Chapter 3 #2
“I know the cottage. I’m not as well read as I should be, but I’m guessing this is twelfth century? It’s a bit too spartan for William’s time. I mean, where’s the furniture?”
“You’re as annoying as your grandfather.”
I grinned at him as I stood up. “That’s a really nice thing to say.”
He huffed out a frustrated breath, waved a hand, and there was the warm cottage, changed from what Lorne and I were used to, yes, not a modern convenience in the mix, but not the barren stone room it had been moments before.
There was still no sunroom, but there was a blanket chest in the living room made from pine, which I knew because it sat, in my time, in the bedroom I shared with Lorne.
In the cottage of William’s time, Lorne and I were surrounded by a settee and three chairs, as well as a card table that had been lost to time.
The furnishings were not lavish; it was a country cottage after all.
There were ladder-back chairs around a simple maple table in the kitchen, the seats made of woven rush that had been described in diaries, but were gone before my grandfather was born, replaced by the sturdy mahogany and cherry furniture that inhabited our space, thick and durable, what I had grown up with and which I would pass on.
“Happy?” Giles prodded me.
“I am,” I replied, glancing around, admiring the heavy quilts on the rack in another corner, both the hearth and fireplace making the room cozy and warm. “Thank you. It’s much better.”
“What tipped you off?”
“Mostly the front door,” I said, gesturing at it. The witch bells had returned, the lock was gone, and it looked as it did in my time—a heavy, six-inch-deep carved mahogany beast of protection.
“The door?”
“It doesn’t need a lock,” Lorne told him. “The cottage knows who belongs inside and who does not.”
At the mention of the word cottage from Lorne, the floor, the walls, everything shuddered, and the familiar smell that had inhabited the space since my husband had taken up residence in the Corey home wafted through the air.
The scent was pumpkin—not pie, but like in a field ready to be picked, some broken open by animals, the heart of it, the pulp—as well as baking bread, chai, and a trace of crisp fall air.
We’d met in autumn, and the cottage commemorated that by changing at times what it smelled like inside.
There were still remembrances of my grandparents and others, but mostly, it was Lorne.
The cottage had a soft spot for the man.
“Oh, there’s my girl,” he murmured.
“What is happening?” Giles asked sharply.
“You’re about a minute and a half away from your time-slip not holding, at least in the cottage,” I informed him.
He scoffed. Loudly. “I should be concerned with a mousey little witch?”
“Why does everyone always think that?” Lorne asked me.
“Much like the fae, who don’t do any research, neither does he.”
“I see.”
The cottage shook again, this time far more violently.
Lorne grabbed my hand, yanked me after him, and darted to the front door. He opened it, pressed me against the frame, which I took hold of, and then he plastered himself to my back and held on.
“The hell is going on?” Giles yelled at me.
As I suspected, our version of the cottage knew it wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
It shook off the hedge-rider’s spell, which it could do.
It had been built on sacred, warded earth, had been reinforced with iron to bar the fae, and had been bonded to each of the guardians of Corvus and had absorbed, over centuries, pieces of magic of every Corey who ever lived within its walls.
Because Giles had never been a resident of the cottage, he had no inkling how powerful it was. He was about to learn.
I closed my eyes as the magic corrected what had been inflicted on our home.
Giles was screaming, and I knew it had to hurt.
I’d never experienced having my own magic undone, as I made certain, always, as I’d been taught, to use it only for the highest and best. My grandfather had never had any of the seams of his ripped apart either, but he knew others, in the coven he’d been part of for a short time, that had.
I heard things breaking, and shivered when the blast of cold air struck me.
“I can’t say why, but I feel like we need to let go,” Lorne insisted over the howling wind. Even speaking into my ear, I barely heard him.
The thing was, if his gut was telling him something, there was a reason and that was my magic working through him.
Because I trusted him in all things, I let go, feeling his arms close around me at the same time.
It was like flying, except I was being whipped around, and even when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see a thing.
I was surprised when we both bounced down onto our couch.
It was as though we fell through the ceiling.
And I knew that wasn’t possible, but this was magic, after all.
As we sat together, getting our bearings, I realized the interior of the cottage was precisely as it had before we left for James’s home hours before.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I said with a sigh.
“Wait,” Lorne cautioned me, getting up and going to the door, opening it, and finding Giles there, shivering.
Shoving by him, he walked out onto the porch as I scrambled up off the couch to join him.
A sleigh went by then, drawn by an enormous black horse wearing what looked like a heavy coat.
I had the fleeting thought of how much the horse must have been valued before the man driving waved to Lorne and called out a greeting.
Turning to Lorne, I said, “A sleigh?”
“More importantly, the Jeep is still missing,” he growled, brows furrowed, facing Giles, arms crossed, leveling a glare at the man that I was glad I had never been on the receiving end of. “What is going on?” Lorne demanded. “We need to know now.”
Giles moved so fast, I couldn’t even react, but he smashed his hand over Lorne’s left pectoral, in a motion, I was sure, meant to kill him.
“No,” I screamed, rushing toward them, then abruptly freezing as Lorne grabbed his hand, twisted it violently, braced the man’s arm with his other, and dragged him to the porch railing before throwing him over.
Giles Corey was not a small man, but Lorne threw him easily. And it wasn’t far, the snowbank cushioning his fall a bit, though with ice on top of the accumulation, there was a distinct crunching sound, and it did knock the wind out of him, as evidenced by him not moving.
“Wherever you came from,” Lorne began, pounding down the steps, “you need to go back and get the hell off my land.”
Giles rolled to his hands and knees, and I saw it then, the beast he was under his calm, genteel facade.
“How dare you try and take him from me!” I roared, skirting around Lorne before he could stop me, rushing down the steps, then over to the cobblestone path, now barely visible, but knowing by heart where it ended so I could step off.
Drawing wind to my hand, I cleared a small patch of snow, just large enough for me to crouch in, and then spoke to the earth, my land, and it was like new soil, soft, pliable, as I pressed my hands down.
I would do now what I never did in the dead of winter and wake the land from its slumber.
It was needed, and when I called on it to kill the man who had threatened Lorne, it would come to my aid.
Moreover, Giles Corey would feed and nourish Corvus, as he would be dragged deep and his blood and bones would be added to those of far more venerable ancestors.
“Wait, wait,” Giles pleaded, crawling quickly over to me. “It was an instinctive reaction to him challenging me. It was primal. I didn’t think, simply acted. Forgive me. Please forgive me.”
Lifting my head, I stared at him, and he scrambled back.
“I had no idea you were a branded witch, Xander Corey, or that your mundane husband was branded as well.”
“All that means is that if I weren’t, I’d be dead,” Lorne stated, reaching me and going down on one knee beside me.
“I wouldn’t have killed you,” he rasped at Lorne. “Only put you into a sleep that I alone could wake you…from.” He glanced around then, the color draining from his face. “We have to go inside.”
“We do, yeah,” Lorne confirmed curtly, taking hold of my hands, brushing the dirt from them before taking them in his. “Don’t freeze these off out here,” he ordered me. “I’m very fond of them.”
I exhaled sharply, feeling the anger wash through me and then drain down into the land. “I can’t be without you,” I husked.
“Same,” he said with a grin, then kissed my forehead. “Let’s go inside and figure out what the hell is going on.”
I nodded, and he stood and helped me up just as I heard some rustling.
“Xan,” Lorne whispered, and the fear in his voice had me searching for whatever it was that spooked him.
The low growl turned my head to the right where, outside of the light from the porch, something was standing in the shadows.
And I was used to seeing animals step out of the night, but this was different.
The eyes were much higher than I expected, but more importantly, the hand on the porch railing was human, while the other one stood out sharply against the snow behind it, covered in fur and ending in talons—the hand that had tried to drag me through the mirror earlier.
“Holy fuck,” Lorne gasped, tugging me after him as we ran up the stairs, through the door, and…were then right back where we’d started.
“No, no, no,” I moaned.
“The fuck did you do?” Lorne yelled at Giles, yanking me off my feet as hot, wet breath bathed the left side of my face and my right shoulder felt as though it was severed from my body. I wasn’t proud of my scream, but the pain wrenched it from my throat.
“Xan!” I heard, and that was all.