Chapter 3 #2
“But cool,” I amended, not wanting to offend Bracken if he could still hear me. “Really cool. New talent unlocked, I guess. Yay for me!”
Would I be able to hear all the squirrels now?
Or just Bracken? What about dogs? I brightened as I thought about being able to communicate directly with Mitch.
My sister would love that. He’d become such an integral part of her life, and I knew she’d get a kick out of hearing his thoughts.
Humming to myself, my mind focused on all the ways I might be able to communicate with animals now, as I quickly worked through unloading the car and setting myself up in my new space.
By the time I’d finished, leaving the boxes from Zara’s house on the table in front of the couch, my stomach was growling.
Grabbing my purse, I locked up and glanced around the trees to look for Bracken.
The light was dimming, the sun already dipping toward the horizon as night came early in the late fall in Scotland.
With no sign of Bracken anywhere near my car, I hopped in and drove to the supermarket.
Briefly, I debated stopping at The Tipsy Thistle for a meal, but I looked a mess and since I’d likely be applying there for work, I needed to be at my most presentable.
Instead, I dipped into the market, bought a few basics, and was back home before full dark.
Home.
It felt weird, moving into a house where nobody was home, but I wasn’t a stranger to weird situations in my life. Instead, I just needed to be grateful that I had a roof over my head and a small space of my own while I figured out what came next.
I kind of hated that I needed to work out what came next for me.
In novels, it always made it sound like the heroine just sat down and sorted out her life in an afternoon.
But the reality was, life just wasn’t that cut and dried, was it?
What? I was suddenly going to have an epiphany and have it all figured out?
Maybe life was just a series of taking small steps forward until you blundered into where you were meant to be.
But I guess that probably didn’t make for fun reading, so I could see why authors left the ugly bits out of their stories.
But here I was, thirty years old. Sitting in my torn and faded pajamas, an empty sandwich plate on the table in front of me and clutching an almost empty bag of crisps, silence stretching out around me and filling the room until it almost made my head hurt.
Was now when I was supposed to suddenly have all the answers come to me?
If so, I could use a manual. A set of instructions.
Hell, even an acorn thrown at my head would feel better than this yawning emptiness inside of me.
Never one to settle into uncomfortable feelings all that long, I decided to distract myself from the whole what should I do with my life?
problem, so I cut into the tape on one of the old cardboard boxes from Zara’s cupboard.
Sliding it open, I pushed the packet of crisps aside and dusted any crumbs from my hands before opening the lid.
The first picture, right on top of a pile of old books, made me laugh out loud.
It was Z and me, probably around seven years old, at Halloween.
She was dressed as a witch, and I was grinning widely, a front tooth missing, in a fat orange pumpkin suit.
I’d always been the more ridiculous of the two of us, and I took the picture out and set it aside, knowing I’d want to keep it.
I busied myself digging around and sorting items into piles.
Old pictures, letters, and birthday cards went on one side of the box.
Notebooks, recipe books, and other books that needed further investigation on the other side.
At the bottom of the box, my hand touched soft velvet, and I pulled out what looked to be an old pouch.
Opening it, I gasped at a beautiful leather-bound book, with an intricate Celtic and floral pattern stamped into the cover.
Taking it out of the protective bag, I leaned back onto the couch and tried to ignore the hum of excitement that had zipped through me when my hands touched the book.
It was just me over imagining things, as I often did. I was sure of it.
Gently, I opened the cover, and tears immediately sprung to my eyes as I saw my name written across the front page, under a line of women who had come before me.
Liora Webster.
Ailis Webster. My mother.
Beatrice Baxter. My grandmother.
Senga Durnell. My great grandmother.
Why wasn’t Zara’s name on the list? Tapping a finger against the page, I felt that zing of energy again, and tilted my head, studying the book. Was there something more here? Turning the page, I let out a soft sigh of pleasure.
The celestial charts stared back at me, drawn with intricate detail, and with lovely penmanship. Slowly, I paged through the book, and gasped when I realized what I was holding.
It was a spell book.
But it was also so much more than that. The women of my family had made notes in the margins, adjusting spells, adding their insights, or even, like on one page, making a joke about another’s cooking. It was a journal. It was a grimoire. It was a family history of shared magick and love.
What a gift.
I couldn’t believe it had been tucked away for so long, and being the curious sort that I was, I was desperate to try a small spell. Just to see if any of this worked…
Just to see if I actually had this kind of magick.
I mean, I should, right? My name was right there, added to the book.
Paging through the various spells, I landed on one that seemed innocuous enough. A spell for truth-telling. I wasn’t sure who I’d use it on, but maybe I could just practice it? Just to see if anything, I don’t know, shifted in the air around me as I did.
Humming to myself, I studied the spell. It seemed simple enough. I needed to pick a small item to anchor the spell in the middle of my circle, and then do the incantation. If the person I needed to be truthful stepped inside the circle, the spell would activate.
Thinking, I popped up off the couch and picked up the acorn I’d taken inside with me after Bracken had thrown it at me.
Laying it on the floor, I crossed the room and picked up the book.
I then traced a large circle around the acorn with my foot, just setting the parameters of the spell even though I didn’t mark anything into the floor.
“Right, so the acorn roots the spell,” I murmured, standing there with the book in my hand. “I’ve got my circle. Now I just need to do an incantation?”
Reciting it to myself several times to make sure I had it straight, I stared down at the acorn, my back to the door, and began.
“Root of witness, bell of clear, bind the tongue, let truth be near.”
I repeated the spell, slowly and with intention, focusing on the words. Just as I was finishing the third round, a sound caught my attention.
A man stepped into the room, directly into my circle, and stared down at the acorn on the floor, a question on his face.
“No.” I gasped, my eyes widening as his face turned up from the floor, his eyes meeting mine.
“What are you—”
“Torin.” I gawked.
“Not you,” Torin Cattanach, the man whose relationship I’d seemingly ruined, gaped at me in surprise. “Bloody hell, Liora, but you’ve gotten even more beautiful than the last time I saw you.”
“What? You think I’m beautiful?” It felt like a record scratching as awkward silence filled the room. The last time I’d seen Torin he’d been berating me for destroying his relationship with Avery.
“Wait. What?” Torin looked down at himself, askance, dismay on his face. “Did I just say that out loud?”
The truth spell. Shite, shite, shite.
“Um, aye, you did.” I pressed my lips together, suddenly very nervous. Torin wasn’t the type of man to play around with, if I remembered correctly. He was gruff, terse, and often downright short with people.
“That’s… odd. Damn it, why are you here?
And what am I supposed to do with a freaking goddess living under my roof?
” Torin’s face filled with horror, and he slapped his hand over his mouth, looking down at the acorn on the floor to where I stood, gaping at him, a thousand emotions running through me.
“Bloody hell, woman, what have you done to me?”