A Feather of Stone #3

A Feather of Stone #3 Read Free Page B

Book: A Feather of Stone #3 Read Free
Author: Tiernan Cate
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spell, and the whole back had been damaged.
    “But this weekend?” I suggested. “I’m pretty sure if I whine enough, I could possibly get out for one night.”
    Kevin grinned and kissed my hair. “Just tell me when.”
    I smiled and nodded, amazed at how normal I was being. Inside, I was still trapped on an emotional Tilt-A-Whirl. It was hard to know which end was up nowadays, with everything that was going on. The best thing about Sylvie, Claude, and Kevin was how unconnected they were to my other life, the life of my new family. With them I could be just Thais Allard, unassuming high school senior, northern transplant. At home I loved being a sister and a sort of grand-daughter, but home was also where magick was made, where my troubling and surreal history seemed unavoidable. At home we talked about what had happened at Récolte, or the autumn solstice. We talked about the fact that some people we knew and were related to were immortal. Literally. And we worried about the rite that Daedalus was planning, the one that might kill me or Clio or make us immortal too.
    “I’m sorry, what?” I said, realizing that my friends were looking at me expectantly.
    “Did you study for calc?” Sylvie asked again.
    I let out a breath. Lovely normalcy. “Yep,” I said. “But I still don’t get most of it.”

Clio
    “ F eel the life in every handful of dirt.” My teacher, Melysa, paused to admire the black earth trickling through her fingers.
    I looked at her sourly. Gardening was one of my least-favorite things to do, and in our climate you can grow something all year round. Plus, the firefighters had completely trampled Nan’s gorgeous front beds to get to the back of the house. So here I was, gardening my little heart out, as penance.
    And as part of my lesson.
    “Yeah, full of life,” I muttered, wiping the sweat off my brow. “Gotcha.” I leaned over and pulled up a dead plant by the roots. I threw it on the pile to compost and raked the dirt smooth. On the sidewalk sat a tray of eight tiny cabbage plants, waiting to be transplanted. Great. Gardening and looking forward to eating cabbage this winter. Oh, joy.
    I stood up, stretching and groaning. “I feel like my back is about to break.” Not to mention my hands, which were red, as if sunburned, and still stung from last night.
    Melysa shot me an amused glance. “Number one, you’ve only been at it for fifteen minutes. Give me a break. Number two, you’re seventeen years old. You don’t get to complain about aches and pains until you’re fifty. Now, do you remember green cabbage’s true name?”
    I looked at it. Not napa cabbage or red cabbage, but this particular kind of green cabbage. “Seste,” I said.
    “Very good.” Melysa crouched on the ground and dug a small hole with a trowel. Expertly she flipped a cabbage plant out of its plastic cell and popped it in the ground, patting the dirt around it firmly. “Have you been working on a spell for your rite of ascension?”
    I blinked at the change in subject. “Uh-huh.” If you only knew, I thought uncomfortably. She couldn’t know, I reassured myself. No one but Daedalus knew about the spell I had done last night in the cemetery.
    I raked and pulled, lost in thought. For my rite of ascension, I needed to craft a major spell, one utilizing several levels of power, several forms of spellcrafting, several witch’s tools. Last night, I had done just that, and it had worked. It had been the first major magick I had done alone. It had been awful and scary. But I had learned more about what had happened with the Treize. And with Richard, I remembered, feeling my cheeks flush more. As Cerise, I had memories of him as a lover. It felt weird and uncomfortable, as if I had spied on him. Which I guess I had, in a way.
    A totally bizarre, unbelievable, X-Files kind of way.
    But whatever. What was important was that I’d gotten a bird’s-eye view of Melita’s spell. I’d seen the sigils and runes that had

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