Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 67614 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67614 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 270(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
And, yes, it’s plenty big for anything I could ever want or need.
But it’s not mine. Giles isn’t mine.
And it’s best if I remember that.
“Cinnamon rolls are the best thing in the world any time of day,” Lorelei says as Giles takes the pan and smiles down at me.
Gods, he makes my knees weak with that crooked grin and those green eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses. Not to mention how his lips tip up just a bit higher on the left side than the right, and how he smells like pure, unadulterated male.
“Thanks,” he says with a wink. “I’ll get some plates.”
“I think you should tell us what you have to say first,” Xander, the leader of our coven and a dear friend to us all, chimes in from across the room. Xander is a big, imposing man of close to seven feet tall, with black hair and eyes that can be incredibly disarming—or soothing, depending on his mood.
He’s also Lorelei’s soulmate.
But he hurt her, and I often wonder if she’ll ever let him in again.
From the look on her face right now as she tries her best not to look at him, I’d say the odds of that are slim to none.
“You’re right,” Giles agrees as I take a seat with the others in the living room. He looks nervous as he sets my pan aside and then rubs the palms of his hands down his jeans. “Okay, to start, I didn’t know I had this in my possession. So, first and foremost, I want to sincerely apologize to everyone.”
“We are your friends,” Jonas reminds him and wraps his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “You’re safe with us, Giles.”
Giles licks his lips and then turns to open a cabinet, pulling out a large, leather-bound book.
“A Book of Shadows,” Lorelei says in surprise.
“Yes, from the sixteen hundreds,” Giles replies, and I can’t help but gasp. “From what I gather, this belonged to the original Giles Corey’s mother.”
“How did you find it?” Xander asks.
“There are a few trunks up in the attic that my mother gave me a couple of years ago when she was downsizing her home,” Giles explains. “She called yesterday and asked me if I’d look in them for a photo album she misplaced. When I was digging around, I found this. I had no idea it was upstairs all this time, and I feel like a fool because it might have helped us all along.”
“You don’t know that for certain,” Jonas replies, but his eyes are narrowed on the book. “I knew Giles. He was an old man in the late sixteen hundreds and married to Martha for only a short time then. Louisa, my dear friend in Hallows End, is his sister. She was half his age. His parents had her very late in life, but that wasn’t uncommon then.”
“Did you know Giles’s parents?” I ask Jonas, completely enthralled by this new turn of events.
“No, they were dead by the time I met him, but Louisa told me many times that her mother was a talented and gifted witch. She didn’t know where the Book of Shadows was.”
“Her brother had it,” Giles says. “And it ended up here. I was up all night reading it. Some of the language is a bit foreign to me because English has changed a lot in those hundreds of years, but if I’m reading this right, I think there’s a spell we can cast that might just undo everything—including the curse.”
“Go on,” Xander urges when Giles pauses.
Giles opens the book to a marked page and sits with it, propping it on his lap. “It’s something called a Loom of Fate spell. Essentially, we would weave a tapestry with magical textiles and materials, rewriting the history of what happened. Then, when it’s finished, we cast a circle and chant the spell, and everything about what happened with Hallows End should be changed.”
“That sounds incredibly fanciful, even for me,” Lorelei says, speaking up.
“So did a possessed man hanging me in my bedroom,” I remind her. “Right now, I’ll believe just about anything. Try just about anything.”
“It certainly can’t hurt.” Jonas nods. “I don’t know what it will mean if we’re able to lift the curse that way.”
“I think we can write the spell however we choose,” Giles says. “We can make it simple and just lift the curse, setting Hallows End free once and for all.”
“I can work a loom,” I declare with excitement building inside me. “I have a loom. Somewhere. I’ll need help with the tapestry’s design, and we’ll have to work together to gather the materials and infuse them with our magic, but this is very doable.”
“Where’s your loom?” Lucy asks.
“Uh.” I blink, thinking. “It’s in the guest room of the house, somewhere. I didn’t need it, so I didn’t bring it to the apartment.”