Blood Witch_ Book Three - Cate Tiernan [20]
I shook my head. “Tough,” I said shortly. I blew on my cider to cool it. “You guys stay downstairs, or Mom will have my ass.”
Mary K. sighed. Then she and Bakker brought their stuff to the dining room table and self-righteously started to do their homework. Or at least they pretended to do their homework.
As soon as my sister was gone, I waved my left hand in a circle, deasil, over my cider, and whispered, “Cool the fire.” The next time I took a sip, it was just right, and I beamed. I loved being a witch!
Cal grinned and said, “Now what? Do we have to stay downstairs, too?”
I let my mind wander tantalizingly over the possibilities if I didn’t practice what I preached but finally sighed and said, “I guess so. Mom would go insane if I was upstairs with an evil boy while she wasn’t home. I mean, you’ve probably got only one thing on your mind and all.”
“Yeah.” Cal raised his eyebrows and laughed. “But it’s one good thing, let me tell you.”
Dagda padded into the kitchen and mewed.
“Hey, little guy,” I crooned. I put my cider down on the counter and scooped him up. He began to purr hard, his small body trembling.
“He gets to go upstairs,” Cal pointed out, “and he’s a boy.”
I grinned. “They don’t care if he sleeps with me,” I said.
Cal let out a good-natured groan as I carried Dagda into the family room and sat on the couch. Cal sat next to me, and I felt the warmth of his leg against mine. I smiled at him, but his face turned solemn. He stroked my hair and traced the line of my chin with his fingers.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You surprise me all the time,” he said out of the blue.
“How?” I was stroking Dagda’s soft triangular head, and he was purring and kneading my knees.
“You’re just—different than I thought you would be,” he said. He put his arm across the back of the couch and leaned toward me as if trying to memorize my face, my eyes. He seemed so serious.
I didn’t know what to think. “What did you expect me to be like?” I asked. I could smell the clean laundry scent of his shirt. In my mind I pictured us stretched on the couch, kissing. We could do it. I knew that Mary K. and Bakker were in the other room, that they wouldn’t bother us. But suddenly I felt insecure, remembering again that I was almost seventeen and he was the first boy who’d ever asked me out, ever kissed me. “Boring?” I asked. “Kind of vanilla?”
His golden eyes crinkled at the edges, and he tapped my lips gently with one finger. “No, of course not,” he said. “But you’re so strong. So interesting.” His forehead creased momentarily, as if he regretted what he’d said. “I mean, right when I met you, I thought you were interesting and good-looking and the rest of it, and I could tell right away you had a gift for the craft. I wanted to get close to you. But you’ve turned out to be so much more than that. The more I know you, the more you feel equal to me, like a real partner. Like I said, my mùirn beatha dàn. It’s kind of a huge idea.” He shook his head. “I’ve never felt this way before.”
I didn’t know what to say. I looked at his face, still amazed by how beautiful I found it, still awed by the feelings he awoke in me. “Kiss me,” I heard myself breathe. He leaned closer and pressed his lips to mine.
After several moments Dagda shifted impatiently in my lap. Cal laughed and shook his head, then drew away from me as if deciding to exercise better judgment. He reached down and pulled a pad of paper and pen out of his book bag and handed them to me.
“Let’s see you write your runes,” he said.
I nodded. It wasn’t kissing, but it was magick—a close second. I began to draw, from memory, the twenty-four runes. There were others, I knew, that dated from later times, but these twenty-four were considered the basics.
“Feoh,” I said softly, drawing a vertical line, then two lines that slanted up and to the right from it. “For wealth.”
“What else is it for?” asked Cal.