Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“Listen,” Bran said as he opened yet another cupboard in the Shoppe and started moving items around, making sure to get eyes on every inch of the space. “How long does it take to become a legal guardian? Will the government come and take Aisling from me if I don’t have anything filed on time?”
“You’re her immediate family, and DCF prefers those kinds of placements. My understanding is the police in Pelham notified them, and a counselor spoke with you yesterday?” Thomas said. The lawyer Tina had put him in touch with seemed all right so far and hadn’t sounded condescending or anything.
“Someone came by yesterday afternoon.”
The woman had driven in from Amherst, spent less than an hour with him after their lunch at Red’s Diner, and left Aisling in his care.
Bran was glad he hadn’t needed to use magic to change her mind.
Compulsion wasn’t something he liked to use, and his mother had always frowned on the spells that took away someone else’s autonomy.
Just this once, though, if it had been necessary, Bran would have done it.
“You have a job, and you have somewhere to live. That’s more than some people can give their kids.
” The sound of rustling papers filtered over the line.
“I can have the paperwork drawn up, and we can get it filed within the week. It’ll necessitate you driving into Boston to meet with me.
Unfortunately, Pelham doesn’t have a courthouse, but we can file online in the one in Hampshire. ”
Bran closed the cupboard door and settled back on his heels. He ran a hand through his hair, yanking on it lightly out of frustration. “Does it need to be this week? I have a funeral to plan.”
“I understand. The sooner, the better would be preferred, but Aisling won’t be displaced from your care if we take a few weeks to get everything in order.”
“Great.”
“Give me a call in a week or two, whenever you’re ready.”
“Thanks.”
Bran ended the call, not in the mood to deal with legal things, but knew he needed to if he wanted to keep Aisling and get full control of his mother’s business and bank accounts.
The short call he’d had with Tina that morning to set up a more in-depth meeting indicated they had a lot to go over.
Part of Bran didn’t want to have that meeting because it would truly mean his mother was gone.
Denial was a creeping sort of insanity Bran knew he couldn’t succumb to, even if part of him desperately wanted someone else to take over being the adult.
But at newly twenty-five, he was the adult.
He stood, eyeing the next set of cupboard doors in the cabinet set against the wall.
Bran wasn’t doing inventory so much as looking for any sort of hidden space his mother could have stashed the grimoire.
So far, he was coming up empty-handed, and the panic he’d managed to shove aside was back, skittering through his bones.
Mac hadn’t located the grimoire in the house, which Bran still hadn’t set foot in.
The ranger had handed off another load of clothes and shoes when Bran returned to the station yesterday afternoon to name and put to rest the latest body taken from the woods.
It was strange performing a duty his mother had handled for decades.
It felt a lot like playing dress-up, as if he were some character in a play on a stage he had no right to stand on.
He’d taken over the mantle to guard and fight against the wyrding and all it entailed, and he liked to think he had his mother’s blessing for it.
He still wished she was there to do it for him.
Bran clenched his teeth against the knot in his throat and the ready burn of tears in his eyes. He’d done his best not to cry around Aisling, trying to be strong for her. Right now, she was upstairs watching television while Bran tried not to fall apart.
Someone knocked on the door at the same time Jupiter cawed outside, his familiar’s tone a warning only Bran would recognize.
He froze, head snapping around to stare at the door.
The lights in the Shoppe were on, and his car was out front.
It probably looked as if they were open, but he’d turned the hand-painted little wooden sign hanging on the door outside to closed the first night they’d stayed in the apartment.
Everyone in town knew of his mother’s death. While he’d accepted quite a few casseroles and other easy-to-store and cook meals in the last twenty-four hours for him and Aisling to eat, Jupiter wouldn’t have cawed like that if the person knocking was local.
Another knock finally got Bran moving. He stood and approached the door, settling one hand on the knob. “We’re closed.”
“Yes, but it’s past the opening time, and I had an appointment,” a woman called back.
Another caw from Jupiter, this one almost angry-sounding, and Bran’s grip tightened on the cool metal pressed against his palm.
After a moment of hesitation, he finally undid the deadbolt and the regular lock, pulling open the door but fitting his body in the space it created to block the way inside. “I said we’re closed.”
The woman standing on his porch was taller than him, even in the pointed pair of flats she wore.
Her cream dress with black polka dots was sleeveless, buttoned down the front, with a neatly folded down collar.
Her eyes were hidden by oversized sunglasses, and the silk scarf she wore over her red hair was as fashionable as it was useful, judging by the sleek convertible Porsche parked next to his run-down Honda Civic.
Her makeup was flawless; so were her neatly manicured nails.
Everything about her was eerily perfect, and the hair on the back of Bran’s neck stood on end at that uncomfortable realization.
The woman cocked a hand on one hip, her other hand adjusting the strap of the pristine Chanel purse she carried. “And as I said, I have an appointment. I didn’t drive all the way from Boston just to be turned away. I’m here to see Ms. Gallagher about a return. It’s important that I meet with her.”
Her accent was the genteel sort of old money that belonged to the kind of person who summered at Martha’s Vineyard and wintered in Aspen or the French Alps. Bran didn’t know why someone like her was in Pelham, looking to browse the Shoppe.
“Ms. Gallagher is dead,” Bran said flatly, not caring about politeness when grief tasted like acid in his mouth. “The Shoppe is closed.”
The woman drew back slightly, one hand coming up to press over her chest. “I didn’t know.”
“It was sudden. She was the only one in charge of the business.”
The woman frowned prettily. “Are you taking over for her?”
“I’m her son.” Which wasn’t an answer, even if the answer was yes. The woman didn’t need to know that.
“Well, then. It’s nice to meet you. Bran, is it? Ms. Gallagher spoke lovingly of you over the years. I’m Meghan.”
Bran gritted his teeth against the desire to tell Meghan to shut up. He settled for one better. “Like I said before, the Shoppe is closed.”
He stepped back, intent on closing the door, when Meghan put her hand out, palm against the wood, and halted the swing of it with surprising strength. Jupiter cawed again from the roof, and Bran stared at Meghan, some instinct telling him that turning his back on her would be a terrible mistake.
Letting her inside would be worse.
She smiled, her eyes difficult to make out through the lenses of her sunglasses.
“I’m sorry to press the issue, but I did have an appointment with your mother this morning on an urgent matter.
She was meant to finalize a return for me, and I came to bring it to her.
If you’re here, perhaps you could handle it for me? I’m sure it shouldn’t take long.”
“Come back some other day. Some other week, even. My mother is dead, the Shoppe is closed, and I’m not taking any customers.”
He spat the words out like they were bullets, wishing she’d take a hint.
The edge of the door dug into his shoulder from the strength of her hand, her body refusing to give an inch when she had no right.
Bran wanted her gone. He’d trusted Jupiter’s opinion of people for years, and she’d never led him astray.
That his familiar was perched overhead, still cawing out a warning, told Bran he couldn’t trust who—or what—stood on the porch.
Their staring contest was broken by the sound of a truck engine getting louder from down the road.
Moments later, a black truck favored by park rangers pulled in alongside Bran’s Honda Civic.
The engine cut off, and Cillian got out of the truck, hat left behind, but wearing the uniform favored by rangers.
Bran stared at Cillian, stomach swooping a little as he watched the other man approach with a confident stride.
He wore a short-sleeved shirt today as an acknowledgment of the heat, the fabric pulled tight over his broad shoulders, showing off the muscles in his arms. Bran didn’t realize his gaze was drifting downward to the bulge that not even the loose uniform pants could hide until he had to jerk his eyes back up to meet Cillian’s.
“I didn’t know you had opened the Shoppe to customers,” Cillian said slowly.
“I didn’t. She was leaving,” Bran said.
Bran glanced at Meghan and realized she was no longer looking at him but at Cillian, focused in a way Bran didn’t care for at all.
He’d almost take a flirty look over the predatory sense he got off her in that moment.
It made him want to put himself between the woman and Cillian, to call up a witchmark for a spell that would cast her out of Pelham and send her back to Boston.
If she even was from Boston.
Meghan moved away from the door, and Bran nearly pitched face-first to the ground, stumbling badly now that she wasn’t forcing it open. Cillian eyed him worriedly, but Bran ignored him.