A Celtic Witch

Chapter 2



Cass walked into the inn’s informal dining room, her mouth already watering. In the summer, the place would be hopping. On a Thursday morning in March, she would likely be eating alone.

Or not. Dave looked up from a table in the corner, papers spread out around a heaping plate of pancakes and some of the inn’s delectable blueberry preserves. He smiled and pointed at a chair. “Your French toast will be ready in a few minutes. Join me?”

It sounded like a choice, but she was well aware he’d pout if she sat elsewhere. “Predictable, am I?”

“8 a.m. like clockwork, and I don’t think you’ve ever eaten anything different than French toast.”

When you discovered heaven, you stayed put. “Got some of that blueberry jam?”

He tapped a stumpy white pot sitting by his papers. “Filled it up for you fresh this morning.”

She stared at the little container, warmed right down to her toes. It was the small things that made a day worth living, and she found so very many of them here. “Thanks.”

“It’s good to have you back.” Dave’s eyes shone with sincerity. His good nature and charm made his inn legendary—his soft heart made him a very good friend.

“I wouldn’t miss it.” She leaned back in her chair, ready to talk and knowing he was always ready to listen. “It’s been a tough tour this year.”

His eyebrows knitted. “You said that last winter too. Maybe you need to slow down that breakneck schedule of yours. Give your fingers a rest every now and again.”

“Like coming here?” She grinned at him companionably. If history was any indicator, she’d spend more hours with her fiddle on her shoulder in the next three weeks than she would any other three months of the year.

“Well,” he said, slowly taking the lid off the jam pot, “it seemed safer than suggesting that maybe that wandering soul of yours needs a rest.”

It bothered her that something inside her chest agreed with his last words. She leaned on humor to chase it away. “I would, but so far, you haven’t agreed to marry me.”

His happily married eyes twinkled in return. “Just say the word, and the town ladies will be happy to find you a nice man to settle down with.”

The ladies had been threatening that for years. It concerned Cass more than a little that each year, it sounded a bit less awful. She shrugged her shoulders, trying to shake off the odd melancholy. “I’ve always liked the traveling.” New places, new things. New faces to feed her need to create and challenge and endure.

No ordinary life, full of normal, to compete with her beloved music.

“Sure.” Dave smiled at the server as a heaping plate of French toast settled between them. “In another lifetime you’d have been a bard or a seanchaí, feet always wandering the earth.”

She snorted. “I’m no storyteller.” And not much of a singer, if it came to that.

“Of course you are.” He winked and passed her the jam. “Not all stories are told with words.”

She frowned as the rocks hummed in agreement. They didn’t use words either.

He followed the jam pot with a lopsided jug. “Blueberry syrup—made it myself.”

She grinned at the adorable workmanship. “Jenny and Jack?” Dave doted on his grandkids.

“Yup.” He picked up his fork. “Made me five of them for Christmas. Run their kindergarten teacher around in circles, those two do.”

“Either of them picked up a ladle or a fiddle yet?” Most people in Margaree drifted toward one or the other.

“Nope.” And Dave seemed plenty content to leave it that way. He glanced at the syrup jug and grinned. “I think they’re going to be famous artists.”

You had to admire a grandfather’s blindness. Cass tilted the jug, inhaling the warm blueberry goodness that wafted off the purple waterfall. “How do I get a truckful of this to follow me around?”

His eyes twinkled. “Come back in the summer and pick a whole helluva lot of blueberries.”

That figured—the good stuff was never for sale. She swirled the syrup around with her fork, mashing it into hills of blueberry jam. Breakfast of the gods.

Dave poured a much-smaller helping over his own pancakes. “You going to spend the whole three weeks here this time, or are you headed out on a walkabout?”

Cass shrugged. Some years, she never left Margaree. Others, she felt a need to hit the road for a few days. “Not sure yet.” The rocks hadn’t voted, and unless they did, she was staying warm and safe and close to the blueberry jam.

He nodded. “Well, if you do head out, you might check out the Sea Trance Inn for me. Way off the beaten track, a nice little B&B in a place called Fisher’s Cove. Had a couple last week who reported a lovely stay there.”

Dave collected information like crows collected shiny things. “Have they got anything to rival your French toast?”

“Not a chance.” His eyebrows danced as he gathered up his papers to make room for delivery of a second platter. “But the owner has a nice hand in the kitchen, I hear. And his wife makes jewelry from sea glass. Pretty stuff.”

That was preying on all her weaknesses at once. She had a deep fondness for quirky and pretty, and he knew it. “So where is this Fisher’s Cove, anyhow?”

“On the mainland. Down from Peggy’s Cove. Six, maybe seven hours from here. Or take a stop in that place by New Glasgow you like.”

West and across the waters. Cass sat quietly, checking in with the thrumming under her feet. Eleven and a quarter months of the year, she went where Tommy’s schedule told her to go. The other three weeks, she got to commune with the rocks.

The quiet humming signaled approval. “Think I’ll need a reservation?”

Dave glanced around his empty dining room. “In March? If you do, I want to know their secret.”

She chuckled at his woebegone look. “You’ll have a full house tonight.” Dinner was almost as good as the French toast—and the parlor music was a Margaree institution.

He winked. “Gonna exercise that arm of yours, are you?”

“Maybe.” She’d sit on the couch, play a little. And people would come. They always did.

-o0o-

He’d been invaded so darned often it was beginning to feel normal.

Marcus looked over at Lizzie, playing an endless game of Knock Over The Block Tower on the floor with Morgan. Since she was still here, he should probably feed her. “You hungry?”

“Uh, huh.” His young guest squinted at a block that was apparently misbehaving. “No carrots, though. Orange stuff is yucky.”

Last week it had been green stuff. Apparently Lizzie shared the usual witch aversion to vegetables. He was getting smarter, however. “That’s unfortunate. I have pumpkin eggnog, but it’s decidedly orange.”

“Can Morgan have some too?” The block tower tumbled to raucous noise and two little-girl grins. “We both love pumpkin the very best.”

It was damnably difficult not to laugh. “Would a grilled cheese sandwich with that please Your Highness?” He had mashed turkey and peas for Morgan, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t going to pass muster with the head tower engineer.

“Okay. No crust and lots and lots of butter, please, because I’m a skinny little thing and Gran says I need to fatten up.”

He might not be very smart about womenfolk, but even Marcus knew better than to discuss fat, skinny, or anything in between. “Lots of butter, coming right up.” And some grilled onions in the cheese had gone undetected by the previous day’s invaders. Marcus Buchanan, vegetable pusher. Oh, how the mighty bachelor had fallen.

Lizzie eyed him hard. “Nothing weird.”

Clearly she was made of smarter stuff than Sean and Kevin. He reached into the fridge for the block of cheddar cheese, trying not to be amused, and pulled out the onions, too. He’d appreciate them, even if his pint-sized dictator wouldn’t.

After the usual clattering and banging required to get lunch started in the Buchanan household, he looked back over at the girls. They’d moved on from tower building—now Lizzie had constructed a ramp out of a motley collection of paper-towel tubes and was zooming toy cars into Morgan’s lap.

He eyed the tube. Seven-year-old engineering sometimes had limitations. “I have some duct tape if you’d like to reinforce your ramp.”

Lizzie’s eyes lit up. “The pink stuff?”

A year ago, he’d been entirely unaware that duct tape came in every color of the rainbow. “Roads and tunnels are usually gray, my dear.”

“Not this one. Morgan’s a girl. She needs the pink stuff or she’ll grow up and fart and wipe her nose on her sleeve.” Lizzie collected scattered toy cars and readied her ramp again. “Somebody has to teach her how to be a real girl.”

Marcus eyed the Hot Wheels, hand-me-downs from two boys who claimed Morgan didn’t have enough toys, and wisely kept his mouth shut. Lizzie zoomed another car down the tube tunnel. Morgan flailed wildly and missed it entirely, almost knocking herself over in the process. Followed by much giggling.

Marcus hid a smile and flipped over two sandwiches. His, heavy on the onions and light on the grease, settled back into the frying pan without a sound. Lizzie’s, coated in butter, sizzled like a snowball tossed into a cauldron.

Not that he’d ever done any such thing.

Stop laughing. He scowled out the window in the general direction of the sky and his brother Evan’s current domicile. It wasn’t me who threw the first one, and Aunt Moira can’t make you scrub from way up there.

A quiet snicker behind him was all the warning he got that he had company. He pulled his mind barriers down with a loud thunk—rude under most circumstances, but when someone had just transported into your kitchen and stood there eavesdropping, they deserved rude.

“What, you think I should have ported into the street?” Nell looked out the window and shuddered. “Do you have any idea how cold it is out there?”

He looked down at her flip-flops and shook his head. “Why are you here?”

Nell raised an eyebrow and helped herself to a seat at the table. “I figured you’d know why. How come you’re messing with my fetching spell?”

Her what? “I haven’t been in Realm in a month.” There was no time for gaming with Morgan charging around the world on two legs.

“Not Realm. The fetching spell we use to find new witches. The one that grabbed Elorie last year.”

Ah, yes. That fetching spell. “Haven’t you turned that thing off?” It was a menace to innocent witches everywhere.

“It was off. And you’re going to burn your sandwiches.”

Damnation. Marcus grabbed the frying pan and plunked it, not very ceremoniously, on a slab of brick he’d taken to using as a hot plate.

“He burns them a lot.” Lizzie grinned from the corner.

“Quiet, rabble-rouser, or I’ll feed you the one with onions.” He scooped up the greasier of the two sandwiches and plopped it on a plate. “I suppose you’d like some milk with this.”

“Uh, huh.” Lizzie eyed the plate. “That’s a really big sandwich—Nell can have some if she wants.”

His puny babysitter was more than capable of eating the whole thing herself. Which meant she was giving him a not-so-subtle lecture on hospitality instead. He rolled his eyes. “I’ll share mine—I’m sure Nell will appreciate the more grown-up version.”

The witch in question snickered and got up from the table. “Don’t be so sure of that. I’ll pour the milk.” She got down three glasses.

Marcus scowled. He hated milk. Almost as much as Lizzie hated carrots.

Bossy women were going to be the death of him.

-o0o-

Nell poured milk for Lizzie and tried not to laugh. It rated as a totally average lunch on the Walker-family scale, but poor Marcus wasn’t quite there yet. High comedy for the Buchanan digs.

It was not, however, getting her question answered.

She carried both halves of Marcus’s onion-laden sandwich and two mugs to the table and reached for her bag. One thermos full of really good coffee—she knew better than to come to Fisher’s Cove unprepared.

He sat down across from her and sniffed. Wistfully.

She poured coffee into both mugs. “Caffeine is the patron saint of parents. Trust me.”

His lips quirked. “It’s not exactly in large supply here, and we seem to raise a fair number of children despite the lack.”

“Okay. Feel free to do things the hard way.” She shrugged and sipped from her mug. Pure heaven. “But Lauren’s found the best source of coffee beans in the known world.”

He picked up his sandwich, a few stray onions sliding out the sides, and eyed his steaming mug. “Can she be bribed into sending regular deliveries?”

If she couldn’t, several other denizens of Witch Central probably could be. Nell reached back into her bag and pulled out a paper sack stuffed full of beans. “Send up a beacon when you run out.”

Marcus inhaled the heavenly aroma—and then his lips quirked. “This wouldn’t cost me my firstborn by any chance, would it?”

Her girls would be more than happy to steal Morgan for a few months. “Maybe for a visit. If you want a second bag, though, you have to stop messing with my code.”

He frowned. “I haven’t touched your fetching spell.”

Right. Nell set down her coffee and picked up her own sandwich. Might as well eat while she interrogated the suspect. “How do you explain the small tracker it wandered home with?”

His eyebrows flew up. “What on earth makes you think I have that kind of time to waste?”

She blinked. That was offended innocence speaking. He’d seemed like the obvious culprit. “I was doing a routine security check. System flagged a rider on the fetching spell. Just a couple of lines of code. It’s tight.” The kind of thing good programmers wrote on autopilot and bad ones turned into six pages.

He chased down onions with a large swig of coffee. “And of all the coders in all the world, you walk into my kitchen?”

Marcus was being funny. And he watched Bogart movies. Nell wasn’t sure which of those two things meant the end of the world was closer, but both were entirely weird. “I traced it back to a Nova Scotia IP address.”

“Ah.” He contemplated something on the table that looked like bits of play dough. “Well, good coders are rather more scarce in this part of the world, but I’m still hardly your most likely culprit.”

“There’s a cloaking layer on the fetching spell.” She waited until he looked up. Interrogations worked better that way, although in this case, the subject was looking a little too honestly perplexed. “One of mine.”

“Ah.” The sound was more drawn out this time.

“Yeah. Nobody’s going to sniff through that without magic. We’re looking for a coding witch. A skilled one.”

Marcus peered morosely at the bottom of his coffee cup. “Well, it’s not me. If I had any time to code, I’d go undo that mess your most difficult daughter has created in my high mountain keep.”

Nell rolled her eyes. No one in Enchanter’s Realm had touched anything of Marcus’s. Under Ginia’s high decree, gamers with babies were exempt from sneak attacks unless they were actually present and accounted for.

He was probably in deep trouble the next time he put in an appearance, though.

She frowned at her mug. If he wasn’t messing with her fetching spell, who was?

The witching world is full of miscreants. Marcus stood up and headed to the fridge. Faking an IP address isn’t all that hard.

True. But that traveled into the territory of something more than witch tricks. Unless someone had been trying to get Marcus into trouble. Nell grinned and relaxed. That was a workable theory, and the potential list of culprits was long.

She’d set a snare when she got home.

Right after she finished her sandwich and figured out exactly what Marcus had done to make onions taste like candy.

He was out of the fridge now, carrying more supplies to the cutting board. Nell watched his eyes track over to Morgan and wondered if he had any idea how much his love showed. She dropped her voice out of range of Lizzie’s listening ears. “How’s parenthood these days?”

He stopped his first answer before it got out. And busied himself with some carrots and what looked like a really sharp knife. “Hard.”

Not the tough-bachelor answer she’d been expecting. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” He guillotined carrots with a force that made Nell wince.

“No problems on the astral-travel front, right?” Global reports had been swift and full of gratitude—none of their very few living travelers were having trouble staying attached to their bodies anymore.

In their last spell together, Marcus and Evan had done very good work.

“I think we just need to take a trip or something. Get out of the infernal cold and wet.”

A Nova Scotia winter would have made Nell bat-shit crazy, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t Marcus’s problem. People who lived here on purpose had stronger constitutions. Nell tiptoed into the sudden quicksand—maybe that way Marcus wouldn’t chop a finger into his carrots by accident. “Sometimes parenting’s hardest when there isn’t a crisis.”

His eyes bounced up.

She took that as evidence that her shot in the dark had hit some kind of target. “Nothing to fight, no windmills to tilt at. Just one foot in front of the other.” And the knowledge that the road stretched long ahead. “Those days can be a slog.”

It took a very long time for him to speak. “I thought it was just me.”

She shook her head. No, you grumpy old curmudgeon, and if you let us see your heart more often, you’d know that.

He only stared down at his carrots.

Nell sighed and went back to regular speech. “Any parent who tells you otherwise is lying through their teeth.” She looked over at Morgan, currently trying to push down Lizzie’s pillow fort. “Even when we love them so much it hurts.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it.” He pushed plates aimlessly around the counter. “How the heck is Marcus Buchanan, crotchety old bachelor, going to raise a girl?”

Ah. More going on than just the usual parenting slog. “It’ll work out. Morgan will keep you wrapped around that little finger of hers, and together, you’ll make it happen.” She thought of her triplets and smiled. “Trust me, they have minds of their own.”

“But there’s all that girl stuff.”

Nell resisted the temptation to make him squirm—he hadn’t been nearly as obnoxious as usual today. “I grew up with six brothers, and my girls have still managed to cover half my house in glitter glue and shiny things.” Maybe more than half.

“But you’re a girl.” His cheeks reddened as he set their plates back down on the table. “I mean, a woman. But you were a girl once.”

Nell hid a grin. Marcus’s happily sexist bubble was full of a lot of pinholes these days. “I wasn’t that kind of girl.”

She moved the carrots from her plate to his. Cheese was orange—that was good enough. “It’s not our job to teach them about glitter and coordinating outfits. It’s our job to teach them to be loved and have generous hearts.”

He scowled. “Glitter might be easier.”

Nell picked up the cookie that had shown up along with the carrots and contemplated the man who thought his heart was lacking. “I have three girls you can borrow any time you like.”

He nodded, distracted, eyes back on Morgan.

And then turned to Nell again, eyes suddenly intent. “Thanks.”

She blinked and chewed slowly on her cookie. Marcus Buchanan had figured out how to be a friend.

Miracles really did happen.

-o0o-

Cass sat quietly, Rosie on her lap. She’d heard the notes of a musician hard at work and wandered in, looking for some musical company.

And found a child playing.

Or not quite a child. Ellie Brennan had been a fixture at The Barn ever since she was a baby. Fastest toddler in the nation, her father had called her.

She wasn’t a toddler now. Brown waves of hair haloed a face of beauty and fierce concentration. Ellie Brennan was growing up.

And if looking at her long, teenage legs and screaming pink fingernails hadn’t made that clear, the music pouring out of her fiddle would have.

The talent wasn’t surprising—not in this town. Musical genius flowed in the Margaree water. But the focus was, and the finger calluses that spoke of long hours with fiddle strings underneath them. Cass had noticed those the night before when Ellie had been keeping the fiddlers’ glasses full.

Now she knew that Ellie had the talent to match her calluses, and something else as well. The girl had been aware of Cass’s presence for almost ten minutes—and she’d stuck out her chin and kept fiddling. A very intentional performance.

Talent and ambition, living strong in the girl who played and the woman who listened.

For some, music was a hobby—a way to pass the time with friends and family. For Cass, it had always been a vocation, a calling, and occasionally a prison sentence.

Listening to Ellie play was like visiting a time warp.

Except Cass hadn’t been that good at twelve. Or remotely that determined.

At twelve, playing her violin had been a very good way to get out of milking the cows, nothing more. At sixteen, it had been a way to avoid the overtures of Tommy Murphy, sixth-generation cow farmer and arrogant turd. And at nineteen, it had been her ticket over the waters.

Away from the cows. Which probably made her current location a bit ironic.

Ellie finished and set her violin on her knee.

Cass had no idea where to start. “You’re very good.”

A shy smile. “Buddy says maybe one day I’ll be almost as good as you.”

“You’ve done more practicing.” Cass grinned wryly. “My double stops weren’t that good for another decade.”

“Is that all it takes? Practice?”

Most kids would have run screaming at the thought. And because this one hadn’t, Cass tried to be honest. “Nope. You need raw talent, which you have. Not everyone who practices can be the best.”

Ellie stared solemnly for a while. “And?”

The girl was no dummy. “And it takes some luck. The industry changes a lot. The audiences and the important people are a moving target.”

“Buddy says smart people make their own luck.”

That was an awful lot of support from the local legend. Buddy wasn’t one for fawning praise. Cass frowned—she was missing something. “Do you play something besides reels?”

Now the nerves hit, great big waves of them. “Mostly I try to play what I hear.”

A twelve-year-old virtuoso who couldn’t read music. Ireland was full of them—this side of the waters, not so much. “Well, you have lots to listen to here.”

More nerves.

Something else, then. “The first time I got up on a big stage, I thought I was going to puke.” Cass settled into her chair more comfortably.

Curiosity poked through the nerves. “Did you?”

“Yup.” Several times. “But not until I was finished.” Cass eyed the girl—time to see what she was made of. Nerves could kill a career as surely as lack of talent.

Ellie stared. And then she picked up her fiddle, eyes flashing with twelve-year-old pride, and walked to the middle of the stage.

The first three notes would have made angels cry. It wasn’t technique anymore, or the fiddling of a master rendered by twelve-year-old fingers. It was joy and yearning and the slow tumble of emotions that would rock the soul of anyone who had ever been a teenage girl.

It was pure magic.

Cass leaned forward, willing the notes to continue. This is what Buddy had seen. This wasn’t someone else’s work—it had Ellie Brennan soaked into every note.

Cass let the music wash over her, the song of a heart that saw every possibility and danced to them all. A soul that had not yet chosen a road, but had the courage to do so. It was the kind of music that would bring ten thousand people to their knees in two measures—and kill the innocence of the bright child who had been able to create it.

She took in a deep, shuddering breath as the notes came to a close. Ellie was a child—and one cradled in a place that would protect her innocence for as long as she let it. She’d need to leave eventually. If you wanted music to be the singular thing in your life, eventually you had to go. But no way was Cassidy Farrell going to walk her to the road. “You’re a composer.” It was a limp word for channeling the music of a thousand teenage heartbeats.

“I like to improvise a little.”

That was no improv. Cass knew polished brilliance when she heard it. But girls on the cusp of young womanhood were allowed a secret or two. “What do you want to do with it?” She was pretty sure she already knew—the answer had streamed from the music.

“I want to travel like you do. Play for really big audiences.” Stars shone in the girl’s eyes.

Cass just shook her head. That greener-grass thing had always been hard on Celtic souls. And music was a demanding passion. Often a selfish one. “The Barn’s pretty much the best audience there is.”

“It’s just people.” Ellie sounded totally unimpressed. “And they hear me play all the time.”

And didn’t appreciate her talent often enough. Cass knew how that felt. “Have they heard you play that?”

Ellie shook her head slowly. “It’s not fiddling.”

She didn’t have to say anything more. Not Celtic. Not tradition and roots. Not Margaree. Cass knew the unwritten rules. And she also knew the man who had the clout to break them. “Be ready to play it tonight.”

Ellie’s eyes grew bigger than buckets. “At the square dance?”

Cass only smiled and picked up her violin. “Help me warm up a little.” She grinned as her young companion rolled into a reel that would have made most grown fiddlers cry. Accepted the challenge, cranking Rosie up to speed in ten seconds flat.

And pondered roads taken.

Ellie aimed for the crossroads that had called to nineteen-year-old Cassidy Farrell.

And twenty-six years into that journey, of all the roads she traveled all year long, it was the few miles of detour to the middle of nowhere that she looked forward to most.

Because, despite all the things two and a half decades had changed, she still lived for the music. Not the fame, not the accolades. The pure, glorious beauty of what she and Rosie could create together.

And coming here helped her remember that.