“You’re making me want to teach you to cook. Which is stupid because I’m a terrible cook. My sister’s great in the kitchen. Cooks, bakes, entertains. She’s learned all these British recipes and baked goods. I can muddle along if I stick to a recipe and focus. But nothing like her. You sound more inept than me, though—which is sad.”
“Inept is not even the word.” He shook his head. “I’ve boiled water to put things into so they will cook. And I’ve used a microwave. That’s my life history.”
“No. What did you eat in university?”
“That’s when I was boiling water,” he said gravely.
I was still laughing when our main dishes arrived: his steak and my trout with buttery potatoes and roast vegetables. I’d finally had my salad earlier and this fish, some light protein, looked stunning.
“How about you?” Isaac said as we started to eat. “You can’t ask these things if you’re not willing to answer yourself.”
“Oh…” I squeezed lemon on the fish—the sort with the head on. “Spiders. But I like snakes. It seems to be one or the other fear for most people, doesn’t it? Either spiders or snakes freak them out.”
I paused, thinking, trying a bite. “Also … that kind of open water where you can’t see the bottom? I’ve always been a swimmer. But in a pool. Or I’ll swim on a beach, or in a cove. I’m a good swimmer, or I used to be. So it’s a little irrational. But I went swimming once in a lake as a preteen with friends. I swam out without thinking anything of it, but I looked down and there were tree branches. Decades old fallen tree. Like it was reaching up to grab me and I hadn’t seen. It was just a tree, but that image, something right there and I didn’t know… I was terrified trying to get back to shore, so murky and deep I couldn’t see anything else down there, no bottom, no fish. I never got over that. I actually had nightmares about it. I don’t know why. Something primeval. Like fear of darkness: not knowing what’s there with you. I never went swimming in cloudy water like that again.”
“Have you heard the term ‘eclipse time’?” Isaac asked after a moment to make sure I was finished.
I shook my head.
“It’s something we say, usually of youth, but they can happen at any time of life. It’s perhaps what you would call a defining moment? An eclipse time is that time in your life, in your memory, when something happens to you that becomes imprinted as strongly as an eclipse of Moon or Sun, blotting out everything else. You may not remember what you did for your birthday that year, or tests you took in school, or the names of all your friends then. But you remember the image of branches in murky water because it was an eclipse time.”
“You’re right. And that’s a beautiful expression.” I smiled at him across the table. The trout was lovely, but I found I didn’t care that much about what I was eating. “Thank you for being a good listener. I need it right now.”
“Eclipse times are for the enjoyable moments also,” he murmured, looking back into my eyes. “Listening to you, being with you, is an eclipse time for me.”
Let’s just go back home.
I didn’t say it.
We went on eating and talking about things that had meaning for us. The necklace I still had hardly ever taken off since he’d given it to me. A piece of a brick he had at home from the first construction site he ever worked around.
The meal seemed to fly by. I declined dessert, though Isaac offered. I’d been eating too much sugar and starch so the beer was my dessert.
Even so, we sat a long time after our plates were cleared and Isaac changed the subject.
“May I ask something more personal?”
Anything.
Again, I stopped myself.
“You can try,” I said with a smile.
“Why don’t you want to be a witch? It sounds like a gift. And who you are. I might as well wish to not be a wolf.”
My smile faded.
I couldn’t remember telling Isaac I didn’t want to be a witch. Though it may have been implied. Or he’d listened in? That night in Cornwall I’d mentioned some of the difficulties to Jason. And admitted I’d been ready to give up magic after this final conference with casters in Brighton. Hang up my hat. Mundane forever.
But the question, having to think about reasons … it hit me hard. Harder than I’d have suspected. Maybe just because it had been an emotionally charged twenty-four hours already.
I swallowed. “It’s tough to…”
“You don’t need to answer, Cassia.”
“No … I can. It’s a fair question. It’s just hard to summarize and make sense. You’re talking about my entire life.”
“I would love nothing better than to hear the story of your entire life.”
I looked into his eyes—dead serious.
“We’ll … try for brief,” I said. “The women on my maternal side have been witches for generations, as far back as I know. I’m sure some of them had wonderful lives and relationships. But it wasn’t visible from where I was standing.”
I let out a slow breath, thinking.
Isaac only waited, apparently ready to listen for a minute or an hour or all night.
Conversations in German reached us in a muted babble. Yet I heard so much else. The arguments. The tears. The breaks.
“My grandfather divorced my grandmother, gaining custody of the three children in a lawsuit in which he tried to have her committed on the grounds of her delusions and ‘fanatical spiritual practices.’ She never liked people much after that. That’s why she moved into a three-room adobe house out in the mountains twenty minutes from Santa Fe and nearly went off the grid. She kept a phone and some practicalities. But Nana enjoyed planting her garden, searching for faie, scrying into distant places, and singing with coyotes at twilight. Not human beings.
“Then my mother… My parents’ divorce was amicable compared to my grandparents. My mom had revived her relationship and finished training with Nana when she’d left home. My dad lives in Kansas City now. She left him because he thought she was cheating and she had nothing to say to him, her whole life with him being lies—even though cheating wasn’t one of them. She was training me, but only me. Melanie never showed the aptitude and never knew the secret. So it was her and my dad on one side, my mom and myself on the other. They still don’t know what was really going on.
“Maybe it wouldn’t have been that bad, just the divorce. But, after that was finalized, when I was thirteen, she died. She went to Upstate New York for a weekend conference with the biggest spellcasters’ organization in the country, Mel and I home with our dad, and there was an accident, a train derailing. One of those freak things that happen once in decades. Over fifty people died. And it didn’t help her, being a witch. She couldn’t save her own life or anyone’s, or keep the train on the track.
“She kissed us goodbye and flew off for a weekend. And never came back. Thirteen years old…” I stopped for a minute, biting hard on my tongue.
“Then Nana came. Seven hundred and fifty miles to Cattahoo, driving her old station wagon full of herbs and warding crystals and incense. She told my dad she was taking me home to homeschool. Of course, she couldn’t explain why—that she had to finish the education my mom had started, that I was a terrified witch in training. And you know what he said? Keeping in mind that he knew all about Nana’s reputation and wild ways and isolated lifestyle. He said fine. He said go ahead.
“I needed to train with her. I couldn’t just be left half understanding magic. But we were still a family. Him and Mel and me. And he was done with me: glad to see me go. Because he knew there was something weird about me, just like them. He was relieved when she showed up to take me away.
“I still saw Mel and him sometimes for summer or holidays. Once I drove, I even got to attend a couple years of high school in Santa Fe. And it wasn’t like I was behind. Nana was a grueling teacher. Mostly, though, for those years in the high desert, until I left for college in Portland, I was so, so lonely. Lying awake at night crying kind
of lonely. Without my mom and contacts from her, and the few links we had to people who understood us, it was just me and Nana. She didn’t want connection. She liked being alone. She loved the endless mountains and blue sky without another sign of human life. But it almost killed me.
“It wasn’t like I rebelled and insisted I was going home or anything like that. She was right. I had to keep training—understand and be able to channel and use my magic in a disciplined way. I knew that, even then.
“But it was the elephant in the room. All the troubles, all the breaks, the splits, the loneliness, right down to my mom’s death, were all because of magic.
“In Portland, I did end up meeting members of the magical community. While I was in school, I traveled more. Visiting Melanie, I even found Broomantle. I know a few people now. I know we have a gift. My world is one that thousands of mundanes would kill to be a part of, even to know of. It’s been a journey. My own mother, and Nana, and the witches before them, did the best they could, and passed down what they knew. But they were stronger women than I am.
“This life is painful, sometimes destroying. I want children of my own more than anything, and a life with friends and family I can talk to not ‘like’ a normal person, but actually be an open, mundane person.
“Nana gave me a love of teaching and the outdoors and respect for life and powers of observation. So much more than just the magic for me to carry. I’m the last witch in the family. And I will carry on their teaching and spirit and wisdom. Not their magic. I would never want to impose this life on an innocent child. And I don’t have to. If they’re not trained, even a child with the gift will simply grow up to be extra perceptive or possessed of certain advantages. Mediums, psychics, those drawn to fringe magic, like Wiccans and shamans—some of these people are witches or magi who were never trained. They can still be ‘normal’ people.
“Right here, with you all, working for something meaningful, of course I want to help with my magic in any way I can. But that doesn’t mean I plan to keep it up. Not once I’m home.”
When I finally stopped, fingers laced together on the table, staring at them, Isaac waited for a while.
Then he reached to rest the back of his hand on the table. I placed mine in his and he squeezed.
As I met his eyes, he said, “Thank you. For being who you are for us.”
Chapter 41
We couldn’t talk on the drive to the farm but I felt wound up, on edge, as we arrived just after sunset and stood on the front steps of the quiet house. We had to start toward Munich in less than three hours. No chance I would be able to sleep between now and then.
“Would you like to go for a walk?” I asked under my breath. “It’s not that far up to the first waterfall and, with the moon out, I’m sure—”
“I would love to. Do you need a jacket?”
I’d worn the leather one Jed had given me for the trip to New Forest over here in the first place. I led Isaac inside to get it, then crept up to the bathroom for a quick teeth brushing and vanilla lip balm while Isaac let himself out the back door. I followed: all quiet.
I knew better than to think the pack was sleeping before having to go out later. Indeed, I felt the eyes follow me even if I didn’t spot anyone. Maybe watching from the guesthouse. Maybe lying in the long grass in their fur. Neither Isaac nor I acknowledged or looked around.
We went on talking quietly as we walked out to the bees, clearly visible and easy to follow the trail below that moon. Full tonight? No, it must be tomorrow.
“Is it true you’re more compelled to change at the full moon?” I asked softly as we walked along the path to the mountains.
“Not at all. We like Moon round because we can see. The night of full Moon is Lunaenott for us, a special worship day—as are Mondays, though that’s much more casual. I am no expert in lore. As with astrology, there may be some deeper connection with full Moon we respond to on an unconscious level.”
“They say that can be true even for humans.”
At the forest, we lost much of the light from the canopy. Isaac took my hand and kissed me, licking the vanilla on my lips, before we walked on, him leading slightly. His eyes were better than mine in the gloom. Although I had a keychain light in my pocket, I didn’t use it, preserving this nocturnal world with him.
“What’s your favorite place?” Isaac asked in little more than a whisper as we followed the sound of the stream toward the falls.
I had to think about that. “I’m not sure. Right now I’d have to say this farm. Maybe I haven’t found my own favorite place yet. What’s yours?”
“Anywhere I’m with you. And … Scotland. The Highlands. Have you ever been?”
“Never. I would love to see Scotland. Bucket list.”
“I’ll take you. I know the country well.”
“Isaac, I have to go home—”
“When you come back.” He glanced around, smiling at me. “Don’t tell me you’re not planning to come back.”
“Yes,” I breathed. “I’ll be back.”
But how? When? I would be starting work in a matter of weeks. I’d promised the holidays to Melanie. And I couldn’t wait until next summer for a tour in Scotland with Isaac. The idea of it took my breath, like I was having to think of chopping off my own arm.
“And what’s your favorite place mentally?” Isaac asked. “Emotionally?”
“Happy place?” I asked. “That’s what my mom called it. ‘Find your happy place. Find a way to work there if you can. Find a way at least to live there in your time off if you can’t.’”
“So have you found it?”
“I think so. I experienced an example of it myself with Martha this afternoon. My favorite thing is the moment between a teacher and a student when everything clicks. Have you ever struggled to learn or understand a concept, then someone comes along who says, ‘Have you looked at it like this?’ And it blows your mind? Everything clear? You needed that connection between student and teacher to get it. Or have you ever taught someone something and seen that happen?”
“Yes, I have. Both, I think. It’s the instant teaching becomes new knowledge. Not facts and figures. But an ‘I get it. I will always remember what I just learnt.’”
“Exactly.” I squeezed his hand, eager with the rush of sharing this concept that was precious to me. “That’s my happy place. I could live on that connection. The time you strike that bond and you get it. I understood how important they were even as a girl. Now, I guess that’s my dream, what I love so much about teaching. I know teaching is hard work. It’s not just a series of ah-hah moments. But that’s what makes it worthwhile when you get the lights coming on: all the time you spend working through darkness and following a goal.”
Isaac watched me, not the trail, smiling, somehow not tripping or walking into trees.
I stopped speaking, shaking my head. “I don’t know what you’ve done to me. I’m usually the one asking questions. I haven’t talked so much in one evening in … maybe ever.”
“Funny, I was just thinking I’ve never heard you talk about anything like that,” he said. “Sounding so lit up, I mean. You’ll be a dazzler of a teacher, Cassia.”
I laughed. “My students will be the judge of that.”
“What about…?” He shook his head. “Never mind. Is this the spot?”
We were coming up on the rushing water, still out of sight.
“What were you going to ask?”
“Another time.” He drew my hand to his lips and kissed my skin as he walked.
“Watch where you’re going. I don’t think you realize how little I can see and you’re making me nervous.”
“My apologies. Love is so bittersweet, I am distracted.”
“Bittersweet?”
“Perhaps you’re too young to find falling in love bittersweet? I’m showing my years.”
“You’re not that much older than me.” I climbed up beside him at the trailhead where the waterfall’s grove seemed to glow wit
h a strange vibrancy in the dark forest: whitewater falls reflected moonlight, which also gleamed from the pool.
Isaac summed up the image by saying, “Moon is most generous when mixed with water.”
This was a moment, a moon, I was ready to remain in forever. An eclipse time if I’d ever known one.
Chapter 42
Isaac still held my hand as we walked to the edge of the water. His eyes in turn bounced back the water’s reflection of moonlight. I watched his face, enchanted by him more than the falls. When he kissed me, though, I disengaged.
“Come on. I’ll show you my summer hiking trick for keeping cool and feeling hydrated on a trail.” I tugged him to my spot from earlier with a good rock seat over the water.
“Are you a regular hiker in your urban life?”
“You’d be surprised. It seems most of my friends in Portland go hiking now and then. I’ve really enjoyed Mount Hood and getting to see that area. The Oregon coast is incredible. That’s my favorite weekend.”
“Will you trade me?”
I settled on the rock edge while he stood behind me. “What do you mean?” Pulling off my shoes.
“I’ll show you Scotland. You show me your mountains and coast.” He sank to his knees behind me, touching my hair.
“Of course I will.” I peeled off my socks. It was all silly. Scotland and Oregon when I was leaving in a few days and didn’t know… But it didn’t matter. This was the moon we were under right now.
“I’d love to,” I went on. “Want to soak?” I gasped when I plunged my feet into the icy water.
Isaac slid my hair away from the back of my neck with his fingertips so he could kiss the skin there, also making me shiver. Then he moved around to sit beside me.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “You could stay there.”
He smiled as he tugged off his shoes. “I’ll go back. You do this even when you hike at night and it’s not hot?”
Moonlight Hunters: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 2) Page 25