Destiny

by Amanda Lynn Petrin

  “Charlie knows. And it’s not like we hide when we practice,” he pointed out.

  “Why are you so invested?” I asked.

  “Because you’re a Bearer of the Crescent Moon, but you’re also a teenage girl who just graduated from high school and deserves to have some fun with someone her own age and be reminded what she’s fighting for.”

  “Why are you acting like we’re safe here? Just because we got rid of Gabriel’s tracker…”

  “Because of Beth,” he sighed, another memory making him sad. “She made sure this property was safe for her friends, for me, and in case someone ever came after her family. Cloaking, warnings, places where magic doesn’t work...she thought of everything.”

  “I thought magic disappeared when the person who did it…” I couldn’t say the words to him, but I could vividly see the sink going back to its original state when the woman died.

  “Some of it does,” he agreed. “Donovan’s control, my mood swings...they end as soon as we do. But if Etta heals you, you’re healed. Some magic lingers…”

  “How do you know which is which?”

  “You don’t. But then again, once she heals you, the wound is gone. I need proximity to alter your mood, and Donovan needs a bond to control someone...they’re temporary in nature.”

  “But the protective spells are permanent?”

  “The important ones are,” he assured me.

  I brought Ingrid’s book back to my room, but when I came downstairs, Embry and Gabriel were having a heated argument in the kitchen.

  “What do you know about it?” Gabriel’s voice carried with anger and indignation. “Just because you inserted yourself into her life doesn’t give you the right…” I tried to mind my own business and not listen, but I could feel that this fight was a long time coming and there would be consequences. I debated walking in and interrupting them, but waited in the living room instead. Hopefully, it was the type of thing you had to get out, so you could get over it.

  “You don’t understand, Embry. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I love her, and I will not let you—-” Embry fumed.

  “Let me?”

  It wasn’t that I was eavesdropping, because I tried to tiptoe to the door, but it was hard not to hear their angry whispers. They were talking over each other, so I got the tone more than the words, until Eric showed up and they stopped, leaving an awkward silence until Eric asked if he should come back later.

  I hid behind the staircase a second before Gabriel barged in and stormed off through the front door. I heard the car start and wanted to run after him and beg him not to leave, but all I could do was hope he would come back. I got that it was upsetting to have your best friend fall in love with your girlfriend when the two of them thought you were dead, but it happened over three centuries ago. It was time to move on.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gabriel eventually came back, but he and Embry avoided each other like the plague. As soon as one of them walked into a room the other was in, they would look really annoyed, then leave.

  I tried talking to both of them individually, to make them see how ridiculous they were being, but the daggers their eyes shot told me to mind my own business.

  It was a relief by the time Wednesday came and Embry said I was still going to Ingrid’s shop. I was hoping they would put aside their differences and go together to protect me better, but they made up some excuse as to why it was smarter to take two separate cars. I rode with Embry, and Gabriel followed us incognito-style, so it was like he wasn’t even there.

  “You know you can tell him about Beth and the fight would be over. You guys could kiss and make up for centuries of—”

  “It isn’t about Beth,” he argued.

  “Not directly, but…”

  “Maybe it’s time he gets off his high horse and sees that my mistake doesn’t give him the right to go around for centuries hurting people and toying with their emotions,” he said before taking a breath that was full of regret. “I didn’t mean that, I’m just upset.”

  “I think it’s also a mistake that you were married at least five years and didn’t tell him. Whether it was to an Owens woman or some random girl out there, if I was him, I would be hurt about that,” I pointed out.

  “He stopped being my best friend centuries before my wedding.”

  “How did you guys manage to raise Margaret together?” It felt like they mostly survived my childhood by spending limited amounts of time together, running off to do their own things once the big moments were done, and only talking to each other about me.

  “It was like when parents stay together for the kids. Regardless of how we felt, Maggie needed us, so we were there for her.”

  “But I’m not a kid anymore?” I asked of the sudden change in their behavior.

  “No, you’re not.” He looked pointedly at me, then shook his head and let out a breath.

  “Funny how you can make me a child or an adult at whim, depending on which way you need the conversation to go.”

  “You’re not a kid who can be fooled by us getting along. By the time Margaret was sixteen, we would take turns going on business trips, and she knew exactly why.”

  “She knew why you didn’t like each other?” I doubted it.

  “She knew it was to avoid each other, but we managed to keep the why out of it. For all of his hating me, he never wanted her to.”

  “Yeah, he definitely hates you,” I said sarcastically, looking out the window to try and see Gabriel in my side mirror. When I gave up and looked back at Embry, he had a tiny smile.

  “We’ve been through a lot,” he sighed. “And even though we’ve spent way more time not liking each other than we did as best friends, that’s still how I see him.”

  “But…” I saw it coming.

  “But this won’t be fixed by an apology. It’s not just him who is mad at me this time. He has things to answer for as well.”

  “And will you tell him that?”

  “No,” he told me.

  “That’s why I still meddle, even when you tell me not to,” I pointed out.

  “I know,” he assured me.

  The store was closed when we got there, but Embry knocked so Ingrid, looking about my age, could come and let us in. “Perfect! You’re just in time,” she said, ushering me in. “You can come to get her around four o’clock,” she added for Embry.

  “We don’t leave her alone,” he argued.

  “This is why children rebel and hitchhike across the country,” she warned him.

  “I’ll take my chances,” he assured her.

  “TV’s upstairs, but don’t touch my peanut butter squares,” she held out a finger at him.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He took a staircase behind a wall of beads I would never have known was there.

  “Just in time for what?” I asked. She ushered me to the back room she came out of the first time I met her. I hesitated a bit in the doorway before following her in. At first, I couldn’t see with the dim lighting and the smoke that made me cough, but my eyes adjusted so I could see the large iron cauldron over a fire in the middle of the room.

  “Seriously?” I asked. If Embry didn’t trust her so much and I hadn’t seen her magic with my own eyes, I would have assumed she was a fraud who watched too many movies.

  “A friend brought her kids, so I put on a little show for them. It’s a genuine cauldron, but there’s nothing but spaghetti sauce inside.”

  “Genuine cauldron as in…”

  “As in it’s ancient, from Salem, but ninety-nine percent of the witches there couldn’t do magic to save their lives, so in this case genuine means it’s really old.”

  “Do you know which ones could?” I asked of the Salem witches, wondering if there was a secret directory or something in the Wiccan community.

  “Annabelle was, wasn’t she? At least that’s what Beth told me. Most real witches knew better than to get caught, and if they did, they could
get out of it.”

  “You weren’t…” I let the thought linger, but her smile told me she understood.

  “I was born the same year as Beth. I just find it fascinating,” she got a dreamy look. “There’ll be time for questions later; I want you to see the bloom.” She brought me to another room that was like a greenhouse with special lighting, misters and temperature controls. It looked more like an illegal drug operation than the back room of an apothecary.

  She brought me to the end of the room, where a large potted plant had a single bulb in the middle.

  “Take this and hold it here.” She handed me what looked like a miniature pewter cauldron, filled with a foul-smelling orange liquid.

  “Are you sure it’s blooming today?” I didn’t see any sign of movement or growth in the bulb.

  “Any minute now,” she smiled, with scissors in her hands. “Keep it steady,” she warned, eyeing the mini cauldron.

  I did as I was told, though I didn’t see the point, until the bulb suddenly came to life. The green pulled back, petal by petal, slowly revealing a beautiful flower of deep red and magenta. It was mesmerizing, but just as it reached what I felt was its full potential, Ingrid used the scissors to cut the flower off and let it fall into the mini-cauldron I held steady.

  “What was that for?” I was upset that she killed it before it even had a chance to fully bloom, after making such a fuss about it.

  “The potion you are holding takes a month to mature and is good for less than three days before you need a new one. The Cereus Labilis blooms once every year for mere seconds, but the flower is the pivotal ingredient in the potion. The fuller the better, but if I cut after it starts to close, I have to start all over and buy a new plant,” she explained.

  “What does the potion do?” It sounded like a complicated one.

  “Numbs the heart,” she said dismissively.

  “That doesn’t sound good.” They said Etta could heal everything except a broken heart, which told me there was a reason why that shouldn’t be done. You have to let time slowly fit the pieces back together.

  “It isn’t. But when you lose a child and still have another one to take care of, you need something to get through the day.”

  “Do you usually sell ingredients, or full potions?”

  “Most of my clients dabble for fun, so they get the ingredients and the cauldrons and the crystals and they feel more in control of their destinies. A lot will come here to replenish their stores of particular items, while others will only come to me for something incredibly complicated, with dire consequences if they mess up.”

  “Like this one,” I understood. “Potions are your strong suit?”

  “I can alter what you see better than anyone, but my other magic is amateur at best. Beth usually did the spells and let me mix the potions.”

  “You were in a coven together?”

  “We were best friends. We did everything together,” she gave me a sad smile.

  “Do you know what it is you’re meant to do?” I asked delicately. While some might see it as a chance to live forever and be invincible, I got the feeling Ingrid was anxious to move on.

  “Rule the world,” she teased, unaware that it was not a laughing matter for me. “There are people who are in the right place at the right time, while others have skills and a drive that compels them to do something. For me, that’s potions. I assume I will invent a formidable potion someday. Or use a normal one to save someone formidable.”

  “But you won’t know if you got it until you don’t come back.”

  “I’ll know when I turn nine,” she argued.

  “What do you mean?”

  “In my very limited experience, dying before you achieve your purpose brings you back and stops time where your body is concerned, preserving you to that moment in time. I believe that once you do what you’re supposed to, time starts again and you live the normal life you should have.”

  “You start over?” I asked, thinking of Gabriel and Embry.

  “I’ll be me, with all my years and experiences, but I’ll be able to turn eighteen and date a man who can actually see me, rather than what I imagine I would look like at that age.”

  “Do all your customers know…”

  “Most don’t,” she shook her head. “I age until I turn thirty or so, mention a niece or a daughter, take some time off to ‘die’, then come back as someone new,” she used air quotations when she said ‘die’, like it was a dirty word.

  “Is Ingrid your…” I knew it was what Beth called her at least.

  “My real name,” she agreed. “Most people call me Ivy currently.”

  “I.V.,” I remembered the sign. “But Mr. Fraser—-”

  “It’s nice to have someone you can be yourself with. When we’re alone, I call him John,” she assured me.

  “This is for the mother of the boy who disappeared?” the potion turned a deep purple.

  “Aye, but they found Billy.”

  “I can’t imagine what she’s going through.” I was used to losing people, but that didn’t make it any easier. And I’m not sure I would recover from losing Clara.

  “Someone drowned him in the swamps. It was so shallow that a person would have to choke you out or hold your head under,” she shivered and wrapped her shawl tighter around her body.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told her.

  “Not as sorry as whoever did this will be.” I didn’t necessarily feel unsafe, but there was a dark focus to her actions. I wouldn’t want to cross her. “How did you like the book?” she changed the subject.

  “Very interesting. I had this weird dream, so Embry suggested I use your tracking spell to make sure my family was okay. I liked that.”

  “What kind of weird dream?” she perked up.

  “I saw someone die, so I see it happen when I close my eyes sometimes,” I tried to make it not sound weird and depressing, but she looked at me like she knew it wasn’t only sometimes, or just someone.

  “What was weird about it?” she stopped what she was doing with the potion to look at me.

  “I felt like he was calling me,” I shrugged. It was less weird than the human pyramid, but it was Sam’s voice in the middle of the night that stayed with me.

  “In your dream?” she asked, going to a bookshelf.

  “More like after I woke up,” I admitted. “No one else heard it.” I felt fairly confident she wasn’t going to lock me up for hearing things.

  “They aren’t usually this active…” she said, mostly to herself.

  “What are we talking about?”

  “The fee follet,” she finally looked up to me.

  “Of course.” Like that made any sense.

  “You’re staying at Beth’s?”

  “Yes, but what are fee follet?”

  “They’re fairies,” she brought the book over to me. “Louisiana’s version of a siren. They appear as a floating light and call out to you. Instead of luring sailors into the rocks, they lure people into the swamps.”

  “This happened before?” I asked.

  “It’s usually one or two people every decade, although they’re more active during great wars or epidemics.”

  “Did a big tragedy happen recently?” I asked.

  “No, which is why I didn’t consider them before. But if you heard them calling you…”

  “I did.”

  “I’ll look into it,” she assured me.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I offered.

  “Whip me up a sleeping draught.”

  “Are you having trouble sleeping?”

  “For you,” she corrected. “To learn, not take, unless you feel like you need it. Some potions require more than mixing the right ingredients in the proper way. Others, like this draught, demand finesse. I have half a dozen we should get through before Embry takes you back.”

  By late afternoon, Ingrid had guided me through the steps of making a sleeping draught, truth serum, an antidote to most common poisons, a
love spell, a focusing draught, and one that burns through things like acid, but doesn’t hurt skin.

  “A love spell?” Embry asked while we drove home and I gave him a recap of my day.

  “She says it’s temporary. It lasts six hours if ingested, but you can get ten minutes or so if you throw it at them.”

  “How would that help anyone?”

  “It wouldn’t if my goal was for them to love me forever, but if someone bad captured me, I could maybe convince them to let me escape. It would at least give me a couple of minutes head start.”

  “She’s...special, but she knows what she’s doing. I’ve seen her get out of impossible situations with mostly her wits,” Embry said fondly.

  “And magic.”

  “No, I think she was worse during the summer she chose not to use magic. Helen was eight, and just lost her mother, so Ingrid thought it would be fun to really bond with her goddaughter. I think she wanted to stop hiding for a while as well. She was a force to be reckoned with.”

  I finished off by telling him about the fee follet, and how worried Ingrid seemed to be about them, before we pulled into the driveway, closely followed by Gabriel. I wondered what he did in town all day, or if he was only with us for the drives.

  Chapter Twelve

  On Friday morning, Embry left early under the pretense of running errands. I’m pretty sure he was just spending the day at Charlie’s so I could have some time with Gabriel. It was like an unpleasant reminder of Keisha’s life when her parents were getting divorced and figuring out an arrangement that worked for everyone. My vote was still for them to forgive each other, especially after Keisha’s parents ultimately chose to have her dad live hours away and hardly ever see her.

  Gabriel got back from his run as I was putting my cereal bowl into the dishwasher.

  “Would you like some coffee?” I asked after he took off his headphones. Running turned me into a sweating mess, where my hair went frizzy and my skin got blotchy; it wasn’t pretty. Gabriel, on the other hand, was glistening and tan from the sun, so he looked like the statue of a Greek God, rather than a hot mess. It was unnerving.