Page 94 of Wicching Hour

The Importance of Pants

“Holy crap!” I ran into the gallery so I had a wall of windows, forty feet high, to watch the show.

The storm suddenly ended.

Faith held a hand over her mouth. “Oh, no. I forgot! Jake and Tyler will be sopping wet.”

Declan laughed. “That was incredible, and they’ll survive. Once we tell them—assuming it’s okay to tell them—they’ll think it’s as amazing as we do.”

I gave Faith a suspicious look. “When we had that heat wave a couple of weeks ago, was that you in a bad mood?”

She giggled, delighted by our reaction. “No. That was climate change.”

“She was kind enough to give us a cool breeze in the backyard, though,” Elizabeth said, “so we could have a nice dinner.”

I glanced over at Bracken, who was watching the rain droplets meander down the windows. “You don’t have to look. It’s done now.” He had a hard time with my wall of windows because they weren’t perfectly square. It was a very old building, after all.

He looked down, tapping his pockets, a sure sign he was agitated. I went to him and took his arm, leading him back into the studio.

He patted my gloved hand. “I’m fine. I just feel as though I’ve let people down. I disappeared when Elizabeth and Bridget were still adolescents. If I’d stayed, perhaps I could have been of service. At least been a gentle and attentive friend in the family.” He shook his head. “It was wrong of me to abandon everyone.”

He was speaking softly to me, but Elizabeth must have heard because she came up on his other side.

“Nonsense, Uncle Bracken. We saw how they treated you. It actually felt empowering when you walked away. I hadn’t known that was possible. You showed me there was another way.” She thought a moment. “Have you ever flown?”

He nodded. “Once. It was miserable.”

“They tell you to secure your own oxygen mask before you attempt to help others. That’s what you were doing. You had to find your own peace before you could offer it to others.”

He smiled and nodded. “I’ll try to think of it that way. Thank you.”

My eyes went to the table and my stomach dropped. “The maps are gone!”

“No, no,” Bracken said. “It’s all right. Given Cal’s interference tonight, I didn’t want to leave them behind.” He pulled his journal from his inside pocket again and took out the maps. “I’m afraid we got sidetracked. Perhaps we should get back to business.”

I let out a sigh of relief and tried to settle my jangling nerves. Flicking my fingers, I put down the shutters. It felt like we needed all the protection we could get for this discussion.

“Now the third map is interesting,” Bracken said, “but I’ll let Arwyn explain.”

He was allowing me to decide how much to share. “I’m going to give you guys the highlights because the whole story isn’t necessary for our planning. My dad came to the gallery opening. Before he left, I told him about the Cal situation and asked if he had any scouts or guards or whatever who could search the shore for demonic darkness.”

“Oh,” Faith breathed. “Good idea.”

“I didn’t hear back right away. I know Dad’s a big shot and busy, so I figured he just hadn’t had time to get to it yet. Anyway, I was sitting on the deck, listening to that horrible podcast about burning me?—”

“What?” Elizabeth interjected. “What podcast?”

Declan took over when I paused. “Arwyn has had issues with stalkers all her life.”

Elizabeth looked appalled. “Why were we not told?”

Robert glanced at Bracken. “As your uncle said, if she received safety and comfort from someone else, it would weaken the connection to her moth—her gran.”

“She was abducted by a pedophile,” Declan continued, “when she was three? Four?”

Elizabeth gasped and Faith looked close to tears.

I waved my hand, trying to get us back on topic. “The point is I have another stalker right now. When he confronted me on my deck a few weeks ago, I’d had enough of his ignoring my demands to leave, enough of the creepy looks and innuendo, so I froze his lungs for a few seconds.”

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