“We have out-of-towners here,” Mac warned. “We needed the crime scenes handled and a medical examiner brought in.”
“Bear attack?”
“It’s tradition in a situation like this.”
A lot of things were tradition in Pelham. Bran’s entire life had been built on it, gladly following in his mother’s footsteps until she’d married Ray. Bran had never gotten along with his stepfather, and when he finally turned eighteen on Summer Solstice, he’d moved to Boston. Ostensibly, it had been for school. Mostly, it had been to escape Ray’s need to assert his authority in a home and town that had always looked to Bran’s mother first.
It was the same reason his father had left back when Bran was a toddler, escaping the doldrums of small-town life. Bran had no memory of the man he’d seen only in a handful of pictures. He didn’t even carry his father’s last name. A witch kept their coven’s name, after all, even if his father had never known his mother had been a witch the same way Ray hadn’t. Wiccan, yes, but notwitch, and the distinction was in the duty that had tied their coven to this land for generations.
Few knew that secret, despite his family and coven running the Ye Olde Curiosities Shoppe for the last twenty years or so on land they’downed for centuries. A witch had always called Pelham home and always would. The Council of Witches had decreed that after Boston had been founded, and the Gallaghers had been forced to answer that call, carrying iron with them from the old country into a forest that wasn’t kind.
People went missing in the forest. It was only in modern times that the number of missing was enough to cause outside concern. Those whose bodies were found had their deaths blamed on bears when the people in Pelham who believed in the stories knew it wasn’t bears.
It was always the lights.
I’m not ready.
“She should never have moved into that house. It was too close to the edge of the forest,” Bran rasped. Not that the Shoppe was much better in terms of location, but at least the Shoppe had a protective circle laid down in it. Ray had never allowed any of their practices in the home he considered his.
Mac tipped his head in silent agreement, but it didn’t matter, not anymore.
His mother was dead, and Bran, as the last Gallagher witch in their tiny coven, had a duty—to the town, to its people, and to the creeping threat in the forest that had always existed.
But first, he had to see to his little sister.
Mac led the way to the door markedPolice Departmentin black lettering over the frosted glass window. The Pelham Police Department was so small that there wasn’t any worry about ever outgrowing the space in the community center. The handful of people inside that open workspace all stopped talking when they entered the room. Bran wouldn’t meet anyone’s gaze, following Mac to one of the rear offices that still had its lights on. He pushed open the door, waving for Bran to enter first.
Aisling sat on a chair someone must have dragged in from the neighboring library in the same building because the faded upholstery of the cushion didn’t match any of the other chairs in the office. She was wrapped up in an emergency foil blanket, feet bandaged, along with her hands, with gauze taped to one cheek and her forehead. Her long, white-blonde hair was tangled and dirty, but someone had at least tied itback in a ponytail to get it out of her face. She held a mug of what looked like hot chocolate, but she hadn’t drunk any of it, judging by how full it was.
The man kneeling in front of her was someone who could still, even after all these years, make Bran’s heart skip a beat and his breath catch. He’d thought he was over his first love and first heartbreak, but apparently not.
Cillian turned his head at their arrival, those blue-gray eyes of his widening in a too-handsome face with model-sharp features that Bran drank in like he was starving. Cillian’s dark blond hair was pulled back in a messy bun at the back of his head beneath the wide brim of his hat. Bran was pretty sure that hairstyle wasn’t regulation, but it somehow suited him.
Seven years since Bran had last seen Cillian, and it felt like yesterday in that moment. The emptiness in his life he’d lived with for so long desperately wanted to be filled by the shape of the man before him—a man who had once pushed him away. But Bran wasn’t going to risk his heart again, even if everything inside of him was screaming he should.
“Bran,” Cillian said, rising to his feet.
Bran had to tilt his head back a little to meet Cillian’s gaze. He remembered they used to be the same height in high school, but Cillian must have hit a late growth spurt during their years apart. He was nearly a whole head taller than Bran now, easily over six feet, and broad-shouldered in a way that hinted at defined muscle beneath his drab-looking ranger uniform. His skin was a golden tan color, shades darker than Bran’s own fair coloring, no hint of freckles anywhere that Bran could see. He lookedgood, and Bran was acutely aware of the way his stomach clenched at the sight, how his mouth went dry without his permission.
Before Bran could figure out how to respond, he was saved by Aisling dropping her mug on the floor. She ignored the mess and threw herself at him with a rasping sort of sob that made Bran’s entire body flinch. He hugged her tightly as she shook through almost soundless sobs. The force of her crying, paired with the lack of words, worried him.
“I’m here,” he murmured, voice catching. “I’m here now.”
It was a few minutes before he could even think about anything else.Eventually, he coaxed Aisling back to the chair to get her off her feet, picking up the emergency foil blanket to wrap it around her thin shoulders again. Someone had given her a pair of joggers and a T-shirt that clearly didn’t fit her, but better than nothing. Bran crouched in front of Aisling, mindful of the mess on the floor. He gently took her bandaged hands in his, gaze dropping to the bracelet she wore, similar to the one around his wrist. Hers just lacked iron beads. “What happened?”
He thought Aisling would tell him, but she only looked at him with those big, watery, deep blue eyes of hers as her lips trembled and said nothing. It was Cillian who spoke instead.
“I found her along Route 202, in the tree line. She was alone,” Cillian said.
“Where?”
“On the way to your house.”
“It’s not my house.”
It hadn’t been even when he lived there, angry that his mother had moved them out of the Shoppe’s apartment to a place where Ray insisted Bran listen to every rule he laid down and got angry when he didn’t. Ray hadn’t ever hit him, but Bran always felt he’d wanted to.
“The house is a crime scene. You can’t take her back there right now,” Mac warned.
