Each were strong women in their own way.
Each were highly magickal.
Each wereveryopinionated women.
Andallof them seemed to believe that I needed to jump one Graham Kincaid, owner of The Tipsy Thistle, my ex-boyfriend, and the man who haunted my dreams at night.
Not that I’d ever let him know that.
“Oh, Agnes,” Willow gasped and heads swiveled to see where Willow drew on her sketch pad, but her eyes were unfocused, staring into the future.
She was having a vision.
“What do you see?” Shona asked, leaning forward.
Willow blinked, looking down at her paper, and then up at me, and I pressed my lips together in a tight line as Willow’s eyes caught on mine.
Tears shimmered there.
“Don’t…” I whispered, holding a hand up to ward her off. “It’s not worth it, Willow. Let it go.”
“Worth what?” Sophie demanded.
“Are you sure?” Willow asked, holding my gaze.
“It can’t be. Don’t force it.”
Silence drew out and then, because my heart was breaking, like it had so many times in the past, I got up and left the library.
It didn’t matter how much magick that incredible group of women had.
There were just some things that neither love nor magick could fix.
CHAPTER TWO
AGNES
Ten Years Earlier
Gran’s hand was cold in mine, her skin papery and thin, the bones beneath fragile as a bird’s. I hated this. It was just too soon.
“Agnes.” Her voice was a rasp, barely audible above the hum of the hospital equipment, machines that beeped their steady rhythm, marking time we both knew was running out. “Come closer, my dear.”
I leaned in, my chair scraping against the linoleum. The room smelled of antiseptic and that unwelcome clinical smell of hospitals that made you ache for your own bed.
“I’m here, Gran.”
Her eyes fluttered open, and for a moment they were sharp—sharper than they’d been indays—cutting through the fog of medication and illness with an intensity that made my breath catch.
“We need to talk,” she said. “About Graham.”
My heart stumbled.
I’d spent the summer falling in love with my childhood friend.
I’d only been home from uni for a day when I’d walked into The Tipsy Thistle, ready to give Graham grief over his newly acquired pub, and he’d looked up and locked eyes with me across the room.
He’d grown up while I had been gone. Filled out. The lanky boy I remembered had been replaced by a man with broad shoulders and tattoos peeking from under rolled sleeves and a jaw that could cut glass. But it was his eyes that stopped me—the same warm soulful eyes they’d always been, crinkling at the corners when he saw me.
