By the time I maneuvered myself into my silky underwear and dress, it was after eight. The five people standing in a half circle at the open end of the downstairs hallway had apparently been patiently awaiting my emergence.
“I clean up rather nicely, don’t I?” I asked, giving a slow twirl and dropping into a half-curtsy.
Thatcher grabbed my wrist and pulled me forward. “We have something for you, Mom.”
I pressed my hands to my cheeks to cool my face and to keep from crying. Harper was holding something tied together with the repurposed pink and silver ribbon.
“It’s my day for presents.” I took the gift to the table, removed the ribbon, and gasped. Red leather gauntlets, decorated with an intricate pattern of embossed symbols and all the charms presented to me by the other witches. I was overcome. “Where…who did this?”
“We all did,” said Thatcher, gesturing to Harper, Leilani, Tanner, and Kaz.
“Is this what you’ve been doing upstairs?”
They all nodded, teens and grown men alike. “Bet you thought we were playing video games,” said Harper.
I laughed and extended my arms. I couldn’t wait to wear my custom-made armor. “The thought did cross my mind,” I admitted, “but I never would have guessed you were doing this.”
Tanner wrapped one gauntlet around my right forearm and laced it on, while my sons worked together on the left.
“Thank you. All of you.” I hugged each of them in turn. “I feel so different.” From my sparkly red dress to my new, red gauntlets, I was different. I was adorned in a way I’d never been, not even for my wedding, and it was a feeling I would never forget.
“Picture time!” Rowan shooed everyone out of the hallway and into the living room and managed a handful of shots where everyone’s eyes were open at the same time. Leilani insisted we get pictures of me and Rowan and another of the three “girls.”
A car horn sounded from the road, breaking up the love fest and reminding me I had a long night ahead. “That’s Belle, and I bet she can’t get in because of the wards.”
“I’ll see to her,” said Kaz. He strode up the driveway, made a line of marks in the packed dirt with a stick, and waved Belle in.
“Halloo, Calliope, are you ready?” The fancily-attired witch enveloped me in a lavender-scented hug before admiring me head to toes and wrists. “Those are smashing,” she cried, peering closely at my forearms, “and now I want a set too. In yellow.”
“The guys made them for me,” I said. “I think I have everything.”
Belle glanced at the clay pots and nodded. “Good. Glad to see you got your soil. All you need is a sweater to keep the chill away and something on your feet.”
“Let me go say goodbye.”
“I’ll wait in the car with Kazimir.”
Grabbing a market basket from the jumble, I added the two pots of soil and left it on the stairs while I went into the house to hug everyone one more time. I slipped my arms into a sweater and my feet into my faithful work boots and declared myself ready.
Tanner picked up the basket and followed me to the car.
“Can you pop the trunk?” he asked Belle, and when he and I were protected from view by the raised hood, he lowered the basket and wedged it in place. With one hand gripping the edge of the hood, Tanner cleared his throat, tugged at the back of his pants, and presented me with a pair of delicate sandals fashioned from long strip of ruby red leather. “This is one occasion where something a little more festive would be appropriate.”
Clutching my fancy new footwear in one hand, I threw my arm around Tanner’s neck. He slid his free hand to the small of my back.
“Calliope,” he whispered. I heard a question in his voice and answered it by planting a kiss on the center of his mouth.
“I have to go.” The gossamer-like layers of my dress created a slippery surface between us, clinging to me in places where my skin was sheened with a fine sweat. He slid his hand higher, cupping the back of my ribs. I swayed in place, the little beads along the hem of my dress tickling my ankles and the backs of my calves.
“Calli, time to go-o!” The car jostled side to side as Belle buckled herself in and Kaz departed.
I could have stayed suspended in the moment, in the circle of Tanner’s arm, for much, much longer. He kissed my forehead, lowered me until my feet met the ground, and stepped away from the car.
I toed off my boots and handed them to him. “Wish me luck.”
Chapter 20
Belle was surprisingly quiet the entire ride, only speaking to ask me a general question or to check that her driving wasn’t too slow or too fast or too anything. I explored my new gauntlets, pressing the pliable leather against my skin and tracing the lines of the repeated designs.
The sky darkened into ever deeper shades of blue. We turned off the main road connecting the upper and lower sections of the island and drove into an unkempt grove of stone fruit trees, past an abandoned house and barn and other decaying outbuildings. A pond grown over with lily pads and purple marsh flowers offered lambent bits of color.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here before,” I said, half to myself, wondering how that could be and hoping I would have an escort on my way out. When Belle pulled up to a squarish plot where the lines
