wedge herself between them “—have no idea what you’ve done by coming here.”
“How in the hell could I?” Moira asked. “I barely know where here is.”
“Port Townsend,” Tierra said. “You’re in Port Townsend. You’re going to love it here. I have the cutest shop just downtown where I sell organic teas and handmade pottery and—”
“I got the Port Townsend part, thanks. I can read, it might shock you to know. What I don’t know is why I’m here. And why here is important. And where in the hell I got a twin sister!”
“Why don’t you come into the kitchen and I’ll brew you a nice cup of lavender and milk-thistle tea to calm your nerves,” Tierra offered.
“I’ll explain everything.”
“I’ll take the explanation, but you can keep your weeds.” Moira folded her arms across her chest to prevent Tierra from grasping them.
“You see how impossible this is?” Justine’s red-rimmed eyes were growing more frantic by the second. “What you’re hoping for is worse than a foolish fantasy. There is a reason you were separated. Did you never think of that?”
Tierra’s hands tightened into fists at her sides, the chunky rings adorning each finger making them look like medieval weapons. “Maybe if you had been willing to tell me the truth, I wouldn’t have had to cast a spell to find out.”
The wood floor vibrated beneath Moira’s feet. All around her, plants nodded and bobbed, their leaves shaking as if caught up in some ghostly gale.
“Tierra!” Justine barked. “Stop.”
All the energy rushed out of Tierra along with the breath she had been holding. Her chest rose in rapid bursts, but the eyes she turned to her aunt were wide and full of an emotion Moira was well acquainted with, pain. “How could you keep this from me?”
Justine’s hand found the high lace collar of her nightgown and clenched it at her throat. “You’re no more ready to know than you were to cast the spell that brought her to our doorstep.”
Side by side, they watched Aunt Justine stomp up the stairs and disappear back into the darkness where she seemed most at home.
“Well, that could have gone better,” Tierra said, brushing a stray lock of hair away from her face. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I think better there.”
Moira stood rooted to the spot, her gaze flicking between the kitchen door and an easy exit. “I ain’t sure I should be anywhere in this house with ol’ pickle-puss skulkin’ around upstairs.”
“Oh, she’s more bark than bite.” Tierra waved a dismissive hand. “Anyway, this house is as much yours as it is hers.”
“How’s that?” Like it or not, the casual announcement had her like a hook through the gills, and she wasn’t about to let Tierra wander into the kitchen unfollowed.
Compared to the kitchen in Uncle Sal’s fishing shack—little more than a galley with a couple electric burners that worked only when they felt like it—this space, with its stained glass accents, tiled backsplash, and dark wooden cabinets, might have been dropped right out of a palace.
It was the kind of cozy, clean hub Moira had imagined herself having heartfelt chats in with the mother she’d never known. They would sit at that island with steaming mugs of something-or-other, the shiny copper pots winking overhead like a chandelier, her gentle hands untangling the snarls that daily plagued Moira’s hair.
Tierra breezed over to the cabinet and slipped on an apron embroidered with the words Kitchen Witch. “This house has been in our family for ages. It’s yours now too.”
Moira looked around at the neat stacks of dishes, the lovely old table and chairs, the cookbooks and linens. Hers?
“Sit down,” Tierra urged. “Take a load off. Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out.”
Moira eased onto a stool at the kitchen island and watched as Tierra sifted through cabinets and drawers with a kind of dancing, unstudied ease. Pulling down mugs, hip-checking drawers closed while snipping bits from various plants and tossing them into a gleaming copper kettle.
“Well,” Moira began.
“Turmeric,” Tierra pronounced, pausing to consult a gleaming array of glass bottles. “Definitely.”
“’Scuse me?”
Tierra unburdened her long, slim arms of their bottles and vegetation. “Turmeric. It’s for your liver. From the looks of things, you could use a cleanse.”
Moira looked down into her bag as an excuse to give herself a subtle sniff. Seemed all right. “I clean myself just fine, thanks.”
“It’s not your outsides I’m worried about,” Tierra said. “It’s your insides. I can only imagine the kind of things you’ve been eating. Not to mention