The Reckoning, page 5
part #50 of The Ghosts of Culloden Moor Series
When he offered them to her, she hesitated. “Is it really a tradition?”
His smile broadened. “It can be.”
She laughed and almost turned away, then realized he was making the move she’d been hoping for. Forty kisses sounded just about right to her, but she’d lose his respect if she agreed. So how could she have what she wanted without seeming to want it?
She pulled the bouquet up between them, accepted his yellow offerings, and tucked them in with the collection of white and purple posies. “How about one kiss for every color.”
His grin faded. “There are only the three.” Then he pointed to a blossom that hadn’t yet opened. “But green makes four, aye?”
“I…I suppose.” Suddenly nervous, she worried she’d forget how to purse her lips.
Simon turned her back to a tree, then crowded her until she was pressed against the bark. “Wouldnae want ye wanderin’ away before we initiate that tradition.”
She put her shaking hands behind her and held onto the tree trunk. Then she lifted her chin and closed her eyes, thinking of that other Simon again, hoping he would feel this kiss, if only in his memory. Seconds ticked by. Though tempted to open her eyes to be sure he wasn’t laughing at her, she held tough.
Finally, a shadow fell across her eyes and the proximity of his face blocked the breeze. Her heart jumped with excitement, then jumped again when his lips pressed lightly against her own. And then he was gone.
She blinked up at him. “My first. Very nice.” Her fingers came up to feel her mouth, though she knew nothing would be different about them.
He looked surprised, then doubtful. “I cannae believe it was yer first kiss.”
She shrugged. “Believe what ye will.”
He frowned and pushed her hand away, then leaned close until their lips were an inch apart. “I would have done better had I known it was yer first.”
She laughed lightly. “Ye’ve got three more chances, but I liked the first one fine.”
He kissed her again, gently like before, but he lingered this time. Their breaths mingled and gave her a taste of what Simon McLaren was like on the inside. It was the most intimate moment of her life.
Finally, when he pulled back, she sighed. Her hands came up again, but to shield her face. She was so embarrassed.
He tried to pull them away. “Dinnae hide from me, Soncerae,” he whispered. “I am happy I’ve pleased ye. But I would see it in yer eyes as well.”
She dropped her hands away, but couldn’t look at him, knowing her face was bright red. He crooked a finger under her chin and lifted it, then waited for her gaze to meet his.
“I am not so experienced at this myself, ye ken.”
She nodded, then closed her eyes again. “My uncle. We should hurry.”
Simon put his hands on her upper arms and pressed his lips firmly against hers and this time, it felt like they shared more than air. The heartbeat she heard in her ears might have been his, since it beat in sync with the heart in his chest, just under her hands.
Again, it was Simon who pulled away first. “Auch, lass. I am beginning to think it was providence there were not forty colors of flowers in these woods. I would surely lose my wits.” He chuckled. “I’ve nigh lost them after only three.”
She inhaled deeply to chase away the dreamy haze that had engulfed her, though what she truly wanted was to dive deeper into it. But if Simon could manage a clear head, she should do the same.
“Right then. One more.” He tilted his head. “I believe my honor can withstand one more. Do ye trust me?”
A quick nod was all Soni could manage at that moment. The real temptation was to run her hands up his chest, into his hair, and twist her fingers in his blond mane so he couldn’t pull away from her again until she was good and ready. Instead, she got a good hold on his shirt as he bent over her.
“Last one,” he whispered, just before their mouths met.
This time, she couldn’t help moving her lips against his, memorizing every detail. She tasted his breath again, from his mouth this time as he breathed into her. When a faint growl rumbled inside his chest, her woman’s ego preened like a lioness, tempting her to make him growl again. But how?
She licked his mouth with a tiny flick of her tongue and he went mad, tasting her in return. His hand came up behind her head and pulled her into him. She put her hands on his chest to push him away…but forgot to.
She forgot everything.
Her senses all focused on the points where their bodies touched. Their mouths, tongues, hands. She wanted more of him. She wanted the earth itself—
She jostled to keep her balance, to keep from losing her grip on his shirt, but it wasn’t easy. His hand lifted off her head and slapped against the tree behind her, to help him keep his balance. His other arm wrapped around her waist and he pulled her against him. Their kiss ended, out of necessity, when the ground beneath their feet rolled and jumped, as if trying to separate them. She looked up into Simon’s eyes. He was awed, then amused, then awed again when the world finally settled back into place.
“Would ye believe, I feel as if I’ve dreamed this before? The kiss. The earth trembling.” His eyes narrowed. “And ye as well.”
“Really? That’s funny.” She didn’t think the term déjà vu had been used in the 18th century, so she didn’t suggest it. But it was something the 21st century ghost of Simon McLaren spoke of now and then.
The caravan door flew wide and slammed against its hinges. “Soncerae!” Wickham jumped down the steps with his hands busy tucking in the end of his tartan.
She and Simon stepped apart. “Here, Wickham!”
“Are ye sound?”
“We’re fine. Just a little earthquake.”
Her uncle mumbled something under his breath as he stomped their way. When he reached them, he pasted a pleasant expression on his face. “Ye’ll want to check on yer mither, Simon. Surely the quaking was felt at home?”
Instantly alarmed, Simon took a step away, then stepped close again to plant a kiss on her cheek. “I must hurry. I will return after dark, when she’s settled.”
It seemed like a long time away, but Soni tried not to sound too needy when she said, “Promise?”
“I do promise.” He snatched her hand and kissed the back of it, then grimaced when he realized Wickham had witnessed all of it. “I will return, sir.”
Wickham chuckled and waved him away. “I do not doubt ye. Now go!”
This time, when he left, Simon looked back three times before he disappeared, and Soni wondered if the smile on her face would be permanent. It felt wonderfully permanent.
She finally turned away…and collided with her uncle.
“Let’s you and I have a serious chat, aye? Concerning earthquakes…”
Chapter Nine
Wickham put an arm around Soni’s shoulders and pulled her tight. When she exhaled, they were standing high on the incline of a rich green hill which made up one side of a gigantic bowl—a glen between mountains. And no matter where one might stand in that glen, one could see the entire thing. Anyone entering, from either end, would be seen by all standing inside.
For a long while, she simply gaped at the beauty of the place. The particular and perfect shade of green was part of the magic of Scotland itself. This was the home of her soul.
“The Lost Glen,” Wickham said, answering a question she had yet to form in her head, let alone on her tongue. “Just south of Glencoe, between two of the Three Sisters. Have ye never seen it before?”
Soni shook her head. “My parents are fonder of libraries than mountains.” A pair of hikers made their way toward the center of the glen, but they were so far away, they might as well be ants. “It’s bonnie, but why are we here?”
“Because no one on this planet should overhear this conversation.”
“Back in the 21st century?”
“Aye. Now, tell me what ye were doing, exactly, when the earthquake struck.”
He was watching her too intently. She couldn’t help but blush.
“Was it a kiss, or something…more?” When her mouth instantly dropped open, he held up his hands. “Just a kiss then. Good.”
“Not just any kiss,” she muttered.
Wickham laughed and finally stepped away.
The one drawback of standing in such an immense place was that she felt that incredible distance stood between herself and Simon. But at least they’d be returning.
“Dinnae fash. We won’t stay long.” Wickham leaned back and dropped his buttocks on the steep incline. “Sit, while I decide where to begin.” After a couple of minutes, he nodded. “I’ll start by pointing out that people, all people, have a…smell.”
She smiled, but said nothing. If she wasn’t mistaken, she was about to be given a lecture about the birds and the bees, and she wasn’t inclined to make it easier on him.
“Ye ken how Lorraine and Loretta always wear that same perfume? If ye walked into their flat, ye’d ken immediately who lives in it, aye?”
Soni nodded.
“And yer own house. I suspect yer mum cooks celery and leeks often, does she not?”
She nodded again. Most of her mother’s recipes started with boiling those two ingredients, whether chili or clam chowder, or anything in between. The house would fill with the smell, steam would cover the windows and mirrors. Just the thought of celery and leeks made her feel hungry and homesick, and she’d been gone less than two days. But she pushed those thoughts away, and braced herself. Next, he’d be talking about the way Simon smelled…or tasted.
“People smell much like their houses. And if they smell unique, ye ken they taste unique.”
Here it comes.
Wickham faced her. “I told ye that, so I can tell ye this. Magic has this same unique taste to it. If I put a blindfold on ye, and either one of my sisters or myself used a bit of magic, do ye suppose ye might be able to say which one of us did it?”
Soni closed her eyes and imagined it happening, then popped her eyes open again, surprised. “I believe I would, aye.”
“But if someone not from our family did the same, do ye suppose ye could tell?”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t say. But what has this to do with earthquakes?”
He tilted his head back and forth and ignored her question. “I’ve not spoken of yer grandfather much. No doubt my sisters have explained what he did to me, and that he released me accidentally, not long before he died.”
Soni hardly dared ask. “Did ye feel it, like they say, when he died?”
Wickham shook his head. “I’d felt him all my life, even while I was suspended in the tunnel, like a second heart beating in my chest. And then one day, after I’d found Ivy again, that phantom heartbeat stopped.”
She’d been horrified to learn what evil her grandfather had been capable of, and she always worried that a bit of his bad blood ran through her own veins. But then Wickham had reminded her, when she was about ten years old, that his own blood ran through her veins too. She was just as capable of good as anyone else. And evil was a choice ye made, never an accident.
She’d relied on his words ever since. They’d given her more comfort than he could know.
Wickham continued. “Even before Ivy came into our lives, my brother and I were in constant competition. It was exhausting if we didn’t keep a distance between us. We moved in separate circles, ye might say. But when it was only the two of us, or being home with our sisters, we fought very little. It is difficult to misunderstand yer siblings if ye’ve access to their thoughts, aye?
“Besides the telepathy gifted to all witches in our family, Walter and I had much different talents. Or rather, he had talent. I always had keen senses, I suppose, when it came to people, animals. Walter was brilliant with illusions, wards, spells. He could make ye believe ye were running down a long series of hallways, when ye were but standing in place. He could create an entire world right there, inside the walls of his bedroom. My sister Lorraine has a bit of that same talent. But Walter was the true master.”
Wickham shook his head and blinked as if remembering they were in the Lost Glen. He looked around for a long while, just admiring the view.
“Anyway. Where was I?” He nodded. “I ken ye’ve heard me tell it before, but I must remind ye of the day we met. And remember, magic will have a trace of the witch who performs it. A flavor of sorts.
“When I was in the tunnel, existing in neither Time nor Space, I felt an earthquake that had the taste of my brother’s magic to it. After he’d died, I sent myself back to the day of that earthquake, to the epicenter, to see what Walter had been up to. But my brother wasn’t there. Instead, I found a wee lassie playing in a park. Her mum called out to her, insisting it was time to go home. The creature threw a fantastic tantrum.” Wickham grinned at her. “Yer face was red. Ye made wee little fists, and ye said some unkind things to yer mum as well, though I forget exactly what.”
Soni rolled her eyes. “Ye know I don’t remember.”
“It was 2003. Ye were four years old and beggin’ for a skelpin’--”
“And you sensed I was yer long-lost grand-niece and followed us home.”
Wickham grimaced, briefly. “Weel…”
“That’s always how ye tell it. Are ye sayin’ it’s not true?”
He shrugged. “Ye were beggin’ for a skelpin’, like I said. Making yer wee fists and stomping yer foot. And, as if summoned, the very earth quaked. Not by Walter’s powers, but by yers.”
Soni held her breath for a few seconds, then looked out over the glen, wondering what other little details had been smoothed over by Wickham, his sisters, and her parents. They all retold the same story often enough, over the dinner table. Had they all decided, together, to keep some details secret from her? Was she a little monster, then? Following in her grandfather’s footsteps?
Wickham chuckled. “Easy, lass. I heard every word of that. And no, we’re not keeping secrets from ye. The fact that yer parents never mention the earthquake is because I took that part of their memory away. I have never told my sisters because they tend to get overzealous when they’re excited.”
Soni took a deep breath, then another, and decided she was going to trust that Wickham was telling her the truth this time. “Ye think they’d get excited about a little earthquake?”
Wickham fell quiet again. There was something more he intended to tell her. Was he having second thoughts?
“What is it, uncle?”
He patted her knee and nodded as if he’d made up his mind on something. “When ye used yer magic that day, at a mere four years old…it left a taste in the air that was definitely familial.”
“Ye knew I was family.”
“Aye. And…it tasted of Walter.”
“So there was no long-lost grand-niece?”
“No long-lost grand-niece. We’d known nothing of ye.”
“The story about my parents dying?”
“Lies.”
“So, they might be out there, right now.” She hadn’t meant to get louder, but by the end, her words rushed out into the glen, then died without so much as an echo, like a barrel’s worth of water dropped into a loch. It hardly made a ripple.
Of a sudden, The Lost Glen seemed empty and lonely. The wee hikers hadn’t made much progress, considering the vast trek before them. Would they ever make it to the other end?
“Aye, lass. Yer biological mother and father are likely living. Are ye anxious to find them?”
Just when she was trying to decide how angry to get, she realized it didn’t matter so much. Pat and DeAnne Blakeburn were her parents. The two people who gave her life were just blanks on a genealogy chart. What did it matter what those names were? Of course she might feel differently, once the shock wore off…
Soni ignored Wickham’s question and asked one of her own. “Ye said something about yer sisters might get overzealous about that first earthquake?”
Wickham shook his head. “Nay, lass. About the probability…that ye might be a Third.”
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “The daughter of a witch, who was the daughter of a witch? Like Rowena?”
“If Walter had a son or daughter with powers—which is rare, mind—ye could be the daughter of a witch, who was the daughter of a male Muir witch. Usually, it skips at least one generation, often more. But aye, like Rowena. Yer magic came on far sooner than it should have. The very ground responds to yer whim--”
“Like Rowena and the weather.”
“Aye. And there is also the fact that my sisters chose to gift ye with the Rowena doll. Perhaps they’ve suspected all along. Maybe you and I are the last to know.”
“A Third…”
“Aye.” Wickham got to his feet, brushed off the back of his kilt, and grinned. “A theory worth testing, aye?” He helped her stand. “Let’s play.”
Chapter Ten
Soni had always had a talent for working spells without actually learning those spells. If she’d seen Wickham or his sisters do something interesting, she was able to copy it, for lack of a better word. And this she confessed to Wickham.
“When I froze yer parents at the dinner table? How would ye suppose I did that?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Ye must teach me, for my first instinct would be to freeze time, and I’ve no idea how that is done. I could stop a clock from across the room, but that does not stop time itself.”
Wickham chuckled. “At least ye didn’t try to freeze yer parents, or ye might have done just that.” He opened his arms to the glen. “Imagine Time as a living thing. If ye wish to step through it, even a small step, ye should be polite and ask permission.”
“So ye asked Time to stop?”
“Nay. I asked permission to step out of it. And I took ye and my sisters with me.”
“Stepping out of time! That’s brilliant!”
