As we settled in and watched Elizabeth and Roman work on the laundry surrounded by a garden of homegrown vegetables and chickens flitting about, I lifted my face to the heavens and reveled in the fresh air. The tube of sunlight pouring over us and warming my skin.
I should have still been all to pieces, but in this particular moment I couldn’t seem to allow myself. There would be time for that later in the darker moments when self-pity and disbelief found me there. Right now all I wanted was to celebrate my aliveness. There are blessings in every tragedy. Something to learn; to grow from.
Yes, I was wanted dead by pretty much every human being that wasn’t also my kind, but my heart was still pumping despite it.
A goat cried somewhere on the other side of the house, and my hand slipped silently over Jacob’s leg. His hand found mine and held on for dear life. A tear slipped down my cheek unbidden.
Yes, I was blessed.
And a friggin half angel with a cool gift.
The idea of being the offspring of a divine entity, while awesome in many ways, would take some getting used to, (was it my mother? Father? And why was I left to discover this on my own?) as would the reality of being semi-immortal and forever stuck in my teens. But for now, I wasn’t going to let the hugeness of everything ruin my mood.
A gust of wind blew through, caressing us in its gentle fury and with it came the smell of smoke. Not like a raging wildfire, or even something roasting. More like the embers of a long-extinguished bonfire that had burned tall and hot.
My eyes scanned the forest ahead until they stopped on wisps of smoke.
Jacob knew what had pulled me from my reverie. “We burned Mable’s corpse, along with her spell book and dagger last night.”
Dagger. She must have needed a special Satan instrument to hack us all to bits.
I recoiled from the imagery.
“Sorry. You probably could have done without that.”
“It’s fine,” I whispered. I’d eventually want to know where her body was anyway, to make sure she was good and dead. Could witches come back to life?
I shuddered at the thought.
Burning her would have been the surest way to make sure she didn’t. That was the way they disposed of them in Europe. And digging a grave for her, she wouldn’t have been worth the effort. She didn’t deserve it.
She was willing to take six lives for selfish reasons.
May she rot in the pit of Hell.
***
“Where are the others?”
“There was one other couple and a boy, but the three of them left at first light of dawn. Said they couldn’t sleep another night here.”
Understandable. What they once had thought of as a haven, a home, had been tainted forever.
“Elizabeth and Roman said they’ll probably stick around for a while. They’re newer to the family and don’t have as many memories here.”
As if she sensed us talking about her, Elizabeth looked our way with a sad smile.
“Plus, she wants to make sure you were able to settle in and find a new normal here, if you decide you want to stay.”
I watched blankly as she scrubbed a huge blob of sheets in the washtub. I honestly didn’t know what I wanted but going back to Ipswich wasn’t an option. Where else would I go? And Jacob could visit me here every time he had the chance.
We could cloak the house again with the spell to keep hidden from everyone else, if they hadn’t already. And by the looks of things, this place was self-sustaining. No need to go to a nearby town or rely on anyone else for things we needed.
Designed that way on purpose.
“I suppose I will,” I said, my gaze moving to Roman while he hung the laundry. The muscles along his forearm bulged and flexed as he reached to pin the sheet into place. How in the world had Mable moved him on her own? Must have been telepathy. No, wait. That wasn’t right. Telekinesis, or some kind of spell to move us easily from one place to another.
“Good,” Jacob agreed. “You’ll be safe here. And I can visit.”
Safe. I tried not to snort but did anyway.
Only time would tell.
***
Jacob left before dinner so he could make it home by nightfall. As I watched his broad shoulders disappear into the trees, my heart squeezed but I maintained my composure. He was my safe place, my rock. My protector.
The reason I was alive.
But he would be back. Probably in the next couple of days, he said.
I didn’t pressure him.
Elizabeth made rabbit stew for dinner with potatoes, rosemary, and black pepper. Any other time I might would have said it was a tad bland, but my soul needed something warm and earthy, so it suited perfectly.
While Roman slurped the rest of his rabbit meat from the bowl, she reached across the table for my hand to grab my attention And flashed a sweet, melancholy smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Without hesitation, I replied, “Me too.”
“Really?”
“I am.” I could have been hacked to pieces. Still in a jail cell. Many other unpalatable places. Sure, this was the house of the lady who’d wanted to kill me, but she wasn’t here anymore.
She flashed an apologetic smile. “Because I worried you’d be sour with me.”
“Sour?”
“Roman and I brought you here. We didn’t know why, we just thought we were rescuing you from the gallows, but…” Her voice broke, and the heaviness she must have been hauling around with her showed in the way her shoulders slumped, the way her eyes glazed over with tears. “But I can’t help but feel partially responsible for what happened to you last night.”
Roman set his bowl down with a thud. “Same.”
I looked at him, his sad blue eyes, and then back to her. All of a sudden, though I was still in desperate need of someone to hold me and tell me everything would be okay, I found myself comforting them. “You thought you were rescuing me from the humans and their ignorance. You couldn’t have predicted anything that happened beyond that. This was Mable’s doing. And she’s gotten what she deserved.”
Somber nods of approval.
“According to the spell book,” Elizabeth said. “You were the last one she needed. That’s why she went ahead with the ritual when you arrived here.”
I did the math in my head. She needed six of us.
She withdrew her hand and gathered our empty bowls. “Well, we’re happy you’re here now. The three of us will make the best of it.”
“Jacob said something about you sticking around until I’m settled in?”
She shot a look back to Roman for his consent. They must have been a couple.
He gave a slight nod.
“Yes. We haven’t really discussed it in detail, but yes.”
“At least until you’re comfortable with running things here on your own,” he added. “There’s a garden and animals to tend to.”
I nodded. It would be easier for me than they thought. I was kind of good with plants. I was thankful for their generosity. They could have left me to fend for myself like the others. “I appreciate it.”
More than you know.
Chapter Twelve
Lots and Lots of Anger
Bedtime came early for me that night. For all of us. And just like any other night, the stillness left me time to think.
My mind didn’t wander to Mable. To the gallows. My semi-immortality. My imprisonment or V. Even Jacob.
In this moment, while I tossed beneath the clean sheets in a home that felt so foreign, I thought of Liza, the only mother I’d ever known.
I missed the warmth of our home. Her cooking. Her laugh. The structure.
The love.
If she and V had known the truth, that I was part angel and not witch, none of this would have happened.
Or, maybe I was giving religion too much credit. The book of Enoch said the fornication of angels and humans was as an abomination. So ironically, even if they had been enlightened about the orig
in of my powers, the result might have been the same. I could have still been sentenced to hang at dawn. Not that it would have killed me. I don’t think. It didn’t feel good, and I definitely would have passed out. But when that didn’t kill me, they would have tried something else until the deed was done.
Either way, yet again, they would have been wrong about me. About everything. I wasn’t an abomination; I was the cherished descendant of an angel, and there was no better testament to that than the fact I was still alive.
I just had to keep clinging to that truth so the reality of my sudden life shift didn’t shatter me to pieces.
***
The next couple of days Elizabeth and Roman taught me what they’d learned about homesteading. They weren’t the most seasoned at everything, but they knew enough to help me fend for myself for when the time came to leave me and venture out on their own. While a part of me loved having them here, I often felt like a third wheel and it made me miss Jacob all the more.
The times they’d go on walks and leave me to my own devices, I’d curl in front of the woodburning stove with a blanket and ponder over everything.
Today, while they were on their evening walk I made some chicken and rice for dinner. As it boiled, I rocked in front of the stove with a mug of tea. Watching the flames dance inside, the steam and waves of heat distorting the pictures above the black iron, I allowed myself to feel what had been festering inside me all day.
Anger.
Yesterday had been sadness. Last night, thankfulness.
Today, lots and lots of anger.
I’d go through this cycle a couple of times…many times, until I found my new normal, as Jacob had called it. Until then, I’d stay afloat, arms spread wide, head titled up to keep from drowning as this sadistic whirlpool went round and round.
In this spin of anger, I couldn’t help but entertain the idea of giving everyone back in Ipswich what they deserved. I had all these spell books at my disposal, after all.
I huffed a small laugh.
Wouldn’t that be fitting? They tried to kill the descendant of angels, so I returned to kill them like the witch they accused me of being.
But no. As tempting as it sounded, that level of evil wasn’t inside me. I was a lot of things, but I was no killer. I was one of God’s own, and vengeance was his.
I eyed the books with a smirk. But I could give them all rashes. Maybe endless diarrhea? Horns?
I laughed a full-blown belly laugh, looked back to the stove. Sipped my tea.
We’ll see.
The idea helped quell my anger anyway…for now.
***
Jacob came to visit that night and it felt like it had been a lifetime since he’d left three days ago. While the others slept, he and I reclined on my bed, staring at the ceiling and emptying our hearts. We’d both had a couple days to think about everything.
“I’ve felt so guilty about everything,” he said. The room was dark, but I knew his exact expression by the way his voice wavered—furrowed brow, set jaw.
“For what?”
“I couldn’t be at the trial or show my support at the gallows.”
I tossed to my side to face him, splayed my hand across the soft fabric of his shirt. His heart beat steady and strong beneath my hand, his breath hitching at my touch. It wasn’t often we were in a bed in a dark room, touching each other intimately.
Never, actually. We’d never done that.
We’d never had the chance because it wasn’t appropriate before marriage, and we had families who didn’t know we loved each other.
“I only thought you couldn’t bear to see any of it.” And that was true.
“I couldn’t,” he managed. “But I would have. You deserved that much from me. I couldn’t save you from your fate, but I didn’t want you to be alone in it.”
Tears burned my eyes, and I studied the bends and hard angles of his jawline in the moonlight. His cleft-tipped nose. Strong chin. “What happened then?” My voice betrayed my pensive admiration, almost sounding detached and rude, and if he noticed, he didn’t let on. He was the most beautiful creature to me.
“Word had gotten out somehow that I’d visited you at the cell, so I was made to stay home and guarded for fear I would interfere.”
Anger sparked inside, but I quickly pushed it away before I started thinking of horns and rashes again.
That was all in the past. And now we’re here. Together.
He tossed to face me. Nose to nose. “I’ll never leave you again, Rosanna.”
The urgency in his voice, the way my full name rolled off his tongue sparked another feeling inside me. My heart skipped. Desire swirled low in my belly, my thighs rubbing together to quell the ache.
“Never again,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss me. God, I missed his lips. When they fused, it was all I could do not to roll on top of him, but we had to draw the line somewhere.
I could be fully his when we were married.
Chapter Thirteen
Beginning of our Forever
The rest of the summer was long and hot and filled with more learning, both about my temporary roommates and how to run a homestead with seasonal fruits and veggies, goats, and chickens. We had everything we needed.
Roman had come from Williamsburg, and Elizabeth from Salem, one town over. She loved knitting and writing poetry, he loved reading and splitting wood. She loved playing with his hair, he loved playing jokes on her. He had the gift of bending water, she the gift of sprouting fire from her palms, something that attracted them to each other when they first met. They both could manipulate the elements.
Occasionally they fought, like most couples do, but when they made up, I tried to ignore the sounds coming from their room at night.
Apparently, they weren’t as worried about the marriage-coming-first thing.
Not that it was easy for me and Jacob…especially now that we had privacy.
He visited as often as he could, stopping by the house during trips out of town to sell the furniture he’d made. We’d hide his horse and wagon beneath the cloaking spell so predators wouldn’t be tempted. It was the only way we kept our free-range chickens and goats alive from coyotes, and our garden free of rabbits and deer.
No fences necessary, though we did have barns for them in the winter.
Late that fall, we said goodbye to Elizabeth and Roman. They wanted to find a town to lodge in through the winter, then get started on their own homestead in the spring.
The night they left, Jacob and I made a bonfire.
It was time to burn Mable’s spell books. Too many times in moments of anger I’d been tempted to crack them open and see what possibilities lied within.
I never wanted to be tempted again.
How could I ever move on if my heart was constantly tempted to give everyone in Ipswich what they deserved? Why ruin the second chance God had given us?
We kept the one with the cloaking spell, though. It had saved my life. And it was the only one that didn’t seem to have dark magic. Conjurers of the Light was what the book called them. Good witches.
By that Christmas I’d gotten used to being alone when Jacob was gone. But not so much so that I didn’t throw myself into him every time he showed up at my doorstep. My life was ever brighter when he was there. Sweeter. Fuller.
And on this Christmas Day, my first Christmas in the house, after he made the trek over once his mom and siblings had gone to bed and was all bundled up against the heavy snowfall, he greeted me with a present. But he was quickly distracted by what he saw behind me. Every table, every shelf along the wall, held multiple pots of flowers.
“Come in,” I said, waving him in from the cold. “I was tired of all the dead around this place.” Bare, frozen trees were incredibly eerie this far back in the woods.
He set the small gift on the dining table and worked to unbutton his coat. “Where’d you get these?” His voice was thick with awe. Last time he was here, I only had half this many. Maybe less. We
didn’t typically decorate or celebrate Christmas, really at all. It was treated as just another day. But something about Christmas this year felt appropriate to make our home as pretty as I could. Though we didn’t recognize the day as the official birthday of Christ, there had definitely been the birth of something this year—new life. My new life with Jacob.
It meant something to me.
And apparently it meant something to him, too, if he’d brought me a gift.
“I dig in the woods every day for more bulbs,” I replied with a shrug. “It’s something to do. And then I bring them to life.”
His coat fell to the ground, and he moved to wrap his arms around me, planted a long icy kiss on my lips. “You’re an incredible person,” he whispered against them. “You know that?”
I smiled, reveling in his presence. “Just trying to keep up with you.”
He pulled back, a glint of pride in his eyes and he reached for the gift. He held the clumsily wrapped package with both hands, like it would crumble in his grip if he didn’t hold it just so, and he studied it a moment before he could speak. “I was going to wait until morning,” he said to the space between us. “But I don’t think I can.”
My stomach jumped. “I won’t argue with that.”
A nervous laugh, his eyes dancing. Why was he…?
Suddenly, a flash of heat shot over my skin.
A small box.
Nervous.
He carefully passed it over, and I sat on one of the stools. Stared at the messy burlap wrapping. If this was what I thought it was, this would officially mark the beginning of our forever.
The thought jolted me into motion, and I tore into the wrapping, the box, and there they were—
Two thimbles.
I planted my face in my hands and wept.
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