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Hear me and grant dominion over the stars.

The witch fell to her knees and stared into the fire. Its hot

blue center swelled, and yet its crest split into what  seemed like thousands of yellow tips, all licking and  dancing in a frenzy. She leaned close, as if she would  breathe the flames into her, to welcome the fire into her  nose and mouth like a lover.

It was going too far. He'd stop the witch before she summoned the devil himself to them. Campbell reached his hand out, felt the heat of the flames and the damp of her sweat radiate to his fingertips. One slight movement and he could push the woman in, baptize her in fire as any witch should be. It was his moment to go back, to choose a different path than that of evil. Her body would burn, and

none would know of Campbell's flirtations with the dark

arts.

Eyes tearing, her thin, dry lips cracked into a smile. “I see,” she whispered.

Campbell drew his arm back. He felt Finola's sudden serenity like a breeze in the night. And he found his own resolve. He would see as the witch saw. Use her powers just this once.

He'd wait for now. Her death would come in time.

Finola sightlessly took a wooden panel from the dirt. “So it is,” she rasped, and began frantically muttering an incantation.

Her tiny dagger glittered silver white in the moonlight as she hacked and carved at the small square of wood.  Untouched by the heat, she retrieved a chunk of charred kindling from the edge of the fire and used it to etch lines and circles on the panel. She worked quickly, as if in a trance, sketching with a loose arm shapes that slowly coalesced into figures.

“I call for you she who is most able to shatter MacColla.”  Finola slammed the wooden panel down before Campbell,  and this time he didn't flinch. It bore the image of a large  man with a woman by his side, smudged in shades of gray  and black.

“I call the woman who would be his bride.”

Chapter One

Boston, present day.

Haley rubbed her finger over the blade. Metal was a curious material. It assumed the body's heat, and yet would never be mistaken for a living thing. She turned it in her hand. It was the oddest weapon she'd ever laid eyes on.

Who was the man who'd held this weapon?
 
she wondered, projecting her mind to  another time. Circa 1675 the catalog read.
 
Whose blood had it drawn?

The filigree patterns at its base remained vivid, but the knife's edge was nearly serrated with corrosion. Though she knew it still had a bite, Haley couldn't resist tentatively scraping the pad of her thumb along the tip, and she gasped when it nicked her. She raised the cut to her mouth and breathed in the sour tang of steel that clung to her palm.

Another blade, sharper and colder, invaded her thoughts.  It was years ago now but, in a  single heartbeat, Haley was back. Reliving the moment that had changed her forever.

She fingered her scar, grazing lightly along it, as if it were some ghastly length of twine with the give of flesh beneath her fingers. The tissue had no feeling, and she  could almost imagine it wasn't a part of her body. And yet she could never forget it. Would never forget that other blade, once pressed hard to her throat.

Her breath hissed sharply from between her teeth. Deep inhale, sharp exhale.
 
The breath sweeps the  mind clear,
 
she could hear her father say. He'd been so helpful after the attack, using his experience and sheer will to pull his daughter back from the darkness that had enveloped her.

Just thinking of her dad brought a smile to her face. The love of her family had brought her back, but it had been her father's police academy training  - leavened with some good old South Boston street fighting  - that had helped  Haley control the feeling of vulnerability that had paralyzed her.

Dammit.
 
She really needed to figure out her dissertation, not get sidetracked by some weapon. She put the strange dagger back on the table and took a rubber band from around her wrist to pull her hair back tight. She'd come to the museum that day for inspiration, and Sarah had let he r into the second-floor storage area to peruse what few artifacts they had that might be germane to a topic in seventeenth- century Britain.

Her advisor had threatened that Haley was in danger of losing her teaching stipend. She'd been in the graduate

program for four years now, and though she'd managed to  eke out a chapter here and there, she needed to establish  her argument and finish the thing.

A thick hank of black hair slipped free and Haley roughly tugged her elastic out and pulled the coarse mass back into place. She needed a breakthrough to catch her advisor's attention. Something fresh. Something she could

even milk into a journal article or two, and get the heat off

of her for a little while.

Dr. Clark had just about lost his patience. Haley's interests in early modern weaponry didn't help matters, skewing, as they did, so dangerously close to what he considered military theory. And with a fellowship cofunded by the  History Department and the Department of Celtic  Languages.

Haley had no choice but to position herself as a pure

Reformation- era Scottish historian. Period.

As much as she'd prefer studying old broadswords instead.

Muttering a very American expletive, Haley snatched the weapon back off the table anyway. She leaned back and, slouching low in the chair, stretched her legs out in front of her. It was gorgeous. And inexplicably buried deep in the museum's archives with so many other gems in the  Harvard collection.

On the surface, it looked like a simple dagger. An elegant, though stout,  dagger. But Haley had known instantly what she was looking at. It was what was known as a  “combination weapon.” Wary of gunpowder's unreliability, early modern arms makers created guns capable of multiple jobs. A spear that shot bullets. A hunting
 
trousse
with a small pistol flush against its machetelike blade.  She'd once even seen an elaborate museum piece that was a sword, cane, hammer, and musket  - rest all in one.

Many of the combination weapons were clunky  - they would have been ostentatious displays  of wealth, not something one would've relied upon for day-to-day hunting or fighting. But this one was stunning, extraordinary. It was only when she held it in her hand that she could sense the hollowness of the blade that would've served as the

barrel of  the pistol. And if the owner wasn't inclined to  bullets, the tip of the knife could separate and shoot from  the base like a lethal steel arrowhead. The flintlock

mechanism that acted as cock and hammer was almost

completely camouflaged by elaborate etching on the blade,  and by the fine hounds' heads crafted at the T-shaped  crossguard above the hilt.

Haley smoothed her palm along the flat of the blade, marveling at the intricate pattern. She shivered.

The air- conditioning must've clicked on. She set the dagger down and pulled her cardigan over her jersey dress, and was distractedly buttoning it to the top when she noticed it. Picking the weapon back up, Haley squinted closely at the hilt. She held it up to the light. Something was etched at the base, and it was unlike the filigree work on the blade.

She darted her eyes around the storage area. Seeing she was alone, Haley licked her thumb and smudged it along the bottom of the handle. Something was engraved there, but it was obscured by black tarnish. She huffed her breath on the metal and used the hem of her dress to

polish it. The letter
 
J
 
appeared. And then
 
L. V. E.

It was an inscription. “For J.”

W-something-something.

Could it be “with love”? Who on earth would give their lover a dagger?

Haley roughly buffed the cap of the hilt to a dull sheen, pausing only with the ache in her arm. “For JG, with love from Ma… ”

“Holy crow!” she exclaimed as her phone vibrated to life,

buzzing along the top of the table like an angry insect.

Putting her hand to her  pounding heart, she glanced at the text message.

You're late. Get your butt over here.

Rolling her eyes, she muttered, “What, is the beer getting warm?” She stuffed her phone in her bag, gathered her notes, and with one last look at the dagger on the table, made her way out.

“Dr. Brawn,” Haley said, leaning her elbows on the front  desk and smiling broadly at one of the Fogg Art Museum's  conservators.

“Dr. Fitzpatrick.” Sarah Brawn smiled right back. They  both knew they were still years from the coveted  PhD, but  they'd met in a first -year graduate seminar and, sharing a  love of pizza and peculiar artifacts, had been friends ever  since.

“I think I've got it. An idea for my dissertation,” Haley  clarified, seeing her friend's confusion. “Thanks again, by  the way, for pulling that dagger for me. It helped get the  juices flowing. Those combo weapons blow me away.”

“Ooh, sock it to me. I assume you've got the title?” They  enjoyed whiling away the hours contemplating grand titles  for their as-yet completed dissertations, that being so  much more fun than the actual writing.

She nodded enthusiastically. “Might to Power: British  Firearms and the Forging of an Empire.” Haley's tone was appropriately grand. “You know, how it was only with the rise of gunpowder that  they were able to build an empire?  That way I've got my focus on the seventeenth century, but  I can also study all those cool old flintlock weapons.”

“Hasn't that gunpowder thing already been done to death?”

“Hey,” she said, feigning chagrin. “I'm still  working on… it.”

“I mean…
 
nicer
,” Sarah was thoughtful for a moment. “But

forging
 
really sounds more like a sword thing ”-

Haley put up her hand to change the subject. “Meet up with us later?”

“Clan gathering?”

She nodded, pulling a long and well -worn scarf from her bag to wind around her neck.

“So that means it must be Sunday.”

“Pigskin and pints at Paddy's.” Haley smiled. “The

countdown to the afternoon game's begun.”

“You Fitzpatricks, you're like clockwork.”

“Where football and my brothers are concerned? Yes.” She  scowled at the door as someone let themselves out and a

blast of autumn air in.

“Don't you mean football, your brothers, and
 
sports bars
?”

“Yeah, yeah, and you're so above it all, right?” Haley  readjusted her heavy canvas messenger bag, slinging it  over her head and across her shoulder. “Come on, come  out with me. I'll buy you a slice… ” She elongated the word
 
slice
 
into as enticing a one as possible.

“Some other time, yes. Tonight? No. We've been over this. I  am not interested in getting set up with one of the  Fitzpatrick boys.”

“Hey, we're good people!” Haley said, laughing. “And the

Pats are playing.”

Grinning, her friend merely waved her ringers in goodbye, nose already tucked back in her book.

* * *

“Doc!” a chorus of voices shouted as Haley entered. Though  far from being a fully realized professor, Haley's family had  taken to calling her Doc the moment she began grad

school. She looked around at all the welcoming faces,  letting her eyes adjust. The place smelled of beer and fried  things, and it brought a smile to her face. She may be in  the ivory tower now, but she was South Boston through  and through.

Three tall Fitzpatrick men were at her side in an instant, and two more waved at her from the table, beckoning with frosty plastic pitchers sloshing with whatever the beer of choice was that day. Sam Adams, if she knew her brothers.

The Fitzpatrick bunch took over Paddy's every week for the  Sunday games, and was a fixture many other nights besides. Though the clan had grown to include some friends, a few cousins, one wife, two girlfriends, and the invariable men they tried to set their only-and baby- sister up with, the family resemblance among the siblings was unmistakable. The dark, wiry “black Irish” hair and pale skin with a perpetually rosy flush to the cheeks.