Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
When Lorne came back, the scent of rain, of petrichor, came with him. Underneath that, there was some kind of musk that I breathed in deeply.
“What’re you doing?”
“You smell good.”
He shook his head at me.
“Help me find basil and fennel seed,” I ordered, grinning at him.
He started searching through the cabinets to the right of the sink, and I checked the ones to the left.
“Got it,” he announced. “What else?”
“I need lavender, seeds or dried flowers, whatever you can find, as well as rosemary, yarrow, and marjoram.”
Not long after, we had them all lined up, and I cupped my hands together and had Lorne dump out half the contents of each of the small bottles into them.
“Oh, and cinnamon,” I told him.
“Your favorite,” he rumbled, arching an eyebrow.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re always putting it on me, and I’m your favorite.”
“No argument there.”
He laughed as I smiled at him, and then he did something odd—instead of dumping the cinnamon into my hands, he shook it over the layered herbs, leaned over, and whispered, “Let’s clean this place up for the highest and best of everyone who calls it home.”
I could only stare at him.
“What?”
“I’m impressed.”
He tipped his head. “I know it’s not the same as—”
I tossed the mixture into the air, and it remained there, floating between us. I did what millions of magicians had done for centuries and dusted off my hands before showing him the fronts and backs. “Ta-da!”
“That’s amazing,” he said, awestruck, smiling at me.
“It is. Look at your magic work.”
“Your magic,” he corrected. “I don’t have any.”
“Some of mine lives in you, and the longer it stays there, the more it becomes yours.”
“No,” he said, but I heard the slight quiver of excitement.
“Yes,” I declared. “Your words activated this,” I said as the ingredients rolled and sifted together, grinding until it all became first a fine powder and then, finally, suspended in the air like a mist encased in a nearly transparent cloud.
“Wow…that’s incredible. And what happens now?” Lorne asked, wide-eyed.
“Now we send it through the house.” I leaned close to the cloud. “As you were bidden, purify all,” I ordered, then blew hard to get it moving.
We watched the mist spark, heard it crackle, and then there was a powerful gust of wind and it expanded once, then again and again, before turning to smoke. It filled the room, then rolled into the hallway, leaving behind a faint scent of flowers.
“Why gardenia?” Lorne asked.
“Is that what you smell?”
“Yeah. You don’t?”
“I smell roses.”
“Well, either is good, I’m guessing.”
I nodded.
“So why didn’t you do this in my old house?”
“Because it’s like when you cleanse something with sage versus burning palo santo,” I explained as the smoke cleared and the kitchen appeared as though it were suddenly brighter, the overhead light hitting every corner of the room. “You take away all the anger and pain, but you strip away all the blessings as well.”
“Same as taking an antibiotic. You kill the bad bacteria that’s makin’ you sick, but you kill the good stuff in your gut as well.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“So in my case, you wanted to get rid of all my younger brother’s hurt and pain in the house, but keep the love Cass and I had started to build.”
“That’s right,” I said, staring at the man I loved. “You’re quite perceptive.”
“Hey, I’m not just a pretty face.”
“Oh, I know.”
He took hold of my hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed my knuckles.
We returned to the sitting room, where Lynette was still passed out.
“Should we worry she’s not up yet?” Lorne asked.
“I think she’s been stressed, and probably like a lot of people around town, hasn’t been sleeping, so her body is taking a moment to rest.”
There was a boom above us and then some creaking.
“The hell was that?”
“That is magic making changes to the physical plane.”
He squinted at me. “Meaning?”
“What we said—the bad goes out with the good.”
“Not sure I understand what’s happening.”
“I have a hunch,” I said, letting go of his hand and walking to the straight hall connecting the front and back doors. I didn’t step into the wind tunnel, instead stood and watched.
Lorne, who had followed me, pointed at the balls of what appeared to be cobwebs being blown out of the house. “Explain, please.”
“She said she’d been seeing things all day, and I suspect those are them.”
“You’re saying if you didn’t come over that first time and clear out my brother’s house, it would have gotten like this eventually?”
I shook my head. “This is at least a couple of decades of not cleansing the space. The house has been in the Fornell family for a long, long time, and as far as I know, Lynette’s devotion to magic and mediumship only started after her first bakery went bankrupt.”
“She’s not a witch, then.”
“She’s a practitioner, but this goes back to our talk at Kathy’s.”