Crow Moon, page 13
Once the furniture was righted, drawers were back in the desk, and the books shelved, the room looked much better, though papers and mementos still decorated the floor.
She straightened a few pictures that hung on the wall on her way out and made her way upstairs without thinking. She was over tired. Her quick trip in for a package and a meal at her favorite restaurant would have to wait. She needed sleep.
She found herself in her father’s room, the only bed still left in the house. His room was sparsely decorated. The bed, nightstand, and a dresser were all that stood on the floor. No clothes scattered haphazardly and no clutter. Clean and crisp in muted whites. She kicked off her shoes and coat, and crawled into the sheets, snuggled under the weight of the blankets and fell asleep smelling the faint scent of her dad’s aftershave on the pillow as she did so.
“What happens when they’re through with you?” The whispers haunted her dreams. Then with a swirl, her dream shifted back to her hospital bed years ago. A blurred image, someone sitting beside her. Red, wavy hair to the shoulders. “Honey, I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.” A dream of her mother at her bedside in the hospital. Or was it a memory?
“Don’t say that, Deb,” her father said, moving into her vision his hand on her mother’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is. It’s my family’s curse. It eats away at everyone we love.” Her face dropped to her hands to mask the sobs.
“You’ve done what you can. You sacrificed everything you loved,” her father said.
“To what end? I lost you. I’m losing her.”
“Lenore is stronger than you think.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Her dream melted away and shifted, churning like the black and gray of the ring she’d just received. Another time. Same place. Her blurred vision from the hospital bed. Another figure sitting next to her. Her aunt perhaps? Red hair pulled back, broader shoulders but not as tall, it seemed. Something about this figure didn’t fit with her aunt. A cold hand grasped hers.
“Strong girl. Now is not your time to go. You will recover. You are better than those hiding you away. You are better than all of them. Maybe even me. They don’t deserve you. They fear you, but I need you. I will come for you again. Your time will come when you will ruin them all.”
Leni sat up, sweat on her brow, though it still wasn’t warm in this room. A muffled buzzing sound registered. It took a second to shake off the weird dream for her to realize it was her phone in her coat pocket. She took it out of her coat on the floor.
Before she could answer, her aunt cut in. “Leni? Leni, where are you? You have to come home now.”
“I’m at my house. There was something—”
“It doesn’t matter. Come home. Something’s happened. You’re in danger.”
“I was in danger before.” She rubbed her eyes, trying to force the sleep away.
“Your mother is gone and there’s been a breach of our security here.”
“Then isn’t it safer for me to stay where I am? No one knows I’m here but you.”
“You are safer with us, than you are on your own.” Diana’s voice was urgent and rushed.
“Who is ‘us’?”
“Your family, Leni.”
“And who exactly is my family?
“Me, Michaels…and your grandfather.”
Eleven
Her mother was gone…what did that mean this time?
Speeding back to her aunt’s, the emptiness of leaving her dad’s home crept in again. Was it easier with people in her life or without? How would she do completely on her own? She’d felt the strongest in her life with both parents, but that could have been due to her age. She’d been a child then. Now, going to college, meeting new people, wrapping up her father’s life, she felt capable and strong. The panic attacks were fewer and farther between. Perhaps she was meant to be alone. Maybe that was the peace and the space she needed.
Her aunt’s estate had brought confusion, secrets, mysteries, and downright absurdities. She needed none of those things right now. What she needed was rest. All her father had asked of her was to go to school and make a life for herself. That was what she was trying to do.
That wasn’t entirely true though, and she knew it. He’d also asked that she go to live with her aunt for one year before making any adult decisions.
Her mother asked for forgiveness and acceptance. Her mother wanted to be back in her life. She could tell by the way she looked at her, pleading with her eyes without saying anything. Her mother needed this from her to fulfill her own life.
Her aunt wanted her to be some kind of chosen one of witch-kind. It was ridiculous when she thought of it. Maybe mental illness ran in the family. Her aunt needed Leni to come into her power, to fulfill some sort of destiny, so she could battle her evil grandmother.
And if her grandmother even existed, she, according to Diana, wanted to harness Leni’s ability and use it to strengthen her own.
Leni didn’t want or need any of it. She had spent years trying to return from the depression, years fighting the panic attacks. These witches were trying to pull her back in.
But her father had placed her in that home for some reason. Her levelheaded father, whom she trusted more than anyone on earth, had put her right dab in the middle of mama-drama central.
If none of it was true, they were a bunch of delusional weirdoes. But what if it were true? What if her grandmother was out to get her? What if Leni was the balance they were searching for? What then?
Was she better off alone? That was her base instinct. Run away and leave them all to their own issues, so they couldn’t try to drain her like emotional vampires. Wanting something from her. Needing something. But also because maybe in this short time she’d grown fond of them in some perverse way. Maybe deep down she wanted her mother back in her life. Maybe she was enjoying the female camaraderie. Maybe she enjoyed her large estate and her potentially potent bloodline. She felt a part of something. But at least if she ran away, they couldn’t leave her.
Everyone wanted something from her.
The ringing of her phone broke her over-analyzing.
“Hey, Leni. Sorry I missed you today.” Ned.
She glanced at the clock—10:22 p.m.
“Oh, yeah,” was all she could think to say.
“I’m a softie. Shouldn’t have let that student have a make-up test this early in the term. Now she’ll expect it all year.”
“Probably.”
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I had to go to the city and pick up some things. I’m headed home now.” Home. The word felt hollow and fake as she said it.
“Can I see you?”
“Tonight? Kind of late isn’t it? And kind of a long drive for you.”
“You’re worth it.” She could hear the smile as he said it, and warm fuzzies spread through her inside.
“I don’t know. I was going to stay in the city tonight, but my aunt called all upset. She has some sort of crisis going on.”
“Ah, okay then. Still on for this weekend, though, right?”
“Sure, yeah.”
“Great! Have a good night.”
When she drove up the circle drive and parked in front of the house, Diana trudged back and forth rapidly along the front porch with Michaels standing behind, armed with a shotgun. Her aunt’s stance relaxed when Leni stepped out of the car.
“Oh, thank God. I was so worried.” Diana rushed down the stairs and hugged her to the point it bordered on painful.
“I told you, I—”
“Get inside,” Michaels said, eyes narrowed as he scanned the property. He opened the door, and Jake bounded out to be with him. A few puppy barks greeted Leni.
Before she could argue with him, her aunt cut in.
“Come on. I’ll explain everything inside,” Diana said, guiding Leni past him.
Michaels remained on the porch. He cocked the gun and steadied his eyes on the perimeter.
Diana closed the door.
“What in the world—” Leni started but before she could finish, her aunt was dragging her upstairs. Leni didn’t even have time to take her coat off.
“Come on. Your room is the safest one in the house. Except for…” her aunt stopped and turned back around. “No, down here.”
“Aunt Diana. Tell me what is going on!” Leni tried to jerk her arm free, but her aunt had a tight grasp on it.
Diana didn’t speak but dragged Leni through the dining room to the kitchen and went to the locked pantry.
Diana waved a hand and said, “.” A metal sound came from inside the door, as though gears were shifting or locks pulling back, reminding Leni of a bank vault door. Then it popped open an inch, and Diana pulled it the rest of the way. “Get in.”
“Now wait a minute,” Leni protested, “if I’m in danger, why would I let you shove me in some sort of locked cell in your kitchen?”
“Oh, for goddesses’ sake!” Diana rolled her eyes and pushed in front. “I’ll go first then.”
Whose side was her aunt on? Could this be a trap?
“Your father entrusted me with you. If you don’t trust me yet, trust him.”
Leni couldn’t argue. He was the only person on this earth alive or dead she trusted. She followed her aunt in. The door closed behind her, and her aunt flipped on the lights.
Stairs led down, and Leni trailed behind her aunt. At the bottom, a room opened up. At first glance, it appeared to be a rec room. There was a TV, stereo system with albums stacked under beneath, a pool table, a dartboard, and a carved wooden bar with a mirror and lots of bottles of booze on glass shelves behind it. Bookshelves lined one of the long walls, and another door was on the opposite end.
Before Leni could ask, Diana told her to sit on one of the large sectional couches, and she sat across a large, square industrial table from her. “This was created during prohibition. They hid the booze here and had parties or hid from the cops. Now it’s our panic room. We come here when we are under magical attack from other families or from my mother. No one but family and security know about it.”
“Again, who is ‘we’? Who is this family and security?”
“Oh Leni, I should’ve started your training when I first saw you, but your father wanted you to ease into it and only if necessary. I don’t even know where to start.” Diana stood back up and paced the room.
“Where is my mother?”
“We don’t know. You went to get your parcel, and your mother followed after you.”
“I never saw her. She didn’t catch up with me.”
“She’s stopped answering her phone.”
“Well, what’s the big deal about that? It may have run out of battery.”
“She stopped answering any telepathic messages, too. It’s as if she just dropped off the witch radar.”
“Telepathic messages?” Another new trick Leni had yet to learn. “You think your mother has her?”
“I do.”
“To what end?”
Diana took a deep breath. “To bend you to her will.”
Leni scoffed. “Good luck with that. Any feelings I ever had for my mother left when she did, years ago.” Leni said the words but deep down, no matter how much she denied it or pushed it away, she was relieved and even happy her mother had returned with a decent reason for having left.
“Even if that were true, would you want to see your mother killed if you don’t play along?”
Leni opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out.
Diana poured herself a drink at the bar. “So tonight, you left to go to your dad’s to get a package. What was it?”
“It was just something from—” Leni stopped because she didn’t know who it was from. She took the package out of her hobo bag.
Diana’s eyes widened. “You have it here?”
“Well, yeah. This is it.” Leni brought it over to the bar.
“Let me see it.” Diana snatched the box from her. “Louisiana, but no name,” she said reading the return address. She delved into the box, read the symbols, and started shaking her head as she muttered.
“What does it mean?” Leni asked.
Then she took the ring out, inspecting the stones and around the inside of the band. She didn’t speak. The stone didn’t change for her.
“Well?”
“Well, the letter seems to be a message about your two bloodlines entangling. You. And what you are to become. No surprise there really.”
“The balance?”
“But the ring…” she turned it over again, and the stone remained black.
“Wait, earlier, when I touched it,” Leni said taking the ring back, “it changed. See?” She held it out for her aunt to see the swirling gray and black in the stone. Diana jerked it back, and the stone stilled, dead black again.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Leni said, knowing it was more than pretty.
“It’s dangerous. Leni, anything like this, especially if you don’t know who it came from, can be deadly or cursed. Think of magic like drugs. Sure, some are harmless, but if you found a box of drugs, and you didn’t know who they were from, you wouldn’t take them. You can’t put on rings like this without knowing what they are.” Diana placed the ring on the coffee table, closed her eyes and held her hands hovering above it. She whispered in a language Leni didn’t understand.
Leni sat patiently, and after a minute, her aunt explained. “There are two strains of magic on this ring. One tells me it is one-part detector and one-part tracer. It can tell you whether you are more prone to positive or negative magic, depending on the color.”
“When you hold it, it’s black. Does that mean—?”
“It’s not attuned to me. It won’t change for me. It remains in default mode, so to speak. The second strain, however, is the important one. Whoever gave this to you is using it as a tracker, so they know your whereabouts.”
“It didn’t come from my dad’s family in Louisiana at all, then.”
Diana shook her head. “I doubt it. Leave it with me, and I can remove the trace, and you can keep it for the other purpose if you like it. I can put an aura around it to hide it from those who seek you for now.”
Diana carried the ring over to the bar, put a scotch glass on top of it like a dome, and then held out her hands and spoke more mysterious words. A dark cloud of smoke filled the glass, hiding the ring from sight. “That should do it, along with being down here. This prohibition room is also our magic panic room. It has several spells and protective auras sealing it in. Not only mine, but your mother’s, Michael’s…”
“And my grandfather’s?”
Diana’s eyebrows raised. “He is a powerful caster, but men cast differently than women do. They tend to specialize in protective spells, barriers, and force fields. This room is safe from any sort of spell except ritual spells. For those, your grandmother would need a coven working together. Plus, they’d need to breach the perimeter of the property.”
“You said on the phone, they had.”
“Michaels detected an intruder on the property. It could have been someone walking up the highway, a hitchhiker from the road. It could be nothing, but we fear my mother may use innocent people to get near us or to deliver cursed items to us.”
“It could have been that man. That bird man from the shack,” Leni said, and as she did, it all clicked into place.
Diana sat next to her. “The bird man, as you call him, is my father, your grandfather. My mother’s power drained him. She took his mind rather than his life. I guess she couldn’t bear to lose him totally.”
Leni’s stared at her aunt, wide-eyed, and her chest tightened.
“He’s harmless. Really, he is. He still has some of his own magic that he uses to help. Michaels takes good care of him. Your grandfather is actually…” Diana stopped.
“Tell me. Tell me everything.” Leni sat at the edge of her seat, leaning forward.
“Women hold most of the magical abilities. Men’s powers are limited, but they are there. They cast in very specific schools of magic, as I said before. God, Leni, there is so much you’ve never been told. For me to explain it all in a few minutes is impossible.”
“Try.” Leni crossed her legs and folded her arms across her chest.
“Each witch has a guardian who looks over her. The guardian is the grandfather of the maternal line.”
“So, the crazy bird man is my guardian grandfather? Great.”
“He’s not crazy! He has more power remaining than you could imagine.”
Leni immediately regretted using that term. She’d been called that when she’d had her anxiety and depression issues. She shifted focus. “Where does Michaels fit in all of this? You warned me away from him when I first moved here.”
Diana paused for a long while. “I didn’t want any magic you may possess to target him. Michaels and I are involved. We fell in love many years ago. We’ve remained friends because there can be nothing more.”
“Because your magic will drain him.”
“I’ve tried to give him up, unsuccessfully, but I’ve also tried to give up magic. It’s hard, Leni. Once you start.”
“If I go this witch route, I’ll never be able to love someone? To be with someone?”
“You will but you run the risk.”
“The risk my mother took.” Leni stood now, circling the room. Her mind went to Ned. Maybe it was better that she not get involved with anyone. Maybe she shouldn’t get any closer than she was now. She couldn’t take anyone else leaving her, and she didn’t want to hurt anyone. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Stay safe and work on your training.”
“I want nothing to do with all this magic! I want to have someone else in my life who isn’t relegated to the barn or drained to death. I don’t want this! I don’t want any of it.”
“You can’t always get what you want. This is your life. This is what you have to work with. So, what are you going to do about it?”
A long pause passed between them.
“How does this witch thing happen? You have to have some sort of magic in the blood and then you practice? Is that how I’m so lucky to have this in my life?”
