“Thanks for the reminder,” I say flatly and look away to avoid her penetrating and knowing gaze.
Aunt Ivy means well, but her way of dealing with emotional hardship and mine are so completely different. She wants to talk about it and dwell on every tiny aspect. She thinks charms, spells, potions with lovely smells, and cake—lots of cake—will heal my bruised heart. I’m more like Aunt Jet when it comes to pain and suffering. I want to take a ride by myself as far away from everyone and everything that I can. Then I want to crawl into my bed and stay there until I die. Where is my Aunt Jet? She’s the only person on this planet that can talk Aunt Ivy out of driving me bonkers.
“Now what will it be? Would you like a mourning party in the courtyard? It will be a new moon in seven days and make for a lovely midnight mourning, or would you rather have something here in the parlor, or the greenhouse? All your beautiful plants may do your spirit some good. How does the greenhouse sound?”
I place the plate on the coffee table and flop over to bury my face into the cushions. “Stop,” I moan.
“You know you’re going to have to get this out of your system, Aspen. I won’t see you destroy yourself like you did the last time. Let’s get this over with sooner rather than later. A mourning party will be perfect for you. All of your pets can come and your cousin Tori will be here with me and Jet. We’ll have you back in the saddle in no time. Isn’t that what you want?”
She’s practically pleading with me. It hurts to know she’s so concerned about my emotional well-being that she will do this ridiculous thing to not see me fall down the rabbit hole of despair again. I mean I know it was bad last time, but now I’m seeing just how bad I must have been for her to plan all this in advance to keep me from sinking to that pitiful level.
“I’m not going to get as depressed as I was last time. I understand so much more about our problem than I did a few years ago. Please, Auntie Ivy. I need some time alone. That’s all.”
“You know we can help speed up the healing of your precious heart.”
“No!” I raise my hand to ward off the suggested magic spells before she says them aloud. “It’s okay to feel pain like a normal person. Even if it does suck,” I add.
“Nothing about our lives is normal, Sweet-pea. We are the Morgan witches and we do things differently. If you accept this, you’ll see that it’s also okay to use magic to help yourself. So, first things first—” she begins, and sounds a bit too chipper.
I hold in the groan that rises in my throat. I can see the gleam in her eye as she plans every minute of the next month of my life. Visions of herbal garlands being wrapped around my naked body as I get ritually cleansed in the Pool of Serenity swirl through my head with nauseating effect. Pain is natural. So is longing and suffering—to some degree. I don’t want to use magic to feel better about our family curse. To me, layering magic spells on top of magic spells doesn’t solve anything. It only causes a confusing mess. Sort of like my hair on most days. In my experience, it takes more work and a lot of valuable time to undo the chaos.
“We’re going to start right now. Along with the cake, I’ve made your favorite cherry turnovers, and I can whip up a pot of soothing tea in the blink of an eye. How about it? Cream puff pastries, instead?” she asks with her super sweet auntie voice.
My stomach clenches into a tight knot. I really am going to be sick over this. Between Aunt Ivy’s ministrations and the reality that I’m going to become an old crone, my innards just can’t stomach it. No matter how good her cream puffs and teas are.
“Back off, Ivy-wild! You’re making our gorgeous young niece turn green as goose shit. Are you even looking at the poor girl?” Aunt Jet says as she sweeps into the room.
“Oh you hush your rotten lying mouth. I am not,” Aunt Ivy defends.
I sink further into the cushions with visible relief and let some of the tension fall off my back. Aunt Jet to the rescue. I can always count on her for some reality refreshment. As powerful as she is in the world of witchcraft, she has a stronger hold on the current state of affairs for witches living in the modern world than anyone I know. She can craft a spell like it’s nothing, but she can also appear to live a “normal” life whenever it suits her needs.
“Tell your aunt how much you want to be fussed over right now,” Auntie Jet says to me as she moves about the room waving her hand at the candles and extinguishing not only the flames but also the overpowering scent. The drapes open and the room brightens with natural light.
Aunt Ivy turns her wide and hopeful eyes on me. Oh Goddess. I can see how much this means to her, but I just can’t bring myself to say I want her help.
She receives the answer in my non-reply. My soft, plump aunt turns away from me and rises from the loveseat. “Well, I never can win against the two of you, can I?”
The hurt in her voice kills me, but then I distinctly remember her playing this card before. Her feelings may be genuinely injured, but I know this is another ploy of hers to get me to give in and play along with the mourning potions and broken heart charms. I hold my tongue and stare back and forth between the aunts.
“All I was trying to do is be helpful. I’ve been around the block a few times myself, when it comes to heartache.” She brushes away non-existent crumbs from her poppy print skirt and takes a step toward the door.
She isn’t rushing out, so I know she’s stalling in the hope that I’ll call her back.
I push myself up with a sigh. “We’re not in battle, Aunt Ivy.”
“Oh?” she asks, her voice rising with emotion. “You two always criticize my attempts to help.”
My eyes roll around their sockets and my gaze lands on Auntie Jet. She sees my distress call and answers for me. “Give it up. You know we’re as different as the sun and the moon when it comes to the heart. I wonder why you can’t get over it. Aspen and I need to dwell on things silently until they feel settled in our mind. We don’t need comfort food and mood lighting and coddling.”
“I’m only trying to give her what Aurora would want. Aurora was just like me. She would have smothered Aspen in love and mending hearts potions if she was here.”
“Urrgh.” The groan comes up and out of me as I flop over on the sofa once again and throw my arm over my face. “Don’t bring my mom into this,” I say.
“She wouldn’t want you to bear this curse any more than she had to herself. Aurora used every spell, potion, and charm in her repertoire to keep the hurt at bay,” Aunt Ivy argues.
“Now you’re being cruel, you wretched witch,” Aunt Jet retorts.
Jet sits down on the couch next to me and places a protective hand on my side. My arm falls from my face and I peek at her. Her hair is a windswept mess of black and amber waves. Mine probably looks similar except my hair is multi shades of blonde and usually doesn’t give off the glowing effect of wildly wicked radiance like Jet’s. My hair is more like a rat’s condominium, and that’s without the motorcycle riding. Aunt Jet’s wearing her black leather riding pants and jacket and apparently hasn’t been using the helmet I bought for her—again. Being that she’s my current guardian against the evil, but well meaning, Auntie Ivy, I decide now isn’t the time to chastise her for riding without protecting her head. I need this woman in my life for at least another fifty years. It’s incomprehensible to me why she won’t put the damned helmet on when she takes one of her bikes out, but now’s not the time.
“Cruel is you babying her and letting her brood for months at a time. You know as well as I do she can move right along to a new love interest with one simple torch of Eros ritual.”
My mind spins out of control for a moment with the thought that perhaps my meeting Rook was the work of two crafty aunts, but then I remember that they swore to me they would never send a man into my life without my permission. They swore with their blood on the branch of an ash tree during a meteor shower in the Aries moon, so I know they meant it.
The thought of Rook—whom all this fuss is really about—and what
I’d just done to him, brings back the heaviness, the longing, and the need to have a good cry. I sit up and press my lips together, sealing them in an attempt to keep from vomiting all my feelings and regrets to the aunts. What good would that do? Aunt Ivy and Aunt Jet are just as powerless to stop this curse as I am.
“I’m going upstairs. Don’t call me for dinner and please for the love of the Goddess, don’t make a fuss about this. It’s just another breakup. Every female Morgan knows what it feels like. I really just want to be alone tonight. Okay?”
They watch me with kindness and understanding on their lovely faces. Aunt Ivy has her hands pressed to her heart and I think I see tears in her eyes. I suck in a deep steadying breath. The look on her face makes me ache even more so as I glance at Jet. She’s my rock. Her understanding of my need for solitude gives me the strength to start heading for the stairs to my attic rooms leaving the lilac and cinnamon scented parlor behind.
“Wait,” Aunt Ivy says and scoots over to the wall where the bookcases are. “I have something for you.”
“Give it up already and let our niece have a time-out,” Aunt Jet says.
“This is important,” she says from the other side of the room. “Please, Aspen. Can you put up with me for one more minute?”
“Ivy,” Aunt Jet warns.
I halt my retreat and stare at the polished wood planks of the floor. Sometimes I think my aunts sort of married each other since a real marriage wasn’t in their cards. They do this often, bickering and disputing each other like an old disagreeable couple that you know love each other despite the words coming out of their mouths. It’s comforting and familiar in a messed up sort of way. And then again, it’s petrifying to think that my cousin Tori and I can so easily end up exactly like them.
Aunt Ivy rustles around in the secret bookcase behind the bookcase. My interest flares a fraction. We generally don’t open the hidden bookcase. It even requires an offering to make the locking mechanism open. I wonder what she promised, or gave, to make it unlock and why.
“How did you two know this would happen today?” I ask.
“We’re more in tune than you realize,” Aunt Jet says as she slips out of her leather jacket. “When you’ve lived with this curse as long as we have, you can feel heartache coming.”
“But I didn’t even know I was going to break it off with him today.”
“Didn’t you, Sweet-pea?” Aunt Ivy says as she swings the outer bookcase in front of the hidden library closed.
I frown and think about it as she walks back over to me holding a small book. “Maybe,” I admit. “Every time I go on a date, the thought of the eventual breakup crosses my mind.”
“So it does. For us all,” Aunt Jet says, resting her head back against the sofa, leather coat now draped over the armrest. That is until her eyes find the book in Aunt Ivy’s hand.
“What are you doing!” she says jumping up from her previously reclined position.
“It’s time, Jet. I wanted to give it to her after the mourning party, but I think the two of you cancelled the party before I could even tell you the rest of my plans.”
“You should have mentioned this to me before just handing it over to Aspen.”
“I don’t have to have your permission.”
Aunt Jet reaches out to take it. My eyes widen in astonishment at Jet’s reaction.
“I don’t think we were ever supposed to see Aurora’s journal and I don’t know that now is the time to give it to Aspen when she is so vulnerable.”
“I’m not vulnerable. I’m only feeling sorry for my lonely heartbroken future self. I mean who wouldn’t want to fall in love over and over again and never know what it’s like to have a lasting, loving relationship with the man of your dreams?” I say sarcastically, feeling the bitterness catch up with the sadness over what generations of my family has had to deal with.
“Put it back,” Jet says to her sister.
“It’s hers,” Ivy says, raising the book over her head like an older sibling playing keep away from her younger smaller sister.
Now I’m really intrigued. Aunt Ivy has never looked so foolish. It takes Jet by surprise, too.
“Put your arm down,” she scolds.
“Well then don’t you dare try to take something from my hands. I’ll give you warts for that.”
“I’ll punch you in the face for even suggesting you could cast on me.”
“What is going on? You two are acting like children,” I say. They’re odd witches, to be sure. I mean, most of us are in some way or another, but this is truly bizarre behavior for them.
“This was your mother’s,” Aunt Ivy says, and hands me the green book.
I run my fingers over the gold embossed pattern on the cover. “What? Why…why haven’t I ever seen it before?”
“Because we didn’t think you were ready for it. There are many personal things written in it and quite a few passages about your father,” Aunt Jet says.
“All the more reason to give it to me. I’m twenty-five years old. I think I can handle it.”
“I always intended it to be yours,” Aunt Jet says. “We wanted you to have some life experience under your belt before reading about her life. That way you can read about her as her own person and not use it as a manual as you grew up and discovered who you really are.”
I crinkle up my face, trying to understand their position on this matter. My mother has always been an open subject in our house. I grew up believing I knew everything there was to know about her and now, this! I feel betrayed, but then I wonder if I should be grateful. Maybe it’s a good thing to find something new about her after all these years.
I raise my gaze to Aunt Ivy’s tender and caring face. She reaches out to me and places her soft hand on my arm. “There’s something else, Aspen.”
I throw my hands in the air. “Of course there is. Devastating news always comes in threes. Just get it over with,” I say, and brace myself.
They exchange a worried look that hardens my resolve to take the blow, no matter how rough it is.
Jet says it. Auntie Ivy has always been the softer one. Not only physically, but emotionally. Aunt Jet and I can always deliver bad news easier than my Aunt Ivy. Her life revolves around hugs and baking muffins. She’s tough when she needs to be, but the tears come easily when something tragic is happening. As Aunt Jet steels her resolve to lay it on me, the look on her face instantly reminds me of when I had to tell my clients that their thoroughbred had laminitis, and it was most likely their fault for giving the horse the wrong feed. Shame, guilt, regrets. Nothing good ever comes with a look like that.
I take a step toward the stairs in preparation to retreat. Aunt Ivy’s hand falls to her side and she starts to follow me, but then she stops.
“Our beloved sister died working her magic. I want you to know that we have never been dishonest with you about that.” She pauses, takes an enormous breath, and composes her face, letting some of worry lines soften.
I have this instant knowing of what she is going to say next. Not the specifics, but the broad overview is hovering just above my head. Then it lands with a clunk. Right in my medulla oblongata. The part of my brain that controls my heart function.
“But the part we didn’t tell you is she died trying to break the wedding curse on our family.”
I blink. I knew that was what she was going to say even if no one ever said it aloud before. “Okay,” I say as calmly as possibly. Part of me even believes I can handle this. That the basic human functions are still operating correctly inside my stunned body. “I’m going to take her journal and have a look at it in my room.” I hold it up for us all to see, and then whirl around and head for the stairs.
“Aspen?”
“Nope. I don’t want to talk about anything right now.”
“But,” Aunt Ivy stutters.
“And no mourning party!” I flee up the stairs, half stumbling up them as quickly as someone can who is in a state of semi-numbness and with a hea
rt as heavy as a ten-ton stone.
Chapter Three
When I reach the second floor landing, I have the unfortunate experience of hearing someone knocking at the front door. The sound of my aunts bickering also carries up the stairs. They’re in disagreement over the journal. Whoever is at the door quiets their arguing. Then, it’s as if I’ve lost control of my body. My feet drag like anvils are tied to my ankles. My traitorous, curious nature has to know if Rook has returned with Perry.
“Come inside, Rook,” Aunt Jet’s voice lifts to me as I lean over the hand railing.
“How are you, dear thing?” Aunt Ivy says.
I can’t see them, but I hear everything, even Rook’s boots as they hit the mat by the door and then his socks against the wood floor as he enters the house.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” he says in his perfect purring baritone.
“We already know what happened today. Aspen won’t be coming down. But I’d love it if you would join me in the kitchen. I’ll put on some fresh tea and we can chat for a moment.”
“I wanted to speak to you both, so I’m glad to hear Aspen is otherwise preoccupied.”
“Oh, well, that’s good, dear. Let me cut you a piece of cake,” Aunt Ivy says.
Their talk fades as they make their way into the kitchen. My hand feels clammy around the book. I switch it to my other hand and wipe the sweat on my pants. Then I run up the next flight of stairs and don’t stop until my bedroom door is securely shut. With my back pressed against the wood, I slip down to the floor and stare at nothing and everything.
The small powder blue vase filled with lilies sitting on my nightstand catches my attention immediately.
“Ugh…” That definitely was not there before I left the house today. I glance over at my balcony door and wonder if Rook was just up here, or when he could have placed the flowers in my room.
Heart of the Secret: A Witches of Lane County Novella Page 3