Swordfights & Lullabies Read Online Free Page A

the rest of his life.  And he would work every day to be the man Nan saw.  Cass deserved at least that.
    Little hands grabbed the side of the table, nearly toppling tea and pint both.  Marcus reached for cups and glasses.  Nan far more sensibly reached for the small girl causing the disturbance and lifted Morgan onto her lap.  “Go.  She’ll want you to share this moment with her.”
    He stood up.  Cass was about to face her destiny—and he felt a need to face it with her.
    She played a few notes on Rosie.  Checking the tuning.  Finding the feel of the place.  And then she looked up from her fiddle and straight into his soul.  “Most of you don’t know that this is my last night on tour for a while.  I wanted to start tonight off by playing the song that tells the story of why.”
    He knew what it would be before she played the first note.  Alanna.   The song she’d written for his beautiful girl.  The one she played, rain or shine, small venues and large ones.
    And then the music began—and he knew he was wrong.
    Something different floated from Rosie’s strings this time.  Teasing, tentative notes.  Sad ones, mixing in with curious, awkward riffs.  Slowly, Cass pushed the notes together.  Caught them again when they frayed and fled.
    An odd, strange melody.  A song that couldn’t quite find itself.
    The pub had quieted, perplexed by the music on stage.  Celtic fiddling, it was not.
    The notes danced, a little faster now.  Still uncertain.  Still not quite in harmony—but they wanted to be.  And all throughout the bar, Marcus felt people beginning to wish that they would.  An unspoken yen for the little hint of a song to find its voice.
    Cass’s fingers gathered the notes closer now, and the amorphous wishing of her audience along with it.  The wanting for things unseen.  The dreaming of things impossible. 
    And Marcus finally knew what he listened to.  He and a green-eyed Irish witch had danced this way once.
    When Cass’s fingers found the first notes of true harmony, his heart surged along with a hundred others.  And crashed again as the chord fell apart.  Chaos now.  And sadness.
    It wasn’t his feet that carried him closer—it was apology.  And need.  He remembered that day.
    And then Rosie found the chord again and stopped him dead.
    The music that came next shouldn’t have worked.  It was still full of tentative notes and not-quite-right ones, awkward riffs still sounding under the fingers of the master.
    And all of that paled in the face of the melody Cass wove through their midst.  A thing of utter beauty and fierce aliveness and gentle, consuming wholeness.
    It was a love story like nothing he’d ever heard. 
    When her notes ended, it was very clear the song wasn’t finished.  And she meant it that way.
    She held his eyes and reached for the mike.  “I call that one Flowers in Winter .”
    Marcus let go the breath he’d been holding for three-and-a-half minutes and tried to collect his shredded, awed, love-drowned soul.  Bloody stupid daffodils. 
     He saw the mirth hit her eyes before it rang out into the oddly silent pub.  I should have kept my mittens on.
    Wordless now, he let all of his heart, destroyed and rebuilt by the naked truth of her music, flow down the connection to her mind.
    Saw the tears hit her eyes.
    And heard her heart’s reply, fierce and bright.
    Shouldering Rosie, Cass launched into one of her signature reels.  Fast, furious, and defiant as all hell.
    Daring anyone to miss her.
    Daring anyone to see this as her last song.
    Swordfights & Lullabies , the 2013 tour, might be coming to a close—but Cassidy Farrell was just getting underway.
    And the man who got to stand at her side nearly ignited in gratitude.

I hope you enjoyed this small
moment with Marcus, Cass,
and Morgan!  Coming next… 

A Lost Witch (book 7 - June 2013)

all current books in the A Modern Witch series

And then I will be starting the new
Witch Central