He arches a brow and smiles. “I never pegged ye for a jealous girlfriend. I kinda like it. Are ye stakin’ yer claim? If ye’d like to torture the details out of me, I won’t object.”
I roll my eyes. “No. I’m asking a question. If you have her number, there’d be a reason. If she’s not a person of interest romantically, then maybe there’s a story there about how you know her. A project you asked her about? I don’t know. I was making conversation.”
He joins me at the wide trunk of the tree. “If it makes ye feel better, I found her number on Witchipedia.”
Hubba-wha? I peg him with a look and wait for him to crack a smirk. He doesn’t. “You’re not serious. Witchipedia?”
He nods and circles his fingers in the air, prompting me to say something. “Go ahead and make yer jokes. I know ye can’t help yerself. Get it out of yer system.”
I wave that away. “I didn’t make that funny. It is funny.”
“It’s also a valuable search engine when ye want to find something about witches. I simply typed in Sarah Connors and searched the profiles that came up and gave her a call.”
“Sarah Connors?”
“Yes.”
Oh, this is getting better by the moment. “Does she know she has the same name as Linda Hamilton’s character in Terminator?”
“I expect it’s been brought to her attention more than once. Perhaps we can make it through our meeting without bringin’ it up at all.”
I make a face. “I can try, but I can’t make any promises. And if my brothers get wind of it, nothing will stop the outpouring of questions and comments.”
“It might serve the Cumhaills well to realize that not every impulse needs to be acted upon.”
I jump to grip a sturdy branch over my head and swing with my feet off the ground. “Well, it would serve you well to realize that not every impulse should be weighed and measured.”
“What then? Should I forget we’re on a quest fer the goddess and run off with yer brothers to kiss the stone?”
“No. You should wait for me because after we’re done with Sarah Connors, I’m kissing the stone.”
“Seriously? Now? Can’t I bring ye back when we’re not set on a task?”
I drop to the ground and brush off my hands. “You could, but I believe in living in the moment. Any goddess of mine will understand who I am and want me to seize the day. Carpe diem, broody. You seriously need to take your foot off the brake once in a while. All work and no play makes Jack Nicholson ax murder his family in a mountain lodge.”
He blinks at me, and I know I’ve lost him.
“The Shining? No? Okay, we’ll circle back to that another time. The point is you gotta give in to impulses once in a while, or you’ll spontaneously combust.”
“I’m sure I won’t.”
“That’s your parents talking. Come on. Live a little. If you could do anything right now, what would it be? Do you know?”
“Och, I know.”
“Is it something you really want?”
“It is.”
“Then you should do it. No apologies. No hesitation. Just go for it—”
Faster than my mind can track, Sloan rushes me and pins me against the trunk of the tree. Gone is his guarded reserve. At this moment, Sloan is raw instinct.
His mouth moves over mine without restraint as one hand tightens in my hair and the other burrows into the open flap of my jacket. Splayed fingers slide up the ridges of my ribs and stop beneath the swell of my bra.
The bark is rough against the back of my head, but I don’t care. I told him to seize the moment, and he is.
It suits him.
It suits me.
With my senses heightened, my awareness of him is intense. For once, the alertness has nothing to do with fight or flight and everything to do with being kissed senseless by the sweet and salty Sloan Mackenzie.
Never have I been kissed like this before.
Annnd that makes it all the more painful to be the one to put on the brakes. Yeah, I urged him to go for it, but we’re in a public garden, and my brothers are here somewhere, and Sarah Connors is coming.
I break from the kiss and drop my head back to catch my breath. He takes my cue and slows things down. As I get reacquainted with oxygen, he nips the tender flesh of my throat, sending a zing of pleasure through me.
“Holy hell, Mackenzie. Where did that come from?”
Warm breath washes my neck as he chuckles. “Och, it’s been below the surface of courtly manners for some time. Ye asked me to let loose a little. Now ye know. I told ye before that ye just need to say the word, a ghra. Until then, it’ll keep.”
He eases back a step, and I press my palms against the rough bark. I’m not sure my legs will hold me so I use the solid support to keep from melting into a puddle at his feet. “You call that letting loose a little?”
“Och, there’s plenty more where that came from.”
I swallow. How can my throat be dry when I’m salivating? “Good to know. You get an A-plus by the way. Full marks for seizing the moment. That was quite a moment.”
His cocky chuckle is too damned sexy. “Agreed. It was at that.”
I’ve never been that girl, the one who gets swept away by a chiseled jaw, a husky voice, or a set of rippled abs. I thought being raised surrounded by men exempted me from that batting of the eyes, girly gene. Wow. Big hells no on that one.
Sloan Mackenzie proved that.
As the two of us step apart, I fight the mighty pull of magnetism and settle. I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one affected. I’ve had a few steamy moments, cute guys, the bad boys, the musician—Da hates the musician—but this is different.
I’m not naïve enough to get swept away by a kiss and think it’s true love, but this is more than a casual affair of the heart. I might be in big trouble here—my heart anyway.
Maybe Gran was right.
Guard yer hearts, guard yer parts.
My mental musing is interrupted by a gentle tap on the forehead. I blink up at Sloan and draw a deep breath. The cocky gleam in his eye has dimmed, and his brow is pinched. “Where’d ye go just there, a ghra? Did I overstep?”
“No. That kiss was perfect.” I run my fingers through my hair and try to clear the cobwebs. “I just didn’t realize we’d become so…”
“Incendiary?”
“…deeply affected by one another.”
His gaze narrows. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No. It caught me off-guard, but it’s good. I think it’s good. It’s scary because it matters. To me, anyway. Sorry… I’m scattered.”
He gathers me close. “No apology. Take yer time. When ye’ve sorted through yer process, I’ll be right here.”
I open my mouth to say something and change course. “Someone’s coming.”
After a quick squeeze, he steps back. “This will have to wait, but yer right, it matters. Perhaps it’s grown to be more than we realized but yer right again, it’s good.”
With that doozy floating in the air between us, I draw a steadying breath and turn toward the approaching footsteps.
The hanging tendrils of willow leaves sweep apart of their own accord. The opening breaks the privacy of the world Sloan and I shared, and a ponytailed pretty blonde girl about my age walks through to join us.
“Am I interrupting?” Her brow arches.
Sloan straightens beside me and presses a hand against the small of my back. “No, yer right on time. We appreciate ye makin’ the trip. It’s important, as I said on the phone.”
“That’s all ye said. I should tell ye that I’m not keen on the cloak-and-dagger routine.”
“I thought it best to get into it face-to-face.” He gives the shield on my back a gentle pat. “Any tingling? Any itching?”
“Nope. S’all good.”
“In that case, we’ll get to it.” Sloan goes on to inform Sarah about the dark witch covens banding together to steal raw prana from the ley lines. He doesn’t ment
ion the Cistern of The Source or Gobekli Tepe but instead keeps the deets to the information we can share without fear of repeating the past week’s events.
“How much prana did they make off with?” Sarah asks.
“The goddess said nine casks. She’s tasked us to track them down and return them to the source as well as find out who’s responsible and bring them to justice.”
“This is more involved than I expected. The kind of people yer talkin’ about can be dangerous and cruel.”
I nod. “We know that firsthand, but Sloan thinks you being a white witch makes you different, an ally in this. I admit I’m not sold. My experience with witches so far has been hostile at best.”
She scowls. “We are different. White is not gray, and it is certainly not dark.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
“How did you like bein’ lumped into the same pot as the Barghest druids?”
“You heard about that?”
“There are no secrets among the empowered ones of the Emerald Isle. What ye did at Ross Castle when ye rescued the fae from bein’ siphoned is well-known and respected. Some think it was a druid mess to clean up in the first place because the Barghest are yer own sect.”
“The Barghest aren’t druids. They pervert everything we stand for and try to pass themselves off as druids.”
“Ye mean like gray and dark witches pervert what true Wiccans stand for and call themselves witches? It offends us as much or more as it did you to be guilty by association.”
I get that. “All righty then, consider me set straight. Do you have a way to help us find them?”
“Perhaps. I’d need to speak with my coven and get the approval of our Magis to get involved. If you’re telling the truth and this is a direct request from the goddess, we are bound and honored to serve.”
Sarah pulls her phone from the pocket of her long, peasant skirt and steps outside the drape of willow leaves. I strain to hear what she’s saying, but she must have lowered a cone of silence around herself because there’s no sound.
“So, Sarah. She’s a very pretty girl.”
Sloan blinks down at me and shrugs. “I hadn’t noticed.”
I roll my eyes. “Liar.”
He chuckles. “All right, I might have noticed, but she never caught my interest. Face it, Cumhaill. Ye knocked me for a loop from the first time we met.”
“I nailed you in the nuts, you mean.”
He winces. “Don’t remind me.”
“The second time too.”
“I recall.”
“Huh, so maybe that’s the trick women have been missing all these years. If you want to get a man’s attention, bag-tag him from the start.”
“That’s poetic.” Dillan sweeps open the leaves of the tree behind us and saunters in.
“You should write for Hallmark, Fi,” Emmet says, swaggering behind him buck naked. “Speaking about man junk. How about those sweats you brought for me? Good call on that, by the way.”
I hustle over to the tree trunk to get those. I dropped the backpack when Sloan laid one on me and forgot all about it. “Oh, and I should warn you. We’re still talking with—”
“Oh, my,” Sarah says, eyes wide. She saunters back into the convo with amusement plain on her face. “Who have we here?”
Any sane male would cup his junk and step behind the tree. Emmet isn’t that guy. “Emmet Cumhaill,” he says while striding straight toward her, hand extended. “Had a bit of an issue with my first animal transformation. Sorry for the nudist routine.”
“No apology necessary.” She eyes him up and down. “Ye know how to make quite a first impression. I’ll give ye that.”
“He makes an impression all right.” I hand Emmet the bundle of clothes and point at the trunk of the tree. “Could you at least pretend to have an ounce of modesty?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Emmet struts off, putting a little extra sway in his stride, and I giggle. “You’ll have to excuse my brother. He used to climb out of his crib as a baby and fell on his head one too many times.”
“Hello…I can hear you.”
“Yeah, yeah, put your pants on, Magic Mike.” I gesture at Dillan. “This is another of my brothers, Dillan. D, this is Sarah Connors.”
“No shit!” Emmet jogs out from behind the tree. “Sarah Conners? Hasta la vista, baby. I’ll be back. You’re terminated, fucker.”
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever quip ye come up with, I’ve heard it. It’s old.”
“Challenge accepted.” Emmet holds up his fist for Dillan to bump.
“It’s better if you don’t engage.” I flick my hand to shoo them away. “So, what did your coven say?”
“Oh, right. Sorry, I got distracted by the naked bit.”
I hold up my finger as Emmet opens his mouth. “Not a word about your naked bits. Focus.”
Emmet chuckles. “Cranky pants.”
“Sorry, Sarah.” Sloan shifts to turn her away from the chaos. “Ye were sayin’?”
“The coven will gather. First, they’ll test that yer tellin’ the truth about the goddess and her wishes. Then, if that checks out, we’ll help ye all we can.”
“Excellent. We’re glad to have yer help.” Sloan holds his hand out to me, ready to leave.
Emmet does the same and holds out his hand to Sarah. “Sarah Connors, come with me if you want to live.”
Sarah shakes her head and looks at me. “Is there an off switch?”
I laugh. “If there is, I’ve never found it.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Blarney Woolen Mills. With every stitch comes a story.” I scan the sweaters in the display window as we head past them and groan. It’s a shame we’ve got places to be. “These sweaters are so beautiful. Look at that one. Stunning.”
Sarah smiles. “A family business since 1823. Aran sweaters are an Irish treasure. They were originally knit for the fishermen to keep them warm and dry during their days out on the water. Each stitch pattern holds a distinctive interpretation. They’re knit in Kilcar, County Donegal, and are all one hundred percent merino wool.”
I want to stop and press my nose to the window. I would if we weren’t trying to track down power-hungry witches. “Well, they’re beautiful. Oh, look at the button collar on that one. It’s long and has pockets.”
“Yes, the coatigan. It’s very popular.”
Dillan chuckles. “Are we here to save the world or buy Irish knits?”
I stick my tongue out at him. “Fine, but the next time you want to stop and look at a motorcycle parked outside the pub, I’m going to remind you of this moment.”
“Forewarned.”
Sarah gestures farther down the walkway, and we carry on. Her coven doesn’t meet in the mill store itself but in a private room of the building's hotel. I nod to the ladies as we step inside, surprised at how normal they look.
No pointy hats or cloaks or besoms in sight.
They represent an eclectic array of appearance and personalities from elegant, older ladies, to mom types, to a lively bunch of twenty-something girls, to a mousy redhead in the corner with her nose in her book.
“Dia dhuit,” Sloan says as we join them. “It’s good of ye to have us. We appreciate ye comin’ together to hear us out and hopefully help.”
One of the elegant older ladies, a tall woman with cropped brown hair and questionable fashion sense, gestures at the large wooden table in the room's center. “When we heard yer claim that Our Lady asked it of ye Herself, it seemed too important to ignore.”
“And too wild to believe,” one of the younger girls adds.
“Fair point, Delia.”
Sloan pulls my chair out for me and takes the seat to my left. Emmet sits on my right, and Dillan stands behind us. He may not have his cloak on, but he’s always ready to be called to arms.
When we’re seated, Sarah gestures at the brunette woman who welcomed us. “This is Shona Fraser, Magis of our coven. Magis, this is Sloan Mac
kenzie, and Fiona, Dillan, and Emmet Cumhaill.”
“Yer Lugh Cumhaill’s kin, aye? The Americans?”
I shake my head. “We’re Lugh’s grandchildren, but we’re Canadians. We live in Toronto.”
“Same thing. Isn’t it?”
Emmet chuckles. “No. We’re the ones who live in igloos with our pet moose and eat poutine, eh?”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
Shona waves that away but by the look on her face, she’s not sure if he’s joking or not. “But yer the druids that live in the city. The ones causin’ the stir.”
I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, but who am I to diss the small talk? “I suppose that’s us, yes.”
She gives us an assessing glance. “Interesting.”
I’m not sure how.
Sloan folds his hands together on the table and flashes her a winning smile. “Sarah mentioned ye’d like to test us to ensure our story rings true before we get into the meat of things. Are we ready to do that now?”
“In a bit of a rush, are ye lad?”
“Ye could say we are. When the Grand Mother sets ye on a path of importance, expedience seems prudent.”
“I suppose that’s true—if that’s true.”
I glance at Sarah across the table, and she sends me an apologetic smile. “The sooner we confirm it, the sooner we can make a decision, true?”
The coven Magis taps a glossy nail against the surface of the table and purses her painted lips. “Maith go leor.”
Sarah nods. “All right. Good enough.”
The white witches of Blarney escort us to the next room. It’s empty of furniture and has a closed pentacle painted on the floor. They sit the four of us in the middle on our knees and light a different colored candle at the five points of the elements.
Sarah steps outside the circle once we’re settled and accepts a staff. “Witches and druids alike share a reverence for the five elements. In this casting circle, we have the quarters marked as well as the ether. To the east, the yellow candle represents air.”
A Witch’s Revenge (Chronicles of an Urban Druid Book 4) Page 15
