Page 33 of Love’s a Witch (The Scottish Charms #1)

CHAPTER NINETEEN Sloane

I felt like I was unraveling at the seams.

It had been a week since the coven meeting about the curse, and in that time, my magick had continued to go off the rails.

The revelation about our father had rocked my sisters and me, and with the added stress of the snow continuing to pile up, I was like an unwatched pot on the stove, ready to boil over.

One morning, we were busy making decorations for the Pinecones & Peppermint Fest, tying pinecones onto twine, and wrapping candy canes in bows, when all of the pinecones had turned into hedgehogs and chaos had ensued. I was never going to look at a pinecone the same way again.

Another day, which still made me hot and bothered when I thought about it, my shadow had become extra clingy.

All day long, it had tripped me up, like a scared child hanging on to my leg every time I made a move.

It had also happened to be the day that I’d gone into town for a few things for Broca from Pixie Dust and had run into Knox on the street.

Quite literally run into him, because my shadow had lost its mind, apparently, and pushed me right into his chest. He’d caught me, and once he’d realized my issue that day, he’d insisted on carrying me home and installing me in my bedroom until it was safe for me to move again.

And had decided to babysit me in the process.

Knowing the house was full of people made our kisses all the more stealthy in my bedroom, and even though I had put up a small fight about not wanting to be with him, my resolve was weakening.

Anyone’s resolve would weaken around that man.

His biggest flaw that I could find at the moment was his absolute confidence that things would work out in his favor.

And as much as I tried to disavow him of the idea of us as a couple, somehow I still found myself wrapped around him every time I saw him, my lips on his, my body aching for more.

We hadn’t crossed that line yet, but I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold out.

Knox was cheerfully open to telling anyone and everyone about his interest in me, which I found beyond irritating, while I continued to grumble and ignore any questions that came my way about Briarhaven’s favorite golden boy.

I’m sure that didn’t endear me to anyone, but I was not used to answering questions about my private life.

Particularly when I didn’t even know the answers myself.

It turned out, Broca hadn’t known our father was still around, either, or at least that’s what she told us, and I believed her.

She had nothing to gain from hiding that information, and she’d been just as upset with our mother for hiding that from us.

As far as she was concerned, children had a right to know about their parents and make their own decisions, and Mum shouldn’t have kept our father’s whereabouts a secret. I wondered if he knew we were back.

We discussed going to the hills, just my sisters and me, to see if we could find him.

There were just a couple small issues with that plan.

The first being that the snow was growing worse every day, and none of us were experienced in winter hiking or camping.

It would be foolish beyond belief to just trudge up into the mountains and try to find this man.

And second, we realized that we didn’t really know if he wanted to see us anyway.

If he’d wanted to, wouldn’t he have reached out?

Even though Nova was still pretty mad about it, we’d agreed to wait on any decision about moving forward on trying to find him until we could seek out more information.

I’d yet to confront Mum about any of this.

Lyra and Nova wanted me to say something, but a part of me was beginning to realize that the less contact I had with her, and the more I distanced myself from her narrative, the better I was becoming at making decisions that suited me.

And, at the end of the day, if we decided to stay in Briarhaven, our relationship with our mother would remain fractured anyway.

What the three of us needed to do was to reach these conclusions about our own future for ourselves, without the lens of a bitter and toxic mother coloring our views.

All of this meant I had a lot of big feelings pinging around inside me, and no particular outlet for them at the moment. So why not try more spell work? It would either go entirely off the rails or potentially solve everything. With that in mind, I’d summoned my family to the living room.

“You think we’ll be okay to try this… just us?

” Nova asked, settling onto the floor in front of the coffee table.

She’d stayed at home a lot this past week, aside from her morning runs, after learning about our father, and had spent much of her time drawing.

It was Nova’s way of coping with her reactions, and her tattoo designs flourished whenever she was in a mood.

Lyra had baked to the point where I might just be winning over the curmudgeonly neighbor who gave me the two-fingered salute every morning.

Granted, he still slammed the door when he saw me coming up the walk, but we’d left a container of treats at his door each day, and this morning I’d even found the empty container back at ours.

It was a small step, but maybe, just maybe, we were starting to change a few people’s minds about our presence back in Briarhaven.

“I think it is worth giving it a go, just us, and we’ll see what’s what. I need to feel the magick of this spell. I’ll be able to get a better read on it if we follow it exactly or if the magick requires different needs now,” Broca said.

“Wait, why?” That was interesting. I felt like I was in preschool when it came to magick, our mother having refused to teach us anything of its history, with Broca filling in limited tutorials where she could.

It was a large reason why I’d spent so long dismissing all things magickal, while Nova and Lyra had spent far more time delving into our magickal history.

“A spell or ritual that was suitable hundreds of years ago may not be the same now.” Broca smiled at me, her tone gentle, endlessly patient.

“Think of it this way. As we learn and grow as people, our needs change. Our understanding of the world changes. For example, words that may have been used fifty or one hundred years ago, which were common vernacular then, are now understood to be slurs. So people stop using them, society adjusts, and collectively we move forward with a better understanding of how to coexist. The same goes for magick. We have technology now. We have quicker ways of doing things. There are some shortcuts we can use that help in our magick, while in other ways the original ritual is best. Witches can adapt to modern times, just like anyone else can. I’d like to just give this ritual a go, see if I can feel if something in particular needs tweaking, and if it does, we’ll call in the Charms and make it a bigger thing. Make sense?”

“Aye, it does at that.” I nibbled my lower lip as I thought about modern-day witches googling how to perform rituals.

Cheese? Blue bumped his head against mine, and my heart warmed. Having the ability to talk with him had strengthened our relationship significantly, even though a large part of our conversations were based around his deep and abiding love for cheese.

“In a bit, buddy. We’re going to do a ritual first.”

Won’t work.

“Why not?” I scratched behind his wings, a spot he struggled to reach with his paws, and his face went delirious with pleasure.

Need Vaila’s family.

“Who is Vaila?”

The witch who cursed you.

My mouth dropped open. To my knowledge, this was the first we’d ever had a name for her, any record of her involvement having been destroyed long ago, or so my mother had told me.

Until the people of Briarhaven had been able to make the village a stronghold for witches, long before Knox had made it a coveted destination, there had been a lot of witch hunts and burning of homes.

Which also included books, records, and magickal tools.

Even having a name was a start. This could seriously help us in our search for a way to break the curse. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t asked Blue more before, but now I leaned back on the cushions and studied my wee familiar.

He grinned up at me, his tongue lolling out.

“What else do you know about Vaila? Do you know her last name?”

I quickly told the others what Blue had said, and Broca leaned forward, excitement in her eyes, while Nova and Lyra crowded close around the coffee table.

No. Just that she had a broken heart. And her family can never love. Not truly.

“He says that Vaila had a broken heart and none of her bloodline can ever truly love someone.”

It’s part of the curse. She hurt others. Which means she hurt herself.

“How do you know this?” I asked Blue.

We get information on our witches before we pick them.

My heart warmed. He’d picked me. Me. It was quite an honor, and I pressed a kiss to his wee forehead.

Blue rolled in my lap and took off across the room, his wings flapping lazily as he lumbered toward the kitchen cabinets to see if any spare cheese had been left on the counter. I repeated what he’d said.

“I’ll get him a wee snack. For being such a good boy.”

The best emberwolf in all the land , Blue corrected from where he perched on the counter, snuffling in the sink.

“Does that mean we’re looking for someone who is single? Never married? How can her bloodline continue if she isn’t in love?” I wondered out loud, and Nova snorted.

“I hate to break this to you, Sloane, but science has proven that babies can be made without the presence of love.”

I threw a cushion at her head.

“Shut up. I was just thinking out loud.”