by Kelly Moran
He laughed. “Sure. You, too.” He forced himself to descend the stairs, then watched her slip inside the house. While he stared at the door, he fought the urge to break it down in order to get back to her.
“Ready?”
A sigh, and he acknowledged Riley with a nod.
They strode through the woods and back home in silence. Once there, Brady stood on the front lawn and eyed the white clapboard fortress with black shutters, caught up in the past while it collided with the present. Such things always fascinated him. How places and people changed, and yet progress was rarely made where it counted.
Ten years after Six Fates Island was inhabited, his ancestors had built Meath Mansion. Back then, it was Federal-style and roughly three-thousand square feet. Traces of the original design like the elliptical fanlight window above the front door and vertical sidelights flanking the entrance were still present, plus the tripartite Venetian glass on the second story above the doorframe. But through time and as wealth accumulated, additions had been erected. It now had more touches of Greek-revival, boasting temple-like porticos on either side of the original structure, supported by grandiose columns.
In other words, a twelve-thousand square-foot mish-mash of privilege.
Brady and his brothers had issued a lot of updates to the interior when they’d come of age, trying to weed out the cold functionality of the decor and making it theirs. Personal touches and warm colors. Feng shui-ing to erase their childhood birthed in lonely times and desperate boredom. But standing here staring at the place, he realized how it could still leave him feeling utterly...frigid.
“Brady?” Riley paused by the front steps, concern wrinkling his brow. “You coming, man?”
Tristan faced him as well, a mirror expression to Riley’s.
When Brady didn’t respond, or couldn’t, they crossed the distance and stood in front of him.
Frowning, he glanced to the east side of the property at the eight-car garage and glassed-in swimming pool connected to the house, then to the west, where an in-ground seating area, stone fire pit, and gazebo sat waiting for guests. Except they never had company. Privacy, a Meath DNA trait.
“Do you ever wonder what they were thinking?” He looked at his brothers. “Our family, I mean. They built this, all of this,” he swept his hand to indicate the estate, “and what do we have to show for it?” There was no laughter inside. No holiday gatherings or pitter-patter of little feet or...life. “What purpose does this serve?”
Riley turned and took in the property as if looking at it for the first time. “Legacy, I suppose.”
“Some legacy,” Tristan muttered.
And that was exactly Brady’s point. “The Galloways extended an olive branch tonight.” He kept circling back to the evening’s events, tried to fit a logical peg into a mystical hole. “Call it fate or whatever, but what legacy are we leaving behind, or adding to, if history is just going to repeat itself?”
If he understood anything, could rally to a cause, history was it. Knowing and studying the past shed light on the errors of ways, on both the atrocities and humanistic end of behavior. It was supposed to teach future generations what to or not to do if given the choice. Wasn’t it up to him and his brothers to learn from their ancestors’ mistakes?
“What are you saying?” Riley crossed his arms and widened his stance. “Do you believe the sisters? That we’re cursed and part of some twisted destiny?”
“Don’t you?” Brady raised his brows for emphasis. “After what you saw with your own eyes and taking into account the Galloway/Meath woes, don’t you believe them?”
Riley’s gaze drifted over Brady’s shoulder, lost in thought. “Strike me now, but yes. I actually do.”
They looked at Tristan, who closed his eyes and dropped his chin. Hands on his hips, he stood unmoving.
Of the three of them, Tristan had the biggest heart. He hid it from most of the world, but he felt things deeply. Riley was a go-with-the-flow person, preferring humor over conflict, and Brady dug his toes in logic. History, in all areas of the globe, was steeped in tragedy and ugliness. He took that nature for what it typically was—ignorant or scared people using religion, insecurities, and power to justify means. Selfishness to the core.
Yet, Tristan amped that to another level and inserted empathy, viewing actions from every side. He hated that about himself, had mentioned it to Brady on quite a few occasions. Emotions were considered a weakness by their uncle. A notion the bastard had tried to drill into them as children, Tristan receiving the worst brunt.
Which was why he despised any talk of the Galloways. Knowing what their ancestors had done to Celeste sickened him, thus he copped an attitude and shut down whenever the topic arose, hiding his sympathy. Brady had seen it endless times.
He couldn’t tell which way the scales would tip for Tristan. On one hand, agreeing to help would offer a way to make amends for an enactment by his family he viewed as shameful. But it also meant opening himself up to three women he didn’t trust, emotions he’d boxed, and injecting himself into a world he wanted no part in.
“Tristan?”
At Riley’s not-so-gentle cue, Tristan’s lids lifted and he glared at the sky, shaking his head. “Damn it.” He jabbed his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, I believe them.” He looked at Brady and sighed. “How could I not after your dreams? If nothing else, I believe you.”
A hefty silence fell between them, and Brady looked at the manicured lawn like it might provide the solution to world hunger. Or break a curse.
“So, that just happened.” Riley lifted his hand, expression dialed to a sarcastic why-the-hell-not. “We just agreed to help three witches in completing unknown, possibly perilous tasks for the fate of our families’ happiness. Right on.” He spun on his heel and marched toward the house. “I need a stiff drink and dry clothes. I’ll meet you in the library, where we can discuss unicorns and leprechauns.”
“Well, when he puts it that way...” Brady scowled.
A grated laugh from Tristan, and they went inside, too.
Brady made his way through the grand foyer and up the polished, winding marble staircase. Taking a hard right to the east wing, he headed for his suite at the end of the long, dark paneled hallway. Portraits of deceased family members stared at him on his trek, and he resisted the urge to shudder.
Kicking the suite door shut, he strode straight past his four-poster sovereign bed to the matching honey walnut dresser and fished in a drawer for sleepwear. He stripped, tossing his damp clothes near the vicinity of the hamper in the adjoining bathroom, then stepped into a pair of blue-striped cotton pants. Barefoot, he padded back down the hallway, shoving his arms into a white tee. A runner took some of the chill out of the mahogany floorboards, but he longed for a fire.
Knowing the few household staff they had on retainer would be asleep in their quarters, he took a shortcut through the kitchen to get to the west end of the mansion. Polished white cabinets and stainless steel appliances. Wine pantry with the best selection money could buy. A breakfast nook and a large island. Dark blue marble countertops and state of the art gadgets. Pristine black and white checkered tile flooring.
Nothing he hadn’t seen before, but he shook his head, suddenly disgusted by everything. He had no idea what had gotten into him, yet distressed impatience grated under his skin like sandpaper. Maybe some of Tristan was rubbing off on him, or perhaps it was all the talk of their family that had him restless. He didn’t know, but he’d kill to shake the sensation. It had begun the moment they’d returned from the woods and only kept building.
He paused outside the library to place his thumb on the keypad for entry, a security measure his uncle had installed before Brady was born. As a child, he hadn’t understood the need, but as a beep granted him access to the room and he stepped inside, he recalled the gist.
From the hardwood planks decorated with a massive area rug to the thirty-foot vaulted ceiling, shelves held volumes and volumes of books. Fir
st edition Tolstoy to Poe, Austen to Bronte, and every second or third edition in between. Encyclopedias and manuals. The very top shelves harbored journals dating all the way back to Minister Gregory Meath, reachable only by a ladder, and in protection casing for preservation. The original Bible he’d brought over from Ireland was in a decorative glass box in the corner next to a colossal oak desk.
Riley stood in front of the ornate ivory fireplace, staring absently at the flames. He’d changed into a pair of dark green silk pajamas, his feet also bare.
“Thanks for getting a fire going.” Brady took a seat on one of the stiff, scroll-armed Chesterfields that faced one another. “I can’t get the chill out of my bones.”
His brother made a sound of agreement, but didn’t turn around. “Not quite as easily done like Ceara, but I made do the old-fashioned way.”
Brady huffed a laugh. “That was something. Imagine the damage she could inflict if she wanted.”
“Fiona’s wind trick was no joke, either.” Riley turned. “You beat your fists against a solid wall of air. And bled.”
“Yeah, I...” Brady glanced at his knuckles and quit breathing. They were fine. Completely fine. No bruising or cuts. And they no longer hurt. His hands should’ve taken a couple weeks to heal. Hell, he was lucky he hadn’t broken any bones. “Check it out. I’m cured.”
Riley’s mouth flatlined. “That was some ointment Mara applied.”
Tristan strode in wearing red flannel pajama pants, no shirt, and went straight to the mini bar in the corner. He poured several fingers of Jameson into three glasses and handed one to Riley and Brady before downing his own.
After pouring another, Tristan leaned against the desk facing them. “Think we’re dreaming, too? Perhaps you and Kaida pulled us into your messed up dreamland.”
Brady stared into his whiskey. “I wish.” He slammed the contents of his glass and set it on the coffee table. A slow burn traveled down his throat and heated his belly. His gaze traveled to the bar and the wall-mounted case above it. They could feed a small third-world country with the cost of one of the five single malts on display. “When this is all over, if we succeed in our whacked assignment, I say we crack the seal on the Dalmore 64 Trinitas.”
Riley’s brows rose. “That’s a hundred-sixty thousand dollar bottle, my man.”
Only three were ever put into circulation. Valuable, indeed. Circa 1868, the red decanter and black wooden mold held some of the rarest vintage on earth. Beside it was a bottle of 1937 Glenfiddich, a 1926 Macallan, a 1919 Springbank, and an empty diamond decanter of Isabella’s Islay. Meath men loved their whiskey almost as much as having something others coveted.
“Yep.” Brady leaned back and tilted his face toward the ceiling. A hand-painted mural of angels in heavenly glory stared back at him. “I say we do it, anyway. What better occasion than saving the world?” Or their piece of it.
“Sure.” Riley crossed the room and took a seat on the Chesterfield opposite Brady. “Why not? The only thing scarier than teaming up with witches who’ve hated us for three-hundred years will be the look on Uncle Greg’s face when he discovers we’ve opened the bottle.”
“Fuck him.” At Tristan’s sharp glare, Brady shrugged. “Seriously, fuck him. If the sisters were right tonight, he knew about this supposed destiny and kept us in the dark. Besides, he’s an asshole.”
The bastard had spent their childhood making them miserable, and then took off for destinations unknown when they’d come into their inheritance at nineteen. Tristan, with little help from Riley and Brady, ran Meath Hotel on the island. They had another location in Ireland and one in Britain that Uncle Greg oversaw. They hadn’t seen him in eight-ish years.
Good riddance.
“Can’t argue with that,” Tristan mumbled, swirling the amber liquid in his tumbler.
“Moot point if you don’t fulfill your task.” Riley finished his drink, resting the empty glass on his thigh. “I’m not a hundred percent certain the sisters told us everything. Considering our meeting was the first instance where the Galloways were even remotely cordial with us, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“Us,” Brady corrected. “Not just me, but us. Following the pattern, if Kaida and I complete our part, one of you is next and will be paired up with another sister.”
Riley froze. “I was happily putting all the drama on your shoulders and liked my delusions, thank you very much.”
“I got the impression they were holding back intel, as well.” Tristan sipped his whiskey, ignoring Riley’s half-joke. “Now that the dust has settled and shock’s wearing off, my mind keeps circling the drain on something Ceara said.”
“I’m still tripping over the fireballs, reverse rain, and air wall. But you go right ahead.”
Tristan gave Riley a baleful glance and stared at his whiskey again. “She said her kind were hunted.”
Brady squinted, trying to remember. At the time, he’d been more focused on Kaida than her sisters. “Not just hunted, but by our family. Do you think she meant our blood relatives are killing witches?”
In this day and age? And assuming, of course, there were others with powers out there.
“This isn’t sixteenth century Salem.” Riley rubbed his eyes. “I chalk it up to the girls playing games. Ignore it.”
“Ceara isn’t coy or manipulative. That’s Fiona’s bag of tricks.” Brady leaned forward. “What are you thinking, Tristan?”
“She looked scared.” He closed his eyes, offering a subtle shake of his head. When he glanced at Brady after a beat, anger tightened his mouth. “She acted like she was genuinely afraid we’d...harm them.”
Riley’s brows furrowed. “I repeat, this isn’t Salem and—”
“When have you ever known them to be frightened?” Tristan barked. “In all our run-ins and business dealings, when has fear ever played a part?”
Deflating, Riley’s gaze drifted in thought. “They’re seductive and mysterious, yes. Arrogant and superior, sure.” He looked at Tristan. “Okay, come to think of it, Fiona did seem...off.”
“And Ceara was shocked at Brady’s adamancy he’d never hurt Kaida.” Tristan finished his drink and walked to the bar, quietly setting down the glass. “It’s been running on a loop in my mind since we met up with them.” His back to the room, he lowered his head. “What kind of monsters do they believe we are if...”
Brady’s gut clenched amid the choking silence. He got lost in the flames crackling in the hearth before glancing at the trinity knot branded on his wrist.
“Think it’ll disappear if you complete your end of the deal?” Riley jerked his chin at the tattoo.
“I don’t know.” Brady didn’t care anymore. All he could think about was getting back to Kaida and ceasing the needles of anticipation under his skin. If Tristan was right and the sisters feared them, what did she truly believe about him? Of their connection and time with one another? Did she view their years together as a lie? “She’s amazingly beautiful, isn’t she?”
“They’re all gorgeous.” Tristan turned and headed for the door. “The real question is, are they dangerous?”
Chapter Eight
Kaida spent most of the morning in her sisters’ shop, watching them in reverent awe. Well, when Brady wasn’t on her mind every three seconds, anyway. She’d always been relatively comfortable with people, could stand at a podium and lecture with ease, but her sisters had skills. Serious skills. They had divide and conquer down to an art form and could sell fleas to a dog.
Like the other stores along the cobblestone strip on Puritan Street, the exterior was gray clapboard with burgundy shutters framing a large display window. One-story, there was a small awning over the front door. It was nestled between a cafe and a bookstore, to which got a lot of cross-traffic.
Tourism season on the island had just begun, but even without it, Bedknobs & Broomsticks had its share of local customers. Townsfolk adored her sisters and seemed to pop in for everything from medicinal remedies t
o advice on love or life. People stayed to chat, drop off goodies, or dole gossip. It was...charming.
The shop itself wasn’t big at about two-hundred square feet, but it was organized to the nines and made great use of space. Floor-to-ceiling chipped birch shelves held lotions, soaps, and ointments on one side, all made by Fiona. Each scented bottle had it’s own purpose. Relaxation. Stress-relief. Romance. Energy. Fertility. Rejuvenation. Healing. Luck. On the other side were shelves of the same material with potions made by Ceara, candles, and homemade tea bags. Again, all with a purpose and decoratively labeled. They apparently did online orders, too.
A tiny seating area donned the center of the room with celestial-patterned fabric. Flanking the curved settees were shallow bookshelves showcasing knickknacks—small handmade straw brooms with witch slogans, crystal balls, and gemstones. The front desk displayed postcards of Wiccan rituals. The walls were painted a calming seafoam green and the ceiling was navy blue with yellow stars. They even had dried black walnut branches affixed to make it look like a canopy.
Skills. Everything from the atmosphere to their merchandise played into the Galloway island lore and trapped clientele into not only buying, but coming back for more. Homey, inviting, and delightful. Mad skills.
Fiona and Ceara had two employees—a manager named Violet who watched over things when her sisters weren’t around, and a young girl they called Sugar, but whose real name Kaida hadn’t a clue. She handled all things relating to website orders and shipping. Violet was an old friend of Mara’s. Wild gray hair, a ring on every finger, and a voice like a three pack a day smoker. She also went heavy on the patchouli. Sugar was twenty if a day, lined her eyes with enough coal to make Marilyn Manson jealous, and had modern goth nailed as if it were her due. She spoke not one word when introduced to Kaida, and positioned herself in the back room with a computer, never to return.
Fascinating. Kaida could write an entire thesis on the shop’s intricacies alone.
“So, there I was, walking down the hallway in my nightie holding a baseball bat. The knocking gets louder, but no one was there!” Diane, an islander who owned the pizzeria, shoved her brown strands from her face impatiently. “I’m telling you, this stuff only happens when my dear Wayne is on a business trip.”