at his side, anticipating her favorite part.
The power that came when he called to it was disturbingly strong. Annoyed, he shoved a line of it into the soil. And tried not to laugh as a whole clump of something lavender popped up. Definitely not daffodils - and they matched Morgan's eyes. "Opinionated flowers, are you?"
His daughter leaned over and buried her face in the flowers. He watched carefully - she was still fairly confused about the difference between sniffing a blossom and eating it, and his knowledge of edible plants was far too sparse to let her go about eating the greenery.
She pushed herself to her feet, a fair accomplishment for a child in snow pants, boots, and three layers of woolens. And signed for "more."
His knees weren't as limber as hers. Marcus cleared a patch a foot away from the clump of purple and sent another pulse of power into the earth. And then frowned at the flower that rose up under his fingers. Orange this time.
Be darned if he was asking Sophie why the cursed plants were changing.
He wasn't an earth witch, dammit.
Morgan grinned in approval - and then toddled three steps and plunked down again, looking at the ground expectantly.
Marcus sighed. It was going to take them all of the remaining hours of daylight to go a hundred feet. Again. Apparently they had to carpet the village in flowers first.
And soft-headed old man that he had become, he would probably go along with it.
Cass pulled her car to the side of the road, amused. When Dave said "off the beaten track," he wasn't kidding. Fisher's Cove wasn't more than three or four miles off the main highway - but she'd venture a guess that very few tourists found it by accident.
Not the most logical place to set up an inn. Hopefully it would be one of those quirky, underappreciated gems that she loved. Dave rarely sent her wrong.
She was still a little way from the huddle of cottages, and slightly uphill. Until she'd come around the bend in the road, she'd been fairly convinced that her scrawled directions had been written by pixies.
But the village was here, tucked behind some small, rocky hills that thoroughly hid it from the rest of planet Earth.
And like the music that flowed in her veins, it was ageless. Houses on the edge of run-down, framed by brambles and browns that were probably lovely gardens in the summer. A couple of nets hanging, and a cove with boats visible just beyond the village.
Not a postcard - but not an eyesore, either. A humble, hardworking sort of place.
Oddly Irish. Home, without all the restrictions.
A small group of children dashed out of a house and made a mad run for the front door of the church. Cass grinned - the church had been their indoor playground when she was a kid, too. The succession of priests had growled at them, issued proclamations about heavenly manners, and left out plates of cookies.
Her stomach rumbled at the thought of cookies. She reached over and grabbed the last of the PEI fried potato skins she'd snagged on her way out of Jamieson's. The rest of the year, she ate like a normal person. Something about Nova Scotia turned her into a hungry bear.
Which seemed backwards - this was supposed to be hibernation, Cassidy Farrell style.
She crunched, her potato-eating genes entirely happy. And wondered why the rocks had brought her here.
Probably not for a game of hide-and-seek in the church pews, and the village wasn't big enough for a decent pub. But the rocks seemed to think she belonged here, and their tugging had been very consistent with Dave's scrawled directions.
She grimaced and reached for the gearshift. This was way too much thinking to be doing about a fishing village. She'd found a comfy spot to lay her head in places far smaller and dingier than this. The rocks would make their point clear in time - they always did. Pulling her car back out onto the road, she drove slowly down the hill.
And smiled as she spied the biggest building in town. That must be the inn.
The wind rattled something fierce this afternoon. Moira walked to the window, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders a little more tightly. Nearly enough to shake an old witch's bones, it was.
It had blown like that back home this time of year.
She lifted a cup of tea to her lips, inhaling her gran's old recipe.
A lot of nostalgia today - and