by Aileen Erin
Relaxing must’ve made me lower my guard. I wasn’t even aware that I’d opened myself up to a vision until a figure walked into the room.
The woman’s hair was heavily grayed at her temples, but the rest was dark as pitch. She had it bound in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Her loose dress was vibrant pink. Brightly colored flowers were embroidered on the edges. A traditional Mexican dress. She looked straight at me and winked.
What? Could she see me? “Hello?” I sat up, but the figure didn’t respond.
Of course she couldn’t see me. This was a vision of something that happened a long time ago.
The woman knelt on the floor, setting down a brown leather book as she threw the carpet to the side. A teal-colored circular pattern was inked on the book cover.
I studied her face, trying to place her. The woman’s features were familiar, but not. She had to be family if she had free reign of the house…
It couldn’t be Grams, could it?
She slammed her hand on one end of a floorboard, and the other side popped up. Then she placed the little book into the hiding spot.
Finally, she looked up at me and winked.
I hopped off the bed. I waved a hand through her, and I knew it was a vision, but she’d looked straight at me. “Grams?”
She shook her head and pointed down at the floorboard.
Just as quickly as it started, the vision was gone. I was left standing in the guest room, alone.
I didn’t hesitate. I dropped to the ground, threw the rug to the side and popped up the floorboard.
Nothing. I couldn’t see anything except spiderwebs. Yuck. I really didn’t want to put my hand in there. Not even a little bit. But curiosity got the better of me. I squeezed my eyes shut, and reached inside.
Still nothing.
I grabbed my cellphone from my bag and turned on the flashlight function. It was empty. There wasn’t a book in there anymore.
Why would I see that book if I wasn’t meant to find it? Or maybe it was a useless vision. Lord knew I had enough of those in my life.
But she’d looked straight at me. As if telling me to find that journal. No one had ever noticed me in a vision before. If someone had asked me if it were possible five minutes ago, I would’ve said no way. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
“Tessa!” Claudia shouted from downstairs.
“Yeah?”
“Someone’s here to see you.”
For a second I got my hopes up that it was Dastien or Meredith, but I knew better. I’d have to look into finding the journal later. I straightened the rug back in place and headed downstairs.
“Daniel,” I said when I spotted the visitor. “What do you need?”
“I’m here to start your training.” He was wearing a pair of jeans and a pressed button-down. His hair was still wet from a shower, but I smelled a faint hint of cloves under his soap.
“Training?” I asked.
“Yup. Mom wants me to make sure you’re well versed in our ways. You’re not here for too long, so I figured it was better to get started on it sooner rather than later.”
Daniel was the guy that the coven—or maybe just Luciana—had wanted me to end up with. And apparently they still did. The brujos didn’t have mates like the pack did, but I’d bet my life that if Luciana could arrange my marriage to her son, she would. All the better to bind me to the coven.
I hoped Luciana wasn’t trying to manipulate some sort of relationship between us by sending him here. Because that so wasn’t going to happen.
This was perfect. Dastien wasn’t going to like this at all. “All right. Where do you want to work?”
“They have a room here for working craft. We’ll head that way.”
I nodded. “Okay.” He led me to a room down the hall behind the living room. When he opened the door, the first thing that hit me was the smell. So many different dried and burnt things. The room was dark. Only a small window opposite the door let in a little bit of light. The walls were painted black. Black counters topped the waist high cabinets that surrounded the room, and black-painted shelves took up every inch of wall space starting a foot on top of the counters. I wasn’t counting, but I guessed they held hundreds, if not thousands of glass bottles.
It was like the Metaphysics supply room on steroids. The bottles were older. Some of the glass bottles had that old-timey warped look to them. The handwritten labels had yellowed with age and were marked with beautiful, scrawling scripts. A beaten wooden worktable took up the center of the room, and stacks of books were piled underneath—I made a mental note to keep an eye out for any brown books with a teal pattern. A small iron cauldron, some measuring stuff, and a few other odds and ends cluttered the working surface.
Now this was what came to mind when I thought of witches. “What’s all this stuff?”
“For spells. Each family has a fully stocked room. We try and make sure that we have anything we might need in case of emergencies.”
“Do you have a lot of emergencies?”
He laughed. “No. But you never know. That’s why they’re called emergencies.”
I grinned. Maybe Daniel wasn’t so bad after all. Not everyone could be judged by their parents. “Right.”
“So, I figured there were plenty of things we could start out with—lighting a fire, levitating an object, becoming invisible—”
The proverbial light bulb went off. “That’s how Luciana snuck into the full moon ceremony.”
“Exactly. But I thought it’d be more useful to you to learn a basic protection spell.”
I did my best to not look disappointed. “Okay.”
“You’re in a place where you don’t trust anyone. I thought it’d be better in light of that, but hey, if you want to start with lighting candles, we can do that, too.”
I waved a hand through the air. “No. You’re right. I’m being dumb. Protection will be much more useful. It’d be good to not get spelled again—like what your mom did—”
Daniel winced. “Sorry about that.”
“Did you do the spelling?”
“No.”
“Then why are you apologizing?”
“Because she’s my mother. Look, I know that maybe things would’ve worked out differently between us had you not gotten bitten, and I was a little—okay, probably a lot—disappointed about it, but fate is what it is. It wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t meant to be.”
Daniel was shorter than Dastien by inches, but still taller than me. He was fit, but not like the werewolves. Not ugly by any means, but I felt zero attraction to him. Not that attraction hinged entirely on looks, but the chemistry was missing. That zing. With Dastien, it was so strong that I sometimes couldn’t feel anything else when we were together.
Whatever Luciana had planned, marriage to her son was never going to be in the cards.
“So, the good thing about protection spells is that they have more to do with the motion and will than with saying the right thing—which can get tricky for spells in Latin.”
I shrugged. “Makes sense.”
He dug around in one of the cabinets. “Claudia?” He called.
She appeared at the door with a box of glasses. The generic kind that came in sets from Target—eight tall and eight short. “Sorry. Forgot you wanted these.” She set them on the worktable. “Want me to stick around?” she asked me.
“Nah. We’ve got it covered,” Daniel answered.
Claudia kept her eyes on me. I shook my head. “Thanks.” I’d be fine. If I couldn’t handle this guy, how was I going to be able to handle his mother?
“We’re going to make them shatterproof,” he said as Claudia left. “Once you get that down, then you can extend it to any object or person. You can even cast spells so that anyone who wishes you harm can’t enter your room or house.”
“Like a supernatural security system?”
“Exactly!” He grinned.
That would totally come in handy. “Cool.”
He dug ar
ound under the stack of books until he found what he was looking for. He opened to a page, and it looked like a book of Celtic knots. The pages were worn and a little wrinkled, but the colored knots still stood out brightly on the faded paper.
He flipped a few pages. “The spell knots are color coded. Some knots—” he flipped to the back of the book—“require using two kinds of intent. So, if a knot is drawn in more than one color, you know when to switch intent.” He went back to the beginning of the book. “But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. This is a basic knot that can make an object or material stronger. If we perform the spell correctly, it’ll make the glass unbreakable for as long as a week, depending how successful we are.”
“Nice.” I was a total klutz, so this could actually come in handy. I might never crack another iPhone screen again.
“The key is starting and ending the knot in the same place. That’s what holds the spell together,” Daniel said.
“Wait. Do we literally draw the spell? Like with a pencil or something?”
“Nope. It’s mostly mental. You trace a knot with your fingertip wherever you want to spell applied.”
Okay. This was getting ten times harder. “If you’re not using a pencil, how do you know where the knot starts and ends?”
“That takes practice. It’s best to envision a point and start there. Then you just have to remember to go back to that point when you end. Don’t worry. We have plenty of glasses to work with, so we can do some trial and error. By the time you’ve gone through the box, you should have that knot down.”
“Got it.”
He started me off by tracing the paper with a finger over and over. It seemed like a waste of his time to stand there watching me, but every time I messed up, he corrected me. It was harder to stay on the lines than I expected.
Once I made a successful knot twenty times in a row, Daniel said we could move on to the first glass. “Remember to make sure you’re incorporating your will into the knot. You have to believe—you have to know—that the glass isn’t going to break.”
That seemed a little counterintuitive. How was I supposed to know it was going to work if I’d never done it before?
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered to myself as I picked up the first glass. It was a tall one with a slightly squared shape.
Don’t break. Don’t break. Don’t break. I thought to myself as I traced the knot onto the glass with my fingertip. When I was done I placed the glass on the table.
“What now?”
He reached into a cabinet and dug out a large plastic bucket, a hammer, and two pairs of goggles. “Now, we try to break it.” He handed me a pair of goggles, and I popped them on.
I placed the glass in the bucket and lightly tapped it with the hammer.
The glass didn’t just shatter—it turned to dust. It completely disintegrated as soon as the hammer touched it.
“Whoa!” Daniel said. “You barely tapped it. I’ve never seen a knot backfire like that.”
I tried to keep my cheeks from heating. That was a total disaster.
“Let’s try again. This time really focus on thinking about protecting the glass.”
“Right.” Because I’d totally done the opposite before.
I did the same thing. I put all my will into believing the glass wouldn’t break. I chanted it in my head as I drew the knot.
Once again, I put the glass in the bucket.
Instant dust.
Okay. Something wasn’t right. “Are you sure this is the right knot?”
“Pretty sure. That’s why it says ‘Unbreakable’ at the top of the page.” He grabbed a glass from the box and started tracing a knot on it. When he was done, he threw the glass on the floor. It bounced. Literally bounced. Like a ball.
“Clearly, I’m not very good at this.”
Daniel scratched his head. “I don’t know. It’s so odd. I’ve seen knots not work before, but I’ve never seen a glass turn to powder.” He grabbed a short glass this time. “Again.”
By the time the doorbell rang a few hours later, I’d nearly gone through the whole box and there was a thick layer of glass dust on the bottom of the bucket. My stomach growled and I knew it was past time to eat. This whole thing was testing my frustration, and on an empty stomach, that wasn’t wise.
“I need a break.”
“Yeah.” Daniel sifted through the glass powder with a long-handled spoon, still partly in shock at my total spell ineptitude.
A knock sounded on the door.
I opened it and saw Mom. She pulled me in for a hug. “How are you doing?”
“Okay. Frustrated. My first lesson isn’t going so hot.”
“Then I’d say you need a break. Help me with the groceries. I want you to see what I got.”
I stepped into the living room to see two worker men hauling in another fridge. “What’s that?”
“I didn’t want you to worry about the food so much, so I brought another fridge. Call me when you start hitting the secondary fridge. That way you’ll always have enough.”
That was an incredibly good idea. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it. “Thanks, Mom. This is above and beyond. I really appreciate it.”
“It was Dastien’s idea.”
“You talked to Dastien?” I was suddenly jealous of my own mother.
She nodded. “I wanted to make sure I was getting enough.”
Wait. I was missing something. “You have his number?”
“He’s your mate. Of course I have his number.”
That was news to me. “Do you guys talk? Often?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes. We traded numbers when he came to pick up your stuff for St. Ailbe’s. I knew then what was going on. Your father was a bit slower to accept things, but it’s important to me to support my children, no matter what life brings their way.”
I had no clue she’d done that. I knew she supported me. That was clear in everything that she did, but this was something else.
I followed the workers into the kitchen. Claudia was trying to move the table over to make room in the corner for the second fridge. Now this, I could help with.
I didn’t want to show off too much for the workers, but I went to the table and lifted it just enough before taking a few steps back.
Claudia shot me a look of awe, and then started scurrying around and scooting chairs out of the way. After the workers left, we went out to Mom’s car. She’d folded the seats down, and every bit of space was filled with food.
“You bought the whole damned grocery store.”
“What do you think took me so long?” She bumped her shoulder against mine. “Now, let’s get this stuff put away.”
“First things first.” I smelled a delicious mix of bread, cheese, and tomato sauce and found the source in her front seat. I snagged a slice of my favorite pepperoni and jalapeño pizza and inhaled it. “Okay, let’s go,” I said as I wiped my hands on my jeans. I grabbed as much as I could carry and still see over, and made my way back inside.
It took us an hour to get everything organized in such a way that the fridges could close. The last thing mom brought in was the stack of four extra-large pizzas. “Lunch. Three for you. One for your cousins. You can heat them back up in the oven.”
“Thanks. That’s awesome.”
Mom sighed. “I wish I could stay.” She hugged me. “Be careful. If you need anything, just call. Remember, I grew up here. I know these people and what it can be like.”
“I know. I appreciate it. I’m going to be okay. Thanks for the food.”
“Of course, mija. Anything for my girl.”
“If you talk to Dastien again, tell him I’m okay.”
“I will,” she said as she stepped out the door.
I popped the pizzas in the oven and wondered what Dastien was doing. Being apart was a constant aggravation. I’d been doing my best to focus on the lesson with Daniel, but it seemed like every time I slowed down or stopped moving, I felt this yearning—this lo
nging that I couldn’t ignore. And we’d only been apart for hours. This was going to be a whole bunch of no fun.
Maybe if I climbed on the roof, my cell could pick up a signal, but that would mean breaking the rules…
As the smell of pepperoni and cheese filled the kitchen, I pulled out plates.
“What’s going on?” Daniel said as he walked into the kitchen.
I guessed he’d been busy trying to figure out what I’d been doing wrong. “My mom brought food. You hungry?”
“Sure.” He sat at the table and my cousins joined him. The way they talked with each other reminded me of my friends. Suddenly, it wasn’t just Dastien I was missing, it was everyone.
Adrian might be able to get on coven ground, but that would probably only fly once. If I were lucky, maybe twice, and Luciana would definitely try to get her hooks into him. So, I had to save that for when I had really good reason to contact him.
As I tucked into the second pizza, Dastien occupied my thoughts. He was probably fine. Maybe chatting with our friends.
The image of Imogene kissing him flashed into my mind.
What was wrong with me? I really wished I could un-see things. But once I had a vision, it was never gone. When I was in Imogene’s room a few months ago, I’d touched her necklace and glimpsed an intimate moment between the two of them.
I guessed that was why she got to me. She’d known Dastien much longer than I had. He said he hadn’t meant to lead her on, but she’d been led nonetheless. Her ulterior motives for speaking against me weren’t all that secret.
She wanted Dastien back. I knew it. Hell, everyone knew it. But I had to trust Dastien. I had to focus on why I was here, and know that my bond with him would always exist, even if I couldn’t feel it. Still strong. Just hidden.
But it was hard to remember when I felt so cut off from him.
The pizza settled like a ton of bricks in my stomach. I put the last one in the fridge and went back to my room. A shower and a nap would do wonders for my attitude. Or at least I hoped they would.
Chapter Twelve