by Deanna Chase
I glanced toward the bathroom door. I could make it there and lock myself in before he stopped laughing at me, but that would only be the cherry on top of my humiliation. This. Things like this were why I was better off alone. “Get out,” I said quietly.
He ignored me and kissed my forehead. “For the record, I don’t buy presents nor do I send love letters. And you’re the one who brought your mother up. I merely answered your question.”
“Get out.” I pushed hard against his chest, letting anger overcome my embarrassment. “Leave or I will make you leave.”
That sobered him immediately. “Don’t threaten me, necromancer. We have a deal and I expect you to uphold your end of the bargain.”
“There was no ‘deal.’ There was a possible favor, and it’s been rescinded. Now get your ass out the door before I personally send you to hell.”
Moving so slowly it was painful, he nodded and headed to the door. “This isn’t over. You will cast the spell.”
“You and an entire army of vampires couldn’t make me do it,” I sneered at his departing back, then slammed the door behind him.
4
I threw the damn painful shoes across the room after he was gone, tore off the stupid clothes and haphazardly scrubbed my face clean. Then I pulled on my sweats and crawled under the covers, kind of hoping for death. Never coming out seemed like a reasonable life plan. Corbin would tell people. He knew the coven, he knew Sy, he…then again, he wasn’t impossible to fight against. I was a necromancer. Technically, I could own him if I chose to.
But the coven, the damn coven, would have so many questions. They’d want to hear everything. Then to pour salt in my wounds, they’d pity me. I couldn’t take that.
And none of my questions were answered. I still had this stupid key around my neck and a picture of my mom and none of it made sense.
My eyelids were heavy. Sleep was good. I couldn’t think if I were asleep. I was fading away when there was a tapping at my window. I groaned, burying my face in the pillow. No way did he come back.
I peeked out from under the covers. There was a face in the window, but it definitely wasn’t Corbin. He winked as the pane frosted over. It was the man who had been watching us from across the street on our shopping trip. I climbed out of bed and opened the window to see better. He stood in the yard, snow swirling around him, then looked up with a smile and motioned me to come out.
I pulled on my coat, gloves, and boots, and did as bidden. I was getting to the bottom of this once and for all. “Who are you?” I called from the inn’s entrance.
He raised an eyebrow and waited until I stood in front of him. His brown hair was snow-free, and his hazel eyes studied me with a warm, lively light. “It’s been too long.”
That’s what he said to me. This person I had never met in my life, but who had been following me. He spoke to me like we were old friends. Anger filled my chest. I tugged on the fingers of my left hand glove and had it half off before I realized what I was doing. I shoved it behind my back. I wasn’t angry with this man. “Who are you?”
“Orion,” he said like it explained everything. “I meant to find you sooner, but—” He shrugged. “Time is a funny thing.”
I shook my head. “Why would you want to find me?”
His brow furrowed. “I gave you the letter, didn’t I?”
“Huh.” The letter…with the picture that I threw away. “I didn’t read it.”
He frowned. “I know I was late, but that was a bit childish, don’t you think?”
“Excuse me?” I glared at him.
“You heard me.” He stared back. “Your mother put a lot of thought into that letter. I haven’t carried it with me since her death for nothing.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what it said?”
He shook his head. “There isn’t time for that. All of this would have been so much easier had you read it. How will you even know whether or not you can trust me? You don’t know me at all.”
I threw up my hands. “I don’t trust you. You give me these weird stalker gifts and claim to know my mother. None of that makes me trust you.”
“But…it’s Christmas and you people do things like that. Plus, I thought the mystery would inspire you to seek answers on your own. Instead you hide in there.” He pointed accusingly at the inn. “Why must you be so difficult?”
I closed my eyes and squeezed the bridge of my nose. “I don’t understand.”
“Then you should have read the letter,” he mumbled.
“Well, I didn’t. Can we move on?” It figured my secret admirer would be an asshole. Tonight sucked. “I should have stayed in bed.” I stalked back toward the entrance. Enough was enough, I didn’t need this.
“Wait,” he said like it was all a huge inconvenience for him. “This isn’t entirely your fault. I told Winter I would deliver her message when you were much younger then it slipped my mind. But now I’m here. I’m sure you have a lot of questions and probably a fair amount of anger. For that I apologize.”
I tapped my boot in the snow.
He held out a hand to me with a little smile. “I have answers if you still want them.”
“What’s the key for?”
“Your house. The house your parents left to you.”
I nodded, but my mind reeled. I had a house. There were several times in my life that would have been useful to know. “I thought there wasn’t a will and that they didn’t have anything.”
“Not exactly the case. Winter, your mother, trusted me to fill you in. She had a plan. She knew that giving birth to you would take her life, but there’s a loophole. You can bring her back.”
I stared at him.
“You can. It’s all in the letter.”
“Even if that’s true, why would I? She’s a dark witch. I’m not.”
He blinked. “She’s your mother. It won’t only help her; it could help you too.”
I shook my head. “She has never been my mother. The sun will have a blizzard before I lift a finger to help that woman.” I held up a hand when his mouth opened to respond, turned on my heel, and went back into the inn.
I lay in bed and stewed until my phone rang. I glanced at the clock. Nine a.m.
“Hello,” I said.
“Good morning, sunshine. How was last night?” Leslie’s bubbly voice came from the other end.
My finger hovered over the end button. “I don’t want to talk about it. I actually think I need to head home today.”
“Oh, no,” she said then I heard muffled talking.
“Don’t you dare go home,” Katrina’s voice came on the line. “Get your butt over here. We have to do the meditation and the party is tonight. You can’t miss that. You’re one of us, Frost. Act like it.”
I chewed the corner of my lip.
“Frost, it’s Selene.” As if I couldn’t tell from her lyrical elf-like voice. I wrapped my free arm around myself, and my grip on my phone tightened. She was the last person I wanted to talk to. Not that it was her fault Corbin loved her, but she was the one who brought him into my life. “I’m coming to you.”
A second later she was standing in my room, pretty as ever, with Leslie at her side. Her eyes quickly took in the shoes by the door, the pile of clothes by the trashcan, and, of course, me lying in a heap under a pile of covers. To her credit, no sympathy flickered over her face.
“Don’t you knock?” I glared at them.
Selene smiled and sat down on my left and Leslie plopped down on my right.
“Not with family,” Leslie said. “And that’s what being in a coven is. Family.”
I kept my gloveless hands pressed against my sides beneath the covers.
“I know all of this is hard,” Leslie said and I snorted. “Fine. You’re right. I have no idea, not really. None of us do or even can know…because you won’t tell us.”
I looked back and forth between them. “You aren’t going to let me leave, are you?”
Selene’s eyes twinkle
d with flecks of gold. “I don’t know what happened last night and I don’t care. What we do care about is that you’re okay. So what can we do to make all of this easier?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, hoping the hurricane of emotion inside of me wouldn’t break free. No one in my entire life had ever asked me that. I shook my head, afraid to speak.
The tears I felt filled Leslie’s eyes as they widened in horror. “It wasn’t him,” she said softly. Selene raised a curious eyebrow, but she ignored her. “I’m so sorry. I thought for sure. God, how humiliating.”
There was an itch in the back of my burning throat. “I’m fine,” I managed to say.
“I’ll kill him,” Leslie said, standing up. “I will find him and kill him…or at the very least say a lot of mean words to him.”
I laughed, shocking myself more than them, and a single tear slipped out and rolled down my cheek, but I was afraid to uncover my hands to brush it away.
“Whoever it was doesn’t deserve you. Look at yourself.” Selene produced a mirror out of thin air and held it up in front of me.
Despite all my face scrubbing, the mascara smudges beneath my eyes verged on football player bad.
“What do you see?” she asked.
“Me,” I said.
She shook her head. “No. What do you see?”
“A hot mess,” I said borrowing Katrina’s phrase.
Leslie smiled. “That’s not what I see.”
“Me either,” chimed Selene. “I see one of the strongest people I have ever met. The burden you carry daily is unreal and yet you still do good. If anyone has a right to be bitter and resentful, it’s you. But you still seek out a way to heal yourself even though everyone has said it’s impossible. You carry hope like shield against the world, and I admire the hell out of that.”
“It’s all I have.” My voice was too thin and my eyes felt too watery. They needed to go.
She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Not anymore.” She patted the covers over my knee. “Now you have us.”
“I see so much bravery when I look at you,” Leslie said. “I wish I had a quarter of it. You’re scared, rightfully so, yet you still manage to live. Not only that, but last night you took a chance. Even if it didn’t work out, do you know how brave that was? You’ve had your heart broken so many times in your life, but you still feel so deeply. I couldn’t do it. And if Cor—” My eyebrows shot up, stopping her. “If he can’t see that then he deserves to be miserable. But you don’t. You’ll find the right person.”
I cleared my throat. “Would the two of you mind getting off of my bed?”
“Not if you’re going to run away,” Selene said. “If that’s your plan, I’ll just call Jessica and Kat and we’ll do our meditation here as a coven because like it or not, you’re stuck with us.”
I nodded. “I just want to sit up and get dressed.”
They stood up and took a couple steps back before I budged. I sat up and stretched my neck to one side until it popped. “Did you keep the letter?” I asked Leslie.
She pulled the smoothed letter and picture out of the back pocket of her jeans. “Of course I did. I thought you might want to read it after you had a chance to think about it.” She held it out for me.
I took it by a corner and unfolded the aged paper carefully.
“My dearest Frost,
I barely know what to say or where to begin. How do I explain the decisions I have made or how they will forever be a source of pain for you? Please believe me that I never meant for any of this to happen, but what was done can’t be undone and I couldn’t live with losing you too. I won’t offer you excuses for my actions because they were mine and mine alone. I do apologize and hope you are able to feel my love for you in your heart even though I was never able to say it to you in person.
You will be born with everything in life stacked against you. My friend and midwife, Fredricka, agreed to care for you after my death. She is a good person and will love you as I would. She knows that she is not to touch your skin. All I can do is pray that you are still with her when this letter reaches you. You need people in your life who want to understand and help you.
I have entrusted this letter to Orion. He has been a friend of mine for many years and I trust him with my life. He will always watch over you as he has tried to watch over me, but unfortunately I didn’t listen to anything but my own heart. I know the request I am about to make of you will seem impossible, but it is the only glimmer of hope I have left for both of our survival. Please, before you decide, let Orion tell you my story and listen with the heart of a daughter.
There is a way I can come back to you and you can be free of your curse. You may not be strong enough yet, but you will be in time. You will also need a coven and Fredricka can help with that. The magic that flows through you is strong enough to cast this spell that will resurrect me. Once I inhabit a new body, I can break the necromancer curse that binds you and then we can be together. “
I scanned the spell. It started with a sacrifice. Dark magic. Of course. I refolded the letter. I didn’t need to read any more. Both Selene and Leslie were trying entirely too hard not to watch me.
I had meant what I said to Orion. I couldn’t listen with the “heart of a daughter” because I had never been a daughter. I could read between the lines though. She was so “worried” about me that she left someone else to tell me why she’d done what she’d done. She hoped I would still be with her friend because she could help me bring her back. I wasn’t fooled for a moment. “She said she can break my curse if I bring her back.” I stood and dropped the letter in my duffle bag with a genuine smile.
“Frost,” Selene started, already shaking her head.
“I’m not going to do it.” I pulled out clothes to wear, still smiling.
“Then why are you happy?” Leslie asked.
I looked over my shoulder at their worried faces. “Because if she can break the curse, so can we.”
5
Back in the attic, we finished closing our circle and calling upon the elements to grace us. When the energy in the circle peaked, we welcomed the Oak King and extinguished the black candle then lit the white one. We each sat in our corner and closed our eyes.
“Show us what blessings the future holds,” we said in one voice.
I opened my eyes and I was standing outside on a farm blanketed in snow. The sky was clear overhead, not a bird or cloud insight. Faster than possible, I watched night race across the sky toward me until I was surrounded in darkness, though the stars and moon twinkled above me. But without the sun I was cold and my fingers began to ache deep in my bones.
A house appeared to my left and a man stood on the porch. I stared at him, not wanting to move toward him. Wind whipped around me and suddenly Orion stood in front of me.
“You left without saying goodbye last night,” he said.
“I’m supposed to be meditating. I’m waiting for my guide. Get out of here,” I said.
He smiled. “You’re looking at him.” He pulled up the hood on the cloak I hadn’t noticed he wore.
“I read the letter,” I said as I followed him to the house, only my footprints disturbing the snow. “What are you?”
“I told you. I’m Orion.”
I shrugged.
He sighed. “I was cursed into the heavens by some demigods a long time ago. So technically, I’m a celestial body. But as part of my curse, I also have the pleasure of being who you would refer to as Jack Frost. When there’s a winter storm, I’m here.”
I nodded. “How did you know my mother?”
He laughed. “You say mother like you’re being ironic.”
“I am.”
Orion nodded. “I guess I can see your point. When she was a young witch she had the gall to summon me to her circle. I have always admired pluck. We became friends.”
“Was she a dark witch then?”
He shook his head. “It’s funny how a couple bad decisions can change a life f
orever. She didn’t want to be dark, but once it took a hold of her she couldn’t find her footing. She knew what that meant for you and she couldn’t stop it. In the countless years I’ve been stuck in the sky watching people toil, I have never seen anyone with more determination to change her destiny than her. I think that was because of you. I think it was really your destiny she hoped to change.”
For some reason, despite the topic, I was calm. I even felt sympathy for her. “How did it happen?”
He frowned. “She was very much in love with your father. When he died, she was distraught and thought she could bring him back. She wanted you to have a father.”
Only true necromancers could resurrect and even then a full resurrection was tricky and about a million things could go wrong, including losing yourself completely to the darkness. “Did it work?”
“Eventually . . . to a degree, but it was as you probably imagine.”
If you weren’t brought back for a reason, i.e. vampire, guardian, jinn, etc. it wasn’t pretty. Rotting flesh, ungodly smells, and empty vessels. Creating immortality was better left to nonhumans.
He nodded. “She had to kill him. I thought for a while that might kill her too.”
“Why is it so much easier to talk to you now?” I asked, looking into his handsome face.
“Meditation is designed to bring down walls so you can see more clearly. I should have approached you like this to begin with. You’re much more pleasant like this. Do you feel you have clarity now?”
“I see where she would be tempted, but none of this absolves her. I still don’t trust her and I’m not bringing her back.”
He nodded. “Can’t say I blame you. I guess we’re done then.” On the porch he picked up a large brown leather sack and held it out. “The bag contains the four elements. Reach in and find what you seek.”