by Cate Tiernan
more pages toward the end. Instead of being signed
Bradhadair, these entries were signed M. R.
Those were my initials. They also stood for Maeve
Riordan. My mother.
Stunned, feeling dizzy, I sank down into Selene's desk chair,
which squeaked. I had tunnel vision, and my head felt too
heavy for my neck. Remembering long-ago Girl Scout training,
I scooted the desk chair back and put my head between my
knees, trying to take deep, calming breaths.
While I hung upside down in this graceless position, trying not
to taint, my mind whirled with thoughts that bombarded me so
fast, I couldn't make sense of them. Maeve Riordan. This was
Maeve Riordan's Book of Shadows. This book before me, the
one that had spoken to me even before I touched it, had
belonged to my birth mother. The birth mother who had been
burned to death only sixteen years ago, in a town two hours
from here.
Selene Belltower had her Book of Shadows. Why?
I straightened up. Rapidly I read passages here and there,
reading the entries as my mother changed from being a girlish
fourteen-year-old, newly initiated, to a teenager experiencing
love, to a woman who'd lived through hell by the age of
twenty-two, as she found herself pregnant with an unplanned
child. Me.
My gaze blurred with hot tears, and I flipped back to the
front of the book, where the entries were light, girlish, full of
wonder and the joy of magick.
Of course this book was mine. Of course I would take it
with me tonight There was no doubt about that But how had
Selene Belltower come to have it in her library? And why,
knowing what she knew about me, had she never mentioned it
or offered it to me? Was it possible that she'd forgotten she
had it?
I rubbed the tears out of my eyes and flipped through the
pages, watching as my birth mother's spells became more
ambitious and far-reaching, her love deeper and more
compassionate.
This was my history, my background, my origin. It was all
here in these handwritten pages. In this book I would discover
everything there was to know about who I was and where I
had come from.
I looked at my watch. It was 7:45. Oh, my God. I'd been
in here for more than twenty minutes already. And now it was
time to go. The others were surely looking for me.
As hard as it was, I started to close the book. How was I
going to get it out of the house?
Then the secret study door opened. A shaft of light from
the hall dropped into the room, and I looked up to see Cal and
Selene standing there, staring at me sitting at Selene's desk, an
open book before me.
And I knew I had trespassed unforgivably.