Bewitching Sloth

by Gross, Michelle

  Her mouth dropped. “Why?”

  “Like they won’t be able to tell when they see us…” I ogled her still draped in sheets.

  “What?” Her skin looked flushed.

  “They’ll take one look at you and know just how fucking smitten you are with me,” I teased her.

  She tossed a pillow at my face and huffed. “I swear, do you realize how obnoxious you are sometimes?”

  “It’s okay, witch, I’ll gladly accept all those affections you have for me. I have quite a bit for you as well.”

  She threw another pillow at my head.

  ________

  “Aye, Touch of Death,” August shouted at Isabella the moment we entered the castle side by side. “Touched anyone within the last few hours that we need to send to the afterlife?”

  He went too far, but August often always took things too far. Before I went to pummel him though, she responded.

  “Hey, Pig,” she said to him, then a smirk took over her tiny face. “Or is it toad?”

  That had everyone—all my siblings except Kitty—in the ballroom laughing. Mom hung back in the corner inspecting Izzie. I glanced around and was surprised to see Payne in the mix considering Joy was also here. Even Prudence—with her arms crossed leaning against the wall—looked like she was pleased with Izzie’s response to August. And like Barron, Prudence was never happy about anything.

  “He’s a toad that will never find his princess if he keeps a harem of women,” Joy said, walking up toward Izzie, extending her hand. “Hi, I’m Joy.” Then her eyes widened, and she retreated her hand quickly. “Oh, right, I forgot. No touching.”

  Izzie smiled at her. “I’m Isabella, but Izzie’s fine. Sebastian’s been calling me that since we met without my permission, anyway.”

  Joy laughed. “I’m sorry. My brothers are annoying.”

  “You’re a tiny little thing,” Mom interrupted, walking toward us. I placed a protective hand on her shoulder, a gesture that told Mom not to go overboard. “No wonder Sebastian’s so adamant about protecting you.” She finally offered Isabella a smile. “And it’s a good thing because now we know who we’re really dealing with.”

  “From what we heard from Payne and Barron last night, it’s safe to assume she’s a key element here to whatever games he’s playing and so are we.” Maureen strolled forward and planted herself next to Joy with her arms folded over her chest. “He’s the one that made Izzie’s touch deadly.”

  “Maureen,” Mom’s voice had that warning tone to it I was accustomed to growing up.

  “Well, his little girlfriend probably knows what’s cooking in the Underworld,” Maureen went on anyway.

  “Maureen,” I hissed. “Izzie knows just as much as we do.”

  “Maureen’s right.” Of course, Barron would agree with our sister. I scowled at him. “You don’t know Izzie, and it’s awfully convenient that you ran into her right when all of this started.”

  “You’re wrong,” Izzie muttered. “In fact, Julius doesn’t want me around Sebastian at all. He settles the darkness inside me in a way that almost angers Julius… As for the rest of you, you’re right. We’re all a part of some scheme that I have no clue about.” She hardened her eyes on Maureen. “I wish I knew more, but that would require me to be close to Julius and that’s something I never want to happen. Tell me, have you been stripped of your own will and have all your thoughts removed forever? Have you ever not existed inside yourself? Have your hands been forced on a defenseless creature until there was no life left? Have you been stripped of who you were before you were old enough to be a person?”

  I knew that last one struck a nerve for all of us, and Izzie had done it without even realizing. A storm brew in Maureen’s eyes before she twisted on her heels, shoving Joy out of the way. “Fuck this.”

  “Maureen,” Mom called after her.

  “I’ll go after her,” Barron followed her.

  “I’m sorry,” Izzie started.

  Mom cut her off. “It’s fine. They all have their own demons to face, including you.”

  “Stay close to my brother,” Joy gave her a smile. “It sounds like having you two close together is safer for all of us.”

  “I think so too,” Mom agreed with a smile.

  “Now we have to find Harvest and put a stop to whatever the hell is going on,” Payne groaned, running his hand through his hair.

  “Relax, Payne,” Dad finally made an appearance. The first place his gaze fell was on Mom and even after all these years, those two proved to me love was a very potent and real thing. “Everything always works out.” Only I was surprised to see Mom frowning when Dad said those words. He caught her expression, walked toward her, and pulled her into his arms. “We’ve been through worse.”

  Mom smiled. “We have,” she agreed. “But you’re the one that’s been restless because of everything that’s happening. Don’t downplay this. Something’s changing. I can almost feel it against my skin..”

  “It’s okay, love.” When Dad kissed Mom’s forehead, Joy looked around the room for Payne. He averted her gaze and strolled out of the castle without looking back.

  “You can’t keep me out of the loop all the time,” I recognized Kitty’s voice as she stepped out of the double doors that led to the kitchen. She had a spoon in her mouth and a bowl of ice cream with her.

  “We don’t mean to keep you out of it,” Dad told her.

  “Yes, you do.” She huffed. “It’s fine though, you’re gonna need me if things are bad enough that everyone keeps meeting together like this.” Her eyes lifted over to Izzie as she placed a big scoop of ice cream in her mouth. In a muffled voice, she asked, “Who is this?”

  “This is Isabella—” I stopped talking when I saw that Isabella couldn’t take her eyes off Kitty. Not in the way she looked at everyone when her darkness was taking over. No, this was something else entirely. She looked horrified.

  “You—”

  Isabella took three steps back before she bolted out of the castle.

  Nineteen

  Isabella

  I shouldn’t be surprised. I shouldn’t want to run.

  But I was so afraid.

  I recognized those golden strands, the curve of her body as it rested against the dirty floor of the building. Only now she was standing in front of me in the form of Sebastian’s sister. A ghost from my past came back to haunt me and one of them finally had a name. A name I had never wanted to know.

  One of his sisters, one of his sisters was who Julius had abducted for me to drain. Repeating it didn’t help, but it didn’t make it go away either.

  I shouldn’t be shocked. The face of his mother had stirred an inkling of awareness because his sister was almost the spitting image of her mother. The entire time I looked at her, I had the impression of déjà vu, and it clicked the moment her daughter walked out.

  Why? Why?

  And, it was what Julius wanted even now. Their powers. And their sins. But I didn’t know why. Were they safe with me around? Was I safe leaving? Why was I so powerless when I held so much power within my body? Why wouldn’t it obey me instead of him?

  My chest hurt so bad, and there was a knot in my throat the size of a golf ball. The thought of staying made me queasy, but the idea of leaving Sebastian was somehow worse and I didn’t understand that either.

  His footsteps were loud behind me and I felt him closing in. I had hurried out of the castle—his parents’ amazing home—right in front of them when my brain pieced together what was always there.

  He caught me by the arm and turned me around. “What’s wrong?”

  My heart swelled, and my vision blurred with unshed tears that I wished weren’t there, because within these strange occurrences, I knew it wasn’t my past that haunted me; it was the fear of how Sebastian would react to every new thing he learned about me, including the one where I was sent to absorb all of his sister’s power—or at least try to, until there was nothing left of me or her, and considering she was
an entity, I’d say I wouldn’t have stood a chance, anyway.

  But, Julius seemed to think I could.

  “Hey,” he said again, cupping my cheek.

  “I recognized your sister,” I whispered, reaching for his hands in fear that he’d pull away from me once he knew. I shouldn’t tell him; I didn’t have to. But I couldn’t stop myself from telling him the truth. In a matter of days, I’d told him so much and even now, I couldn’t explain my need for him to know me. I’d never had a soul to talk to about the darkest parts of my life and all these memories that haunted me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the night I escaped from Julius’s clutches was the night he meant for me to take your sister’s power,” my voice wavered as I told him. “Don’t you get it? All along, this is what he wanted. I’m right here where he wants me and he’s going to take advantage of that.”

  Sebastian’s eyes darkened. “It was Julius that kidnapped Kitty?” he asked me. I knew that had to be his sister’s name. I retreated a step back, but he grabbed my arm. “You’re going to have to stop that.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Running from me every time you feel fear.” I couldn’t avert my gaze even though I wanted to, somehow, his eyes held mine captive. “Everyone’s afraid of something, but you start running long before there’s a reason to.”

  “Who knows what I could have done to your sister that night,” I yelled, then softened my voice. “I don’t mean to… It’s an automatic response… I don’t want to run from you.”

  “Then don’t,” he urged me. “That was the night you were able to escape?”

  I nodded, then sighed. “Have I really escaped from his clutches, Sebastian? Have I really? The moment I stepped back into the Underworld, it’s like he has a hold on me! One touch, one little whisper to the darkness inside and I’m gone. He takes me under and I don’t come back, and even without him it’s hell being here around all of you!” I almost jerked my arm away from his hand but stopped myself at the last second, willing my body to adapt to not running. “All I want to do is touch each one of you until there’s nothing left to take, or my body disintegrates in the same way we saw Delena’s yesterday.”

  “I’ll take you away from them. When it’s just me, it’s not so bad, right?” He searched my eyes, and I dipped my head down. “I’d never let you hurt any of them, and I’d never let you hurt yourself. Do you hear me, Isabella? I’ll find a way to kill an entity before I ever let him do you any more harm.”

  “You’re going to have to stop that,” I repeated his words.

  “Stop what?”

  “Making me feel things that I don’t know what to do with,” I told him honestly, then laughed nervously. “I can’t stop telling you whatever’s on my mind.”

  That made him smile. “Since you brought it up, I think it’s safe for me to agree. You sure talk a lot for someone that didn’t even want to be friends with me.”

  “Are we friends?” I asked him.

  Holding my arm, he slid his fingers down until he was touching mine and our fingers entwined. Sebastian brought our hands up to his chest, resting the top of my hand against the rhythm of his heartbeat. “Feel that?” he asked me. “That organ beating in my chest? That’s what you’re becoming to me. That’s all of me, witch, and you think it won’t fall into those little hands of yours if you don’t try taking it? Tell me, do I feel like a friend?”

  You feel like nothing I’ve ever had before. You feel everlasting.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat while he continued. “You’re safest with me. We’re all safer that way. I won’t let him control you, and I’ll stop you from hurting anyone.” He squeezed my fingers gently. “I’m glad you got away that night, but just know, I would have taken one look at you that night and saved you along with Kitty had you been there. Believe that. And believe that it’s not your fault she was kidnapped or held captive.”

  “My brother’s right, ya know.” I whipped around to see the cause of my distress—Kitty, Sebastian called her. She was beautiful in a way I’d never be, sensual and curvy. Blonde hair and striking blue eyes like her brother. Only, some of the beauty she held ebbed with the way she walked and ate. She carried ice cream around with her, and I also couldn’t help but notice all the candy bars hanging out of the back pockets of her jeans. Was that a Slim Jim placed behind her ear? “We kind of save people, and we’re kind of really good at it. They try to shield me from a lot of it since I was kidnapped.” She gave her brother a tight look. “They forget that I’m no different from them.”

  So, it was a big deal when she was taken by Julius. Sebastian wasn’t letting on to how much it had affected them all. I slipped my hand out of his and took an appropriate step back. He dropped his hand from his chest and eyed me softly before fixing his gaze on his sister.

  “Your touch hurts the supernatural, so what?” She surprised me by saying, sticking another spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. “I can’t stop eating, Sebastian falls into a cursed sleeping state more than all the fairy tale princesses combined, and don’t get me started on the rest of my siblings.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Like you, these curses were placed on us without us wanting them, and it’s not our fault. You didn’t kidnap me. You had nothing to do with it. Even if Harvest or whoever would have succeeded in forcing your hand on me, I don’t worry like the rest of my family because I know I’m never really alone.”

  “You’re alone all the time,” Sebastian told her.

  She smirked. “No, I’m not. I’ve never been truly alone in my entire life.”

  “We don’t hover,” Sebastian defended them all.

  “Not you.” She sighed. “Something in the shadows is always watching me.”

  “Not this again.” Sebastian huffed. “We’d know if someone was watching you. We’d sense it.”

  Memories of the night I escaped flashed through my eyes, and the terrifying man that had moved through the demons killing them—just like a shadow. Was that who she was referring to? A shiver slid down my back. I wasn’t brave enough to ask or mention that creature to her. Somehow, it felt like by thinking about him right now, he’d somehow know. He was downright creepy, and the Underworld was full of creepy, so I had no idea why this one was so horrifying.

  “I suppose,” she mumbled. “I’m Kara, by the way, but everyone calls me Kitty.”

  “Isabella,” it was easier to find my voice when we weren’t talking about that night.

  “Why is my brother the only one that isn’t affected by your touch?” she randomly asked. “Yeah, you’ve been the talk of the house the last several hours, so I know all about it.”

  “I don’t know…” I told her honestly.

  She smiled, still taking bites of her ice cream. “Our parents have a word for these kinds of encounters and things.” Her words had Sebastian smirking like he knew what she was talking about. “They call it fate.”

  “I’ve already—” Sebastian cut off mid-sentence. The smile on his face left completely, and when I looked at Kitty, her face held the same amount of alarm as his as they glanced at one another. “Feel that?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Hundreds of them… Hundreds of lives are about to be taken that aren’t supposed to die today.”

  Everything that happened next spanned within seconds, but it was amazing how fast everyone came together in such a short amount of time.

  “It’s safe to say it’s Harvest,” the Grim Reaper called out as everyone started appearing left and right around us.

  “Well, he wanted our attention,” Sebastian’s mother, Melanie said.

  “And he got it,” Maureen hissed, stepping out of the castle door. “That and he’s about to get so much more.”

  “Who messes with children just to get our attention?” Payne muttered.

  My stomach swam with unease. “It’s children again?” I asked Sebastian.

  He nodded. “It’s okay.” He gripped my shoulder. “We’ve got time to make it to th
em.”

  “I’m going too,” Kitty told everyone.

  “Fuck that,” August hissed. “You’re staying here. Who knows what we’re going into and we won’t have time to look after you.”

  “I know you mean well, but you sound like a fucking asshole brother when you treat me like I can’t take care of myself.” Kitty snapped at him.

  “She’s coming,” Sebastian said to August. “He wants all of us for a reason. We’re better together. She’s more vulnerable left alone than going.”

  August blew air from his nose but otherwise said nothing as he nodded and walked away. It was amazing to see that even that prick seemed to care a great deal for his family.

  “Izzie.” Sebastian snuck up beside me holding his hand out. “You’re safest attached to me, got that? But don’t go distracting me by sliding your hand up my stomach, all right? I’m all yours again afterward.”

  He made me smile despite my queasy stomach. Instantly, small and warm flurries replaced my worries… he was good at that, making me feel better. “Sebastian… We’re walking into a trap, you know that?”

  “How many lives did you help save while working at the hospital?” What a strange question to ask me at a time like this.

  “Why are you asking me that?”

  “We don’t know what we’re walking into, but we do know what we’ll be doing once we get there.”

  Saving kids’ lives.

  And when put like that, it made all the sense in the world to risk everything, even ourselves.

  And that was how I fell in love with Sebastian in a matter of days.

  It was the way he called to my inner self. The way he sang the sweetest song quieting all the demons that haunted me, and he gave me hope when my flight response wanted me to run from my past and my future.

  One minute in a room with Sebastian. One minute in a room with Julius.

  That was all a person needed to recognize the difference between heroism and corruption. Light and dark. Honesty and deception.