“That’s about the strangest thing I seen since that time when Pervis Morton tried to make his pecker bigger hookin’ it up to an industrial strength shop vac.”
Moira could have gone the rest of her life—however long or short that might be—without the recollection of that particular experiment.
“Truth to tell, I think the boys mighta took a shine to your sister.”
“Which one?” Moira asked.
“The one what looks like someone up and pissed in her coffee every morning since the day she was born.”
“Oh, you mean Aerin!”
From the pop of recognition on Sal’s face, Moira got the impression that the boys may or may not include one Salvadore Malveaux.
“Anyhow,” Sal said, “After everyone was introduced, the boys excused themselves for their evening constitutional.”
Evening constitutional. That was an interesting way of saying drinking themselves rubber-legged on moonshine and playing a round of Who Can Piss the Highest?
“How come you didn’t go with them?” Moira asked.
“That young man of yours suggested I might should come up and talk to you,” Sal said, wringing the cap in his hands. “Said you might be feelin’ a little out of sorts.”
Moira let out a gusty sigh as she turned her back to him. “He ain’t wrong about that.”
Sal closed the distance between them, seating himself cross-legged near the railing and patting the space next to him on the cement. “Why don’t you set yourself down and tell me all about it.”
And she did. Finding her sisters. Opening the seals. Meeting the horsemen. Battling Lucy. Tierra’s pregnancy. The prophecy. Her choice.
When she’d finished, Sal sank back against the railing and whistled his astonishment. “Damnation, Moira Jo. You got yourself quite a conundrum.”
“That’s so,” she agreed, wrapping her arms around her legs and setting her chin on her knees.
They sat together in the silence as lightning forked across the sky in the distance.
Sal ran a hand through his unruly black and silver streaked hair. “Can I ask you somethin’?”
“’Course.”
“Which is it that’s got your tail twisted more? The idea of bein’ a momma, or tyin’ yourself to a man?”
Moira sat up straighter. In her time away from bayou, she had forgotten about the canny ways of men bred to survive lethal animals by quickly reading their mood and movements. About how her uncle could cut straight to the bone of her most tangled thoughts and feelings. She felt a pang of sadness for the girl she was when she’d been on the receiving end of this surprise.
“I can’t rightly say.” This was true. She been standing up here, the wind whipping her hair and the thoughts speeding in ever-tightening circles. Just as soon as she’d convinced herself she might just be able to raise a baby, she would remember who she’d be raising that baby with. Which brought her right back to…holy shit! She’d volunteered to get knocked up.
Sal repositioned himself across from her, his bony knees in their faded overalls touching hers. From this vantage, he reached over and took her clammy hands, sandwiching them between his big, warm, leathery ones. The simple and familiar comfort in that gesture plucked her heart like a harp string, releasing a single, mournful note of longing. Moira was transported back to that creaky old fishing shack. Her single bed. Her simple problems. The knowledge that after Sal relieved her of whatever burden she’d been carrying, she could shuffle into the kitchen and make them celebratory biscuits.
She’d find no such solace now and that was the price of seeing what she’d seen.
Of knowing what she knew.
“Moira Jo, you been motherin’ everything with a heartbeat since you’s tall enough to gnaw the kitchen table.”
Despite the leaden heaviness in her chest, Moira felt one corner of her mouth tug into a smile. Sal had always loved to tell that story. How, absent the fancy rubber teething toys favored by more civilized folk, Moira had cut her teeth on any piece of household furniture with wooden legs.
“This is a little different than nursin’ a three-legged goat back to health,” Moira pointed out. “Or rescuing a baby pig from the carnival freak show.” As if on cue, Cheeto, who had settled himself into her lap, hiccoughed, releasing a little puff of smoke.
“Actually, I think it’s exactly like that. Well, just look at me and the boys. Half the time I think it wasn’t us that raised you, but you that raised us.”
Truthfully, Moira had had the same thought more than once.
“You got a talent for lovin’ critters that are different,” Sal continued. “And it sounds like that child’s gonna need all the love it can get.”
“Lookin’ after y’all was one thing. We’re talking about a baby. A human child.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, but given who’s going to be its daddy, I don’t know if that’s safe to assume.”
Moira blew hot air from her nostrils. “Don’t even get me started on that subject.”
Wind whipped the of Uncle Sal’s hair into an unruly halo. “He ain’t all bad.”
“All evidence to the contrary,” Moira scoffed. “You don’t know Nicholas Kingswood.”
“I know he went to a lot of trouble to get me and the boys here. Buyin’ that ratty old bait shack and tradin’ the old pontoon for the Moira Jo. A man doesn’t do them kinda things unless he’s ass over hooch bottle in love, in my experience.”
Love.
She felt her body tense up in an instinctive flinch.
That word again.
Was Nick even capable of love? He certainly knew a brand of adoration and obsession, but as far as Moira could tell, it was mostly reserved for himself and certain kinds of Italian cars.
“How about you?”
“How about me what?” Moira asked, aware she was deliberately trying to buy herself time.
“Do you love him?” Sal asked, his obsidian eyes boring into hers with startling focus.
Well if he didn’t have the most irritating habit of getting straight to the goddamn point.
Moira looked from the man in front of her to the small, warm bundle in her lap. Until recently, this was everything she’d known of love. And then she’d met Tierra, and Claire, and Aerin, her heart expanding effortlessly to include every one of them. Hell, even Aunt Justine, who she’d wanted to kick down the stairs a lot less lately.
Then, there was Nick.
Nick with his whisky in the firelight eyes and his hair the color of earth after a heavy summer rain.
The man who’d stopped her from flinging herself into the sea only to shoot her through the heart with his flaming arrow when she’d asked. The man who had brought her the greatest pleasure and greatest pain she’d ever known.
She remembered the first time she’d seen his face. A glance stolen beneath the fringe of dark lashes as she pretended to sleep in the airplane seat she’d stolen from him. She’d seen his mouth. His beautiful, sensitively carved lips drawn up in a smirk.
A smirk that informed her in no uncertain terms that she was in big, big trouble.
She had loved him then.
She loved him now.
She’d loved him every minute in between.
Loved him the way the sea loves the shore. The only thing large and solid enough to not recoil from the full force of its wrath.
Which explained why she’d tried so goddamn hard to drive him away.
“Shit,” Moira said, her face dropping into her hands.
Understanding this for the admission it was, Sal reached out and patted Moira’s knee. “You two are gonna be real happy, Moira Jo. I mean, provided the world ain’t reduced to a heap of smoldering ash directly.”
Big fat tears dripped from her chin, darkening the cement like the first drops of rain.
Moira sniffed and wiped at her salty lips. “Because I finally met a man who can tame me?”
“Because you finally met a man who won’t try.”
With
those words, the catch in Moira’s chest released.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, she took a deep breath, the mingled scents of ash and salt air filling her lungs. “Well, I suppose there ain’t no sense in drawing this out any longer.” Tucking Cheeto under her arm, she ungracefully maneuvered her way to her feet.
From somewhere down below, Moira heard a hearty shoooeee and looked over the railing to find Mookey and Little Earl holding the bottom of a violently wobbling ladder and Red halfway up it, clutching a rung with one hand while wildly waving his trucker cap like a bull rider in the other.
“What in the Sam Hill do you fools think you’re doin’?” Sal shouted down at them.
The ladder came to rest against the side of the house with a resounding thump and all three men glanced around guiltily.
“We were just out in the yard and we heard somethin’.” Red called up. “We thought we might should investigate.”
“What the actual fuck?” The outraged cry followed the unmistakable crash of Aerin’s window being thrown open.
“Now!” someone hissed from below.
Red pressed his cap to his chest, the other reaching upward with all the gravitas of a preacher at the pulpit. “What light through yonder winder breaks? ‘Tis the beast! And Aerin is the sun!”
“You dipshit!” Little Earl barked. “It ain’t beast, it’s east! We done talked about this!”
His soliloquy interrupted, Red cast a baleful glance downward. “I’m improvizationalizin’! And anyhow, I didn’t see you bein’ the one offerin’ to haul your lazy ass up the ladder, Earl!”
“Don’t you call me lazy, you skunk lickin’ chicken fucker!” With this, Little Earl gave the ladder a threatening shake.
“First of all, I ain’t ever licked a skunk and second, it wasn’t a chicken, it was a—”
Moira’s eardrum puncturing whistle dropped everyone into a sudden silence. “Uncle Red, you’re gonna climb yourself down from that ladder right this second, then you all are going back to your boat.”
Mookey shoved his hands in his pockets and scuffed at the dirt like a little boy just sent to his corner as Red descended, a cloud of creative expletives hovering around him like gnats.
“Don’t be too sore at ‘em,” Sal said with something like fondness on his face. “They just never seen a woman with all her natural teeth before.”
“You all right to keep an eye on them while I…while we…” Moira paused, searching for the right consolidation of the business ahead. “Do what needs doin’?”
Sal nodded sagely, dropping a hand on Moira’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever known, Moira Jo. And no matter what happens, I am so proud of you.”
Moira’s nose stung as she saw the matching sheen of tears gathering in the weathered folds at the corner of Sal’s eyes. She let him draw her into his bony chest, resting her ear against the reliable engine of his heart. She thought of the storms she had weathered with this sound as her compass and anchor. Simple steadiness inside the storm’s very eye.
Fortified, she released him, turning her face to the chaos to come.
One last time.
24
“Are y’all sure this is strictly necessary?” Moira stood in the center of the room, the circle of flickering candles around her casting making dancing ghosts of the shadows. Naked save for a plain white cotton shift that someone had hauled down from the attic, Moira waited, her arms held out like a scarecrow.
With more ceremony than Moira would have figured her globe-bellied sister capable of at this point, Tierra approached her with a wooden bowl of some suspicious-looking green goo held in one hand. In the other, a paintbrush. Slightly behind her and to either side, Aerin and Claire followed with bowls of their own, the contents of each the symbolic hue of their respective elements.
“The instructions in Grim were very specific,” Tierra said, eyes glowing golden with flames’ reflection. “We each have to paint a different part of you with the symbol of our element and bless it before saying the spell.”
“I’m pretty sure Nick knows where to find everything. We’ve done this a couple times before, you know.” Moira shivered as a draft from the window found its way right up under her shift.
“That’s a fucking understatement,” Aerin muttered under her breath, stirring her bowl of silvery liquid with equal parts suspicion and disgust.
“Tell me about it,” Claire echoed.
“All right,” Tierra said, marshaling an air of matronly authority. “Off with the shift.”
A bead of nervous sweat crawled from Moira’s armpit down her ribs like an insect. “Can’t y’all just…you know. Reach under it?”
Claire snorted. “You parade around in jean shorts no bigger than a thong most days and now you’re getting bashful?”
“I mean, we’re identical,” Aerin added. “If I’ve seen mine, I’ve seen yours.”
She had a point, Moira supposed. With one swift movement, she shucked the shift over her head and let it flutter to the floor.
“Remind me to put you in touch with my waxer when this is all over,” Aerin said, eliciting a snicker from Claire.
“You guys.” Tierra glanced over her shoulder to fix her sisters with a reproachful look. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
“Excuse the everlasting fuck out of me.” Aerin swiveled in her still (miraculously) perfectly creased pantsuit. “Playing paint by numbers on my sister’s body so she can conceive some weird immortal baby capable of preventing the destruction of the world as we know it wasn’t exactly in my day planner.”
“Would you rather you did the conceivin’ and I did the paintin’?” Moira asked, her hand planted on her bare hip.
“Nope,” Claire answered, a little too quickly. “We’re good.”
“Well, all right then,” Moira said. “Slap some paint on my ass and let’s get this over with.” She resumed her arms out position, all traces of levity falling from Aerin and Claire’s faces.
A rare silence held them, filling the room like billowing smoke.
Tierra stepped toward her, dipping her paintbrush in her bowl, her many bracelets tinkling, and she reached out. Moira’s stomach shuddered as the cool liquid came in contact with her skin, watching as the rudimentary shape of a tree branched over her navel. “By the power of the Goddess, may your womb be as fertile as the damp, rich earth.”
Stepping back, Tierra made room for Claire, sleek in a black tanktop and buttery leather pans. The crimson liquid looked like nothing so much as blood as with quick, cascading movements, she conjured the shape of flames over Moira’s stomach. “By the power of the goddess, may your belly be filled with the fire of life, now and always.”
Aerin approached next, her eyes taking on the liquid mercury glow of the bowl before her as she walked behind Moira. With the precision she brought to all such tasks, Aerin drew a billowing coil over each side of Moira’s back. “By the power of the Goddess, may your lungs be filled with breath everlasting.”
They stepped back, leaving her in the circle alone. Moira glanced down at the small bowl of deepest cobalt they’d deposited at her feet.
“The last one you have to do yourself,” Tierra said gently.
Her body a running rainbow, Moira bent to pick it up.
Brush in hand, she looked at her sisters, feeling their love vibrating through her every pore. Feeling the protective space they held for her. The measure of their power they had so freely given her.
In that moment, she knew that what remained would somehow be the hardest.
The love she had to grant herself.
Dipping the paintbrush into the azure pool, she lifted it to her heart, where, in loose, liquid strokes, she brought forth the shape of waves. “By the power of the Goddess, may my heart be brave and boundless as the ocean’s tide.”
Setting the bowl back down, she nodded to Tierra, who held out her hands to Aerin and Claire.
In a voice trembl
ing with both emotion and fear, Moira spoke the words they’d read in the Grim.
By the power of earth, air, fire and sea, let the Ceann Dorcha be born of thee.
Moira brought her hands to her navel. No longer cold and clammy, but vibrating with heat as she repeated her portion of the spell.
By the power of earth, air, fire, and sea, let the Ceann Dorcha be born of me.
25
Dread roiled in Nick’s gut as he listened to the murmured voices from the room next door, where, presumably, Moira’s sisters prepared her to sacrifice herself to their shared fate.
And he had no doubt that’s what this was. Moira had made it exceedingly clear that she had about as much interest in soul-bonding herself to him as she did setting herself on fire and throwing herself in front of a sixteen wheeler.
Which, he supposed, was a pretty good metaphor for what she had decided to do.
Nick thought of the look of strange, steely determination he’d seen in her oceanic eyes when she’d come down from the roof. He’d been overcome by an impulse to go to her, to tell her that she didn’t have to do this. That they didn’t have to do this.
They could let the world burn. He would hold her in the flames.
But they hadn’t even had a chance to make eye contact before her sisters whisked her away.
He, Killian, and Dru had taken up residence in the room next door, waiting to be called into battle. Julian had made himself scarce, insisting that there was something else he needed to research.
They’d sat in stifling silence for what seemed like for-fucking-ever before the door opened and Pestilence entered, a glass of mud colored sludge in one gloved hand and a book in the other.
“Shall we proceed?” he asked, setting both down on the antique table nearest the door.
“Proceed with what?” Dru asked, combat boots propped up on the steamer trunk in front of the chair he slouched in. “Nick’s the one who’s got spawn to shoot.”
Julian reached into the pocket of his blazer and withdrew a folded sheet of parchment, which he set next to the glass. He flicked a glance to Killian, who seemed to be summoning shadows to his dark, hulking form.
Which Witch is Willing? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 4) Page 13