Blood Witch_ Book Three - Cate Tiernan [44]
“Hey, cute thing,” I said, scratching him behind his ears. He settled on my lap, and I started reading.
Fire.
The word rolled around my head, and I glanced up from the page. My birth mother was right. Fire was different. I’d loved fire since I was little: its warmth, the mesmerizing golden red glow of the flames. I even loved the noise fire made as it ate the dry wood. To me it had sounded like laughter—both exciting and frightening in its hungry appetite and eager destruction.
My eyes wandered to the burning logs. I shifted carefully on the couch, trying not to disturb Dagda, though he could probably sleep through almost anything. Facing the flames, I let my head rest against the back of the couch. I set the BOS aside. I was one hundred percent comfortable.
I decided to try to scry.
First I released all the thoughts circling my brain, one by one. Bree, looking at me standing in the snow by the side of the road. Hunter. His face was hard to get rid of—and when I pictured it, I got angry. Over and over I saw him, silhouetted against a leaden gray sky, his green eyes looking like reflections of Irish fields, his arrogance coming off him in waves.
My eyelids fluttered shut. I breathed in and out slowly. The tension drained from each muscle in my body. As I felt myself drift more completely into a delicious concentration, I became more and more aware of my surroundings: Dagda’s small heart beating quickly as he slept, the ecstatic joy of the fire as it consumed the wood.
I opened my eyes.
The fire had transformed into a mirror.
There in the flames I saw my own face, looking back: the long sweep of brown hair, the kitten in my lap.
What do you want to know? the fire whispered to me. Its voice was raspy and sibilant—seductive yet fleeting, fading away in acrid curls of smoke.
I don’t understand anything, I answered. My face was serene, but my silent voice cried out in frustration. I don’t understand anything.
Then in the fire a curtain of flame was drawn back. I saw Cal, walking through a field of wheat as golden as his eyes. He swept out his hand, looking beautiful and godlike, and it felt like he was offering the entire field to me as a gift. Then Hunter and Sky came up behind him, hand in hand. Their pale, bleached elegance was beautiful in its own way, but I felt a terrible sense of danger suddenly. I closed my eyes as if that might blot it out.
When I opened them again, I found myself walking through a forest so thickly grown that barely any light reached the ground. My bare feet were silent on the rotting leaves. Soon I saw figures standing in the woods, hidden among the trees. One of them was Sky again, and she turned and smiled at me, her white-blond hair glowing like an angel’s halo around her. Then she turned to the person behind her: it was Raven, dressed all in black. Sky leaned over and kissed Raven gently, and I blinked in surprise.
Many disjointed images flowed over one another next, sliding across my consciousness, hard to follow. Robbie kissing Bree . . . my parents watching me walk away, tears running down their faces . . . Aunt Eileen holding a baby.
And then, as if that movie were over and a new reel began, I saw a small, white clapboard house, set back on a slight rise among the trees. Curtains fluttered from the open windows. A neat, tended garden of holly bushes and mums lined the front of the house.
Off to one side was Maeve Riordan. My birth mother.
I drew in my breath. I remembered her from another vision I’d had, a vision of her holding me when I was an infant. She smiled and beckoned to me, looking young and goofy in her 1980s clothes. Behind her was a large square garden of herbs and vegetables, bursting with health. She turned and headed toward the house. I followed her—around the side, where a narrow walk separated the house from the lawn. Turning to face me again, she knelt and gestured underneath the house, pointing.
Confusion came