Free Spellbound by Cate Tiernan Page A

looking into a camera. It was a middle-aged man, a handsome man, and he looked both surprised and alarmed and intensely curious. I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t think where.
    “Goddess,” Hunter muttered, his breath suddenly coming sharp and fast. I felt my consciousness flare.
    “Gìomanach,” said the man softly. His face was lined, his hair gray, his eyes brown. But there was something of Hunter in the shape of his jaw, the angle of his cheek.
    “Dad,” Hunter said, sounding strangled.
    I gasped. Hunter hadn’t seen either of his parents in ten years, and though we’d talked about the possibility of his trying to find them, as far as I knew, he’d done nothing about it yet. What was happening?
    “Gìomanach,” said the man again. “You’re grown. My son . . .” He looked away. In the background I could barely make out a house, painted white. I heard a seagull cry faintly and wondered where Hunter’s father had been all this time, where he was now.
    “Dad,” Hunter said. I felt the coiled tension of his emotions; it almost caused me pain. “Linden—”
    “I know,” said the man, looking older and sadder. “I know. Beck told us how your brother died. It wasn’t your fault. It was his own fate. Listen, my son—your mother—”
    Then the picture changed as a dark presence washed across the face of the lueg . It was like a cloud, a purple-black vapor roiling across the lueg , and Hunter and I watched unspeaking as the dark wave focused and concentrated, blotting out his father’s face, the whitewashed window.
    With a jolt Hunter snapped back, straightening, his eyes flicking open to stare widely at me, and I gazed at him, seeing his pale face as the grounding of my reality.
    My temples were damp with sweat, and my hands were shaking. I rubbed my palms against my corduroys and tried to swallow but couldn’t. I knew I had just seen the dark wave in the stone—the dark wave that had consumed my ancestors and almost every member of my ancestral coven almost twenty years before. The dark wave that we believed was somehow connected to Selene.
    Hunter spoke first. “Do you think the dark wave took my father just then?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
    “No!” I said strongly. He looked so lost. Without thinking I rose to my knees and clasped him in my arms, cradling his head against my chest. “I’m almost sure it didn’t. It was more like it passed in front of the stone. Between us and him. I can’t believe it, Hunter, that was your father. He’s alive!”
    “Yes,” Hunter said. “I believe he is.” He paused, then said. “I wonder what he was trying to tell me about Mum.”
    I was silent, unable to think of anything comforting to tell him.
    “I’ve got to tell the council,” he mumbled against my shirt.
    After a few moments he pulled back slightly, and reached up to brush my damp hair away from my face. I looked in his eyes and couldn’t read the emotions there. Cal’s emotions had always seemed so transparent: desire, admiration, lighthearted flirtation. Hunter was still mostly unreadable to me.
    Then I thought, To hell with it, and before either of us realized it, I bent down, put my hands on his shoulders, and pressed my lips against his, keeping my eyes open. I saw the flash of surprise, the sudden ignition of desire, and then his eyes drifted closed and he pulled me backward with him to the floor. I was on top of him, his chest against mine, our legs tangled together.
    I don’t know how long we lay against the hard floor, the unforgiving jute rug, kissing again and again, but finally I heard a furtive tap on my door and Mary K.’s quiet voice: “Mom just pulled up.”
    Flushed, breathing hard, I trotted downstairs and helped Mom unload groceries from her car, and ten minutes later when I went back to my room, Hunter was gone, and I had no idea how he had managed to leave without any of us noticing.

7
    Circle of Three
    November 8, 1973
     
    Clyda fainted again yesterday. I