by Rhodan, Rhea
Cayden glanced down at the orange tabby who was Gran’s familiar, not even tempted to try to pet him. The old tom had been around as long as she could remember. He was big enough to eat a small terrier and mean enough to back down a Rottweiler. She’d barely prevented the former on one occasion, wisely stayed out of his way on the other. He glared up at her through his one good eye, flattened his ragged ears, and hissed. Then he turned in a graceful pirouette and sauntered into the kitchen after Gran, holding his crooked tail high.
Cayden grabbed her backpack and followed at a respectful distance. She thumped it down on the wooden bench and pulled out a couple of fresh tomatoes she’d bought at the early market by the train station. The rest of the groceries could wait.
She handed them to Gran. “Would you like to fry these with the eggs and rasher?”
Gran held them under the soft yellow light over the sink. “Smooth as a baby’s behind, and no worse for having cushioned yours when you took that tumble in the ditch.”
“How did you know?”
“Could be I should have spelled the bag against mud and the blood of columbines, too. I know I’d have spelled that wee excuse of a skirt, if I were you.”
Cayden reached behind her, patting her fat butt and felt a rip up the seam running just beneath her hand. Drat.
“You know I can’t cast spells.”
“True, your magic is other. ’Tis also far stronger than you guess. Yet surely you know enough to keep yourself out of the ditch.”
“I thought you didn’t want to hear about it until after breakfast.”
“And quite a tale it’ll be, I’m sure. Seems only last year you’d come rushing in, full of tears and fire. My wee wild warrior princess, breathless with the tale of some battle.” She turned her eyes to the backpack on the floor. “But no, it’s near ten years come and gone since you started making your own way in the world, and that old sack still guards its contents like they were its own heart.”
“It was the best graduation present ever.” On an impulse, Cayden jumped up to hug her close. “Oh, Gran, I love you so much.”
“There, there now, darling.” Gran patted her back. “It can’t be as bad as all that. We’ll sort it out, you and I, like always. After breakfast.”
Cayden clung tighter to Gran, wanting more than anything to hold onto this moment forever. Her whole life, Gran had seemed so much larger than her physical form. Today, she felt small, her body more frail than Cayden remembered. She buried the new worry. The ones she’d brought with her were more than enough.
As Gran had reminded her, breakfast in the cottage was a sacred ritual, a comforting one. Cayden couldn’t disrupt it if she wanted to. So the three of them ate in peaceable silence, she and Rob Roy politely ignoring each other while murmuring their praises for Gran’s cooking.
After the last bite of fried tomato, Cayden’s gaze wandered past Rob Roy stretched across the low sill, through the lace-curtained window, to the grove that marked the Crossing. The happiest times of her life had taken place either here in this cozy kitchen with Gran or up on that hill. Was it wrong to feel the place was her greatest burden too?
“Ah, Cayden, I see you’ve gone on ahead without me. Now that’s as it should be, come the time. Not just yet though, darling, eh? Fetch the tea now, won’t you?”
Cayden shivered and rose to get the kettle off the venerable gas stove.
She poured hot water from the copper kettle into Gran’s cup. “Please don’t talk that way.” Thinking something was one thing, speaking it, another. Words had power, especially the words of a spell witch as formidable as her grandmother.
Gran merely sipped her tea and said, “Now then, tell me what kind of man could have set my sweet dark angel to cursing outside the door on such a fine morning. You’ve never given the others a second thought, even the ones you—”
“I found the Keeper.” Cayden squeezed the ring in her pocket. How had Gran known she was cursing him when she’d not spoken a word of it aloud?
The only sound in the room was Rob Roy’s bent tail twitching against the windowpane while he watched a squirrel rummaging in the garden.
Gran looked as if she were waiting for more. Finally, she said, “Why, that’s wonderful! I don’t mind telling you I was becoming a mite concerned.”
Cayden tried not to shriek. “No, it’s not wonderful at all. It could hardly be worse. He’s been coming into the HandiMart at least twice a week for over a year. He never even noticed me until this morning.”
“You’ve noticed him, then?”
“Well, ye-ah. A woman would have to be dead not to notice Clint MacAllen.”
“Fine to your eyes and a good Scottish name to boot. I don’t see what you’re on about.”
“You’re not listening. Men like him don’t look twice at women like me. He didn’t listen to my advice about the stupid anchovies. He couldn’t even make himself take my hand. How can I possibly get him to—”
“Is he wearing the ring?”
Cayden shook her head. “He gave it back.”
“Gave it back? I can’t believe the Crossing would choose an idjit for a Keeper.” Gran sat up in her chair, then settled back in with a finger on her bottom lip. “He’s touched it, though. That’ll help. The magic won’t leave him be. How did you manage it if he didn’t notice you? I cannot imagine any man missing the sight of you.”
Gran leaned forward, watching her with pursed lips, while she told the tale of the HandiMart debacle, complete with the sidebar on the kamikaze breath mints.
Gran gave Cayden one of her warm smiles. “Inspired indeed, to slip him the ring when you did. Now I understand why you had your meeting with the columbines in the ditch. You’d gone and used yourself up.”
“I had. Sometimes it feels as though I’ll never learn to control it.”
“Yet you did, in spite of the cost. You will get better at it. You must believe in yourself, Cayden. While you may not care for the name you were given, darlin’, you’ve certainly lived up to it. You were born with a fighting spirit. ’Tis no time to leave it lie now.”
“Maybe if I lose a few pounds, have my colors done like Muriel nagged me about, he might find me attractive enough.”
“Now it’s you who’s not listenin’. You are who you are. And who you are is more than enough to do what needs to be done. And more than enough for any man, Keeper or not. Don’t forget, it’s just the once that’s needed. You’ve plenty of time before Midsummer’s Eve.” Gran drew her breath in slowly. “There’s only one thing that troubles me, and that’d be the darkness you spoke of. A year gone by, and the ring waited for last night to make its choice known. That cannot be a coincidence. Tell me exactly what you saw.”
“It’s difficult to explain. I don’t get visions, and I only saw this one for a second when he gave me the ring back.” She flinched at the memory. “All I saw were these black tendrils moving around his aura. It felt as if they were trying to find a way in. How bad is it?”
“Well now, that depends. There’s evil around all of us at one time or another, trying to find a way into our hearts, poking and prying at the cracks fear creates. They’re subtle tests, so light a touch ’tis hard to ken them for what they are. It’s love, hope, and faith that heal them. That’s why the Crossing is so very important.”
“I know.” The knowledge was sometimes more than she could bear.
“It didn’t have hold of him yet, you’re sure?”
“Not from what I could see. But it was only a flash. What if—?”
“It will not help to weaken our defenses with uninformed angst. ’Tis the nature of the darkness that concerns me. Tendrils are no mere random worries. Their nature is particularly personal.”
Cayden took a sip of her tea. It was already cold. Our defenses. Gran was worried, too.
“What do you mean ‘personal?’”
“The evil seeks him for a specific purpose. More than that, I can’t say without casting a spell. And I haven’t what I need to throw it.”
Hope budded. “If it’s only a matter of ingredients, I can get them for you.”
“His mark is on the ring?”
Cayden nodded, her hope blooming like the lungwort in Gran’s garden outside the window.
“Good. I’ll just be needing some star anise flowers and the presence of himself.”
Hope withered on the vine.
“And if not before Beltane, then—”
“Beltane! That’s only three weeks away.” The vine turned to ashes.
“If it hasn’t touched him yet, then I must see him with my own eyes. You can figure that, Cayden, spell witch or not. If it has a hold on him… Well…on the good side, a drop of his tainted blood and the anise would show me the root of those tendrils.”
As if getting Clint’s blood would be any easier than bringing him here. “And on the bad side?”
“If it gets hold or finds its way in, it could hide itself from me and the ring. That would be unchancy. Unchancy enough I dare not dwell on it. I do not want to be creating any fearful cracks of my own.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
Chapter Three
“HandiMart! They got pizzas. Man, I gotta have me some. Otherwise, I could get sick. Low blood sugar problem, ya know.”
Clint glanced at his passenger and grimaced. “More like a tequila shots and Dos Equis problem if you ask me, Dillon.”
Two weeks after the contract was signed, Green Man was already ahead of schedule to meet Dean Cumberland’s deadline. That Dillon, a general laborer of the non-union new hires from Dean’s list, was one of the guys he’d hung around with at BU was a good sign. Clint was hanging on to it. Between the old sleeplessness and the new headaches, his nights sucked. It helped if his days didn’t.
This particular day, a Friday, had stretched into a late evening at O’Malley’s with a bunch of the crew. Dillon had overindulged. Clint had made the executive decision that he needed a ride home. No harm done. Except Dillon had spotted the one place on Sumner Avenue still open.
Since that bizarre night—morning, whatever—he’d gone out of his way to avoid going into HandiMart after dark. He was pretty sure she only worked the graveyard shift. Ha. Yeah, that would be about right, what with her whole goth thing. Only when he pictured her in his mind’s eye, he saw the smooth pale skin sliding into the shadow of her lush cleavage, the flash of strong white thighs in the early-morning sun, and her oh-so-round ass encased in tight black leather.
“C’mon, man. I’m starvin’.”
The light changed. He accelerated reluctantly and pulled into the parking lot slowly, then sat there for a minute studying the store’s plate glass window. The checkout counter was located on the other side, so there was no way to tell who was behind it. On the other hand, it might do him good to see her in the flesh instead of in his damn vague, disconcerting dreams. Why didn’t he dream about Darcy? She was tall, gorgeous, sophisticated, perfectly groomed, and impeccably dressed. When she was on his arm, people looked at him with envy, respect. His parents had been pushing to meet her. The very idea of introducing Cayden to anyone turned those tantalizing dreams of her into nightmares.
Oh hell, maybe she wouldn’t be working. It was Friday night, after all. Cayden St. Strange was probably in the basement of some scary goth club, doing whatever it was those people did in those places.
He leaned against his truck. Listening to Dillon swear through the window he’d opened “just in case” while he fumbled with his seatbelt made Clint extra glad he’d switched to water hours before they left the bar. He winced when Dillon climbed out and threw his weight into the truck’s door, slamming it hard enough to rattle the window. A few inches shorter than Clint, Dillon outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. Some of it was still muscle from back in the day, but the bulk was gravitating toward his middle in a hurry.
He let Dillon plow through the store’s door ahead of him. He did not want to risk it getting slammed and shattering all over hell. The last time he’d come in here, half the display of breath mints had ended up on the floor. What was weird, though, was he’d been sure he hadn’t touched that rack. Cayden hadn’t been anywhere near it, either. It was an eerie thought, more than enough to make him want to wait in the truck.
Good idea. He was about to follow up on it when he caught sight of Cayden bending over a shelf in Aisle Two. One glimpse of that ass hugged lovingly in the smooth black satin told him it was the same ass that had been haunting him.
He caught a whiff of rain-soaked wind blowing across a green field. Some kind of noise must have escaped his mouth because she straightened and swung around, her wild black and red ringlets bobbing. He’d forgotten her eyes were hazel. They were so wide, the color was hard to miss now. His own were drawn inexorably lower. The black lace jacket she wore buttoned high on her throat only made those bountiful breasts of hers, pushed together and held up like an offering by the blood red corset she wore under it, all the more tempting.
She stood there looking at him. He stood there desperately trying to pull some air into his lungs since his throat had closed and he was no longer able to swallow.
He was close to drooling when Dillon lurched up the aisle and thrust a large supreme at Cayden. “Heat this up for us, will ya, Freak Show?”
She took the pizza and whirled away without a word. The sound of the skirt swishing against her bare legs made Clint want to feel the warmth of her skin through the satin, to fill his hands with hot, slippery Cayden, while he tugged the skirt up real slow—
“Wow, huh? Makes you wonder if the circus is in town and they let the fat lady’s daughter loose. Nothing like those hot sorority babes, ya know. Besides, man, I gotta tell you, that is one scary bitch.”
Dillon, the moron, must have misread Clint’s scowl as encouragement because he yammered on.
“I forget her name now, but I know her from when I was at Cornell, ya know, before I got injured, lost my scholarship, and had to go to that shit hole, UMB.” Funny how, even drunk, Dillon managed to sneak in his brags.
After being in class with him, Clint was fairly certain he knew how Dillon had lost his scholarship, and it hadn’t been an injury. Besides, UMB was a decent school.
“Anyway, this friend of mine—he was first string, too—he’s cuttin’ across campus, on his way back from a party at Delta house. She’d kinda caught his eye, ya know. I mean, he’d had a few beers. Ya see how these goth girls dress, like they want it real bad, and then they get all snotty when you’re not covered in tattoos or pierced up like a pincushion.” Dillon nodded up the aisle to where Cayden had disappeared, “Christ, man, look at that outfit. Don’t tell me it doesn’t make you wanna rip off the girlie jacket, reach down, and squeeze the hell out the Charmin.”
Clint had been thinking more along the lines of taking his time, one tiny button after the other. “All right already, just tell me what happened,” he said it in a low voice, wanting to wind the story up before Cayden heard and hopefully get Dillon to lower his voice at the same time.
Dillon raised his voice. “Yeah, well, he goes up to her, just bein’ friendly, ya know.”
The ring finger of Clint’s right hand suddenly itched ferociously. Up until that moment, he’d been as embarrassed by his attraction to the damn woman as he was by Dillon’s crudeness. Now—
“You’da thought she’d be grateful, ya know, what with girls falling all over this guy, and her being such a fat little bitch and all.”
Now he was ashamed of himself for being with Dillon. When he heard a soft cough, his gut clenched. Had the lights just flickered? Nah, it was probably some Freudian thing that had to do with him wishing he were dead
.
“Friend-ly?” Both syllables were pronounced precisely.
“Yeah, Freak Show, friendly. I don’t expect you to know what that means.”
“I’ve kept track of him, ‘ya know.’” The last two words were spoken in a good imitation of Dillon’s voice. “He’s made quite a career of being friendly. In fact, he’s sharing a nice little cell in Sing Sing as we speak. Apparently, the state of New York frowns on his brand of friendly more than you do.”
Cayden’s hazel eyes flashed golden fire, striking back and forth between Dillon and Clint.
They landed on Clint, though, when she set the steaming pizza down on the counter. “Some very classy company you keep. That comes to eighteen seventy, unless of course you also think a fat little bitch like me should just be grateful for the company, Clint.”
She’d said his name as if it were a subspecies of slimy worm. His gut twisted harder, then sank right through the foundation. He yanked out his wallet, even though he was positive he wasn’t going to be able to eat one bite of the pizza. Dillon had chosen this, of all moments, to finally shut up.
Oh, God, he wanted to say something to her, some kind of apology, something. But how could he possibly make up for Dillon? No words came. He peeled off a twenty, grabbed the pizza with one hand, wrapped the other around Dillon’s arm, and dragged him out the door.
In the truck, Dillon had foregone the complications of the seat belt and already had a piece of pizza in his mouth. Clint had a powerful urge to help him choke on it.
And then, like some broken windup doll from hell, Dillon babbled on as though nothing had happened. As though Cayden hadn’t heard, hadn’t made it clear what kind of scum she thought he was.
“I haven’t gotten to the scary part yet. So before this poor guy can do the deed, a flock of crows—a flock, for Chrissake, he swore to me on his granny’s grave—swoops down out of nowhere and attacks him. His face was clawed up real bad. He’s like, blind in one eye now.”
