A Celtic Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 6) (2 page)

And found himself entirely unable to block out her quiet thanks.

-o0o-

Cass headed out of The Barn, fingers numb and head stuffed full of laughter, a few too many raucous twirls around the floor, and sublime music.

Outsiders might have said the inhabitants of Margaree had no idea what talent sat in the chairs of their informal music hall.  That it was wasted on some tiny little town in the sticks.

They would have been wrong.

It was here, where the cliffs breathed Celtic mystery and the days were often short and fierce, that kitchen tables all across the small island nurtured the music that lived in her heart.

Small children and old, old men, aunts and sisters and awkward teenage cousins all gathering for the
ceilidh
.  Food and dancing, gossip and music—the lifeblood that kept communities thrumming during the long days of a Cape Breton winter.

She’d played for thousands.  Tens of thousands.  People sitting politely in their seats and throngs on their feet, swept up by the music.

But she’d never played anywhere she loved better than The Barn.

So every year, over the protests of her very savvy marketing team and her long-suffering manager, she made her pilgrimage.  It wasn’t going home to Ireland, which was a voyage of a different kind and one her marketing team could better appreciate.

This was a homecoming of the heart.

She tugged her wool toque down tighter over her ears.  It was damn cold. 

Stuffing hands in her pockets, she chuckled at her weak blood.  “Just what were you expecting at this hour?” 

“Still talking to yourself, I see.”  Dave had caught up to her on the path that led from The Barn to his inn.  “That was some fine fiddling tonight.”

Buddy had been in rare form.  “He’s still a genius.”

She felt the smile on the path beside her.  “I meant yours.”

She never played badly here.  The rocks, the audience, and her pride would never permit it.  “It’s good to be back.”

Dave stopped at the turn to the small house behind the inn.  “I have you in your usual room.  Need any help with your bags?”

“I’ll fetch them in the morning.”  Wouldn’t be the first time she’d slept in her jeans and boots, and her other essentials had been dropped off earlier.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small brown bag.  “Well, this ought to tide you over, then.”

She watched him walk up the graveled path lit only by a few brave stars peeking through the sullen night sky.  And then took a look in the bag.  Two scones, a bar of chocolate, and a toothbrush.

She walked the rest of the way in laughter, adoring the brisk wind stealing down her collar and the marvelous feeling of being thoroughly understood.

Most of which slunk away the moment she let herself into her room and discovered her laptop bag sitting in the middle of the bed, with something that could only be her cell phone vibrating in manic craziness on top of it.   Damn.  She should have left it sitting in the car along with her underwear.

Sadly, expensive gadgets didn’t handle Canadian winter nights quite as well as her woolies. And there were several people on her label’s management team who didn’t consider 2 a.m. a rude time to text.  Especially if she’d been ignoring them for two days.

Sighing, Cass sat down on the bed and reached for the shaking phone.  “Hush now, you’ll break yourself wiggling about that way.”  Her Irish had picked up noticeably over the course of the evening.  And it wasn’t the poor phone’s fault people kept abusing it so.

She scanned the texts.  All the same.  All from Tommy. 
Check your email.

Email meant he needed a longer answer than yes or no.  Her kingdom for a problem that could be solved in three characters or less.  She pulled the laptop out of its sleeve and dug the chocolate bar out of Dave’s care package.  Time to pay the piper.

Leaning back against the bed’s mountain of pillows, Cass contemplated the nightmare that was her inbox.  Draft tour schedules, six contracts to review, a few carefully screened messages from fans, and twenty-six “where the hell are you” emails from Tommy and his minions.

Where she always was this time of year—taking a break and feeding her soul.  No hoopla, no advance team, no schedules.  A chance to listen to the rocks and go where they called.

Email number forty-two made her laugh.  Tommy wanted to install a bunch of safes for her fiddle.  One for the bus, one for her apartment in New York, and some portable thingie that looked like a torture device.  New insurance estimate.  Apparently she was a legend now, and that made Rosie worth more money.

She refrained from emailing Tommy back and letting him know her precious million-dollar fiddle was currently sitting in a closet at The Barn along with several other violins.  Strings didn’t like quick trips out into the blowing cold, and anyone could practice in The Barn day or night.

And maybe Rosie would snuggle up with Buddy’s fiddle and learn something.

Tommy probably didn’t want to hear about that, either.

She picked a tour schedule email at random and replied. 
I pay you the big bucks to figure this stuff out.  Stick to the rules, and we’re good.
 

The rules were simple—no more than two towns a week, and she got to play at a dive in each one.  Or what Tommy had taken to calling “a small, intimate venue.”

Someplace where Rosie could sing and she could see the faces of people swept up in the music.  Or swept up in each other—at the last pub, she’d spent half the night watching an elderly couple in the corner.  They’d shared a pint and held hands until the wee hours, and their eyes had gleamed with something that had tugged notes out of Rosie far later than planned.

Half a chocolate bar left and too wired to sleep.  Cass pulled up her chat window—maybe someone in Ireland was up early.  The little circles were all gray.  Figured.  Mum was probably out in her garden, trying to tease some poor bulb into sticking its head up early.  Bri was likely chasing the twins, and Rory was either sleeping or eyeing the latest version of brunette and sexy sharing his bed.  And Nan hated technology with a passion she usually reserved for husbands who’d caught something itchy in their nether regions.

Gah, she missed them all.  Cape Breton always tugged on her Irish heartstrings.

A small light at the bottom of her chat window flashed purple.  Cass raised an eyebrow—that was interesting.  She pulled up a quick coding window.  Something had been tracking her online lately.  Nothing very obvious, just a whisper following her around.  She’d tweaked the chat alert to let her know when it was close.

A wee Internet ghostie, as her mum might say.  A benign one—the rocks would have let her know if danger lurked.

Cass brought up a couple of preprogrammed chunks of tracking code and tossed one casually at the ghostie.  “Let’s see if we can follow
you
around for a bit instead, hmm?”

Her coding chunk slid off some invisible wall.

Huh.  A wee ghostie with armor.  Amused, she tried a second tracker, this one with a few more teeth, and chuckled as the flashing purple light faded away, a small bit of her code stuck to its butt.  “Gotcha, cutie.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll know who you are.”

The light flashed one last time, making her laugh.   “Cocky, are you?”

She ate her remaining square of chocolate and closed the laptop.  Next, she’d be talking to the cows outside the window.  Definitely time for bed.  The music had filled her up—she’d sleep like a baby.

And then do it all again tomorrow.

Chapter 2

Cass walked into the inn’s informal dining room, her mouth already watering.  In the summer, the place would be hopping.  On a Thursday morning in March, she would likely be eating alone.

Or not.  Dave looked up from a table in the corner, papers spread out around a heaping plate of pancakes and some of the inn’s delectable blueberry preserves.  He smiled and pointed at a chair.  “Your French toast will be ready in a few minutes.  Join me?”

It sounded like a choice, but she was well aware he’d pout if she sat elsewhere.  “Predictable, am I?”

“8 a.m. like clockwork, and I don’t think you’ve ever eaten anything different than French toast.”

When you discovered heaven, you stayed put.  “Got some of that blueberry jam?”

He tapped a stumpy white pot sitting by his papers.  “Filled it up for you fresh this morning.”

She stared at the little container, warmed right down to her toes.  It was the small things that made a day worth living, and she found so very many of them here.  “Thanks.”

“It’s good to have you back.”  Dave’s eyes shone with sincerity.  His good nature and charm made his inn legendary—his soft heart made him a very good friend.

“I wouldn’t miss it.”  She leaned back in her chair, ready to talk and knowing he was always ready to listen.  “It’s been a tough tour this year.”

His eyebrows knitted.  “You said that last winter too.  Maybe you need to slow down that breakneck schedule of yours.  Give your fingers a rest every now and again.”

“Like coming here?”  She grinned at him companionably.  If history was any indicator, she’d spend more hours with her fiddle on her shoulder in the next three weeks than she would any other three months of the year.

“Well,” he said, slowly taking the lid off the jam pot, “it seemed safer than suggesting that maybe that wandering soul of yours needs a rest.”

It bothered her that something inside her chest agreed with his last words.  She leaned on humor to chase it away.  “I would, but so far, you haven’t agreed to marry me.”

His happily married eyes twinkled in return.  “Just say the word, and the town ladies will be happy to find you a nice man to settle down with.”

The ladies had been threatening that for years.  It concerned Cass more than a little that each year, it sounded a bit less awful.  She shrugged her shoulders, trying to shake off the odd melancholy.   “I’ve always liked the traveling.”  New places, new things.  New faces to feed her need to create and challenge and endure. 

No ordinary life, full of normal, to compete with her beloved music.

“Sure.”  Dave smiled at the server as a heaping plate of French toast settled between them.  “In another lifetime you’d have been a bard or a
seanchaí
, feet always wandering the earth.”

She snorted.  “I’m no storyteller.”  And not much of a singer, if it came to that.

“Of course you are.”  He winked and passed her the jam.  “Not all stories are told with words.”

She frowned as the rocks hummed in agreement.  They didn’t use words either.

He followed the jam pot with a lopsided jug.  “Blueberry syrup—made it myself.” 

She grinned at the adorable workmanship.  “Jenny and Jack?”  Dave doted on his grandkids.

“Yup.”  He picked up his fork.  “Made me five of them for Christmas.  Run their kindergarten teacher around in circles, those two do.”

“Either of them picked up a ladle or a fiddle yet?”  Most people in Margaree drifted toward one or the other.

“Nope.”  And Dave seemed plenty content to leave it that way.  He glanced at the syrup jug and grinned.  “I think they’re going to be famous artists.”

You had to admire a grandfather’s blindness.  Cass tilted the jug, inhaling the warm blueberry goodness that wafted off the purple waterfall.  “How do I get a truckful of this to follow me around?”

His eyes twinkled.  “Come back in the summer and pick a whole helluva lot of blueberries.”

That figured—the good stuff was never for sale.  She swirled the syrup around with her fork, mashing it into hills of blueberry jam.  Breakfast of the gods.

Dave poured a much-smaller helping over his own pancakes.  “You going to spend the whole three weeks here this time, or are you headed out on a walkabout?”

Cass shrugged.  Some years, she never left Margaree.  Others, she felt a need to hit the road for a few days.  “Not sure yet.”  The rocks hadn’t voted, and unless they did, she was staying warm and safe and close to the blueberry jam.

He nodded.  “Well, if you do head out, you might check out the Sea Trance Inn for me.  Way off the beaten track, a nice little B&B in a place called Fisher’s Cove.  Had a couple last week who reported a lovely stay there.”

Dave collected information like crows collected shiny things.  “Have they got anything to rival your French toast?”

“Not a chance.”  His eyebrows danced as he gathered up his papers to make room for delivery of a second platter.  “But the owner has a nice hand in the kitchen, I hear.  And his wife makes jewelry from sea glass.  Pretty stuff.”

That was preying on all her weaknesses at once.  She had a deep fondness for quirky and pretty, and he knew it.  “So where is this Fisher’s Cove, anyhow?”

“On the mainland.  Down from Peggy’s Cove.  Six, maybe seven hours from here.  Or take a stop in that place by New Glasgow you like.”

West and across the waters.  Cass sat quietly, checking in with the thrumming under her feet.  Eleven and a quarter months of the year, she went where Tommy’s schedule told her to go.  The other three weeks, she got to commune with the rocks.