The Complete Spellbound Trilogy Bundle

by Penelope King

  I ran over and stood in front of her, blocking her path. “Please! Please don’t leave me again! I need to talk to you… I need to know what happened all those years ago, and why you pretended to disappear from my life but have really been watching me the whole time!” My eyes pleaded with her, and it was like looking in a mirror. The eyes looking back at me were as sad and distressed as I felt.

  She dropped her head and gave a deep sigh. Finally she nodded. “Somehow, I knew this day would come. I had hoped you would be happy living without me and just forget I ever existed. But deep down, I knew that one day this would all come out. And maybe it’s time.”

  She paused and looked up at the sky. “Okay… I’ll tell you what you want to know. But just be aware that knowing the truth will make you hate me even more than you already do.”

  Chapter 32. Monsters

  She sat down on an old wooden bench, next to a small but well-tended herb and vegetable garden. It was nothing like Ana’s grand display of course, but it was cute. I still couldn’t believe that I was actually sitting next to my mom. Now that I had her here, I didn’t know where to start. How do you fit an entire lifetime of missing conversations into a single afternoon?

  I figured we both needed to relax some before we got into the heavy stuff. “So, do you live here alone?”

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  We both smiled at our simultaneous questions.

  “Um, sure, I could use something to drink,” I replied politely.

  “I’ll be right back.” She stood up, and for a moment I didn’t want to let her out of my sight for fear I’d never see her again. But a few minutes later she returned with an ornate silver serving tray. “Strawberry lemonade. My own recipe.”

  I poured a glass and took several gulps. “Delicious! I’ve never had this before.”

  She smiled. “It’s my favorite drink. It’s better than my mom’s tea, that’s for sure.”

  It was so weird to hear her refer to Ana as her mom. “It’s way better. Thanks again.”

  She took a sip and set her glass down. “To answer your question, yes, I do live here alone. Just me and Shasta.

  “Has it always been like that?”

  She nodded. I could feel her sadness, and I focused on controlling my own emotions so as not to upset her any further. Our relationship was so precarious and delicate, I feared one wrong move would send her running off like a skittish colt.

  “How long have you been here?”

  She gave a shy grin. “I arrived the same day you did.”

  “And you were in Louisiana before…?”

  She nodded.

  “And Tennessee before that?”

  She nodded again.

  “You’ve always been with us.” It was more of a statement than a question.

  She looked me in the eyes. “How did you know?”

  “I did a spell… I saw you... I saw everything.”

  Was that a flicker of pride I saw sweep across her face?

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ve always been close. As close as I could be so I could watch over you, but far enough away to keep you from harm.”

  “Keep me from harm?”

  She frowned, and her eyes filled with a deep sadness. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. A lot of really dumb and dangerous mistakes that cost people their lives. Mistakes that I can never undo and that will haunt me until the day I die.” She glanced away, and I felt an overwhelming remorse.

  Finally, she took a deep breath and continued. “But I also did two pretty amazing things. I met and fell in love with Del, and had you for a daughter.” Her face lit up a little bit at that. “But my love for both of you put all of our lives in danger. I had to leave you for your own protection. There was no other way.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand… who would want to harm us?”

  “He would’ve hurt you to get to me. Or taken you to use as leverage. He certainly would’ve killed Del.” She stared down at the grass and clenched her hands in her lap. “Either way, the sins of my past had come back to haunt me, and there was no escaping it. I had to pay for my crimes. The only way to keep everyone safe was to leave and make sure you and Del had no connection to me. I had to die. If we were together, we’d always be in danger… always be looking over our shoulders. And if he ever found out about you—”

  “Who? Who was after you?”

  She let out another deep sigh. “I was young… so young and foolish and stupid, and I made some bad decisions. I got involved with some witches and warlocks from another coven…”

  “The Triple Star,” I murmured.

  She frowned and shook her head. “Actually, no. They were from a coven back East. They’d come out to California looking for help with a certain task.”

  She sensed my confusion. “Basically, I’d heard they were looking to trade in dark magic spells,” she admitted. “The darker the better. And they were willing to trade something pretty valuable in exchange… something I desperately wanted at the time. Of course, it was highly forbidden in our coven to engage in those sorts of activities. But as I said, I was young…dumb. I’d always had a talent for spellcasting, so I decided to go into business with them. It was the worst mistake I ever made in my life.”

  “What happened?” I whispered, and gripped my hands around the bench.

  She squinted and looked off into the distance. “I was barely sixteen, and my powers were growing stronger every day. Spellcasting was as easy as breathing for me, and almost anything I wrote would come to fruition. Almost anything.

  “At the time, I was deeply, madly in love with a boy. Or so I thought. He was a few years older than me, a warlock from the Triple Star coven. All the girls were constantly fighting for his attention and affections. He was perfect—unbelievably good-looking, smart, charismatic, powerful…”

  “James,” I mumbled. My real father.

  She nodded, slightly surprised. “Yes… you know of him?”

  “Ana told me.”

  “Oh. Well, I was head-over-heels for James in the way that only a teenage girl could be. I thought my whole world revolved around him, and for a while, it did. The only problem was, he thought I was just a silly school girl. He wasn’t remotely interested in me in any romantic sort of way, and it made me crazy. I‘d even tried casting a spell that would make me more attractive to him, but it didn’t work. He was immune.

  “So when I heard of the deal that these new witches were offering, I jumped. Worst decision I’ve ever made, and I’ll never forgive myself…” Her voice faded away and she clenched her jaw.

  “What were they offering?”

  She looked at me, her eyes filled with shame and regret. “A powerful, extremely rare Love Spell. Permanent, deep, and guaranteed to produce genuine, blissful love, even on witches and warlocks. Believe it or not, that’s a very hard spell to come by. Love Spells are highly dangerous and notoriously volatile. Even I had never been able to invent one that worked for any period of time or produced genuine emotions. But they claimed theirs was the real deal, and more than anything I wanted to be in love with James for the rest of my life and have him love me back with all his heart and soul. So I made a trade. A deal with the Devil. My spells for theirs.”

  “What kinds of spells did they want?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

  She looked away again. “They were pretty bad. I don’t want to give you the details, but suffice it to say it was the darkest magic I’d ever done. Had I been caught, I would’ve been banned from the coven and probably disowned by my parents. But I made all sorts of excuses in my mind, like if I didn’t do it someone else would, so I might as well get what I wanted out of it…”

  She shook her head and her mouth tensed. “But when the time came to turn the spells over, I couldn’t do it. I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I did. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror anymore, I was so sick at what I’d become. As much as I loved James and wanted him to love
me back, I couldn’t go through with it. So I tried to back out.”

  “That’s good… you ended up doing the right thing after all,” I said, relieved. As much as I had tried not to judge, it scared me to think that my mom would trade in dark magics… dark magics that would later create me.

  She took a deep breath, and her eyes had a sad, faraway look. “But they weren’t happy about that at all. One day they came looking for me, demanding that I hand over the spells. There were three of them, and they started using magic on me, first binding my powers, then controlling my mind. I fought back and tried to get away. My dad came home just as they were chasing me up the stairs…”

  Her eyes grew hard, like glassy stones. “He tried to protect me,” she continued in a whisper. “He tried to stop them. He managed to knock one of them unconscious, but the others got to him and there was nothing I could do…” Her voice broke off, and she shook her head as if trying to escape the memory. “They killed him right in front of me.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “He’d distracted them long enough for me to break free of their bonds. It was too late to save him, but I did succeed in killing his murderers.

  I gasped and felt her sickness merge with my own.

  “You … killed… someone?”

  She shook her head. “No, not someone. I killed three monsters. Three monsters who had killed my father. I only wish they were alive now so I could kill them again. And again.”

  I stared at her in stunned silence. No wonder she’d been so messed up. Not only did she cause her dad to die, she also took three other lives that fateful day. And she was only sixteen… my age.

  “I weighted the bodies and sank them in the ocean,” she continued quietly. “Later, when my mom came home, I was still in shock. I was traumatized by what had happened, but I knew I didn’t want her to find out that it was all my fault. There were no bodies, so I lied. I told her that some wizards from the Triple Star had killed my dad. There’d been some quarrels between our two covens in the past… nothing major, but still enough so that it was a plausible cover story. I was already wracked with guilt for my role in my dad’s death, and I couldn’t tell my mom the truth and have her hating me, too. So I lied, and she believed me.”

  I gazed down at the ground. “I could understand why you’d do that,” I said quietly. “I know what it’s like to pick up on others’ feelings so much that you want to die inside. You had to protect yourself. But what happened was an accident… you tried to do the right thing. It wasn’t your fault.”

  She nodded vehemently. “Yes, it absolutely was my fault. Everything that happened was because of me—my selfishness, my horrible choices. Arthur died trying to protect me, and I can never forgive myself for that.”

  As much as I wanted to console her, I couldn’t honestly say that I wouldn’t feel the same way had I been in her shoes. “But he did it because he loved you. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted his death to cause you a lifetime of pain and guilt.”

  She gave me a strange look. “But I didn’t deserve his love… he didn’t deserve to die.”

  How badly I wanted to reach out and give her a hug. Put my arms around her and pat her back and make all her pain go away. But we each remained on our own side of the bench.

  “It’s horrible, and awful, but you have to forgive yourself. It was an accident. You made bad choices, but what the other three witches did was out of your control. You didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. They are the bad guys here, not you.”

  She was silent, and a small tear escaped her eye and trickled down her cheek.

  “Was that why you ran away from home?” I continued, my voice softer.

  She dabbed at her face. “No. Well, sort of. I was in a really bad place for a long time after my dad died. A place so dark and bleak, I didn’t know what I was doing or thinking half the time. I hated myself, and my relationship with my mom was so strained… I’d lied to her, and I knew I was the source of all her suffering. The guilt was eating me up inside. And the worse I felt, the angrier I became. It was a vicious cycle.

  “One of the witches I killed had the copy of the Love Spell on her, and I had found it when I was moving the bodies. I’d kept it hidden in a safe place and had vowed never to use it, but one day I was out of my mind, and I did it. I just wanted someone who would love me and make me happy… make me want to live again. I needed someone to love me so much it would erase all the hate I felt for myself. So I just did it.”

  She paused and glanced at me. I felt her insecurity and her fear that I would judge her harshly. I gave her an encouraging nod and tried to keep my feelings impartial.

  “And for a while, it seemed like it had worked,” she continued. “For a brief time, I thought I might be happy again someday. But then something happened that caused my entire world to collapse… again.”

  “You got pregnant with me,” I whispered, my stomach a knot.

  She looked genuinely startled. “Huh? No, I didn’t get pregnant with you until later… after I’d left James.”

  “But James is my father, right? My real dad?”

  “Why on Earth would you think that? Del McCoy is your father, of course,” she replied, a bewildered expression on her face.

  My whole body went numb and tingly. “But—”

  “No, it isn’t that Del McCoy wasn’t your father. What tore my world apart, what destroyed my relationship with my mom…

  …Was that I’d discovered that Arthur wasn’t mine.”

  Chapter 33. Fate Twisted

  “Wait—” I held up my trembling hand. “Are you telling me that Dad really is my dad?”

  She frowned. “Of course he is. Why would you think otherwise?”

  I covered my mouth, and put my head down as the tears flooded my eyes.

  “Calista, what is it?” The concern I felt from her made me choke up even more, and it was several long moments before I managed to regain my composure. I had tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter that Dad wasn’t my biological father, but I couldn’t hold back the wave of elation and relief I felt at this shocking revelation. At the same time, I also knew that my good news came at my mother’s expense. I took a few more deep breaths and finally met her questioning gaze.

  “My boyfriend, Nicholas… he’s in the Triple Star coven, and I saw his Mark. And only their bloodline can see it. Then I heard you’d been pregnant by your Triple Star boyfriend, James, when you ran away.” I took several more breaths and focused all my energy on not jumping up and down and screaming with joy.

  My mom gave a sad chuckle and raised an eyebrow. “Well, you do have some Triple Star blood in you, but it comes from my side. I’d discovered this fact myself when I was, um, intimate with James and saw his Mark. I knew there was only one possibility for it, and when I confronted my mother, she admitted everything. Arthur hadn’t been my real father. She’d had an affair, and Arthur never knew. That’s what caused our final blowout and forced me to leave. She’d lied to me my whole life about who my real father was, and the saddest part was that Arthur never knew I wasn’t his. In reality, he died protecting someone else’s daughter.”

  “I’m sure he loved you just the same,” I said, still reeling. “And Ana was just trying to spare you the pain of the truth. Both of you. It would’ve hurt you and probably destroyed him. She did it out of love.”

  Nicholas’s words from the other night in Druantia came back to me. “Ana was lying out of love… didn’t want to lose me… the Triple Star coven had been scapegoats… everything I’d been told was a lie…”

  He had been right. He’d known the truth, and instead of just telling me, he had forced me to get it from the one person I needed to hear it from the most. It was the only way I would ever have believed it.

  Because facing the past and confronting the painful truth was the only way that our shattered family could ever be put back together again.

  Mom nodded. “Yes, I know she was just trying to protect me. I know that
now. Time has a funny way of changing your perspective on things. But at the time, I felt like I’d been ripped apart and betrayed and lied to by my own mother. That, on top of everything else we were going through, was more than I could take. I had to leave.”

  I don’t know how long we’d been sitting outside talking, but the sun was starting to set and the air turned noticeably cooler. I shivered and pulled my sleeves over my hands.

  “We could go inside for a bit if you like. I could make us a fire,” Mom said.

  I nodded and smiled at her. “Thanks, I’d like that.”

  We climbed the three creaky steps of her front porch, and Shasta scooted in front of us as we walked inside. The house was small, about half the size of the place Dad and I shared. But it was quaint and cozy.

  “Please excuse the mess. I don’t get many visitors.” She picked up a sweatshirt off the floor and tossed it in another room.

  My jaw dropped, and I stared at her. Did my mother just apologize to me for being sloppy? I was starting to feel like I was in some bizarre parallel universe. Dad was my real dad, Ana had had an affair with a Triple Star warlock, and my mom had killed three evil witches…

  She came over and threw some small logs on the fire. “Where are my long matches?” she mumbled to herself, and started poking in some drawers. I cleared my throat and smiled, then reached over and ignited the woodpile with my fingers.

  “Right, I forgot you were a fire goddess. How silly of me.”

  A what?

  She sat down on a beanbag chair and gazed at the fire. Already she felt different—as if unloading her secrets had lifted some of the horrible burden on her soul. I took a seat on one of the throw pillows on the floor next to the fireplace and waited for her to continue.

  “All this is fine and good,” she whispered, still staring at the flames. “But you want to know the real story. You want to know why I had to leave you and your dad… why I had to die.”