“One night, months after he and Missy had their date, Rhys was buried in the hayloft of a barn several miles outside of town. He was on a date with another girl—this one wasn’t even a witch. It must have driven Missy crazy to know he was he just didn’t care who he spent time with, that she could be the most pedigreed girl in town and she still couldn’t have him. His Mother was indulgent and he didn’t have the normal pressure to find the best possible match as early on as he could. He might have been the most carefree boy to ever grow up in Desire, which just made him all the more appealing to Missy. She was a girl who longed for something she would never have.
“Desperation drives people to crazy acts. Rhys and his new friend were being frisky in their pile of hay when they heard a screech, the loud flapping of wings, and then a thud from the barn floor beneath them. The girl, who had lived on that farm her whole life, told him that the first noises were just a barn owl hunting, but she had no idea what would cause a thump like that.
“Hand in hand they crept to the edge of the hayloft and peered down at the floor where they saw a girl sprawled next to a dazed looking owl. The girl had large bloody holes along her sides, including one that appeared to have punctured her heart.
“Rhys didn’t recognize her right away and he didn’t piece together Missy and her talent for shapeshifting until later. The Coven were able to contain our secrets, of course—they always do. There was never a news report about a mysterious death of a girl in a barn. But it wasn’t long before the story made its way to all of us here in town.
“It seems that Missy had been following Rhys on his dates ever since the two of them had gone out together. Sometimes she’d be a bird in a tree, watching as he and a girl would spread out a blanket by a lake. Other times she’d be the house cat curled up in the chair across the room while the couple made out on the living room sofa. As much as it hurt her, she’d rather spend time with him secretly than be left out in the cold completely.
“On that particular night she’d decided to creep into the barn as a mouse. It’s unclear how she managed to get up the steep ladder to the hayloft. Maybe she flew up as a bird. But it was as a mouse that the barn owl found her. It caught her in its talons and she might have still survived if she’d taken on her human form before it managed to eat her, but one of its talons pierced her fragile mouse’s heart, killing her instantly. At that point she reverted to her human form and fell to the floor, dead.”
Gemma looked at Zelda, stunned. “Was Rhys sorry, at least? Did he stop sleeping around?”
Zelda laughed. “Girl, you’re missing the point entirely. Love stories don’t have happy endings in this town. Of course, he didn’t feel any remorse. He continued to be a playboy until his Mother finally told him it was time he got married several years later.”
“That’s terrible, but Will isn’t like that.”
“I didn’t think my Johnny was that sort either. We’d been a couple all through our teenage years. He came from a good Family and I was the First Daughter of a Coven Family. There was no reason in the world that we shouldn’t be together, but then our Mothers had a falling out and his Mother promised him to Jane, a girl from another Coven Family.
“Johnny and I were heartbroken. We knew that there was no way to overcome tradition. If Johnny refused to do as his Mother said, he’d become an enemy of his Family. A more vengeful Mother might order a traitor of that nature killed, and from what we’d seen of her already, neither one of us had cause to think that she wasn’t the kind of woman who would do that very thing. So we vowed to keep our love for each other alive, but secret, and he married Jane.
“Years passed and we carried on an affair. Even after I married we sought each other out every chance we got. My husband knew about it, of course; I’d never been intimate with him and I went on to have several children. I was understanding when Jane turned up pregnant time and again. Naturally he had to a certain obligation to her. I will admit that it started to grate as I listened to people talk about how much promise Jane’s children had with her and Johnny as their parents.
“As time went by, my resentment started to grow. She had the life I wanted with Johnny. They were a golden couple and to all outward appearances they were very much in love. I suppose I hoped that someday Johnny might blurt out the truth, that their marriage was a sham, but it never happened. And my resentment bubbled beneath the surface, barely contained.
“It was that deep well of bitterness that festered within me that made me so quick to agree to Johnny’s plan. We’d been carrying out our secret affair for years with no sign of anything changing for us. When we’d first agreed to a secret love affair in our youth, it had seemed like it would be enough to have those stolen moments together, but as I got older, my priorities changed. I wanted him with me for the everyday moments, too. I wanted to fall asleep in his arms at night and wake up with him in the morning.
“So it was after one of our clandestine encounters that Johnny told me that he wanted out of his marriage with Jane. He told me that he didn’t love her and that he just wanted to be free to be with me. He wanted me to kill her with my power.
“I am able to take things apart by looking at something and imagining it in pieces. I suppose I could build something the same way, but I don’t have the know how to put something together. I can’t create, only destroy.
“What Johnny was asking me to do was horrifying. It would be a bloody, painful way to die, and my first instinct was to refuse him. But it didn’t take long for the idea to take root in my mind.
“At first I’d banish the idea as soon as it entered my thoughts, but within weeks I had begun to examine it from all angles. Maybe it was the fact that it seemed like now, more than ever before, there were more comments about how perfect Jane and Johnny were together and how Talented their children were. And my time with Johnny was scarcer than ever before, which he blamed on Jane’s sudden suspicious neediness. He told me that she was reluctant to let him leave her side for any reason. The time we did have together was spent listening to Johnny trying to convince me how happy we would be together once she was no longer in the picture.
“I’m ashamed to say that it only took three months before I gave into Johnny’s relentless badgering. I can see clearly now with the wisdom of age that by then my emotions for him didn’t involve anything like love anymore. I didn’t even really like him anymore. Somehow my loving feelings had evolved into the desire to possess him for myself. I resented Jane for being with him and I continued our relationship more out of jealousy than a sincere fondness for him. Killing Jane and having Johnny to myself had begun to seem like a logical course of action to set things right.
“I’ll spare you the details except to tell you that Johnny had set up a time for me to enter their home when Jane would be there alone. I started my nasty business, taking care to finish her as quickly as I knew how. I’d only been at it for maybe 15 minutes when several members of the Coven burst in on me. It soon became evident that Johnny set me up. While I was being tried by the Coven, Johnny began to publicly court another woman. He’d found a way to get both Jane and I out of the way so he could be with the woman he’d been hiding from both of us. The man who I thought loved me with his whole heart had manipulated me into killing someone and left me to face the consequences.”
“What did they do to you?” Gemma asked breathlessly.
Zelda met Gemma’s eyes for the first time and she realized that Zelda was blind. All the years she’d sat there staring into space, it wasn’t because she was crazy. She just couldn’t see anything. Gemma felt terrible for the mean things they’d said about her.
“I tried to tell them Johnny’s part in everything, but in Desire there’s no crime involved in conspiring to kill someone. I was the one they held accountable because I had blood on my hands, both figuratively and literally. They nullified my power by blinding me. I can’t dismantle what I can’t see. They turned me out of the Coven and my First Daughter was too young for a Show
of Power. My husband made public the fact that we’d never consummated our marriage and that my children weren’t his. Even though he was older, he was able to find a First Daughter who was happy to marry him. My kids left Desire as soon as they were old enough.
“I know what people say about me. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing. I sit here on my bench because it’s as close to human contact that I ever get anymore. I only made one mistake, but it was unforgivable. I’m not getting anything that I don’t deserve. All I’d ask is that you think long and hard before you decide that you’re in love with your young man. Love has a funny way of becoming all twisted up in Desire.”
Gemma and Zelda said their goodbyes shortly afterwards and Gemma headed back to her friends, who were clapping for her from across the square. She was still sure that she loved Will, but she thought that maybe she should pay a little more attention to what Delia and the others were saying about college. Just in case.
The End
About Wren Emerson
Wren Emerson was born on the mean streets of small town Kansas 30*mumble* years ago. She first put pen to paper at the tender age of 12 and wrote an epically awful story. She then became publisher and editor in chief of a family newspaper which included articles written by indentured servants/siblings. It got rave reviews from all 8 members of her family.
Now in adulthood, Wren still enjoys bossing people around so she became overlord to a small army of minions; her true love, kids, a cat, and a dog. When she’s not plotting to form a dictatorship she writes. When she’s not writing, she plays video games, reads books, practices her iphoneography skills, and spends way too much time hanging out in #pubwrite on Twitter.
Find Wren Emerson at Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, or email her at [email protected].
A GHOST OF A MATCH
by
Misty Evans
Chapter One
Everyone wants to be loved. To find their soul mate. All relationships have a destiny, but most people find the path of true love is never straight or easy.
That’s where I come in. I’m a fourth-generation Vodun priestess with a gift for matchmaking. My mother, grandmother and great-grandmother have taught me everything I know about soul mates, relationships and destiny along with the tenets of West African voodoo.
Matchmaking is serious business. Part art, part science, it requires skill, knowledge and magic. Magic, of course, is the fun part.
Every Samhain during my childhood, when the veil between worlds was thinnest, my mother and grandmother would contact my great-grandmother Owanna’s ghost with the matches giving them the most trouble—those clients who didn’t seem to have a soul mate. The three of us would sit in a circle around a large wooden table covered with a black cloth, candles forming a pentagon on top and a spirit circle of salt laid around the outside edges. Grandmother would cut her finger and let it drip blood into a bowl of oil. We’d hold hands and call upon Owanna to offer her sage advice.
This particular Samhain, I had the table, black cloth, candles, a bowl of oil and a silver knife to draw blood. Standing in for my mother and grandmother were two of my friends. The matchmaking client list on my laptop was full of people who needed my services in a desperate way, but I wasn’t calling on the ghost of my great-grandmother to help with any of my clients’ relationship issues.
I was calling on her to help me with mine.
“Maybe your great-grandmother’s busy this year, Keisha.” My best friend Amy looked bored as she sat on my right side at the dining room table. Amy was a dark witch who’d joined Witches Anonymous and given up magic. Yep, that’s right. She’d sworn never to use magic again, no matter what happened to her. What’s worse, she gave up magic because of a guy. Not just any guy, either. She gave up magic because of Lucifer. Of the school of hell and damnation.
Talk about relationship issues.
“Shh.” I shook my head at her and mentally called to Owanna. “No talking.”
On my left was Amy’s Witches Anonymous peer, Liddy. Liddy had been a Wiccan before joining WA and going magic-free and looked like a modern-day Bo Derek with the cornrows I’d braided into her blonde hair that morning. Tiny lightning bolts jumped between the rows as she quietly bit her nails and freaked out next to me about spirit communication. The lightning bolts made her head glow in the darkened room. Wiccans … they don’t like voodoo.
I’d already bled into the bowl of oil and recited my usual invitation to the spirit world, asking for Owanna to come forth and bless us with her presence. I’d lined up gifts for her inside the circle. A chalice of sweet blackberry wine, a box of her favorite chocolates, and a stack of racy romance novels, which she loved to read and share with her friends in the afterlife.
But she wasn’t showing.
And I only had until midnight to reach her before the veil solidified again, making spirit communication harder and more dangerous. If any spirits became stranded between worlds when the veil was shifting, or ended up on this side of it when it returned to normal, they were stuck here until next Samhain.
Please, great-grandmother. I need your help. In a big way. In a big angelic way.
Another thirty seconds of silence went by.
Amy’s knee bobbed up and down under the table, brushing against mine. She fidgeted in her chair. She was dressed from head to toe in black leather, ready to go trick or treating with the devil. “Maybe Owanna isn’t too excited about you and Gabe. Could be why she’s giving you the cold shoulder tonight.”
Heaven help me, what was it about no talking that eluded her? I sighed.
Noticing my irritation, she handed me a Dove chocolate as if to apologize, but that didn’t stop her from yakking at me some more. “I mean, Gabe is a fallen angel.”
I gave her the hairy eyeball and ignored the chocolate. She pressed her lips together, held up her hands in an I give up gesture and sat back.
Liddy frowned. “Is that a rule or something? Voodoo priestesses can’t date angels?”
Oh, for crying out loud. “There’s no rule against me dating him, and he’s not just an ordinary angel. He’s an archangel.”
Amy and Liddy looked at me with blank expressions. I reined in my impatience and pointed at Liddy. “What if you were dating a brain surgeon and someone called him a general practitioner? Big difference. Right?”
She nodded.
I pointed at Amy. “You’re dating Lucifer, aka Satan, the ruler of Hell, and sin incarnate. We don’t label him a simple trouble-maker or bad boy.” I made air quotes around the descriptors. “Do we?”
She shook her head.
“Well, believe me, Owanna will approve of Gabriel being so high up in the heavenly hierarchy. Fallen or not.”
I wasn’t actually sure about that. Maybe my magic had failed, or maybe Owanna really didn’t approve of Gabe and me hooking up. I thought he might be my soul mate. I’d never felt like this about anybody, and I really needed her advice. But there was that whole fallen issue. How long would God punish Gabriel for disobeying Him and keep my boyfriend stuck on Earth? How long before Gabe got tired of eating double mocha fudge ice cream from Amy’s ice cream shop and wanted to go back to Heaven?
I needed my great-grandmother’s assurance the guy I’d fallen head over hexes for was The One. And I was running out of time. If she didn’t show tonight, I’d have to wait a whole year to ask her.
One thing for sure … I didn’t have a year.
Amy leaned forward and squeezed my hand. “Gabe’s crazy about you, and you’re crazy about him. You two are great together. He wants to become human so he can stay here on Earth for you. I’d say that trumps anything your great-grandmother has to say.”
Blasphemy, but I held my tongue. Amy was anxious to see Lucifer, and Liddy was too nervous to concentrate, sure we were conjuring demons instead of my African priestess grandmother. I stood and shooed them away from the table, blowing out the candles and trying not to show my irritation. It wasn’t their faults Owanna was ignoring me.
I still had a couple of hours before midnight. Maybe if I cleared the room of their negative energy, I could try again on my own. “You two go enjoy your night.”
“Are you sure?” Amy asked.
I nodded. “I’ll see you at work in the morning.”
We exchanged hugs and I walked the two of them through the living room to the front door. Once they were gone, I leaned my forehead against the door and tried not to panic. My magic had never failed before. When summoning spirits, I did little more than think a person’s name and the ghost appeared in the circle. Owanna had to be ignoring me.
Never a good sign.
Turning around, I noticed a glow coming from the dining room. I’d blown out all the candles so the room should’ve been dark. And this wasn’t the warm yellow light of burning candles illuminating a room. This was the distinctive white glow of a spirit.
My heart leapt. Owanna had come after all.
I raced to the dining room, calling her name, but stopped short when I saw the ghost sitting inside the circle.
She was sipping from the chalice cup and flipping through one of the books. A gold band encircled her head, dark hair flowing from it and forming perfect curls down her back. Her white silk dress was embroidered with gold, and a matching metal belt encircled her waist. She spotted me and lifted the cup of wine in a salute. “Blackberry, ‘tis my favorite, but I do not understand these strange texts. I like the paintings on them, though. The male on the front of this one is well-endowed.”
Definitely not Owanna. Definitely not a spirit I’d ever contacted before. What was this one doing here? And more importantly… “Who are you?”
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