by Luna Joya
Sunny was still. Slumped. Reaching for the door. Coral put the key back in the ignition. She hovered near the driver’s door and listened. No noise. She watched for the rise and fall of Sunny’s chest, but she wouldn’t ever draw breath again.
It was done. Coral got in the car and righted Sunny in the seat, straightened her clothing, and tenderly placed her hands in her lap. She made sure Sunny’s shoes and stockings remained neatly in place, arranged her gloves and purse next to her, and smoothed her hair into its lovely curled style. It looked like Sunny slept. Except for the redness in her face and the trail of blood from her nose and down her mouth.
Coral took the scarf from her own face and moved to wipe the blood away before she remembered maybe that could be used as proof against her. She recoiled. Realizing she could be discovered at any moment, she scrambled out of the car and ran for the door. She slid it closed and backed away from the scene.
She rubbed her hands together, trying to wipe away the magnitude of what she had done. She shook her head to clear her thoughts and rushed toward the house smoothing her dress and tucking her hair. She would need to stay somewhere else tonight. She had to get out of here and far away from this as quickly as possible. She had to escape.
Stopping at the door to the house, she looked to the ocean where the waves crashed and the wind howled, and then down to the café below where Paul and their future waited. She breathed a long deep sigh. She had taken care of everything just as she had promised.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The sisters talked long after Mina and Delia’s retelling of the events surrounding Sunny Sol’s death. Hearing it retold from the killer’s point of view had been chilling.
“Crazy bitch,” Ruby summed it up. “She and Price deserved each other.”
“Both had some extent of a nervous breakdown and went into seclusion,” Cami said. “The rumor was Price confessed on his deathbed that he killed her. People figured he’d simply locked Sunny out.”
“No one can be more violent than loved ones.” Delia shrugged. “Daily story of my job.”
Cami stilled. Her head pounded. She’d had enough of abusive relationships for a lifetime.
Ama touched her shoulder. “It’s not the same for you, little one. You got out.”
She had to tell them she’d never really gotten out. Not all the way. The shadow of her abusive past still loomed above her. “He threatened you, Ama. He threatened all of you if I didn’t stay with him. He controlled everything I did, what I said, what I ate, where I went, who I talked to. He made me feel like I was crazy and paranoid. I second-guessed everything I did or said. I couldn’t take it anymore, and then I found him in bed with another woman.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t lash out at him,” Ruby said. All the sisters nodded.
Cami struggled with the secret weighing her down, the reason she’d shunned magic and planned her life.
“I did,” she whispered. “I knew Neil would follow me, so I ran to the beach. He knocked me to the ground and beat me, probably trying to knock what I’d seen out of me.”
Mina covered her mouth. “That’s why you wouldn’t let me go near the beach when we helped you move. You were afraid I’d see him beat you.”
“No.” Cami’s voice grew stronger. “I was afraid you’d see what came next.”
“What happened?” Delia clipped her words. She’d slipped into her interrogation mode. No judgments. Just the facts, ma’am.
“I almost drowned him,” she confessed. “I wanted to so badly. I called to the water to have the ocean drag him down and hold his head beneath the surface. I broke the first rule of magic to harm none. I didn’t just want to hurt him. I wanted to kill him.”
The silence roared through her head. She looked straight at Delia. “The monster you’re so afraid of becoming? I’ve already embraced her. That darkness never leaves.” There. It was out in the open. They could condemn her for it.
Ruby spoke first. “Fuck him. He got lucky you’re strong enough not to have finished it.”
She stared, shocked at the nods and quiet reassurance. Even Ama refused to judge her.
“He never deserved your attention, mija.”
Delia alone didn’t move to join in. “How close did you come to killing him?”
She cringed at the memory. “Close.”
“How’d it feel?”
“Exhilarating. Vengeful. Powerful. And dreadfully wrong.”
“Cams, you didn’t do anything wrong. It was self-defense. Neil is a master of messing with your mind, but you stopped yourself and your powers before you went too far. I don’t know if I could.” Delia breathed deeply and rolled her shoulders. “Let Neil try to come for us. It would not go well for him. We stand together.”
“Agreed. Bring it.” Mina nodded.
She shook her head, overwhelmed by the outpouring of support and affection. She’d carried a fraction of the terror Sunny Sol must have gone through.
“Sunny knew she would die,” she whispered. “The pain and fear she’d have known those last seconds, fighting for her life.” She shivered before she could finish. “Mina, when you slipped into Sunny’s time, was she afraid every second?”
Mina shook her head. “Her vivaciousness started the chase for me. Not fear.”
Ama smiled. “It must’ve been the longing for love sustaining her. She needed love like oxygen. Just like our Camellia.” Ama passed a hand over Cami’s curls.
Tears stung her eyes. She couldn’t remember crying this much before. She hadn’t even started grieving the loss of Sam. She’d push that until later when she was alone.
“I’m hoping Sunny found Joey after all,” Ruby said, their eternal optimist under all her tough exterior.
“That would be a sweet ending for our tale,” Ama agreed. “Bedtime, lovelies.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
An hour before dawn, Sam met Lottie at the back of a nondescript building in the Valley. Her gaze darted around the empty lot and street outside. She locked the door behind them. Her hair was tucked under a baseball cap pulled low over her brow.
He followed her down a narrow hallway to a large open space filled with green screens, camera lighting, and backdrops. “What is this place?”
“Rental studio.” She clicked on a single light. “I know the guy that owns it. I’m dressing Witch’s Bane for a music video here tonight after my day gig.”
“Then what are we doing here now? Playing dress up?” He snapped his mouth shut. He didn’t need to inflict his foul temper on her. It had already gotten him in enough trouble.
“I couldn’t very well discuss this over the phone or at our parents’ house.” She poked around each corner as though checking for surveillance before swinging her giant purse off her shoulder and pawing through it.
“What’s with all the secrecy? You wouldn’t even let me bring Bogart.” He gestured toward the bare studio, the dim light, and her ball cap. “I only called to ask about our pathetic excuse for a father’s ramblings and Mitch Abrams.”
She hurried across the room and clapped her hand over his mouth. “Don’t speak until I tell you.”
For such a small woman, his sister had a huge personality. Much like Cami. Even the thought of his girl had him longing to drive the short distance east to her mother’s house and beat on the door, begging her to forget the last thing he had said. But Ruby had called. After cursing him with some creative names for stupid, she had told him to give Cami the night. The sisters had her. She was safe, and she needed the space.
Against his better judgment, he would give her the time when all he wanted to do was plead with her to come back. But right now, he needed some answers himself. Answers he hoped Lottie could give.
He nodded once, and she removed her hand. She yanked chalk and candles out of her bag. Not the scented pretty kind she had tried to put in his apartment. These were votives in glass cylinders like those used for prayers or altars or shrines. Pacing the concrete floor, she drew
a smooth, fluid circle. She must have done this a thousand times as easy as the sketch came.
Grabbing his sleeve, she dragged him into the center of the circle. She rummaged through her purse. What all did she have in there? Fabric swatches, tape measures, a sewing kit. He straightened before she could catch him staring. She shoved a charm into his palm. He turned it in his hand. It looked a lot like the one looped on Bogart’s collar except this one was blue. She held a finger to her lips.
She took out a lighter and lit the votives, spacing them in equal distances around the circle. Snatching the charm from him, she whispered something in broken pieces of Latin and Japanese. He frowned. Lottie didn’t speak foreign languages.
A pulse went through the room. Nothing he could see except for flickers of the flames, but his gut tightened. What the hell was going on?
She gripped his arm and counted aloud to ten. “All right. The protective circle should hold. Maybe. I mean mostly this is doing the work.” She held up the charm. “I’m shit at spells. We can talk now.”
He touched the metal. “What is that?”
“A privacy ward made by the best spell crafter in the country, Eleuia Nahualli Donovan.” She smirked. “I believe she lets you call her Ama.”
He lowered his hand. “About that. I might have screwed things up with Cami.”
Lottie narrowed her eyes. “What did you do?”
“Can we just talk about the family stuff?”
She moved to flick his forehead, but he dodged before her hand caught him. “Sam Corraza, you need to fix things with Cami.”
“I will.” He hoped. He prayed. He couldn’t risk believing otherwise.
“You better.” She ran her tongue over her teeth.
He pointed at the circle, seizing the opportunity to change the subject. “So you know magic?”
“Welcome to our witchy family secret.” She stretched her hands.
“And you couldn’t tell me this before?” Maybe when she found out he was dating a witch?
She winced. “Forbidden.”
“By the authority?” He was joking, but she wasn’t laughing.
She nodded.
“Wait, seriously?” He couldn’t believe it. “Who are we talking about? A witchy ruler or Congress?”
“The Senate,” she whispered. Her eyes had gone wide. She was afraid.
He rubbed the back of his neck. He’d already mishandled one frightened woman tonight, and it’d been a disaster. “Lottie, are you saying a witch Senate passed a law that said my own family couldn’t tell me?” He swallowed, unsure what to say. If Cami’s family was an example, the powers were inherited. Hell, his own father had told him the powers went to Lottie. “Couldn’t tell me you’re a witch?”
“Exactly.” Her voice was low and urgent. “They told our parents to cut you off. But now you’re dating a Donovan sister, which makes talking to you an even bigger no-no.”
He blinked. He must have missed some key pieces of information. “Lottie, I own a restaurant. I fell for a pretty girl who walked into that restaurant. I don’t think that rates as a terrorism threat.”
She swallowed and stayed silent.
“All right,” he said. “If this Senate—”
“Shh.”
“Okay.” He stretched out both hands, palms down. “If this authority doesn’t want me around the family or to know about your powers.” She frowned. “Your special needs.” She slapped his shoulder. “Your abilities,” he concluded. “Then why wasn’t Joe cut out?”
She snorted. “Please, as if Joe notices anything outside his own little narcissist bubble. Joe believes what he is told to believe about the family.”
“But I wouldn’t?” This guessing game was getting difficult.
She bit her lip. He needed to change tactics. Gesturing to the candles, he flicked a finger at the lighter. “So if you’ve got magic, why not just twitch your nose and light the wicks?”
She heaved a sigh that was much more like the little sister he knew and not this crazy super-secret Senate stuff. “It doesn’t work like that. You’ve watched too many movies. Not even the elementals who are one in a million can create their elements from nothing.”
He froze. “Cami is an elemental. Are you saying she’s…?” He couldn’t finish the question. What? One of a kind? He already knew that.
Lottie grabbed his hand. “Since the inception of the Senate, the Donovans are the only known set of sister elementals to have existed. They’re a first in two thousand years of witch history. So yeah, she’s one in a few billion. There’s a reason no one knows they exist. It needs to stay that way.”
Sam swore. It sounded like Neil wasn’t the only threat to his girl. He didn’t let Lottie pull out of his grasp. “Then how do you know who the sisters are? What they are?”
Lottie’s expression went blank.
“Classified?” He guessed. “Or something else I’m not supposed to know.”
She jerked her chin once.
“What can you tell me to protect her?” Because he needed to keep Cami safe from her stalker ex and whoever this Senate was.
Lottie lifted sad eyes to his. “You can stop asking about our uncle who never existed.”
“Mitch Abrams?”
She flinched. “Yes. Him. He was gone before I was born, but he was a good-looking, smart son of a witch who did some seriously bad shit.”
“So I got banned for reminding people of someone I happen to look like and pulling some juvenile pranks?”
“What I’m about to tell you?” Her gaze burned into his. “I will deny saying it and you need to forget you ever heard it. Swear to me you won’t repeat it. To anyone. Ever. Not even Cami.”
Shit, could he promise that? He would if it would get Lottie to talk. “Yeah.”
She dug her fingers into his skin. “Swear it.”
His throat went dry. “I swear.”
Lottie closed her fist over the charm and dragged Sam closer. Her voice was barely audible. “You got banned to protect you and our family. There are prophecies. Mitch never had children, but if he had, we were told his son would betray the Senate. But you, Sam, you’ll orchestrate the event that will seal the Senate’s downfall.”
Chapter Thirty
Love like oxygen. Cami had whispered her mother’s words through the sleepless night. She rubbed the grit in her eyes and headed toward Santa Monica the next morning in stop-and-go freeway traffic. She planned to pick up the paperwork for an extended restraining order, meet with an insurance adjuster about the damage at her apartment, and return to Ama’s house for the night. Mina shuffled music, scrolling through playlists.
Cami’s phone lay silent in her bag. Ruby had deleted the messages from Sam last night, and he hadn’t called or texted again.
“How’s your life plan working out?” Mina interrupted her spiraling thoughts as they waited for the interchange from the 110 to the 10 westbound.
“Crappy,” she admitted. “Other than Neil, it’s all going to plan. Work is great, studies are fine, and I’m on track to certification. I should be ecstatic. But I’m not. Plans are boring.”
“Sam’s not boring.” Mina flipped the fancy engraved silver lighter in her hand, dancing it out to the crook of her ring and pinky fingers. The lighter flicked the opposite direction toward her thumb.
She sighed and switched lanes. “No. He’s not.”
Mina snapped open the Zippo with a loud click.
“No open flames in the car.”
Her sister clapped it shut and stuffed the lighter into a pocket. “Sam’s dog is cool too.”
“Yes.” She held back the tears, unwilling to start another flood. She took the exit for Ocean Avenue.
“We going to your apartment after the courthouse?”
“Only long enough to meet with the insurance person. My lease is up soon.” She pulled into parking. “Time to find a new place. Maybe further down the coast.”
“Somewhere away from Sam?”
Without
answering, she shut the door and reached for her necklace as they walked into the courthouse. Half an hour later, she had applied for a more permanent protective order.
“I’m hungry,” Mina said for the third time in the last ten minutes. “How about the chicken shack by the beach? You hungry?”
She wasn’t, but she couldn’t let Mina starve either. It would be a short walk in broad daylight through a busy populated part of town. “Sure.” She tossed the paperwork in her bag and glanced toward the police department.
When they got to the restaurant, the patio was full. They ordered at the curbside window, and Mina pushed to look for a seat in the back. Cami waited on the sidewalk for the order. Should she call Sam? Would he answer?
Her amulet flared hot and blazing. She spun to find Neil hurrying toward her.
His fingers closed over her upper arm. “Let’s go. Don’t make a scene.”
“No.” Her stomach pitched and rolled with the memory of every time he had bruised her. She yanked out of his grip. “Don’t touch me.”
His hand moved to cup her face. He squeezed her cheeks hard. “I said, let’s go, bitch.”
Adrenaline rushed through her, the tingles firing as hot as his hold on her face. She stomped on his insole. “No.”
He stumbled back but regained his footing and yanked her off balance. Her world tilted. He hauled her against him. “It’s not like you’ve got a home to run to anymore,” he seethed. “Don’t make me do something you’ll regret.”
“Stop.” She dug her nails into his arms and squirmed out of his hold. He backhanded her to the pavement. Her forehead banged against the curb. Pain, sharp and overwhelming, shot through her. A hot rush of blood streaked into her eyes, and her cheek stung. She tasted a coppery tang in her mouth.
“No! Cami!”
A high-pitched scream had her struggling to her feet. Mina. Her sister had thrown herself on Neil who shrugged her off. Mina landed with a thump on her butt. A man rushed to help, but Neil hit him in the face. A woman yelled she was calling the police.