They’d managed to mostly clean themselves up by the time Tywyll House came back into view, although Tamsyn knew she had a hole in the back of one stocking, and while Bowen said he didn’t see anything, she was pretty sure there was still a leaf or maybe a piece of bark stuck somewhere in her hair.
As they approached the front steps, the heavy front door creaked open, and Emerald dashed out to meet them, wearing a pair of dungarees and an old sweater, another velvet ribbon—blue now—holding back her hair.
“There you two are!” she said, running up to them only to pull up short. “Were you two shagging in the woods?”
Tamsyn shot Bowen a look, but he was blinking owlishly at Emerald, who rolled her eyes and walked forward, snagging that elusive piece of bark out of Tamsyn’s hair.
“Told you so,” Tamsyn muttered to Bowen, who only grunted in reply, his face practically scarlet.
“I can’t wait to grow up and get married,” Emerald said happily as she handed the bark to Tamsyn, who, unsure what exactly
she was meant to do with it, shoved it in the pocket of her skirt. “And speaking of,” Emerald went on, both hands clasped
behind her back as she rocked forward on the balls of her feet, smiling smugly, “I have something to show the pair of you.
Come on.”
Chapter 20
“Maybe it’s something about this house,” Emerald said a few moments later as she, Bowen, and Tamsyn all sat in the little, older kitchen Madoc had shown Bowen and Tamsyn to when they’d first arrived at Tywyll House in their own time.
It was warm and smelled pleasantly of spiced things, but Bowen couldn’t appreciate that right now given that he currently had his face pressed to the wood of the table, his eyes shut.
“You did a great job, Emerald,” Tamsyn said, and Bowen could hear her pat the younger girl on the back. “I mean . . . very thorough.”
“To be fair, they were only kissing when I ran out to get you two,” Emerald replied. “I didn’t think they’d already be—”
“Stop it,” Bowen said, the words muffled by the table.
He wasn’t sure how long it might take him to forget the sight of his grandparents . . .
No, he didn’t even want to finish that thought.
Not even when Tamsyn laid her hand on his back and said, “Retinal trauma aside, this is a good thing, Bowen! We did it. Harri and Elspeth are definitely—like, really, really definitely—back together.”
Bowen grunted.
“How did you manage it?” Tamsyn asked Emerald, and Bowen sat up to see the teenager practically preening as she leaned back in her chair with a steaming teacup.
“Simple, really. Same way I’m always tricking Madoc into hiding in those same passageways. I pretend I’ve seen something very interesting, I get them to go in with me, and then I lock them in until they start screaming. Or, in Harri and Elspeth’s case . . . Well, I suppose that also involved some screaming.”
Bowen ground the heels of his hands into his eyes with a sigh. “I’d almost stopped picturing it, I really had.”
“Well, we commend your service, Emerald,” Tamsyn said, pouring her own cup of tea, “but I really feel the need to reiterate that you’re a very frightening child.”
“I am!” Emerald said happily, then leaned forward. “So now will you tell me why it was so important you get those two back together? Is it because of something magical?”
“Something like that,” Bowen said, and Emerald screwed up her face.
“It’s really bloody awful being a non-witch in a family of witches. No one tells you anything interesting about magic because they assume you won’t understand it, or they’re afraid you’ll try it.”
Bowen was about to give her some sort of bland comfort, some assurance that just because she didn’t have magic, that didn’t mean she wasn’t important. Look at Tamsyn, the most wonderful woman in the world as far as he was concerned, and she couldn’t do magic.
But then he stopped, something about her words tickling something in the back of his brain, some memory.
The book she’d been hiding.
He’d assumed it was just a romance novel, something scandalous Lady Meredith might have given her a hard time about reading, but maybe it was something more.
“What was that book you had?” he asked her. “The one you’re hiding in a copy of Rebecca?”
The guilty expression that flashed across her face told him he was right: this was more than just a filched copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover or something similar.
“Just something I found in the library here,” Emerald said, reaching into the pocket of her dungarees and pulling out a rolled-up booklet.
Magic and Everyday Spells was written in swirling font on the front, and when Bowen paged through it, he frowned. None of it appeared to be legitimate magic, but there was just enough in there to make him worry. Some of the words, the incantations . . . they weren’t right, but they were close enough that in the wrong hands . . .
“Confiscating this for now,” he told her, and Emerald gave him such a ferocious scowl he almost sat back in his chair.
“You’re not my father,” she told him with an imperious lift of her chin. “And I just did you a huge favor, so how is it fair to go stealing my things?”
“She’s got you there,” Tamsyn murmured, sipping her tea, and Bowen glared at her.
“You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am unless you’re being high-handed, and you kind of are right now.”
St. Bugi’s balls, he had sounded a bit like his father. Or Wells. Wasn’t sure which was worse, so in the end, he handed Emerald back her book.
“Just don’t go around saying any of the spells in there,” he said. “No telling where all that was cobbled together from. If you’re serious about studying magic, I can talk to someone about sending you to Penhaven in America. It’s for witches, mostly, but they have a human side of the school as well, and I’m sure someone knows what to do with a human from a witch family who wants to learn magic.”
“Really?” Emerald’s eyes were big as saucers, the hero worship in them clear as day, and Bowen was surprised how nice that felt.
“Really,” he promised. “But stay out of trouble.”
