Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 47894 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47894 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 239(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
There were ladder-back chairs around a simple maple table in the kitchen, the seats made of woven rush that had been described in diaries, but were gone before my grandfather was born, replaced by the sturdy mahogany and cherry furniture that inhabited our space, thick and durable, what I had grown up with and which I would pass on.
“Happy?” Giles prodded me.
“I am,” I replied, glancing around, admiring the heavy quilts on the rack in another corner, both the hearth and fireplace making the room cozy and warm. “Thank you. It’s much better.”
“What tipped you off?”
“Mostly the front door,” I said, gesturing at it. The witch bells had returned, the lock was gone, and it looked as it did in my time—a heavy, six-inch-deep carved mahogany beast of protection.
“The door?”
“It doesn’t need a lock,” Lorne told him. “The cottage knows who belongs inside and who does not.”
At the mention of the word cottage from Lorne, the floor, the walls, everything shuddered, and the familiar smell that had inhabited the space since my husband had taken up residence in the Corey home wafted through the air. The scent was pumpkin—not pie, but like in a field ready to be picked, some broken open by animals, the heart of it, the pulp—as well as baking bread, chai, and a trace of crisp fall air. We’d met in autumn, and the cottage commemorated that by changing at times what it smelled like inside. There were still remembrances of my grandparents and others, but mostly, it was Lorne. The cottage had a soft spot for the man.
“Oh, there’s my girl,” he murmured.
“What is happening?” Giles asked sharply.
“You’re about a minute and a half away from your time-slip not holding, at least in the cottage,” I informed him.
He scoffed. Loudly. “I should be concerned with a mousey little witch?”
“Why does everyone always think that?” Lorne asked me.
“Much like the fae, who don’t do any research, neither does he.”
“I see.”
The cottage shook again, this time far more violently.
Lorne grabbed my hand, yanked me after him, and darted to the front door. He opened it, pressed me against the frame, which I took hold of, and then he plastered himself to my back and held on.
“The hell is going on?” Giles yelled at me.
As I suspected, our version of the cottage knew it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It shook off the hedge-rider’s spell, which it could do. It had been built on sacred, warded earth, had been reinforced with iron to bar the fae, and had been bonded to each of the guardians of Corvus and had absorbed, over centuries, pieces of magic of every Corey who ever lived within its walls. Because Giles had never been a resident of the cottage, he had no inkling how powerful it was. He was about to learn.
I closed my eyes as the magic corrected what had been inflicted on our home. Giles was screaming, and I knew it had to hurt. I’d never experienced having my own magic undone, as I made certain, always, as I’d been taught, to use it only for the highest and best. My grandfather had never had any of the seams of his ripped apart either, but he knew others, in the coven he’d been part of for a short time, that had.
I heard things breaking, and shivered when the blast of cold air struck me.
“I can’t say why, but I feel like we need to let go,” Lorne insisted over the howling wind. Even speaking into my ear, I barely heard him.
The thing was, if his gut was telling him something, there was a reason and that was my magic working through him. Because I trusted him in all things, I let go, feeling his arms close around me at the same time. It was like flying, except I was being whipped around, and even when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see a thing. I was surprised when we both bounced down onto our couch. It was as though we fell through the ceiling. And I knew that wasn’t possible, but this was magic, after all.
As we sat together, getting our bearings, I realized the interior of the cottage was precisely as it had before we left for James’s home hours before.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I said with a sigh.
“Wait,” Lorne cautioned me, getting up and going to the door, opening it, and finding Giles there, shivering.
Shoving by him, he walked out onto the porch as I scrambled up off the couch to join him. A sleigh went by then, drawn by an enormous black horse wearing what looked like a heavy coat. I had the fleeting thought of how much the horse must have been valued before the man driving waved to Lorne and called out a greeting.
Turning to Lorne, I said, “A sleigh?”