The Lost Enchantress (20 page)

A few minutes later, she opened the door of the house to the familiar aroma of Grand’s special Irish stew. It was the ultimate comfort food, the sort of dish that had to be assembled early in the day and left to simmer on low heat for hours so that the flavors had time to blend. Eve was positive there had been neither sight nor scent of any such blending going on when she was home earlier, yet there was now a big enamel pot of steaming homemade goodness on the stove. How it got there was the “secret” in Grand’s secret recipe.

The table was set with dark blue placemats and napkins, and chunky white bowls. A silver basket held freshly baked rolls.

“Doesn’t it smell great in here?” Rory asked her. “I’m starving.”

“Me too.” Eve suddenly realized how true that was, and that it might be better to wait and have
the talk
on a full stomach. Unless Grand insisted on having answers and explanations right away. She had, after all, returned home to find the pendant, Rory
and
Eve missing.

Her grandmother finished fussing with the fire burning in the hearth between the kitchen and dining room and turned. But instead of the barrage of questions, she offered Eve a welcoming smile.

“That’s what a cook likes to hear,” she said. “Now sit so we can eat.”

Grand reached for the ladle, but Rory was quicker.

“You sit,” Rory told her firmly. “I’ll serve.”

“That would be lovely.” Grand sat and placed her napkin in her lap.

Eve followed suit, still eyeing her grandmother curiously. Was it possible Grand hadn’t noticed the pendant missing? And had just assumed Rory and she were both running late without explanation?

God, no. What was she thinking? Grand didn’t have to notice . . . she would just
know
. But she was kind enough to let them finish eating, with the dishes cleared and tea poured, before swinging a no-nonsense gaze from one of them to the other.

“And now I’ll hear all about what you two have been up to today.”

E
ve looked across the table at Rory, who looked back at her with a rueful expression.

“I should go first this time,” she said to Eve. “I’m the one responsible for everything that happened.” She turned to Grand. “I guess I should start by telling you that I heard you and Eve talking last night. I didn’t mean to listen in . . .” She hesitated, shrugged. “But I didn’t stop either. I’m sorry, Grand.”

“And what did you hear us say?”

“Pretty much everything, I think. About the talisman and the goddess and how there’s magic in our blood. Ancient magic, and maybe divine. I know I heard about something divine.” Her tone grew more excited and her words came faster. “And about how if a man’s heart is true, the crystals in the hourglass will turn red when he touches it. Is that true, Grand?”

Grand drew a deep breath and held it as she glanced in Eve’s direction.

She was waiting for a sign from Eve as to how to proceed. They’d made a bargain and Grand had honored it to the best of her ability. And she would continue to do so if that’s what Eve wanted. Even though she didn’t agree with it, she would bow to Eve’s demand for secrecy in the interest of holding together the family she had left, the family she loved.

But Eve no longer wanted complicity from Grand; she wanted her help.

“It’s okay, Grand,” Eve told her, sounding quite calm and confident despite having no flaming idea if anything was okay or ever would be okay again. All she could do was plod ahead and hope for the best. “Secrets are one thing, lies are another. Rory is nearly an adult and she deserves the truth.”

Happily convinced, Grand exhaled slowly and nodded. “Yes, Rory dear, everything you heard me tell your aunt last night is true. You are an enchantress by birth, as am I, and Eve.”

“And my mother?”

“Oh God! Chloe.” Eve groaned. “I’ll have to call her later and fill her in. On everything.”

“Don’t worry,” advised Rory. “She won’t be as surprised as you might think. She’s had her suspicions just like I have. We’ve talked about it.”

Eve angled her head. “You have?”

“Sure. Mostly me.” She tucked her hair behind her ear, her green eyes intent. “I had no idea it was anything this huge, but I’ve known there was something special about Grand since I was ten.”

“Oh dear,” Grand said with a small, uneasy smile. “I did try to be . . . discreet.”

“Oh, you were,” Rory assured her, grinning. “I was just sneaky for my age.”

“What happened when you were ten?” Eve asked.

“I was outside playing with some of my friends and we ran out of juice. I brought the pitcher in to get more and Grand said she would take care of it. On my way out I hung around the back door and I saw Grand refill it by just touching the rim. I was blown away.”

Grand closed her eyes and reached for her tea.

“I was dying to know how you did it,” Rory told her, “but I knew it was supposed to be a secret, something I shouldn’t talk about. After that I paid a lot more attention and I saw all kinds of other amazing stuff.”

Eve could easily imagine the amazing stuff she was referring to because she’d seen it herself growing up. “And you told your mom about what you saw?”

She nodded. “Not until a long time afterwards. But yeah, I finally told her. I told her I thought Grand was some kind of magician, that she could sweep the floor or make things disappear or change the color of the paint on the wall by just waving her hand or saying a few weird words.”

“Not weird, darling, Irish. What you heard is the old tongue.”

“Can you teach it to me?”

The gleam in Rory’s eyes told Eve that Irish wasn’t the only thing her niece was hoping to learn from Grand.

“Of course,” Grand assured her, then thought again and slid a cautious glance toward Eve. “Well, maybe. We’ll have to see.”

“What did your mother say when you told her?” Eve was beginning to suspect that the person most in the dark around there had been her. Oh, sweet irony.

“She said I was probably right, but that it was up to Grand to tell us if she wanted us to know about it. And she said—” She stopped abruptly and turned her attention to lining her teaspoon up with her saucer.

“What else did she say, Rory?”

Reluctantly she met Eve’s gaze. “She said talking about it would make you sad and we didn’t want to do that.”

Emotion welled up inside Eve. She rubbed the outside corner of one eye and waited until she felt able to speak in a steady voice. “Your mother is a lot smarter than she sometimes gets credit for being. It was always me, not Grand, who wanted to keep this a secret from you and your mother. I did it because I thought it was the only way to keep you safe from harm. And all the while you were keeping a secret of your own so I wouldn’t be hurt.”

“What matters is that all of you were acting out of love,” declared Grand, reaching for their hands and giving both a quick squeeze. “And you did splendidly. In all these years no one did get hurt. But now things have changed.”

“I’ll say. We’ve been kaleidoscoped.” Seeing their quizzical looks, Rory pantomimed looking into a kaleidoscope and turning it. “One little turn changes everything.”

“It does indeed,” Grand agreed. “I’m afraid you’re right, Eve. The time for secrets has passed.”

Rory clapped her hands in excitement. “Good. Because I’m dying to hear more . . . to hear everything.”

“And you shall,” said Grand. “
After
you finish telling me about today.”

Rory sighed and raised her hand level with her shoulder, elbow bent, palm flat. “Guilty. Again. Today was all my fault; I took off after school without letting anyone know I had plans. I meant to, but . . . I guess I was sort of distracted.”

“And then I panicked and went tearing out of here to look for her in such a hurry I didn’t think to leave a note either,” Eve said.

“Well, that explains why it looked like a whirlwind had passed through here,” Grand remarked. “I walked in and saw your purse upended, cupboard doors left open, and the garage door too.”

“I forgot to close the garage door?” Eve shook her head. “I must have been even more frantic than I’d realized. I’m sorry we worried you, Grand.”

“Oh, I wasn’t worried,” Grand countered.

Eve and Rory exchanged a look as Grand calmly and unhurriedly took a sip of tea.

Eve’s eyes narrowed. “You did notice that the pendant was also missing?”

“And also my fault,” Rory blurted before Grand had time to speak. “I took it.”

“Yes. I know,” Grand said.

Rory scrunched her brow. “You know? How?”

“Because I set the wards, of course. Any competent mage can set a simple protection ward. Creating something more layered and multifunctional is a far greater challenge. And, if I may say so, something of a specialty of mine. Some have even called it an art. As soon as I saw the wards in tatters and the talisman gone, I knew it was with you. I also know that Eve found you—and the talisman—by scrying.” She turned and looked directly at Eve. “That can’t have been easy for you.”

“I managed,” Eve said, not really surprised by the revelations.

“And splendidly, I’ve no doubt of that. But of course, I have never doubted you, or your abilities.” She held Eve’s gaze just long enough to make sure her meaning was understood, and then leaned back in her chair, arms folded. “That much I know. What I don’t know, Rory, is
why
you took it.”

Eve listened as Rory told Grand what she’d done with the talisman and what she’d hoped to accomplish, eagerly explaining her scientific reasoning.

When she was through, Grand peered at her from beneath sharply arched brows. “With a boy you hardly know?” She shook her head. “Silly child. Did you really think to improve on the work of a goddess?”

Rory appeared startled by the question.

“The talisman was a gift,” explained Grand, “bestowed for a very specific reason, so that a T’airna woman could be sure the man she loved was true of heart.
The man she loved.
It was never intended to weed out the runts of the litter or to be used like one of those foolish contraptions people strut along the beach with in hopes of finding lost coins and trinkets in the sand.”

“Metal detectors,” Rory supplied, no longer smiling.

“Yes. Those. The talisman is meant to sanction what the heart knows. Not to do the work every woman must do for herself. Love is never simple or tidy or easy. You’re meant to get your hands dirty and your heart bruised, and yes, maybe even broken, along the way. You’re meant to earn it, so that when it finally comes you’ll understand what a prize you have and treasure it.”

Eve felt a sudden lump in her throat. A good lump, a happy lump, a lump of dreamy anticipation. And looking across the table at the way Rory was biting her lip, she suspected there was a similar lump in her throat. Grand was good. In a handful of minutes and a handful of words, she said all the things Rory needed to hear about love, about its price and its possibilities. She said the things Eve wished she’d had the wisdom to say. She had—to use Rory’s word—kaleidoscoped both of them.

Hours later, they said their good nights and went off to their own beds, with plenty to think about until sleep claimed them.

Eve carried her leather tote to her room out of habit; she wouldn’t be doing any of the prep work she’d brought home from the office. When she dropped the tote on her bed, a flash of red caught her eye and she remembered the single rose she’d impulsively held on to after asking a newsroom intern to distribute the other hundred and seventy-nine to anyone who wanted them.

The damp napkin she’d wrapped around the stem had dried and the rose was wilted, the edges of the velvety petals dark and beginning to shrivel. It was clearly beyond rescue, but she fetched a glass of water to put it in anyway, and placed the glass where she could see it from her bed. And smiled as she turned out the light.

On the other side of the house, with the connecting door closed and locked, Grand moved aside shoe boxes and hatboxes and boxes containing her out-of-season clothing in order to reach the farthest corner of her bedroom closet. She took out the tapestry valise tucked away there and carried it to her bed. The once bright colors—gold and burgundy and evergreen—had long since given way to their muted shadow selves, and at the bottom edges and along the zipper, where the threads were worn away, there was no color left at all.

It didn’t matter. To Brigid T’airna’s eye, it looked the same as it had decades earlier when she stepped off the ship that had carried her and all her worldly belongings across the ocean. A good many of those belongings—and all the ones that mattered most to her—had been in that bag and the bag had never been out of her sight.

Among them was a pair of rose bushes, which had been carefully dug up, by her own hand and in the dark of night, from the grand estate where her beloved Liam had been groundskeeper. She’d pruned them so they fit in the bottom of the valise, and tended them as devotedly as a mother bird tends the eggs in her nest, through storms and sickness, all the way from Ireland to America. Aside from her memories, the roses and her unborn child were all she had left of the only man she’d ever loved, and she was determined to see to it both thrived in their new home.

And for a time they both had. Her darling Diana was gone now, and the roses were lost to her as well. But beneath the silver hair and wrinkled skin she was as feisty as the day she set sail, and as determined to see to it that what mattered most to her would endure. The old valise still held one thing of great import. It was like no other in existence, in fact. And it had been years since she’d looked upon it.

Now she found the pocket cleverly concealed between the tapestry and the inside lining and removed a scroll tied with a black silk cord, and then she oh-so-carefully unrolled the fragile parchment and began to read.