Spellbound

me.”
    She laughed, kissed him lightly. “Oh, we’d have trouble soon enough if you thought I did. As it happens, it’s my pleasure to cook for you this morning.”
    His eyes gleamed as he nibbled on her knuckles. “A full Irish breakfast? The works.”
    “If you like.”
    “Now that you mention it…” His voice trailed off as he took a long, thorough study of her face. Her eyes were shadowed, her skin paler than it should have been. “You look tired. You didn’t sleep well.”
    She only smiled and led him into the kitchen. “Maybe you snore.”
    “I do not.” He nipped her at the waist, spun her around and kissed her. “Take it back.”
    “I only said maybe.” Her brows shot up when his hands roamed around, cupped her bottom. “Are you always so frisky of a morning?”
    “Maybe. I’ll be friskier after I’ve had that coffee.” He gave her a quick kiss before turning to pour himself a cup. “You know I noticed things this morning that I was too…distracted to take in yesterday. You don’t have a phone.”
    She put a cast-iron skillet on a burner. “I have ways of calling those I need to call.”
    “Ah.” He rubbed the chin he had neglected to shave. “Your kitchen’s equipped with very modern appliances.”
    “If I choose to cook why would I use a campfire?” She sliced thick Irish bacon and put it on to sizzle and snap.
    “Good point. You’re out of sugar,” he said absently when he lifted the lid on the bowl. “You spin your own wool, but you have a state-of-the-art stereo.”
    “Music is a comfort,” she murmured, watching him gounerringly to the pantry and fetch the unmarked tin that held her sugar supply.
    “You make your own potions, but you buy your staples at the market.” With quick efficiency, he filled her sugar bowl. “The contrast is fascinating. I wonder…” He stopped, stood with the sugar scoop in his hand, staring. “I knew where to find this,” he said quietly. “I knew the sugar was on the second shelf in the white tin. The flour’s in the blue one beside it. I knew that.”
    “’Tis a gift. You’ve only forgotten to block it out. It shouldn’t disturb you.”
    “Shouldn’t disturb me.” He neglected to add the sugar and drank his coffee black and bitter.
    “It’s yours to control, Cal, or to abjure.”
    “So if I don’t want it, I can reject it.”
    “You’ve done so for half your life already.”
    It was her tone, bitter as the coffee, that had his eyes narrowing. “That annoys you.”
    She cut potatoes into quick slices, slid them into hot oil. “It’s your choice.”
    “But it annoys you.”
    “All right, it does. You turn your back on it because you find it uncomfortable. Because it disturbs your sense of normality. As I do.” She kept her back to him as she took the bacon out of the pan, set it to drain, picked up eggs. “You shut out your gift and me along with it because we didn’t fit into your world. A tidy world where magic is only an illusion done with smoke and mirrors, where witches wear black hats, ride broomsticks, and cackle on All Hallows’ Eve.”
    As the eggs cooked, she spooned up porridge, plopped the bowl on the table, and went back to slice bread. “A world where I have no place.”
    “I’m here, aren’t I?” Cal said evenly. “Did I choose to be, Bryna, or did you will it?”
    She uses you. She’s drawn you into her web.
    “Will it?” Insulted, struck to the bone, she whirled around to face him. “Is that what you think? After all I’ve told you, after all we’ve shared?”
    “If I accept even half of what you’ve told me, if I putaside logic and my own sense of reality and accept that I’m standing in the kitchen with a witch, a stone’s throw away from an enchanted castle, about to do battle of some kind with an evil wizard in a war that has lasted a millennium, I think it’s a remarkably reasonable question.”
    “Reasonable?” With clenched teeth she swept back to the stove and shoveled eggs onto a platter. “‘It’s reasonable,’ says he. Have I pulled him in like a spider does a fly, lured him across an ocean and into my lair?” She thumped the laden platter down and glared at him. “For what, might I ask you, Calin Farrell? For a fine bout of sex, for the amusement of having a man for a night or two. Well, I needn’t have gone to such trouble for that. There’s men enough in Ireland. Eat your breakfast or you’ll be wearing it on your head like a hat.”
    Another time he