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

“Not much.”

She eyed me for a moment, then seemed satisfied. This day was getting more whacked as it went.

“Ahh, it’s good to be home…” Shoving the last of the biscuit into her mouth, Aileen kicked up her feet and began picking leaves and grit from her hair. “Tell me about the craglorn. Do you feel sick?”

“I barfed big time, but I was able to get it back.”

“What? The vomit? Skye, that’s disgustin’.”

“No! I don’t lick up neon yellow spew, thank you very much. I’m talking about my magic. You know, the Crescent Legacy or whatever fancy-pants name you want to slap on it. I took it back, then zapped its ass. Pow!” I swatted the air with my fist.

“You took it back?” Aileen stopped playing with her hair.

I nodded and poked at the mark on my stomach. “Served it right. I warned it, but it didn’t listen. It was all mmaaggiiccc, blergh!”

Aileen looked thoughtful but didn’t share any of it with me. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to take my magic back. Is that what made me throw up? Better not have because there went my plan for getting stolen Legacies back to their rightful owners. Throwing up was the worst.

My stomach flip-flopped again. This was happening way too fast. Thinking about the Chariot, I wondered if this was what it heralded all along. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d misinterpreted the tarot cards. Aileen was back… Like, really back.

“Are you really here?” I wanted to pinch Aileen to make sure she was solid. I’d seen some crazy things since moving to Derrydun, but this was the craziest by far. “I mean, I’ve had weird dreams about purple typewriters, and there was this thing about elephant toast, and there was this fae that stole the face of my ex-boyfriend, and I poked a wolf’s eye out with a stick… Oh! And there was the swim I took with the sluagh, and the hawthorn tried to warn me about the Nightshade Witches, then there—”

“Skye,” Aileen interrupted. “Calm down. I’m really here.”

“How? I mean, you just said you never made it to the other side, but how?”

She sank back into the armchair and drew in a deep breath before letting it out in one big whoosh.

“I was pulled into the earth,” she began. “But my magic cocooned me.”

“But we went to the clearing,” I argued. “There was nothing there. Nothing at all. The earth wasn’t disturbed or anything. I don’t understand…”

“After survivin’ this long, I’ve stopped askin’ questions myself. Though I gathered it mustn’t have been my time.”

“But you must remember something,” I argued. “That can’t be it!”

“I remember usin’ the last of me strength to cast a cocoon around myself. Then there was darkness. Lots of darkness. I suppose that’s when I died, and you were Called. Somethin’ brought me back and stopped me from crossin’ into the hawthorn with the ancestors, but I can’t really explain what. Perhaps me spell spared me and gave me another chance. It felt like I went for a really long swim through sludge, not knowin’ which way I was supposed to go. Then I swam into the forest, pulled myself out of the ground, and here we are. I’m glad you’ve got biscuits.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I said sullenly. “I’ve got a lot of mess to clean up. I could do with a hand.”

“I can’t fix this for you, Skye. I’m not a plot device dropped in at the right moment to make all your mistakes go away. I’m not in control of the coven anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Technically, I did die but not really. It messed up the bloodline, and magic can be very literal about these things.”

“So this is some kind of magical time warp where the space-time continuum has folded in on itself?”

Aileen blinked, looking bewildered, then shrugged. “You could say it like that, but the simple version is the mantle passed to you, and once you’ve got it, you can’t hand it back. You’re in charge of the coven now, and whatever comes next, you must lead with your Legacy.”

“So, I’m your boss.”

“Kind of.”

“You sort of died, and even though you’re back, you got demoted anyway?”

“I wouldn’t say it like that,” she said with a huff.

“It’s exactly like that.”

“Where’s Boone?” Aileen asked, abruptly changing the subject. She looked around the cottage as if he would poke his head out from behind the couch at any second.

“Uh…”

“Skye?”

I played with the ring on my finger and looked anywhere but at Aileen. The floral curtains had a rather interesting pattern to them even though they were ugly as sin, and I’d been too lazy to change them over.

“Skye?” Aileen prodded again. “Where is Boone?”

“Gone,” I replied with a sigh.

“Gone? Where?”

“Home.” It was as simple as that.

Aileen’s gaze dropped to my finger, and her eyebrows knitted together. “His memory came back.”

It was a statement, not a question, so I didn’t bother replying.

“Where is home, Skye?”

“Carman,” I replied, twisting the ring around my finger. “He’s one of Carman’s sons.”

Aileen let her head fall. “And that ring?”

“I love him,” I whispered, the words tearing open the wound in my heart again. “He asked me to marry him at Christmas and…”

“Oh, Skye…”

“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” I murmured. “So much has happened.”

“Then you better start at the beginnin’.”

“But we don’t have time,” I complained. “Carman is coming, and she could be here at any moment! I’ve been trying to prepare, but…” I felt like bursting into tears. “I told you. I stuffed everything up.”

“We have time,” Aileen said, placing her hand on my knee. “This is important, Skye. Take a deep breath, and tell me about arrivin’ in Derrydun. Did Robert O’Keefe help you?”

Doing as she said, I breathed deeply, then exclaimed, “Let me tell you about that scoundrel, Robert O’Keefe!”

Chapter 15

When the sun rose the next morning, it broke through the clouds for the first time in months.

I scarcely had the brainpower to work out the omen