by Sara Stone
Out of nowhere, the door popped into my head, and I couldn't get it out. I would face whatever it was hiding. I was already emotionally spent; whatever secrets it held, now was a good a time as any to find them out. The excitement was almost overwhelming by the time I made it up to the stairs. Being brave enough to open it, the heavy door opened with a creak, and I stood there in awe. It was a small sitting room. I took in the countless shelves full of jars, rocks, and other objects I had a hard time believing belonged to Gram. This was not an office I would expect of my grandmother.
Hesitantly, I walked into the room, taking in a small sitting chair by the window with a side table that held a massive worn-out book. I picked it up and immediately had to sit down. It was so heavy. I ran my hand along the cover, feeling the soft velvet fabric. Turning it over, I noticed a worn clasp keeping it tightly shut and no key insight. The cover had ripped along the edges where it had worn thin to tatters. The leather binding still held strong but needed some oil. There was no writing of a title or author on either side.
I set it back down carefully, so I didn't bust the little wood table and made my way around the shelves. I couldn't believe it. The woman Gram portrayed to me and the one who would own these types of things were opposites. I could construe stuff she had done over the years as strange, but that's what made her my Gram. It almost made me sick to see all of it huddled together in a little room. This was overwhelming proof living with someone for your whole life didn't mean you fully knew who they were.
Touching the different crystals and blowing the dust off the shelves as I went, I found it hard not to watch, touch, and inspect every little thing. Running my fingertips across the jars full of herbs from the garden along with other ones I was sure you couldn't get anywhere but the internet. I knew a little about some things like smudge sticks, but I didn't have the slightest clue what they did. Some candles had weird markings in them, and others had been burned until there was just a husk of it left.
Propped up against some books on a desk against the far wall, there was a small envelope with my name on it, written in Gram's dainty cursive. I plucked it off the shelf and opened it slowly, unsure of what I would read, and yet my heart danced with the thrill of having the last bit of her talking to me.
My Dearest Dahlia,
If you're reading this, the worst has happened, and I've left you far sooner than I had planned. Please know, above all else, I love you.
I know that you will second guess what I am about to tell you, but you, my dear Lia, come from a long line of witches. You were born with great power, a power that others envied.
That is why your mother left you in my care. I was the only one that could lay a protection spell on you strong enough to hide it from the world and you. I feared that in the world I know, you would be in danger.
I now know that I should have taught you how to use it, so you may protect yourself. I hope you forgive me.
I have left the family grimoire in your care. It will stay locked until the fire within you burns its brightest. Then and only then will the key find you.
The Coven of the Crossroads will guide you in gaining and controlling your magic to claim your rightful spot among them.
I wish I had more time to explain it all. My time, I fear, is ending.
With all my love,
Gram
The tears running down my face plopped messily onto the paper. My eyes blurred reading it. It was in her handwriting, but there was no way any of this was true. Gram didn't walk around casting spells! She went to church every Sunday, won the town's best garden award yearly, and made sure to help anyone in need, whether they asked for it or not. Someone was playing a sick joke on me, indeed. I couldn't think of any other explanation. Witches and magic don't exist, except in books and movies. Sure, you got the loonies playing fortune teller for twenty dollars or mediums on TV with ungodly high hair, but none of it was every day normal for anyone. How many hours had she spent in here, living in this while I knew nothing of it?
With that thought, I dropped the letter on a desk, marched out of the room, and slammed it shut. This was all too strange. Thrown into an alternate reality where nothing made any sense. My life didn't have dramatic twists. It was overly mundane with me working Monday through Friday and sometimes through the weekend. I didn't have many friends or go on fancy vacations, and I drove around in a hand-me-down Jetta. And there was no such thing as magic.
I paced my room before grabbing my laptop and plopping myself down onto my bed. The last thing I wanted to do was sit around and think about it anymore. Work would easily distract me enough to calm down. I opened a half dozen emails, browsing through the customers asking for results of applications. I needed to review a few before giving confirmation on acceptance. I opened the first one, and it had a plot featuring the supernatural. I slammed my laptop and set it down. Leaning back on the couch, I came to terms with being entirely distracted by all this. I didn't want to believe it, but part of me was curious enough to seek out the answers to who my gram was.
I walked back into the room, scooping up the book before sitting in the worn wing-back chair. I couldn't believe I was talking to a book like it might understand me. I hoped that some words would make this magical key appear to figure out what was going on. Magical key. Talking to books. Magic. I shook my head. This was just ridiculous.
"Gram said the key wouldn't show itself until I was ready. I am so not ready for this, but I need to know what secrets you hold, so...open sesame...please open...abracadabra..." Well, magic words weren't helping. Feeling idiotic for talking to a book, I went to the bookcase and took out any other book that seemed like they could help. Already on the verge of a freak out, and yet here I was talking to books, searching for spells. It was all complete and utter nonsense.
I started with one that claimed to have healing magic with a dark green cover with embossed leaves in the pages. I flipped through some pages that held lists of plants to use to others that had actual spells. A spell! Maybe I could spell the key into showing up. I still didn't believe any of this to be reality, but I wanted answers and couldn't get them if the book stayed locked. I searched through her old books for hours and came up empty-handed. As far as a spell went, I didn't know where to start, and all the books had been specific spells from healing, summoning to protection, and such. If I couldn't find the book's answers, I would go to the internet, which had to have a spell to help or some answers, or at least I hoped it did. Could I even cast a spell? She had cast a spell over me to stop my powers, and here I was, acting like I could snap my fingers and start playing the part of Glinda the Good Witch. I didn't have a puffy pink dress, so that was out. Not that I would ever willingly wear one, anyway. Pink just wasn't my type of color.
My internet searches came up with odds and ends of random cuckoos’ babblings and blogs. I couldn't distinguish serious writing from fan fiction. Angst riddled teenagers rebelling their parents hilariously must have written many random spells, as they were just ludicrous. The icing on the cake was when random messages would pop-up with a lady called Madam Zelda, offering to read my fortune or tell my future. Good lord, it was exhausting. Searching just about anything I could think of to explain all the nonsense or why a mostly sane woman would randomly believe she was magic before her death. The possibilities were endless. I was sitting there pulling my hair out, grasping at straws.
Mold! This house was so old it was likely to have mold, causing hallucinations! Maybe we weren't so crazy. That would explain why I had never heard about any of this until now. It was a good theory, but even I was skeptical about it being my answer. I warred with myself on what to believe, wanted to explain away why this wasn't happening. My quirky yet respectable grandmother had laid a doozy of a bomb on me in a letter in a room filled with many strange things in it, along with some mysterious book that wouldn't open. She had even written that my mother had left me because of it. That had me searching for medical or psych issues she could have had.
I had to be delirious. I wiped the tiredness from my face, shuffling to my room. The late afternoon coffee had me crashing hard, and I was too tired to cook dinner, mostly since it was only for me. I changed quickly and laid in my down feather comforter, trying to relax. The day's events kept me from falling asleep. My eyes burning from staying up later than I should have. It was all mind-numbing. My everyday existence was changing, and I couldn't come to grips with it. It was taking a turn I couldn't comprehend as being real.
As I would drift off to sleep, another thought about Gram lying to me my whole life by omission would twist my insides and squeeze my already broken heart. Betrayal was not even an excellent description of how I felt, knowing that most of what I thought I had known about those around me was all wrong. I tried not to, but thoughts of my mother leaving me behind popped up into the surface of my mind, following the melancholy track of my thoughts. She had dumped me onto Gram, not because of the small town, but because she couldn't handle who I was. My inner child, the little girl who always wondered if this would be the day one of her parents would come to see her, cried. There was no good reason for her to leave. Knowing a sliver of truth was too much for my heart to handle. Sometimes not knowing was just more comfortable on the feelings.
I couldn't help but think of all the times where this kind of thing could have come up. She could have told me the truth about everything, including my mother. Gram would avoid talking to me about her at all costs. Not that I brought her up a lot anyway, but when I did, she would steer the conversation elsewhere. She would get a distant glint in her eye before moving on. It must have been painful for her too. Raising a daughter who wanted nothing to do with her grandchild showed the exact opposite maternal traits Gram excelled at. I think she partially blamed herself. I would if I were her. I could see why she wouldn't want me to know, but in the same breath, I had gone almost thirty years in my life with no kind of understanding of who I was, who my distant relatives were, who or where my mother was. I would have to relearn everything. With that thought, I closed my eyes and drifted into a restless sleep, dreaming of a woman I had never officially met beside the supposed two months before she dropped me off to leave me behind.
Chapter Two
I woke up way too early for my taste. The sun was shining through my blinds, making my already foul mood even worse. I rolled over and shoved the covers over my head, trying to bring sleep back. I had tossed and turned all night, leading me to wake up feeling exhausted. I wasn't leaving the bed until I got a good eight hours of sleep. Otherwise, I would be grumpy all day, and even I didn't want to deal with me in a mood like that.
I shuffled my slipper clad feet into the kitchen to start some coffee. I grabbed the creamer and leaned against the counter as I listened to my machine percolate, wishing it would be quicker. The short few minutes between waking up and drinking a dark-roasted brew was too long for me. Magic… give me a break. I shook my head, trying to get rid of the craziness bouncing around in it. Yesterday had been too much, and yet here I was waking up to it.
As I poured the steaming cup of my morning pick me up, a loud banging started coming from outside. Grumbling to myself about hearing this racket first thing in the morning, I stomped to the front door, as much as you can in slippers, and out to the stairs. Judson was hammering away on the steps, oblivious to my incoming temper. I stood there staring at him, wondering how long it would take for him to notice my presence.
He glanced up. His eyes made a slow perusal of me, from my slippered feet to up to my face. I had my arms crossed over my chest with my favorite mug hanging from my hand, and it was a good thing since I was standing scantily clad in my little pjs.
I didn't let his gaze calm the storm of a mood I had brewing. He had just made my already irritating morning worse, and no amount of an evident appreciation from a man as hot as he would stop it.
"Do you mind?" I asked, glaring at him. If looks could kill, his ass would be toast.
"Do I mind what?" he asked, standing up and stretching before the ghost of a cock smirk graced his full lips. Ugh. He knew what he was doing. Two could play this game.
"Making all that noise at this ungodly hour!" I stamped my foot, driving the point home. No one wanted to hear that kind of racket any time of day, let alone when they were just waking up.
"It's 8:30, and I have other jobs to do after this." He half shrugged as if that was a good enough reason. I mean, it was, but I wasn't happy with it.
"The least you could have done is wake me up before starting."
"I tried. You didn't hear me, sleeping beauty." I blushed. Not from his backhanded compliment hanging on the words sleeping beauty, but because he had just pushed me too far. It wasn't a flirty type of blush. It was my temper ready to flare.
"Listen here, Judson..." I was pointing at his chest but let my hand drop. I was ready to give him a piece of my mind, but a weird buzzing noise cut me off.
Obnoxious, in a swarm of angry bees' sort of way with an underlying hum that instantly started grating on my nerves. I pushed past him, leaving him on the steps, trying to figure out what was going on. It sounded like it was coming from the street where his truck sat.
"Lia, stay here!" he said, reaching out to push me back. I sidestepped his arm. The buzzing continued as I made my way down the sidewalk. "Lia!" Why was he yelling? I was the one in a foul mood.
I walked to the end of the walkway, only getting to the gate, when his truck exploded, throwing scraps of fiery hot metal about the street. The blast threw me onto my back, knocking the air out of my lungs. The back of my head, where it slammed into the sidewalk, pounded with my pulse. The cuts from glass and metal burned into my skin along my arms and legs. I stared up into Judson's face. He tried talking to me, but all I heard was the ringing in my ears. He had appeared at my side quickly. That or I wasn't processing things in real-time. He picked me up, carrying me inside before laying me gently on the couch. In my frazzled state of mind, winking in and out of consciousness, I thought about how mad Gram would be if I bled on her couch. With that, I closed my eyes and slipped into the void.
I awoke to my muscles protesting the smallest movements as they sent white-hot pain down my limbs. I felt like a diesel had hit me. I slowly opened my eyes to find Judson wiping the blood from cuts on my arm. His face tight, lips pursed into a thin line. He sat on his haunches, focused on his task, and didn't notice right away that I was awake, which gave me time to get a good glimpse at him as he worked at cleaning me up.
His face was smooth, except for a few small scars. One ran through his right eyebrow with a bright white line that caught your eye first. His cheekbone also had a slight imperfection, but it was so faint you could barely see the tiny scar. Scars could make someone else's appearance creepy, but it added a depth of intrigue to him. His eyes held flecks of gold that were striking, set against the deep brown.
"Ow! What the hell!" I protested, trying to pry my arm from his grasp. It didn't work. His warm hand held me like a vice grip. As much as I didn't want him cleaning them out, the slight tingle I had felt when he shook my hand, now caressed my arm. Static doesn't do that.
"I need to clean these out before they get infected." He mumbled to himself about stopping it or something. I didn't catch much over my whining. Whatever he was using burned worse than when it all happened.
"It hurts! Stop it!" I tried to sit up, and my head started to pound. I laid back down into the pillows and let him continue to clean them, although I still voiced my discomfort.
"I have a friend coming to check you out. He says not to let you go back to sleep." Concern creased his face with worry lines. The most dramatic one sat right between his eyebrows. Part of me struggled not to touch it. The explosion must have hit me harder than I thought if I was contemplating touching this guy's face.
"Lovely. I don't think I could if I wanted to." Waves of dizziness had me clenching my eyes shut until I heard the door open.
A guy with startling blonde hair walked i
n. It hung well past his shoulders in a cascade of lusciousness any shampoo commercial would kill for. His frame was lean and seemed to glide into the room towards me.
"I'm Ulric. It's nice to meet you, Lia, although I wish it were under better circumstances."
He studied me thoroughly, checking all the scrapes for shrapnel with his slender hands. He pulled a bag off his back and went to work. He dabbed on strong-smelling concoctions and ointments out of unmarked jars. Great, just great! This guy would poison me on top of all my other injuries—someone needed to call an ambulance instead. I felt the tension leaving my stiff muscles, the more he dabbed stuff on. Something he dabbed on had numbed some pain in the cuts, but not before it burned.
"Lia, I need you to drink this. It'll help you heal faster."
The liquid in question impersonated a kale smoothie that had sat on the counter for a day. The ointments and such had been enough home remedies for me.
"No offense, but I'm not drinking that." I gagged as it sloshed around. If it looked that bad, I couldn't even think about how bad it would smell, let alone taste.
"We can't tell if you've had any internal injuries. It's drink this or head to the hospital to explain how you were twenty feet from an unknown bomb explosion, followed by a million questions from the authorities."
