Ever since I’d paid a visit to the Nightshade Witches, I’d been struggling with the terrible burden of being a Crescent Witch. I understood their hatred now. Being a leader sometimes meant you had to do bad things for the greater good, and the legacy I was a part of had done things I wasn’t proud of. Now I’d added my own chapter to the darker side of the story. Taking the birthright of an entire coven was an awful punishment. I could justify it however I wanted, but it still burned a hole inside me.
And there’d been no blips on the radar from Carman or any other malicious fae or craglorn. It was mysteriously quiet.
I worked on my magic, Boone experimented with his newly acquired magical tongue, and Mairead built up the colors on her Derrydun landscape painting that she’d moved from the garden shed into the laundry at the back of the cottage.
We prepared, we watched, and we waited.
Then, one morning in late October, the world started to change.
Rolling out of bed, something felt different. It was cold—there was nothing new or strange about that—but the air felt close. Shaking it off, I showered and dressed, making sure I put on my thermal undies I’d bought off the Internet the week before. I was so not used to having numb ass cheeks.
Thundering down that stars, I checked the laundry in case Mairead was locked in there high on paint fumes, but the room was empty. I looked over her work in progress and let out a humph.
The canvas was still one big blob of color, but she’d already begun the fine detailing. It was actually starting to look like something now. There was the powerhouse with the tangle of ivy clinging to its facade and the spire of the church through the forest.
“Not bad, kid,” I muttered.
Galloping into the kitchen, I snatched out a breakfast bar, unwrapped it, and shoved the end in my mouth. Glancing at the clock as I pulled on my gloves and beanie, I groaned. Mairead would already be at Irish Moon waiting for me. Today was day one of stocktaking, and I was so not looking forward to it. Count all the things, take photos of said things, and start building the most epic website in the history of epic websites. I knew how to turn on a computer, but that was about it. The rest was going to be a comedy of errors and curse words.
Opening the door, I breathed out a plume of vaporized air around the breakfast bar still shoved in my mouth. It took me a full minute to realize that overnight it had snowed. In October? Weird.
I scratched my head, knowing Boone had been pulling my leg when he’d told me it snowed in Derrydun. The gig was up the moment I’d typed ‘does it snow in Ireland’ into Google. This was abnormal.
It was so still and close. Nothing stirred among the whiteness, and for a second, I felt like the only person left in the world.
The garden was lost under a few inches of white stuff. Cold snap, indeed. I totally got the powder reference until I plunged my bare hand into the drift by the side of the cottage. The cold burned my skin, and I pulled back, wiping the water on my jeans. It wasn’t grandma-scented talcum powder at all! My winter wonderland fantasy exploded into a billion tiny icicles, and I stepped down onto the path.
My boot slipped on the ice, and I threw my arms out to steady myself. Close call.
Making my way cautiously down the path, I decided even though it was beautiful, snow was treacherously deceptive. There was a metaphor in there someplace, but my brain was too frozen to dwell on it.
Out of nowhere, a ball of mushed-together snow smacked into the side of my head. I let out an oomph and slipped on the ice. Landing on my ass, I yelped as both cheeks began to throb, and my breakfast bar plopped into the snow.
“Bull’s-eye!” Mairead exclaimed, jumping out from her hiding spot.
“Mairead!” I shrieked. “I was having a magical moment, and you ruined it! And I can’t find my breakfast!”
“Sore loser,” she declared with a pout.
Bunching up a wad of ice in my hands, I scowled. “I thought snow was meant to be powder soft like cute little cotton balls.”
“That’s clouds.”
“I thought it didn’t snow around here,” I complained, my thermal undies well and truly feeling like I’d peed my pants…without the warmth.
“Sometimes,” she replied. “It’s been really cold this year.”
I wondered why that was. I rolled my eyes and shoved the unwelcome thoughts of magical mischief into the back of my mind. My supernatural spidey sense wasn’t tingling in the slightest. It could just be really cold because it’s just really cold, I thought to myself with an added twist of sarcasm for my own benefit.
I packed together the ice in my hand and smiled as my thoughts turned wicked. Throwing the snowball at Mairead, it smacked her right in the guts, and she doubled over with an oomph. Doing a commando-style roll, I leaped to my feet, slipped, and dove behind the fence.
“That hurt!” she screeched.
“Who’s a sore loser now?” I called out from behind my hiding spot. “You can dish it out, but can’t take it, I see!”
“This is war!”
“Bring it on!”
Thud! Snow showered over the top of the fence, dusting me with a layer of ice.
Popping my head over the top, I threw another missile at Mairead, who didn’t have any cover she could dart behind. The snowball flew straight past her and smacked into a tree.
“You suck,” the Goth girl taunted.
I ducked back behind the fence and started balling up
