Chapter 3

Bowen wondered if he’d been on his mountain so long that he’d forgotten just how loud family gatherings were in general, or

if his family in particular was just That Loud.

He suspected it was the latter.

Of course, not all families had a talking cat adding his own voice to the cacophony.

“Treats?” the little beastie asked as Gwyn stepped out of the kitchen with yet another bottle of wine, just as Taran banged

his wee fists on the table with an echoed “TREEEEEEEEEE!”

“Wonderful,” Vivienne said, shifting the baby on her lap and shooting a wry look at Gwyn. “He’s learning to talk from the

cat.”

“Sir Purrcival has a better vocabulary than Rhys, so you should be thankful,” Gwyn said, handing the wine to Wells to open.

“When that cat starts using words like ‘peripatetic’ just because he’s going on a walk, let me know,” Vivi replied, and Rhys

leaned over to kiss his wife’s offered cheek.

“Thank you, my darling,” Rhys said, before shooting Gwyn a two-fingered salute. She only laughed merrily, flipping him off right back, but Wells glared at his brother and raised his voice to intone, “We are in my house, Rhys, and—”

“Actually, this is Da’s house, you just live in it, which is a bit sad for a man your age.”

“SAAAAA!” Taran screamed, and Rhys nodded at him.

“Just so.”

They were in the dining room of the house Simon had built high on the hill—Bowen couldn’t call anything around here a mountain no matter what the locals said—in Graves Glen, a house Gwyn and Wells had taken over and, in the words of Gwyn, “majorly

de-creepified.”

Bowen had only vague memories of this place before, but he had to admit it was nice now, warm and cozy. Lived in. Gwyn’s touch

was everywhere, from the brightly patterned seats of the dining room chairs to the whimsical mirror shaped like a crescent

moon, but Bowen could see Wells here, too: the faux-horn candelabra (now moved safely out of Taran’s reach), the hand-tooled

leather placemats.

It had been a house, but now it was a home, and Bowen was happy for his brother.

For both of them.

But the longer he’d sat there tonight, listening to them tease and banter, argue and laugh, the hollower his gut had become.

Bowen thought he’d done a pretty good job of hiding it, but then Vivi turned to him, the baby still in her arms, now happily

absorbed in tugging at the ends of her long hair, and asked, “Is everything all right?”

He glanced at his brothers, but they were now engaged in a debate over where to find the best Yule log, and Gwyn had turned to talk to her mother, Elaine, who sat at the head of the table, a piece of holly stuck behind one ear as she swirled her wine in its glass.

“Fine,” he told her, but his brother had married a damn smart woman, and she wasn’t so easily put off.

“I know you look... well, you look... like that,” she said, waving at his face, “a lot, but it just seemed like something

was bothering you.”

What was bothering him was a strange mix of guilt—Declan would never have this, would never sit at a table with his family

again, and whose fault was that?—and something else, something he was less used to.

Loneliness.

He was lonely, even as they included him, even as they pulled him into their arguments and their conversations, because he

could feel how easy this was for all of them, how natural. How apart from it he was.

By choice, but it ached all the same.

Clearing his throat, Bowen answered her, but addressed the rest of them at the same time. “I, um... I know we’d talked

about me staying through the new year.”

That brought Rhys and Wells’s discussion to a halt, and everyone turned to look at him now, causing a dull flush to creep

up Bowen’s neck.

Folding her arms over her chest, Gwyn fixed him with a steady look. “Not just talked about, Bowen. Planned. First big Jones-Penhallow Yule celebration. All of us together for nearly the whole month. Cutting down the Yule log, wassail...

Esquire here even agreed to wear the holly crown!”

She elbowed Wells in the ribs, sloshing his wine.

“I did,” he confirmed. “Once I had an assurance of no photographs.”

Bowen nodded. “Right. Right... I... Right.”

“And they made you a wee, sad little hut out back!” Rhys added. “So you’d feel at home.”

Christ, he hated when it was two against one.

“It’s just... I’m working on something right now,” he said, telling a partial truth at least. “And I can’t spare a full

month away from it.”

“You can work on it here,” Gwyn said, and Wells nodded.

“Plenty of space upstairs, and as Rhys noted, we made you a hovel in the woods, since that’s more what you’re used to.”

“And between the college, Aunt Elaine, and the store, I’m sure you’d have anything you’d need to do your weird magic science,”

Vivi said, brightening.

Taran babbled something at him, too, then gave him another one of those gummy smiles before trying to eat Vivi’s hair.

“Of course,” Elaine said, “if you’ll tell me what kind of work you’re doing, I’d be happy to help.”

“Ooh!” Gwyn sat up straight in her chair. “ And you’re welcome to anything in Something Wicked, too, but I feel like your kind of magic probably doesn’t call for sage and

lavender bath salts.”

“Right,” Wells said with a clap of his hands. “So that’s sorted then, yes? You’re staying.”

St. Bugi’s balls, he hadn’t reckoned with the combined force of these people.

But then Bowen could be stubborn, too.

In his way.

“I’ll stick around for a few days,” he said. “But that’s all I can promise.”

It’s all I can give.

Bowen had just thrown another log on the fire when the ghost appeared.

It was, he had to admit, the perfect setting for a spirit—December night, howling storm outside, remote Welsh mountainside,

man brooding in the general direction of a fireplace—but he shrieked like a wee girl all the same.

“Calm yerself, Bo, Christ. It’s just me,” Declan said, raising one translucent hand as Bowen stood by the fire and tried to

stop his heart beating out of his chest.

“You oughta get chains like that fella in A Christmas Carol, ” Bowen told him with a scowl. “Or a bell. Like a cat.”

His former classmate and best friend flipped him off, bluish fingers wavering in the firelight. “Wanker.”

“Arsehole,” Bowen replied, then sighed. “Don’t tell anyone I made that noise when you appeared.”

“Oh, because that was gonna be a big topic of conversation for me and all my ghosty buddies at the lunch table, sure,” Declan replied with a wry grin.

It made Bowen’s chest hurt, that grin.

That was one of the first things he’d come to like about Declan, all those years ago, the way he smiled like the whole world

was a big joke, and weren’t the two of you lucky to be in on it?

It had reminded Bowen of Rhys a bit, and maybe that’s why he’d become friends with his roommate at Penhaven College so quickly.

Graves Glen might be a lovely place now, but all those years ago, it had seemed like millions of miles from home, the mild

winters and hot, humid summers of Georgia so different from his wild Welsh homeland.

But then he’d met Declan, a Scottish lad from Edinburgh who was as passionate about ancient sorcery as he was his beloved

Midlothian Hearts football team, and they’d become best mates almost immediately. No one was smarter when it came to magic

than Declan, no one quicker to pick up a spell or know exactly what book in exactly what part of the shadowy, cluttered library

would have the ritual they were looking for.

No one had been more willing to embrace the wilder side of magic, either.

Bowen had told himself a thousand times that what had happened wasn’t his fault. Hell, Declan had said the same.

But it had been Bowen who’d found that spell.

The log on the fire popped, releasing a shower of sparks, and Bowen stepped back a bit, dusting his hands on the back of his jeans as he studied the spirit that had once been his friend.

“Haven’t seen you for a bit,” Bowen said. That wasn’t unusual—he’d once gone nearly a whole year without seeing the spirit,

and he’d hoped maybe that meant whatever it was tying Declan’s spirit to the earth had finally been severed, but no such luck.

“Where’d you get yourself off to now?”

Declan went a bit “thin,” as Bowen always thought of it. His form didn’t seem quite as substantial, the bookshelf behind him

now very visible, his football jersey barely readable.

Then the room got a little colder, and Declan started coming in clearer again, still translucent, but a little more solid,

and for the first time, Bowen realized he was holding something in his hand.

An envelope.

Bowen took it from Declan’s outstretched fingers and frowned at the heavy weight of it in his hand.

“Wedding invitation,” Declan said, but Bowen was less concerned with the what of the thing and more the how . As in—

“How the hell did you manage to get this thing here?”

Ghosts could move objects, but rarely did they have enough power to transport something.

“That’s why I haven’t been around for the past few months,” he said, nodding at the envelope. “That showed up at my mum’s

house back in July. It’s taken me this long to get it here, and now time is pressing, mate.”

Bowen pulled out the card inside and squinted at the elaborate calligraphy. “Morgana’s tits, I can barely read this.”

“Don’t worry,” Declan said with a gusty sigh. “I’ve had time to memorize it. It says that Sir and Lady Meredith have the pleasure

of inviting you to the wedding of their daughter, Carys, to a Mr. David Thorsby on December twenty-fourth.”

“Carys Meredith,” Bowen said, throwing Declan a sharp look.

The ghost threw up his glowing hands. “Yes, that Carys.”

“Your fiancée,” Bowen went on, and Declan scowled, folding his arms over his chest.

“Former fiancée. This David apparently now holds the title.”

Given that Declan made the name “David” sound like a communicable disease, Bowen refrained from pointing out that it wasn’t

like Declan was exactly able to take a wife, so maybe moving on had been good for Carys.

Bowen had never met her, but he remembered her picture in its place of honor on Dec’s desk in the room they’d shared. She

was pretty in a delicate sort of way, her hair so blond it was nearly white, but her eyes were dark brown, and in the picture

Declan had, she’d been laughing at the camera, her head tilted back, her arms thrown wide.

Declan had been mad about her, and Bowen had always wondered what she’d been told about what happened to her fiancé.

What she must have thought.

“It’s not just a wedding,” Declan went on, pointing at the invitation. “Whole long weekend sort of thing. A Yule celebration mixed in. Carys’s family always was a little over the top, to be honest.”

Shaking the card at Dec, Bowen asked, “And it’s next week?”

Declan gave a grim nod. “Told you, I’ve been trying to get this bloody thing to you since July . I almost thought I wouldn’t make it.”

“Hmmph,” Bowen snorted, thinking that over as he thwacked the card against his palm. “You know—”

“I could’ve come to you, told you about the wedding, and then had you magic up an invitation, or possibly contact my parents

and get it yourself, yes, these were all things that occurred to me the second you picked the fooking thing up, thank you,

Bowen.”

That was a thing with ghosts—they got so fixated on whatever quest it was that was keeping them tied to the mortal plane that

they sometimes forgot the way the human world worked. It was both endearing and a little sad, and not for the first time,

Bowen wished that he’d been a little bit more forceful trying to talk Declan out of that bloody stupid spell.

Still, it was done now, wasn’t it?

“Why bring it to me at all?” he asked, and Declan gave him a look that Bowen remembered very well from their university days.

It was the one that said, How can one man be this thick?

“Because I want you to go,” he said.

Bowen could actually feel his frown deepen. If Tamsyn were here right now, she’d probably already be doing an exaggerated

impression of it.

“You... want me to go,” he echoed, “to your ex-fiancée’s wedding.”

Declan nodded, his hair—which had been bright red when he was alive, but was now more of a sort of grayish blue—flopping over

one eye. “Mmm-hmm. I need you to whip up a really nasty curse. Right at the vows, stand up and proclaim it, maybe add some

thunder and lightning for effect? Ooh, can you do, like, a scary black cloud thing, too? You know, just to really sell it.”

Bowen stared at his friend for a couple of beats as the fire crackled away and sleet rattled against the door.

Then, slowly: “You’re fucking with me.”

Declan’s eyes went a little wider as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Huh. Usually takes you a little longer to figure

that out.”

“I’ve had more practice lately,” he muttered, Tamsyn’s dark eyes, bright with amusement, suddenly springing to mind.

He should introduce her to Declan one of these days. They’d like each other, Bowen was sure of that. But then explaining Dec

to Tamsyn would mean explaining his own role in how all this had happened, and Christ, wouldn’t that be a mess?

“Seriously, though,” Declan said, dropping his chin and looking at Bowen from underneath a curtain of that floppy hair. “I can’t go myself. That house is magicked to hell and back, and anything that feels off to it gets spit right back out. Don’t ask me how I know. Okay,” he went on, holding up a hand. “I know because I’ve been trying to haunt the damn place for the last decade, and every time I get within a few feet of the house, I’m poofed right out to somewhere miles away. The Merediths apparently don’t fuck around.”

Bowen nodded, but his mind was already moving.

“Meredith,” he echoed, and then he walked past Dec to the bookcase at the back of the room, the biggest one just by the door

to his bedroom. Reaching up, Bowen pulled down a book that was so heavy he actually winced as the full weight of it landed

in his arms.

It was a massive tome, the cover a cracked and fading black leather, the gilding starting to peel from the edges of its pages.

It was the sort of thing that, had it been a prop in a movie, he would’ve had to blow dust off so that the audience knew just

how ancient it was, but no books ever gathered dust in Bowen Penhallow’s home. He’d looked something up in this one just the

other day, as a matter of fact, thanks to a late-night phone call from Rhys, who had suddenly worried that Taran’s middle

name, “Emyr,” had belonged to one of their less savory ancestors.

It hadn’t, thankfully, and Bowen flipped backward, past the section on the Penhallows, the Parrys, the Owens, the Neagles,

until he finally came to the elaborate script proclaiming “MEREDITH.”

He could feel a cold breeze at his back and knew Declan had stepped closer, reading over Bowen’s shoulder.

“I knew her family were Posh Witches, but I didn’t know they were posh enough to be in your book,” he said, his breath icy

on Bowen’s neck.

“Not just posh,” Bowen told him, his eyes scanning the names. “Powerful. This Meredith right here? Powys in 1283?” Bowen tapped the name. “Hanged, disemboweled, burned, then decapitated.”

“And he didn’t die?” Declan asked.

Bowen shook his head. “No, all those things killed him. Well, I suppose just one of them killed him. The others probably just

hurt a lot.”

“And this... denotes ‘powerful’... how, exactly?”

Bowen reached over Declan’s ghostly arm to pull his notebook and pen closer, inadvertently dragging them through Declan, who

yelped with offense.

“Sorry,” Bowen said, distracted, and as he began to write, Declan snorted.

“No, you’re not,” he replied, and if Bowen hadn’t already been absorbed in his work, he might’ve smiled.

“Doesn’t hurt you anyway,” he reminded Declan, who lifted his chin and floated to the other side of the table.

“Right, but it’s rude . Now explain to me what you meant about Carys’s great-great-times-a-bloody-million-grandfather being powerful.”

“The English did all those things to him because he was dabbling in dark magic,” Bowen said, still taking down names, dates.

He could remember things he’d read pretty easily, but if he wrote it down, he never forgot it.

“Okay, but it was 1283,” Declan said. “‘Dark magic’ could’ve meant... I don’t know. Taking a bath. Not wanting a leech

applied to his cock.”

“That’s ignorance speaking, Declan. The Middle Ages were not nearly as filthy and backward as people think. In fact, did you know that entire idea about them having bad teeth is false? They didn’t have sugar, so—”

“Mate,” Declan said, holding up one hand, and Bowen scowled but tucked that particular diatribe away for another time.

People always gave him so much shit for not talking that much, but then when he did want to talk about something he was interested in, it was all glazed eyes and “mate.”

“To the point, dark magic in this case was truly dark magic. Necromancy, that sort of thing.”

Declan perked up a bit, and the hope in his eyes was enough to make Bowen’s stomach churn. “Necromancy. Like bringing the

dead back to life.”

“You’re not dead, Dec,” Bowen reminded him, his voice as gentle as he could make it. “Not really.”

The sound Declan made was too dark to be called a laugh, but it was close. “Not dead, not alive, a ghost, but no body moldering

away anywhere... Yes, Bowen, we’ve been over this. And I wasn’t asking you to go because I hoped it was the answer to”—Declan

looked down at his wavering form and gestured to it—“whatever the hell this is.”

Turning to face Bowen more fully, Declan reached out, laying his hands on Bowen’s shoulders. Bowen could feel the cold, but

there was no weight there, no real touch.

“If I’d married Carys, you would’ve been my best man, right? Now, I can’t watch the woman I love get married, but you can. For me. It’s the closest thing I can think of to being there myself.”

It had been a while since Bowen had felt like this. The tight throat, the sudden stinging in his eyes. Not since that last

night he’d talked to Da, probably, that cold evening last year when Bowen had made sure Simon Penhallow knew that all three

of his sons were done with him and his scheming for good.

It had been the right thing to do, but fuck, it had been hard. Almost as hard as staring into Declan’s pleading face now.

“Dec,” Bowen said softly, “I can’t just... invitation or no, pretty sure they’ll remember they didn’t invite me.”

“Your family is ancient and powerful,” Declan reminded him. “Just as much as the Merediths. No one is going to question you

showing up with an invite. Carys will probably assume This David’s family invited you. And This David will think it was Carys’s

terrifying grandmother. But not a one of them is going to tell a Penhallow he can’t be there.”

Declan had a point. Welsh witch families were strange in that way, a tangled mess of marriages and blood feuds and ancient

treaties, and Bowen’s family was one of the most influential there was. He could just channel Wells a bit, be an imperious

dickhead, and everyone would assume he belonged there.

In a remote castle for a whole bloody weekend with a bunch of witches he didn’t know.

At Yule.

Again, Tamsyn’s face came to mind. They were supposed to meet in London on the twenty-fourth. The pub, the Reindeer Rosé.

The mistletoe.

“Please, Bo,” Declan implored again. “I know I’ve lost her and that she’s gone, but if you could watch the wedding, if you

could just tell me about it... if I could know you were there and that there was at least one person in that room who was

thinking of me, maybe it wouldn’t hurt this much.”

And that was a bloody knife to the heart, wasn’t it?

He had taken so much from Declan, still hadn’t figured out the way to make it right, and here was this one thing—a small favor

in light of it all—that Declan was asking him to do.

“Look,” Dec said, flashing him that grin again. “It’s going to be cold and uncomfortable, and you’ll probably be miserable,

but—”

“But how is that any different from every day of my life,” Bowen finished dryly, and Declan laughed, another rush of cold

air settling on Bowen’s skin.

“Pretty much,” he confirmed. “Although you’ll probably like Tywyll House. Creepy as fook, full of all sorts of old magical

shit. Think of it as a working vacation.”

There was something about that name—Tywyll House—that rang a faint bell in the back of Bowen’s mind. Something that seemed

important.

Something he should know.

But then there was another gust of wind howling down the chimney, the fire flaring briefly, and the thought—and Declan—vanished.