of us and our horses – part of that spell was Truemagic, it should have killed someone from the Real World.’

      ‘Well, I hate to disagree with you on a point of magic but there he is.’

      ‘Strange things happen during Samhain,’ Mom mumbled under her breath as she approached Brendan. ‘Why did you incarcerate my son?’

      Brendan didn’t answer but the question succeeded in stopping him from saying, ‘Oww, oww, oww,’ over and over again.

      ‘Mom, he was just doing his job.’

      Mom gave me a sharp look and said, ‘I am speaking to him.’

      ‘He’s right, ma’am,’ Brendan said with a mixture of respect and fear. ‘I was just doing my job.’

      ‘And what job is that?’

      ‘I’m a policeman,’ he said but when he realised she didn’t understand he sighed, ‘I catch and punish evildoers.’

      ‘And what evil could this sweet boy have done?’

      ‘I thought he had killed his father.’

      ‘And why would you have thought that?’

      ‘Well, the house was trashed, his father was missing and he was spending his money.’

      ‘Money?’ Mom asked, turning to me.

      ‘Like gold,’ I said.

      ‘I thought people in the Real World didn’t use magic. What would they want with gold?’

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