Shadow Spell

14

AS SEPTEMBER TICKED ON TO OCTOBER, BRANNA dragooned Connor and Iona into helping harvest the vegetables from her back garden. She set Iona on picking the fat pea pods, Connor to digging potatoes, while she pulled carrots and turnips.
“It smells so good.” Iona straightened to sniff at the air. “In the spring when we planted, it all smelled fresh and new, and that was wonderful. And now it smells ripe and ready, and that’s a different wonderful.”
Connor sent Iona a baleful stare as he shoveled. “Say that when she has you scrubbing all this, and boiling or blanching or whatever the bloody hell it is.”
“You don’t complain when you eat the meals I make all winter with the vegetables I jar or freeze. In fact . . .”
She moved over, plucked a plump plum tomato from the vine, sniffed it. “I’ve a mind to make my blue cheese and tomato soup tonight.”
Knowing his fondness for it, Branna smiled when Connor gave her the eye. “That’s a canny way to keep me working.”
“I’m a canny sort.”
Harvesting put her in a fine mood. She might pluck and pick through the summer, but the basics of bounty she’d jar up for the coming winter gave her a lovely sense of accomplishment.
And the work, as far as Branna was concerned, only added to it.
“Iona, you could pick a good pair of cucumbers. I’ll be making some beauty creams later, and I’ll need them.”
“I don’t know how you manage to do so much. Keep the house, a garden, cook, make all the stock for your shop—run a business. Plot to destroy evil.”
“Maybe it’s magick.” Enjoying the scent of them, the feel of them in her hand, Branna added more tomatoes to her bucket. “But it’s the truth I love what it is I do, so most times it’s not much like working.”
“Tell that to the man with the shovel,” Connor complained, and was ignored.
“You’ve plenty dished on your own plate,” Branna said to Iona. “You don’t seem to mind spending each day shoveling away horse dung, hauling bales of hay and straw, riding about the woods nattering to tourists who likely ask most of the same questions daily. Add all the studying and practice you’ve done on the craft since last winter when you could barely spark a candlewick.”
“I love it all, too. I have a home and a place, a purpose. I have family and a man who loves me.” Lifting her face to the sky, Iona breathed deep. “And I have magick. I only had hints of that, only had Nan as real family before I came here.”
She shifted to the cucumbers, selected two. “And I’d love to be able to plant a little garden. If I learned how to can things, then I’d feel I’d done my part when Boyle ends up doing most of the cooking.”
“There’s room enough for one at Boyle’s. Do you plan on staying there once you’re married?”
“Oh, it’s fine for now. More than fine for the two of us, and close to everything and everyone we want to be close to. But . . . we want to start a family, and sooner rather than later.”
Branna adjusted the straw hat she wore more for the tradition of it than as a block from the sun that peeked in and out of puffy white clouds on a day that spoke more of summer than fall.
“Then you’ll want a house, and not just rooms over Fin’s garage.”
“We’re thinking about it, but neither of us wants to give up being close to all of you, or the stables, so we’re just thinking about it.” Bending back to her work, Iona picked a bright yellow squash. “There’s the wedding to plan first, and I haven’t even decided on my dress or the flowers.”
“But you have what you want in mind for both.”
“I have a sort of vision of the dress I want. I think— Connor, fair warning, as this will bore you brainless.”
“The potatoes have already done that.” He plucked them out of shoveled dirt for the bucket.
“Anyway, I want the long white dress, but I think more a vintage style than anything sleek and modern. No train or veil, more simple but still beautiful. Like something your grandmother might have worn—but a bit updated. Nan would give me hers, but it’s ivory and I want white, and she’s taller—and, well, it’s not really it, as much as I’d love to wear a family dress.”
She picked a cherry tomato, popped it warm into her mouth. “God, that’s good. Anyway, I’ve been looking online, to get the idea, and after Samhain, I’m hoping you and I and Meara can go on a real hunt.”
“I’d love it. And the flowers?”
“I’ve gone around and around on that, too, then I realized . . . I want your flowers.”
“Mine?”
“I mean the look of your flowers, your gardens.”
Straightening again, Iona waved a hand toward the happy mix of zinnias, foxglove, begonias, nasturtiums. “Not specific types or colors. All of them. All that color and joy, just the way you manage to plant them so they look unstudied and happy, and stunning all at once.”
“Then you want Lola.”
“Lola?”
“She’s a florist, has a place just this side of Galway City. She’s a customer of mine. I send her vats of hand cream as doing up flowers is murder on the hands. And she’ll often order candles by the gross to go with her arrangements for a wedding. She’s an artist with blooms, I promise you. I’ll give you her number if you want it.”
“I do. She sounds perfect.”
Iona glanced toward Connor. He crouched on the ground studying a potato as if it had the answer to all the questions printed on its skin.
“I warned you I’d bore you brainless.”
“No, it’s not that. It got me thinking about family, about gardens and flowers. And the bluebell Teagan asked me to plant at her mother’s grave. I haven’t done it.”
“It’s too much of a risk to go to Sorcha’s cabin now,” Branna reminded him.
“I know it. And still, it’s all she asked. She helped heal Meara, and all she asked was that I plant the flowers.”
Setting down her bucket, Branna crossed over to him, crouched down so they were face-to-face. “And we will. We’ll plant the bluebell—a hectare of them if that’s what you want. We’ll honor her mother, who’s ours as well. But none of us are to go near Sorcha’s grave until after Samhain. You’ll promise me that.”
“I wouldn’t risk myself, and by doing that risk all. But it weighs on me, Branna. She was just a girl. And with the look of you, Iona. And I’m looking at you,” he said to Branna, “just like I looked at Sorcha’s Brannaugh, and I could see how she’d be in another ten years, and see how you were at her age. There was too much sorrow and duty in her eyes, as too often there’s too much in yours.”
“When we’ve done what we’ve sworn to do, the sorrow and duty will be done.” She gave his grubby hand a squeeze. “They’ll know it just as we do. I’m sure of that.”
“Why can’t we see, you and me together? And with Iona the three? Why can’t we see how it ends?”
“You know the answer to that. As long as there’s choice, the end is never set. What he has, and all that’s gone before, it blurs the vision, Connor.”
“We’re the light.” Iona stood with her bucket of pods, garden soil staining the knees of her jeans. And the ring Boyle had given her sparkling on her finger. “Whatever he comes with, however he comes, we’ll fight. And we’ll win. I believe that. And I believe it because you do,” she told Connor. “Because with your whole life leading to this, knowing it did, you believe. He’s a bully and a bastard hiding behind power he bartered for with some devil. What we are?” She laid a hand on her heart. “What we have is from the blood and from the light. We’ll cut him down with that light, and send him to hell. I know it.”
“Well said. And there.” Branna gave Connor a poke. “That’s our own Iona’s St. Crispin’s Day speech.”
“It was well said. It’s just a mood hanging over me. A promise not yet kept.”
“One that will be,” Branna said. “And it’s not just that and digging potatoes that’s put you in a mood—a sour one that’s rare for you. Have you and Meara had a fight?”
“Not at all. It’s all grand. I might worry here and there at the way Cabhan’s taken too fine an interest in her. When it’s one of us, we have weapon for weapon, magicks to magicks. She’s only wit and spine, and a blade if she’s carrying one.”
“Which serves her well, and she wears your protective stones, carries the charms we made. It’s all we can do.”
“I had her blood on my hands.” He looked down at them now, saw the wet red of Meara’s blood rather than the good, dark soil. “I find I can’t get around it, get past it, so I’m after texting her a half dozen times a day, making up some foolish reason, just to be sure she’s safe.”
“She’d knock you flat for that.”
“I know it well.”
“I worry about Boyle, too. And Cabhan hasn’t paid any real attention there. It’s natural,” Iona added, “for us to have concerns about the two people we care about who don’t have the same arsenal we do.” She looked at Branna. “You worry, too.”
“I do, yes. Even knowing there’s nothing we can do we haven’t done, I worry.”
“If it helps, I promise I’m with her a lot during the workday. And when she takes out a group—ever since the wolf shadowed her—I braid a charm into her horse’s mane.”
Connor smiled. “Do you?”
“She indulges me, and so does Boyle. I’ve been adding them to all the horses as often as I can manage. It makes me feel better when we have to leave them at night.”
“I gave her some lotion the other day, asked her to use it every day, to test it for me.” Now Branna smiled. “I charmed it.”
“The one that smells of apricots and honey? It’s lovely.” He kissed Branna’s cheeks. “So that’s thanks on a magickal and a romantic sort of level. I should’ve known the pair of you would add precautions. For me, she’s never out of Roibeard’s sight unless she’s in mine.”
“Well, give her over to Merlin for an hour or so—Fin would be willing. And go hawking.” With a hand on his shoulder for a boost, Branna rose. “Put the potatoes in the little cellar and take your hawk out for a bit. I expect you could both use the time.”
“What about the boiling and blanching and all the rest?”
“You’re dismissed.”
“And the soup?”
She laughed, gave him a light knock on the head with her fist. “Here’s my thought. Tell Boyle I’ll need Meara around here in . . .” Branna looked up at the beaming sun, calculated the time. “Three hours will work. Then the rest of you should be here by half-six. We’ll have your soup, and a rocket salad as I’ll have Iona cut it fresh, some brown bread, and cream cake.”
“Cake? What occasion is this?”
“We’ll have a céili. It’s long past time we had a party here.”
Brushing his hands on his pants, Connor pushed to his feet. “I can see I need to develop a sour mood more often.”
“It won’t work a second time. Go store those potatoes, go find your hawk, and be back here at half-six.”
“I’ll do all that. Thanks.”
She went back, picked more tomatoes as now she’d be making the soup for six, and glanced over at Iona after Connor had gone.
“He doesn’t know yet,” Iona said. “He’d tell you if he did. You if no one else. So he doesn’t know he’s in love with her.”
“He doesn’t know yet, but he’s coming around to it. Sure he’s loved her all his life, so realizing it’s another sort of love than he let himself believe takes some time.”
Branna looked toward the cottage, thought of him, thought of Meara. “She’s the only one he’ll ever want a life with, or a lifetime. Others have and could touch his heart, but none but Meara could break it.”
“She never would.”
“She loves him, and always has. And he’s the only one she’ll ever want a life with, or a lifetime. But she hasn’t his faith in love or its power. If she can trust herself and him, they’ll make each other. If she can’t, she’ll break his heart and her own.”
“I believe in love and its power. And I believe that when given the choice, Meara will reach for it, hold on to it, and treasure it.”
“I hope more than I hope for almost anything else you’re right.” Branna let out a breath. “Meanwhile, the two of them haven’t yet figured why no one else in the world has ever made them feel as they do now. The heart, it’s a fierce and mysterious thing. Let’s get all this inside, scrubbed off. I’ll show you how to start the soup, then we’ll see how much we can jar before Meara comes.”
* * *
SHE ARRIVED, TIMELY AND OUT OF SORTS.
Once she’d stalked through to the kitchen, she fisted her hands on her hips, frowned at the shining jars of colorful vegetables cooling on the counter, the soup simmering low on the stove.
“What’s all this? If you’ve called me here to do kitchen work, you’re to be sorely disappointed. I’ve had enough work altogether today.”
“We’re nearly done,” Branna said pleasantly.
“I’m having a beer.” Meara completed her stalk to the fridge, yanked out a bottle of Smithwick’s.
“Is everything all right at the stables?”
Meara snarled at Iona. “All right? Oh, sure it’s been more than all right with us having a summer day in October and every blessed soul within fifty kilometers deciding nothing would do but they ride a horse today. If I wasn’t taking out a group, I was doing rubdowns or hauling saddles in, hauling them out.”
She waved the beer in the air before opening it. “And didn’t Caesar take it in his head to bite Rufus on the arse, and this after I told the Spanish lady riding him to give the horses some space. So then I had a near hysterical Spanish lady on my hands, and I can barely understand her as she’s hysterical in Spanish, and doing half the talking with her hands so the reins are flying about giving Caesar the notion she wants a fine gallop.”
“Oh God.” Iona spoiled the attempt to sound concerned by choking off a laugh.
“Oh sure it’s an amusement to you.”
“Only a little, because I know it’s all right, and you wouldn’t have put her on Caesar if she couldn’t ride.”
“For all her hysterics, she rode like a bloody conquistador, and I have a suspicion she angled for the gallop all along. Fortunately, I was on your Alastar, and caught up with her easy. Grinning wide she was, though she tried to turn that around when I got hold of Caesar’s bridle and pulled him up. And I swear to you—”
Now she pointed, face livid. “I swear to you the two horses had a hearty laugh over it all.” She chugged down beer. “And after that one I had five teens. Five girl teens. And that I can’t talk about at all or I might have Spanish hysterics myself. And you.” She pointed again, an accusing jab at Iona. “You’ve a free day to play about in the gardens as you’re sleeping with the boss.”
“I’m such a slut.”
“Well, there you are.” Meara drank again. “And that’s why I won’t be doing any kitchen work or garden work, and if there’s spells or enchantments to be done, I’ll require another beer at the very least.”
Branna glanced over toward the jars at a trio of tiny pops—a sign the lids had sealed. “That’s a good sound. There’s no work at all. We’re having the day off.”
This time Meara drank slowly. “Has she fallen under a spell herself?” she asked Iona. “Or has she been into the whiskey?”
“Neither, but there should be whiskey later. We’re having a céili.”
“A céili?”
“I’ve the first of my harvesting done, and the jarring as well. We’ve had a summer day in October.” Branna dried off her hands, laid the cloth out. “So have your singing voice ready, Meara, and put on your dancing shoes. I’m in the mood for a party.”
“Are you sure this isn’t a spell?”
“We’ve worked and worried, planned and plotted. It’s time we took a night. We’ll hope he hears our music, and it burns his ears.”
“I won’t argue with that.” More contemplatively now, Meara took another sip of beer. “I hate to risk spoiling this rare mood of yours, but I should tell you I saw him twice today—the shadow. First of the man, and next the wolf. Just watching, no more than that. But sure it’s enough to play on the nerves.”
“He does it for that, so we’ll show him he can’t stop us from living. And speaking of just that, I’ll need you both upstairs.”
“You’re full of surprises and mystery,” Meara decided. “Do the others know you’re after having a party?” she asked as they started upstairs.
“Connor will let them know.”
Branna led them into her bedroom, where, unlike Connor’s, everything was perfectly in place.
She had the largest space—built to her specifications when she and Connor expanded the cottage. She’d painted the walls a deep forest green, and with the dark, tree-bark trim, she often thought it was like sleeping in the deep woods. She’d chosen the art carefully, following fancy with paintings of mermaids and faeries, dragons and elves.
She’d indulged herself with the bed, with a Celtic trinity knot carved into its high head– and footboard. A garden of pillows mounded on its thick white duvet. A chest, built and painted by her great-grandfather sat at its foot and held the most precious of the tools of her craft.
She fetched a long hook from her closet and, fitting it into the little slot in the ceiling, drew down the attic door and steps.
“I need to get something. I’ll only be a minute.”
“It always feels so peaceful in here.” Iona walked to the windows that looked out over fields and woods to the roll of green hills beyond.
“They do good work between them, Branna and Connor. I envy her en suite bath with that big tub and the hectare of counter. Of course if I had that much counter in my bath, I’d clutter it up. And hers has . . .”
Meara went to the door, peeked in. “A pretty vase of calla lilies, fancy soaps in a dish, three fat white candles on gorgeous silver holders. I’d say it was witchcraft, but she’s just brutal about tidiness.”
“I wish some of it would rub off on me,” Iona said as Branna came down the steps with a big white box. “Oh, let me help you.”
“I’ve got it, ’tisn’t heavy.” She laid the white box on the white duvet. “So when we talked about weddings, and dresses and flowers and all of that, I had this thought.”
After opening the box, she folded back layers and layers of tissue paper, then lifted out a long white dress.
Iona’s gasp was exactly the reaction she’d hoped for.
“Oh, it’s beautiful. Just gorgeous.”
“It is, yes. My great-grandmother wore it on her wedding day, and I thought it might suit for yours.”
Eyes wide, Iona took a quick step back. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t, Branna, it should be for you, for yours. It was your great-grandmother’s.”
“And she’s your blood as well as mine. It wouldn’t suit me, though it’s lovely. The style’s not for me. And she was petite, as you are.”
Head cocked, Branna held the dress in front of Iona. “I’ll ask you to try it on—indulge me in that. If it doesn’t suit, if it isn’t what pleases you, no harm done.”
“Try it on then, Iona. You’re frothing to.”
“Okay, okay! Oh, this is fun.” She began to strip, all but dancing as she did. “I never thought I’d be trying on a wedding dress today.”
“You’ve the unders for a honeymoon.” Meara raised her brows at Iona’s lacy pale blue bra and matching panties.
“I’ve bought an entire new supply. It’s proven to be an excellent investment.” She laughed as Branna helped her step into the dress.
“Button up the back, will you, Meara?” Branna said as Iona carefully slid her arms in the thin lace sleeves.
“There are a million of them, and so tiny, and pretty like pearls.”
“She was Siobhan O’Ryan, who married Colm O’Dwyer, and was an aunt to your own grandmother, Iona, if I’ve got it all straight. The length’s good as you’ll be wearing heels, I imagine.” Branna fluffed the tiers of lace-edged tulle.
“It might’ve been made for you the way it fits.” Meara continued to fasten buttons.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful.” Smiling at herself in Branna’s long mirror, Iona brushed fingertips over the lace bodice, down the tiered column of skirt.
“There! That’s the lot,’ Meara said as she did up the last buttons at the base of Iona’s neck. “You look a picture, Iona.”
“I do. I really do.”
“The skirt’s perfect, I think.” Nodding, Branna walked around Iona as her cousin swayed this way and that to make the skirt sweep. “Soft, romantic, just enough fuss but not too much. But I’m thinking the bodice could use some altering. It’s far too old-fashioned and far too modest. Vintage is one thing, covering you to the chin’s another.”
“Oh, but we can’t change it. You’ve kept it all these years.”
“What can be changed can be changed back again. Turn around here once.” She turned Iona herself, putting her back to the mirror. “These should go.” Branna swept her hands down the sleeves, vanishing them, glanced at Meara.
“Altogether better already. And the back here? Don’t you think . . .”
Branna pursed her lips as Meara traced a low vee, then with a nod, traced it herself to open the back to just above the waist. “Yes, she’s a lovely strong back and should show it off. Now the bodice.”
Head angling this way, that way, Branna walked a circle around Iona. “Perhaps this . . .” She changed the bodice to a straight line just above the breasts with thin straps.
Meara folded her arms. “I like it!”
“Mmm, but it’s not quite right.” Thinking, imagining, Branna tried an off-the-shoulder style, with a hint of cap sleeves. Stepped back to study with Meara.
They both shook their heads.
“Can I just—”
“No!” And both of them snapped out the denial as Iona started to peek over her shoulder.
“The first you did was better by far.”
“It was, but . . .” Branna closed her eyes a moment until the image formed. Then opening them, she waved her hands slowly over the bodice.
“That!” Meara laid a hand on Branna’s shoulder. “Don’t touch it. Let her look now.”
“All right. If you don’t like it, you’ve only to say. Turn around, have a look.”
And the look said it all. Not just a contented smile now, but a stunned gasp followed by a luminous glow.
Bride-white lace formed a strapless bodice with the curve of a sweetheart neckline. From the nipped waist, the lace-edged tulle fell in soft, romantic tiers.
“She likes it,” Meara said with a laugh.
“No, no, no. I love it more than I can say. Oh, Branna.” Tears glimmered now as she met her cousin’s eyes in the glass.
“The back was my notion,” Meara reminded her, and had Iona angling to look. “Oh! Oh, Meara. It’s fabulous. It’s wonderful. It’s the most beautiful dress in the world.”
She spun around in it, laughed through the tears. “I’m a bride.”
“Almost. Let’s play a bit more.”
“Oh please.” As if to protect, Iona crossed her arms over the bodice. “Branna, I love it exactly as it is.”
“Not with the dress, for it couldn’t be more perfect for you. No veil you said, and I agree. What about something like this?”
She ran a finger over Iona’s cap of sunny hair so Iona wore a rainbow of tiny rosebuds on a sparkling band. “That suits the dress, and you, I think—and something for your ears. Your Nan might have just the thing, but for now . . .” She added tiny diamond stars.
“That works well.”
A dress, Branna thought, suited to the shower of sunlight and the glimmer of the moon. Suited for a day of love and promises, and a night of rejoicing.
“I don’t have the words to thank you for this. It’s not just the dress—how it looks, which is beyond anything I hoped for. But that it’s from family.”
“You’re mine,” Branna told her, “as is Boyle.” She slid an arm around Meara’s waist. “Ours.”
“We’re a circle as well, we three.” Meara took Iona’s hand. “It’s important to know that, and value that. Beyond all the rest, we’re a circle as well.”
“And that’s beyond anything I once hoped for. On the day I marry Boyle, my happiest day, you’ll both stand with me. We’ll stand, we three, the three and all six. Nothing can ever break that.”
“Nothing can or will,” Branna agreed.
“And now I see why you decided to celebrate. Spanish hysterics be damned,” Meara announced. “I’m in the mood to sing and put my dancing shoes on.”