The sudden tension of both Hunter and Mr. Niall’s bodies alerted me to it even before my eyes picked up on it. Below me on the page, fine, glowy blue writing was shimmering under the knife blade. I tried to read it but couldn’t—the words were strange, and some of the letters I didn’t recognize.
Taking a deep breath, I straightened up and put the athame on the table. “Did you recognize those words?” I asked.
Mr. Niall nodded, looking into my face for the first time all evening. “They were an older form of Gaelic.”
Then he picked up the athame and held it over the page. For a long minute nothing happened; then the blue writing shone again. Mr. Niall’s eyes seemed to drink.
“This is it,” he said, awe and excitement in his voice. “This is the kind of information I need. These are the secret clues I’ve been looking for.” He looked at me with grudging respect. “Thank you.”
“Nicely done, Morgan,” said Hunter. I smiled at him self-consciously and saw pride and admiration in his eyes.
All of a sudden I felt physically ill, as if my body had been caught in a sneak attack by a flu virus. I realized I had a headache and felt achy and tired. I needed to go home.
“It’s late,” I said to Hunter. “I better get going.”
Mr. Niall looked at me as I turned to go. “Cheers, Morgan.”
“’Bye, Mr. Niall.” I looked at Hunter. “What about the writing? Will it disappear if I leave?”
Hunter shook his head. “You’ve revealed it, so it should be visible for at least a few hours. Long enough for Da to transcribe it.” Hunter got my jacket and walked me out onto the porch.We both gave a quick glance around and felt each other cast our senses.
“Let me get my keys,” he said. “I’ll follow you to your house.”
I shook my head. “Let’s not go through this again.” Hunter was always trying to protect me more than I was comfortable with.
“How about if I just sleep outside your house, then, in my car?”
I looked up at him with amusement and saw he was only half joking. “Oh, no,” I protested. “No, I don’t need you to do that.”
“Maybe I need to do it.”
“Thank you—I know you’re worried about me. But I’ll be okay.You stay here and help your dad decipher Rose’s spell. I’ll call you when I get home, okay?”
Hunter looked unsure, but I kissed him good night about eight times and got into my car. It wasn’t that I felt I was invincible—it was just that when you go up against someone like Ciaran, there isn’t a whole lot you can do except face it. I knew he wanted to talk to me; I also knew that he would, when he wanted to. Whether Hunter was there or not.
As I drove off, I saw Hunter standing in the street, watching me until I turned the corner.
I felt like crap by the time I pulled into my driveway. I got out of Das Boot and locked it, grimaced at its blue hood that I still hadn’t gotten painted, and headed up the walk. The air didn’t smell like spring, but it didn’t smell like winter, either. My mom’s dying crocuses surrounded me.
It wasn’t really that late—a little after nine. Maybe I would take some Tylenol and watch the tube for a while before I went to bed.
“Morgan.”
My hand jerked away from the front door as if electrified. Every cell in my body went on red alert: my breathing quickened, my muscles tightened, and my stomach clenched, as if ready for war.
Slowly I turned to face Ciaran MacEwan. He was handsome, I thought, or if not strictly handsome, then charismatic. He was maybe six feet tall, shorter than Hunter. His dark brown hair was streaked with gray. When I looked into his eyes, brownish hazel and tilted slightly at the corners, it it was like looking into my own. The last time I had seen him, he had taken the shape of a wolf, a powerful gray wolf. When the council had suddenly arrived, he had faded into the woods, looking back at me with those eyes.
“Yes?” I said, willing myself to appear outwardly calm.
He smiled, and I could understand how my mother had fallen in love with him more than twenty years ago. “You knew I was coming,” he said in his lilting Scottish accent, softer, more beguiling than Hunter’s crisp English one.
“Yes. What do you want?” I crossed my arms over my chest, trying not to show that inside, my mind was racing, wondering if I should send a witch message to Hunter, if I should try to do some sort of spell myself, if I could somehow just disappear in in a puff of smoke.
“I told you, Morgan. I want to talk to you. I wanted to tell you I forgive you for the watch sigil. I wanted to try once again to convince you to join me, to take your rightful place as the heir to my power.”
“I can’t join you, Ciaran,” I said flatly.
“But you can,” he said, stepping closer. “Of course you can.You can do anything you want. Your life can be whatever you decide you want it to be. You’re powerful, Morgan—you have great, untapped potential. Only I can really show you how to use it. Only I can really understand you—because we’re so much alike.”
I’ve never been good at holding my temper, and more than once my mouth has gotten me into trouble. I continued that tradition now, refusing to admit to a fear close to terror. “Except one of us is an innocent high school student and the other of us is the leader of a bunch of murdering, evil witches.”
For just a moment I saw a flash of anger in his eyes, and I quit breathing, both dreading what he would do to me and wishing it were already over. My knees began to tremble, and I prayed that they wouldn’t give way.
“Morgan,” he said, and underlying his smooth voice was a fine edge of anger. “You’re being very provincial. Unsophisticated. Close-minded.”
“I know what it means.” He wouldn’t even need to hear the quaver in my voice—he was able to pick up on the fact that my nerves were stretched unbearably taut.
“Then how can you bear to lower yourself to that level? How can you be so judgmental? Are you so all-seeing, all-knowing that you can decide what’s right and wrong for me, for others? Do you have such a perfect understanding of the world that you assume the authority to pass judgment? Morgan, magick is neither good nor evil. It just is. Power is neither good nor evil. It just is. Don’t limit yourself this way. You’re only seventeen: You have a whole life of making magick—beautiful, powerful magick—ahead of you. Why close all the doors now?”
“I may not be all-knowing, but I know what’s right for me. I’ve figured out that it’s wrong to wipe out whole villages, whole covens in one blow,” I said, trying to keep my voice down so no one inside could hear me. “There’s no way you can justify that.”
Ciaran took a deep breath and clenched his fists several times. “You are my daughter; my blood is in your veins. I’m your family. I’m your father—your real father. Join with me and you’ll have a family at last.”
The quick pang of pain inside didn’t distract me.
“I have a family.”
“They’re not witches, Morgan,” he said painstakingly, as if I were an idiot. “They can neither understand you nor respect your power—as I can. It’s true, I’m selfish. I want the pleasure of teaching you what I know, of seeing you bloom like a rose, your extraordinary powers coming to fruition. I want to experience that with you. My other children... are not as promising.”
I thought of my half brother Killian, the only one of Ciaran’s other children I had met. I had liked Killian—he’d been fun, funny, irreverent, irresponsible. But not good material as an heir to an empire of power. Not as good as I would be.
“And you... you are the daughter of my mùirn beatha dàn,” he said softly. His soul mate, my mother.
“Who you killed,” I said just as softly, without anger. “You can ask me from now until I die, but I won’t ever join you. I can’t. In the circle of magick, I’m in the light. My power comes from the light, not the dark. I don’t want the power of the dark. I will never want the power of the dark.” I really hoped that was true.