Crescent Legacy, Nicole Taylor [best 7 inch ereader .txt] 📗

“Took long enough,” she said.

“Just stopping by for some supplies.”

“Like what? Fertilizer?”

“Very funny,” I shot back at her, picking up a bound wad of sage.

“You better scan that.”

“I will.”

“What were you doin’ out there anyway?”

“I’ve told you about the hawthorns. I had to see if someone was home,” I replied, deciding to omit the part about the craglorn I’d just nuked in the clearing…and the existential crisis I’d had immediately after. “Shit is about to go down.”

“Did it tell you that?” Her eyes widened. “I know Carman is comin’, but it hasn’t seemed real.”

“Believe me, I know all about that.” I held out the smudge stick for her to scan. “Put me down for four of these.”

“What’s this for?” she asked, brandishing the scanner.

“I’m making an electric fae fence.”

“Are not!”

“Am too!”

The scanner beeped as Mairead tallied up my inventory. I added a bag of pink Himalayan rock salt to the pile and began fiddling with some clear quartz tumbled stones. Maybe I could use these as an anchor to make the spells last longer. There was no way I was walking a thousand miles around the countryside on a weekly basis if I didn’t have to. Quartz held a lot of grounding power and would echo the natural energies of the hawthorns. That was if I cast the barrier properly.

“What’s the salt for?” Mairead asked, holding up the bag.

“Nothing,” I replied. “I like the taste. Goes good on rubbery microwaved vegetables.”

She made a face and scanned the barcode as I piled my supplies into a calico bag, which also got zapped with the laser.

“You’re goin’ now?” Mairead complained as I made for the door.

“I’ve got no time to waste,” I replied, the quartz clacking in the bag. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“You better,” she grumbled as I left.

Glancing up and down the street, I checked the time on my phone. It was barely lunchtime, so I stopped off at the teahouse to get a sandwich to go. I had a lot of ground to cover before nightfall.

Chapter 13

Even in the dead of winter, the forest around Derrydun was brilliant green.

Moss clung to everything—snaking up rocks, clinging to fallen tree trunks, and sprouting wherever there was a dusting of dirt and damp. Pressing my fingers against a patch, it sprang back like a sponge. Lichen clung to the side of the tower house, gray, green, and yellow.

Leaning against the wall, I felt the magic rippling through the ruined structure and stared out over the village. It had been so long since I’d been up here. Maybe once since Boone and I had dug up the athame. Glancing up, I could almost see his ghost perched on the stone above me, looking out for trouble.

Returning my attention to the landscape, I made a mental note of where everything lay. The main street, the lone set of traffic lights, the cottage, the ancient hawthorn, the druid’s cave, and the place where Boone said Aileen defeated Hannah the spriggan.

To the right, past the village, was Boone’s cottage. I didn’t look too far in that direction, the thought of him cozying up to his mother too much to bear. I would be seeing him again that much was certain, but I wasn’t sure I would like the way he would look at me when he did.

To the left of my perch were the top fields of Roy’s farm, and beyond that, the smudge of smoke gave away the position of his little cottage. Further still was the Ashlyn’s property, Maggie’s parents, along with their dozen horses.

I’d walked around the lot of it, studying the land, placing quartz, burning sage, and constructing the largest magical barrier Ireland had ever seen. At least, I figured it was. Carman was cursed out of the country, so I assumed she didn’t count in my world record attempt. Too bad I couldn’t call up Guinness and ask for inclusion in their next annual edition.

I’d found some interesting things, too. The foundations of a long forgotten cottage, another druid cave, a small ring of standing stones, and the edges of a barrow. The dead who lay beneath were long forgotten and hidden from the modern world, but my magic had sensed them through the earth. The dead hawthorn in the glade behind Sean McKinnon’s farmhouse was a revelation, but I assumed it had passed long before I came here. Its branches had been gray and brittle, snapping off when I’d curled my hand around a low-lying bough. A doorway lost forever.

When the last quartz crystal had been placed and the spell cast, I’d felt a flare of magic as all the edges joined. Stepping through to the outside, I’d felt coldness that had everything to do with exposure, and when I’d returned within, warmth had spread through my joints, tingling everywhere it went. Even the talisman around my neck heated like it was connected, too.

The barriers had worked but at a cost. In the week after I’d put them up, they’d started going haywire. Everything and anything tripped them, and I was out in the countryside checking every little magical mouse that brushed up against the invisible web. I was all for learning something new every day, but finding out just how many supernatural creatures lived around here through a million false alarms was an annoying lesson for sure.

Now sitting on the hill overlooking Derrydun, I knew the hassle was worth it. The tower house felt like an antenna, the bubble of magic left behind by the witch who had lived here in the seventeen hundreds, Mary Byrne, acting as the magical router in the Wi-Fi network I’d created. I’d totally morphed into Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. In the first movie, she was all girly and whiny, and by the second film, she was a super badass soldier who didn’t take any shit lying down. Though the difference in my story was the fact I’d just made Skynet my bitch. Figuratively speaking.

Yesterday, the first