Page 12 of Resurrecting the Witch
I sensed a quick spike of fear from him and realized my magick was pouring out of me in heavy doses. My eyes were probably entirely green, and I felt the static in my hair lift at the ends.
“You can deny it all you want or threaten me, but you need to get used to the fact that you are running out of time in keeping all of that magick in you.”
I didn’t care that his words made sense or that I had been seeing signs for the last few months of my body deteriorating from the magick, from theentireÓ Quinn family magick flowing in my veins.
Covens and family lines weren’t important to witches just for the community aspect, even though that played a big role. We weren’t meant to be solitary even if the storybooks painted us as hermit wood-dwelling creatures with a cauldron to boil children’s bones in. Our magick needed bodies and spirits to disperse it evenly, especially with Ó Quinn magick since we were one of the oldest lines in the world without a break. It wasn’t meant for one person to hold, and I knew Guillermo had his own struggles with the Luna line even if they weren’t as historically long as the Ó Quinn’s, and I’d been holding this force inside of me, drowning in the agony of the constant reminder of their lack of presence in this realm, for five long years, pretending it wasn’t slowly ripping me to shreds. I looked into his brown and blue eyes and saw the determination for him to have this conversation now.
“It’s already been too long, Cliona. Most wouldn’t have even lasted this long, and you have fucking Ó Quinn magick. You need to get your coven—”
“My coven isdead,” I said and stood up without letting him finish. Fuck Guillermo Luna for ruining my good ass mood with his bullshit reminders of what I couldn’t forget if I tried. “This session is finished.” I didn’t look in his direction and walked out before I did or said something I’d regret.
I didn’t bother going to my office and instead walked back into Town Square on the opposite end of the main entrance. I took a deep breath in of crisp Pacific island air as soon as I hit the cobblestone streets of the center of Haven Pass and made my way to my greenhouse and shoppe across the square.
The bones of the Town Square were built when Gran, Gramps, Pops, and Papá first migrated here from Ireland back in the late seventeenth century. (Gran was a bad bitch with her own polyamorous relationship living my romance novel loving dream before romance novels were probably even a thing.) While Ireland wasn’t a hotspot for witch persecution, they hadn’t been in the mood to wait around and find out. So, they fled here, and found this green paradise that was too harsh for anyone else to inhabit, anyone without magick anyway. It was a hundred fifty-mile-long island spanning both Canada and Washington state, but with no official record of ever actually existing in the human realm.
Our little town of Haven Pass was settled between two smaller mountain ridges that already began to show signs of snow at their peaks. It was a beautiful sight, but I had never known anything different. The main part of town was mostly flat, thanks to the magick my grandparents used to protect the base of the pass, but the further outside you got, where a lot of other homes were built, the more treacherous the terrain became, which is why most folks stayed relatively close to the town limits if they could help it. Depending on their race, they might look for an already existing cave in one of the hill faces, but most took advantage of the neighborhoods my family built when they first settled, the same ones we continued to expand on throughout the years so there were now a dozen or more neighborhoods breaking off from the Town Square with hundreds of homes.
I tried to get lost in the scenery and enjoy my town. It didn’t work. Guillermo was right, and I hated to admit he was right. I couldn’t keep going at this pace and maintain any sort of control of the power. It wasn’t just me I had to think about, the entire island relied on me to keep our wards strong. It wasn’t an easy effort to keep us hidden from the humans and it only got harder with each new resident we approved for entry. I knew I’d have to expand my one-person coven sooner rather than later or all my work the last five years in rebuilding Gran’s dream and making updates she would have hopefully approved of would be wasted.
“Hey there, Miss Cliona,” I heard a voice call when I approached my shoppe entrance.
I was not in the mood to deal with anyone, but I plastered a smile on my face for my business neighbor.
“Hey, Bert. Cutting lots of hair today?” I couldn’t get my door open fast enough. I loved Bert most days, but I needed to get in my shoppe and unleash some of this magick before I harmed him or anyone else in my path.
“Oh, you know how it goes. Hair keeps growing even when nothing else does.” He shrugged and I saw the massive amount of scissors attached to his right arm and shook my head.
“I’m still surprised you don’t hurt yourself with those.”
He snipped the scissors up at me and laughed a big belly laugh. No one on the island knew what Bert was exactly, he didn’t even know himself. But he could take apart his appendages and attach new pieces. He was some kind of Frankenstein experiment gone wrong, but he didn’t let that get him down. His head was shaved bald, and he had black tattoos covering almost every inch of his pale gray skin. Bert looked intimidating, but it was yet another example of appearances not being quite what they seemed.
Bert was probably the happiest person on the entire island, and his constant business whether folks needed a cut or shave spoke to that fact. He had also stepped up after my family died, taking me under his protective wing even if I hadn’t needed it. He always had a joke or kind word, even coming over for dinner or inviting me to his own apartment above his barber shop when he saw me around.
“It’s an art that took me many years to master.” He shrugged. “And also enabled me to learn some incredible first aid skills.”
He laughed so hard it was impossible not to laugh with him.
“Have a good day, Miss Cliona.”
“You too, Bert.”
I entered my shoppe and took a deep inhale. The soil and plant scent immediately set my nerves at ease, and I got to work.
Chapter 4
Cliona: And you can only call me pet if I can call you daddy. *sweating emoji*
My nostrils flared as I thought about the text message my filthy little witchling sent me yesterday.
“And how about you, Patrick? Any thoughts?” I blinked away and tried to come back to the present, torn away from the endless obsession of my mate playing over and over in my mind.
“I can smell how hard his dick is, Doc. No way he knows what we’re talking about.”
I flipped Drew off even though he wasn’t wrong. His wolf senses didn’t make it any easier for him to ignore my arousal, or anyone in the Alpha Group really. We all had gifts that made our predator instincts heightened, otherwise we wouldn’t have been in this group.
“Tell me what we were discussing.” I didn’t ask, I simply told and hoped the others would understand my lack of attention. I’d tried my best to take care of myself before the meeting; I’d yanked my dick until it felt raw, coming over and over again since I met Cliona two days ago, but it didn’t help any. And then she sent that feckin’ message yesterday.
The witch was trying to kill me.
