“Hey,” Boone said as he walked out of the kitchen. “You’re early.”
“Can’t keep my main man waiting,” I said with a smile.
He leaned over the bar and gave me a kiss, lingering a little too long for Maggie’s taste.
“Eww,” she declared. “Get out of here, and take your sickly sweet lovey-dovey talk with you.” She flicked Boone with a tea towel as he darted around the end of the bar.
He grabbed my hand and dragged me from the stool, and we made a quick getaway, the old boozehounds of Derrydun bellowing with laughter as we went.
It was already dark outside by the time we approached the hawthorn in the forest. Overhead, a fine layer of clouds obscured the stars, and the moon was a waxing crescent. The night was almost absolute as we walked along the well-worn path into the forest. The way was familiar, even though I couldn’t see it very well, and I felt the presence of the ancient hawthorn long before I laid eyes on it.
It was always like that, though. The more in tune I became with my magic, the easier it was to sense what was around me. I could even sense Boone across Derrydun if he were tapping into his shapeshifter-ness. Was this how Aileen had felt? I wished she were here so I could ask. It was a little bittersweet in the aftermath of last week’s misadventures.
The hawthorn loomed before us as we stepped out into the clearing, its branches stretching over us. I sensed the power in its leaves and was glad for its protection. Hawthorns guarded words and magic, so whatever we did tonight would be a private affair.
“I should’ve brought a torch,” Boone said, his voice loud in the silence.
“I have something a little better than a torch,” I murmured, holding up my hand.
Focusing, I worked my magic down my arm and into my fingers, fashioning a little ball of golden light in my palm. Willing it to hover, I sent it into the air. It spun and glowed brightly as I stepped back. It looked like a firefly as it began wandering the clearing.
“Pretty badass, huh?” I declared proudly as the forest glowed with warm light.
“Much better than a torch,” Boone agreed.
I turned to the hawthorn and said a silent prayer. I didn’t know what was going to happen tonight, but I asked for something good. If the universe couldn’t give me that, then something half decent. Boone needed something to hold onto. Eventually, there would be a chapter in our story when I wasn’t going to be enough. Not with this.
“It’s not a coincidence,” he said as I placed my hands on the tree. “The wolves were chasin’ me the first night. A wolf was stalkin’ you when you first arrived. Then I changed into one meself. I might know somethin’ that could help you fight Carman. At least, understandin’ what I did to break through that barrier…that could help. The risk is worth it.”
“It’s a can of worms,” I said with a frown when the Crescents didn’t answer.
It didn’t mean anything. Sometimes, they weren’t there at all and only came through when the moon was at its brightest, though I suspected they only spoke up when they had something to say. Not a bunch for small talk, then.
“Aye, I know I’m takin’ a risk.” He shrugged and raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know what else to do. I’m limited in me powers. What can I do to help you against another witch? Nothin’.”
My shoulders sagged, and I grasped his hand. Boone had reached breaking point.
“You’ve done a lot already,” I murmured. “More than you realize.”
He grasped my shoulders, his eyes shining in the semidarkness. “If I knew how I changed into that wolf, then maybe I can do more.”
“Boone…” I didn’t like where this was going.
“I want to try to change,” he said, voicing my fears. “Will you help me?”
“But you… Boone, you were almost feral.”
“It was me emotions,” he argued. “You were dyin’, and I was desperate.”
“I don’t know.” I shied away, knowing he was probably going to try changing anyway. If I were here or not, it didn’t make a difference.
“I have to figure it out, Skye. It may be the key to unlockin’ me memories.”
“So that’s what this is about?”
He let me go, his brow furrowing.
“Then change and find out,” I said. “I’d rather be here while you did, than not.”
He nodded and began stripping. I folded his clothes into a neat pile as he shed each piece, setting them on a squishy patch of moss so they would stay clean. Glancing up, I got the perfect view of tonight’s full moon.
“Strange, I thought it was a waxing crescent tonight,” I quipped.
“Stop lookin’ at me ass like that,” he complained.
“I can’t help it. It’s a good ass.”
“Good?” He glanced over his shoulder.
“Amazeballs?” I offered.
“Now you’re just gettin’ filthy.”
“You knew what I was like before you got involved.” I smiled, thankful for the mood lifter. “I’m here. Do what you’ve gotta do.”
His shoulders tensed, and he knelt in the center of the clearing. I took a step back, giving him the space he needed to attempt his change. The muscles in his back rippled, and I winced as his bones began to snap, and his flesh began to distort.
I never liked watching Boone change. If I were being honest, I tried not to witness it at all. The pain came with the ability, and he’d developed a tolerance for it. He’d assured me—which was often—but tonight…something wasn’t right.
Boone grunted, holding onto a cry as his arms and legs grew. His knees snapped backward, and he lowered his head, trying to hide his change from me best he could. His snout was growing, his skin was sprouting fur, and the beginning of a tail was appearing, but his change was slow and cumbersome.
He was struggling and attempting to force the shape to come forth.
“Boone, stop!” I exclaimed, wanting to touch him. It was the worst thing I could do while he was like this. A single touch could send him into a frenzy.
He put his head down and gritted his teeth, his bones continuing to snap. Either he couldn’t stop…or he didn’t want to.
“Stop!” I cried again. “This is stupid! You’re hurting yourself!”
Boone snarled as his face elongated, and his teeth grew, then he turned on me, his jaws snapping. I stumbled back a step, my heart racing. The beast was rising to the surface. It had frightened me the night of the ritual, but now it was beginning to terrify me.
He was half man, half something else, struggling with his change. He’d always been so fluid when he’d morphed into his familiars. The fox and the gyrfalcon. Even when he’d told me about how he’d made an affinity with Mark Ashlyn’s stallion, it had seemed easy for him, so why was the wolf shape so difficult? Maybe it was the block in his mind, and the only thing that had broken through that night was his link with me.
“Boone!” I cried. “Stop! You’ll get stuck! You’ll get stuck and won’t be able to come back!”
His jaws snapped at me, but I pushed past the fear and threw myself at him. I collided against his chest, and his arms wrapped around me, and his claws dug into my back.
My magic pulsed through me and into him. The impact sent a soundless shockwave out through the clearing and into the forest, the force rattling the trees and dislodging leaves from their ancient boughs. I didn’t know what else to do, what words to chant or intent to put behind it. I just asked him to come back.
He disappeared from my grasp, and I fell forward onto the ground, jarring my wrists. A muffled yelp echoed from beneath me, and my eyes widened as I saw the familiar shape of a fox pinned under my startled body. He wasn’t the russet color I was used to seeing—with his white chest and belly and black-tipped ears—but a sparkling silver and gray. His feet were black, and so were his nose and ears, but the rest of him… It was like someone had taken all the color from his coat.
Boone rose to his paws and shook, his silver tail flicking back and forth as he wr
iggled out from underneath me. He glanced at me, his black eyes full of questions I didn’t have any answers to.
“I’d make a joke about being a silver fox, but…” I shrugged and stroked his fur. “Don’t stay like that too long.”
He blinked, then padded away from me. His change back to human seemed to go easier on his body, and before long, he was a butt-naked Irishman once more.
“You scared me half to death!” I exclaimed, throwing my arms around his neck.
“Careful,” he said, wincing at my touch.
Pulling back, I poked and prodded at his limbs until he pulled away and sat his bare ass in the dirt.
“I can feel it in there,” he said, fisting his hands into his wild hair. “But it’s locked away like me memories. I can’t get to it.”
“You don’t have an affinity with it,” I said. When he glared at me, I added, “Maybe you did before, but you’ve forgotten it. Something allowed you to tap into it the other night, but now it’s gone again. We’ve gotta figure out what that something was.”
Boone glanced away and shivered. The cold was starting get to him, and the heat his shapeshifter body usually radiated wasn’t helping the closer winter came.
“Somethin’ is changin’,” he murmured. “I can feel it.”
I picked up his shirt and draped it over his shoulders. His fox shape had been silver this time. I wondered if it was going to be a permanent thing and if tonight had triggered a change in his abilities he couldn’t stop.
“The wolf is leechin’ into me other forms… I was afraid it might happen.”
“So?” I asked, rubbing his shoulders. “A healing tongue and the ability to negate magical barriers sounds like a useful ability, right?”
Boone nodded but didn’t look comforted. He was too wrapped up in the why. Hopefully, that part would come, but I knew it wouldn’t all at once. Sometimes, things had to reveal themselves over time and forcing the issue caused more harm than good. Tonight was a prime example of that. He could’ve become stuck between shapes, and then where would we be?
“I know you want answers, Boone, and I want them for you too, but…” I sighed and kissed his cheek. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself finding them. Not like this. It’s selfish as hell, but I need you.”
“And I need you, Skye, but… But…” He was struggling. The failure to change into the elusive wolf troubled him more than I would ever understand.
“You have to be satisfied for now,” I murmured. “Patience… You can’t force it.”
He nodded, trying to hide the pain from his expression. His attempt had hurt him more than he was admitting.
“Let’s go home, okay?” I reached for his clothes. “How about a hot bath? Doesn’t that sound good? You’re freezing.”
“Skye.” His big hand cupped my cheek, silencing me mid-babble.
I sighed and rested my forehead against his.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “We always do.”
I hoped he was right.
Chapter 5
The weeks began to pass, and nothing changed in Derrydun. Nothing out of the unordinary, anyway.
Mary Donnelly was still planning a spring wedding for Boone and me, Sean McKinnon was still drunk and pining after his dead wife, Mrs. Boyle had upgraded her broom to a shovel to see her through winter, and the tourist buses had stopped altogether. Apart from an odd group of backpackers or a lone rental car day-tripping from the big cities, the quiet village life had simmered down to a faint blip on the ol’ heart monitor. It seemed hibernation was a thing when the sky threatened ice and snow.
As he’d predicted, Boone’s various animal shapes had all turned silver, though he didn’t have any trouble shifting like he had the night he’d attempted to recreate his mysterious wolf form. His gyrfalcon shape had always bordered on silver and white anyway, so it felt comforting to him that something was the same. Unlike me.
Ever since I’d paid a visit to the Nightshade Witches, I’d been struggling with the terrible burden of being a Crescent Witch. I understood their hatred now. Being a leader sometimes meant you had to do bad things for the greater good, and the legacy I was a part of had done things I wasn’t proud of. Now I’d added my own chapter to the darker side of the story. Taking the birthright of an entire coven was an awful punishment. I could justify it however I wanted, but it still burned a hole inside me.
And there’d been no blips on the radar from Carman or any other malicious fae or craglorn. It was mysteriously quiet.
I worked on my magic, Boone experimented with his newly acquired magical tongue, and Mairead built up the colors on her Derrydun landscape painting that she’d moved from the garden shed into the laundry at the back of the cottage.
We prepared, we watched, and we waited.
Then, one morning in late October, the world started to change.
Rolling out of bed, something felt different. It was cold—there was nothing new or strange about that—but the air felt close. Shaking it off, I showered and dressed, making sure I put on my thermal undies I’d bought off the Internet the week before. I was so not used to having numb ass cheeks.
Thundering down that stars, I checked the laundry in case Mairead was locked in there high on paint fumes, but the room was empty. I looked over her work in progress and let out a humph.
The canvas was still one big blob of color, but she’d already begun the fine detailing. It was actually starting to look like something now. There was the powerhouse with the tangle of ivy clinging to its facade and the spire of the church through the forest.
“Not bad, kid,” I muttered.
Galloping into the kitchen, I snatched out a breakfast bar, unwrapped it, and shoved the end in my mouth. Glancing at the clock as I pulled on my gloves and beanie, I groaned. Mairead would already be at Irish Moon waiting for me. Today was day one of stocktaking, and I was so not looking forward to it. Count all the things, take photos of said things, and start building the most epic website in the history of epic websites. I knew how to turn on a computer, but that was about it. The rest was going to be a comedy of errors and curse words.
Opening the door, I breathed out a plume of vaporized air around the breakfast bar still shoved in my mouth. It took me a full minute to realize that overnight it had snowed. In October? Weird.
I scratched my head, knowing Boone had been pulling my leg when he’d told me it snowed in Derrydun. The gig was up the moment I’d typed ‘does it snow in Ireland’ into Google. This was abnormal.
It was so still and close. Nothing stirred among the whiteness, and for a second, I felt like the only person left in the world.
The garden was lost under a few inches of white stuff. Cold snap, indeed. I totally got the powder reference until I plunged my bare hand into the drift by the side of the cottage. The cold burned my skin, and I pulled back, wiping the water on my jeans. It wasn’t grandma-scented talcum powder at all! My winter wonderland fantasy exploded into a billion tiny icicles, and I stepped down onto the path.
My boot slipped on the ice, and I threw my arms out to steady myself. Close call.
Making my way cautiously down the path, I decided even though it was beautiful, snow was treacherously deceptive. There was a metaphor in there someplace, but my brain was too frozen to dwell on it.
Out of nowhere, a ball of mushed-together snow smacked into the side of my head. I let out an oomph and slipped on the ice. Landing on my ass, I yelped as both cheeks began to throb, and my breakfast bar plopped into the snow.
“Bull’s-eye!” Mairead exclaimed, jumping out from her hiding spot.
“Mairead!” I shrieked. “I was having a magical moment, and you ruined it! And I can’t find my breakfast!”
“Sore loser,” she declared with a pout.
Bunching up a wad of ice in my hands, I scowled. “I thought snow was meant to be powder soft like cute little cotton balls.”
“That’s clouds.”
“I thought it didn’t snow around he
re,” I complained, my thermal undies well and truly feeling like I’d peed my pants…without the warmth.
“Sometimes,” she replied. “It’s been really cold this year.”
I wondered why that was. I rolled my eyes and shoved the unwelcome thoughts of magical mischief into the back of my mind. My supernatural spidey sense wasn’t tingling in the slightest. It could just be really cold because it’s just really cold, I thought to myself with an added twist of sarcasm for my own benefit.
I packed together the ice in my hand and smiled as my thoughts turned wicked. Throwing the snowball at Mairead, it smacked her right in the guts, and she doubled over with an oomph. Doing a commando-style roll, I leaped to my feet, slipped, and dove behind the fence.
“That hurt!” she screeched.
“Who’s a sore loser now?” I called out from behind my hiding spot. “You can dish it out, but can’t take it, I see!”
“This is war!”
“Bring it on!”
Thud! Snow showered over the top of the fence, dusting me with a layer of ice.
Popping my head over the top, I threw another missile at Mairead, who didn’t have any cover she could dart behind. The snowball flew straight past her and smacked into a tree.
“You suck,” the Goth girl taunted.
I ducked back behind the fence and started balling up snow, making a neat line of ammo. Choosing the largest, I peered over the edge and surveyed the battlefield.
“What’s goin’ on here?”
At the sound of Boone’s voice, Mairead and I turned at the same time and smiled wickedly at each other. Hurling our collective arsenal, Boone let out a surprised oomph as snowball after snowball collided with him. His arms flailed, and his boots slid back and forth as he tried to keep his balance.
“I surrender!” he cried, then promptly slipped and fell on his ass.
We burst out into fits of laughter, and I skidded my way out from behind the fence. Holding my hand out for Boone, he grasped it and yanked me down. We fell in a heap as Mairead held her side, obviously finding our predicament the funniest thing she’d ever seen.
Crescent Legacy Page 4
