Cresent Prophecy by Axelle Chandler (great reads TXT) 📕

He laughed and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I see Mark Ashlyn over there. I just want to have a word, and then I’ll be back. Think you can hold onto your magic until then?”

“It’ll be a struggle, but I think I’ll manage.” I made a face and waved him off.

The moment I was free, I sensed someone creeping up in my blind spot. Turning, I saw it was Roy.

“Skye,” he said, sitting beside me. “Mary wants to know if you like lavender.”

“Lavender?” I made a face. Why was Roy asking me about smelly flowers?

“They flower in summer she says. Her reasonin’ is you and Boone will have a bit more time together to solidify your relationship. Spring is too soon. Her words, not mine.”

My mouth fell open. They were still planning our supposed wedding!

“So?” he asked. “Do you like lavender?”

After the standoff in Molly McCreedy’s, things seemed to get back to normal. At least, as normal as things usually were in Derrydun.

Autumn was in full swing. Leaves were changing color, rain was falling more often than not, the fog was rolling in most mornings, and among all of it, Boone had practically moved into the cottage. He kept me warm in bed and cooked me breakfast every morning.

Lucy was doing well at Irish Moon, but I wasn’t ready to give her the reins solo yet. She wasn’t Mairead, but she was fun to hang around, which made the workday go a hell of a lot faster. Speaking of the Goth girl, I hadn’t heard from her since she went off to Trinity College. I took it as a good sign and hoped the talisman I’d given her had protected her delicate parts from STDs.

We’d also been on the lookout for any wayward craglorns and other assorted magical tricksters that might’ve sensed the magical flare I’d sent up when I’d attacked Fae-Alex, but nothing had stirred. It seemed we’d gotten lucky, but it was a notion I wasn’t too keen to rely on.

I considered Derrydun to be at DEFCON three. Ready for decisive action at the slightest provocation.

We were at Molly McCreedy’s enjoying the latest addition to the menu, a side of colcannon with our lamb chops.

“Have you had it before?” Boone asked, watching me poke my fork at it.

“No.”

“It’s just potato, cabbage, and kale.”

“Cabbage?” I pinched my nose. “You can’t stay over tonight unless your farts smell like roses.”

He laughed and shoveled some into his mouth like a pig.

“I’m serious, you know.”

“People used to leave out bowls of colcannon for the fairies and goblins,” he said once he’d swallowed.

“If you’d told me that me a couple of months ago, I would’ve laughed at you,” I said. “But now, I totally believe it.”

“They used to put trinkets inside for people to find, too.”

“Like what?”

“Coins, mostly. Sometimes rings and other things, but that was a long time ago.” He waved his fork. “Whatever you found would be like a lucky charm for the year to come. A coin for wealth, a ring for marriage, and so on.”

“Oh, like a plum pudding at Christmas,” I exclaimed. “When I was little, and my grandma was still with us, she used to bake five-cent pieces in them. Well, until Dad almost choked on one. And now that I think of it, that sounds kind of gross. Can you get poisoned from cooking coins into pudding?”

Boone laughed and shrugged. “You’re still alive, so I guess not.”

“Does Derrydun have a big Christmas?” I asked, thinking about the holiday. It was the first week of September, which meant it was about three months until the big day.

“Last year, there was a dinner here at the pub,” Boone replied. “Aileen cooked up a storm.”

“Did she?”

Thinking about my mother, I frowned. I’d recently come to terms with her leaving me as a child, after all the Crescent Witch calling nonsense, but never knowing her really bothered me sometimes. Then there was Boone and the relationship he’d had with her. He’d lived at the cottage for something like three years before I came along. Now he lived somewhere outside of the village in some shack or tent or something.

“Boone?”

“Yeah?”

“Why haven’t I seen your place yet?”

He set down his plate that I was certain he was about to lick and shrugged.

“If you want to come over, then you can come over,” he said nonchalantly. “It’s not as nice as your cottage, though.”

“I’d still like to see it.”

“Then, let’s go see it.” He smiled.

Relieved there was no big secret, I waited while he returned our dirty plates to the kitchen. Donning my coat, I went outside and patted Fergus’s donkey, scratching her ears until Boone appeared.

We walked through the night hand in hand, our silence easy as we approached Boone’s little cottage. It was a one-story whitewashed number with a modern tiled roof with an awkward television aerial stuck on top. There were a few pots out the front where he was growing some herbs and a couple of flowers, though the rest of the garden was grass. The whole scene was bordered by a stone drywall just like the one that surrounded the fields up on the hill.

Boone unlocked the door and let me inside, turning on the lights as I went. Immediately, I was hit with a smell that was strange yet oddly alluring. In a completely weird and sick way because it stunk.

“What’s that smell?” I asked, curling up my nose.

“What smell?”

“You’ve got a super animal nose, and you can’t smell that?”

“I assume you’re talkin’ about me natural musk,” he said with a chuckle. “I can’t smell me own smell.”

“Is that what you call it?” I made a face and stepped further inside. “Natural musk?”

“Boone Number Five?” he quipped, making a joke.

“More like Ode de Boy Stink.”

The cottage was definitely a man cave. His love for black and red check shirts had translated to his decor choice. A brown leather couch sat in front of an open fireplace, a small flat-screen