Chapter 2 #2
Aisling sat on a chair someone must have dragged in from the neighboring library in the same building because the faded upholstery of the cushion didn’t match any of the other chairs in the office.
She was wrapped up in an emergency foil blanket, feet bandaged, along with her hands, with gauze taped to one cheek and her forehead.
Her long, white-blonde hair was tangled and dirty, but someone had at least tied it back in a ponytail to get it out of her face.
She held a mug of what looked like hot chocolate, but she hadn’t drunk any of it, judging by how full it was.
The man kneeling in front of her was someone who could still, even after all these years, make Bran’s heart skip a beat and his breath catch. He’d thought he was over his first love and first heartbreak, but apparently not.
Cillian turned his head at their arrival, those blue-gray eyes of his widening in a too-handsome face with model-sharp features that Bran drank in like he was starving.
Cillian’s dark blond hair was pulled back in a messy bun at the back of his head beneath the wide brim of his hat.
Bran was pretty sure that hairstyle wasn’t regulation, but it somehow suited him.
Seven years since Bran had last seen Cillian, and it felt like yesterday in that moment.
The emptiness in his life he’d lived with for so long desperately wanted to be filled by the shape of the man before him—a man who had once pushed him away.
But Bran wasn’t going to risk his heart again, even if everything inside of him was screaming he should.
“Bran,” Cillian said, rising to his feet.
Bran had to tilt his head back a little to meet Cillian’s gaze.
He remembered they used to be the same height in high school, but Cillian must have hit a late growth spurt during their years apart.
He was nearly a whole head taller than Bran now, easily over six feet, and broad-shouldered in a way that hinted at defined muscle beneath his drab-looking ranger uniform.
His skin was a golden tan color, shades darker than Bran’s own fair coloring, no hint of freckles anywhere that Bran could see.
He looked good, and Bran was acutely aware of the way his stomach clenched at the sight, how his mouth went dry without his permission.
Before Bran could figure out how to respond, he was saved by Aisling dropping her mug on the floor.
She ignored the mess and threw herself at him with a rasping sort of sob that made Bran’s entire body flinch.
He hugged her tightly as she shook through almost soundless sobs.
The force of her crying, paired with the lack of words, worried him.
“I’m here,” he murmured, voice catching. “I’m here now.”
It was a few minutes before he could even think about anything else.
Eventually, he coaxed Aisling back to the chair to get her off her feet, picking up the emergency foil blanket to wrap it around her thin shoulders again.
Someone had given her a pair of joggers and a T-shirt that clearly didn’t fit her, but better than nothing.
Bran crouched in front of Aisling, mindful of the mess on the floor.
He gently took her bandaged hands in his, gaze dropping to the bracelet she wore, similar to the one around his wrist. Hers just lacked iron beads. “What happened?”
He thought Aisling would tell him, but she only looked at him with those big, watery, deep blue eyes of hers as her lips trembled and said nothing. It was Cillian who spoke instead.
“I found her along Route 202, in the tree line. She was alone,” Cillian said.
“Where?”
“On the way to your house.”
“It’s not my house.”
It hadn’t been even when he lived there, angry that his mother had moved them out of the Shoppe’s apartment to a place where Ray insisted Bran listen to every rule he laid down and got angry when he didn’t. Ray hadn’t ever hit him, but Bran always felt he’d wanted to.
“The house is a crime scene. You can’t take her back there right now,” Mac warned.
Bran’s shoulders inched toward his ears. “I still have my key to the Shoppe.”
“The Shoppe was locked up tight with no signs of forced entry, according to the police.”
“Then we’ll stay there.”
Better a place with no memories of whatever had occurred that put such a haunted look in his little sister’s eyes than anywhere else.
Aisling had always been a quiet child growing up, bused to the same schools Bran had gone to in Amherst and forced to deal with the social stigma of where they’d grown up.
She had friends, he knew, but none in Pelham.
The handful of kids in town who were her age knew of their family and the Shoppe, and that was enough, sometimes, to make locals steer clear.
“Was anyone with you out in the forest?” Bran asked.
Aisling shook her head, still not talking. He was relieved to know he wouldn’t have to search for anyone else. It’d been years since he had walked the forest at night, and he wasn’t in the right mindset to do so right now.
Just get through this.
“No one else has been reported missing,” Cillian said.
Bran didn’t care about anyone else. “I’m taking Aisling home.”
Mac cleared his throat. “CPS won’t come until later. I’ll have the police chief talk to them.”
Bran worked his jaw but kept his grip on Aisling’s hands gentle. “She’s my sister. What are they going to do? Leave her with someone else when I’m right here?”
“I think if you hadn’t come, the chief was going to let her stay with me and my wife. I’ll go talk to him.”
Mac slipped out of the office, and Bran wished Cillian would follow him. But he stayed, and Bran could feel the weight of Cillian’s gaze like an itch between his shoulder blades.
“I would’ve taken Aisling home so she had somewhere to stay if Mac didn’t,” Cillian said quietly.
Bran eased up out of his crouch and stood, letting go of one of Aisling’s hands so he could turn and look at Cillian. “Thank you for finding Aisling, but she’s not your responsibility.”
Cillian’s lips firmed into a flat line, gaze unreadable. Bran used to be able to read the other man’s moods, but that was back when they’d been best friends, before he’d been stupid enough to kiss Cillian on the night before the rest of their lives started.
Coming back here, seeing Cillian for the first time face-to-face in years, dredged up so many memories and emotions that left Bran wishing Cillian hadn’t stayed.
That he’d moved out of Pelham like Bran had so Bran wouldn’t have to deal with the person who’d once unknowingly owned his heart and shattered it while he mourned his mother.
The stupid, fucked-up thing was that Cillian still owned his heart. Would always own it.
Seven years wasn’t going to change that.
“Bran,” Cillian began, but Bran cut him off.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
Which was a lie, but Bran pretended otherwise because that was the only way to protect his heart. He wasn’t going to risk it again, even if some part of him wanted to.
Cillian closed his eyes, a pained expression crossing his face before he opened them again and nodded. “The police are handling the investigation. The rangers won’t be involved.”
Cillian gave Aisling a nod goodbye before leaving the office.
The door clicked shut quietly behind him, and Bran let out a heavy breath.
He forced all thoughts of Cillian out of his mind and turned his attention to his little sister.
Aisling looked back at him with wide eyes, waved her hand at him, then pointed at her throat.
Bran frowned. “So it’s not that you won’t talk, it’s that you can’t?”
Aisling nodded rapidly. He held her other hand higher, eyeing her bracelet.
Bran remembered watching his mother create the bracelets in her stillroom, hunched over a table with delicate tools and a pair of jeweler’s magnifying glasses on her head.
She’d whispered magic into every line she carved to create a witchmark, a spell of protection meant to keep the wearer safe.
It should have protected Aisling from whatever had killed their mother and Ray.
But she couldn’t speak, and that meant something had gotten through their mother’s legacy.
Something to do with magic.
Bran glanced over his shoulder at the door, calculating the risk of casting magic with so many people outside the office.
His mother had always been adamant about making sure their family’s secret didn’t get out.
It had been ingrained in him ever since he was old enough to understand that magic should never be spoken of outside their coven, which had consisted of himself and his mother for years until Aisling came along, even though she wasn’t born a witch and had no magic.
He let go of Aisling long enough to lock the office door. The window there was made of frosted glass, but Bran didn’t take its opaqueness for granted. Then, he knelt in front of Aisling and raised his right hand between them, fingers slightly curled.
A witch earned the right to carry their coven’s witchmark only after they completed their training.
Most witches these days made do with pendants or rings, something unobtrusive and easily overlooked.
Few carried it on their skin anymore, but the Gallagher coven still adhered to the old tradition.
It hadn’t broken, even during the terror of the Salem Witch Trials.
The Gallagher coven had always guarded the forest surrounding Pelham, with its long history of bright lights and the creeping edges of the wyrding—that barrier between worlds—in its depths.
An itinerant witch had done his mother’s tattoo when she was twenty, and a different witch had done Bran’s when he turned eighteen.
Fine-line needlework meant the witchmarks denoting his family’s coven were expertly hidden amid the branches of the pine trees ringing his forearm.