“Because, my dear child, I know so much more than your Bryce does about magic. I know a great deal about most all things.” Roxanna asked her why. “You know why. You don’t need for me to tell you.”
“You were the first Grand Witch.” Grandma only nodded while she snapped more green beans. “You’re not going to help me, are you?”
“You don’t need my help. You’re a brilliant young woman.” The sound of the bean snapping brought back a memory that she’d had once. “There you go. You’ve got it now.”
“You’re my mother.” Grandma nodded. “Men came to the house and fired bullets into our home when I was there. They wanted to kill us both for our powers. Not only that, but the familiars that we both used. We barely got out alive. It was a miracle that we weren’t hurt.”
“Ah, but we were, weren’t we, child? You were shot up pretty badly because you tried to cover me. I was hurt too, because all I could think about was you. Those men, you killed them with your power, and then healed us both. That magic came from me to you. As my child, the power to call on, that was purely you.”
She remembered it now. “The heat that came from me. The heat came from me because I called my dragon, my counterpart, to come and help us.” The beans suddenly disappeared, and Grandma was standing at the stove when the popping of gunfire started. “They didn’t just want to take our magic, but they wanted the dragons as well. Mother fuck, Grandma, I’m almost as old as Connor.”
~*~
Connor listened to the story twice. He’d heard it when Roxanna told him, then again when she’d told it to Devon. It still wasn’t making any sense. Nothing was right now. When she sat down in front of him, Connor took Roxanna in his arms. He just needed to be grounded for a moment.
“Are you mad?” He asked her what he might be mad about. “I don’t know. Because my life with you has been a total fabrication?”
“No, I’m not mad. I’m confused, that’s for sure, but not mad. How come you didn’t remember any of this? I mean, you seem to have been around for a long time.” She asked him what he meant by it seemed like she had. “I don’t know what I mean. How do you even know that what you dreamed is real? Maybe the sex rattled your brain or something. Maybe that’s it.”
When she didn’t say anything to him, he thought that she was thinking about what he said. He was glad for that. Connor didn’t want her to think that every dream she had was going to be something that was truthful. After she stood up, telling him that dinner was nearly ready, Connor leaned back on the couch and let out a sigh of relief.
There were things about the dream that she believed that made him think that something had happened to her during sex. She seemed so…he wasn’t sure, but she did seem like she was happy that she’d been able to speak to her grandma.
Also, there was something he was surprised that Roxanna hadn’t thought about, he was sure. Connor would mention it to her if she continued to believe the dream. Roxanna hadn’t been there when her grandma had been killed, she’d told him before. All this, he thought, was some demon that was trying to trick her into something, and she let him.
Connor realized that he’d been sitting there on the couch for quite a while now. Looking at the fire, it might have been longer than he thought. The fire had burnt down. Even the embers were nearly out when he stood up, going to the kitchen to find out what had happened with dinner.
“Where’s my wife? I mean, did she come in here earlier.” Brenda told him that she’d not seen her for hours. “I don’t know what time it was, but earlier she told me that dinner was ready. Did I miss it?”
“I’ve not seen your wife, my lord. Earlier, as you said, she was here, but she left just after five and hasn’t returned that I know of.”
Thanking her, Connor made his way to the front of the house to see if she’d returned. If perhaps her car might be there. It wasn’t in the drive. With the amount of snow on the drive, she’d been gone long enough for the snow to have covered her tracks.
Reaching out to her, Connor was surprised that he wasn’t able to reach her. Thinking that something had happened to her, he reached out to the rest of the family. The only person that answered him was Devon.
I’ll come over and talk to you. Connor was worried then. Asking Devon if something had happened to Roxanna, all he said was that he’d be right over.
I don’t want to wait until you come over. If something has happened, I want to know about it. Devon asked him if he’d told Roxanna she was crazy. No. Why would I do that?
Then he thought of what he’d said to her. That her dream was just that, a dream. That there wasn’t any way for it to be true. Then he’d told her that sex had rattled her brain.
I think what I said to her, she took the wrong way. I did sort of tell her that she’d been rattled, but I never said that she was crazy. Is she there with you? Devon said that she wasn’t. But you know where she is.
I do. But I’m not going to tell you. You really pissed her off, Connor. Whatever happened, whatever you said to her, you are in the shit house now. Connor asked if he could please tell him where she was. I can’t. My wife will have my nuts in a vise, and while I like you a great deal, your friendship isn’t worth me getting neutered. By the way, your wife told me that was what she was going to do to me if I mentioned where she is.
Connor didn’t think anything he’d said to her was worth her leaving him for. But the more he thought about what he’d said and how he’d acted, he knew that he had fucked up royally. He told Devon to come over if he wanted.
An hour later, Connor was no closer to figuring out where Roxanna was than he’d been before. Each time he reached for her, it was as if he was hitting a brick wall. After a few times of doing that, she did something so that when he tried to find her, his head would feel as if it was splitting open.
Bryce showed up just as Devon was leaving for home. “Do not open your mouth, or so help me, I will blast you so far into outer space that you’ll never return.” He nodded, and sat back down on the couch when Bryce told him to. “Are you out of your ever loving mind right now? Why would you tell her that you thought that she was nuts? And because of sex?”
“I was grasping at straws.” She told him to shut up. “You asked me a question. Am I supposed to ignore it?”
“Yes you are, dumbass. I’m here to call you names and ask you questions for which you should have thought of the fucking answers before you opened your mouth. To think that I was envious of the two of you because you seemed to have your shit together. Now look at you. You’re sitting here whining about something that was misunderstood, and your wife is out there doing who knows what to every creature that she comes across.” He asked if she was all right. “What do you think? No, she’s not fucking all right. The man that she loves called her stupid. And on top of that, you basically called her a liar. What the hell were you thinking? Don’t answer that. Because I know the answer. You weren’t thinking. Not with your head, you weren’t.”
“I was confused.” Bryce looked ready to do harm to him. “I was. She had all these tales that didn’t make sense. Don’t you think that I would have been able to tell if she was as old as I am?”
“Yet, you couldn’t. The part that I don’t understand at all is why you think she wasn’t telling you what she knew to have happened? Because it didn’t sound good to your ears, so hell, it couldn’t be true?” She started pacing the room. “Did it occur to you to come to me for answers before you fucking ruined your life? And all of ours when she decides to never return?”
“Do you think she won’t return?” Bryce didn’t answer him. “What is it you can tell me about her grandma? Please? I want to know so that I can grovel when I find her. And I really want to find her.”
“Will you believe me?” He said that he would. And that he’d believe Roxanna when she came back. “I’d not count on that if I were you. Not soon, anyway. The last time I
saw her she was crying so hard that she could barely see. Not to mention, she was sick with it. You hurt her deeper than anyone that I’ve ever seen hurt. Then you thought about it being a demon. You’d rather think that whatever was wrong with her—your words, not mine—was a demon rather than that she was telling you the truth. I don’t know whether to feel sorry for you or to knock the fucking shit out of you. You fucking dumbass.”
“I am. I know that now.” She said that it was too little too late. “I don’t want it to be too late, Bryce. I messed up. I know that now. But we’d just had the most incredible sex ever, and things had messed with my mind. I think that I was going into this with a closed mind, and that is why I said that.”
“She said that the two of you thought that she was in heat, and that she conceived.” Connor told her that was exactly what had started him feeling doubtful in the first place. “Roxanna is pregnant, Connor. Devon could smell it on her when she got to his house. He was just as surprised about it as I was. Then he spoke to his grandma.”
“Anna? What did Anna know about this?” Bryce explained it to him. “Devon was born as a child? To a human and a dragon? That’s not possible.” She glared at him. “All right, I guess it is possible, but…Roxanna is really going to have a child? My child?”
“Whether it ends up being your child or not when it’s born is predicated on what you do in the next twenty-four hours. If you don’t fix this, Connor, she could and will do so willingly on her own. Mark my words. You have to fix this.” He told her that he would. “Her grandmother would like to speak to you.”
Connor felt his balls tighten up around his throat. She was going to kill him. Annabella was going to not just tar and feather him, but she was going to make it so that he’d never find his child.
Asking what she might want from him, the elderly woman appeared in the room. Connor had been correct. He was never going to see his child born. Not to mention, he’d not be able to tell Roxanna how very sorry he was. Connor hoped that someone would remember him well. Roxanna certainly wasn’t going to.
Chapter 11
Roxanna sat in the booth at the little diner and played with her food. She’d been hungry when she’d decided to stop and come into this place. But now all she wanted to so was throw up, and then simply die on the bathroom floor.
“Buck up.” She looked up at the waitress that had been by her table more times than Roxanna thought was necessary. “You look like you’ve been handed the brass ring, and then you lost it in the shitter.”
Something tugged at her memory. “You could say that, I guess. I just want to sit here and drown in my misery.” The woman—her name tag claimed her to be Ruth—slammed her hand down on the table as she joined her in the booth. “Don’t you have someone else to piss off?”
“Not at the moment, no.” Roxanna looked around and realized that she and Ruth were the only two in the place. “We closed up about ten minutes ago.”
The sign outside the place was still blazing the words Open twenty-four hours. Before she could point that out to her, Ruth snapped her fingers and the sign went off. Roxanna looked at her.
“What are you?” Ruth laughed. “In the event that you don’t get it, I’m not in the mood for humor. I’m in a piss poor mood, and I just want to be fucking left alone.”
“Tough shit.” The tea she’d been drinking was refilled, and the steam coming off seemed to curl into small hearts. “What do you think I am? And don’t say that I’m a pain in the ass. You call me that all the time.”
Roxanna started to ask her when she’d said that when the woman in front of her shifted from Ruth to her grandma. Putting her fingers to her lips, Roxanna just stared at her and tried to form a single comment or question that would be coherent.
“Do you really work here?” Grandma said that she owned the place. “I don’t understand. How is this hiding away? Do you want to get captured?”
“I’m hiding in plain sight, so to speak. I’ve talked to Connor. You should cut him some slack, my dear. He was just as confused as you were after you conceived his child.” Roxanna started to tell her grandma that she didn’t care when what she said occurred to her. “Yes, you’re going to have his child. Not an egg, as that wonderful Kelly has, but a child. Devon was born the same way. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s something that all creatures feel and wonder about for decades. You’re having a little girl, by the way.”
“I don’t understand.” Grandma started to tell her about sex. “I know how it happened, damn it. I don’t understand why something so special would be for me. I’m not all that much.”
“Why on earth would you think that?” Roxanna explained to her about how she’d forgotten all about their time together. How she was just someone that spoke to ghosts. Nothing that a hundred other people could do. “Okay, first of all, you didn’t remember because it wasn’t safe for you to remember. I did that. I’m sorry that I had to, but I needed to keep you safe so that you could reach this point in your life for Connor.”
“To have his child.” Grandma shook her head. “So I’m not going to have a baby. I knew that there—”
“Hush right now, before I pop you a good one on your ass. My goodness, you’re still as stubborn as you were when you knew what was going on. Now that you’re older, much older, I’ll add, you’re worse than before.” Roxanna smiled at her. “You imp. Yes, you’re going to have a child by Connor. But it’s not just his child, Roxanna. It’s a child of you both. You created this child out of love and magic. A great deal of magic, as a matter of fact. Magic that you’ve had for a very long time.”
“Devon was born of the same magic?” Grandma told her that in a way he had been. “What way? Are you telling me that anyone that has magic and a dragon can have a child? Because that is what it’s sounding like to me.”
“Devon’s sire, the fucking prick, was full of magic too. A great deal of black magic. Not only did he dabble in it for his own personal gain, but like a great many witches, Sara included, he killed others—witches, dragons, and other creatures—that turned his heart into a black mass. It was the purity of his mother that made Devon what he is now. A kind and loving man who treasures all that is around him. That is where the two of you, yourself and Connor, differ. You both have pure magic, no black at all.” Roxanna asked her why they were different. The magic was strong in all of them. “Yes, it is. But, as you well know, a white witch, such as you are, is much stronger than anyone with the same amount of dark magic. What makes you stronger still is the purity of the dragon that you’re mated to, the only other creature that could help you handle the amount of magic that you have. Connor balances you as much as you do him.”
Roxanna thought about the things that she’d seen Bryce do. Some of it things that she’d only seen her grandmother be able to perform. When she looked at her grandma, wondering why she had not been the Grand Witch, she seemed to know that answer.
“You’re going to ask me about Bryce, the Grand Witch. I would have too. But what you don’t know, and I was remiss in telling you, is that while you’re as strong as her, and you are, you can do things that she cannot. You have the ability to work with the dead. She can’t do that nearly as well as you. Nor will she ever be able to.”
“Why?” Grandma asked her what she meant. “Why can’t she, as the Grand Witch, work with the dead?”
“It comes back to the balance again. She would be unbalanced if she could do that as well as her other duties. With you there, as her sister, you and Connor balance out the magic and power that she can call on. While she can call to them, she can’t send them away. You and Connor do that for her. You’re a team.” She said that this was confusing. “It’s only confusing because you’re pig headed.”
“Thanks.” Grandma smiled at her. “What would have happened if I had been killed before meeting up with Connor?”
“You couldn’t be killed, love. No
more than I can. It’s why you don’t remember anything. It was safer, for you both—myself too—for you not to remember all your life and the magic that you have. People, humans, would have captured you for your knowledge and the ability to do what you do with the ghosts. It’s why they come to you more than to Connor. Because you’re even stronger than he is. And Connor knows that.” Roxanna snorted. “He does. He has always known that. By the way, the poor man is going out of his mind worrying about you.”
“Right now I need answers more than I want to take care of a whiny ass. Okay, I guess I can understand my not being able to remember all that I can do. But I did remember it at times. I used the power too.” Grandma said that was to be expected. But there was someone forever watching over her. “So that I can have this special kid.”
“Your stubbornness is coming through again, Roxanna. No. Not just to have a child by the man that you love. As you’ve pointed out, anyone can have a child that has magic and a dragon in their bed. But to have a child that would be stronger than even you and Connor together. A little girl that will someday marry and bring even more magic to what she could have done before. Things that she can do that were given to her by both her parents. Both parents that practice white magic.” Roxanna put her hand on her belly. “She rests there now, gathering your magic around her so that no matter what happens, she’ll be safe. The dragon in her as well is arming her with the knowledge of her kind. Roxanna, she’s nearly full blooded, and will be able to help bury her dead comrades. To bring families together that would have otherwise been torn apart by magic. There are a great many dragons out there yet that are giving up in finding their other half because they have no idea where they are. You and Connor will be able to guide them. Your daughter will be able to bring them together so that not only will they be happy, but there will be more children born to both dragons as well as necromancers.”
“I’m not a necromancer, Grandma.” She just nodded at her. “No, I don’t raise the dead. I can send them along, but I’m not a necromancer. I’m just someone that helps the dead.”
Connor: House of Wilkshire ― Paranormal Dragon Shifter Romance Page 13