“If anyone cares, Uncle Raibeart is naked in the back gardens.” Euann glanced up from the security feed on his laptop. Two of his brothers and their cousin, Rory, sat at the formal dining table with him. A trail of light made its way in from the window, creeping across the room to mark the movement of time.

Rory leaned to look lazily past a large flower vase in the middle of the table. He shook his head in denial at Euann. Rory appeared more interested in his coffee cup than anything else. “Not unless the giant puppy I’ve been trying to get Malina and Jane to materialize for me is chasing him.”

“Ah…” Euann squinted and leaned closer to the screen. “No, it looks like…gremains, maybe?”

Rory waved his hand in dismissal. “He’s probably trying to get one to marry him. Let Raibeart have his shot at love.”

“Can ya imagine the children that would come from that union?” Iain mused. His brother’s feet were kicked up on the table, and he picked at a croissant, throwing more pieces onto the plate than into his mouth.

“Should we go rid the gardens of the creatures once and for all?” Euann asked, even as he lacked the motivation to do so.

“It’s too early to deal with gremains,” Iain dismissed, suppressing a yawn. “Let’s do it tomorrow.”

“I don’t want to break up Raibeart’s date,” their oldest brother, Erik, added. He didn’t look up from the thriller he read on his smartphone. “He’ll scream if he needs help.”

A melancholy air had settled over the MacGregor estate, like a mist covering the mansion and surrounding grounds that would not dissipate. The entire family felt it, well, at least those of warlock blood.

The twenty-fifth anniversary of Kenneth’s disappearance was upon them, and they were no closer to having answers than they had been the night he’d gone missing.

They all had theories: vortex to another world, fairy ring to another realm, magick gone awry causing Kenneth to lose his corporeal form, evil spells, statue potions, witch hunters. Erik had convinced himself Kenneth left of his own accord and didn’t want to be found. Otherwise they would have had a hint of his whereabouts. No one else really believed that. Kenneth would not do that to the family. For a time, his brother Niall had thought maybe a nest of vampires had taken him, but that turned out to be a dead end. The family had tried seances and spells, summonings and incantations, offerings and prayers. Nothing brought Kenneth back.

Every year, his parents, Angus and Margareta MacGregor, would go to West Virginia, where Kenneth was last located by a credit card receipt at a local bar. What started as a pilgrimage of hope had slowly turned into a bleak journey they were compelled to take each year.

Euann missed his brother and felt the hole that had been left behind in their lives. It was an ache that would not lessen. He supposed it would be worse for parents, losing a child and never having an answer as to what had happened to him. It didn’t matter that Kenneth had been just over four hundred years old at the time. To parents, their child would always be their child.

In the course of a warlock’s lifetime, twenty-five years wasn’t a lot of time, but it was enough to lose hope, to accept the hollow feeling might never go away. It had become a darkened part of their souls.

Euann realized he watched Raibeart on the security feed of the back gardens without seeing him. He flinched and then jumped back in his seat. “Och, that’s not right. Raibeart is doing nude tai chi.”

“What self-respecting warlock uses technology instead of magick for security? There are only six acres of gardens. Ya should be able to cover that with a couple of protection spells.” Erik still didn’t look up from his book. “I think it’s because the sack man forgot to give ya true magick when he tricked ma into taking ya from him.”

His brothers always teased him about being the son of a sack man and not a real MacGregor. It was an old joke, one they had not given up since childhood. They liked to claim the Spanish boogeyman fathered him, and that is why he wasn’t a true Scottish warlock. Euann hated golf and whiskey, which his family loved, and preferred playing with gadgets instead of using a magickal solution.

Euann arched a brow and, without verbally answering Erik’s insult, he pulled open a file on his computer and sent a video to all of his family’s cellphones. Seconds later, Rory’s phone dinged, Iain’s beeped, and Erik frowned before sweeping his finger over his screen to ignore the notification so he could keep reading.

Rory glanced at Euann with a questioning look.

Euann just gave him a half-smile and kept idly checking the camera feeds around the property.

“Ly-di-ah!” As Rory played the video, the sound of Erik singing to woo his now-wife belted out of the phone.

Barely a second later, Iain’s phone joined their cousin’s creating a slightly out of sync playback of the song. “Ly-di-ah! I sit beneath your window, laaaass, singing ‘cause I loooove your aaaass.”

Erik sat forward in his seat as he swiped his finger to look at the message he’d disregarded moments before.

“Ly-di-ah!”

“Dammit, Euann!” Erik swore.

“Ly-di-ah!”

“Ohmigod, there’s dancing,” Rory exclaimed, slapping his hand on the table and gasping for breath through his amusement.

“Those are some sweet moves, brother,” Iain added, shaking his hips back and forth in his chair.

As if on cue, Rory and Iain belted out with the recording, “Ly-di-ah!”

“Turn it off,” Erik demanded.

“Ly-di-ah! Ya smell just like a, uh, la-ven-der-ah mint, and I think I like your scent.”

“Och, brother, ya cannot carry a tune.” Iain set his phone down and plugged his ears with his fingers. “Ya do not do the MacGregor name proud.”

Erik gestured his hand toward Iain, materializing a stiff breeze that sent Iain’s phone flying into the dining room wall. It crashed so hard that it stopped playing.

“Ya didn’t have to do that,” Iain protested.

“Erik!”

The sound of his wife’s voice caused Erik to stiffen and look around as if he suspected he was in trouble. It was still the recording.

“Uh-oh, Lydia sounds annoyed.” Iain picked up his broken phone. “I don’t think she liked your song.”

“Yes, my lavender,” the recording of Erik’s voice said. Rory and Iain laughed harder.

“Malina drugged me,” Erik protested. It was true. Their sister had helped Lydia make a love potion as a prank and it backfired, horribly. It had caused Erik to become obsessed with his true love to the point of being dangerous. He’d called a storm that nearly destroyed the whole town, and he’d even shifted into a monstrous version of his puma form.

“Don’t call me lavender,” Lydia’s recording stated firmly. Rory turned his phone so Iain could also appreciate the way Erik groveled.

“Yes, my rose.”

“Don’t call me rose.”

“Yes, my—”

The video clip ended when Erik walked out of the frame of the security camera. Iain and Rory doubled over with laughter.

“Ly-di-ah!” Iain sang, placing his hand on his heart as he crooned toward Rory.

“Ly-di-ah!” Rory returned louder than his cousin.

“I will not forget this,” Erik told Euann. “It’s going in the revenge book.”

Euann wasn’t worried. “File it under the section called, I’m not scared of the kitty cat’s threats.”

Erik marched toward the main foyer.

“Oh, wait, Erik, we’re sorry,” Rory said as Erik reached the door.

“Yeah, come back.” Iain moved around the side of the table to follow his brother, with Rory right behind him.

Erik stopped and arched a skeptical brow as he faced them.

As if reading each other’s minds, both Rory and Iain began bouncing around the dining room, lifting their arms and kicking their legs in a bad rendition of an already hilarious dance as they mocked Erik.

“Oh, Ly-di-ah, my lavender cake,” Iain sang.

“How I love to make ya quake,” Rory added.

“Kill me for heaven’s sake,” Iain continued, shaking his ass violently so the kilt he wore jerked back and forth. He winked at Erik. “They call this twerking. Try it next time. Might help.”

Erik lifted his finger and pointed it deliberately at Euann. Under his breath, he uttered, “Revenge.”

Euann laughed and, as Erik strode from the room, he called, “Wait, lavender boy, I have more. Don’t ya want to see…?” He let his words trail off. He heard Erik’s boots hitting heavily on the stairs as he headed toward his bedroom. There, Erik kept a magick mirror that would transport him home to the Victorian mansion he shared with Lydia.

The teasing had lightened the mood of the morning. Iain and Rory went back to their chairs. Euann knew it wouldn’t last, but for now they were smiling.

“Do ya know who would have loved that?” Iain asked, only to answer his own question. “Kenneth.”

And with that, the mood dampened.

Rory nodded as he sat back down by his coffee. “Yeah, he really would have.”