The moment I got home, I puked neon yellow into the toilet bowl. Again. The color had nothing to do with my magic, by the way. That was when I discovered the mark on my guts.
I stared at the red welt on my stomach in the mirror and grimaced. A handprint with five dots all spaced out to match the five claws the craglorn had pressed against me when it had tried to feed. Gross. The word feed made me want to hurl again.
Opening the cupboard under the sink, I fossicked through the tubes of ointment and soaps Aileen had collected like a pack rat and found a tube of salve that said it worked for bug bites. Cooling burns and insect nibbles. That ought to cover it.
Sitting on the edge of the bath, I rubbed it into the… What should I call it? A suck mark? I shivered and made a face. Whatever it was, it was a close call. The closest I’d had since that swarm of sluagh tried to drown me at Croagh Patrick.
I seriously felt like imploding. I couldn’t do this anymore! I was the last of the most badass coven to have ever lived? Yeah, right! I couldn’t even stop a craglorn from sucking my magic let alone keep a magical barrier in working order. I was supposed to be able to do the impossible, right? Ugh.
The sound of furious knocking at the front door broke through my inner tantrum, and my heart skipped a dozen beats. Dropping the tube of ointment, it landed on the floor with a plop.
“I’m so over this!” I shrieked, barreling out of the bathroom and down the stairs. “I’ll kick your ass, then I’ll fry you to a crisp! Just you wait!”
Wrenching open the front door, I froze, not expecting what was standing on the stoop. A woman was waiting patiently, and when she saw me, her face lit up.
Her hair was long, black and streaked with silver, her face was wrinkled with age, her clothes were rumpled and caked with dirt… She looked like an older version of me. Either I was in a time warp and had come back to visit myself or… Aileen. It couldn’t be her because she’d been drowned in the earth by a spriggan, which meant a fae had taken her form to trick me. A fae brought here by the barrier, which was no longer working thanks to that hungry craglorn.
For a split second, I was dazed, but my instincts kicked in, and it was on like Donkey Kong.
I raised my hands and forced my magic to flare around my fingers. The moment it shot out toward her, the woman returned fire. Her magic collided with mine, gold and bright. I stumbled back a step as I realized this wasn’t a trick. No one had stolen her face.
It was Aileen.
“Mum?” I whispered, my hands falling to my side.
She smiled as our magic faded from the air, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Skye,” she said. “I come back to you now at the turnin’ of the tide.”
I frowned. “Wait. Isn’t that a line from Lord of the Rings?”
“Yes, but it’s a good one. Very fittin’, don’t you think?”
I was flabbergasted, and my mouth flapped uselessly. “What… How… When…”
“Can I come inside? It’s rather chilly out here.”
I stood aside as she came in, the reality of her being alive not hitting me as hard as it should have. Not yet, anyway. I was sure I would be visiting the toilet bowl again soon.
The moment the door closed, Aileen pulled me into a tight hug, squashing the air out of my lungs. “My daughter,” she murmured. “Why do you smell like midge cream?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Aileen… Carman’s here. She’s in Ireland.”
She pulled away, staring at me with unguarded concern. “How?”
“Aileen…” My bottom lip trembled, and suddenly, I was two years old again with a scraped knee. “I stuffed everything up.”
“I seriously doubt that. You’re my daughter.” She glanced over my shoulder and frowned. “Why is there a dead tree in my living room?”
I’d totally forgotten about the Christmas tree that had turned brown a week ago. “I think you’ll find the cottage is legally mine.”
“Hmm. You’re right…” Aileen wrapped her arm around my waist and led me into the lounge room.
“Are you hungry? You must be.” Wriggling out of her grasp, I legged it into the kitchen.
Leaning against the counter, I drew in a breath, my lungs burning. Aileen was alive. Aileen was alive and in the next room. My mother. I’d hated her for leaving for so long but had then come to understand her and the Crescent Calling—maybe I even loved her a little—and now she’d come back to life. She better not be a zombie because I was fresh out of brains.
Reaching for the last packet of chocolate biscuits, I went back into the lounge room and set them on the coffee table.
“Oohh, Chocolate Kimberleys,” Aileen exclaimed, opening the packet.
“How are you here?” I asked. “I mean… I’ve seen a lot of weird shit but resurrection? This is a new bag of crazy.”
“I never made it to the ancestors,” she replied, nibbling on a chocolate biscuit. “I was in between, and it took me a while to find my way back. I didn’t expect it, to be honest. When I told Boone to protect you, I thought I was a goner.” She humphed. “Luckily, I didn’t arrive because they’re the most difficult bunch of spirits I’ve ever dealt with. I wasn’t ready for an eternity with them. It would drive me around the bend and back.”
I screwed my face up, wondering why that sounded so familiar. “I think I was there.”
Aileen almost dropped her biscuit. “What? On the other side?”
“In the hawthorn, you mean? That’s where they are, right?”
Aileen nodded.
“Uh… There was a thing with a craglorn and…” I didn’t want to say Boone’s name because then I would have to explain, and I was humiliated enough with all my stabbing in the dark and nonsense dreams.
“And?” she prodded.
I lifted up my T-shirt, stopping an inch away from flashing her.
“Skye!” Her hand flew to her mouth.
“This was another one,” I said lamely. “Today. I put midge cream on it. It seems to be helping.”
“There was another one?”
“Three, if you want to get specific. Wait. Five. Yeah, there were five.”
“Skye Williams,” Aileen exclaimed, getting all motherly.
“Am I grounded?”
“I think we’re past that stage, don’t you? How much did it take?”
“Not much.”
She eyed me for a moment, then seemed satisfied. This day was getting more whacked as it went.
“Ahh, it’s good to be home…” Shoving the last of the biscuit into her mouth, Aileen kicked up her feet and began picking leaves and grit from her hair. “Tell me about the craglorn. Do you feel sick?”
“I barfed big time, but I was able to get it back.”
“What? The vomit? Skye, that’s disgustin’.”
“No! I don’t lick up neon yellow spew, thank you very much. I’m talking about my magic. You know, the Crescent Legacy or whatever fancy-pants name you want to slap on it. I took it back, then zapped its ass. Pow!” I swatted the air with my fist.
“You took it back?” Aileen stopped playing with her hair.
I nodded and poked at the mark on my stomach. “Served it right. I warned it, but it didn’t listen. It was all mmaaggiiccc, blergh!”
Aileen looked thoughtful but didn’t share any of it with me. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to take my magic back. Is that what made me throw up? Better not have because there went my plan for getting stolen Legacies back to their rightful owners. Throwing up was the worst.
My stomach flip-flopped again. This was happening way too fast. Thinking about the Chariot, I wondered if this was what it heralded all along. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d misinterpreted the tarot cards. Aileen was back… Like, really back.
“Are you really here?” I wanted to pinch Aileen to make sure she was solid. I’d seen some crazy things since moving to Derrydun, but this was the craziest by far. “I mean, I’ve had weird dreams about purple typewriters, and there was this thing about elephant toast, and there was this fae that stole the face of my ex-boyfriend, and I poked a wolf’s eye out with a stick… Oh! And there was the swim I took with the sluagh, and the hawthorn tried to warn me about the Nightshade Witches, then there—”
“Skye,” Aileen interrupted. “Calm down. I’m really here.”
“How? I mean, you just said you never made it to the other side, but how?”
She sank back into the armchair and drew in a deep breath before letting it out in one big whoosh.
“I was pulled into the earth,” she began. “But my magic cocooned me.”
“But we went to the clearing,” I argued. “There was nothing there. Nothing at all. The earth wasn’t disturbed or anything. I don’t understand…”
“After survivin’ this long, I’ve stopped askin’ questions myself. Though I gathered it mustn’t have been my time.”
“But you must remember something,” I argued. “That can’t be it!”
“I remember usin’ the last of me strength to cast a cocoon around myself. Then there was darkness. Lots of darkness. I suppose that’s when I died, and you were Called. Somethin’ brought me back and stopped me from crossin’ into the hawthorn with the ancestors, but I can’t really explain what. Perhaps me spell spared me and gave me another chance. It felt like I went for a really long swim through sludge, not knowin’ which way I was supposed to go. Then I swam into the forest, pulled myself out of the ground, and here we are. I’m glad you’ve got biscuits.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I said sullenly. “I’ve got a lot of mess to clean up. I could do with a hand.”
“I can’t fix this for you, Skye. I’m not a plot device dropped in at the right moment to make all your mistakes go away. I’m not in control of the coven anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Technically, I did die but not really. It messed up the bloodline, and magic can be very literal about these things.”
“So this is some kind of magical time warp where the space-time continuum has folded in on itself?”
Aileen blinked, looking bewildered, then shrugged. “You could say it like that, but the simple version is the mantle passed to you, and once you’ve got it, you can’t hand it back. You’re in charge of the coven now, and whatever comes next, you must lead with your Legacy.”
“So, I’m your boss.”
“Kind of.”
“You sort of died, and even though you’re back, you got demoted anyway?”
“I wouldn’t say it like that,” she said with a huff.
“It’s exactly like that.”
“Where’s Boone?” Aileen asked, abruptly changing the subject. She looked around the cottage as if he would poke his head out from behind the couch at any second.
“Uh…”
“Skye?”
I played with the ring on my finger and looked anywhere but at Aileen. The floral curtains had a rather interesting pattern to them even though they were ugly as sin, and I’d been too lazy to change them over.
“Skye?” Aileen prodded again. “Where is Boone?”
“Gone,” I replied with a sigh.
“Gone? Where?”
“Home.” It was as simple as that.
Aileen’s gaze dropped to my finger, and her eyebrows knitted together. “His memory came back.”
It was a statement, not a question, so I didn’t bother replying.
“Where is home, Skye?”
“Carman,” I replied, twisting the ring around my finger. “He’s one of Carman’s sons.”
Aileen let her head fall. “And that ring?”
“I love him,” I whispered, the words tearing open the wound in my heart again. “He asked me to marry him at Christmas and…”
“Oh, Skye…”
“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” I murmured. “So much has happened.”
“Then you better start at the beginnin’.”
“But we don’t have time,” I complained. “Carman is coming, and she could be here at any moment! I’ve been trying to prepare, but…” I felt like bursting into tears. “I told you. I stuffed everything up.”
“We have time,” Aileen said, placing her hand on my knee. “This is important, Skye. Take a deep breath, and tell me about arrivin’ in Derrydun. Did Robert O’Keefe help you?”
Doing as she said, I breathed deeply, then exclaimed, “Let me tell you about that scoundrel, Robert O’Keefe!”