Chapter 4
Sky
“I’m sorry, I have to go,” I told Ego and Jetty. “You guys don’t really need me anyway.”
I’d received a text message from Gran asking me to join her and Elyse at Witch’s Brew in town for afternoon tea. I’d been dying to get Gran over there since I saw how excited Carli and Cassi were just to meet King since he was Rosie’s grandson.
Ego frowned. “You’re always running off somewhere. Do you have another job?”
“No,” I said, gathering my stuff. “Rosie and Elyse want to meet up for tea.”
“You mean coffee?” Ego asked.
“No, he definitely means tea,” Jetty said, chuckling. “I didn’t realize there were Americans who consumed as much tea as those women.”
Ego shook his head. “This place is weird.”
My poor cousin. I wondered if he was regretting his decision to buy this old rumbling mini-castle here.
As much as he liked my friends, Stevie and Buck had been giving him a little haunting exposure, and he’d caught all of us talking to ourselves—aka, talking to one of the ghosts he couldn’t see—so many times that he’d actually asked me if the water in this town was poisoned with hallucinogens.
“Well, when will you be back? I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be in town, and I’d like to spend more time with you before I leave.”
That stopped me short halfway to the door. “I thought you were staying until the house is redone.”
As he shook his head no, Jetty motioned behind him that he was going up to join his workers. I appreciated him giving me and Ego a moment alone.
“I can’t. Not really. I have a benefit concert, and I need get some content done for my socials.
Then I have that short tour I told you about.
I’d like to get all this other stuff done so that when that’s over, I can come back and relax and just write my music.
Jetty thinks all the work inside will be done by then. ”
Ugh. That made sense, but dammit, I liked having my cousin here. His arrival had been shit timing, though. My exposure to the Dream-veil came along at the same time as him, so I’d been spending as much time with Gran and Pops as possible, soaking up their connection and love.
Plus, I finally had King’s attention. Granted, we didn’t spend as much awake time together as I’d hoped to.
His resistance to sleepovers was frustrating, but that had made me hyperaware that I needed to be at home sleeping in my bed every night.
We didn’t dreamwalk every night, but it was enough that I didn’t want to be caught unaware, having a sleepover with my cousin and maybe doing or saying something in my sleep that would freak him out.
“Yeah, okay. That makes sense. Darn. I have a couple of new jobs coming up, but I promise I’ll clear a couple nights this week so that we can hang.”
He grinned, easily pacified, and my heart hurt a little. That was the thing with my cousin. He might be famous, people throwing themselves at his feet and dying for a sliver of his attention, but he knew that all they wanted was Ego, the popstar. Not the real him.
Not the man whose inner-child still wanted to know why his family hadn’t wanted him.
Hadn’t treated him with loving kindness.
But he did have me, and I needed to do a better job of showing him that he had every right to want more of my time—that I wanted to give it to him—since we really didn’t get much.
Skipping back, I pulled him into a tight hug. “I love you, cuz.”
He squeezed the stuffing out of me, laughing. “Love you more.”
We slapped each other’s backs, and I left. As I pulled the massively heavy stone door closed behind me, I saw him standing right where I left him, staring at the floor, looking lost and lonely.
Drat. It wasn’t like I could ask him to go with me.
What if the ladies wanted to discuss magic?
Ego didn’t know anything about any of those things.
I needed to speak with Chance. Maybe we could at least say the place was haunted without giving away that Chance was a psychic medium or that ghosts were part of our found family.
My frustrations over my cousin faded away as soon as I saw Elyse helping Gran out of her car. Parking quickly, I jumped out and ran over to help.
“Sky,” Gran said happily.
“Hi.” I kissed her wrinkly cheek, then turned to Elyse—who thankfully looked way less annoyed at me—and kissed her cheek as well. “What’s the occasion?”
“We need to discuss your training,” Gran said. Her gaze slid past me, and a bigger grin broke out. “Oh, good. He got away.”
Chance waved as he pulled past us to park.
“I didn’t know Chance was coming, too,” I said, excited my bestie was joining us, but also wondering if I should’ve texted them back and asked if Ego could come with me.
If this was just a friendly get-together, there was no reason my cousin couldn’t have come.
Elyse smiled at her son as he hustled over. “I’m guessing Scotty convinced you to let him handle the guests.”
He nodded. “Between him and Harry, there was no way they were letting me stay.”
Gran huffed and patted his cheek. “Harry knows. We need to find you a couple of more workers, I think. Ones who know about the supernatural. You’re actually all going to be much too busy to run the everyday operations of the B&B yourselves.”
She turned, leaning on Elyse’s arm, and walked toward the sidewalk. Chance and I exchanged confused glances, and even Elyse looked back with an arched eyebrow that clearly said, what the fudge? I mean, seriously, what else did Scotty have to do? He didn’t have any gifts that we knew of.
All thoughts of her ominous statement were pushed to the back of my mind by the sheer hilarity of Cassi’s face as Gran stepped through the door into Witch’s Brew. Cassi was usually the grounded, stable one to Carli’s flighty giddiness.
The sheer disbelief on Cassi’s face turned to pure joy as she rushed around from the back of the counter and stopped before Gran. “High Priestess.” She bowed her head.
With a low cackle, she tilted Cassi’s face up, then clasped their hands together. “Cassi Hart. Child, I’m so happy to meet you. It felt like you and your bride would never get here.”
Carli, who’d been coming around the counter, stopped with widened eyes. “You know who we are?”
At this, Elyse’s tinkling laughter rang through the coffee shop. “Considering she’s stronger than me, she must since I knew exactly who you were the second you stepped into town.”
Gran gave Elyse a smug look over her shoulder. “Oh, honey. Stronger is relative.”
Elyse startled at that. As the four women got better acquainted, Chance whispered to me, “Do you feel like we’re missing things?”
“All the things,” I said back in just as low a voice. “I’m not sure we’ve even scratched the surface.”
“You haven’t,” Carli said in a booming voice so unlike her normally sweet soprano.
Her eyes darkened to black pinpoints with a silver ring around them and rolled back.
“You have enjoyed your time here in Willowhope.
Seen things and learned things you never expected to know. But the time for crawling is over.
“You were brought together for such a time as this. Picked since the creation of time to go further than your predecessors. They have carried the burdens, but now you must begin. Take your places, Chance Chancellor and Skylar Reign. Be who you were created to be.”
As her booming words faded, Cassi caught her wife as she slumped into her arms, lowering her gingerly into the chair behind her.
“Um.” I glanced at Elyse and Gran, who both appeared completely unsurprised by Carli’s proclamation. No…not Carli’s, but someone else.
“Can someone please flip the sign on the door to closed and turn the lock?” Cassi asked while tenderly wiping her wife’s damp hair off her forehead.
Chance hurried over to do as requested, and Gran smiled approvingly. When he came back, she smiled kindly but with an authority that belied her normal gentle grandmotherly routine. “Have a seat, boys.”
We dropped into the closest two chairs like our legs had been swiped out from under us. I reached over and gripped Chance’s hand. “What just happened?” I whispered.
“And why did it sound like we haven’t seen anything yet?” Chance asked.
Gran looked to Elyse, who flipped an intricately designed black and white hand fan with splotches of purple open. Where had she been keeping that? “Because you haven’t,” she said smartly. “I was so happy with both of your progress until recently. You’ve already gotten lax, and we’ve barely begun.”
Gran took a seat next to me and patted my hand. “It’s true, dear.”
“What?” I felt a little offended. I’d been crushing this dream-tether thing, thank you very much. “I’ve been meeting with King in the Dream-veil. I’ve got a psychopomp as a familiar.”
“Yes, let’s talk about your familiar.” Duchess, Gran’s psychopomp princess of a cat, appeared in her lap. She stroked a hand through her thick hair.
“How do you do that?” I asked, vaguely aware of Cassi scooting a sleepy-looking Carli up to the table. “Patchy only appears when I’m asleep.”
“Shocker,” Gran said dryly.
Ew. Why was she being so mean to me? Chance squeezed my hand. “What does that mean, High Priestess?” His tone sounded…formal. Like he had when he’d rid his property of different violent, angry spirits. Like, this was warrior-Chance.
“It means that he’s not taking anything seriously enough. We deal with souls. All of us. And it’s important work,” Elyse said, sounding very much like the mother she was.
“The most important,” Carli mumbled weakly, just loud enough for us to hear her from where she cradled her head in her arms on the table.
Gran dipped her head in acknowledgement of Carli’s words. “Yes. And now you getting off track is impeding Chance’s continued growth, as well.”
“What?” I squawked.
Like I hadn’t said anything, Gran glared at me. “And you’re going to end up getting yourself or my grandson killed.”
“What?” Elyse, Chance, and I all burst out.