by Keary Taylor
“Or going through old documents, records, books in Salem, where Mare McGregor had lived,” Dad said. And as I looked at him, I saw hope dawning in his eyes. And excitement. “Your mother was the only person who rivaled me in reading. She could have found endless information about this…mage blood you must have shared.”
Something tingled at the back of my brain. Something like hope.
“Do you know where she put all of those books?” I asked. My eyes cast around the house, wondering which ones she’d brought back with her from her search.
Dad shook his head. “Her classroom would have been my guess,” he said. “But I cleared that out years ago. There was only what you’d expect. But the number of books your mother collected…” He looked around the house, too. “I know they aren’t all here.”
My heart started beating faster.
Because here it was, what our family had needed for so long. What Nathaniel and I desperately needed.
Hope.
We had hope for the first time.
Chapter Ten
We might have just shared earth-shattering news, but we all still had lives to live and responsibilities to take care of.
I went to class and did everything I was supposed to. Dad went to teach. I didn’t see Nathaniel, but I knew where he would be. We all had lives to carry on with.
I kept my mouth shut and I avoided everyone I possibly could. We couldn’t be exactly sure, but I was counting on the coin of compulsion’s effects lasting twenty-four hours. I wasn’t going to give David or Borden or anyone else the opportunity to bother me. I’d be brutally honest, more so than normal. And who knows what kind of situations would get me to confess one thing or another.
So, when school was over, I headed back home. Dad taught until five o’clock on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So, I had the house to myself for a few hours.
Maybe I wasn’t a good daughter, but maybe I was just doing what my father couldn’t. I went straight for their bedroom. My mother’s side of the room had been practically untouched since she disappeared. My father couldn’t stand to disturb anything, maybe he thought she was going to come back any day and want her things just as she’d left them.
But I had to get some answers.
I had to know.
I went to her nightstand first. I went through the two books that sat atop it. One was written in French, and as far as I could tell, there was nothing more to it. The other was a book about the history of Massachusetts. It too, looked innocent.
I pulled her top drawer open. There was an assortment of pens and notebooks. Carefully, I went through each one. They were all notes from her classes, and her planner. I went through that carefully, but there was nothing that set off any alarms. Her appointments extended beyond the date she disappeared and tapered off in the months after.
That was another signal to me that she didn’t plan to just walk away from her life.
The bottom drawer contained an assortment of memories. An old diploma. A clip of she and my father’s wedding announcement in the paper. A few stacks of pictures, from before I was born, to ones just a year before she was gone.
I next moved to her dresser. Emotions pricked at the backs of my eyes as I carefully went through her clothes. They still smelled faintly of her. Like old books and lavender and jasmine. I remembered when she wore a certain blouse or the fuzzy socks she wore around the house. I remembered how pretty she looked in that dress.
But there was nothing more than memories and clothes in the dresser.
I snooped through her drawers in the bathroom next. All I found were old hair products and brushes, hair pins, her make up. There was a vial of her perfume sitting on a shelf, and for half a moment, I was tempted to spray some of it on, just to smell her again. But I wouldn’t risk my father smelling it on me. I could only imagine what that would do to him.
I worked my way through the entire house, going from closets to the kitchen, to the sideboard in the dining room.
I found little pieces of her all around the house. Things that stirred memories. Things that made me smile. A lot of things that made me cry.
I walked to the living room and just stared at her chair by the window. My parents had bought a matching set a year before she disappeared and put them in the bay window. A small table sat in between them, and often, I’d find my parents holding hands over the table, reading quietly by candlelight.
I missed seeing them there together. I missed our normal. I missed when we didn’t have this big gaping hole in our lives.
But I turned to the kitchen, because Dad would be home soon, and I knew he wasn’t going to feel like cooking after getting home this late.
I had just finished making spaghetti when he walked in. He immediately launched into venting about a certain student. So, I sat there and listened while he ranted.
And for a minute, things did feel normal. They were the new normal.
Later, Dad retired to the living room. He had pulled out a stack of books from around the house that he wanted to take a closer look at as possibilities that could be more than they were.
I’d hesitated in the middle of the room for a solid thirty seconds.
My eyes were fixed on Mom’s empty chair.
I’d only ever sat in it three times since she disappeared. It just hadn’t ever felt right. So, I’d sat on the couch every time I came in the living room.
But now, looking at it, I felt closer to her.
I felt the echo of her. As if she weren’t that far away.
So, I crossed the room, and I sat down in it.
I worked on the pile with Dad. Book after book. I went through a dozen of them in twenty minutes.
But I was distracted. My mind was running a million different directions.
I shifted, crossing my legs, when something poked me in the hip.
I reached down and found a book had slid down into the crack of the cushion. I pulled it out.
It was some kind of fantasy novel. Thinking about it, I did recall Mom reading it soon before she disappeared. A bookmark poked out between the pages about two-thirds of the way through, telling me she never finished it.
“I’ve got some homework to work on,” I said as I clutched it to my chest and stood. I pressed a kiss to my father’s forehead. “See you in the morning.”
“Night, Margot,” he said, smiling as he watched me walk up the stairs.
I brushed my teeth and walked into my room with the book and my school bag. I set the book on the nightstand and dumped my school things out onto the bed.
I stood there for a solid thirty seconds with my hands on my hips. I let a huff of a breath out, feeling overwhelmed and bored at the same time.
With so much in front of us, it was nearly impossible to focus on school. And I felt it, a shift in the direction of my life. Things were bigger than I’d thought just a few weeks ago.
What did I want to do with my life now? Was it the same as what I’d wanted to do with it just a few weeks ago?
I told myself to suck it up and just focus on making it through the semester. I climbed onto the bed and got to work.
The sun had been down for maybe half an hour when I heard a light tap on my window.
I smiled before I even looked at it.
I slid the window open and a paper airplane floated right into my hands. Carefully, I opened it up.
I miss you, read Nathaniel’s beautiful handwriting.
I smiled, instantly feeling better. Everything was heavy and complicated and overwhelming in my new world. But not Nathaniel.
Nathaniel felt good and exciting.
I haven’t stopped thinking about you all day, or any other day, I wrote in return. As soon as the words were written on the paper, the airplane folded itself again and instantly shot back through the window.
I sat in my chair by the window, waiting and smiling to myself.
Two minutes ticked by, and then five. I started to get anxious.
Maybe the coin hadn’
t worn off. Maybe I’d been too honest. Maybe I was jumping too fast.
But then a noise outside drew my ear. I turned my head, listening closer.
And just two seconds later, Nathaniel’s head emerged through my window.
“What are you doing?” I hissed, trying to keep my voice down as I sprang to my feet. I reached out a hand, helping him inside. He barely fit through.
His feet were louder than I would have liked as he stepped inside. He grabbed my shoulder to steady himself as he climbed through.
And in the dim light, our eyes met. His were so green and so intense. My stomach did a back roll.
“I couldn’t wait one more hour,” he breathed out. He took a step closer to me, and I watched as his eyes dropped down to my lips. “I’m pretty sure the coin has worn off, but that is the honest truth. I can’t wait one more agonizing day, Margot.”
I felt it building up inside of me. This surge of excitement. This was real. This wasn’t a book. This was my story.
My hands came to the back of his neck, sliding up into his hair. Nathaniel’s hands came to my back, cradling me with a strength I didn’t know he had. He stepped me back two steps, and just as he tipped us back onto the bed, his lips finally met mine.
This kiss was fierce. It was not elegant. It wasn’t composed. Really, it was nothing like Nathaniel.
But I tasted him in every movement of his lips. I breathed him in. I touched him. His hands clung to me.
I let my lips slide open and I didn’t know if he would take my invitation, but he did. His tongue sought out mine. Deeper and more desperate, the kiss evolved. His body pressed into mine, and despite our height difference, I felt that we fit together perfectly.
One of Nathaniel’s hands ran up my side, slipping up along my arm. His fingers wrapped around my wrist and something in me thrilled at the motion.
My entire body was alight with need and want and utter satisfaction.
Finally. Finally.
I smiled under his lips. Gently, I rolled us so Nathaniel and I were both on our sides. Through the dim light, our kisses slowed and I rested a hand on his cheek as our eyes met once more.
“I want you, Margot,” Nathaniel said. He rested his hand in the valley sloping down from my ribs and my hip. He touched the bare skin there from where my shirt had ridden up, and I’d never felt anything so good. “Every morning and every night and all the hours in between. I can’t ever get you out of my head.”
“Glad to hear I’m not the only one getting a bit obsessed,” I said. I leaned forward, gently pressing my lips to his. My eyes slid closed in ecstasy and a smile pulled at my lips.
“Be mine, Margot,” he said. He wrapped his hand around my wrist. He brought my palm to his lips, pressing a kiss there. And then he kissed each of my knuckles, one by one. “You’ve claimed me publicly on several occasions. Let me do the same, and let your words be the truth.”
I held his eyes as I rolled him over onto his back. I climbed onto him, one knee on either side of his hips. I grabbed his wrists this time, pinning them above his head. And slowly, I lowered my mouth to his. I kissed his lips. And then I kissed the corner of his mouth. Then I kissed the side of his jaw. And finally, his neck.
“You belong to me, Nathaniel Nightingale,” I said, whispering the words to the hollow below his ear. “And I’m yours.”
He reached up as I released his wrists, lacing his fingers into my hair. He held my eyes with an intensity I’d yet seen from him. I saw hunger there. I saw claiming. I saw that he would fight, no matter the cost, for me.
So, I didn’t hesitate as my mouth returned to his, hungrier and more confident than before. His lips weren’t gentle. His grip was demanding. And I couldn’t get enough of how his hands felt as they slid from my hair, down my shoulders, over my back, and to my hips.
Once more, Nathaniel rolled us, pinning me against the bed. His kisses trailed from my mouth, down to my neck. I relished in the feeling of his tongue on my skin and every inch of me set on fire.
I’d been kissed before. I’d kissed three other boys in high school. It had been nice, at times awkward and wet.
But nothing, nothing compared to kissing Nathaniel.
He had a hunger and I was filled with both the desire to fill it, and leave him starving, so that he would always come back for more. He was confident and exploratory. He knew what he wanted, and he knew I wanted it too and invited me on every inch of this journey.
His kisses trailed from my collarbone, across my chest, to the other side.
I threw out a hand to brace myself. Only I hit something on the nightstand.
It went flying through the air.
It hit the floor.
And then there was the sound of something metal hitting the wooden floor. It skittered across the floorboards and hit the opposite wall.
“You okay, Margot?”
My entire body tensed and grew cold at my father’s voice just outside my bedroom door.
Nathaniel instantly grew still, holding his breath.
“Yeah,” I said, and I knew my voice probably sounded desperate and sharp. “Just dropped my pen.”
There was a slight pause, and I just about died, wondering if, somehow, he knew. If he knew I was lying flat on my back with Nathaniel Nightingale poised over me, one of his knees between my legs, his hand splayed over my ribs, his lips hovering over my neck.
He couldn’t know.
He couldn’t know.
But my heart was frozen in fear all the same.
“Alright,” my father finally said. “I’m going to bed. Get some sleep.”
“’K,” I said, praying my voice didn’t sound too strained.
We both listened hard to the sound of his footsteps walking away. Still, neither of us dared move as we listened to him in the bathroom. And we still didn’t move until we heard his bedroom door close and sixty seconds passed by.
Nathaniel finally relaxed, laying the full weight of his body on top of me. He tilted his head down, resting his forehead against my shoulder with a sigh.
I couldn’t help the smile on my face or the laugh that didn’t leave my lips but shook my chest. Within five seconds, Nathaniel’s did the exact same thing.
“Well, this turned into a much more interesting night than anticipated,” I whispered.
Nathaniel just laughed again. He shook his head before he pressed a kiss to the side of my neck and then rolled off me. He lay on his back, crooking one arm above his head. The other fell over onto my middle and he found my hand, lacing his fingers through mine.
“Probably for the best he walked up here when he did,” he said, his voice quiet and calm once more. “I was getting a little carried away.”
I rolled over, angling toward him. “I certainly didn’t mind.”
He smiled on one side of his mouth. “I could tell. Still, I need you to know that I’m not this type of man. The kind who just crawls in through a woman’s bedroom window and jumps into her bed. You seem to have brought out a new man in me, Margot.”
I just smiled and leaned forward, kissing him once more, just because I could, and I really, really wanted to. “I kind of like who we are together. It feels real. Natural.”
He didn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes told me that he agreed.
Needing some air, I rolled away and turned on the lamp beside my bed. Sitting on the edge of it, my eyes searched the floor for whatever it was I’d knocked over.
Laying on the ground was the book I’d brought up, the one my mother had been reading. There was a card poking out of its pages. Picking it up, I found it was one of the title cards, for a book located in the McCallum room. But it certainly wasn’t for the book she’d been reading. And I didn’t know why she would have taken the card.
“You ever read either of these books?” I asked, my brows furrowed. I held the book and the card up.
Nathaniel took them and examined both. “I haven’t. But this number…” he squinted his eyes, looking at the
number on the card. “I swear it doesn’t exist. And it doesn’t even make sense with this asterisk.”
My brows furrowed, trying to figure out what that meant.
But as I looked back at the floor, I saw something gleaming against the floorboard. I slid off the bed and crawled forward on my hands and knees. I grabbed it and sat back on my knees.
It was a key.
It was one of those older styles. Not the old skeleton keys, but the kind from the turn of the century with a loop on one end and a star shape on the other.
I looked back at Nathaniel, who looked down at the key with rapt interest.
My heart broke out into a race.
“My father said my mother had been collecting books from Boston and Salem before she disappeared,” I blurted the words as they exploded in my head. “But he said they’re not here, and they weren’t in her office.” I twisted around, kneeling at the side of the bed, holding the key up for Nathaniel to see closer. “What if…what if this opens some room? What if this is a clue?” I grabbed the card with the room location and the number Nathaniel didn’t think existed.
Nathaniel looked back up at me. “Margot, what if she found things? What if she knew…everything?”
My eyes brightened. Hope and excitement surged in my veins. “Let’s go,” I said, getting to my feet. “We need to find it.”
Nathaniel’s hand snapped out, grabbing hold of my wrist. “The school has long been locked.”
The truth of what he said hit me with a suffocating tidal wave. I sank back down onto the bed and my shoulders sagged with disappointment.
“So, it’s a good thing I made a copy of Mrs. Walker’s keys before I returned them to her.”
My eyes flicked back over to Nathaniel, and my excitement doubled at the coy mischief in his own. I felt a smile grow on my face and I twisted, crawling up into his lap. Anticipation and lust and excitement sparked in my lower belly, racing down my inner thighs before returning to my chest. I placed my hands on either side of his face, breathing him in as I kissed him.
I really, really loved us as a team.
“You ready?” I asked as I pulled away for breath and looked down into his eyes.