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

to go with it. I’d had an hour of sleep on the back of an entire night bringing Aileen up to speed on everything that had happened since she’d, well, carked it. The craglorns, the ritual, what I’d done to the Nightshade Witches, the visions the hawthorn had shown me, the athame I’d found buried in the tower house, the swim I’d taken with the sluagh, Boone’s wolf shape and the healing powers of his animal tongue…all of it. Well, except the part where Boone and I’d done it in a ditch. I left that bit out. There were some things you just didn’t tell your mother.

I was currently sitting at the kitchen table in a state of fatigue and shock, a can of energy drink open in front of me. Aileen—all washed and smelling like roses—was sorting through the fridge, clucking her tongue at every over-processed, genetically modified convenient food item I’d stuffed in there. I was having another nonsense dream. If that were the case, then who knew what it would manifest as when I woke up. Arctic, honeysuckle, powder puff, ice cream most likely.

“I’ve been having dreams,” I said.

“Of?”

I shrugged.

“I can’t hear you shruggin’,” Aileen declared, her head still stuffed into the fridge.

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the point. I mean, I know I’ve been dreaming something important, but when I try to recall them, it’s all purple monkey, elephant, toaster, lima bean.”

“Lima bean?”

“I made that last one up.”

“Hmm…” she mused, stacking up the dozen frozen meals on top of the frozen pizza. “It could mean a lot of things.”

“Like?”

“You say the hawthorn’s been talkin’ to you?”

I nodded.

She looked at me curiously, then shrugged. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Is that it?” I exclaimed. “We just have to wait and see? What if I have a brain tumor?”

“You don’t have a brain tumor,” she retorted. “I would’ve smelled it.”

“That’s not weird at all!”

The resemblance was uncanny. Aileen even thought the same way I did—in sarcasm and pop culture references. Was sass a genetic trait? I was fast becoming a believer.

“What’s normal in our world, Skye? We talk to magical trees and protect humanity from starvin’ creatures trapped here from another plane of existence. Leprechauns are real, shadow people are real, and golden light shoots from our fingertips!”

My shoulders sank. “Point.”

Our world was crazy and wonderful, but it had a darker side. One that had been with us for a thousand years.

After hoping the hawthorn had been right about Aileen being alive and finding nothing at the site of her death, after all the disappointments—I couldn’t quite fathom the fact she was pulling out all my frozen meals from the freezer and scolding me like I was five years old. Seeing my mother in the kitchen, checking how well I adulted, was really messing with my head. I never had any of this growing up, and I’d come to accept she was gone forever only a few months ago.

I wondered what Dad would think about all this. Did he know about her being a witch? I didn’t think so. It wasn’t like I was accidentally going to set something on fire in the midst of a tantrum. My magic had been bound long before Aileen had answered the Crescent Calling. It wasn’t until Robert O’Keefe had shown up and unbound my Legacy with his golden pen that things had started getting weird.

That was another revelation from last night. Robert O’Keefe, the Danny DeVito lookalike, was a leprechaun. It explained a lot.

“Mum… Aileen… I mean…”

She glanced up from the fridge and frowned. “Call me what you like, Skye. I know I wasn’t there. I don’t blame you. You can call me ‘that bitch-faced scrag’ if you like, and I won’t ground you or anythin’.”

“It’s just…” I didn’t know how to express what I was thinking without hurting her feelings. “I get it now, but when you left, it took me a while to understand you weren’t coming back. I got used to it then. Lots of kids I went to school with had single parents, so I didn’t think I was special or anything. When Robert O’Keefe showed up… It hadn’t been long since Dad passed away and…”

“I regret what happened with your father, I do… I wanted to protect you from all of this. Both of you.” She picked up a frozen chicken meal and scowled at it. “I never told him about this life. He never knew what I could do, and back then… I didn’t want you to be drawn into this awful existence. Once, I imagine it would’ve been wonderful bein’ a witch.”

“Yeah, a thousand years ago,” I drawled.

“Exactly. It’s always been a burden I wanted to spare you from. Look at that mark on your stomach. I never wanted you to face a craglorn let alone have your magic siphoned by one.”

“Yeah, you wanted to spare me until Boone got you killed.” I knew it wasn’t his fault, but I was in a mood, and my mouth was running away with itself. What a bitch.

Aileen shook her head. “No, it wasn’t his fault. It was what it was and nothin’ more. I assume he told you about it?”

I nodded, knowing I was just sulking and making excuses. Sometimes, shit just happened, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Unless it was me and my quick temper, shit had nothing to do with it.

“He wasn’t going to tell me,” I said. “About his memories being unlocked.”

“Boone’s brother came to Derrydun because Carman wanted to separate you,” Aileen said matter-of-factly. “Together, you were stronger.”

“And I sent him straight back to her,” I muttered. “If I’d just spoken rationally to him, then he’d be here right now.”

“Maybe, maybe not. It’s no use dwellin’ on what-ifs, Skye.”

“That’s easy for you to say!” I threw my hands into the air in frustration.

“Why would you think that?” she asked. “You’re lucky. Your grandmother, great-aunt, and great-grandmother didn’t come back. I knew of my magic, but I