by Iris Kincaid
“If you think you’re going to take out her eyes . . .” Delphine swelled up threateningly.
“Who said anything about taking out her eyes?” Minerva smirked. “Oh, we certainly considered it. But would they have been of any use to us unattached to a body? We’d have to have planted them in one of our eyes, and which one of us was willing to sacrifice their eyes for such an uncertain outcome? No, the eyes are working perfectly in the body that they are in, and there they shall stay.”
“Then what is your intention?”
Michaela cackled with delight. “We’re going to adopt her.”
“Isn’t she a bit old for that?”
“She is an orphan. She has talents that need a guiding hand. Though we have been impressed with what we already witnessed. After Mallory left that weapon in her garage, we wanted to see how she would handle herself. There is nothing like being in jeopardy to sharpen one’s powers. She shows great promise.”
“She’s also quite the artist, isn’t she? We’re thinking that she can do a family portrait of us. Especially fitting, since we are welcoming her into our family. There’s a spare room that should do very nicely for her.”
“And in gratitude for our protection, she will offer the power of her eyes in our service. She will read Lilith’s hidden spells and messages. We will access all the secrets. And we will become, individually and collectively, the most powerful force this world has ever seen.”
Delphine nodded. “There is great strength in numbers. For example, six witches are more powerful than three.” She looked beyond them at the somber group of five witches approaching. They surrounded the Hatch sisters.
“Would you like to take your chances on three against six?” Delphine said pointedly. “I am ready for that fight, and I have more recruits to draw upon. I know you cannot say the same. Release this girl and be on your way.”
Delphine’s friends looked grim and not to be messed with. With a snarl, Michaela and her sisters stormed away. Delphine took Gillian by the hands.
“Are you all right, my dear?”
“I didn’t want to go with them but I couldn’t fight it.”
“No, that would have taken more strength than you possess yet.” She looked around at all of her friends and nodded in gratitude. “All right, everyone over to my house for crab cakes.”
The witches murmured with excitement. Gillian was confused. “Are we going to strategize about what to do about the Hatches?” she wondered.
“No. We’re going to eat crab cakes. That’s what I promised them, in fact. Asking them to cloak their thoughts and to surround the Hatches, that was just a bit of show. Thankfully, it worked. But I really couldn’t ask them to put their lives on the line for someone they didn’t know. For a commoner. I wish I could say that witches were a more altruistic lot, but on the whole, no. I’m afraid they’re primarily here for crab cakes, which you really must try.”
Gillian scoffed. “So, they weren’t prepared to fight for me?”
“No, my dear. They weren’t. But I was.” She gathered Gillian up in a gentle hug. “On my life, I swear it. You will always have my protection.”
Just like Abby’s arms, it felt like an embrace from family.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Trust was such a complicated thing to consider. And not only for Gillian. The following day, she was in the grocery store parking lot when she witnessed a knockdown screaming match between Ezra Yates and a woman she presumed to be his ex-wife, another casualty of Byron’s philandering, possibly during the time that she was with him. But that wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was that there was so much distrust and deception in the world, and Byron had only made it worse.
Ezra Yates got into his car, slammed the door angrily, and peeled away. His wife slumped against the hood of her car, too distraught to make any kind of decision. Gillian knew exactly what that felt like. She also felt some sympathy for Ezra, having shared the common experience of being under the control of the Hatch trio. She approached the woman.
“I don’t mean to intrude. I know that man. I know your husband, and I know what Byron Curtiss did to your marriage. I lived with him for two years. Yeah, I know he was involved with a lot of other women. But I really shouldn’t think about them as other women. I was one of them. One of the many. I was just the dumbest. I was the one who lost the most.”
The woman shook her head tearfully. “Did you lose your husband? I have lost mine. His love. His trust.”
Gillian’s grasp on trust felt about as fledgling as her witch powers. But she had clearly seen that Ezra’s aura still pulsed with passionate colors of love, as well as anger and pain. “You didn’t lose his love. And as long as that’s true, you have to figure out a way to win back his trust. He thinks he can go it alone. He can’t, and he doesn’t want to.”
“But how do you know?”
“You know how I know about betrayal. What I learned about trust all just sort of snuck up on me. The right people, the right time, the right fit. And don’t just ask for his trust. Earn it.”
That seemed to trigger a hopeful train of thought in Ezra’s wife. Gillian backed away, wishing them the best.
*****
What a long, exhausting week. Gillian nestled onto the cozy lawn chair on their back porch for a quick nap. She awakened an hour later when Vaughn arrived unannounced. He must have tried the front door and then come around the back. Now he hovered over her hesitantly, thinking that she was still asleep. She wasn’t, though her eyes were closed. She could see perfectly. He sank quietly down onto his knees and gently put his hand out to touch her cheek. What exquisite anticipation.
But then he pulled his hand away. Why?
“You can touch me,” she said quietly, eyes still closed.
Vaughn drew a sharp breath. How had she known he was there? Her eyes finally opened. He stammered, “Did you have a good nap?”
“No. I think it would be a lot more restful upstairs in my bed. Would you like to join me?”
Vaughn’s mouth almost dropped open. This should have been a dream come true. Gillian had occupied his thoughts every spare moment for almost as long as he had known her. But they were two traumatized individuals, who’d both experienced enough to hold relationships and trust at arm’s length.
“There’s nothing I’d like more. But I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not for us. I know that I’ve let my feelings run away with me. I feel exactly the way that you think that I feel. But that’s not enough after what that man did to you. You’re never going to be able to trust another man again. I know that. It’s perfectly natural. Understandable. But knowing that you couldn’t really give me your whole heart and trust would just torture me. It already does. But right now, I can keep my expectations in check. Which I couldn’t if we were to get closer. You see, don’t you?”
No, she didn’t see at all. Well, that was the way that she used to see the world, and love, and trust. But a lot had happened to her in a very short amount of time.
“I think we both need time to think. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” he promised.
Gillian watched him walk away. His lack of trust in love and people made her unbearably sad. She couldn’t let him spend the rest of his life like this. She had to do everything in her power to help him understand how wonderful it was to truly trust another person. But how could she, of all people, help him to see that? Talk about the blind leading the blind.
*****
Determined to get their relationship back onto comfortable, platonic waters, Vaughn invited her to join him for an afternoon of sailing. The thought of losing her friendship was unbearable to him. He was beyond relieved when she agreed to go.
They met at the crowded marina. Gillian was delighted at the prospect of her first time on the open waters, and Vaughn was all too eager to get their relationship back on an even keel.
“It’s not the biggest boat. But it’s a manageable size for the two of us. I can teach you a thing or two. If we were really flus
h, that’s the boat we would’ve taken for the day.”
He pointed to an enormous gold-plated luxury yacht named Peggy Sue Got Married. Had that just been a song, or a movie as well? In any case, someone in Oyster Cove was rolling in the dough.
“The owners are probably able to cover the entire bank loan by renting it out a few times a week. But the down payment must still cost a pretty penny.” He was just jabbering idle talk, trying to recover their equilibrium, hoping that she would forgive him for pushing her away, and beating himself up over not knowing whether he had done the right thing.
Gillian let him play teacher. After all, she wasn’t supposed to know anything about sailing. She had, however, run to the library that morning and done some super-speed reading by holding a few books on small craft sailing. It couldn’t hurt to be prepared.
No one had ever told her that it felt like flying. It felt as fast as a horse—as fast as a dolphin—just barreling through the water with the wind pushing against them, at top speed. It was glorious. Eventually, they needed to slow down, anchor, and eat the picnic lunch they had brought aboard.
But Gillian had something on her mind besides food. She had come with an agenda. An agenda of trust. Vaughn was bustling with the baskets, spreading out the food, and he barely noticed that Gillian had stood up, stepped away, and was standing perilously close to the ship’s edge.
“Hey, you need to step away from the edge,” Vaughn said with agitation. There was no telling if some tiny rogue wave would hit them at the worst time.
“Are you a good swimmer?” Gillian asked.
“Pretty good. My neighbors had a pool. I was in it all summer.”
“That’s good. Because I really, really need for you to be a good swimmer. I can’t swim. Not at all.”
And with that, Gillian took the most frightening step of her life—backward, right into the ocean.
She never lost sight of her surroundings. Her superior vision offered an incredible bombardment of underground sea life. At the same time, the panic that she felt was a little higher than anticipated. But as she predicted, as she absolutely knew with her whole heart, her jeopardy was short-lived. Vaughn reached her in under twenty seconds and dragged her to the surface.
He got her into the boat with some difficulty. It might have been easier if he’d left her holding the edge, climbed on himself first, and then pulled her in. But he was determined to get her in first. They collapsed in the middle of the boat, soaking, cold, and exhausted. Gillian was a bit disoriented. Vaughn, on the other hand, was furious.
“What on earth were you thinking?” he yelled, practically shaking her. “You could have drowned out there. You could be dead right now.”
“Not a chance. I knew you wouldn’t let that happen. I trust you with my life, don’t you understand? More than I have ever trusted anyone in my entire life. I knew you wouldn’t let that happen.”
Shaking, Vaughn gathered her into his arms, losing the battle to hang on to his anger. Gillian held back as tightly as she possibly could, resting her cheek on his, whispering into his ear, “I trust you with my life.”
*****
Gillian was bundled up with every blanket that Vaughn could find in his car. It was a warm day, so she wasn’t really cold anymore, but still pretty wet.
“You should get into a hot bath. Just to make sure you don’t get a chill.”
“The bathtub in our house isn’t designed very well. We always took showers.” She laid her head on his shoulder.
“Well, the bathrooms in my complex are all newly renovated. Most of them are Jacuzzi style. We’ll head over there.”
Gillian’s face was turned away from him or he would have seen the wide smile on it. This was starting to turn into a real date. And Vaughn had proven to be a real hero.
Still, it was probably wise that she had taken precautions. When she did her flash reading of sailing guidelines earlier, she had also remembered to peruse through a few swimming manuals.
*****
As Vaughn drew her a warm bath, Gillian examined his living room with approval. It was both homey and contemporary, which she had previously thought to be an unlikely combination. The walls were a soft mint green. Nice.
She stood in front of the painting that she had made for him, which had a flattering place of honor, right over the fireplace in the living room. Vaughn joined her side.
“Those colors, the way it moves, the way it changes. You said it was random. But it doesn’t feel random. It feels like a mood ring or whatever. You did say something about a mood ring, didn’t you? Like all that pink that keeps growing and spreading out over all the other colors. What does that mean?”
“I think it means that you’re falling in love. Or could that just be wishful thinking?”
Vaughn was a rational man. He didn’t really believe in mood ring paintings. But he knew an opportune moment when he saw one. Fortunately, the Jacuzzi tub was plenty big enough for two.
*****
How did trust get such a bad rap? Gillian had been mulling over this issue for several days now. She thought that the more she leaned on other people, the weaker she would feel. But it turned out to be just the opposite. She had never felt stronger.
And it wasn’t just the new eyesight and the new powers, though they certainly helped. She remembered thinking that they would help her to know who was lying or being deceitful to her, whom not to trust. But with every passing day, her sight kept providing an abundance of evidence, from which she could only conclude that the trustworthy outnumbered those who were not by a wide, wide margin. So much so that it seemed to make more sense for trust to be her default setting.
There was one person, however, who severely tested the concept of trust. Perhaps, tackling this particular challenge would cement her understanding of who could and could not be trusted. It was time to pay Simone a visit.
*****
“What are you doing here?” Simone grimaced.
Gillian breezed right past her into the luxury apartment. “I think that you’ve been in my place often enough. It was time to return the favor.”
Simone eyed her warily. “Look. There’s no point in fighting over a dead guy. He’s no benefit to either one of us right now. I know you’re pretty sore about this, but I guess he got what he deserved. Don’t ya think?”
“Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world everyone got what they deserved?” Gillian observed. “You’ve got a really nice place. Are those marble shelves? Pretty deluxe.”
“Are you asking me how I managed to afford such nice place?”
“I wasn’t asking. Although, I guess I was wondering.”
“Okay, I guess it’s no secret. Byron was helping me out. Yeah, yeah. I know that his money used to be your money. You just have to get over it.” Simone walked over to the dining room.
“What did you know about me?” Gillian wondered.
“Just that you were dumb enough to sign over your money to him.”
That was kind of harsh. How could Gillian explain that being blind had felt a bit like drowning? To save yourself, you grab onto the first thing that floats by. In her case, that had been Byron.
Gillian absentmindedly wandered over to the window to check out the ocean view. This was definitely upscale living. But right at that moment, she felt her spine tingling. Her eyes were powerful, but she did not have eyes in the back of her head. Still, she could sense that something was wrong. Turning around slowly, she saw Simone holding up a large butcher knife in her direction.
Up until that moment, Gillian had been trying to convince herself that she only suspected Simone of murder because she disliked her so much. But that was definitely a knife. And Simone looked deadly serious. Coming here was starting to look like a terrible idea.
Simone waved the knife toward her. “So, everyone gets what they deserve. That’s what you said, right? You killed Byron because of all those things he did to you. And now you’ve come to kill me. Well, I’ve done plenty of crappy things in my
life, but I sure don’t deserve to die because of them. Now, you get out of here before I call the police on you.”
This was unexpected. Simone was actually shaking with fright. She was terrified of Gillian! She thought that Gillian had come to kill her. And more importantly, she thought that Gillian had killed Byron. Gillian sank down onto a comfy sofa, to Simone’s great surprise.
“You’re actually scared of me because you believe that I killed Byron. And if you believe that I killed Byron, it means that you couldn’t possibly have killed Byron.”
Simone’s dagger slowly lowered to her side. “So, you didn’t kill him? You didn’t come here to kill me?”
“Why would I kill you?”
Simone tossed the butcher knife on the counter and warily took a seat across from Gillian. “Because I’m no better than he was. Not really. He was a scammer, a con artist, a loser. And I’m no different. Robbing from a blind woman. My grandmother would turn over in her grave.”
“You mean Karen Bennett’s grandmother.” Simone was utterly shocked that Gillian knew who she was. “Tell me about Karen Bennett.”
Simone took a deep breath. Normally, she would be scrambling for the next lie. But all the lies and secrets were unraveling. What was the point?
“Karen Bennett is someone who screwed up big time and will be paying for it for the rest of her life. Because she’s a felon. She can’t get a loan to start a business. She can’t get a job—any kind of job—because she can never get past the background check. She can’t even get a job at McDonald’s.”
Simone started rocking back and forth in frustration. “So, she couldn’t . . . I couldn’t earn an income. I couldn’t support myself and there was nothing left to do except to find a man who would take care of me. I thought Byron was the answer to all my problems. I thought that he would always be there to take care of me. Now, he’s gone, and I have to scramble to find the next guy who’ll pay the rent.”
Their situations in life were quite different, but with some similarities that were immediately apparent to Gillian.