The dark-haired woman whacked him on the head with a wooden spoon. “Sit!” she said. “You too, Sebastian. Lee. Teaser.” Each name was accompanied by her pointing to a chair. “Glorianna, you and Caitlin Marie need to talk, so you girls go into the parlor. Lynnea, you go with them. And the rest of you be quiet!”
In the hush that followed, Michael looked at Glorianna and recognized a woman who was working up to being well and truly mad. He figured her anger was going to be generously heaped on his head for making everyone aware of Sebastian’s infidelity, but he intended to do his best to see that the ripe bastard got a fair share of it.
“I think the Magician and I need to discuss a few things and clear the air,” Glorianna said.
“Mud wallow?” Lee asked.
“Lee!”
He hunched his shoulders when the older woman smacked the table with her spoon. Then she looked at Glorianna. “And I think you need to speak to Caitlin Marie. You may be a powerful Landscaper and a Guide of the Heart, but in this house you are my daughter, and you will do as you’re told.”
The air snapped and crackled between the two women.
Lynnea put an arm around Caitlin’s shoulders. “Let’s go into the parlor like Nadia asked.” She and Caitlin disappeared into another room.
Glorianna hesitated for one more crackling moment, then followed them.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” Nadia said, glaring at the men around her kitchen table. “You’re grown men and you’re acting like…like…”
“Hooligans?” Michael suggested, giving Nadia his charming smile.
She whacked him on the shoulder. Apparently charm didn’t work with the women in this family.
“Hooligans,” Nadia said. “I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like the way you’re behaving. Yes. Hooligans.”
“Thanks very much,” Lee said dryly. “Now you’ve taught her another name to call us when she’s annoyed about something.”
Nadia gave Lee a whack.
“He started it,” Sebastian said, pointing at Michael. “Coming in here and acting all pissy. Accusing me of being unfaithful—and with my cousin no less.”
Cousin? Glorianna hadn’t said anything about being Sebastian’s cousin. In fact, she…No, a prick of jealousy had spurred his assumption that she was defending a lover. But after making what he considered to be an honest mistake, she had helped him down the wrong path by not correcting that assumption. “She’s got some brass to be blaming me,” he muttered.
“That’s enough,” Nadia snapped. She gave each one of them the Stare. “You’re not little boys who can call each other names and waggle your privates at each other.”
“Trust me, Auntie,” Sebastian said, “there’s no one sitting at this table who is interested in waggling his privates at another man.”
“Sebastian Justicemaker.”
Sebastian winced.
Michael felt a foolish urge to stick out his tongue and say “Nyah, nyah,” but Nadia was standing next to him and beat his Aunt Brighid by a long arm when it came to retaliating against male foolishness. He hadn’t had anyone whack him with a spoon since he was fifteen, and he’d figured he’d outgrown that stage of his life.
Apparently not.
“As I said”—Nadia gave each of them another dose of the Stare—“you’re not little boys who can indulge in name-calling and taking pokes at one another. You’re powerful men who have a powerful influence on this world. And starting trouble just to make trouble is unacceptable behavior from every one of you. And that goes for you too, Teaser.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Teaser muttered, slouching in his chair. “Just said the girl had a nice pair of tits.”
“Where I come from, if a man says something like that to a girl’s brother, the next thing he’d better be saying is the date of the wedding,” Michael said darkly.
“Well, we’re not in your part of the world, are we?” Teaser replied in a prissy tone of voice. “If you’re going to get all scrappy about the way we live, go back where you came from.”
I don’t know how.
Powerful men…who had a powerful influence on the world.
Remembering the sandbox—and how the world had changed to reflect his feelings—he leaned back in his chair and looked out the kitchen window. Nothing appeared different, but how could he know how much influence he had on the world? Was a nearby village filling up with heavy fog at this very moment? Was some farmer’s field suddenly full of stones that might lame a horse or break a plow? How was he to know?
“Did I break the world?” He almost expected to hear Aunt Brighid’s voice saying, You’re puffing up your consequence, boy. But no one in that kitchen dismissed his question—and a true, pure fear began to shiver through him as he looked up at Nadia. “You said we were powerful men. I’m a Magician. A luck-bringer. An ill-wisher. The world listens to me. I can make things happen.” Memories stirred, and he added in a horrified whisper, “Even when I don’t mean to.”
Nadia tossed the wooden spoon onto the table, then hurried to the back door, pausing long enough to yell “Glorianna!” before she was out the door and running toward her walled garden. A moment later, when Glorianna rushed into the kitchen, Lee pointed to the door and said, “Go.”
She hesitated a moment, and Michael saw the flash of understanding as their eyes met. Then she was gone, following her mother into the gardens.
Michael’s stomach started rolling. It was getting hard to breathe. “Rory Calhoun.” The memory sank its teeth into his heart.
He’d been sixteen years old and already planning to leave Raven’s Hill the day young Rory Calhoun and two friends met their fate in the old quarry.
He’d gone for a walk, wearing the new coat Aunt Brighid had bought him as a fare-thee-well gift. Inside, he was a swirl of fear and excitement at the prospect of leaving home for the first time since his father had settled him, his mother, and baby Caitlin into the cottage that, along with the land that came with it, had been the sole inheritance the man could offer his wife and children. Then his father had resumed the wandering life and, two years later, his mother had walked into the sea.
But that day, Michael wasn’t thinking beyond the dimly remembered romance of the wandering life, had seen it as a way to escape the looks people gave him and Caitlin Marie. He had seen a way to earn some coins with the music he’d taught himself to play on the tin whistle he’d found in a trunk of his father’s belongings.
That day, his mind and heart had been filled with the sense of adventure and the pleasure of wearing a new coat instead of a patched, secondhand one. Then Rory and two friends began following him, taunting him, throwing clods of dirt that just missed hitting him and dirtying his new coat.
Until Rory had thrown a clod that hit him square in the back. Stung that the people in this village wouldn’t let him have one nice thing, he turned and looked at Rory. “May you get everything you deserve.”
“Ooooo,” Rory said, waving his hands. “He’s ill-wishing me. Ooooo.”
They continued to follow him until they reached the old quarry. Then they abandoned him to play “dare you”—a game all the boys in the village had played at one time or another to prove manliness or bravery or some other foolish thing. Usually the game was played on the other side of the quarry, where there were slabs and ledges of stone that weren’t too far below the top. A fall on that side of the quarry might end with a broken leg or arm. On this side was a steep slope that changed to a sheer drop to the quarry floor. Any boy who fell on this side of the quarry would end up at the bottom, broken and dying.
He’d sometimes wondered what would have happened if he’d kept going, kept walking. But the air around him had trembled with a discordant song, and something about those young voices pulled at him. So he’d turned and saw them standing much too close to the edge. But that was the whole point of playing “dare you.” The quarry’s edge wasn’t stable. Walk too close and a section of stone might break away. The winner of the game was whichever boy stood closest to the edge and stamped a foot, daring the stone to break.