Envious Deception

by Katie Keller-Nieman

  Also by Katie Keller-Nieman:

  THE ENVIOUS SERIES

  Envious

  Envious Obsession

  Envious Existence

  Envious Deception

  Envious to Ashes

  ENVIOUS

  DECEPTION

  The Envious Series

  Book 4

  KATIE KELLER-NIEMAN

  All Rights Reserved

  Envious Deception, Copyright © 2019 Katie Keller-Nieman.

  No part of this book can be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author. You must not circulate this book in any format. Thank you for respecting the rights of the Author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover art by Katie Keller-Nieman.

  All stock purchased.

  Edited by Kathleen Crouse.

  www.katiekellernieman.com

  For my sweet Oliver.

  You make everything better.

  “All things truly wicked start from innocence.”

  -Ernest Hemingway

  UP TO NOW

  Truth. It’s what we’ve been searching for. Answers to the questions of who we are, what we are, and why we are. It’s evaded us for so long. Centuries spent in the dark as nothing more than pawns in a sick game of love and revenge. But finally, our circumstances are beginning to change. Answers have started to form.

  It began with a brain tumor, the thing that nearly killed me sophomore year of college. It put pressure on my brain and warped my thinking but gifted me with truths I never could have imagined. I saw visions of my past lives. Lives I’d shared with Eric, my soul mate. And also shared with Aurora, the jealous witch who cursed us. I’d thought I was crazy, yet we found proof.

  She has power, an ability that makes everyone in my life dangerous to me. She can control people’s minds. In the past, she targeted one person in particular, over and over. She forced Eric to kill me multiple times, and now we know that he could never overcome her power, no matter how he fought it.

  The tumor gave me much-needed information, but when it was surgically removed, the visions stopped—and with it, the trail to truth. Now, they come through Eric. Through our connection, because of a new spell Aurora cast over me.

  Eric and I thought we were the only ones searching for answers to our past, but we were wrong. Aurora also wants answers: Who stole her spell books? And where have they gone? She needs one of those spells, the very spell that cast us into this reincarnation cycle. And she thinks I know where it is. So I made a deal with her.

  In every life, she’s tormented me, controlled Eric, and we’ve always died before we truly had the chance to live. But if I find the books for her, she’ll let us live out one life in peace, without her interference. Finding them is our only hope to live this life through, only I don’t know where the books are.

  I don’t, but Eric does.

  CHAPTER 1

  A LITTLE GLUE

  Eric nearly pounded down Tom’s door with his fist. I had been waiting in his car for ten minutes, watching my tall, gorgeous, blond boyfriend contain a frustration that I knew could explode if provoked. He was as fierce and determined as he was beautiful and kind. And for some reason, he loved me. Some who knew our history might think that was a bad thing, that Eric was my curse, a love that was my eternal undoing. And they’d probably be right. But as I watched him fight for us, I found hope, something I’d thought was long gone.

  Eric had remembered something from our distant past, something that might be our salvation from Aurora’s jealous fury. Our lives—past, present and future—had been in her hands far too long.

  Tom lived in a neighborhood that was probably a wealthy one in its day. Towering oak trees shaded the street made up of old, three-story brownstone houses. Now, cars crowded the curb on both sides, and each house had since been split into multiple apartments. Tom’s was at the front of his house and included the porch where Eric was currently pacing.

  I rubbed my hands vigorously for warmth, watching Eric through a sprinkling of colorful leaves; saffron yellow and pumpkin orange. They drifted from the trees and swirled in the wind before falling to join their friends in piles on the pavement. I could hear Eric yelling for Tom, even from within the car, but eventually my determined boyfriend gave up. He got back in the car and slammed the door closed with an agitated huff.

  “Where else could he be?” I asked, smoothing my long bangs aside to glance down the leaf-buried street.

  “He’s in there,” Eric growled. “He just won’t talk to me. He’s such a freakin’ baby sometimes.”

  I lifted one brow. “You did break his nose.”

  “Accidentally,” he argued. “He should know better than to try and break up a fight.”

  Eric had busted two noses in his fight with Mike. Mike had deserved every punch and more, but this one act of revenge was now derailing our future. I made a move for the door handle. “Maybe I should try.”

  “No,” Eric said.

  I whipped my head to look back at him. “He might listen to me.”

  He gave me an awkward glance. “Sandra, you’re probably right, but he’s blasting his stereo to drown me out. He won’t hear you.”

  I slumped back in my seat. “Explain to me again why we’re here?”

  “He has a phone number we need,” Eric answered cryptically, eyes sweeping up and down the street.

  I had been easygoing about leaving the library in search of Tom, but I still had no clue how finding him related to locating Aurora’s missing spell books, the ones we had stolen from her long ago. In another life. Eric had been on such a roll, thinking so quickly he could barely speak. I hadn’t wanted to interrupt his train of thought, but now he’d settled down. I gave him a probing look and lifted my brow expectantly. Finally, he seemed to realize.

  “Sorry,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I guess I should explain?”

  “Probably,” I muttered.

  He shifted in his seat to face me better. “So… back then, Rose was a witch,” he stated. “She had been the one to tell me what the books were, and what Aurora was. I’d trusted her.” I nodded furiously, urging him to continue. “Rose McLeary,” he stressed.

  “Yes,” I confirmed impatiently.

  Eric smiled. My heart fluttered in my chest at the light expression on his face. Beautiful. It had been so long since I’d seen him smile. Weeks at least. Maybe longer. I’d started to think I’d never see it again.

  “I grew up in a small town, Cassandra. One with a lot of history,” Eric gently reminded me. “We have Bacsters. Lintons.” He paused dramatically before adding, “And McLearys.”

  My jaw dropped. I had never even thought Rose might have family still living in Cranes Hollow. Eric’s excitement didn’t fade. He eagerly reached for my hand. His knuckles were bruised and cracked from the way he had pummeled Mike’s face, but the heart-stopping ferocity I had seen then was a distant memory from the tender way he held me now.

  “I know them,” he explained. “There’s a McLeary… a girl my age. Tom dated her.”

  “He did?” I asked in confusion. Cranes Hollow was so far from here.

  “She went to our college and graduated last spring.”

  “She’s here?” I asked urgently.

  He nodded. “She moved over the summer, but not back home.”

  “And you think she knows something?”

  “I know she knows something,” he stressed. “It always seemed strange… Growing up, her family refused to let her come near me, to talk to me even, which is hard to do in a graduating class of si
xty people. Plus, we’re kinda cousins or something. Or our parents are.” He looked down, shaking off his momentary confusion. “Anyway, turns out she didn’t have any issues with me. We became friends once we both ended up here.”

  He leaned back and gazed pensively at the street. “Now that I know about our reincarnations, and what happened to Rose because of it…” his voice trailed off and his countenance darkened with the heavy reminder of the horrors of our past. “They knew. I swear, they know all about us. They must. They had no other reason to hate me like they did.”

  The weight of his confession struck me mute. They knew? Could these people really have known the truth about us? All this time? The realization left me feeling numb.

  “And Tom has her number?” I asked carefully.

  He nodded. “They keep in touch, but I haven’t seen or heard from her since… you know.”

  “Since you shot Aurora,” I surmised.

  He closed his eyes and nodded again. He’d caused many rifts when he shot his ex-girlfriend to save my life, but most had mended by now. It hadn’t taken long for their mutual friends to realize that Aurora was the dangerous one, not him. After all, she was the one currently locked away in a mental hospital.

  I leaned back into my seat, trying to process. This was wild. If Eric was right, and the McLearys had known all along about Eric’s, Aurora’s, and my reincarnations, they could have warned us. They could have told us to stay away from her but chose not to.

  “Back then… eighteen… whatever-” he began.

  “1895?” I said.

  “Yeah. In 1895, we know that I found Aurora’s spell books,” he recapped. “After we died, the books disappeared. Her father, Byron, could have destroyed them so they wouldn’t keep being handed down through their family, but I don’t think he did.”

  “Why not?” I asked, studying the resolute look in his eyes.

  “From what I’ve remembered… Rose wasn’t holding anything the day we died. She was standing by the fire, waiting to break Aurora’s spell, but she didn’t have any books with her.”

  He was losing me now. “What are you saying?”

  “Cassandra, Rose was a witch. I would have trusted her to handle the books, and I know I would have wanted them out of Aurora’s reach. So… there’s a chance that Rose’s family had them hidden away somewhere.”

  I shifted forward in my seat, and my heart thumped harder. The idea had never occurred to me. “Do you think they still have them?” I asked urgently. We both knew what that would mean for us.

  “It’s possible,” he said with a sure nod. “If not, maybe they’d have a clue of where they ended up.”

  I leaned back, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me. My heart was racing in my chest. Before today, I’d given up all hope of finding those books. I’d resigned myself to a future of dodging Aurora’s attempts on my life. But if we could get our hands on those books, I wouldn’t have to hide. There would be no worrying about when she would strike next or how she would take over Eric’s mind again. We could live, the both of us. We could take her deal, hand over the books, and actually live our lives for once.

  “Tom’s band is playing at The Jukebox tonight,” I reminded Eric.

  “Yeah. I’ve got my photography class…”

  Photography was his only night class, and he was usually there for hours afterward, working in the darkroom. But I couldn’t wait, not now that I had hope.

  “No problem. Go to class. I’ll handle it,” I said confidently.

  If Tom knew someone who might have information on those damn books, I’d do anything to get it.

  “What a dump,” Ashley complained, raising her voice to be heard over the deafening rock music. “I can’t believe they charged us ten bucks just to get in.”

  She wasn’t wrong. The Jukebox wasn’t the nicest place. Everything felt sticky, and there was a foul stench in the air. It smelled like rotting broccoli.

  Formerly Aurora’s roommate, and now mine, Ashley was the last person I’d expected to become my friend. She was a spunky, platinum-blonde party girl who thought of men like Kleenex. I was a frustrated, antisocial brunette who had been in love with the same guy for centuries. We were different, but somehow it worked.

  Ashley rubbed at the black X mark on her hand with agitation. The bouncer had spotted her ID as a fake immediately, so the two of us sat at the bar, sipping sodas like two good, law-abiding girls—the complete opposite from the last time we went out. There was no room for games tonight anyway. No drinking. I needed a clear mind. A sharp one, because I was on a mission.

  The song ended, and the band on stage began to pack up their equipment, clearing out for the next performers in the lineup.

  “At least the guys here are kinda hot,” she mentioned, wiping a drop of condensation from her cup while scoping out the crowd. She didn’t have a clue about my true agenda for going out tonight, but she clearly thought it was a great chance to hook me up with someone other than Eric. Given her terrible taste in men, I would have thought she would like him more after our big fight, but I was wrong.

  “He’s cute,” she said, nodding her head toward some guy wearing all black and eyeliner. That’s right… eyeliner.

  “So go say hi,” I suggested casually.

  “For you, dummy,” she laughed, her bleached blonde ringlets bouncing on her petite shoulders.

  “No thanks.”

  Ashley reached out, latching onto a purple streak of my hair and twisting the lock into a spiral curl to match hers better. We’d stopped by the salon earlier to get touchups on our matching highlights. Her sparse pink locks were brighter from it, and my matching purple saturated with color. When she let go, it fell into a loose wave again, joining the natural brown.

  “Prefer your farm boy?” she asked, slipping into a fake British accent. “Polish my horse’s saddle. I want to see my face shining in it,” she continued, pursing her glossy pink lips in exaggerated air kisses.

  I let loose a chuckle, finally catching one of her pop culture references. I had seen The Princess Bride enough to recognize that line.

  “Ah, yes,” she gushed dramatically. “The sexual prowess of a rural boy. If Eric took off his shirt and let me sip lemonade while watching him bale hay, I just might forgive him for being an ass to you.”

  I sipped my soda, trying to get that sexy image out of my head. I couldn’t be drooling over Eric’s body while on a mission. Ashley was such a distraction. Apparently Eric’s six-pack was as well.

  Where the hell is Tom? We’d been there for a while and still hadn’t spotted him.

  It probably would have been easier to come by myself, but when I mentioned my plans to Ashley, she just assumed I wanted her with me. She hadn’t gone out much lately, not nearly as much as she had in the beginning of the semester. She now chose to spend her nights watching TV with me rather than going out to party. It had been over a week since she’d hung out with her other friends at all. Maybe sleazy Mike’s return had something to do with that. She hated him.

  I spun around on my stool, searching for Tom in the crowd. I was suddenly nervous that Mike might be there. For some strange reason, he and Tom were friends. Luckily, The Jukebox definitely didn’t fit Mike’s wannabe-rich style. I had thought Blackie’s Tavern was a dive. This place was just disgusting. They didn’t even have real cups, just the clear plastic type you buy in bulk at the grocery store. Plus, I was hoping that Mike would leave me alone now, after the incident. I doubted he’d want to show his face in public for a while, mangled as it was. Eric had compared his new look to Quasimodo. I couldn’t help but feel some level of satisfaction in it, like I’d gotten revenge for the horrors Mike had put me through. That didn’t mean I approved of Eric attacking him, but I was glad someone had finally put him in his place.

  Still no sign of Tom. I exhaled a frustrated sigh. This place had a reputation for getting rowdy. I wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible. Tom, Tom, Tom, where could you be? The guy was like
seven feet tall; he shouldn’t be that hard to find. Then I spotted him making his way through the crowd. Ashley noticed him too.

  “Dibs,” she declared. Her black leather pants squeaked as she sat up a little straighter.

  I gave her an incredulous look. “Tom?” I asked.

  “That guy is tall like a tree. One that I’d like to climb all over.”

  I knew I shouldn’t have brought her.

  She twirled a pink lock of hair around her finger, watching Tom walk straight toward us. He wore a grass green t-shirt, a matching baseball cap, and carried a cup of dark beer. Apparently, rumors of his broken nose had been vastly exaggerated, though it was bruised a deep purple on one side and the swollen discoloration spread up to meet his eye.

  Ashley prepared to give him bedroom eyes when he excitedly burst out, “Voodoo Girl!” with his arms outstretched in greeting.

  “Jolly Green Giant!” I exclaimed in response, matching his welcoming stance teasingly.

  He stopped walking suddenly, a smile tugging at the corners of his wide mouth. “Did you just give me a nickname?” he asked.

  “Watch it stick,” I said with an unabashed smirk.

  He burst out laughing and pumped his fist excitedly. “Retaliation! Finally, someone gives me a nickname!”

  He threw a heavy arm around my shoulders and crushed me against his side until I felt like I was fused there. I stared uncomfortably at his beefy hand at my collarbone. I wasn’t used to being touched by people other than Eric, but he did this sort of thing all the time with his friends so I chose not to shrug it off, for now. Play it cool, Sandy.

  “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting?” he asked. He was so close that I grimaced at the smell of beer and nachos on his breath.

  “Nicknames? Ooh, do me,” Ashley suggested, clearly a double entendre.

  He ignored her and noticed my soda. He chuckled to himself, mocking my underage drink. “Want some Guinness?” he offered, pressing his cup to my lips.