Across the kitchen, Rowan choked audibly on his mulled wine. A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in Briar’s throat. Given how Ciara looked at him, it sounded like a threat.
“I’ll let you make my dress for me,” she added benevolently.
He pointed to her diary. “Are you planning weddings in there?”
She gave a theatrical, long-suffering sigh. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Sorcha said, “She hid the key and can’t remember where she put it, didn’t she?”
“I put it somewhere safe!”
“I know a bit of magic that could unlock it,” Briar said.
Ciara’s eyes grew wide, and she picked up the diary to slam it in front of him. “Show me, show me!”
“Say please, Ciara, how many times have I told you?” Sorcha said.
“Please!”
Rowan came over to watch as Briar lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s an old type of magic. It needs a different kind of tithe. You’ve got to tell a secret, something you’ve never told anyone.” Though a rare spell, certain words, or their meanings, held power. The confession of a deeply held secret unlocked the truth, and thus could free something sealed away.
A deep frown of concentration came over Ciara as she searched for a secret to tell. At a loss, she cast about the room, eyes falling on the turkey. She said, “I don’t like cranberry sauce on my turkey.”
The lock did not open. Sorcha burst out laughing. “Ciara, you’ve been giving out to me about the cranberry sauceall day.”
“I never told Briar!”
“It’s got to be something you’ve told no one else,” Sorcha said. “Not something you’ve told half of Coill Darragh.”
“I’ve a secret for you,” Rowan said with a sly smile.
“Tell me!”
“You’ve got to promise not to tell, or it won’t work.”
He mimed a zipper over his lips. Ciara did the same. After a moment, Rowan, Ciara, and Briar all put their hands on the diary. Rowan leaned down to whisper in Ciara’s ear. As a conduit for the magic, Briar felt it surge through him into the diary, but as it did, something else leaked through. It tickled his senses like fall leaves scuttling along a windy street. A magic signature, but not his own.
The lock on the diary popped open with a click. Shrieking triumphantly, Ciara pounced on it and ran from the room saying, “Don’t look, it’s private!” Unaware of the irony that if she had any secrets therein, she wouldn’t have needed Rowan’s to open it.
Briar watched her go. “I think your niece might be a witch, you know.”
“Wouldn’t surprise us. She’s a right spitfire,” Rowan said.
Briar had wondered why Ciara never showed the same unease around Rowan as others. Perhaps she had an ability, like Briar’s aura reading, that helped her see through it.
“So.” Briar smirked up at Rowan. “What’s the secret you told her?”
Rowan made a production of shrugging and returned to stir the pie filling without answering.
The kitchen became a thoroughfare for every O’Shea in Coill Darragh while the cooking continued. Cousins, aunts, and uncles poured in with bottles of wine or a “How ya doing, hey?” They all introduced themselves to Briar and asked in a roundabout, friendly way how he found himself in Maebh’s kitchen, and had he tried her gravy yet? When he said he was a friend of Rowan’s, none concealed their shock. They seemed genuinely glad, if surprised, that Rowan had a friend. One of them put it like so: “He’s a face for scaring children, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
They greeted Rowan, warm but with an underlying discomfort. Briar could see them reaching across the void of that scar’s influence, and he could see Rowan on the other side of it, resigned to the distance the chasm created. They were all family. They’d known him before. But none seemed to understand what had become of him.
Some of the hubbub moved into the living room, a distant hum ofactivity. As Briar set the pots of veg in the kitchen, he felt a warm hand at the small of his back.
Rowan said, “When I invited you, I didn’t mean to put you to work.”
