“You’ve not worked with her on spells?” Fin asked.
“She’s barely getting her grip on the elements.”
“Caution has its place, Branna, but as you’ve said yourself, we don’t know how much time we have.”
“Push me,” Iona begged. “At least a little.”
“You might regret the asking of it, but that’s what I’ll do.”
“I think if there’s any of this prodding into dreams, you should all write them down.” Meara spread a cracker with cheese, handed it to Branna. “They stay clearer that way, and you could compare them. There might be something there.”
“That’s a sensible thing,” Connor agreed.
“What about the place in the woods?” Iona asked. “Where the first dark witch lived. When can I see it?”
In the beat of silence that followed, Iona felt tension, fury, grief. Once again, Boyle took her hand under the table.
“You’re not ready,” Branna said simply. “You need to trust me there.”
“If I’m not ready to go there, why can’t you tell me why?”
“It’s a place between.” Fin spoke slowly, frowning at his wine. “Sometimes it’s simply a place with the ruins of an old cabin, and the echoes of the life lived there, the power wielded there. A gravestone where that power lies under the earth. It’s the trees and the quiet.”
“And other times,” Connor said, “it slips away, and it’s alone. It’s not tightly bound to the world, to the here. Without the knowing, a person might be caught there, in that other, that alone. And it’s there he might come, stronger for it, and take what you are.”
“But you go there, have gone there. I have to know how to go, and how to stay.”
“It’ll come,” Branna promised.
“He took me there in a dream.”
“Not him, I think, but her. Teagan. To show you, and still keep you safe. Be patient here, Iona.”
“He marked me there.”
Silence fell again after Fin’s words. “I knew of him, but not that I’d come from him. And there, in a place that had been a kind of sanctuary, at a time when there was joy and promise, he laid his mark on me, and the burn of it seemed to sear down to my bones. He slipped the bounds, took it all adrift, and marked me. And he came in the form of a man, and I could see myself in this man. He told me he would give me more power than I could imagine, that I would have all and more anyone could dream of. I was his blood, and all this I would have. I had only to do one thing for it.”
“What?”
“Only to kill Branna as she slept beside me. Just that.”
A shudder wanted to rise out of her, but Iona fought it back, kept her gaze on Fin’s, quiet and steady. “But you didn’t.”
“It’s him I’d’ve killed had I known how. One day I will, know how and get it done and finished. Or die trying. So it’s best you wait a bit longer before we take you there. And all of us will take her when that time comes. That’s a firm line, Branna. I’ll not be shut out of it.”
“When the time comes,” she agreed. “For now, we wait and watch. We learn, and we plan.”
“And talk more than we have,” Connor added. “We’ll be stronger for that.”
“You’re right. We close no one out.” Branna touched a hand, briefly, to Fin’s arm. “I was wrong. Will we say Fin and Connor will use their hawks to patrol—if that’s the word—the woods? We’ve Meara and Iona leading the guided rides most days, and keeping their eyes and ears open there. Boyle’s seeing Iona home, so I’ll make a charm for you, Boyle, for protection.”
“I’ll see to it,” Fin told her.
“Fair enough. I’ll work with Iona, and there I may call on all of you from time to time for help. If we dream, we write it down, all the details of it.”
“There’ll come a time it’ll take more than protecting ourselves,” Boyle said.
“I know it. What I don’t know is what it will take, and how to get it.”
“It’s time to find it.”
Branna nodded. “We can hope with six of us looking, we will. Now, as has been said, we’ve lives to live. We can start that by setting the table while I see to the stew.”
“And I say we live it well.” Connor pulled his sister up, kissed her. “For that’s surely a boot up his f**king arse.”
“All right then, well it is. Put on some music, Connor, and we’ll start living well right now.”
They set the dark aside, for the moment, with Connor and Meara arguing over the music until Connor tapped in some sort of fast jig with lots of fiddles and drums, and pulled her into a dance.
“Wow,” was Iona’s reaction. “They’re really good.”
“They’ve both of them wings on their feet.” Boyle took the bowls Iona held, set them around the table. “Always have.”
“Can you do that?”
“I haven’t got the wings, but I don’t have lead either.”
“Ask the lady to dance then, you git.” Fin dropped napkins on the table.
Iona only shook her head. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“Then it’s past time you learned,” Connor proclaimed and, snatching her hand, pulled her in.
“You’re slow, brother,” Fin murmured to Boyle.
“I move at the pace that suits me.”
“Slow,” Fin repeated. “As a snail on a turtle’s back.”
But Boyle shrugged it off. He liked watching Iona try to keep up with Connor’s fast and clever feet. More, he liked the way she laughed as she spun around.
And who could argue with the laughter, he thought when Fin twirled Meara in three fast circles, and at the stove Branna clapped her hands in time.
The light and the laughter felt good, felt needed. So he’d take it.
Neither he nor any of the others in the bright kitchen with the warm smells, the quick music, the rolling laughter saw the shadow outside the rain-splashed window that watched. That hated.
* * *
WITH THE MEAL BEHIND THEM, THE KITCHEN PUT TO RIGHTS, and the hour growing late, Boyle readied to go.
“We’ll see you home, Meara. I’ve my lorry. Branna, I meant to ask if you’ve any of the tonic you make for head colds. Mick’s been blowing and sneezing for the last two days, and I’ve a mind to pour some of it down his throat.”
“I do, of course.” She started to rise.
“I’ll get it for him,” Iona said. “In the blue bottle, right, on the shelves nearest the front window.”
“That’s the one. You can settle up with me here or at the shop, Boyle, at the end of the month.”
“I’ll do that, and thanks for dinner. I’ll meet you and Meara out front,” he told Fin.
He walked back with Iona, made the turn into the workshop. She hit the lights.
“I’ve been trying to get a good sense of her stock and what she keeps here, what she sells in the village. She won’t let me make anything yet—not unsupervised—but at least I’m learning some of what goes into what.”
She reached for the bottle, clearly marked with Branna’s Dark Witch label. “I hope this helps Mick. He’s been miserable the last couple days.”
“Less if he’d taken his medicine sooner.”
“I guess swallowing witch potions makes some people nervous.”
“He’ll swallow this, if I have to personally hold his nose.” Boyle slipped the bottle in his pocket. “I wanted to say, while there’s a moment, it meant something before, the way you stood up for Fin.”
“Being excluded hurts, just like being blamed for what you are hurts. I can understand Branna’s feelings, but my instincts are to trust him, and I get tripped up when I go against my instincts. Sometimes when I go with them, too.”
“Speaking out as you did, it mattered. So . . .” He shifted his feet. “We’ll go have dinner sometime.”
“Oh?” Her heart grinned like an idiot, but she did her best to keep her smile polite. “All right.”
“I prefer doing the asking. Whether or not that’s old-fashioned, it’s how it is.”
“Good to know. My social calendar’s pretty clear.”
“Then we’ll book something. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He started out, got halfway to the door, turned back.
This time Iona was ready for the grab, and grabbed him back.
She loved the way he hauled her to her toes. It didn’t make her feel small. It made her feel wanted. The reluctance in it only added a sexy edge. Everything about the kiss, the heat of his lips, the strong grip of his hands made her feel irresistible.
And that was a heady sensation, a powerful thrill.
He kept meaning to take it slow with her, if at all. He’d taught himself control, learned—for the most part—to balance heat and temper with cool-headed thinking and logical steps.
Yet here he was again, wrapped around her, wrapped up in her. And it was God’s own truth, he just wanted to sink there, be there, and draw all that natural sweetness, that cheerful energy in.
And with it, he wanted his hands on all those pretty curves and dips, his mouth on that smooth skin. That surprisingly tough little body moving, moving, moving under his.
She clung another moment when he would’ve pulled back, and nearly undid him.
“Well then,” he managed, and ordered his hands back down by his sides. Then, safer yet, into his pockets.
She just stood there, her pretty eyes heavy, her lips curved and so soft. So soft he wanted to—
“You could come back, after you take Meara home. You could drop Fin off and come back. Then you could take me to work in the morning.”
“I . . .” The idea of it, a night with her, had every need inside him threatening to boil over. “I’m thinking with Branna and Connor in the house that would be awkward at best. And there’s the matter of rushing the fences.”
“You want dinner first.” Her smile perked up when she clearly saw he didn’t get the joke. “That’s fine. I think it’s simpler to be clear, from my side, that when it’s not awkward or rushed, I want to be with you. It’s not that I take sex lightly, it’s that I don’t.”
“You’re a puzzle, Iona. I’d like to figure more of you out.”
“That’s nice. I don’t think I’ve ever been a puzzle to anyone before. I think I like it.” She rose on her toes again, brushed his lips lightly with hers. “I’ll help you fit some of those pieces together if I can.”
“I’ll work on it in my own time. In the morning then.”
“Okay. Good night.”
She locked up behind him, watched through the rain as he strode to his truck. And did a little dance in place as she watched the lights sweep, then move away through the dark.
She puzzled him, and wasn’t that wonderful? Iona heart-on-her-sleeve Sheehan, the girl who too often blurted out her thoughts before they’d fully formed, puzzled Boyle McGrath.