Witch of Warwick (Dark Coven Book 1)

by Heather Young-Nichols

  “The first thing you need to do, Miranda,” Miller began. “Is take your shoes off so you can feel the earth beneath your feet.”

  I did that and the morning ground was slightly damp and somewhat squishy between my toes.

  “You won’t always need to do that but to begin it’s the easiest way.”

  “Got it.”

  “Now, close your eyes and try to center your energy in your chest.”

  I closed my eyes as he instructed and took several deep breaths while willing my energy to settle in my chest. At first, I didn’t think anything was happening.

  “Hold your hands out to your sides, palms facing the sky.” I had to hold back a giggle given how much he sounded like a motivational speaker. His voice was calm and even. Low as if he was trying to hypnotize me. Still, I did as he said.

  A couple of more deep breaths later and I felt it. This buzzing sensation in my chest.

  “I think…” I began. “I think I’m centered. It feels like a bunch of bees zinging around in my chest.”

  “Yeah.” Luken sounded so much closer than he had been when I’d shut out the world. “That’s it.”

  “Good,” Miller continued. “Now, focus and try to pull the energy up from the earth and into your body.”

  That sounded totally normal. Still, I tried my best and within seconds it was like a current of electricity shot through the soles of my feet, up my legs, and into the rest of my body.

  “Holy shit,” I muttered. “That’s amazing.”

  “Which means you’re doing it,” Miller told me. “You can open your eyes again.”

  I blinked three times against the bright sun. “That’s it?”

  “That’s grounding,” he said. “Now that you know what you’re looking for, you should be able to do it without taking much time.”

  “That was quick,” Luken said, his voice filled with amazement.

  “That’s what you get by being Sarah Good’s great-great-whatever granddaughter.”

  “True.”

  “OK. So we did that. Now what?”

  “We’re going to call up the wind,” Luken told me. “You do the same thing but once you feel the electricity, you focus in on the wind. You have to direct it somewhere so, to know it’s working, why don’t you try to push me.”

  I reached out and put my hand in the center of his chest and gave him a shove. The guys broke out into laughs and I knew that wasn’t what he meant. Still, it was funny as shit.

  “Good one,” Miller told me as he schooled his laughter. “But let’s do this.”

  This time, I quickly grounded myself and felt the, now familiar, electric current. Then I focused in on the wind. I knew I had it when the feeling of wind blowing replaced the bees in my chest. Since I was supposed to direct this wind to Luken, I focused in on him.

  Yet, when I tried to release it, the wind went to the ground, tossing me a couple of feet into the air.

  “Shit,” they both said at the same time.

  I spun head over feet then hit the ground with a resounding thud.

  “Miranda,” Luken was suddenly beside me, His hand on my back when I’d landed on my front. “Are you OK?”

  “Great,” I said into the ground.

  “Can you get up?” Miller asked.

  First, I propped myself up onto my elbows then I slowly pushed myself to my feet.

  “Does anything hurt?” Luken asked. “Do we need to heal you?”

  My eyes grew wide as I looked up at him through my lashes. “Wait. You guys can heal people?”

  “Yeah. That’s not even a hard one.”

  I stretched out my appendages and turned my head every which way. “No,” I told them. “I think I’m good but will probably be sore tomorrow.”

  “We can help you tomorrow then,” Miller assured me. “Let’s try that again.”

  I cocked my head to the side and gave him a scrunched-up face look. “Are you insane? I don’t want to do this again.”

  “You have to.”

  “Miranda,” Luken stepped in. “You just lost a little focus. Eventually, you won’t have to think about it much but for now, make sure you’re really focused on me before you let it go.”

  “Uh… no. I don’t want to do that to you.”

  He shook me off. “I’ll be fine. Promise.”

  After a bit more prodding, I did the whole process over again. Only this time, I pushed the wind toward my… well, whatever he was and sent him soaring backward.”

  “I did it,” I said excitedly.

  “You did,” Miller said and patted me on the back.

  We spent the rest of the morning practicing this very thing over and over. We did not, however, go into the realm of lightening because that I really didn’t want to use just yet. The idea of hurting one of my only two friends wasn’t that appealing.

  Around one, we broke for lunch. Nothing fancy. Just sandwiches again. Then headed up to the attic to look for Grandma’s spell book.

  “Yeah, this is definitely where she did the bulk of her magic,” Miller said as soon as we entered the attic.

  “Is that why there’s like a purple mist all over?” I asked.

  “You can see it?” Luken asked.

  “Yeah. It’s like… in the corners.” Then I turned to him. “Wait. Has it been here the whole time?”

  He nodded. “When we were up here before, you didn’t seem to notice.”

  This time I shrugged and felt the flush of my cheeks heat up. “Again. Distracted.”

  Miller snorted but didn’t say anything.

  The three of us spent an hour scouring the attic for any kind of book that might be my family grimoire. I liked the sound of that word so I was going to use it. I pulled open a drawer on an old dresser and found a huge leather-bound book.

  “Is this it?” I asked as I pulled it from the drawer, almost dropping it from its weight. “How in the hell did Grandma lift this? It’s so heavy.”

  “Serena was strong,” Luken told me quietly as he took it from my hands and set it on the table where all of her vials were. “But she also probably didn’t always keep it in the drawer.”

  “Oh. Yeah. That makes sense.”

  “OK, spells.” Luken stood beside me while Miller went over to the couch and dropped onto it. I cringed. He couldn’t know what was last done on that piece of furniture but the memory of it filled me with embarrassment because he was sitting there. “It’s fine,” Luken whispered.

  I looked up at him through my lashes. “Spells?

  “Right. Some spells you need things for. Herbs, oils, that kind of thing. Not all. There are some that you can just ground yourself and say the spell.”

  “That works?”

  “Like a charm,” Miller called out not looking up from his phone.

  “Let’s do one then,” I told him.

  Miller glanced up and the guys gazes locked as an unspoken conversation passed between the two of them.

  Luken and I began flipping through the pages. “This should be a harmless one. Even if you mess it up.”

  Miller hopped up from his seat and trotted over to us. As he peered over from behind me, his chin bumped my shoulder as he nodded. “Yeah. Neither of us are lying to her so a truth spell should be fine. It’s easy. Not really any bad consequences if it goes wrong.”

  “And she can do it without making any potions or herb concoctions.”

  “Yeah. I say let’s do it,” Miller agreed.

  “So what you do,” Luken told me. “Get grounded and say the words here.” He pointed at this beautifully written page.

  “I can get grounded in here?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  I nodded then tried to replicate what I’d done in the back yard. It took longer. Maybe because I wasn’t out there and I wasn’t barefoot but eventually the buzzing returned to my chest and I knew I was grounded.

  Then I opened my mouth and said, “Earth and Sun I call to thee, From…” I needed a time frame and didn’t wa
nt to interrupt the flow. “Now until five minutes from now I seek the truth that I have not found.”

  The buzzing increased followed by what felt like a rubber band snapping against my chest. Almost took my breath away.

  “How do I know if it worked?”

  “Ask us something,” Miller said.

  I had no idea what to ask them at first. Then I thought of something guys might lie about. They might overexaggerate or under. Either way, I’d have an answer and if the spell worked, I’d have the truth.

  “What’s your body count?” I asked.

  “Nine,” they both said at the same time then turned to look at one another.

  “Are you serious?” Miller asked.

  “Yeah,” Luken told him.

  “We need to compare names at some point.”

  “Can it not be right now?” Luken nodded his head toward me to indicate he didn’t want to have to tell me the truth on that.

  Some girls might’ve been mad but I could only giggle.

  “Am I included in that number?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Luken said at the same time Miller said, “No.”

  “I guess I’ll assume this worked then. I don’t know.”

  We waited for the five minutes to expire before Luken assured me the spell had worked. He would’ve told me either way but being that they too were witches, they’d felt it the moment I’d cast the spell since they were both standing so close and he couldn’t lie even if he’d wanted to.

  For the next several hours, we continued to work on spells and talk about Echo Valley, where they lived. I’d only lived in Warwick. Wait. That wasn’t true. When I lived with my parents, we’d apparently lived in Maine but I had no memory of that.

  After a quick stop for dinner, we returned to the attic and continued thumbing through the grimoire.

  The pages were beautiful and written with so much purpose that I kind of hated that this had been hidden from me. But if Grandma had done that, she’d had her reasons.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Luken

  That night, Miranda and I laid there together in almost darkness in the bedroom of the secret house, the moonlight shining through all the windows. There were a lot of windows, actually. Her foot softly trailed against mine as her hand slid across my lower abdomen. Not repeating the incident from the attic a few days ago was going to be hard if she kept this up. And I needed to not repeat that just yet. Probably shouldn’t have had a taste of her in the first place.

  Then she began dropping kisses across my chest, causing all the blood in my body to rush south and if I didn’t put a stop to it soon, there’d be no turning back. But she also couldn’t use me to feel better about her grandma. Even if I wanted to let her. She needed that grief to get where she was going.

  “I know what you’re doing,” I said, my voice hoarse with desire even to my own ears.

  She buried her face in my chest and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  What a little liar. “I get that you’re sad,” I said as gently as possible. “But you need to work through that. You have to allow yourself to feel. Especially you.”

  Her head snapped up and her dee blue eyes scanned over my face. “Why especially me?”

  “Because your feelings influence your magic,” I said. Her brows furrowed. “Think.”

  At first she looked lost, then her eyes widened. “The cemetery?” she asked. I nodded because that was exactly what I was referring to. “I did that?”

  “You did,” I told her. “Probably wasn’t the first time.”

  She grew quiet for a while. I thought she’d either fallen asleep or was lost in her own thoughts. But soon, Miranda began telling me about growing up here. She’d touched on it before in the attic, but now she told me in more detail how mean the kids had been to her. For some reason, with her under my arm in the cover of darkness, the stories she told sounded even sadder, made me angrier, and got my hopes up that when I had to leave Warwick, she’d come with me.

  The hardest were the stories about the minister’s daughters, Ashley and Taylor. They’d taunted her. They’d constantly told her that her parents had died because of her. That she was the reason for everything bad in the world.

  “Weird behavior for preacher’s kids,” I whispered.

  She grunted but then went silent again. I listened to her breathing for countless minutes until I realized she’d finally given in and fallen asleep.

  I should’ve done the same, yet I never did. Funnily enough, I wasn’t even tired. My brain was too busy formulating a plan. A plan to keep Miranda safe from whatever had befallen her grandmother and that meant finding out exactly what had happened to the old woman.

  This wasn’t a heart attack the way Miranda said everyone had assumed. Obviously, she hadn’t been struck by lightning. That would’ve left marks on her body. This was the result of a magical attack and Miranda could still have been a target.

  Once she took that telltale deep, relaxing breath, I knew it was safe for me to get up. I snuck back to her grandmother’s bedroom to begin going through paperwork in the hopes of figuring out why she’d been murdered.

  As I passed Miller’s door, it opened quietly and he stepped out as if he’d been waiting for me.

  “We going searching?” he asked.

  “Thought I’d check out Serena’s room,” I whispered. There wasn’t a chance in hell I wanted to do anything that would wake Miranda.

  “Let’s go,” he said as if it was a forgone conclusion that he’d be going with me.

  I nodded toward her room and repeated, “Let’s go.”

  We made sure to close the door tightly and only turned on the side table lights to keep it from being obvious we were in here. Miranda hadn’t shut the safe all the way but we started with the boxes of papers. I already knew what was in the safe and would only go through that as a last resort.

  Serena seemed to have kept everything by the looks of these papers. Receipts. Bank statements. The papers giving her custody of Miranda.

  “Fuck, she was a pack rat,” Miller said more to himself than to me.

  The really interesting stuff came when I found newspaper clippings of events around Warwick. Dark happenings that Miranda never mentioned probably because she didn’t know about them. The way her grandmother had shielded her from all things magical, she would’ve hidden this as well. Besides, these were things that non-witches would never have known was anything other than odd natural phenomenon. But Miller and I knew better.

  “Why the fuck would they think they had an earthquake here of all places?” he asked.

  “You know what your mom says. People will believe anything if they don’t know any better.”

  “True.”

  When dawn came, I was onto something. A trail of unexplained events that Serena had put together like a detective chasing a serial killer.

  Warwick was far darker than any of us had suspected.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Miranda

  As soon as I woke up, instinct had me feeling around the bed beside me, but it was empty. I was alone and sadness began to cloud over me like a storm until I heard Luken somewhere in the house. Then I pushed all thoughts out of my head and concentrated.

  The sounds were coming from the living room of the nice house. Hidden house? I had no idea what to call this place. What I did know was that this place was like a mirror image of my real house. Only much, much nicer and with a few added rooms. The rooms were roomier as well but the layout matched the house I was used to.

  After a quick pit stop at the restroom, I headed down that way.

  Sure enough, Luken and Miller sat on the couch with a laptop balanced on each of their legs, papers spread all around them and Luken had a pen in his mouth that he’d periodically use to take notes with. Without him knowing, I watched him scribble something across a notepad for the third time and my heart was so full for this guy who’d come to take care of me. Watch out for me. I should’ve felt
like I barely knew him, yet I wanted to throw myself into his arms.

  Last night, he’d told me that I needed to get through my grief over Grandma and I thought processing my feelings of being told I was a witch probably wasn’t a bad idea. I accepted what he told me since there was no other way to explain this magical, hidden house. But I was sure I could do both of those things while still having feelings for him. Even if it was too soon by most people’s logic.

  So instead of doing what I wanted to, I veered past the two of them to go back to my regular house for a shower. I don’t know why I did that. I could’ve showered in the bright white subway tile bathroom I’d just used. But my clothes were over there and it was what I was used to.

  The water did nothing to dampen the attraction that had been pulling me toward Luken. To take away the naughty thoughts running through my head. Once I dried myself and got dressed, I decided to get the three of us something nice for breakfast. We were a small town but we did have a little diner that would be perfect and they had some pastries. It would be a win-win.

  For the first time in my life, I left my house with a sense of confidence. As if I’d suddenly grown more comfortable in my own skin. Like maybe I belonged somewhere after all.

  Finding out I wasn’t destitute probably helped a bunch as I walked into the diner in town. It was a busy place, could use a paint job but the food was actually pretty amazing. I hadn’t eaten here often because of money but the times I had, I’d never been disappointed. For the first time in my life, I paid no attention to the people around me. This newfound confidence was something I could get used to.

  “What can I get you?” Marielle, a woman who I’d gone to high school with though she was three years older, asked as if she had never seen me before in her life. She was incredibly tall and obviously beautiful with her curly chestnut hair and striking hazel eyes. But the tired lines around her eyes and the way she didn’t even pretend to smile told the real story. I didn’t really know what happened to her after high school but I did know she had a four-year-old daughter.

  “I’d like to place a takeout order,” I told her.

  She twirled her finger in front of her indicating her impatience with my manners. “Go ahead.”