Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(68)
And maybe the sort of person I’d been while growing up had played into it, too, I mused to myself. The fiercely protective way the goddess statue had seemed to love me suggested she responded to a certain kind of craving—and I’d been a hurt and lonely child so often, the kind that yearned for some benevolent patron and protector.
Maybe, combined with whatever nature I had in common with her, she’d felt the clarion call of all that need.
“Names, too, can be another important thing, an intrinsic source of power and alignment,” Delilah continued. “What’s yours? Your full name?”
“Nineve Cliodhna of House Blackmoore,” I said, my back straightening automatically. I’d been reeling my formal name off since I was a child, at Camelot and other witch functions, so often that I was basically my own herald.
Delilah tilted her head, thinking, clicking her nails against the counter in a complicated rhythm. Her nails were longer—coffin shaped, and polished a bright teal with various interesting nail art adornments—than I’d have expected from someone who worked with books and delicate parchment and scrolls all day. Maybe there was just the teeniest slice of whimsy to her, after all, and it did play well with her ornamented hair.
“If we’re talking a goddess with water associations, you already have several,” she finally said. “Your family descends from Morgan le Fay, for one thing, one of the Ladies of the Lake in Arthurian myth. And Nineve is a name in the Vivien/Nimue tradition, as you likely already know. The line of enchantresses linked to Avalon, all considered Ladies of the Lake in their own right. If I’m remembering right, Cliodhna is a Celtic sea goddess of passion and prosperity, possibly beauty, too.”
She waved an irritable hand, scrunching up her nose. “That or a fairy queen, the lore is ambivalent on the specifics. But the sea always makes an appearance, one way or another.”
“Let’s say all this is true. I’m goddess-touched, and in divine favor. What if it turns out you don’t want the blessing?” I asked, though my throat tightened ridiculously at the thought. “How would you get rid of it?”
Delilah tossed me a bluntly uncomprehending look, like maybe I was certifiably insane. “Uh, not a common complaint in the books, I must say. In the literature, most supplicants are, you know, overwhelmed and giddy with gratitude. The first step, I’d imagine, would be discovering who bestowed it in the first place. What deity it is that you’re dealing with.”
“Do you think you could help with that?” I asked, trying to keep my tone even. “I know we’ve already taken a good bit of your time.”
“Consider it my honor,” she said dryly, though her tone was more like, Oh, by all means do keep imposing on me, it’s my favorite. But she still hadn’t returned the coin to me; there was genuine professional curiosity in play here. And she probably wanted to get to the bottom of me, too, figure out what I was keeping from her.
“The coin is a helpful start. We have the octagram, which is a fairly broad symbol, but still, promising. We know it can mean salvation, resurrection, new beginnings, abundance. Sometimes it also corresponds with chaos magic, though I doubt that’s the case here.”
Given my newfound power, those attributes sounded more like what the goddess had been intending to give to me than what she necessarily stood for, but that wasn’t something I could share with Delilah.
“But the fact that it’s warm,” she murmured, passing it from hand to hand, a fine wrinkle knitting her brow, “and that it shines like this . . . I’d say we must be talking a light deity, as well as one with water correspondences. That narrows it down for me somewhat, at least.”
She clicked her fingers on the counter again in that complicated tattoo. Then she nodded to herself, leaned over to drop the coin back into my palm, and took off toward the spiraling metal stairs in the bookstore’s back in that brisk march, like some kind of soldier of knowledge.
“Wait there,” she ordered over her shoulder. “I have an idea—just need to gather some things.”
21
Not Just Goddess-Touched
We should get the fuck out of here, Nina,” Gareth hissed into my ear as soon as Delilah’s pounding footsteps faded. “Did you see how she was looking at you? She knows something’s off. That we’re not exactly laying our cards on the table for her perusal here.”
“Leave, and then what?” I challenged, pulling away from him. “We’ve barely learned anything we can actually use! I know what’s happening to me now—I’m goddess-touched, for whatever reason, and because of it, the Lady in the lake gave me a gift. And even that much, we wouldn’t have learned without Delilah’s help. But who is this goddess? What do I do with her blessing? What if I don’t want to keep it? We need much more information here.”
“I’m just saying,” Gareth replied tightly, rocking his head from side to side, a vein pounding at his temple. “I have a bad feeling about this, okay? The more Delilah knows, the more detail you give her . . . it’s risky for us. It’s not how Lyonesse and Igraine wanted you and me to handle this, and you know that.”
“Are you really that afraid of them?” I demanded, halfway pleased to see him cringe at the accusation. “That even us being here, the slightest bit out of pocket, makes you this uncomfortable? They’re the ones who want us to understand what’s happening to me, remember? So just focus on that, why don’t you, and leave the rest to me.”