“Oh,” Harper said. “No. Not here.” She tried tugging her hand free, she wanted to go back. She wanted her apartment with the red leather couch and the birdcage with the stuffed teddy bear and the afghan her friend, Henna, had knitted. Harper could not break free.
“Come,” Bridget said, tugging Harper down the hall without a struggle. Down the hall and into a waiting room with blue plastic chairs. On one of them, a younger Harper sat. Her arms were folded over her chest, her beat-up backpack lying against her feet. Next to her was her foster brother, Jemmie. His jagged bangs hung over his eyes, and she flinched at the sight of him. She’d promised to always be his friend. She yanked a breath in and tried hooting it out. Nothing was working.
“I don’t…”
“Come,” Bridget said, moving Harper past her younger self, bypassing Jemmie as if he didn’t haunt Harper far more than Bridget ever could. “You know this part. Let’s see the rest.”
Bridget walked ahead of Harper, almost dragging her behind. She tried again to pull free, but that ghostly grasp was unbreakable.
“Here,” Bridget said brightly.
Harper shook her head as she saw familiar faces. Ones she’d tried to block out.
A harried looking woman with dyed red hair, gray roots, and fading makeup sat with a file in front of her. An elderly woman with a white bun. An official-looking man with a wrinkled suit that needed to be dry-cleaned.
“What about her father?” The man asked. He was leaning his forehead on his hand, hunched over the table.
“He’s in jail,” said the harried looking woman. The social worker, Harper knew, trying to avoid her name. “He said he’d sign, so she could be adopted.”
Harper paused, walking around them, waving her hand in front of their faces. They were so familiar. The lawyer, the social worker, and the advocate. Those who were supposed to take her from what was bad and give her something better. They had failed.
Harper had gotten better but through a fluke.
“Please,” the social worker said. Harper had hated the social worker. Still did. “No one is going to adopt that one.”
“We have to try,” the lawyer said. He sounded tired, but he wasn’t putting up much of a fight. Back then, he hadn’t met Harper’s eyes very often. Now she knew why. He hadn’t fought for her.
Harper leaned down, sticking her face right into his. She hadn’t liked him either. But she couldn’t spook him as much as she wanted.
“They can’t see you,” Bridget said with a hint of a laugh.
“Jared,” the social worker said, sighing and shuffling paperwork. “No one is going to want her. She’s been arrested. She’s run away 4 times. She won’t even get into a foster home. Who would take her? This girl is pure group home material. I have other kids who might actually get adopted that I need to focus on.”
“Hey now…” The advocate was speaking now. She was the grandmotherly type complete with knitting needles and white bun. “We aren’t giving up on her.”
“We are,” the social worker said. “We don’t have the man-hours or ability to do anything else. Even if we had time to work her case…she’s still unadoptable.”
What was her name? Kristen? Linda? Perhaps Harper had blocked it out.
“I don’t want to be here,” Harper told Bridget. “It’s time to go.”
“Look at them,” Bridget said. “How many kids do you think they were trying to help? 20? 30? Just at this moment in time? Look at that stack of files. How many kids do you think they found homes for?”
“What does it matter?” Harper asked. She tried to open the door, but her hand flew right through the handle as if she were the ghost. “They didn’t find one for me. I already know this. Can we leave?”
Harper tried again to open the door. She didn’t want to see this. She didn't want to hear how worthless she had been. As if Harper didn’t know. The girl out there in that waiting room full well knew how her mom had kept using drugs rather than getting Harper back. Her dad had spent his life in and out of jail and signed her away within seconds of being asked. She…none of them wanted her.
“I’m ready to go,” Harper said. The tense hack of her voice sounded foreign, but Bridget just shook her head brightly.
“We haven’t seen enough,” she said.
“I will not give up on the child,” the advocate said. She put down her knitting needles and said, “We can do better than this. We can do better than a group home and shuffling onto the next child.”
“No offense, Pearl, but I don’t think you’re being very reasonable either,” the social worker replied in an irritated tone that said they’d had this argument too many times. “I have talked and begged that girl to behave. To stop running away. To stop, for the love of god, setting things on fire. She’s stone-hearted and stone-headed.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“It’s not that I don’t get it,” the social worker said, “I do. I can see it. I can see everything that led up to where the girl is. The system failed her. We were too late. But we aren’t too late for the other kids. The one is unadoptable. Others aren’t. A group home is the best we can do. Even then, she’ll be lucky to keep out of juvie.”
Harper hadn’t kept out of juvie. She hadn’t even tried. If anything, she’d dared herself to get there faster and with a bigger bang.
“We can do better,” Harper’s advocate repeated. “We must do better. She’s a child, Linda. Just a child.”
“Then do it, Pearl. Have it be your fruitless project. Now about Jemmie…I think he’ll be ending up in that group home too. He’s almost as bad as Harper but even stupider.”
The lawyer sighed and said, “His mom isn’t going to sign the release paperwork. We’ll have to terminate rights…that’ll take forever. Until then…the case is at a stand-still. Not that it matters. No one wants him.”
Bridget took Harper’s hand and said, “This is why you have a hard time connecting with people. Too many people who should have helped you and didn’t.”
Harper didn’t say anything. She wasn’t stupid. She knew. Family after family had found her unworthy of love. Including her first one.
“Pearl found your mom, you know…she searched and searched and told people about you. She even visited your dad in prison time after time. He was the one who got word out about you. To the supernatural community. Where it got to your mom,” Bridget said. “Not everyone abandoned you. Pearl and your dad made your life possible. They didn’t abandon you. Not everyone will abandon you. Qui—”
“That’s not true,” Harper said. Her heart had frozen. “My dad and Pearl didn’t do that.”
She did not want to hear about Quinton.
“It is true,” Bridget affirmed. “They did.”
“My dad didn’t help me. He just signed me away. And yeah, I know that I’m not alone,” Harper said, “My mom, Maeve, Scarlett, my nieces, they’re all with me.”
“Quinton would be too, if you’d let him.”
Harper said nothing.
Bridget, very gently, said, “He’s your red thread. He’s tied to you by the magic thread from your soul to his. He is a soulmate.”
“Please,” Harper said, ensuring she infused her voice was as much sarcasm and doubt as it was possible for one word to convey.
“Yes,” Bridget snapped, and the sympathy was gone from her voice.
Harper shook her head. In the middle of it, Bridget placed her hand on Harper’s and yanked. She stumbled forward, through a mist and appeared in the very institutional prison visiting room. Her heart ached in her chest, and her hands clenched. This room and this moment had been emblazoned on her mind, and she couldn’t forget it even though she wanted to. “No. Not here.”
“Face it,” Bridget said gently, placing a very cold hand on Harper’s back. “Own it. This is your story. Even though it sucks.”
Harper shook her head as her young self walked into the room with the advocate, Pearl. Harper’s dirty blond hair was hanging in her face,
and her too-thin body made Harper wince. She’d forgotten how she hadn’t liked to eat then. She’d forgotten how the only thing she felt was the feel of her favorite razor blade against her arm.
She glanced at Bridget for mercy, but Harper only got a sympathetic gaze in that traitor’s face.
A tall, thin man stood as her young self approached his table. His jaw was stubbled with hair, his eyes were sunken. His skin was yellowed. He’d lived hard. She hadn’t seen that then. She’d just seen the man who’d left her mom before she was more than a few days old and she’d never seen again. Not until this day.
“Harper,” he said, his voice a croak. “I…”
She looked at him, and Harper was amazed to see the hatred in her young face. She remembered how she felt that day. She hadn’t felt hate. She’d felt hollowed out. Nothing. A snow globe that had been cracked open and lost all its glitter and water. Ruined.
“I…”
Young Harper didn’t look at him. She set her hands on the table across from him and stared down at them. You couldn’t see it, but she was biting the inside of her cheek bloody.
“I’ve done what I can for you.”
Young Harper still refused to look at him. But adult Harper heard the plea in his voice. Neither of the Harper versions were moved by it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Her young self snorted and shifted but did not look at him.
“I shouldn’t have left your mom like that. I should have told her.”
Modern Harper froze at that. Oh Hades, she thought. Suddenly remembering what he had said, suddenly understanding it now that she had the context of the rest of her life.
“I should have explained what was happening, but it was all too much for me. You. Her. Everything. I should have…”
Modern Harper pounded her fist down on the table between her young self and her birth father.
Young Harper did not look up, and Harper’s father didn’t notice.
“They can’t see you,” Bridget said softly.
“No,” Modern Harper said. “No, it’s not true. They were just both addicts. They were stupid. They made bad choices. He didn’t…”
“I’m afraid that’s not quite true,” Bridget said gently. “He knew what he was. What you were. He had a pretty good idea what your mom was. He was a warlock, Harper. Just like you. He had seen enough of your mom to guess her for a druid. Supernaturals are drawn to each other even in groups of hundreds of normal humans.”
“Oh,” Harper needed to vomit. She stood up, grabbing Bridget by the shoulders and said, “I don’t care.” What a lie.
Bridget didn’t argue it.
“Take me home. Right now. Remove me from this place.”
Chapter Three
Waking in the middle of a gasp and sitting up in bed to get her thoughts together, Harper had to get up or go mad. The antsy feeling was back but a thousand times worse. It was as though snakes had infested the place between her skin and her muscles. She rose and paced.
Back and forth, back and forth, so sick to her stomach, she was surprised she wasn’t bent over the toilet, vomiting.
She took a sharp look around for Bridget, but of course, the ghost wasn’t there. It had all been a dream. Finally she stumbled into her kitchen and took a long drink of water. Her stomach marveled at the water, but she didn’t quite puke it up. With shaking hands, she splashed water on her face and then laid on her couch.
She glanced around, her gaze catching the pictures on the mantle. They called to her as if someone were shining a light on them, and she crossed to them. The first was of her and Scarlett. It had been taken only a few months after Harper had been adopted. She was still awkwardly thin, and she’d already begun dying her hair black. Anything to block out things that could remind her of her biological parents.
Scarlett’s arm was wrapped around Harper, and Scarlett was grinning right into the camera. Scarlett had been Harper’s salvation, the first person Harper had been able to trust. The first person who just took Harper as she was and accepted it.
The next picture was of Maeve, Bridget’s sister. Harper and Maeve only been family for a few months, but something between them clicked. Maybe it was because if you could focus just right, it seemed possible to see all the way their lives echoed each other with trauma and loss.
Harper swallowed and picked up the next picture. It was of her and her mother, Maye. Harper reached out with a shaking hand and touched that face. She had to move or die.
She slipped on running pants and shoes and fled. She ran through Mystic Cove, up the streets and down them. The lights were out, everyone was sleeping, but the fog was thick making Harper feel as though she were in the middle of a true haunting instead of a series of terrible dreams. She ran past Quinton’s bed and breakfast and noted one single light. His light. It seemed to chase her all the way home, to her apartment. Not even a run could leave her in peace. She wanted to go to him. She couldn’t. She couldn’t let him leave her too. Better for her to leave first.
Outside her outer apartment door, she pressed her head against the doorjamb and wondered why she had to be so very damaged? Why hadn’t she just gone up those stairs and into his room? He’d have opened his arms and wrapped her up. He had every other time she’d freaked out on him.
Would he this time? Or was he so angry with her, so upset, that he would shut the door in her face? Maybe he was sick of all the drama with her?
She opened the door and hoped she could somehow escape these dark thoughts. As she stepped into her entryway, she stumbled. She was in her niece’s room instead.
“They’re so sweet,” Bridget said from behind Harper. “I’m so glad Maeve has them.”
Harper gasped and spun. “But I wasn’t asleep.”
“Oh Harper,” Bridget said, laughing. “You never have been.”
Harper took a deep breath and then heard her name.
“…she’ll take us.”
Harper turned slowly to find her beloved nieces, Scarlett’s daughters, Ella and Luna.
“But, Mommy will be mad,” Ella said. Her little voice was concerned. She was showing none of the disdain she would have if Harper or Scarlett were in the room. Ella needed to be grown up around them, but with Luna, Ella could be herself.
“Auntie Harper isn’t afraid of Mommy,” Luna scoffed in her piping little voice. She curled onto her side to face Ella. They were both in Ella’s bunk, with their blankets tented over them, a flashlight between them that Scarlett hid away to end these late nights.
Harper had to laugh. She crawled onto the bed, and the girls didn’t even notice. If anything could make her feel better, it was these two.
“Auntie Harper is the only one who will take us,” Ella admitted. “I bet she’ll bring Quinton. Do you think they’ll get married and have babies? Then we could be the big girls who take the babies places. I would be the best cousin ever.”
Luna sniffed and then shrugged. She said, “Auntie Harper is scared.”
Harper winced. Luna was far too insightful for a 5-year-old, and she was ruling all of them because of it.
Ella gasped and said, “She’s not scared of anything.”
“She’s scared that Quinton doesn’t love her,” Luna said, sniffing sadly for Harper. “Cause all those people didn’t love her when she was little. She doesn’t see it had to be that way.”
“Why wouldn’t they love her? Why did it have to be that way?”
Harper felt her heart and her throat choke at the same time, and she felt something burning at the back of her eyes.
“Cause they were dumb, du-uuh. Besides, if they loved Harper like they should have,” Luna said, “She wouldn’t have been ours. They had to be stupid, so we could have her.”
“Like fate?” Ella asked. “I’m glad fate made her outs.”
“Like fate,” Luna repeated. “She was always ours. She just had to come a really, really stupid way.”
Harper bit down on the inside of her mouth so hard, she
drew blood. She rose and walked to the door, imagining for a moment if her foster family, the Walkers, had adopted her or the Michelson’s. She knew the Walkers, at least, had thought of it. Starry skies, her entire body rejected that idea of being a Walker instead of an Oaken. Thank goodness she’d lit their shed on fire.
Harper opened the door, surprised it let her escape, and found herself stepping into the room where Scarlett slept. That was not how this apartment worked. She should have been in the entry way across from the kitchen and near the living room. Harper flinched, not sure she could take whatever the next painful revelation would be. But there Scarlett was, lying back in her bed, talking on the phone.
“Harper will take them,” Scarlett said and yawned. “I feel like I take advantage of her though. She let me sleep in three weekends in a row but every time she offers sleep, I just can’t say no. What would I do without her?”
There was a murmured reply and Harper didn’t want to hear the answer. She took a step back and found herself standing in her Gram’s room. Mr. Jueavas, shirtless, had his arms wrapped around Gram.
“Oh no,” Harper said, immediately squeezing her eyes closed, but knowing she’d never get over the sight of those wrinkled biceps wrapped around a distinctly naked Gram. “No.”
Harper hadn’t plugged her ears though, so she heard Mr. Jueavas say, “It’s not fair. Santiago had everything, and he’s a monster. Sometimes I look at Harper and shake my fist at the heavens.”
“It’s not your fault,” Gram said, and her voice held none of its usual meanness.
“And yet your Harper, she’s been through everything, and she’s great. She got kicked around, we catered to Santiago.”
“She’s damaged,” Gram said. “Don’t be blind. She’s all scarred up on her soul. She might never find happiness.”
“Life damages us all,” Mr. Jueavas said, “But she bears it so well. She’s a shining star to me. A shining star.”
Harper turned and fled only to find her Mom talking to Maeve in the attic bedroom room of the Oaken House.
Spells and Jinglebells Page 31