“Sure, I get it. The dopamine hit of someone new to date.” Liora dumped a spoonful of sugar in her tea.
“And then, all of a sudden, there was Graham.” I shook my head, remembering my visceral reaction to seeing my friend again after a few years apart. “I was fresh from a significant breakup, convinced I hated all men, and then…poof! There he was. He’d grown up since I’d seen him last.” I shook my head and laughed. “All muscles and some tattoos and that deep raspy voice.”
“Oh, I get it.” Liora fanned her face, and I laughed again.
“You and every other woman who walks into the pub.” I sighed and picked up my tea, leaning back into my chair as I allowed myself to remember the moments I’d tried so hard to push away. “We just, I don’t know…it was like taking blinders off, or something. I just looked at him and thought, of course.Of course. There you are.”
“Awww.” Liora pressed a hand to her heart.
“Och, well, it couldn’t be, you see?” I waved a hand toward where my astral chart had glimmered in the air. “We were fast, furious, and absolutely enthralled with each other. Everyone who came before him just kind of faded away. They all paled in comparison to what I feel, I mean, felt, for Graham.” I glared toward the direction of the loch. In no way, shape, or form, did I want the Truth Stone to interpret what I was saying as me currently being in love with Graham.
“It was real.” Liora gave me a sympathetic look.
“Aye. And then the dreams started. Each one more horrifying than the next. Graham’s lifeless body floating in the loch. And I knew. I knew what I was being told.”
“So you ended it.” Tears shimmered in Liora’s eyes and I shifted, unable to think too deeply about the chasm of pain that yawned between Graham and me.
“And so I ended it. I told him it was too much, too fast. That I was getting my business started, that I valued his friendship and was scared to lose it, and that it was more important to me that we stay friends than possibly lose what we had over dating.” I laughed, the sound sharp and sardonic, and shook my head, remembering the very real hurt in Graham’s eyes the day that I…broke both of our hearts.
“And he believed you.”
“Not really, but also, there wasn’t much he could do. I held the line, and he backed off, respecting my boundary. But goddess, was he mad. And I couldn’t blame him. He did a good job at making me jealous, then I took the bait and tried to make him jealous too, and then we eventually fell into this place we are in now.”
“Mutual pining?” Liora asked and I gaped at her.
“He isnotpining for me. That man has a new date on his calendar every month.”
“Just a distraction, Agnes. None of them are you.”
“Och, well, be that as it may, we’re good now, Liora.” Bracken chittered something and Liora gave me a long look. “Weare. We’ve kind of fallen into this begrudging acceptance of the way things are.”
“I think you need glasses then because that’s not what I’m seeing.”
“You have to leave it, Liora. You saw as well as I did there wasn’t much to be done at this point.”
“Och, I don’t believe that for a second. We have to break this curse.”
“I don’t know, Liora.” Worry made my shoulders tense. “Truly. I’m not willing to play a game with Graham’s life.”
“It’s not a game. It’s your life, too. And it might be something much more. I’m telling you, Agnes, I think you’re connected to all of this. I saw it. Isawit, okay? You can’t just ignore this anymore.” Liora’s jaw set with determination. “We need more information. We need to find out why this is tied to your thread of fate. And then...” She smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Then we break it.”
Break it.
The words shimmered in my mind, fragile as spun glass.
I wanted to believe it was possible. I wanted it so badly my heart ached.
But my family’s history spoke otherwise.
My father had lasted three weeks after I was born. And then my mum had been grieving her husband while raising a newborn on her own. Well, we’d had Gran, but for a while there, apparently, she too had seemed so lost to grief for what had then transferred to her own daughter.No wonder she was so determined to warn me away from love.But she became our rock. Mum left Loren Brae the minute I’d gone to uni, insisting that she wanted nothing to do with the loch or its powers now that I was grown up. How she’d managed to stay there, fear in her heart, long enough to raise me was beyond me. But she’d held on until she’d been ready to go, and I could only thank her for giving me an upbringing that was as normal as she could manage. Now, she lived in a suburb of Glasgow and had herself a nice hill-walking group to meet up with every couple of weeks.
She was happy.
But she remained alone.
As did I.
“I should go,” Liora said, closing her laptop. She gave me a look. “You should think about whether you’re ready to tell the others about this. Sophie. Hilda. They might know things about the Order’s history that could help. I won’t say anything, as this is your life, but you should think about it.”
