Envious Deception

by Katie Keller-Nieman

  He was right. At least, it seemed that way. It made sense. He hadn’t seen the vision. He wasn’t reeling, and he was thinking more clearly than me because of it. We’d been powerless against Aurora all along. And she knew it. She’d gloated about it.

  “Maybe you don’t have magic now,” I said in an angry growl, “but you did then. And you kept it from me. I killed myself for you! Maybe if I had known, we-”

  I cut my sentence short, but the silence that took its place was deafening. I knew the severity of those few words I had almost uttered. A statement like that couldn’t be taken back. The words could never be unsaid. I hesitated, biting my lip.

  “Finish Cassandra,” Eric breathed in a soft, broken tone. “We what? We wouldn’t be together?”

  I leaned against the tree. My need to flee was outweighed by crushing guilt. I felt weak at the hurt in Eric’s voice and let the tree brace my body.

  “Would you have hated me?” His words were careful, soft, and filled with fear.

  My blood was pumping furiously, my mind raging with emotion. I was dizzy from it. My nose sniffled, and I felt glued to the tree. I was just another of its branches, without a voice and frozen in place, incapable of motion. The tree was the only thing holding me up and keeping me from crumbling.

  “Do you hate me now?” he asked apprehensively, eyes cast down.

  I had no answer for him. How could I after what I had just learned? Everything I thought I knew was wrong. He was a witch. He knew that Aurora was. He hadn’t just sympathized with her. He’d helped her. They shared knowledge, and they shared a kiss. It wasn’t the shining moment that Aurora had made it out to be. It was sad on her part actually. Even with all that they shared… he wanted me. He loved me.

  “Cassandra?” he called out.

  “Maybe if I had known, I wouldn’t have followed you and Aurora,” I admitted. “I gave up everything. My life, my family. I killed myself to help you when you didn’t even need it.”

  “Of course I needed it. I need you,” he exclaimed desperately.

  “No, you don’t. You have magic,” I choked out. I reluctantly turned to him but avoided looking at his face. He was standing there heartbroken, worry tensing his body and confusion in his posture.

  “Cassandra, I don’t know anything about magic.”

  He didn’t seem to be lying. What if he wasn’t?

  “Maybe you just don’t know it,” I suggested. “Maybe that was what Julie meant when she said there was more magic in your life,” I surmised, studying a shivering brown leaf at my feet.

  “I don’t know what Jules meant when she said that, but she couldn’t have meant me. Whatever we were in the past, things have changed. Remember how I was when we were married? How high-strung I was? And you said you were a bitch in the fifties.”

  “I still am,” I muttered under my breath.

  He was silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts and words. “So maybe… maybe I was… a witch,” he said, voice choking on the foreign sentence. It sounded so wrong coming from him, and he seemed to feel that way too. “But things change.”

  “Aurora still is,” I said.

  “She made the potions. She drank a different one than me.”

  My mind quieted at his words. That sentence alone gave me so much understanding. He had taken a different potion. She had made one specifically for her and another specifically for him. If he had known more than her and been as powerful as she implied, and she had been intent on chasing him down and taking him over… that would need to change.

  She recreated our lives, our worlds… and us, through her spells.

  My eyes lifted from the ground, catching on his. The intensity in his blue eyes was overwhelming. His gaze swallowed me up. I wanted to forgive him. I wanted to forget what I saw in his mind.

  “Would you ever have told me? If you hadn’t died, would I ever have known?” I asked.

  “I’d like to think so.”

  He leaned back against the tree opposite me and slid down the weathered bark until he reached the damp leaves and dead yellow moss. The forest was beginning to shine from a light drizzle. The rain was icy cold. He looked defeated, weary, and uncomfortable. I had expected him to look different to me now that I knew, but sitting there with his light hair ruffled and his deep blue eyes looking heartbreakingly sad, he was just Eric. I ventured a bit closer, twisting my hands together nervously.

  “You were scared then. I felt it,” I told him.

  “I was afraid of losing you,” he admitted. “I still am. I always am.” His eyes slowly met mine once more. “I’m not hiding anything now. I swear. I don’t know any spells. I’ve never used magic. I’m not capable of anything out of the ordinary.”

  I loved him. In this life, I’d loved him from the start, even when all he could think about was Aurora. He’d rejected me so many times. It wasn’t possible that my love was an illusion created by magic. I never thought I’d feel thankful for those torturous years, the many times the love I’d offered to him had been brushed aside without a care. But I did now. It was proof that my feelings for him were real. That he was telling me the truth.

  He was no witch. I had to believe that. It felt right.

  He held out his hands, palms up. “Take any memory you want. See anything that you need to.”

  I reached for his hand, fingers trembling as they laced with his. I sat cross-legged across from him in the damp leaves, stroking my thumb along his skin, tracing a smudge of black paint lining his fingernails. My eyes studied our intertwined hands, the way they fit so perfectly together.

  “I think you tried to tell me once,” I confessed, now understanding that night with the butterfly. The hurt in his eyes at my fear of magic made sense. “I don’t know how I would have reacted. Maybe the secret was justified,” I admitted sheepishly.

  “And now?”

  I looked to his eyes, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore. He stared at our clasped hands, heartbroken. “You’re not a witch. It doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe Aurora changed that. Or maybe you were like your sister then… without a spark. Maybe you just knew spells that anyone could do. And now you don’t.”

  Relief flooded his features, and his head dropped forward, nestling against my neck. The beat of my pulse felt harsh and staggered against his temple, making me want to shrink back and hide where no one could find me.

  “Cassandra…” he whispered, lifting his head. He looked shocked and amazed, in awe of something. “Maybe I could remember them. The spells in Aurora’s books… I might have known them.”

  A biting chill raced through me. That’s what she’d been afraid of…

  He doesn’t know what he’s capable of, Aurora had said. But now we knew: he was capable of decoding her spells and possibly of finding one that could end this for us.

  My moment of excitement did not last. The thought of Eric knowing magic made me cold with fear. He had shared magic with the sickest person I’d ever met.

  “We’ve been over the spells again and again. You haven’t felt any memory surfacing, have you?” I asked carefully.

  He shook his head. “I don’t control it. They only seem to come when you want them to. You have to touch me.”

  “Do you think you might have known a spell to block her power?” I asked cautiously.

  “Maybe.”

  This terrible truth might actually help us. If he knew spells then, we might stand a chance against Aurora now. I’d have to put aside my fear of magic, no matter how terrifying it seemed.

  We hurried back to campus. My panic had taken us far away, and the walk took a while, even at our brisk pace, but the anticipation had not faded by the time we reached his room. He flipped through the pages, studying them intently. He tried another book, while I sat at his side processing, and my mind shifted to Freyr.

  Aurora had been in love before Eric. She’d been married. Imagine how different our lives would have been if her husband hadn’t died. If he had lived…

  The reali
zation left me feeling stunned. Aurora killed her husband to protect herself and Eric, and because of it, she’d latched onto Eric and refused to let go. Even now.

  “I can’t do this alone, Sandra,” he said, eyes pleading with me.

  There was no time to think of what-ifs. They wouldn’t save us now. I cautiously reached for Eric’s hand, but worry dragged me back. I didn’t know what we might see or if I was ready for it. We might see more than either of us bargained for. What if the Eric I knew now was even more different than the one then? What if there were more secrets? What if he kissed her again? What if he-

  “Cassandra?”

  I wrung my hands anxiously. “Do any of them seem familiar?” I squeaked nervously, motioning awkwardly to the pages.

  He saw the fear in my eyes and went paler than he already was. He looked back to the open book on his lap, staring blankly at the pages. He wasn’t really looking. This was his way of hiding from me. I would run. I always ran. But he would stay and pretend like everything was fine.

  I forced myself to reach for his hand. Just do it, Sandy! For your future! So that you’ll actually have one for once.

  My fingers laced with his, and I braced myself.

  Nothing.

  When our hands touched, I felt no buzz of a memory, no tingling. His fingers gripped mine tight, and he closed his eyes, brow furrowed with focus.

  Minutes passed. An hour. No vision came to us. Even with the revelation of what he once was, we still had no answer.

  TODD:

  He wandered down a cobblestone pedestrian street lined with kitschy shops. He passed a woman dressed and painted to look like a metal sculpture of a witch. She leaned forward on her stilt-like pedestal, shadow hovering over him ominously as he passed.

  Salem, Massachusetts, was a tourist attraction buried in witch-related souvenirs. It was a place famous for witch trials that killed numerous innocent people, and ironically they now welcomed the supernatural. Anything to make a buck. Even more ironic was the number of actual self-proclaimed witches who lived in the city. It was the witch capital of the East Coast and a place he hoped he might find some answers.

  He breezed through a few tiny shops, glancing around for anything that seemed remotely authentic. Aisles were filled with glittering witch balls, goofy-looking spell books with cartoon covers, and an array of multicolored candles, each to serve a different “magical” purpose. He’d already browsed three shops identical to this one. Frustration grew within him, near to forcing a takeover, when he pushed through the door of the cheesiest place he’d seen yet. His fists knotted as he wandered through aisles of dragon sculptures, Harry Potter wands, magic trick kits, and pirate t-shirts.

  He was about to leave when a fragrance stopped him in his tracks. He recognized the scent. It smelled like that damn tea Aurora used to give him.

  Like a friggin’ bloodhound, he sniffed the air, following the scent through the aisles until he turned a corner. Tucked away behind racks of postcards was another room-and this one was anything but hokey. The books lining the wall weren’t exactly within Aurora’s creepy caliber. They were on things like reiki and chakras. Alternative healing and meditation.

  He picked up a book that claimed it was the witch’s guide to a balanced house. Within its chapters were spells to cleanse a home of negative energy. Not a solution, but it was a start. He took the book with him as he explored the cramped room, winding through little niches. Bowls containing gemstones and crystals lined open spaces between stacks of books. He lifted a pendant hanging from a leather bracelet. Small colored rocks were tethered in a webbing of silver wire, and a star charm hung beside it. He set it back when he noticed another with a symbol he recognized. This one had a triskele-the same symbol Aurora had carved into her own hip. His heart thudded in his chest as he reached for it.

  “We have men’s fashions too.”

  He jumped at the sudden sound and turned to see the woman who spoke. She was about his mom’s age with stringy curly hair in faded tones of red and gray. Her dark brown crinkle skirt dusted the floor as she walked toward the far wall. Her honey-colored sweater looked well worn, and the multicolored scarf hanging loosely around her neck practically spelled out the word “eccentric,” which he was hoping meant “witch.”

  He stiffened nervously. He didn’t have the best luck with witches, but this woman’s store seemed the most authentic of any he’d seen. He watched as she bent down behind a glass counter and summoned his courage, walking over with the triskele clutched in his fist. Within the glass was an assortment of dried herbs. Half of the names he didn’t recognize, but half he had seen in Aurora’s books.

  The redhead looked up at him, and he swallowed hard, holding out his hand to show her. “What’s this symbol for?” he asked, trying his best not to bark his question at her, though his patience level was waning.

  “It’s a triple spiral. It represents life, death, and rebirth,” she told him.

  “Like reincarnation?” he led.

  “The cycle of life. Would you like it wrapped?” she asked, reaching for it. He quickly snatched his hand back, afraid that she might touch him. It was instinct, ingrained from his knowledge of Aurora.

  The woman eyed him suspiciously. “You’re not shopping, are you?” she surmised.

  He dropped the bracelet on the counter. “I’m a student, doing research on modern magic.”

  She leaned back. Her eyes soaked him in, as if trying to read the truth on his face. The story was technically true, but she didn’t seem to be buying it. Instead of calling him out on it, she casually lit a stick of incense set in an ivory holder on the counter. Tendrils of white smoke swirled in the space between them. The fragrance was potent but nothing he recognized.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth, but his mind blanked out. He had planned questions and a cover story for what exactly he was doing there, but they escaped him. He didn’t want to beat around the bush. If she had answers, he needed them.

  “I was wondering if you could help me with something,” he said slowly. “A spell for memories-”

  “I don’t sell spells,” she said, cutting him off quickly. “Unless it’s on the shelf, it’s not for sale.”

  “I don’t want to buy one… I’ve been under one.”

  What the fuck? Why the hell did he just say that?

  “What kind of spell?” she asked.

  “Mind control.”

  He couldn’t believe he had just admitted that outright. He’d had a plan. What the hell happened to his plan?

  He glanced down at the burning stick, the only thing burning in the entire shop, and she didn’t follow his gaze. He snuffed it out with his fingers, feeling the harsh singe on his skin as the smoke tapered off. She looked displeased with him and backed a step away.

  He glared at her. “What is this?” he demanded.

  “Something for transparency,” she answered, eyeing him warily. “I use it with all new customers who… linger like you are. Can’t be too careful.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “People with questions are dangerous,” she blurted out, then frowned with disgust, waving a hand through the lingering smoke to disperse it. “It works both ways,” she grumbled, walking away.

  “I’m not trying to bother you, but I need help,” he called desperately.

  She turned to look at him, accessing the hurt look in his eyes that he tried to mask. “I don’t help people I don’t know.”

  He snorted angrily. “Well, I’d buy you a drink if I thought I could walk into a bar and not come out hammered.”

  Sickened by his admission, he waved a hand through the air, further dispersing any lingering smoke. She returned to him. Leaning over the counter, she grasped his hand. He pulled away, ripping his hand from her grip.

  “Do you want me to know you or not?”

  “Not,” he grunted. “I don’t know what you can do.”

  “I can see if there
is a spell ruling you. It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “It’s gone,” he answered. “Faded.”

  “Then what do you need?”

  “Protection from it. A way to keep it from happening again.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What exactly were you dealing with?”

  “Mind control.”

  Her brow lowered, shadowing the curiosity in her eyes, and a dark laugh escaped her lips. “You said that already, but where did you get an idea of mind control?” she questioned blandly.

  “You’re saying it’s not possible?” he demanded.

  “Not that I’ve encountered. I suppose anything is possible, bright eyes. What kind of mind control are we talking about?”

  “Influencing my actions. Consuming my thoughts.”

  “How did she do it? Through touch?”

  He never said she. “Can it be blocked?” he asked.

  “Yes. Stay out of reach.”

  “That’s not enough. How else?”

  She hesitated, so he dug into his wallet, drawing out some monetary persuasion.

  “I won’t take your money,” she stated, leaning back from him.

  “You’ve got to give me something. I need help,” he pleaded.

  “I’m sorry, but I just don’t know. This isn’t something I’ve ever come across,” she said, beginning to turn away.

  “Wait. I also need to understand a few things about reincarnation.” She stayed, staring defeated at the floor, so he continued. “How would someone go about making and breaking a reincarnation cycle?”

  “What?” she gasped, head swinging around to look at him. Her voice took on a horrified tone. “What are you involved in?” she whispered. From her haunted expression, he could tell she really didn’t want to know.

  “I know that it’s possible to link deaths of people, bringing them into the next life through their family line.” Her attention intensified. “What I want to know is how that could be broken.”

  Her hands began to shake. She brushed past him, looking down the long aisle that led to the room they were in as if looking for someone. “I don’t know.”