Page 25 of Adepts and Alchemists

“Nice,” I finished with a smirk.

“Yeah,” he finished, rubbing the back of his neck. He wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. At least I knew it was embarrassment at my lack of shame than hostility that kept him from meeting my gaze.

“You two lovebirds can make out later,” Wanda said, hitting the end call button before Lucretia Boline or Aurea Grimsbane could comment further.

“Actually, no, you can’t,” Angelo said as he gave us both a look. “Indigo, you’re still borrowing Lydia’s body, and I don’t appreciate her making out with… him.” He finished as he pointed in RJ’s general direction.

I thought about protesting. I thought about tugging RJ to me, just to make a point. Instead, I turned on one heel and marched through the rippling surface of the mirror...

And fell about five feet onto an expensive Tunisian rug. Air exploded from my lungs when I hit the floor, and I had to roll desperately to avoid being crushed by the next person who walked through. It left me blinking black spots out of my eyes. I couldn’t understand why the mirror had been fastened to theceiling.Was Poppy’s grandmother a sadist or just insane?

We ended up in a series of tangled limbs. I was pressed uncomfortably close to RJ, who’d landed inches away from me and shoved part of his weight on top of me to avoid being crushed by Angelo when he came through. Our bodies were angled toward each other. Our eyes met, and I couldn’t blame Angelo’s power for the frisson of pure want that flashed through me. In better circumstances, I would have been thrilled to be under this man.

Before any of us could sit up and take stock of the room, a door opened. A petite woman stood in the gap. She’d been thinned down by time and curled forward by age. She leaned heavily on a cane, taking in the tableau with more calm than I would have expected from a mundane. Instead of screaming, she sighed and tucked a lock of snowy hair behind one ear.

“Oh, Poppy,” she said in a chiding tone. “If you wanted to introduce me to your friends, you could have used the front door.”

Poppy’s hair looked like it had gone through a wind tunnel. Finn looked shaken too, as though the journey through had been harder on some of us than others. As soon as he stood up, his great grandmother pulled him into a hug. A glance around confirmed that most of us looked ill or annoyed. Angelo still looked smug, but that was his de facto expression. The jerk.

“Um... GG, why is your portal mirror attached to the ceiling?” Poppy asked.

GG grinned. “To deter unplanned guests. You never know when a tricky witch might get it in their heads to visit.” Then she turned to face me. “Isn’t that right,Indigo?”

It was my turn to stare. The unassuming woman looked barely strong enough to pour her own tea, let alone to divine who I was. Not to mention that I didn’t look a thing like the Indigo who’d perished in Lydia’s shop.

“How did you...?” I began.

“I knew your mother very well,” she said by way of explanation. “I suppose that witch isn’t done with me, even after all these years.”

“You knew witches before?” Finn asked, frowning at her. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

The kid almost looked… hurt.

“Come in, all of you,” GG answered. “I’d say Poppy and I have some catching up to do.”

Chapter Eleven

Indigo

Smothering hugs smoothed over a lot of hurt feelings, but for everything else, there was chocolate.

I sat back in a creaky Windsor chair, sipping from a mug of genuine cocoa. I had to admit, if only to myself, that I was sneaking a little illicit pleasure from the experience. In the past, I could taste the food we ate in the back of Lydia’s mind, but it wasn’t the same thing as an in-person experience. There was so much involved in enjoying a culinary experience that I had been missing. The heat of the mug was scorching, pulsing much-needed warmth back into my fingers.

The chocolate didn’t add much to the fortitude of my backbone, but that was reasonably secure now as well. GG had patiently waited for the coven witches to do their work, walking the property lines as they set up wards and an early warning system. She didn’t actually speak another word to us until we were all seated and facing the head of the table. It had given me a little time to look around, looking for any evidence that my mother had ever been here.

The thick velvet curtains moved stiffly, barely parting to allow streamers of light through. They fell on a worn hardwood floor, scuffed with the evidence of play and childhood mishaps. GG hadn’t had any scarring of the old wood smoothed out, keeping each groove like a memento.

The dining room had a good view of the sitting room. The whole house had this comfy, cozy feel to it, and I just couldn’t imagine my mother lounging on any of the overstuffed couches and armchairs. I also couldn’t picture her sitting at the old typewriting desk, whipping up formulae for spells, or brewing potions with the neatly organized ingredients that were laidout on the top of the desk. GG would occasionally stop to stir something she’d been working on when we arrived.

It was only the grandfather clock tucked into one corner like an afterthought that convinced me that Mother had ever been in this place. It was a gorgeous piece, carved completely from mahogany and graced with enough written spell work to make my eyes cross. It had Mother’s magical signature tucked into the clock face, and it was thrumming with life due to our recent arrival. If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend she was in the room with us.

GG caught me looking and cast the grandfather clock a wispy smile. “She gave that to me when I got married. The clock acts as a supernatural warning system for the mirror. Your mother disapproved of marriage in general, of course, but she wanted me to have advance warning if someone used the mirror.”

Why? I wanted to scream. Why had my mother been mingling with a mundane gypsy woman? Historically, we weren’t friends. It was beyond strange that Wanda and Poppy were as close as they were. I’d just attributed their relationship to the fact that everyone in Scapegrace were basically cast outs so they needed one another. When it came down to it, witches and gypsies couldn’t exist in the same place without one pushing the other out. Most often, witches won that fight. So, how had my mother gotten so close to this woman that she’d been willing to give such an incredible piece of furniture to GG in order to keep her safe?

“It hasn’t chimed in ages,” GG continued with a sigh. “I keep expecting your mother to walk through, complaining about this or that. She was a very strident woman, your mother. Very strong. Very opinionated. I didn’t see that a lot in the women of my generation. It made me like her quite a bit. And I grew on her, I expect.” She laughed then, as if she were caught in some long ago memory. “She hated me at first.” She caught me staringand gave me a sly grin. “I can tell you’re dying to ask, but do wait until everyone is seated, dear. I don’t enjoy repeating myself.”

If she hadn’t added the last bit, I might have exploded into a fresh barrage of questions. But she was right. It was a waste of valuable time to explain everything twice. So I sank a little lower into my chair, sipping my chocolate with a sullen frown. Angelo watched me do it, smirking in amusement.