Cecily thought she might scream as the most random thought crossed her mind. She’d sat in that doctor’s office with Scott while he explained that he didn’t know his family’s medical history. All the while, she’d thought how challenging that much be for him, comfortable in the fact that even though her parents’ divorce had been messy and violent, she at least knew who her parents were. So fucking high and mighty.
But she hadn’t. She’d never known who her father was. Just like Scott.
God, she wanted to hold him. To tell him how much she loved him and apologize for all the times she’d othered him in tiny, seemingly inconsequential ways. She wanted to hold him because he would never lie to her. Or hurt her.
Cecily stood from the sofa. “I need to go.” They all stopped and looked at her, but she looked only at Zander. “Can we go?”
Zander stilled for a breath before giving a stilted nod. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” She stood from the sofa.
“Wait.” Nicole stood, motioning for Zander to sit.
But Cecily couldn’t wait. Heart pounding, she sat her mug of tea on the table as she sped for the door.
“Cecily, wait.”
No. She needed to leave. Now.
Her mother caught up to her as she took her bag from one of the hooks on the wall in the entryway. “I want us to talk about this.”
Cecily wrenched her purse down from the hook with a wordless exclamation. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to tear this whole goddamned room apart. Or maybe start bawling.
And throw-up.
Zander joined her in the entryway.
“Let me explain,” Nicole pleaded as Zander took her own bag from the hook beside Cecily’s.
“Not now.” Cecily looked to her mom as she looped her bag over her shoulder. “Later. But right now, I need to go home.” She needed Scott.
CHAPTER TEN
Scott tilted his head one way and then the other, stretching tension from his neck that had been building since Wednesday afternoon. Ugh, Saturdays sucked. It was his longest and busiest day of the work week, made that much busier because he had taken a day and a half off to be with Ceelee. He smiled at the thought. Totally worth it. The only reason he had this moment to himself was because his last session had wrapped up early when the woman got a call from her babysitter and needed to bail. And thank god for that so he could take a break. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be at home, with Cecily. But, then, Cecily wasn’t even home today, she was at Nicole’s, doing whatever it was Nicole had called her and Zander there for.
It had been such a relief to tell Callum and Zander about the baby this morning. Terrifying, but a relief nonetheless. Until he saw Callum’s smile spread with surprise and joy Scott hadn’t known just how important it was for his brother to be happy for him.
Cal had texted about an hour ago: I’m gonna be a fucking uncle!
If that wasn’t the exact kind of happiness a person needed when they told their family they were having a baby, Scott didn’t know what was.
“Hey, whatcha laughing at?”
Scott looked up from his notebook—the one he’d intended to write some thoughts and shit down into—to find Abby peeking around the entrance to his station. He sighed and shook his head. “Just something Callum said this morning. What’s up?”
Abby eyed him for a second. “You doing okay?”
Jeez. Was it that obvious he was fried? “I’m good. Did you finish with your client?”
“Yep!” Abby chirped as she came the rest of the way into his station and hopped up onto the edge of his table where she crossed her legs at the knee, displaying a pair of black knee-high socks with red stripes at the cuff between black combat boots on her feet, and black tights that disappeared beneath an oversized black sweatshirt with the neck cut wide and little red stars embroidered near one shoulder. With her red-tipped hair piled up on top of her head, and her red-painted lips, she looked like a character from a comic book.
He sucked back a breath when a set of lines superimposed themselves in front of his view of her.
Ally.
He scrubbed his hand across his face, keeping a groan of annoyance locked in his chest. He was getting really fucking tired of this...whatever the hell it was.
“Dude, you look like hell.”
He looked at Abby’s concerned expression as he pushed himself up from where he was sitting, plopped his notebook onto the table beside her just to get it out of his hands, and headed for the back room. “I just need some water.”
When he came back into his station with a fresh, cold bottle of water a moment later, Abby was still there, and he felt sort of bad for how he’d left. She was hardly his apprentice any longer—she didn’t need supervision while she tattooed, and only asked the occasional question—but he was still her primary go-to at the shop.
“Better?” she asked when he came into the station.
“Better,” he confirmed. It was only mostly a lie. The water did feel good to drink. And as long as he didn’t look directly at her, the runes wouldn’t flip in front of his vision.
“What are these things you drew in your notebook?”
He crossed to where she was still perched on his table and turned the notebook around so he could see it. He hadn’t been drawing anything as far as he’d been aware. Just squiggles and lines, which was what he did when his brain was on overload, or he was too exhausted to draw properly. “Nothing—” but he stopped.
Runes. He’d drawn sigils down the margins of the page, one after another. Some of which he’d never seen before now.
Protection. Fertility. Love. Kindness. Friendship. Ally. Magic. Truth. Courage.
“They’re really neat,” Abby said. “Where’d you learn to draw them?”
He closed the notebook. “They’re nothing. Just doodles.”
Doodles that represented intention and called magic into motion.
That’s all.
⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸
Cecily paid for two hours on the parking spot she’d claimed along the street a block away from the shop were Scott worked. She and Zander had shared a quiet ride home from their mom’s place, though the quiet wasn’t due to anger with each other and Cecily was grateful for that. Still, she wasn’t quite ready to hang out at home with Zander and Callum just yet. She was wound too tightly to sit still, and too fucking mad to do anything productive.
How could her mother have kept something like that from them for all these years? It was—she didn’t even know what it was, she was so mad about it! Every time she started to feel her anger ebb, it was replaced by an incredible urge to start bawling, which only pissed her off all over again.
She knew Scott’s day was booked solid—he was always booked solid on Saturdays—but she also knew that if she texted him she was at the coffee shop on the next block, he’d swing in as soon as he got the chance to. She just needed to see him. She just needed to be wrapped in his arms, to smell his skin, and hear him say they were okay, that he loved her. Then she’d be ready to go home.
She pushed into the coffee shop and was met with the usually enticing scent of roasting coffee. Today, however, it smelled different. Maybe they were roasting a new bean or something. She stepped up to the counter and ordered herself a sixteen-ounce, almond milk turmeric chai. She still didn’t trust dairy on her stomach, but the turmeric would keep things settled and help with inflammation—so she’d heard, at least.
As she waited for her drink, she tried to think through everything Mom had said that morning.
Zander and she had the same father—but he was not the man they grew up calling dad.
He knew about Zander; Cecily...not so much.
You sure know how to pick ‘em, Mom. That’s what Zander had said, wasn’t it? Cecily chuckled. She hadn’t been able to appreciate the sarcasm at the time.
“Cecily, is that you?”
She turned toward her name, only to stumble back in shock.
Her dad. No, not her dad. Marcus.
/> The guy she’d thought was her dad until two hours ago—a man she hadn’t seen in years, who the last time she saw was spiting accusations like acid at her mom—was standing just six feet away.
His smile stretched, just like his words. “It is you.”
Nope. Heart in her throat, Cecily turned around wondering if waiting silently for her drink, could send her back in time.
“I’ve been calling you,” he said. “But I’m not sure I have the right number.”
She had to get out of this—and she had to do it without causing a scene.
Deescalate, deescalate, deescalate. That was the name of the game when it came to good ol’ Dad. Do anything, say anything he wanted to hear to keep him happy.
She turned to face him with a questioning expression, then did a double take like she was only just realizing who he was, before she let her own lips stretch into a smile and her eyes go wide with put-on delight. “Dad? Wow, hi!” It was like she’d never left this dance. She marveled at how easy it was to slip back into that role, even after years of despising that she’d ever had to play it.
She bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood when she hugged him. He smelled like incense and soap, just like he always had. The smell made her stomach turn.
“Look at you,” he cooed. “All grown up.”
It was hard to make her laugh sound natural.
“Come sit with me,” he said, motioning her over to his table. “Just until your drink is up.”
She couldn’t get out of this any other way. If she just sat and chatted with him for a few minutes—just until her drink was up, like he said—she could leave gracefully.
“I’ve wanted to talk to you for months,” he said. “I just—well, it took me a while to pluck up the courage to call. But now that you know how things really are, I can explain everything to you. I never could before.”
Wait. What? She felt her brows furrow as she looked at him. “Now that I know how things really are?”
“The other side, the veil,” he said with a shrug too tight to be as nonchalant as he was trying to be. “Now that you see, I can explain, and you’ll understand. I never meant to hurt you, or your sisters when your mom and I split up.”
Cecily sat, her mind buzzing. Could this day get any weirder? She wasn’t sure she had the patience for this right now—and she also knew she didn’t have a choice. God, she was exhausted. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, I stumbled across your blog,” her dad replied. “That’s what made me realize you’d found your gift.”
Found her gift?
He leaned forward. “You’re a medium.” His brown eyes were bright, his long, angular face shaved and tidy. “I’m so glad you have that blog, or I never would have known! Your mom doesn’t keep me updated on you girls.”
His collared shirt was pressed and clean, the cuffs rolled up to reveal his forearms—discretely tattooed with runes that ran from his wrist to his inner elbow.
“It’s not my blog,” she said, unsure why she felt the need to clarify that. “It’s Callum’s. I just guest post.”
“Callum, right,” he replied like she’d reminded him. “He’s the guy who’s written most of the posts, right?”
Cecily nodded. This was bizarre. “Yeah. It’s his blog, like I said.” At least Marcus hadn’t found her medium business website—that would have been even weirder.
“He seems legit,” her dad replied. “Do you know him? Or only online.”
Cecily couldn’t help the small smile that pulled at her mouth. Did she know Callum? It was funny to think of a universe where she didn’t know him. “Yeah, he’s a good friend. And very legit.” She ticked a nod at his tattooed arm. “You’re runed.”
Her dad’s smile spread. He turned his arm over to reveal the full set of small, faded tattooed symbols. “These old things. Had these forever.”
No he hadn’t. Cecily didn’t remember them. They weren’t very well done, she couldn’t help but notice, especially considering he couldn’t have had them more than five or six years.
None of them were symbols she recognized, but that didn’t mean anything—there were hundreds, if not thousands of runes, sigils, and religious symbols out there.
“Why do you have them?” she asked. She had a solid idea of what his answer was going to be—he’d met her mom in a club for people interested in the occult, after all. Still, she wasn’t yet ready to fill in the blanks for him.
“I’m a medium,” he said, surprising her. She’d expected something about energy, or magic, or some other metaphysical explanation available on the internet. “Hell, I’m where you got it,” he added.
Liar, liar, pants on fire. Cecily sat forward in her seat like she was interested in everything else he had to say. “Really? Mom never mentioned you being a medium. Even after she found out about me.”
Then again, how much was that worth given the lifetime of omissions her mom had just admitted to? Still, she knew Marcus wasn’t her father—Mom had been honest about that much this morning. But Marcus was not aware she knew that. Interesting.
His expression stayed open even while his blond brows furrowed in question. “I guess I’m not surprised. She didn’t care for it much, to be honest. I’m not even sure she believed me about the whole thing. But, then, can I blame her? She couldn’t see any of it.”
Something triggered in Cecily’s thoughts. She looked around the coffee shop.
Where was Trey? Or any spirits, for that matter.
“Almond milk turmeric chai for Cecily!”
Marcus stood from the table as she did. “I’ll go get that for you.”
She let him, using the time while he stepped away to do two things: one, come up with her excuse to leave and two act like she was checking her phone while she zoomed in and snapped a pic of the tattoos on his arm from feet away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Abby sat on the table in Scott’s station, trying to figure out if he knew he was drawing runes and lying about what they were—or if he really had no idea. He was anxious as hell, his energy a cluster fuck of emotions and stress, and it had all come to a head when he looked at the drawings in the notebook and claimed them to be mindless doodles.
He was seeing runes. He had to be.
And he had no idea what was happening to him. That was the only explanation for his fucked-up vibe and very un-Scott-like crypticness.
Now she just had to figure out how to help him without tipping her hand too soon.
How in the hell did he come into the magic at this age, anyway? Unless maybe he was touched by magical forces—and, not like a handshake. This would have had to be a big fucking deal—a soul-altering kind of touch. Or maybe he died and came back from the other side?
Yeesh. Even she knew that question was too awkward to ask.
But she needed to say something, or she’d start looking like a dork just sitting on the dude’s table, staring at him. And not in a sexy way—like, in a what-should-I-do, I-don’t-know-what-to-say sort of way.
“Well, they’re really neat.” Inspiration struck. She pointed at the rune for protection, “This one looks sort of like the shapes I tattooed on your friend, Wren.”
“Oh, uh, yeah.” Scott took the Moleskine off the table and crossed his station to slip it in alongside a row of identical journals that sat flush against a thick book with the title “Body Mod: A History” running down it. But, damn it, he didn’t offer any other explanation.
So she followed the conversation to a new topic, that, unfortunately for her, was no less fraught. “She seemed like a cool chick. Wren, I mean.”
Scott took a rag and his disinfectant spray and started wiping down his credenza top. “She is, yeah.”
“You been friends long?” Immediately, she regretted the question. It was so obvious she was fishing.
But then, Scott didn’t seem to notice. “Since last year, I guess. She’s Zander’s best friend.”
“Oh, right. She’d said that. Za
nder is Callum’s girlfriend, right?” Did Zander know Wren was a witch?
“Uh huh.”
Ugh! Abby wanted to scream. Clearly, she needed to pull out the big guns to snap Scott out of his distraction and give her something to work with. And there was one thing she knew she could say that would demand a response—and not get her fired. “Okay, I’m just gonna say it.”
Scott turned around, rag in hand and brows furrowed.
“I asked Wren out. She said yes. We went to coffee. She’s really fucking cool and I like her a lot. But, I don’t want to do it again if it’s going to jeopardize our working relationship.”
Scott just stared at her for a second. Then he blinked like coming out of a fog. “Oh, shit, no you don’t need to worry about that. Wren’s very cool.” He chuckled, and Abby was so relieved to see him smile, she did too. “Go forth with my blessing.”
“Oh, thank the universe,” she sighed. She hadn’t actually been worried about compromising she and Scott’s working relationship by dating Wren, but now it was surprisingly easy to fain relief—so maybe she wasn’t faking it as much as she thought she was. She hopped down from his table. “You’re the best, Scott.”
“You really like her, huh?”
Abby shrugged. “Yeah, I mean, as much as you can like a person after one date.”
Scott’s eyes went wide. “That’s a whole hell of a lot.”
Abby wanted to melt into the floor. How had he picked up on that?
Yes, she was completely and totally sprung on Wren. Like, can’t-stop-thinking-about-her giddy. They had a connection through their respective magic that made her head light just thinking about it.
And that kiss!
It had made her skin buzz and her panties wet just pressing her mouth to Wren’s—imagine what would happen if they pressed other body parts together.
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