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

was never any good at it. I was the only child, the last Crescent in a new generation, much like you, and I was hopeless. Magic never came easy to me, not like everyone else. I’d watch them all twirl around the hawthorn, flick their fingers and make the clearin’ bloom. When I tried, I made everythin’ wither and die. Always too much magic, my mother would tell me. You’re not tryin’. I wanted to be anywhere else but here. Guardin’ a tree when I could be backpackin’ across Europe and bein’ promiscuous? That was much more excitin’.”

“So when you came back…”

“I was takin’ a stab in the dark. I knew all the pieces—in that, our stories differ—but controllin’ what I’d spent a lifetime rebellin’ against wasn’t easy.”

I opened my mouth to say ‘you didn’t have Carman breathing down your neck,’ but it was just another excuse. I’d been full of them since she’d turned up last night. Coming back from the dead was a huge thing, and here I was just waiting to dump all my crap on her head. I finally had a mother, but it didn’t mean I had to regress twenty years into adolescence. Besides, she said it herself. I was the head of the coven now. I guess that meant I had to act like I knew what I was doing at least some of the time.

I sighed and rubbed my finger over the condensation on the side of the pizza box.

“The worst was knowin’ I wasn’t there when they needed me most,” she added. “Guilt held me back for a long time.”

What did I say to that? The Nightshade Witches had burned our family alive while she was living in Australia and raising a family. Who knew what would’ve happened if she’d remained. Aileen was right about all the what-ifs. All we had was now.

“We can’t afford to wait anymore,” Aileen said. “Now I’m back, it’s only a matter of time before Carman finds out. We have the element of surprise.”

She was right. If Carman knew Aileen was here, she would alter her plans to compensate, and we would lose the only advantage we had.

“Right, down to business then?” I asked.

“I’d love to have more time with you, but magical apocalypses and all.”

“Maybe after, we could…” I shrugged.

“We’re goin’ to kick her witch ass,” Aileen declared. “But we have to have a plan.”

“Any ideas? Because that stabbing in the dark thing…”

“We need to lure her here.”

“What?” I shot to my feet, the chair almost falling over. “You do know if she gets to the hawthorn, it’s game over. Kaput.” I dragged my finger across my neck. “Curtains for the Crescents!”

“We can’t leave Derrydun, Skye. Without anyone guardin’ the hawthorn, everyone will be in danger.”

“What’s stopping her from breaking into any of the hundreds of hawthorn trees over Ireland, anyway?”

“They’re all sealed.”

“I know that but why ours? It’s where the spell was cast, wasn’t it?”

Aileen nodded. “Crescent spell, Crescent hawthorn. We’ve got the master key flowin’ in our veins. The network has to originate from somewhere, and it’s that tree out in the forest.”

“Then we have to lure Carman here and not fail. Easy…not.”

I had no idea how we were going to do that. I hoped Aileen had some aces up her sleeve because my suggestion was to troll Carman on Facebook. Somehow, I didn’t think the thousand-year-old witch had a profile.

“If we take out Carman, the rest will fall,” she added.

My mouth dropped open. “So the fae who follow her, her sons, her power…”

“It’s all linked to her.”

“That makes things a little easier.”

“She’ll be heavily guarded…and warded, so no. Not so easy.”

“And Boone?”

Aileen ignored me, which signaled the answer wasn’t a good one, crossed the kitchen and peered out the window. “We have another problem to deal with first.”

“We have more problems?” I wailed.

“I can’t go out there,” she stated, pointing to the outside world. “They’ll think I’m a zombie.”

“You’ll have to come out of the closet eventually,” I said. “You can’t hide in here the rest of your life. I should call Mairead.”

“Mairead? What about Mairead?”

“Uh…” I’d left that part out, too, about the kidnapping and the disclosure.

“Skye…”

“I, uh… There was an incident with a talisman and a van with tinted windows, a kidnapping, and Mairead dropped out of Trinity. Then there was a thing with her managing Irish Moon and wanting to be an artist. Oh! And her parents disowned her, so she lived with me for a while, then they made up, and she put barcodes on all the stuff in the shop, and here we are.” I picked up the frozen pizza. “Hungry?”

“Skye!” Aileen exclaimed. “In all my life…”

I winced. “Am I grounded?”

Chapter 16

I raced out of the cottage, acting a sight more spritely than I was feeling. I was running on fumes, fueled by adrenaline, powered by life or death. I leaped over the garden bed, commando rolled over the low stone fence, fell on my ass, and then catapulted toward the main street like I was competing in the Olympics.

Rounding the corner, I weaved around a startled Father O’Donegal, who shook his fist at me as I went, hurdled over a pile of donkey poop, then landed on the doormat in front of Irish Moon like a long jumper landing in a sandpit. New world record! Someone play the national anthem!

“Mairead!” I shrieked, barging into the shop.

“Give it a rest,” the Goth girl grumbled, emerging from underneath the counter.

“What are you doing under there?”

“I’m hungover.”

Skipping the lecture on the dangers of binge drinking and brain cells, I grasped her shoulders and shook. Her head flopped back and forth, and her scowl deepened.

“What part of hungover didn’t you understand?” she declared, swatting my hands away.

“I’ve got news!” I chortled. “Big news! Humungous, ginormous, elephant-sized news!” I flung my arms wide.

“Are you on drugs?”

“Am I…” I pouted and turned my face to the side. “Why, I never!”

She rolled her eyes and blew a strand of hair off her face.