A Celtic Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,5
from Peggy's Cove. Six, maybe seven hours from here. Or take a stop in that place by New Glasgow you like."
West and across the waters. Cass sat quietly, checking in with the thrumming under her feet. Eleven and a quarter months of the year, she went where Tommy's schedule told her to go. The other three weeks, she got to commune with the rocks.
The quiet humming signaled approval. "Think I'll need a reservation?"
Dave glanced around his empty dining room. "In March? If you do, I want to know their secret."
She chuckled at his woebegone look. "You'll have a full house tonight." Dinner was almost as good as the French toast - and the parlor music was a Margaree institution.
He winked. "Gonna exercise that arm of yours, are you?"
"Maybe." She'd sit on the couch, play a little. And people would come. They always did.
He'd been invaded so darned often it was beginning to feel normal.
Marcus looked over at Lizzie, playing an endless game of Knock Over The Block Tower on the floor with Morgan. Since she was still here, he should probably feed her. "You hungry?"
"Uh, huh." His young guest squinted at a block that was apparently misbehaving. "No carrots, though. Orange stuff is yucky."
Last week it had been green stuff. Apparently Lizzie shared the usual witch aversion to vegetables. He was getting smarter, however. "That's unfortunate. I have pumpkin eggnog, but it's decidedly orange."
"Can Morgan have some too?" The block tower tumbled to raucous noise and two little-girl grins. "We both love pumpkin the very best."
It was damnably difficult not to laugh. "Would a grilled cheese sandwich with that please Your Highness?" He had mashed turkey and peas for Morgan, but he was pretty sure that wasn't going to pass muster with the head tower engineer.
"Okay. No crust and lots and lots of butter, please, because I'm a skinny little thing and Gran says I need to fatten up."
He might not be very smart about womenfolk, but even Marcus knew better than to discuss fat, skinny, or anything in between. "Lots of butter, coming right up." And some grilled onions in the cheese had gone undetected by the previous day's invaders. Marcus Buchanan, vegetable pusher. Oh, how the mighty bachelor had fallen.
Lizzie eyed him hard. "Nothing weird."
Clearly she was made of smarter stuff than Sean and Kevin. He reached into the fridge for the block of cheddar cheese, trying not to be amused, and pulled out the onions, too. He'd appreciate them, even if his pint-sized dictator wouldn't.
After the usual clattering and banging required to get lunch started in the Buchanan household, he looked back over at the girls. They'd moved on from tower building - now Lizzie had constructed a ramp out of a motley collection of paper-towel tubes and was zooming toy cars into Morgan's lap.
He eyed the tube. Seven-year-old engineering sometimes had limitations. "I have some duct tape if you'd like to reinforce your ramp."
Lizzie's eyes lit up. "The pink stuff?"
A year ago, he'd been entirely unaware that duct tape came in every color of the rainbow. "Roads and tunnels are usually gray, my dear."
"Not this one. Morgan's a girl. She needs the pink stuff or she'll grow up and fart and wipe her nose on her sleeve." Lizzie collected scattered toy cars and readied her ramp again. "Somebody has to teach her how to be a real girl."
Marcus eyed the Hot Wheels, hand-me-downs from two boys who claimed Morgan didn't have enough toys, and wisely kept his mouth shut. Lizzie zoomed another car down the tube tunnel. Morgan flailed wildly and missed it entirely, almost knocking herself over in the process. Followed by much giggling.
Marcus hid a smile and flipped over two sandwiches. His, heavy on the onions and light on the grease, settled back into the frying pan without a sound. Lizzie's, coated in butter, sizzled like a snowball tossed into a cauldron.
Not that he'd ever done any such thing.
Stop laughing. He scowled out the window in the general direction of the sky and his brother Evan's current domicile. It wasn't me who threw the first one, and Aunt Moira can't make you scrub from way up there.
A quiet snicker behind him was all the warning he got that he had company. He pulled his mind barriers down with a loud thunk - rude under most circumstances, but when someone had just transported into your kitchen and stood there eavesdropping, they deserved rude.
"What, you think I should have ported into the street?" Nell looked out