Boone flicked his tail back and forth.
“And… All that time you were the cat? You were Buddy?” Remembering the first night he’d appeared, my cheeks turned red. Oh, God. I’d held up his tail and checked out his balls. His big, tabby cat balls.
He yipped again, this time dancing from foot to foot.
“You’re embarrassing the hell out me right now,” I grumbled. “You didn’t look when I was changing, did you?”
He tilted his fox head to the side.
I gasped. “I’m going to smack you one if you did!”
Rising off his haunches, Boone circled back to his pile of clothing and glanced at me, indicating he was going to change back. I didn’t want to see him morph unnaturally again, so I turned around.
He’d changed into a fox! I had so many questions I wanted to fire off at him, but most of all, I was surprised by the fact I wasn’t freaking out. I mean, I should probably be running back toward the village screaming like a banshee right about now, but I’d just cuddled a fox. A fox that was Boone—the hot, mysterious Irishman. Oh, God, I’d seen his thing.
“You can turn around now.”
“Are you decent?” I asked, covering my eyes with my hands.
“I’m decent.”
I shuffled around, still hiding behind my hands. “Swear it!”
“I swear.”
Peeking through my fingers, I saw Boone was Boone again, and he was fully dressed. Sighing, I dropped my hands away. I’d seen more than enough unexpected doodle for one day.
“No one must know,” he said, watching me closely. He was waiting for me to run away screaming, but I hadn’t moved an inch. Yet.
“That’s convenient,” I said dryly.
“Skye, you mustn’t say a word.”
“Why?”
“Witches are being hunted,” he replied, his tone gravely serious. “It’s not all rainbows and sunshine out there. Darkness looms…”
“Witches are being hunted? What for?” I held up my hands and stared at my palms. “I’m not special. I can’t do magic spells or whatever. I’m just a woman. A plain, ordinary woman.”
“You can't tell me strange things haven’t been happenin’ to you since you arrived,” he said, sitting beside me. “Think about it, Skye.”
The day of the funeral, the hawthorn sapling on top of the hill had shuddered and leaned toward me like I was a magnet. The air had been still, and no gusts of wind had whipped it. The man at Molly McCreedy’s with the blue skin and pointy teeth. The wolf stalking me in this very spot. Then there was the night I found Sean McKinnon by the side of the road. I’d placed my hands on his shoulders, and he’d seemed to calm down at my touch. Was that why Boone was so mad at me? Had I used some kind of magic to soothe the man’s sorrow?
“Sean McKinnon… That was…” I glanced at Boone in shock. “No… That’s just coincidence!”
“It was your magic. I felt it clear as day.”
“Then why were you so pissed at me?” I exclaimed.
“You need to be careful,” he replied. “When you use your magic, you become a beacon.”
“I revealed myself? To who?” My gaze shifted to the forest, the shadows lengthening and growing eyes.
“Nobody. I’ve been watchin’. Though the wolf… I don’t think he knew about you. You poked him with a branch from the hawthorn and took his eye. He won’t come back anytime soon.”
“The magical hawthorn?” I asked, remembering how everybody was fond of telling the story about them being fairy trees.
“Aye, the hawthorn.”
I scowled, my thoughts scattered. None of it made sense, and I felt like I was on the brink of a mental breakdown.
“This whole time, you’ve been looking out for me?” I peered at him, not sure how to take it. I mean, learning about my absent mother was a lot to deal with when I’d first arrived, but now I’d poked the eye out of an unnatural wolf with a magical stick, seen Boone turn into a fox, and heard his wild story about me being some sort of Crescent Witch… I was going mad. I actually needed a straitjacket, stat.
He nodded. “I made a promise to your mam.”
“What else did she say?”
“She said you didn’t know about your heritage and that fate would draw you here. Without anyone to guide you, she asked me to watch over you.”
“Fate?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“When your mother passed, there were no Crescent Witches left to protect Derrydun and the hawthorns, so fate drew you back to your ancestral home. I don’t know much about it, but I’m beginnin’ to believe it has conspired to keep you here.”
Now that he mentioned it, everything began to fall apart the moment Aileen died. I’d lost my job, my boyfriend dumped me, and Robert showed up with his magic pen with its terms and conditions. Then when I tried to sell Irish Moon, the door became stuck, the computer had a glitch, and the real estate agent crashed his car into the creek.
“Son of a…” Drawing in a deep breath, I began to understand something very important. “That’s why she left Dad and me, wasn’t it? To protect me from all this?”
“She never really said,” Boone replied. “Not outright, but I believe it to be so.”
I shook my head in disbelief, my heart aching. “I hated her for so long…”
“You didn’t know,” he argued. “You didn’t know.”
“I still don’t know,” I shot back. “I… This is a lot to deal with Boone. I don’t…” I don’t know if I believe you. I believed he was a shapeshifter—that was hard to deny—but all the things he’d said about me?
“Now that you know, you can ask me anythin’ you want,” he said. “I’ll tell you everythin’ I can.”
A million things flew into my mind, and I blurted out the first thing that popped into it. “What have the hawthorns got to do with it? Are the stories you told me true? Are
