Читать книгу Entangled Secrets - Pat Esden - Страница 17

Chapter 8

The triskelion, like the number 3, is sacred and powerful. Its root is ancient, appearing in cultures and religions around the world. It is a symbol of the never-ending cycle. It represents the aspects of the Goddess: Maiden, Mother, Crone…

—S. Jocelyn, “Numbers & Symbols” (lecture 2, Greylock Academy)

On the way back to the complex, Chandler took Peregrine and Devlin in her car, and Gar rode in Lionel’s cluttered VW Beetle.

Rather than waiting until later, she took advantage of the ride to give Peregrine a lecture on how his actions had endangered himself as well as the rest of the group. Devlin stayed out of it for the most part, but he agreed when she suggested Peregrine’s martial arts lessons should be preceded by an additional ten minutes of quiet time focused on learning self-control. Peregrine scowled at that, which made Chandler happy.

“Also”—she glanced at him as they stopped for a red light—“today’s TV time is going to be replaced by reading in the Book of Good Folk about the dangers of fae encounters.”

He didn’t scowl at that, which was good as well. The Good Folk textbook wasn’t easy reading. Chandler hadn’t tackled it until she was several years older than Peregrine. But he seemed to enjoy the challenge, the same way he enjoyed school in general more than she ever had.

Once they got back to the complex, they discussed with Chloe and Em the idea of looking in Merlin’s Book for a spell that would reverse the damage Rhianna had done to Lionel at the same time as they were hunting for one to heal Aidan.

As everyone started talking in more depth about the two issues, Chandler got to her feet. “If nobody minds, it’s time for Peregrine and me to head home.” She looked at Lionel. “I’m going to work on that triskelion.”

“I’d appreciate that,” he said.

It took only a minute for her and Peregrine to get back to their apartment. She hauled the Book of Good Folk from the cabinet under their altar and opened it to the section that gave an overview of hazards. “I want you to make a list of the top ten places you’re likely to run into dangerous fae. Before tonight’s full-moon ritual, we’ll go over the list. Tomorrow, I’ll have you do some reading on detection and protection.”

“Okay, Mom. I’ll be an expert like you in no time.”

She smiled. If only the expert part were true. She knew a fair amount about the fae, more than many witches. Between her and Brooklyn, they’d have no trouble getting through the basic and intermediate levels. Still, she wished they had more than book knowledge to rely on. Peregrine’s father was the obvious choice when it came to hands-on experience with the fae, but he was a Pandora’s box of trouble they were better off leaving firmly closed.

As Peregrine headed for his room with the book, Chandler snagged a Switchback from the fridge, put on her favorite do-rag, its sides embroidered with flaming salamanders, and went out to her workshop.

Once there, she took a refreshing sip of beer, then got out a miniature cauldron and set it near where the iron monkey heart still lay on her workbench. The cauldron was the size of an orange, perfect for bespelling charms.

Next, she retrieved three extralong horseshoe nails from their storage bin. The nails would form the physical portion of the triskelion charm. The iron wouldn’t repel all fae, but it would ward off some, and the protective magic she’d imbue them with would, at a minimum, be a signal that Lionel was under the protection of those with abilities, namely a witch who worked with fire and earth.

She put on her safety glasses and settled down, half-sitting on a barstool up close to her vise with the nails and her tools within reach. She secured one of the nails into the vise’s jaws, then alternated applying magic to heat the nail’s center to red-hot and using pliers to slowly work it into a hook shape. Sometimes—like when she’d created the monkey heart—she used standard equipment and safety gear. Other times, like now, she used her magic to protect her hands and work the metal. It was totally a matter of her mood and if she had extra, pent-up magic from lack of use or keyed-up emotions.

She heated and bent a second nail, falling into a rhythm as she finished that one and started to shape the third into a hook. Her mind wandered to thoughts of when she was Peregrine’s age and her abilities first emerged, a gift for working with fire that she’d shared with her father. She remembered every moment of the night when he’d first showed her how to build a bonfire and call the Great Salamander. She also recalled every moment of the horrific day not long after that, when her father burned to death saving a family from a house fire.

Tears prickled in Chandler’s eyes. She stopped working and took a deep breath. She couldn’t have prevented her father’s death, any more than she could have done anything other than witness her mother fall apart afterward, piece by piece, like a glacier giving way to the crash of the ocean. She didn’t remember anything from the day her mother killed herself. But she clearly recalled the funeral and her mother’s best friend holding her, the first time anyone had held her since her father’s death. Holding her and choosing to adopt her. A strong, single woman not afraid to love fiercely and never let go, even when life wasn’t easy.

Chandler wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She missed her adoptive mom with every inch of her being. But they’d had a lot of good years together. And Chandler had been there two years ago in the Council’s palliative care unit when her adoptive mom had passed. She and Peregrine had kissed her mom and held her hand as she took her last breath and left this life.

Blinking back another round of tears, Chandler returned to work. She secured one of the hook-shaped nails in the vise. With her magic, she fused another hooked nail onto that one and then added the last, joining them together to create the shape of a triskelion. Nails reformed into something new, like a little girl’s shattered life reinvented into something even more powerful by the unwavering love of a witch who had chosen to be her mom.

Chandler set the triskelion into the miniature cauldron, then sprinkled a layer of salt and blessed earth over it. On top of that, she placed a cone of Brooklyn’s protection incense.

“Ignis ignite,” she said, lighting the incense with her magic. As the heady scent of sage and sandalwood drifted into the air, she closed her eyes, cleared her mind, and envisioned the triskelion. “Shield of light surround you,” she intoned. “Protect the wearer from those with dark intent. Spirits of the wood. Spirits of the air. Spirits of earth and fire. Only the good come close. Scuto circumdabit te de lumine…” She repeated the spell in Latin, letting her power flow into the cauldron, bathing the salt and earth, coating and imbuing the triskelion with a force-field-like shield of energy.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she sensed someone enter the workshop, waiting off to one side as still as one of her sculptures. Peregrine? Devlin? Lionel, maybe? She wasn’t sure. But their energy felt familiar and right now she couldn’t afford to pay attention to them, not with the triskelion nearing completion and her wavering between consciousness and the euphoria of a peaking spell.

A glow radiated up from the cauldron. Bright gold explosions flashed. Once. Twice. Three times. Light as bright as the eyes of the red dragon in her vision. The glow fizzled downward, sucking into the earth and salt, then vanishing.

Chandler bowed her head. “Thank you, Great Salamander, Serpent of the Embers. Blessed be your wisdom and strength,” she prayed. Then she turned to see who was watching.

Lionel stood next to the oil drum with one hand resting on the flying monkey’s shoulder. His gaze shifted abruptly to the workbench, like he didn’t want her to know just how intently he’d been looking at her. His smile turned playful and he nodded at the monkey heart. “Um—I hope charm making didn’t interrupt vital surgery?”

She laughed. “It’s for the monkey. But I need to find the perfect veins and arteries before I can contemplate surgery. However, your charm’s all set.” She smiled to herself. His personal charm certainly was all set, and working overtime to make her heart stumble. She took a deep breath and turned back to the workbench. Using the end of a screwdriver, she pushed aside the incense ash, salt, and earth, then retrieved the still-steaming charm with a pair of pliers. She waved it in the air for a moment to cool it down. “Hold out your hand. The protection magic will bond with you even better if you’re the first one to touch it.”

As she placed the triskelion on his outstretched palm, the witch in her took note of what lay before her eyes. His fate line was unusually distinct, with a hard break above his heart line. Palm reading was only a passing interest of hers, something that came with a general artist’s awareness of anatomy. Still, she felt drawn to comment. “You had a difficult childhood.”

He shrugged. “No more so than most.” His expression closed off. Then his dark eyes opened wider, their depths welcoming her in with unabashed candidness. “I never knew my birth parents, at least I don’t remember them. I was adopted by an amazing woman when I was five.”

His mention of being happily adopted sent a warm feeling of connection flickering through her. She smiled. “I was raised by an amazing adoptive mom, too.”

His fingers folded around the charm, squeezing it tight. “Um—I actually came to Burlington because of my adoptive mom. But I’m glad I did. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met any of you.”

As he opened his hand and looked at the charm, her thoughts returned to the job at hand. “Why don’t you give that back to me? I’ll fix it so you can wear it around your neck. Is leather cord okay or would you prefer hemp?”

“Leather would be great, thank you.”

She opened a drawer in her workbench and took out a precut length of deerskin cord. As she started to attach the charm to it, she returned to their previous conversation. “So, your mom lives in Burlington? I assumed you weren’t local, since you’re staying in a motel.”

“My—my mom’s in Massachusetts. I came here because of the ferries—ferryboats, that is.”

“Really?” She stopped threading the cord through the charm to look at him. There were several ferries on Lake Champlain, the lake that stretched between Vermont and Upstate New York, and up to Canada. She and Peregrine often walked to Oakledge Park to watch the ferries cross. She could think of only one reason someone would come to Burlington because of the ferries. “You work on one of the boats? I thought you were a full-time journalist?”

“I am a journalist, freelance. I grew up in Boston.” He hesitated, jiggling his fingers at his side as he thought through what to say next. “My adoptive mom claimed she found me on a ferry. Wh-when I was little, I thought it was a made-up story like parents saying they found a baby under a cabbage leaf. Except, I wasn’t a baby when she found me. Later, I realized her story was true.”

For a long moment, Chandler was too stunned to speak. “You’re kidding? On a ferryboat in Burlington?”

He nodded. “She’s never actually told me it was here. But I know it’s true.” He looked down. “When I was a kid, I liked to pretend my adoptive mom worked for the FBI, that I was a famous child who got handed off to her on a boat and sent into hiding. Or, I was an alien child, a black Superman.”

Chandler would have laughed, except Lionel’s tone was dead serious. Besides, maybe he wasn’t a witch and didn’t have magic in his blood, but this foundling story was strange. In fact, it qualified as uncanny, especially when combined with him developing the sight from being bespelled by Rhianna. “What makes you so sure it’s true?”

“I vaguely remember the ferry,” he said. “For a long time, I thought it came from hearing my mom repeatedly tell the story of finding me on the wet deck and hiding me under a blanket.” He stared past her toward the monkey heart. His voice quieted, barely above a whisper. “In my heart, I always knew the memory of the ferry was real. Um—I lived a lot of places, but that ferry was always in the back of my mind. Finally, I decided to write a travel article to justify searching for it. “Car Ferries of New England.” I thought, if I visited all the ferries in New England, I might recognize one. If that didn’t work, then I’d expand my search westward until I found the boat.”

“But aren’t all ferries pretty much identical—other than size?”

“Some are on fresh water. Some ocean… Different smells. Different vibes.”

Different vibes. Chandler rubbed the triskelion’s cord between her fingers. Now he was sounding like a witch. “And you found the ferry. Here. In Burlington?”

He nodded. “My birth certificate says Boston, Massachusetts. I started my search there, then I went to Connecticut and Maine.”

Chandler thought for a second. “Does your mom know you’re here now?”

“She thinks I’m in Stowe working on an article about tourism.” He hesitated. “But there’s something about Burlington that speaks to me, beyond the ferries…”

She handed Lionel the necklace. “Like black dogs?” she said it jokingly, to clear the tension from the air. But she’d noticed something else. His speech was smoother, and his thought process faster than it had been earlier. “Are you feeling better?”

“Very much so. It’s from being around all of you. I felt this way with the goth, too. And when I came here to the complex last night, and the other time, before the high priestess—I mean, before Rhianna put the spell on me.”

Before she put the spell on him? “I didn’t think you had a hard time putting your thoughts together until after the spell?”

“I didn’t. But I’ve always daydreamed a lot, zoned out. But not with the goth or here.” He slipped the leather cord over his neck and tucked the triskelion under his shirt. “It’s the magic. It keeps me in the moment. Totally present.” He rested his hand against his chest, pressing the triskelion over his heart. “This feels wonderful, like the chime of grasshoppers on my skin and in my head. It is like yoga without the work.”

She did laugh at that. “That’s the strangest way anyone’s ever described my energy.”

His eyes met hers. And in the soft light of the workshop, she could see what a truly beautiful man he was. Everything about him was long and narrow, but all the proportions worked. The smoothness and tone of his skin was more stunning than the darkest brushed bronze she’d ever seen. His lips were satiny. If she’d drawn a likeness of his face in college, her art professors would have criticized the bone structure for being too impossibly flawless.

A gleam sparked in his eyes and his lips twitched into a goofy smile. “Um—sometime, would you like to go out for dinner?”

She stared at him, shocked. Okay, she liked him. Physically he was more than a little appealing. But where had that come from? “Ah—no.”

He raised a hand to ward off the words. “Sorry. I thought… I am an idiot. I completely get it. I am not exactly—”

“It’s not you. I just—” Shit. It was her fault. He’d misinterpreted the way she looked at him, again. “I couldn’t even consider going out with anyone right now, not with everything that’s going on. I need to focus on Peregrine.” That was politely general and true. But it also wasn’t the answer her body wanted to give. It whispered that spending alone time with Lionel could be a lot of fun. She liked tall men. She liked thin men. He made her smile. She’d dated black men before, and guys with energy that hadn’t been anywhere near as tempting as his. For Goddess’s sake, the guy had thrown himself over her and Peregrine in the alley to protect them from a hellhound. Peregrine even seemed to like him.

However, there was a huge issue. Once they corrected the damage Rhianna’s spell had caused and were satisfied that Lionel would remain quiet about magic and the witching world, then he’d have to go back to Boston or even farther away—somewhere his connection to them would be permanently severed, like Gar had suggested. Severed so completely that the Council could never catch wind of any involvement between him and their world. It wasn’t fair to encourage Lionel into thinking there could ever be a place for him here, by agreeing to a date or even a one-time fling.

“Hey,” Devlin said, walking into the workshop.

Chandler let out a relieved breath. “Perfect timing. I was about to call you.”

Devlin frowned as if he sensed he’d intruded on something. “What’s going on?”

Chandler glanced toward Lionel, careful to not let her eyes linger this time. Now that she thought about it, Lionel wasn’t so much a good-looking version of Ichabod Crane as a wild-haired version of a taller and younger John Legend. Really nice.

She clenched her teeth, driving that thought from her head, and instead focused on Devlin. “I finished the charm. It should help until Chloe and Em find the spell.”

“That’s great.” Devlin turned to Lionel. “I’m not sure if you’re fully aware of the extent of the danger the sight poses. Fae don’t like it when people can see them. They don’t just attack. They’ll aim to kill, or at a minimum, blind you.”

Lionel’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “More like a horror movie than Disney?”

“Exactly.” Devlin rested back on his heels. “After you left to come out here, we discussed your situation a bit more. If it’s okay with Chandler, we’d like to invite you to stay at the complex until we find the spell and perform it. No charge. Free food and wi-fi. We’re worried about your safety. Wearing a triskelion is smart. But it’s not a guarantee.”

“Good idea,” Chandler said. After the “want to go to dinner” thing, him staying at the complex would be a little awkward. But they were adults and she didn’t want to see Lionel in danger. Besides, last week when Brooklyn and Midas had paid Lionel a visit to discover if he truly was a threat to the witching world’s anonymity, they’d said the motel he was staying at was a cockroach pit.

Lionel shook his head. “I appreciate the offer. But I have to say no.” He hugged his arms close to his chest. “I want to go through with whatever it takes to right the damage from the spell. But a lot has happened in the last few hours. I need space and time to think everything through.”

A sick feeling tugged at Chandler. “Before—when I said no to your offer—I didn’t intend to make you feel unwelcome.”

Devlin jumped in. “I meant what I said about not forcing you into anything.”

Lionel smiled at Devlin, then met Chandler’s eyes. “It’s not you. Not either of you. It’s me. I didn’t just see the black dog. I saw the skin cut from my friend’s body. I saw it made into a charm. I know Rhianna was responsible for those things. But my head is reeling. I don’t trust myself or my instincts right now. I need to step back and think before I make any more decisions.” His smile widened. “I’m assuming if I change my mind, the offer will still stand?”

“Of course, you’re welcome anytime. Day or night,” Chandler said.

But a horrible feeling twisted deep inside her chest. As much as he denied it, she couldn’t believe her refusing his advances hadn’t played a role in this incredibly unwise decision.