The Sins of Our Fathers, page 5
“Billy could read this book as well as disappear. He’s always seemed to know more about us than he should. He has some power.”
“Let me see it again.” Gwen turned several more pages. “It describes her baby boy and her disappointment in not having a girl, until he disappeared one day. She was terrified. Her husband hated witchcraft and forbid her to ever use it. The second time the baby disappeared, she hid him until he came back. She was terrified her husband would kill him.”
My chest tightened. Could it have been worse than what Billy’s uncle was doing to him? “Billy has had an awful life,” I said.
“Billy isn’t human.” Ruby would never hear a word of sympathy toward him, and I had few to say.
Gwen was silently reading beside me. She glanced up and realized we were all waiting for her to share. “It says,” she started quietly. “His anger knows no bounds. A quiet calm comes over him. He sinks into the evil before he strikes. There’s no turning back. It is the most terrifying form of rapture, and he inflicts it on me.” She turned the page. “It’s been worse since the man spoke to him.”
“What man?” Ruby asked.
Gwen flipped a few more pages and then stopped. “I don’t know. It doesn’t say.”
“Billy mentioned a man. He said whoever it was scared his mother more than his father.”
Gwen, Ruby, and Maya all just stared at me. They’d heard about the bruises, the burns, and the cat. They were lucky not to have to see the images of that day when they shut their eyes, but they trusted my account of the events enough to know Billy was disturbed.
Gwen slammed the book shut. She held it in her clenched hands as a tear ran down her face. “She spoke to me,” she said.
“Who did?”
“Rebecca. The woman who wrote the book.”
“What did she say?” Ruby asked.
Gwen had told us her retched grandmother—the one who cursed the fathers of our children to die—her Mimi, talked to Gwen at her funeral, but we assumed it was something to do with her connection to her grandmother. She had no connection to Rebecca. The only similarity was that both who Gwen could hear were dead.
“She said to send him to her in heaven. He was evil on earth because she was taken from him. To send him back, and she would love him.”
Ruby took the book again and held it close to her chest with her eyes closed. “Nothing,” she said. “Gwen, that’s amazing.”
“Is it?” Her eyes filled with tears again. She held out her hands. Ruby placed the book back into them as Gwen closed her eyes. “Beware.”
We waited for Gwen to tell us more. When it appeared she was through, Ruby began to speak, but Gwen interrupted her with, “Heed the second telling. The hunter as well as the hunted. The story that lasted well past my death.”
“The second telling?” Ruby asked.
Gwen opened her eyes. “There’s more than one book.”
Our mothers returned home in Lovie’s minivan. We met them in the kitchen with the book in my hand.
“What’s this?” my mother asked when I gave it to her.
“Open it.”
She did as we asked and leafed through the pages. They turned to black in her grasp. Sloane, Gisel, and Lovie looked over her shoulder as she read. “Is this . . .” My mother flipped back to the first page that listed the journal as belonging to Rebecca Lane Callahan. “It’s Rebecca Lane’s.”
Sloane took the book from my mother.
“Do you guys know what happened to her?” Lovie asked our mothers.
“She was killed,” Gisel said. “By her horrible husband, Jimmy Callahan.”
“What?” my mother asked.
“I never liked him. He killed her. She had an infant, but I lost track of what happened to him. It rocked the entire county. I was eight months pregnant with Gwen at the time.” Gisel stared at Gwen. Her eyes filled with tears as she let herself sink into the memories.
“His name’s Billy, and he’s in the girls’ class,” Lovie said.
“Rebecca’s son?” Gisel asked us.
“He’s Billy Roberts now,” I said.
“I think they changed Billy’s last name to protect him from this horrible history,” Lovie said.
“But everyone knows you can’t hide from history in this town,” Gisel wiped a stray tear from her cheek.
“He’s a really sick person.” I thought of that poor cat again. “And he can disappear.” Sloane lowered the book and stepped in front of us. Her eyes narrowed as I forced out, “He wants us to give him his full powers.”
“How does he know about us?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Not everything he said made sense.”
“Like what?”
“He said there was a man his mother feared more than his father.”
“A man?”
“She wrote that he would convince her husband to kill her because of her powers.” I nodded at the book Sloane was holding.
Our mothers looked from one to another. If they had any thoughts on who the man was, they weren’t sharing.
“Jimmy Callahan’s in jail,” Lovie said.
My mother placed the journal onto the kitchen table. “I never knew Rebecca was a witch.”
“I didn’t, either,” Sloane said. “But I always liked her.” Sloane’s gaze dragged from the book on the table to the four of us leaning against the kitchen counter as if we were in a police lineup. “Where did you get it?”
Silence was the only thing that came easily. It invaded the room and clued our mothers into our guilt before we could come up with a proper response.
“Oh no,” Lovie said. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Gwen was unconvincing. “We didn’t break into his house or anything.” I stayed silent about my visit and let Gwen keep going. “It fell out of his bag.” There was no getting away with this completely innocent story, and Gwen knew it. “We just didn’t hand it back to him the way we should have.”
“You’re giving it back tomorrow.”
“Of course.”
I waited for Gwen to tell them about Rebecca talking to her, but she never did. I didn’t know why, but I followed her lead.
We decided Gwen would stay invisible for the beginning of first period and sneak the book back into Billy’s bag. He had some powers. He could disappear, but based on the fact he didn’t know they were with me at Stoners Lane and he didn’t sense my presence at his house, he couldn’t tell when we were near the way we could with other witches.
The plan was unnecessary. When we walked downstairs for breakfast the next morning, the book was gone. All of us, including our mothers, just stared at each other. He wasn’t part of the Virago because he’d been able to set foot in Auburn, but that didn’t mean Billy wasn’t an enemy.
THAT DAY, BILLY was late coming to school. His left eyebrow was swollen a little, but I might have missed it if I weren’t looking for Billy’s latest injury. Anyone else and I would have assumed he’d hit it on a cabinet door or the top bunk when they’d gotten up too fast, but I knew better.
Billy didn’t say a word to me in AP English. He barely looked my way. Every time he reached into his backpack, I kept an eye out for a glimpse of the book or a second book. It was as if the day before had not happened.
Billy, I thought. Billy, if you can hear me look my way. Stretch and put your hand behind your head.
Billy sat with an open notebook on his desk and a pen in his hand, but there were no notes he wrote down.
If you answer me, I’ll help you get your powers.
I was lying. I didn’t even think it was possible to assign powers to someone else, even if that person was the son of a witch. Not that I would have given Billy any powers anyway. He was sick, and spells were used to change the universe forever and should never be taken lightly. The course of our existence was already set. Changing it had ramifications.
The consequences of granting Billy power, combined with his evil mind, were too frightening to consider. Billy stayed still in front of me. Neither he nor his mother had ever mentioned speaking inside their minds. Though, if she were a coven of one, she wouldn’t have had anyone to speak to, so maybe she didn’t know.
The bell rang, and Billy rushed out of the room. He went down the side staircase he never used this time of day. He wasn’t in Mr. Frank’s classroom by the time I got there. I took my seat as Mr. Frank marked each of us in attendance on his laptop. He stared at Billy’s empty chair and then turned to me. His glare belied his warm welcome. Some accusation I couldn’t figure out rested in his stare as I took my seat next to Billy’s empty one. Besides the note the first day of school, Billy and I hadn’t exactly come off as best friends.
“Has anyone seen Billy Roberts today?” Mr. Frank stood over my desk as he asked.
I kept my hands still on the top of my notebook and my gaze fixed on the board in the front of the room. He rested the tips of his fingers on my desk. The fan’s breeze landed on the back of my neck with the eerie sense of peril. I tightened the core of my body to hold still, as the silence continued.
“Apparently not,” Stacey Gruber said from across the room.
Mr. Frank tapped my desk twice and walked to the front of the room. I waited the entire class to escape. The fear of him holding me back and asking questions about Billy’s attendance plagued me, which was ridiculous. I was a high school student with no idea where my classmate was. That statement should easily be accepted for the truth that it was.
Billy didn’t reappear the rest of the day. I thought about flying past his house on the way home, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back there. Instead, I went straight home after school, ate dinner, and packed to leave for Rowan the next morning.
“You don’t have to be so excited,” my mother said as she sat on my bed.
“Sorry.” I packed shorts and a tee to wear to bed. “And thanks, Mom.”
She paused for a second. I assumed she was acknowledging how far we’d come since last year. She put my toiletries bag on top of everything else as Carl jumped onto my bed. “What about this guy? Isn’t he welcome in the dorms?”
“No dogs allowed at Holly Pointe Commons. Unfortunately.”
Carl snuggled in next to my leg. “I guess it’s good practice for next year.” She rubbed his head behind the ears. “You’re going to have to get used to sleeping with me.” She left Carl and me to sleep in her own bed.
As long as I kept moving, Billy couldn’t settle in my mind. Him. His cat. His request of powers. All of it stayed just on the peripheral of my thoughts until I lay in bed with the lights out. I listened to the sounds of sleep coming from the other corners of the room. Even Ruby was out cold.
When sleep finally took me, I was back at Stoners Lane with Billy. He was standing next to me. The sides of our bodies were touching. Instead of being full daylight, it was early in the morning and a thick fog hung in the clearing, making it almost impossible to see the surrounding trees.
“Don’t worry, Ever,” Billy said. He wasn’t whispering, but I felt like I could barely hear him. He was standing next to me, but his voice sounded so far away.
“I’m not,” I said and faced him.
“I’m going to kill him for you.” Billy didn’t smile. He waited for my response.
I set the ground around him on fire, leading the flames toward his body. As they crept over the ground, I remembered the words of his mother, Rebecca Callahan, in her journal. How she spoke of her powers and how she asked us to send him back to her, but it was against everything we stood for.
I woke clutching my chest and crying. If there came a choice between Billy and Ike, my honor wouldn’t survive.
“I think you should go to the homecoming dance,” Ike said as he ran his fingertips up and down my bare arm.
I tilted my head toward him, but I still couldn’t see his face to judge if he was serious. I pulled myself up his body until our eyes met. I kissed him because I could. “You have a football game. I want to go to that.”
Ike pushed my hair back off my face and held it in a ponytail behind my head. He kissed my neck. “I know, but this is your senior year. You should be at homecoming.”
“It’s my senior year in a school I’ve barely been at a year. It doesn’t feel like homecoming, and I don’t want to be anywhere without you, especially a dance.”
“These things may not seem to mean much right now, but they’re important.”
I studied his face for the reason behind his newfound concern for my high school memories. “This coming from the guy I had to convince to go to a dance in the first place.” He almost smiled and melted me, again. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t want you to feel like you missed out. I don’t want you to regret anything.”
“Why don’t you let me worry about what I might regret?” Ike sighed. His chest rose three inches with me on top of it. “What is going on? Do you not want me at your game?” The hurt was rising inside me. It was a deep heat warming my cheeks.
“No. That isn’t it.” He pulled me closer to him. I buried my head in his neck. “I had lunch with my dad today.”
“And he doesn’t want me to go to your game?”
“No.” Ike laughed a little. “He kept talking about giving you the freedom to enjoy your senior year with your friends and how I shouldn’t put undue requests on you to spend your time with me instead of them.”
“He did?”
“Yes. He wants me to encourage you to look at schools far away.”
“What?”
“I know. The thought of it pissed me off, too, but he’s right. You can’t just be on the sidelines of Rowan University your whole senior year, and you need to pick a college that will make you happy no matter how far away from me it is.”
“Why does your dad care?”
“He went on and on . . . and on about it.” Ike rubbed my back. “I think he has a lot of regrets about the way he and your mother broke up. I’m guessing it has something to do with her going away to college and leaving him home.”
“I got the distinct impression it had something to do with your mother, too.” Mrs. Kennedy was absolutely a factor in the end of my mother and Ike’s dad’s relationship. I was too scared to ask exactly how, though.
Ike returned to caressing my arm. “Who knows? I don’t even care, but if any of his advice is wise, then I’ll take it. I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t want you to miss out on anything because of me. I love you. You have homecoming, your senior trip, and everything in between.”
“Don’t forget the prom.”
“And the prom.”
I sat up. He was so serious. “I’m fine. I don’t feel at all suffocated by you, if that’s what you’re worried about. Ruby, Gwen, Maya, and I are all planning on touring each of our mothers’ alma maters as well as plenty of other schools. We’ll figure it out. What’s right for us”—I pointed between the two us—“will be what’s right for me.”
“I don’t feel like I got through to you.”
I leaned forward again and silenced him with my lips.
“I don’t know why you feel that way.”
THE FOUR OF us walked in a line on the path of Marlton Park. We took the outside, longer loop near the fields, letting Carl lead us on his leash. I wasn’t sure about him wanting to come back to the park, but he hopped out of Lovie’s minivan as if nothing bad had ever happened to him. We remembered, though. The sounds of his cries as his limbs were practically ripped from his body in the air above us.
The leash was locked into place so he couldn’t get more than three feet in front of us. Nothing was ever going to hurt this dog again. He’d become the center of our home, and every witch in it was in love with him. A man and a woman approached. They were walking at an aggressive pace and swinging their bent arms to burn more calories.
Carl stopped and stared at them. We moved off to the side to give them room to pass and kept Carl near us.
“Hello, Ever.” It was Mr. Frank.
Carl leaned back on his haunches and ferociously barked at my teacher.
Mr. Frank stopped, stared at Carl, and then examined the four of us as if the dog weren’t barking and pulling at his leash to attack him.
“Carl, no. Stop.” I yanked him back toward me as I smiled at Mr. Frank. “Down!”
The woman with him never said a word. Just kept looking at all four of us.
“Have a nice night,” Mr. Frank finally said and walked away.
Carl’s barking subsided into a deep growl. His lips pulled back, exposing his teeth. I’d never seen him react to a person that way. He was always sweet and kind.
“Was that your media teacher?” Maya asked.
“Yes.” I kneeled down and rubbed Carl below the neck. “Carl obviously loves him.”
“He sure does,” Ruby said.
“Carl has great instincts. I cannot stand modern media. That’s one of the classes I have with Billy.”
Ruby held her hand up and tilted her head to the side. I rubbed Carl’s head to keep him quiet so she could concentrate.
“Our moms need us.”
I stood. “Where?”
“They’re with the Kingsway Coven. In South Harrison.” She held up one finger and nodded her head. “They’re fine, but they need us. I told them we’d drop off Carl at home and come, but they said to just bring him.”
“I wish we could fly.” I looked around the crowded park. Someone would notice the four of us and our dog disappearing. Plus, cars weren’t allowed to be parked there overnight, and I wasn’t sure how long we were going to be.
We jogged back to the car and drove toward South Harrison. None of us had actually been there before except Gwen. She seemed to know something about every town in South Jersey. She led us to the small intersection and down the road until we reached Maryann’s house. It was exactly as Sloane had described it to Ruby. Right down to the circle of witches surrounding it. We pulled into the driveway and every single one of them came to the front of the house and stood between us and the front porch.
