A Celtic Witch

Chapter 14



It was Nan who had taught Cass that the best cure for a sad heart was to go on living. So she was visiting a friend for breakfast, good Irish oatmeal in the pot under her arm. And trying her damnedest not to be sad.

Even if Nan was winging away on some impersonal plane in the early-morning sky.

Cass took another breath of the sharp morning air as she walked up to Sophie’s cottage. And smelled something other than oatmeal and Nova Scotia sea breeze. Paradise—but not the edible kind. She opened the door and sniffed again.

Yes. Yummy and definitely not food.

Curious, she stripped off the layers of woolens that seemed to be having babies the longer she stayed in Fisher’s Cove. And then giggled as a stream of creative cursing emanated from the kitchen.

A head popped into the hallway. “Good morning. Come on back. I have my hands full at the moment.”

Cass followed Sophie’s disappearing shadow—and found herself in the middle of what looked like an exploded herbals shop. “Wow. What happened?”

“I’m making potions.” Sophie turned from the stove, her hands covered in something slimy and pink. “My new funnel slipped out of my hands when I was trying to fill the bottles, so I’m hunting for it. It’s in this pot somewhere.”

Sane people didn’t stick their hands into a pot on the stove.

Sophie looked over her shoulder again, eyes kind. “How are you doing today?”

“I’ll be okay.” Or not, but talking about it wasn’t going to help. Cass held up her own pot. “I brought breakfast, if you’re hungry. Oatmeal cooked the old Irish way.”

“Yumm. Give me two minutes to finish this batch.”

Cass sidled over, moving carefully past piles of dried green stuff, bottles of elixirs, and a bunch of other things she didn’t recognize, even after years of cleaning up Nan’s herbals room. “Batch of what, exactly?”

“This one’s just a lotion to help babies to sleep. It’s fast becoming my bestseller. Doesn’t work on my own kiddo, sadly.”

No self-pity, even though Adam robbed their sleep almost every day of the week. “You know,” said Cass softly, “I’ve heard you worry—but I’ve never heard you complain.”

Sophie turned her head, still fishing in the pot. “He’s my son.”

Love wasn’t always that simple. And neither was friendship. “I could play for him again.”

“Thank you.” Sophie’s big spoon chased aimless bits of globby muck around her pot, unspoken words heavy in the air between them. “When you play, Mike feels magic stirring.”

So much for getting past Nan’s visit. Cass felt the bands on her chest tighten again. She was just a simple fiddler. “Maybe he hears the rocks. They like it when I play.” She could hear the weak hope in her voice. Anything to dodge what destiny seemed determined to pin to her shoulders.

“Maybe.” Sophie started to say something else—and then she drooped. A moment of weighty silence and then she turned away from the stove and washed pink gunk off her hands at the sink. “Sit. Please.”

Cass sat, still hugging the porridge pot, and waited for the other shoe to drop.

“I’m so sorry.” Sophie sat down, two bowls in her hands and eyes full of apology. “I know your gran just left and your heart is hurting. Let’s eat breakfast and talk about something totally different.”

Cass ladled out the porridge, breathing in the comfort of a smell rooted deep in her childhood. And kicked herself for being utterly selfish. She sat in the kitchen of a sleep-deprived woman who made potions so other peoples’ babies could sleep.

And set aside her own needs to ease a friend’s sadness.

Destiny could take a hike—but friends were a different matter altogether.

Cass ran her spoon around the edges of the bowl, an old childhood trick for avoiding a burnt tongue. The rocks weren’t something she discussed. Or even knew how to talk about. They just were. “It’s something I’ve lived with all my life. I don’t really know how to explain it.”

“Hmm.” Sophie trailed a spoon around the edges of her own bowl, but didn’t eat. “I hear the flowers sometimes. They whisper almost, as if they carry a message just beyond my hearing. Aunt Moira says they’re messengers of the old magics.”

Such things were said in Ireland only in very hushed tones. Cass marveled again at a place where power lived so openly. “Then you know something of what I sense. A presence.” She shrugged, the words still feeling inadequate. “A guardian, almost—it’s been there so much of my life.”

“That sounds beautiful.” Sophie sounded almost wistful. “The flowers sometimes tolerate me, but that’s all. They love Aunt Moira, though.”

Cass guessed there wasn’t a living thing on earth that didn’t love wise Irish grandmothers. “I felt the rocks for the first time while I played my music on the cliffs just outside our village. I was throwing a teenage fit.” It had felt much more serious at the time. “So I guess I’ve always thought of them as comforting.”

Sophie reached for something green, crumbling it into little fragrant bits over her bowl. “What do they feel like? The flowers are almost like a light wind.”

Rocks were a little more sturdy than blossoms. Cass shook her head at the proffered green stuff. “A thrumming, mostly. Vibrations. A little bit like a really slow heartbeat.”

“A heartbeat.” A slow smile bloomed on Sophie’s face. “That’s just lovely.”

Cass tipped her head down. It was lovely—until the heartbeat tried to meddle in your perfectly fine life. She drew a frowny face in the top of her porridge with her spoon and started to eat.

Sophie’s voice was tinged with humor. “Do you always give your oatmeal a face?”

“Always.” Yet another of Nan Cassidy’s small legacies. “We all do. My brother Rory isn’t any more of an artist than I am, but my sister Bri has a mean talent with brown sugar and some berries.”

Sophie laughed. “Berries we’ve got.” She dug under a nearby pile of potion ingredients and held out a tin. Cass examined the contents cautiously—anyone who’d grown up around the village healer knew to inspect such offerings before eating them.

Sophie chuckled. “Safe, I promise. They’re some of Marcus’s last batch of dried cranberries. Very tasty, and no green stuff.”

Well, if a woman couldn’t trust her friends, she was in a heap of trouble. Cass took a couple, surprised by the tangy sweetness. They were delicious. She added a handful to the top of her porridge. “They’re good.” It was probably bad to sound so surprised.

“Yup.” The healer’s eyes twinkled. “Beware his cookies, though. He’s taken to sending out batches of them on a regular basis.”

Maybe in exchange for all the food that had certainly flowed his direction—Cass knew her village life. “Not a baker?”

“He has a bit of an aversion to sugar.”

She was duly warned. “Is there a potted plant I should feed if I get offered one?”

Sophie grinned and reached for more cranberries. “Nope. Just find yourself a witchling. They seem to forgive him his terrible cookies.”

“They see what lies beneath.” Kids always did. Cass stabbed her spoon into her porridge and watched the cranberries sink into oatmeal goop.

“You like him.”

Damn. She should have stayed in her room and brooded. “He sneaks up on you. Like a complicated piece of music.” The kind she’d never been able to resist.

Sophie raised an eyebrow, amused. “And what are you going to do about that?”

“What can I do?” Sadness landed back on Cass’s chest with a force that took her breath away. She looked around Sophie’s kitchen. “This isn’t my life.”

Sophie looked at a sweet photograph sitting on the window ledge. Mike, hands curled around a tiny, naked, newborn Adam. “Sometimes life changes.”

Cass stabbed a cranberry. You didn’t start playing a ballad in the middle of a reel.

You just didn’t.

-o0o-

He had the luck of a foot soldier on permanent latrine detail. Marcus watched, resigned, as the parlor’s most popular inhabitant squatted down in front of Morgan and twinkled her green eyes at his daughter. “Well, hello, a leanbh mo chroí. Did you come to hear the music again?”

“Her name’s Morgan. Not Alanna.”

Moira chuckled from the couch. “I do believe our visitor’s speaking Gaelic. A leanbh mo chroí means child of my heart. My gran used to greet me with those same words.” She smiled kindly at Cass. “And I believe I heard your nan calling you the same thing.”

Marcus scowled—the Irish might adopt small children as easily as breathing, but he didn’t have to like it. Not his child.

Morgan plunked into her new friend’s lap. “’lanna.”

Outvoted by all the females in his life. Marcus sank into a chair on the other side of the parlor, displeased with the world. Only after he’d settled in did his brain register the sadness in the room. Cass smiled at the child on her knee—but her mind dripped with sorrow.

He looked over at his aunt. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Quiet words that carried sorrow of their own. “Her gran’s gone back to Ireland is all. We dropped her at the airport this morning.”

He tried to be happy that there was one less meddler in Fisher’s Cove—but he knew what it was to miss someone you loved. “Does Cassidy go back to Ireland often?”

“No.” Moira shook her head, eyes sadder now. “And it breaks both of their hearts that she doesn’t.”

He didn’t understand women. “What, she’s got some terrible fear of flying or something?”

“Nothing so simple.” Old hands worried the fringe on a brocade pillow. “Ireland’s a country steeped in tradition. It doesn’t change quickly, especially with all the young ones leaving to find work and livelihood in the big cities or across the waters.”

They weren’t speaking entirely of Cass now. And it was making him cross to try to follow the winding conversation. “She can’t visit because they’re a little behind the times?”

“It’s always been hard for strong, independent women to make their way in Ireland. Especially ones who have tasted freedom elsewhere.” The words drifted now, an old lady talking mostly to herself. “To go back is a reminder that it isn’t truly home anymore. And a temptation to pretend that it is.”

Against all will, he knew how that felt. His precious home on the cliffs felt empty when he trekked there now—a hollow, sterile castle. It would bring a tidy sum when it sold—and leave him king of a cottage that was little more than a hut.

Cassidy Farrell didn’t even have a hut.

He cursed as sympathy breached his defenses, flowing over carefully laid sandbags as if they were just so much flotsam. “She seems to like it well enough here.”

His aunt’s eyes widened in surprise.

Damnation—where in the hell had that come from? “Maybe she just needs to find a village of her own.” Preferably one far away from his meager little life.

It was the best one he’d ever had.

And every time a certain Irish witch touched her bow to her violin, he had the awful urge to upend it.

His aunt was watching him with her wise, knowing eyes. “She’s given up a home for the sake of her music.”

He couldn’t help but hear the words she didn’t say. Marcus picked up a book and jammed open the pages. It wasn’t his job to help Cassidy Farrell find a place to call her own.

Moira let out an exasperated sigh and picked up her knitting.

He ignored her. And peered over the edge of his book. Grown men didn’t squirm. They did, however, keep judicious watch over their children.

Over in the corner, Morgan was showing Cass her treasures—a couple of things swiped from Moira’s collection of pretties. Why a smart woman let toddlers run around with fragile glass, he would never understand.

She said all children needed their treasures.

And Marcus had never been able to deny Morgan’s shining eyes.

“They’re beautiful.” Cass leaned over the latest one, chuckling. “You must be a magpie, a leanbh mo chroí.”

The Gaelic, so casually said, grated on something deep in his heart.

Moira spoke under her breath, and with far too much compassion. “A simple expression, nephew.”

For some. Not for him. Morgan wasn’t some toy to share, and Cass wasn’t some woman of the village who would be there next week and next year when his bright-eyed daughter went looking for her.

She was the child of his heart, dammit. Not a homing beacon for a lost musician.

-o0o-

A fiddler who couldn’t listen to two things at once would find herself out of work darned fast. Cass murmured over Morgan’s pretties, enjoying the small girl’s babbling, and absorbed the quiet words of the conversation on the other side of the room.

The Gaelic had slipped out. It was a common endearment back in Ireland, but Cass was honest enough not to blame it on something so simple. Nan had always called her that—and she hadn’t been nearly ready to let her sturdy grandmother climb onto a plane.

Threads, even small ones, comforted.

But that wasn’t what had her wanting to curl up into Morgan’s squishy little body and simply disappear. It was a few simple words from an old woman who understood far too much.

To go back is a reminder that it isn’t truly home anymore.

For twenty-six years, Cass had gone back to Ireland only reluctantly. Happy to see the people she loved, proud of who she’d become. And while discontent always teased the edges of those trips, she’d never stayed long enough to let it fully bloom.

Ireland didn’t have an easy place for Cassidy Farrell.

She felt more at home in any number of places all over the world. Including this one.

Nan’s words floated back into her heart. Who you are is changing, my girl. Let the song find you.

Cass’s fingers clenched. This wasn’t a morning for bravery or musical composing. It was one for comfort. And the adorable child in her lap was a good start.

She gave her fellow magpie a squeeze and looked over at Marcus. “She’s lovely. I like to collect pretty things as well—is it all right if I give her a trinket or two?”

“What is it with women and frippery?”

Any more dour and his face would get stuck that way. Cass felt a sharp urge to tweak him and grinned. That hadn’t changed either—Nan had always called her an imp. “I’ve plenty if you’d like a bauble or two for yourself. Something blue, perhaps, to bring out the flecks in your eyes.”

The poor man nearly spasmed in shock. “My eyes are brown.”

Moira was doing an admirable job of not laughing outright. “I don’t know—I’m thinking those flecks are more purple, my dear.”

Cass held in her giggles and gave a serious nod. “Well, I’ve purple jewelry aplenty as well. And a shiny amethyst hair clip, if that’s more to his liking.”

Marcus resorted to growls, his cheeks an adorable red.

Cass grinned at Moira and then took pity on the poor man. She touched Morgan’s hair, amused by the wild fluff. “Perhaps you’d like that one instead, sweet girl.” It would be perfect for a baby—no little bits to come off if she tried to give it a taste.

She smiled at Marcus. Maybe she’d knit him a hat instead. She owed him one. And embarrassing him again might be kind of fun.

She made it halfway up the stairs before she heard the notes playing merrily in her head. And cursed.

She’d never been able to hide from a really good song.

-o0o-

Left edge over right, a twist in the middle, and a dampener to keep it from going off unexpectedly. Marcus finished another eavesdropping spellcube and added it to his pile.

And shook his head even as his fingers began to weave the next. Morgan was asleep and here he sat, amassing gaming weapons because his head was too full of erratic thoughts to join her.

He assessed the pile beside him. Lightning bolts next, because The Wizard would most definitely show up with some, and Warrior Girl’s were always pink and glittery.

He had standards.

A small whirlwind blew over the ramparts, stirring up dust and making him sneeze. He scowled—his standards didn’t extend to wasting game points housecleaning a castle. If it was cleaning he wanted, there was a perfectly good kitchen back in real life that could use some scrubbing.

He thought of Cass again and wondered if she had a house somewhere. Castle, or ramshackle cottage, or something entirely different. Did it honor her Irish heritage or eschew it? He knew a little of chasing both.

It wasn’t always easy to make peace with the roots you had been born with.

And it was darn hard to make peace with his persistent, meandering thoughts about a woman who was a temporary guest in an inn that happened to be down his street. For all the mystique and music and captivating green eyes, she was only a visitor. One who had made no claim to being anything else.

It was everyone else laying those suppositions at her feet. And when he’d felt her mind draped in sad, missing the grandmother who shared her kinship with life, he’d wanted to be one of them.

Happiness, he could resist. The disappearing of it…

He thumped a nitwit cube onto his pile with far more force than necessary. And somehow found it fitting. Except in this case, it hadn’t taken a spell to leach the gray matter out of his ears.

He was a grumpy old bachelor in a one-horse town in the middle of nowhere.

And she was a witch with far too much hold over his thoughts, far too many easy smiles for his daughter, and a violin that touched places inside him words had never gone.

Marcus issued a growl to the night sky and listened to it bounce back, a weak bear cub of a sound. He leaned back against the ramparts, sighing. It was definitely bad when even his curmudgeon moments fell flat.

He remembered how Cass’s mind had felt when he first met her, so full of easy joy. A face-forward embracing of life that was so totally different from his own.

Sadness was far more familiar—and feeling hers had done something sharp and twisted to his innards. Until he figured out what to do about that, apparently he wasn’t going to be getting much sleep.

A sound, barely audible, trailed through the night air.

He looked over and saw a shape hovering in the shadows. A familiar one, and normally a friend. Tonight, perhaps, young Kevin had spying on his mind—but something about the body language spoke of sympathy, not stealth.

Marcus sighed again and tossed up an invisibility barrier. He didn’t need twelve-year-old watchers—even kind ones.

-o0o-

Night.

Cass sat on her bed in the dark and let the comforting shadows simplify her world.

Nan had left with a long, rib-sticking hug and an old Irish blessing—and it felt like she’d taken part of Cass’s lungs with her. All day, it had been hard to breathe.

She hugged a pillow to her chest, wishing fiercely for the woman who understood her best to come back. And then stopped breathing altogether as realization hit.

She was always the one who left. Nan would know all too well how this felt.

Cass blinked back tears. And then let them gush as the rocks thrummed gently under her feet. They were good company—but they weren’t Nan. She let the pain in her eyes spill over, washing down her face just as the hum of the rocks washed over the rest of her. And wished it wasn’t so damn hard to grow up.

It took a while to realize she wasn’t the only one throwing tears at the world.

A baby outside her window. Crying.

Cass squeezed her eyes closed. Not her problem. Little ones cried, and the world was full of people better suited to soothing them.

The cry escalated to a wail.

Morgan, maybe, although it was hard to imagine that sweet face balled up in anger. Or her daddy letting her out in the dark of night.

Cass scooted off the bed and walked to the window, pillow still clutched in her arms. And saw what she should have guessed in the first place. Adam. Poor little uncomfortable babe, thrashing at the world he’d found himself in and never quite made peace with.

A form that wasn’t big enough to be Mike bounced in place in the universal dance of baby calming.

It wasn’t working.

Even through five layers of woolies, every line of his mother’s body screamed frustration. Patience on its last, hair-thin string.

Cass watched as Sophie tried, three times, to continue down the road. And every time she took a step away from where she stood at the intersection of road and path to the inn, Adam’s wails escalated. Only an idiot would have missed his message—he wanted to come inside. A baby with a compass that only pointed in one direction.

The pillow dangled from Cass’s arms. She was exhausted, heartsore, and grumpy—but she wasn’t an idiot. And she wasn’t so pathetic that she couldn’t help a friend. She reached for Rosie, lying on a desk in the corner. “Wake up, sweet girl. Looks like we have some work to do.”

She’d play, and he would sleep, and one mother would live to fight another day.

A lullaby or two. The slow, ponderous ones Adam liked best.

It was just music. Whatever Nan thought, it was just music.