Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(14)

Because it was the bar that belonged to the Mortimer Gutierrez now sitting in front of me, fire blazing in his eyes at the mere mention of my family.

In my (admittedly biased) opinion, we hadn’t done anything that your standard deal-driven businessperson wouldn’t do; certainly nothing unsavory, or even borderline immoral. They’d said no to us repeatedly, yes, so we’d tried different tacks, searching for a mutually viable solution—because that was how negotiations worked. From what I remembered, we’d ended by offering a significant lump sum, well above the Shamrock Cauldron’s market value, and they still hadn’t bitten. So it wasn’t like we’d been turning the screws on them.

Somehow, I didn’t think we’d be seeing eye to eye on that.

“I am very sorry to hear you think so,” I said through tingling lips. I was used to—and even relished—a certain kind of confrontation. But that was in my work life, when I was safely ensconced inside the chilly sheath of professionalism and my impeccably tailored business suit. This felt more like an ambush or a trap, even if an unintentional one. Like I’d found myself thrashing in eel-infested waters when I’d thought I was just going for a relaxing, balmy dip. “Especially because that happens to be my family you’re bad-mouthing.”

“Holy shit,” Morty said slowly, jaw dropping as the pieces clicked into place, narrowed eyes glinting icy blue with even more concentrated dislike. “?‘Nineve Blackmoore, Esquire.’ Fuck me, that’s you, isn’t it? You’re that Nina.”

“I am that Nina,” I agreed, forcibly quelling any tremble in my voice, pushing back my chair before I could hear more about what he thought of me, specifically. “And now, I think I’m going to go.”

At least, I thought, as I shrugged into my parka and hightailed it out of the bar before Morty could respond, as far as silver linings went—Jessa owed me so many pigs in blankets (and hot succubi) for this debacle.





5





The Lady of the Lake



Back home on my couch, tucked under an angora throw in my underwear while more snow pinwheeled against the dark beyond the floor-to-ceiling picture window, I proceeded to get pity-drunk by myself. At least my wine fridge served the kind of delicious and expensive red that only theoretically shared a name with whatever swill they poured at the Moon and Scythe. And instead of football gibberish and shouted conversation, I got to wallow in the most tragic parts of the Battlestar Galactica score on repeat.

Overall, an undeniable improvement in setting if not mood.

Trapped in that obnoxiously maudlin “I will never love again” wasteland that apparently came with tannins, I dragged myself to bed only once I’d started dozing off between weeps. I didn’t usually dream anything at all when drunk. But tonight, almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, I found myself back on the lake’s snow-heaped shores, like I’d somehow portaled myself up Hallows Hill again in my sleep.

For a moment, the sense of actually being there was so brilliantly vivid—the icy fire of snow on my bare soles, the sandblast of wind against my cheeks—that I hazily wondered if maybe I had, somehow, managed to cast Lightborne Folly in my sleep. But even Dream Nina was too logical to entertain the notion for more than a moment. I hadn’t felt that lurching stomach drop of transition, for one thing, and not even I could have channeled as much will as a portal passage demanded without sensing it, especially not asleep.

And that was the other thing—I knew that I was dreaming, in that lucid sense that felt both divorced from reality and utterly real. Yet a part of me also couldn’t shake the pervasive conviction that I was really here, with the emerald fronds of the aurora borealis rippling above my head, the stalactite points of frozen stars shimmering coldly against the night.

But I wasn’t here; I couldn’t be. Not only because there was no magic I knew of that could have whisked me here but also because, above me, the stars had begun to fall.

Another perk of Thistle Grove—we got many more stars to wish on than should have been our due. But this . . . this shower was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Silver streaks rained furiously from above, striking the lake’s black surface like molten arrows without disturbing it. They fell all around me, too, pinpricks that tingled without quite stinging where they struck my skin, melting into me like sparks cast off from an icy fire. The ones that fell on my hair caught and tangled in it like captive snowflakes, a spangle of blinding glitter in the edges of my vision.

It reminded me of earlier, when I really had stood up here, that vast and shimmering explosion that had detonated beneath the lake. As if what was happening now had happened then—only this time, I was seeing it from above.

Then the lake called my name.

    NINEVE CLIODHNA BLACKMOORE

NINEVE, MY VERY OWN

NINA, MY NINA, COME NOW, MY NINA



I felt the summons rather than hearing it; a thrumming tremor that buzzed down to my marrow, rattling through my bones in the most compelling way.

“I hie to you, my Lady,” I responded, my voice resonating with doubled harmonics, like some powerful instrument. My mouth shaped the words of its own accord, a colossal swell of awe expanding in my chest until it strained against the confines of my ribs, coupled with a knowing like déjà vu.

I’d been here and done this many, many times before—and then I’d forgotten.