Chapter Seventeen Rab
As I had suspected, Lyra’s magick ran to transmutation as well.
It was a good thing that this particular area of magick was in my wheelhouse, as maybe I’d be able to head off any catastrophe in the future, but for now I had to figure out what to do with a prickle of hedgehogs.
I didn’t have the heart to turn them back into the silverware they’d once been.
“I’ve got a hedgehog problem,” I said without preamble to Knox, sitting on the floor of my kitchen and watching as the wee beasties ran around in circles.
“And I’ve got an owl problem,” Knox said, and I paused, pulling the phone away from my face to squint at the screen.
“Are you taking the piss?” I asked, annoyed. One particularly bold hedgehog ran up to me and then clambered into my lap. Rolling over, he held his wee hands to the ceiling, as though inviting a cuddle. Sighing, I scratched his tummy and the hedgie’s eyes closed in bliss.
“No, mate, I’m bloody well not.” Knox’s beleaguered sigh came through the speaker. “The short-eared owl, to be specific. Apparently, it only hunts during the day.”
“Oh,” I said, understanding dawning. With no daylight hours, the owls would begin to starve. “That’s… that’s not good.”
“No, mate, it’s not. They’ve moved into town and are trying to hunt by the light of our lanterns. Which, as you can imagine, is creating some chaos.”
“Can they see okay? Is that an issue?”
“It’s more that they are hungry, so they are dive-bombing any potential food. Including cats and dogs.”
“Oh no.” I looked at the hedgehogs milling about my kitchen. Not an ideal time to release them to the wild, then. “Have there been any tragedies?”
“Not yet, as I’ve put the warning out. But we’re going to have to figure out how to feed them, otherwise we’re going to have even angrier neighbors than we already do.” I could hear the strain in Knox’s voice.
“If someone loses their cat over this…”
“Exactly. Then the MacGregors will be on the chopping block, because Briarhaven will once again want them gone. I’m already dealing with an onslaught of complaints. The gardening center is particularly peeved, as their plants are dying without sunlight.”
“Shite.”
“Exactly. Now what is the hedgehog issue?”
“Um, right. Well, Lyra was over and—”
“Lyra? She came to your house?” Interest sharpened Knox’s voice. Leaning back, I banged the back of my head lightly on the cupboard door. I didn’t particularly enjoy being the subject of gossip, but I also needed someone to talk to about this. What had I been thinking, kissing Lyra like that?
It was like all my frustrations had built up and the only outlet was through kissing her.
Which made no sense, really, because now I was even more furious.
At myself.
At her.
At the situation.
“Let’s just say filming didn’t go exactly as planned today.
She wanted to talk about it, in hopes we could try to work together as a team.
” Remembering now that Knox was the one who forced me onto the show, my thoughts took a turn.
“Speaking of… What the hell, man? You put me on this show as her partner?”
“You’re her partner?” Knox gave a low whistle and then burst out laughing.
“Och, I’m glad you think this is funny.”
“I swear, mate, I had no hand in that. I did know Lyra was auditioning, but that’s the extent of it.”
“You could have clued me in,” I grumbled.
“I mean, it’s not all that hard to find out information in Briarhaven, Rab. You could have just asked around and had a likely list of candidates for who might be on the show,” Knox said, his voice unapologetic.
He wasn’t wrong. But for some reason I’d never considered the idea that Lyra might have signed up for the show.
A second hedgehog crawled into my lap and bumped his nose against the other, and the two began to bicker, making soft grunting noises.
“While I understand what you’re saying, that’s absolute bollocks, mate. You should have told me Lyra was auditioning.”
“It didn’t go well, it sounds like?” Knox said, neatly avoiding taking responsibility for my current predicament.
I paused, unsure of what to say about Lyra’s magick, yet knowing how Briarhaven worked, I was sure word would be out by now.
Felicity never met a piece of gossip she didn’t share, and Mandy didn’t seem particularly fond of Lyra, so even though they were coven members, I was sure the news would have spread.
“Catastrophic, really.” I sighed and pulled apart the two hedgies in my lap, which were now locked in a death grip. “Her magick went haywire and basically everything was everywhere. Yolks flying left and right, butter curdling. It was an absolute mess.”
And she’d looked adorably, impossibly gorgeous, as frustration had brought pink to her cheeks and her teeth had dug into that lush lower lip of hers.
“Och, poor lass. I know how much she wanted this to be a success. She’s got a YouTube cooking show, you know?”
“Does she?” I pretended I didn’t have it saved on my browser.
“Aye, mate. It’s her main source of income, so I’m sure she’s worried about what this will do to her channel.”
“I’m going to try to help,” I said, nudging one of the hedgehogs away from biting a loose thread in the seam of my trousers.
“Och, that’s a good lad. I was worried you wouldn’t.”
“I don’t want to see her fail,” I admitted, looking out across the kitchen.
“It’s hard to tell. You never talk about it.”
Silence fell, and I knew he was waiting for me to explain myself. Something I wasn’t really in the habit of doing.
“I’m not a horrible person. She hurt me, and I’m angry about it. But that doesn’t mean I want to see her crash and burn either.”
“You still care for her.” It was a statement, not a question.
Did I? If I told Knox what happened between us, would he tell me that we’d only been children and that Lyra had never really had a choice? That she had been forced to leave? Because, yes, that thought had run through my head a thousand times as well.
She could have texted. Messaged. Emailed. Yet she’d never reached out. She’d just… vanished.
“Never trust a MacGregor, Rab,” my father said. “They’re a menace to this town and will only cause you grief.”
I pinched my nose, my shoulders tightening with tension. “As a nice human being, I don’t care to see her, or anyone, make a fool of themselves on a hugely public scale.”
“You still care for her,” Knox repeated.
“I care about not being made a laughingstock,” I said, annoyance flaring.
“You still—”
“Fine, mate,” I almost shouted, exasperated. “I still care for her. Okay? Does it make you happy to hear it? Bloody hell.”
“I knew it.” Knox’s tone was smug in the way of one who was happily ensconced in a relationship where regular sex was the norm.
“But I’m angry at her, Knox. I have been for a long time.
I wish I could just turn off my feelings for her, but that’s never been the case.
Not where Lyra is concerned. It’s better for me if I just stay away from her entirely, but now that’s not really an option.
Thanks to you.” I glowered at the two hedgehogs in my lap, which had now curled up and gone to sleep.
“That might be a good thing.”
“No, I don’t think it is.” I sighed, thinking about how good her lips had felt on mine, her soft body pressed against mine. How much I still desperately wanted her. Bloody hell, but the taste of her kiss was imprinted on my soul. “I don’t think it is at all.”
“What about the hedgehogs?” Knox asked, a voice sounding in the background. Sloane must be home. “What do I need to do, and why are they a problem?”
“Um, I don’t quite understand why they are a problem,” I said. I had an idea of what was going on, since I’d once been new to my powers and unable to control transmutation when my emotions went haywire. “But I have about twenty of them and need to figure out what to do with them.”
“Do owls eat hedgehogs?” Knox wondered, and a sharp voice in the background had him turning away from our conversation. “Of course I’m not going to feed the owls hedgehogs, Sloane. I just need to find a place for them to go.”
A muffled conversation took place, and then Knox returned to me.
“Sorcha. The owner of the Familiar’s Nest? She’ll take them. Runs a sanctuary or something of that nature.”
“Got it. Thanks. I’ll give her a call.”
“Still not going to tell me how you got them all?”
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. Lyra already had enough humiliation on her hands; she didn’t need the world to know that she turned inanimate objects into hedgehogs when she was aroused.
Because I was pretty sure that was what was going on.
Which meant two things. The first?
Lyra was still very much attracted to me. At least based on the amount of hedgies running around my kitchen floor.
And the second?
She had no clue how to harness her power, which would be catastrophic for the show.