“I would love to meet your mom.”
Molly took him inside and introduced him to Sarah. Then she left them to talk over things, coven leader to new witch, while she went upstairs to get ready for their first date. She decided to wear a soft cotton tunic and a bright loose skirt because her stomach was finally beginning to show a slight baby bump. Scooping up a patterned shawl, she went back downstairs where she discovered the two loves of her life were getting along together famously. She and Alexei left to eat seafood at the restaurant by the pier.
Much to his frustration—and hers—she didn’t put out on the first date. She said, “I deserve to be courted.”
“So you do, my love.” He tipped an imaginary hat at her.
After another chaste but searing kiss, he left her on the doorstep. She watched him drive away and then fumbled her shaky way into the large old Victorian house that settled around her like a well-worn cloak. Wandering through the shadowed downstairs, she soaked in the peace and quiet while two tears ran down her face.
She was pregnant. She was allowed to be emotionally overwrought now and then. Besides, it was all so good, so good.
She put out on their third date. They had gone together to her first ultrasound and watched the grainy black-and-white images of the baby.
The doctor asked, “Do you want to know the sex?”
“No,” she said.
At the same moment, Alexei said, “Yes.”
The doctor laughed. “Which one is it?”
“Tell me,” Alexei said, his face creased with amusement. “Don’t tell her. I’m good at keeping secrets.”
He was, diabolically good. That would be terrible. Molly sat up, eyes rounded, and said, “NOOOOOOOO.” As Alexei and the doctor laughed harder, she caved in. “I already can’t stand it! You’re going to have to tell us.”
“Congratulations,” the doctor replied with a smile. “You have a beautiful, healthy little girl.”
But that wasn’t the date. That was baby mama and baby daddy stuff.
After the appointment, they went out for ice cream to celebrate, and that was their third date. Alexei had coffee while she indulged in chocolate chip mint ice cream.
When she was finished, he asked, “Want to see where I’m staying?”
“Of course!” she answered with enthusiasm.
He had asked it in all innocence. She was pretty sure he had. Either that or he was just that good. In any case, he took her to the apartment and showed her the wall of windows that looked out over the ocean, which she loved.
Staring out at the water, she whispered, “I didn’t know I could be this happy.”
He came up from behind, put his arms around her, and whispered huskily against her neck, “Me neither, milaya. I did not know such happiness existed.”
When his lips touched the delicate, sensitive skin at her neck, a violent fireball of sensation exploded between them. With a sharp gasp, she twisted around, and their lips collided. He ran shaking hands up under her tunic. The rasp of his callused fingers on her bare skin caused a pleasure that was almost unbearable.
She pulled his shirt, yanked open the fastening of his slacks. He bit her neck, walked her backward, pushed her down on the couch and fell on top of her, his body a long, muscled arc of aggression. They never managed to get completely undressed before she wrapped her legs around his hips and he entered her.
“I want so much to take my time with you, but not yet,” he muttered against her skin.
“Shut up. Whatever.” She groaned, digging her heels into the cushions and lifting her hips for his thrusts. Greed turned her selfish. Sliding a hand between them, she fingered where he penetrated, pleasuring herself while he moved inside.
Knocking her hand away, he took over. When he touched her, she climaxed. Swearing, he followed soon after, twisting up with the force of his own climax while she watched his clenched face and tightened her inner muscles until he had finished.
He fell back down to her, face buried in the fall of her hair and chest heaving while she held him and let herself drift.
After a time, he stirred, lifted his head, and said, “Shut up? Whatever?”
A lopsided grin lifted one corner of her mouth. “You were maundering on about something. Blah blah, I want to be a courteous lover, blah blah I want to take time. There were too many words and not enough screwing.”
He burst out laughing while his hard features were still flushed from the heat of what he had done. God, she loved the sight of him like that. “I wasn’t being courteous. I want to savor you like a five-course dinner in a world-class restaurant and take all night. Don’t tell me you want to go back to not putting out.”
Chuckling, she ran her fingers through his hair. “I think that ship has sailed, don’t you? But it was fun while it lasted.”
“If you call excruciating fun.” He pulled away, stripped with practiced economy, and picked her up.
“My two legs and two feet, they all work perfectly well together,” she reminded him as she laid her head on his shoulder.
“Shut up,” he said. “Whatever. This gets you into my bed as quickly as possible, and I’m hungry for my five-star meal. Don’t plan on going home tonight.”
She should text Sarah to let her know, she thought. Then Alexei swung her onto the bed and came down over her in one controlled motion, and all rational thought splintered.
She knew how powerful it was to be the sole recipient of his dedicated attention. Her body remembered too, and it ignited everywhere he touched her. She lost herself in a haze of sensuality and pleasure and only remembered she was supposed to text Sarah when it was well after two a.m.
Sarah always kept her phone on in case there was a coven emergency, and Molly certainly didn’t want to wake her with an apology. After deliberating for some time, she decided to let it go and apologize the next morning.
When she did, Sarah laughed. “I didn’t think anything of it. Honestly, I was surprised you waited as long as you did. The way he looks at you… I always like to tell the man that he’s the lucky one, but he looks at you like you’ve hung the moon.”
She bit her lip and then smiled. “He does, doesn’t he?”
On their fifth date, he proposed. Out near the labyrinth by the light of a full moon, down on one knee as he held out a blue-diamond engagement ring.
“It’s gorgeous,” she breathed.
“The blue is for the ocean,” he told her. “I love you. More than that, I like and admire you, and I will want and need you every day for the rest of my life. We won’t get it right all the time—and I know I certainly won’t get it right. But I can promise you this: I will support you in everything you want to do, and I will cherish and respect you for as long as I live in this body. And when I do something wrong, I will make it right.”
She stared down at him. For someone who wasn’t a romantic man, he had put so much thought into the proposal. The moon, the ocean, the labyrinth.
He was telling her so much more with his actions, not just his words, and it was so perfect.
So perfect.
She replied, “Absolutely, yes.”
A keen smile lit his features. He surged to his feet, picked her up, and swung her in a circle. She threw her arms around his neck, holding him tightly.
She would have said yes if he’d mentioned the possibility casually over lunch at some point, but she didn’t tell him that until much, much later.
Over the next several months, other newcomers drifted into town. First Anson came, and then Maria, Steven, and Henry.
But not Richard. Richard couldn’t, he said. He was still too angry to settle somewhere, and he had taken over running the trust Alexei had set up. Everwood was not the place for him. Alexei and the rest of his coven talked about it in depth at Sarah’s kitchen table while Sarah and Molly listened.
From time to time, Sarah joined in the conversation, but Molly kept her own counsel. For one thing, her opinions weren’t necessary, and in any case, she was
selfishly glad that Richard had made the choice to stay away and continue with their mission while the others took their sabbatical to decide how they wanted to move forward with their lives.
Working with Sarah as intensively as she did, Molly could feel dark, seeking tendrils of magic slide along the edges of the cloaking and obfuscation spells that Sarah and the Everwood coven had cocooned the area in for the past several decades. Everwood’s sanctuary still held, but Molly never forgot the price of what they would pay if that screen ever fell.
By actively working elsewhere, Richard would draw the attention of the Rasputin crime family away from Everwood.
At least for now. With what she now recognized was precognition, she knew another confrontation was coming—perhaps even several confrontations—but she wanted that future delayed as long as possible. They all needed as much time as they could take before that came.
Time for recovery, time for Molly to have her baby, time for her to finish her training.
Time for the all-encompassing business of living, time for joy.
As fall came, Sarah did have The Talk with Molly early one afternoon over butternut squash soup. They had just sat down to lunch. Closing her eyes, Sarah inhaled the aromatic scent of the soup and smiled with pleasure.
“I hope you like it.” Molly sliced a loaf of homemade bread. “I put some of that spelled oregano in it since it’s been doing you so much good.”
“Would you be my successor, Molly?” Sarah asked. “I have so much respect for everything you’ve gone through and everything you are. Everwood needs someone with your strength and kindness.”
“Yes,” Molly replied. “You teach me something good every day, even when you don’t mean to, and I’m deeply honored you would ask me. I could never hope to fill your shoes, and I know I have so much still to learn, but I promise I will always do my best to carry on your legacy the way you would want.”
There it was, so simply asked and so readily answered. Sarah’s dark, powerful eyes smiled with so much love and acceptance from the other side of the table as she offered to give to Molly the life that she already adored. Just like that.
After that, some part of Molly knew that several big life events were going to come in quick succession. After she and Alexei discussed everything, they decided to have a quiet wedding that would allow them to really enjoy the day with their friends.
Molly baked her own wedding cake. Alexei asked Anson to be his best man. Sarah officiated. It rained buckets the whole day, and they rolled back the rugs downstairs so everyone could dance.
After they married, Alexei moved in. A few months later, Elisa May Volkov was born on winter solstice. Molly knew she was in labor hours before the evening gathering, but she refused to let Sarah or Alexei cancel it. She wanted to know people were enjoying themselves while she gave birth.
Frankly, it sucked. Labor was hard work and very painful, but when she finally pushed that baby out, the experience held more primal joy than anything she could remember experiencing before.
Alexei held his delicate, new daughter in his hands and said to her fiercely, “I will be the best father you could ever hope to have.”
That moment. That one moment was everything.
After the first of the year, Sarah stopped accepting treatment of any kind. When Molly, Alexei, and her nephew Sam protested, she enfolded each in a hug.
“I’m done,” she said. “I wanted to hold that new little baby and to ring in the New Year, and I’m so glad I did. But you need to understand I’m ready to go. Death has been waiting for me for a very long time, and there’s something on the other side. I don’t know what it is. None of us do, but I’m excited to see it.”
“God, when you put it like that,” Molly exploded. She had to walk away while her eyes sprang another leak. Once again, when she didn’t mean to be, Sarah was still her best teacher.
Sarah died in late January, slipping out of her body from one breath to the next. Everyone knew it was coming. The coven had kept a bedside vigil so she wouldn’t face the crossing alone.
No matter how Molly had tried to brace herself—no matter how well in advance she knew it was coming—she was still utterly devastated.
Everything had been decided, the end-of-life business done. The coven had accepted Molly as Sarah’s successor. Alexei and Molly had already purchased the grand old Victorian house, and Sarah had transferred her liquid assets to Sam. Sarah had handed the mantle of the coven’s protection spells to Molly. The only thing that remained was the hardest part.
They scattered Sarah’s ashes just as she wished, on the bluff overlooking the ocean. Hundreds of people came to pay their respects and celebrate Sarah’s life. Flowers, donations, and notes of condolences came from every one of the grand families in the witches demesne in Louisville.
Molly did everything she could that day to the best of her ability, all with a broken heart. At one point, Alexei found her hiding in their bathroom.
“Everything’s all right,” she sobbed. “I just can’t stop crying.”
He said nothing, wise man that he was, and just folded her in his arms.
Finally, when the day was over, Molly went to sit in Sarah’s bedroom in the old chair by the empty bed while Alexei took Elisa upstairs to tend to her.
A knock sounded at the open door, and Molly looked up. Sam stood in the doorway, holding a leather-bound book in his arms. He gave her a smile. He was as red-eyed as she was.
“I’m sorry, Sam.” Molly wiped her eyes. “I thought you’d already left.”
“Not yet—don’t get up. I was just heading out, but I had one last thing to do.” Walking over, he offered the book. “Sarah wanted me to give this to you once the memorial was over.”
She accepted it with a murmured thanks. “You know, we might have bought this place, but you’re still welcome here anytime, Sam. Come for dinner next week.”
“That sounds good. I’d really like that. Get some rest, will you?”
“You too.”
Sam kissed her forehead, then left, and the house settled into peacefulness. The floorboards creaked as Alexei walked with Elisa in her bedroom. Molly listened, breathing deeply. The house loved having a baby again, and it always knew when everything was all right.
After a time, she relaxed enough to sit back in the chair. Alexei walked in, carrying one of the chairs from the other room. Setting it beside her, he sat and rested a hand on her knee.
She gave him a lopsided smile, and then her attention turned to the leather-bound book in her lap.
She opened it to the first page. It was dated in the spring from two years ago, and written in Sarah’s strong, steady hand.
My dear,
At some point in the future, you are coming into my life, and I don’t know yet who you are, but I love you already. From time to time I can see glimpses of you. They shine like bright fireflies on a warm summer evening.
I wish I could tell you what I see, that you are stronger than you know, more kind than you realize, and so much more powerful than you believe. You are good, whole, and perfect, just the way you are. You always have been, and the people in your life—the people you are even now getting ready to leave—should have told you so. Their loss is my gain.
I’ve discovered we’re not going to have as much time together as I would have wished, so I thought I would use this book to jot things down as I think of them. That way I can visit with you as much as possible before you ever appear. These are just notes, so use them or not as you need.
You’re coming into your Power, and it is such a strange, lovely time of transcendence, but it can be frightening too. The most important thing—the only important thing—is to remember that your Power lies within you. It’s not out in the ether, it does not belong to anyone else, and you can’t give it away.
Nobody can steal that from you. No matter what anybody else does, or what happens in the world around you, that Power is yours, completely and forever.
All you have
to do is claim it.
All my love,
Sarah
With a light finger, Molly touched Sarah’s signature on the page. Then, rocking gently in the old, comfortable chair, she turned the page and began to read.
Thank you!
Thank you for purchasing American Witch! One of the major themes of the book is how Molly comes into her own power, not only as a person but as a witch, and I hope you enjoy reading about her and Josiah’s story.
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Happy reading!
~Thea
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THE ELDER RACES SERIES – FULL LENGTH NOVELS
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ELDER RACES NOVELLAS
True Colors
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American Witch, Book 1 Page 33