The Sins of Our Fathers, page 9
“Helene.” Xavier’s voice came from behind me. I looked over my shoulder, knowing I wouldn’t see him. “I didn’t want to scare you.”
I turned around. “You didn’t.”
“Is Gisel, or anyone else, home?”
“No. They’re with the girls at the movies.” I’d needed a day alone.
The silent pause was awkward. If I could have seen him, it would have meant something, but I was always in the dark with Xavier. He finally said, “There’s been an . . . accident.”
I straightened and forced air into my lungs. Ever.
“Ever’s fine.”
“Xavier.” The silence that always accompanied him was killing me.
“It’s Isaiah.” The name was stifled leaving his mouth. “He’s in his yard behind his house.”
“What happened?”
“He’ll tell you.”
I disappeared and launched toward Alloway. I couldn’t tell if Xavier was with me, but that was often on the ground as well as in the air.
Isaiah was at the bottom of the hill by his house, lying by the water’s edge where the pictures had been taken for the prom last May. I flew around him twice. No one was near him or in the yard. The house appeared empty from the outside. I dropped down and showed myself next to him.
“Isaiah,” I whispered and touched his arm.
He rolled over. A hole near his right eye spewed blood down the side of his face. “Helene.” His voice slipped out the corner of his mouth.
“Don’t move.”
“Helene.” He reached for my arm. “Don’t leave me.”
“I’m not. I just need to get something to stop the bleeding.” I ran into the house, grabbed the dishtowel that hung from the handle on the stove, and dialed 9–1-1. I gave them Isaiah’s name, address, and what I had seen of his injury, but I couldn’t stay on the phone or answer any more questions. Isaiah needed me outside.
I knelt beside him and placed the folded towel over the hole in his head.
Gisel. Sloane. Lovie!
“What happened?” I asked him. He tried to raise his arm. At first, I thought he was reaching up for the towel, but he was covering his head. He was protecting himself.
Gisel! Ever, Ruby, Gwen, Maya.
I remembered, they were all inside a movie theater, probably too enthralled with whatever celebrity was on the screen to listen.
I patted his cargo shorts and pulled his phone out of the left pocket. “Isaiah, what’s the lock code on your phone? I have to call Gisel and Gwen.” His lips parted, but the words didn’t come. “Isaiah, can you hear me?” I held the towel tight to his head and leaned down so I could speak softly in his ear. “Isaiah, it’s Helene.” I tilted his head toward me.
“It’s your birthday.”
I was losing him. He might have had a brain injury. “No it isn’t.”
“The code. It’s your birthday. Zero, one, one, zero.” His chest rose as he inhaled deeply.
“Oh.” I ignored the significance and typed the numbers into the phone. His home screen opened, and I sent texts to everyone. My coven, Ever’s coven, and Ike. Isaiah’s phone was all I had beside my powers.
There were only two other people with me in the waiting room—an elderly man in a tuxedo and a middle-aged woman holding a carved pumpkin in her lap. Emergencies didn’t come when you were prepared to address them. The pumpkin’s design was a cat with a long tail climbing to the top near the stem.
My own outfit was just as confusing. Cutoff jeans, which were covered in a dusting of dirt from the leaves, and an old Woodstown Athletics tee I was sure Ike had left at our house at some point over the summer. No makeup, and my hair pulled back into two ponytails at the base of my neck because no one was supposed to see me.
Ike was the first to arrive. He came tearing into the room ready to rip the automatic doors off the front of the ER when they didn’t open fast enough. “Where is he?”
“He’s with the doctors.” I kept my voice calm and level, but Ike’s response was more appropriate. My time in the waiting room had given me the horrible space to properly assess Isaiah’s wound, but nothing made sense considering the lack of another scratch on him. At least not one that I could see.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Ike sat beside me. “I found him lying on the ground. His head was bleeding.” I left out terms like “gushing,” “pouring,” and “profusely.” “I have no idea what happened before I got there.”
“Did he call you?”
Ike’s question was a glimpse into my future. Questions would be asked about how I found him. I looked around the room, wondering if Xavier was with me. I wasn’t sure what he would want me to say about how I found Isaiah.
“No.” I lowered my voice. “I was out flying and went by your parents’ house.” Was it even Ike’s parents’ house anymore? Gisel lived with us in Auburn. Divorce made all of the tiny details as confusing as the big ones.
“Did you see any signs of someone else having been there?” Ike was not some frantic or shaken kid. He was solid. I didn’t know if it was maturity or a central part of his personality because I hadn’t known him when he was a child. My coven had already lost so much. Time was one of the greatest prices we’d paid.
“No,” I said, and Ike and I sat in silence until the others came. They poured into the room, bringing life to the small group of somber strangers.
“What happened?”
“Where is he?”
“Is he okay?” They peppered me with questions.
“He was talking a little. He knew who I was and seemed to know where he was,” I said.
To Sloane, Lovie, and Gisel, I thought, He has a head injury. There was a lot of blood.
What happened?
I have no idea. I didn’t see where he fell onto anything. There was nothing around him that could have caused it. We’re going to have to wait until he can tell us, I think.
The doctor came out and took Gisel back with him. Gwen began to cry. Maya and Ruby held on to her, but there was nothing anyone could say. She needed to see her father.
Gisel didn’t speak a word to us from the other side of the doorway. I assumed she was lost in a conversation with a doctor. I stood and walked toward the window. He had to be okay. We couldn’t lose someone else from our family. Not even Isaiah, who had been such a source of pain for so many of us. We needed him, though. Gwen, Ike, and Gisel needed him.
I needed him.
Gisel appeared and told Gwen and Ike to go back and see their dad. “He’s going to be fine. He just doesn’t look it.” The color was gone from her face. Tense lines dug in above her eyebrows.
I waited for Gwen and Ike to disappear before walking toward Gisel. She met me in front of Sloane and Lovie and thought, This was a message to us.
None of us responded. The knowledge that this wasn’t an accident, that we’d somehow caused his pain, rose inside me.
All he can remember is a woman on top of him. She surprised him. He was about to take out a canoe. She said, “Tell them to leave,” and then everything went dark.
What did she hit him with? Sloane thought.
The doctor is assuming he fell onto something sharp, but he marveled at the fact it looked clean enough to have been an ice pick.
Three chills ran down the back of my neck and over my spine, chasing each other.
“I think you were right at the Goddess Gathering last year, Helene. This is going to be a war,” Lovie said. None of us answered.
The next day when Isaiah was released, Gisel brought him back to our house. She made Isaiah comfortable in her bed and cared for him as if they were still married. In this situation, he felt like all our husbands.
Lovie cooked Isaiah’s fall favorites. Butternut squash soup, garlic bread, and apple pie. He was gracious and kind and joked about how he was going to get hurt more often if Lovie was going to cook and Sloane was going to be nice.”
“Don’t push it,” Sloane said, and only Isaiah laughed. His injury had brought us even closer together, and with the excitement, no one questioned how I was able to find him so quickly after the attack occurred.
My mind was lost between the Virago’s threat and Xavier’s part in the whole thing. I needed to see him, but I had no idea how to contact him.
Xavier, if you can hear this, I thought, shutting out everyone but him. Even as a woman who often had entire conversations in my mind, I felt ridiculous. I need to talk to you.
I thought the same thing a few times throughout the day. The girls arrived home from school, and Ike came down from Rowan. For dinner, Lovie made lasagna, another of Isaiah’s favorites. Isaiah never mentioned the threat. He’d only told Gisel, and none of us were going to bring it up in front of the kids.
Isaiah went to bed in Gisel’s room. She assigned herself to Lovie’s bedroom for the night.
“I don’t want to disturb Isaiah by rolling over,” she said and left us in the kitchen. We all knew she just didn’t want to sleep next to him. I understood her stance. Sloane did not.
“What is the big deal? They were married for almost twenty years?”
“The big deal is now they’re not, or at least, they won’t be soon,” Lovie stepped in on Gisel’s behalf.
“So?”
“So, endings are hard enough. When you finally come out on the other side of one, why begin again?”
Amen, I thought, but only to myself.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. The sight of Isaiah lying by the lake haunted me every time I closed my eyes until I gave up and went down to the kitchen. I left the lights off. My eyes adjusted to the moonlight just enough to make out the teakettle. I filled it with water and fumbled around with the stove knobs until I was sure I had the right burner turned to high.
I leaned on the edge of the sink and looked out the window up to the moon. It was three-quarters full and perfectly placed in a clear sky, but because of the angle, only a sliver of its light made it to the kitchen.
“Why are you in the dark?”
I turned toward Xavier’s voice and let my eyes adjust. The faint outline of a man several inches taller than me came into focus. “How come you’re not invisible?”
“Can you see me?”
He was facing the door with his head turned toward me. I couldn’t make out his eyes or the lines of his cheekbones, but I thought his hair was thick. He certainly wasn’t bald.
Xavier laughed a little, but I wasn’t sure at what.
“More of you than I ever have before.”
“And that makes you happy?”
“Is it so much to ask? Knowing what a friend looks like?”
“In this case, yes.”
The kettle whistled, and I rushed to take it off the burner before it woke anyone. “Would you like a cup of tea or hot chocolate?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?” I found two mugs in the clean dishwasher that had been run after dinner.
“Whatever you’re having.”
I poured the water over herbal tea bags, being careful not to burn myself. When I replaced the kettle on the burner, I realized Xavier had moved. He was so close I could lean against him without moving my feet. His silence softened the enormity of his stature. There was something delicate about Xavier. It was the vulnerability he wouldn’t share that kept him hidden in the shadows and never fully with me.
“Lemon? Sugar?” I managed to say with him so close.
“No, thank you.”
“How did you know Isaiah had been attacked?”
He took a sip of his tea, taking his time as if he knew exactly what I was going to ask and it was of no bother to him. “I’d heard their plans. They, of course, couldn’t agree on anything.” His head shook a little, I thought. “I followed them to make sure you weren’t the target.”
“You were there when they did this?” How could he let it happen? He knew who Isaiah was to me.
“I was around. I flew over and made sure you weren’t anywhere near the house. I wasn’t even certain he was home until they flew away and I saw him lying there.”
“Why didn’t you help him? Stop them?” I was whisper-yelling and ready to unleash the full volume of my disgust. I didn’t care who heard.
“If it had been you, I would have.”
“But not him?” I couldn’t have watched anyone be hurt that way.
“You don’t understand how things work. Outside, in the real world where there are no more covens or codes of honor.”
I never thought Xavier could have the gifts of a witch. He was a man, but he was so much more than that. With the knowledge of his powers came the possibilities he could be something other than honorable. He could be an enemy. “Explain it to me then.”
“These witches are lost and bitter. They’ve been angry for most of their lives. Just not long enough to forget how things used to be for them. They’re alone and isolated and shunned.”
“I know that.” He needed to get to the part where a decent human being stands by and lets someone be assaulted with an ice pick.
He inhaled deeply, obviously reading my disgust. “I’ve been alone my whole life, Helene. I know of the Virago. Who they are. What they are, and I am hellishly familiar with the absent limits to the evil they will cause.”
“We can stop them. We’re not going to let them terrorize us or this town.”
“How will you stop them? Are you willing to kill them, the way they will you?”
I didn’t have a retort. He knew that wasn’t an option. Unfortunately, the Virago did, too.
Xavier sipped his tea. I could feel him breathing near me. “Show me you, Xavier.” I couldn’t understand keeping his secret from me. I already knew about his powers. What else needed to be kept a secret? The details of his life I was asking for we shared with everyone.
“I’m sorry. I can’t,” he said. I put down my cup and stood in front of him. “I live two lives, and the way I survive is to keep them separate. Only my mother knows the man that I am and the secret that I live.” I reached up and laid my palms flat on his stomach. The fabric of his shirt was a thick flannel. “The rest of the world knows me as Jason.”
“I want to know Jason and Xavier.” It was either the silence or his closeness that made the kitchen feel small with the two of us standing next to each other.
“You’ve always known exactly where you belong. Right here in Auburn. An entire town protected for your family. I’ve been an island raised on a farm in Upper Pittsgrove with barely a word about my powers. The ones that were said were all warnings to keep it a secret.” He placed his hands on top of mine. “I’ve observed the Virago for years, and although they know I exist, we’ve managed to cohabitate this area without a problem. I mind my own business, and they stay out of it.”
I’d always had Sloane and Lovie. No matter who else we’d lost, I’d never been alone. Xavier’s upbringing was certainly not like my own, but did that excuse him from helping where help was needed? I would have died before standing back and letting someone be attacked the way Isaiah was today, but I also had my coven to fight by my side.
“Now do you realize why I don’t share my identity? With anyone.”
I stepped back from him and wrapped my fingers around my mug and let the heat seep into my body through my hands.
“I always understood why you don’t share it with anyone.” I focused until I made out the shape of his body next to me again. “I just want you to share with me.”
He tilted his head to the side, and the moonlight from the window revealed his thick black hair. He whispered in my ear, “I’m going to go. Before I do something stupid.” Heat coursed through me and followed his breath down my neck. He’d replaced my anger at him with frustration.
The warmth settled between my shoulder blades. I inhaled a shallow breath and exhaled, trying to regain control of my emotions. There was too much unknown about Xavier.
His lips rested on my cheek close to my ear. I closed my eyes and heard him say, “Good night,” before he moved, and all of my senses confirmed he was gone.
THE SECOND NIGHT Isaiah was there, Gisel slept with me instead of Lovie. This was something we had done when we were younger. If one of us were hurting, we would gravitate toward the counter balance. If it was a clear understanding, you went to Sloane. For love and support, a back rub, or the scent of muffins, Lovie’s bed was the only option. Gisel and I would giggle the night away. That was what I always sought from her. I wasn’t sure what she needed from me or why she was rolling over and staring at me. I could feel it even though my eyes were fixed on the cracked ceiling above us.
“I’m scared,” she said. Her voice was low, but she wasn’t whispering.
“I know.” The hole in Isaiah’s head punctured me again. “He could have been killed.”
“They picked him because we both love him.” I didn’t argue her point. “And Gwen.”
“He’s the most central to all of us.”
“He isn’t, though. Ike is.” I turned and faced Gisel without a word. Fear was choking me. “Gwen adores him. I can’t live without him. He is Ever’s world.”
“And the rest of us consider him a son,” I said.
“Isaiah was just the beginning. They’ll come for Ike next.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I do. I can feel it.”
I inhaled through the tightening of my chest. “What do you want to do?”
“Kill them.”
I waited for her to laugh a little or elaborate. The hole in her husband’s head had reached deeper into Gisel than it had Isaiah.
“They tortured Ever’s dog. She was ready to kill them then. If they so much as come near Ike, I won’t be able to stop her. I don’t think our honor will mean anything to her.” Hot tears welled in my eyes.
“It won’t. She was willing to give up being a witch for him. She’ll kill for him, too, and I’ll stand right by her side while she does.”
