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“Don’t flatter me, either. You’re hungry enough to eat a plate of raw horsemeat.”
“Got me there.” He dug in with relish. “So, any eye of newt in here?”
Her eyes kindled. “Very funny.”
“I thought so.” It was either take the situation with humor or run screaming, he decided. “Anyway, what do you do up here alone?” No, he realized, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know that. “I mean, what do you do for a living?”
It was no use being annoyed with him, she told herself. No use at all. “You’re meaning to make money? Well, that’s a necessary thing.” She passed him the bread and salt butter. “I weave, and sell my wares. Sweaters, rugs, blankets, throws, and the like. It’s a soothing art, and a solitary one. It gives me independence.”
“The rugs in the other room? Your work?”
“They are, yes.”
“They’re beautiful—color, texture, workmanship.” Remembering the spinning wheel, he blinked. “Are you telling me you spin your own wool?”
“It’s an old and venerable art. One I enjoy.”
Most of the women he knew couldn’t even sew on a button. He’d never held the lack of domesticity against anyone, but he found the surplus of it intriguing in Bryna. “I wouldn’t think a witch would…well, I’d think she’d just—you know—poof.”
“Proof?”Her brows arched high. “Saying if I wanted a pot of gold I’d just whistle up the wind and coins would drop into my hands?” She leaned forward. Annoyance spiked her voice. “Tell me why you use that camera with all the buttons and business when they make those tidy little things that all but think for you and snap the picture themselves?”
“It’s hardly worthwhile if you automate the whole process. If it’s to mean anything I have to be involved, in control, do the planning out, see the picture…” He trailed off, catching her slow, and smug, smile. “Okay, I get it. If you could just snap your fingers it wouldn’t be art.”
“It wouldn’t. And more, it’s a pledge, you see. Not to abuse a gift or take it for granted. And most vital, never to use power to harm. You nearly believe me, Calin.”
Stunned that she was right, he jerked back. “Just making conversation,” he muttered, then rose to refill his empty bowl, the cat trailing him like a hopeful shadow. “When’s the last time you were in the States?”
“I’ve never been to America.” She picked up her wine after he topped it off. “It wasn’t permitted for me to contact you, face-to-face, until you came here. It wasn’t permitted for you to come until one month before the millennium passed.”
Cal drummed his fingers on the table. She sure knew how to stick to a story. “So it’s a month to the anniversary of…the spell casting.”
“No, it’s on the solstice. Tomorrow night.” She picked up her wine again, but only turned the stem around and around in her fingers.
“Cutting it close, aren’t you?”
“You didn’t want to hear me—and I waited too long. It was pride. I was wanting you to call to me, just once.” Defeated by her own heart, she closed her eyes. “Like some foolish teenage girl waiting by the phone for her boy to call her. You’d hurt me when you turned away from me.” Her eyes opened again, pinned him with the sharp edge of her unhappiness. “Why did you turn from me, Calin? Why did you stop answering, stop hearing?”
He couldn’t deny it. He was here, and so was she. He’d been pulled to her, and no matter how he struggled to refuse it, he could remember—the soft voice, the plea in it. And those eyes, so incredibly blue, with that same deep hurt glowing in them.
It was, he realized, accept this or accept insanity. “Because I didn’t want to answer, and I didn’t want to be here.” His voice roughened as he shoved the bowl aside. “I wanted to be normal.”
“So you rejected me, and the gift you’d been given, for what you see as normality?”
“Do you know what it’s like to be different, to be odd?” he tossed back furiously. Then he hissed through his teeth. “I suppose you do,” he muttered. “But I hated it, hated seeing how it worried my parents.”
“It wasn’t meant to be a burden but a joy. It was part of her, part of me that was passed to you, Calin, that small gift of sight. To protect you, not to threaten.”
“I didn’t want it!” He shoved back from the table. “Where are my rights in all this? Where’s my choice?”
She wanted to weep for him, for the small boy who hadn’t understood that his uniqueness had been a loving gift. And for the man who would reject it still. “The choice has always been yours.”
“Fine. I don’t want any of this.”
“And me, Calin.” She rose as well, slowly, pride in the set of her shoulders, the set of her head. “Do you not want me as well?”
“No.” It was a lie, and it burned on his tongue. “I don’t want you.”
He heard the laughter, a nasty buzz on the air. Hecate hissed, arched her back, then growled out a warning. Cal saw fear leap into Bryna’s eyes even as she whirled and flung herself in front of him like a shield.