5. Moira

Moira realized she had shredded her paper napkin into unrecognizable strips. She swept them into a little pile and walked up to the counter to throw them away. As she was turning back to her table, her senses prickled, and she saw Ian at the top of the stairs. He was smiling at her, and she gave him a wide smile in return. She pointed to her table, and he met her there.

"I'm so glad you suggested meeting," he said, sitting down. "It was a bit of a wiggle to get away-Mum wants me to gather some moss for her. What's that, an iced coffee?"

"Yes," Moira said. She felt just the faintest bit of unease when he mentioned his mum. Looking into his blue eyes, full of light, she wondered if there was some way of testing him or if she simply had to trust her instincts and wait. She'd meant it when she'd assured her mother that she was convinced of his innocence, but at the same time… maybe those stories about Selene and Cal had gotten to her more than she'd realized. She had promised she'd be careful, and she intended to be just that. "Do you want to order something?"

"Well…" Ian looked at the board. "Not really, actually. I was wondering if you wanted to get out of here. Do you want to come help me collect plants by the copper beeches, down by Elise's Brook?"

Moira knew Elise's Brook-it was one of dozens of tiny waterways that feathered through the southeastern part of Ireland. This particular one was just outside of town and bordered on both sides by woodlands. Since it was halfway between Cobh and Wicklow, Moira and her parents had often gone there for picnics or herb gathering. Besides the copper beeches, there were willows, sloes, furze, and hazel. She'd had to learn their Gaelic names for herbology class: faibhille rua, saileach, airne, aitheann, and coll.

"All right," Moira said slowly. "Is it raining yet?"

"Not yet," Ian told her as they got up. "I'm hoping it'll hold off. We should have almost an hour if we're lucky."

It took almost twenty-five minutes to walk to the brook. The late-afternoon sun was hidden behind thick gray clouds, and Moira wished the fleeting sunshine had lasted longer. As they walked, Moira took a moment to send a witch message to her mum, telling her where they were going, as she had promised.

As soon as they were out of eyesight of the town, Ian took her hand and held it as they walked. His hand was warm and strong and gave Moira a pleasant tingle. Their eyes were level with each other since they were the same height, and it was both comfortable and exciting walking along as if they were officially boyfriend and girlfriend. "Does your coven have circles on Saturdays, then?" Ian asked. Instantly Moira was overtaken by memories of what had happened just last night. Why was he asking? Did he know something? She glanced at him quickly, but his face seemed open, with no hidden meanings.

"Yes," she said.

"Us too," said Ian. "Mum has what I call power circles, where she and a bunch of the older members try to work a kind of intense magick. Twelve of us younger ones often meet by ourselves and do our own thing."

"What do you mean, intense magick?" Moira asked, feeling her pulse quicken.

He didn't answer at first, and for a moment Moira wondered if he regretted bringing it up. "Oh, lots of chants and rants, I call it. You know. Superstars of Wicca." He laughed self-consciously. "I'm not so much into that-me and my mates mostly do tree-hugging stuff, you know, working with the moon, that kind of thing."

Okay, that didn't sound so bad. Tree hugging certainly wasn't dark magick.

They were approaching the small woodland grove, and Moira almost didn't want to step into the dimly lit thicket of trees, remembering her mother's terrifying stories about Selene and Cal. She glanced over at Ian, thinking, Do I trust him or not? Yes, she did.

Inside the woods it was still, and the air seemed warmer because they were out of the wind. It felt hushed inside, as if even the birds and animals were trying to be extra quiet. Moira cast her senses and picked up vague impressions of squirrels and birds and some small things she couldn't identify. If her mum were here, she'd have been able to identify every kind of bird and animal and even most of the insects. I want to be as strong as that one day.

"Let's see," Ian murmured, pulling a slip of paper from his pocket. "I've got a shopping list." He read the paper, then pulled a handful of little plastic bags from his jeans pocket. "Dog's mercury, for one," he said. "And it's going to be bloody hard to find it this time of year." He looked over at Moira and frowned slightly. "Are you sure you're on for this? I know it's boring. It's just, I really should do it, and I wanted to spend time with you."

"It's all right," Moira said. "I can help you look." He grinned at her, and her heart did a little flip. She loved his smile, the light in his eyes.

"No," he said. "You sit down there. I have to start collecting some of this stuff, but you can keep me company. Tell me what you've been doing."

"Studying for classes. I submitted my ladybug spell to my spellcraft teacher."

"Really?" Ian laughed. "How'd it go over?" "She thought the construction was elegant and clean but that the spell was frivolous and self-centered," Moira admitted. The comments had stung a bit, but she'd half expected them. "She said to read back in my parents' Books of Shadows, so I dug my mum's up and started reading them."

Ian stilled, crouched on the ground, and looked up at her. "Really? You hadn't read them before now? What were they like?"

"I'd read some, but not early ones," Moira said carefully. Why was he so interested in her parents' Books of Shadows? Maybe he's just trying to be nice, she chided herself. "I haven't got far in these," she said, sitting down on a thick fallen log. "But I'm reading about how my mum didn't even know she was a blood witch till she was sixteen years old. She'd been adopted, and no one had told her."

Ian shook his head. "I can't imagine not growing up with Wicca. That would be too strange. How did she find out?"

Moira hesitated. How much could she trust Ian? What if he was like Mum thought? No, she had to stop-this was Ian. "A blood witch moved to town and realized it and told her. It caused big problems, because my grandparents are Catholic and they didn't want anything to do with Wicca."

"These are your mum's adopted parents?"

"Yeah. Even now-I know they love her, and they love me and loved my dad, but our being Wiccan and practicing the craft still upsets them. They're worried about our souls."

Ian clawed at some dirt at the base of a tree. Gently he unearthed a small plant that already looked dormant for autumn. He sealed it inside a plastic bag and set it on the ground. "Well, they're trying to show they love you," he said, looking off into the distance. "Sometimes people can do amazingly hurtful things, trying to show they love you." It sounded as if he were talking more to himself than her, but then he shook his head and gave her a little smile.

"Anyway, it sounds like your mum's Books of Shadows are wicked interesting. You should keep reading them."

"Yeah, I'm going to." She wished she could just trust what he said, but she still couldn't help wondering-did he have another reason to want her to read the Books of Shadows? Was his mum using him to get to her like Selene had done with Cal and her mum?

The sun had almost set, and now Moira realized it was almost dark. "Are you finding what you need?" she asked, doing her best to push away her doubts.

"I can't find a couple of things, but at least I got some of the most important ones," he said, collecting his bags. "I've done my good-son deed for the day. It feels like it's getting colder. Are you chilly?"

"I'm all right," Moira said, but her hands were rubbing her arms. Ian came to sit next to her and put his arm around her. They were alone in a deserted wood, and his warmth felt so good next to her. When he held her like this and looked into her eyes, she couldn't believe that he could ever deceive her. It was as if she could see his whole soul in his eyes and saw only good. Not angelic good, but regular good.

"I've got an idea," he said. "Let's go down and look in the water-scry."

"Scry? What for?"

"Just for fun." Ian shrugged. "For practice."

Moira bit her lip. She could almost hear her mother, warning her that Ian only wanted her to scry with him so he could test just how strong her powers were. Goddess, she wished she could stop questioning every little thing Ian said and did and just trust him. "Okay," she said. "Let's go."

Holding hands, they stepped carefully down the rocky banks to where the brook, barely six feet wide at this point, trickled past. There was a flattish boulder half in the water, and they knelt on it, then lay on their stomachs, their faces close to the water. At this spot a natural sinkhole created a barely shimmering circle of water maybe eighteen inches across. It was as smooth and flat as a mirror. "Do you scry much?" Ian asked, looking down at his reflection.

"No-I'm not that good at it. I practice it, of course."

"In water?"

"Yeah-it's the easiest. My mum uses fire."

Ian looked up, interested. "Really? Fire's very difficult- harder than stone or crystal. But it's reliable. Is she good at it?"

"Very good." Moira stopped, uncomfortable talking about her mother with Ian. She leaned closer to the water. On a bright day she'd have been able to see snips and bits of sky through the treetops overhead. Today, at this hour, she could see only darkness around the reflection of her face.

"Let's try," Ian said softly. He edged closer to her so that they were lying next to each other, their chins on their hands, heads hanging over the water.

When her mother or anyone else from Belwicket scried, they used a short, simple rhyme in English, tailoring the words to fit the medium or the occasion. Moira was trying to recall one when Ian started chanting very softly in Gaelic. She met his eyes in the water, their two reflections overlapping slightly at this angle. Gaelic wasn't Moira's strong point, though she'd studied it and knew enough to have simple conversations. And of course many of the more traditional chants and songs were in old Gaelic. In Ian’s chant she recognized the modern words an t'suil, "the eye," and tha sinn, "we are." There were many more that she couldn't get.

Her gaze focused on her reflection in the water, but her ears strained to understand Ian’s chant. So far she hadn't heard any of the basic words or phrases that she knew could be used as frames to surround a spell and turn its intention dark. Was she being paranoid? Was she just trying to be safe? Had her mother ruined her ability to just be with Ian, relaxed and happy? Silently Moira groaned to herself, but as she did, their reflections in the water began changing. Automatically Moira slowed her breathing and focused her entire energy on seeing what the water wanted her to see. Water was notoriously unreliable-not that it was never right, but it was so fickle in whether it would show the truth or not.

As they watched, their bodies pressed close, the chill of the boulder seeping through Moira's clothes, their two reflected faces seemed to split apart, like atoms dividing. Their images had overlapped, but now they separated. Then Ian’s reflection seemed to split apart again, dividing into two other images. From Moira's angle she thought one of the images was a man, with dark hair and blue eyes. He was older and looked sad but vaguely familiar. But the other half of the image made her breath catch in her throat-it was a shadow, the shadow of a person, with blurred features. Its mouth opened and it laughed, with water showing through where the mouth was. It was just a shadow, not in the shape of a monster, yet the sight filled Moira with dread. She felt clammy and cold, and a chilly trickle of sweat eased down the nape of her neck. It was just a shadow-why did it seem so terrible?

Gulping, Moira looked away, down at her own reflection. It too had separated into two images. One image was a fire-in the shape of a face. The fire was smoldering, red-hot coals but seemed to offer warmth and comfort rather than destruction. Tiny flames licked at the edges, like strands of hair being blown in the wind. The other image was a person, just as Ian’s had been. At first Moira thought it was her, but then she realized the person was a man. She frowned, trying to see closer.

Splash! Moira jumped back as a small stone dropped into the water, destroying the reflections. Startled, she looked up at Ian and wiped a few drops of water off her face. "What did you do? There was something… something else there."

Ian got to his knees, looking unhappy. "I thought I'd seen enough."

Moira also scrambled up, her limbs feeling stiff and chilled through. "Are you all right?" She took his arm and looked into his face, but his expression was blank and he wouldn't meet her gaze.

"Yeah. It was just cold there on the rock." Edging past her gently, Ian picked up his collected bags, then brushed off his clothes.

He's lying. Did he see what I saw?

"Come on, then," Ian said, trying to sound natural. He forced a smile and held out his hand to help her down from the rock. She took it, jumping down, and followed Ian as he picked their way back out of the woods. The closer they got to the edge, the cooler and fresher it seemed, and Moira could smell rain and hear it pelting the tops of the trees.

"Brilliant," Ian said, looking out at the rain and the darkness. He turned to her. "I'm sorry, Moira. We're going to get soaked."

Moira? Where are you? Moira heard her mother's voice inside her head.

She sent back, I'm here, with Ian, at the brook. I'm on my way home.

"It's all right," she said to Ian. "I've gotten soaked before. But are you all right? Why did you break up the reflection?" He paused, not looking at her, absentmindedly flapping the bags against his leg. "I don't know," he said finally. "It just-I wanted to get out of there."

Moira waited, holding his arm and looking at his face, his skin flecked with raindrops. "You can tell me," she said gently. "You can trust me."

His startled gaze met hers, his dark blue eyes seeming to search her face. A sad-looking smile crossed his face, followed by a look of despair that lasted only an instant. Moira wasn't sure if she'd really seen it. Stepping closer, Ian put a hand under Moira's chin. His skin was damp and cool. "Thank you," he said quietly, and then he kissed her, there at the edge of the woods in the rain.

Moira closed her eyes and stepped closer, slanting her head to deepen the kiss. It was so good and felt so right. Her worries and suspicions fell away as they put their arms around each other and held on tightly. But she knew there was something beneath Ian’s skin, something he was worried about or afraid of. Her instincts still told her that he himself wasn't bad, or evil, as her mother would say. I can help him, she thought dizzily as they broke away from their kiss and stared at each other. Whatever it is that's upsetting him, it'll be all right.