Нора Робертс - Blood Magick

She scrubbed potatoes first, cut them into chunks, tossed them in her herbs and oil, added some pepper, some minced garlic and stuck them in the oven. She tossed the bread dough together—taking a swig of beer for the cook, and with plenty of melted butter on top of the loaves, stuck them in with the potatoes.

As the chicken breasts were frozen, she thawed them with a wave of her hand, then covered them with a marinade she’d made and bottled herself.

Satisfied things were well under way, she poured that wine, took the first sip where she stood. Deciding she could use some air, a little walk herself, she got a jacket, wrapped a scarf around her neck, and took her wine outside.

Blustery and cold, she thought, but a change from all the heat she and Fin had generated in the workshop. As the wind blew through her hair, she walked her back garden, picturing where her flowers would bloom, where her rows of vegetables would grow come spring.

She had some roses still, she noted, and the pansies, of course, who’d show their cheerful faces right through the snow or ice if they got it. Some winter cabbage, and the bright orange and yellow blooms of Calendula she prized for its color and its peppery flavor.

She might make soup the next day, add some, and some of the carrots she’d mulched over so they’d handle the colder weather.

Even in winter the gardens pleased her.

She sipped her wine, wandered, even when the shadows deepened, and the fog teased around the edges of her home.

“You’re not welcome here.” She spoke calmly, and took out the little knife in her pocket, used it to cut some of the Calendula, some hearty snapdragons, a few pansies. She’d make a little arrangement, she thought, of winter bloomers for the table.

“I will be.” Cabhan stood, handsome, smiling, the red stone of the pendant he wore glowing in the dim light. “You’ll welcome me eagerly into your home. Into your bed.”

“You’re still weak from your last welcome , and delusional besides.” She turned now, deliberately sipped her wine as she studied him. “You can’t seduce me.”

“You’re so much more than the rest of them. We know it, you and I. With me, you’ll be more yet. More than anyone ever imagined. I will give you all the pleasure you deny yourself. I can look like him.”

Cabhan waved a hand in front of his face. And Fin smiled at her.

And oh, it stabbed her heart as if she’d turned the little knife on herself. “A shell only.”

“I can sound like him,” he said in Fin’s voice . “Aghra, a chuid den tsaol.”

The knife twisted as he said the words Fin used to say to her. My love, my share of life .

“Do you think that weakens me? Tempts me to open to you? You are all I despise. You are why I am no longer his.”

“You chose. You cast me away.” Suddenly he was Fin at eighteen, so young, so full of grief and rage. “What would you have me do? I never knew. I never deceived you. Don’t turn from me. Don’t cast me aside.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Branna heard herself say. “I gave myself to you, only you, and you’re his blood. You’re his.”

“I didn’t know! How could I? It came on me, Branna, burned into me. It wasn’t there before—”

“Before we loved. More than a week ago, and you said nothing, and only tell me now, as I saw for myself. I am of the three.” Tears burned the back of her eyes, but she refused to let them thicken her voice. “I am a Dark Witch, daughter of Sorcha. You are of Cabhan, you are of the black and the pain. You’re lies, and what you are has broken my heart.”

“Weep, witch,” he murmured. “Weep out the pain. Give me your tears.”

She caught herself standing in front of him, on the edge of her ground, and his face was Cabhan’s face. And that face was lit with the dark as the red stone glowed stronger.

Tears, she realized, swam in her eyes. With all her will she pulled them back, held her head high. “I don’t weep. You’ll have nothing from me but this.”

She jabbed out with the garden knife, managed to stab shallowly in his chest as she grabbed for the pendant with her other hand. The ground trembled under her feet; the chain burned cold. For an instant his eyes burned red as the stone, then the fog swirled, snapped out with teeth, and she held nothing but the little knife with blood on its tip.

She looked down at her hand, at the burn scored across her palm. Closing her hand into a fist she drew up, warmed the icy burn, soothed it, healed it.

Perhaps her hands trembled—there was no shame in it—but she picked up the flowers, the wineglass she’d dropped.

“A waste of wine,” she said softly as she walked toward the house.

But not, she thought, a waste of time.

She’d stirred the potatoes, taken the bread from the oven, and had poured a fresh glass of wine before the rest of her circle began wandering in.

“What can I do,” Iona asked as she washed her hands, “that won’t give anyone heartburn?”

“You could mince up that garlic there.”

“I’m good at mincing, also chopping.”

“Mincing will do.”

“Are you all right?” Iona said under her breath. “You look a little pale.”

“I’m right enough, I promise you. I have something to tell all of you, but I’d as soon wait until I have this all done.”

“Okay.”

She focused on cooking, on letting the voices flow around her while she worked. She didn’t have to ask for help—others set the table, poured wine, arranged food on platters or in bowls.

“Do you have a marketing list?” Meara asked as those bowls and platters made their way around the table. “And if not, if you could make one, I’ll be doing the marketing for you—unless you object.”

“You’re doing my marketing?”

“The lot of us will be taking turns on it, from now on. Well, as long as you’re stuck doing most of the cooking. It’s gone past cleaning up after being a fair trade-off. So we’ll see to the marketing.”

“I have a list started, and planned to go to the market tomorrow.”

“It’ll be my turn for that, if that’s all right with you.”

“Sure it’s fine with me.”

“If there’s anything you want taken into your shop, I can haul it in for you at the same time.”

She started to speak, then looked around the table, narrowed her eyes. “What’s all this then, doing the marketing, taking in my stock?”

“You look tired.” At Connor’s eye-roll and sigh, Boyle scowled. “Why dance around it?”

“Thank you so much for pointing it out to me,” Branna snapped back.

“You want the truth or want it fancied up?” Boyle’s scowl only deepened. “You look tired, and that’s that.”

Eyes narrowed still, she ran her hands down her face, did a glamour. Now she all but glowed. “There, all better.”

“It’s under it where you’re tired.”

She started to round on Fin, and Connor threw up his hands. “Oh leave off, Branna. You’re pale and heavy-eyed, and we’re the ones looking at you.” He jabbed a finger when she started to rise, sent a little shove across the table to put her back in her chair.

She didn’t need the glamour now to bring the flush to her cheeks. “Want to take me on, do you?”

“Just stop it, both of you,” Iona ordered. “Just stop. You have every reason to look tired, with all you’re doing, and we have every right to take some of the load off. It’s just marketing, for God’s sake, and cleaning up and chores . We’re doing it so you can have some time to breathe, damn it. So stop being so snarly about it.”

Branna sat back. “Doesn’t seem so long ago it was an apology coming out of your mouth every two minutes or less. Now it’s orders.”