“Any news from the Council?” I asked.
“Nothing new since this morning,” Nicholas responded. “Someone will come get him sometime tomorrow, I guess.”
Justin wandered several paces away, his longish blond hair flopping aimlessly in the breeze. He stood, gazing stoically out over the ocean, as if contemplating his own fate. I didn’t know if it was him or me, but when I felt his emotions they seemed so…intense right now. More so than usual.
I turned to Nicholas. “I need to talk to Justin alone,” I whispered. “I can tell he’s more upset than he’s letting on.”
Nicholas nodded. “Yeah…I think you’re right. He’ll probably have an easier time talking to you than me.”
I gave him a small smile. “It’s weird. I haven’t been alone with him since…you know. Not that I’m afraid of him or anything,” I quickly added.
He looked at me grimly. “Just do me a favor, would you? I get that you need your time alone with him, and I respect that. But for now, could you just stay within my sight? Maybe just go for a walk down the beach or something? I promise I won’t sit here and stare at you the whole time, but just in case.”
I placed my finger over his lips, silencing him. “Nothing will happen,” I whispered. “But I was just planning to walk down shore a bit anyways, and you are more than welcome to stare all you want.” I smiled up at him, pleased that he was being so understanding. And I realized how much I liked that someone had my back and was watching out for my safety.
“Max and I’ll be here playing ‘throw the stick in the ocean’. Don’t worry ‘bout us.”
I gave him another quick kiss and joined Justin down by the water.
“Wanna go for a walk, just you and me?” I asked quietly as I stood by his side. His initial delight was quickly overridden by guilt, fear, and shame. He nodded, giving me a small, crooked grin, and we headed south toward the pier.
“So, there’s something you don’t know about me,” I said after a few moments of awkward silence.
“Really? I thought I knew all your dark secrets.” Justin gave me a sidelong gaze, a wry smirk playing on his lips.
“I don’t think you know this particular secret. Part of my witch package is that I’m an Empath. Sometimes, I experience other people’s feelings as if they’re my own. Whatever they’re feeling, whether they’re happy, sad, scared, angry…it floods through me the same way it does them.”
Justin made a face. “Whoa, really? That would…well…suck, actually.”
“Oh, don’t even get me started on the level of suckage it is. But I don’t feel everyone equally. Some people I feel more than others, for whatever reason. And this—” I fingered the flowered blocking bracelet Ana had given me. “This is supposed to help ward off unwanted emotions. But it doesn’t keep all of them out.”
“That must be harsh having that—HEY!” He turned suddenly and grabbed my shoulders. My heart stopped and I caught my breath, until I saw the comprehension dawning in his eyes. “So that’s how you knew what was happening to Savannah that night at the bonfire!”
I slowly exhaled, and nodded. “Guilty,” I admitted. “I felt her terror and knew she was in trouble. Sorry I had to lie to you.” We continued our walk. I hated that my first instinct had been to be afraid of him when he grabbed me like that. Then again, it was probably only natural, considering…
“Hey, no worries. I totally understand.” He grinned. “I guess it’s a good power to have, huh? You can help people?”
I shrugged and bent over to pick up a pretty pink seashell embedded in the sand. I traced my fingers over its smooth surface. “I guess. But that’s not the way it usually works. That particular time was sort of…unique.”
“What’s it usually like?”
I shrugged. “I just …pick up on things. But normally I can’t do anything about them. I guess it just gives me insight…like if someone is lying to me or trying to hide something.”
He brushed his hair back from his face and again turned his gaze to the ocean. He was quiet for a while. “Do you feel me?” he finally asked.
I chuckled under my breath. “Justin. Of all the people I’ve known in my whole entire life, I feel your emotions the strongest.”
He turned to me, his eyes wide. “What? Are you sure? How do you know?”
“Just trust me, I know.”
I swore I saw the faintest blush creeping up the side of his tanned face. “So you think…you can feel…everything I’m feeling?”
“I don’t think—I know. Not necessarily everything. But definitely some things.”
“Like what?” he asked casually. But he didn’t fool me. What he really wondered was if I knew how much he liked me, and for how long.
But I wasn’t about to open that can of worms right now. “I feel your shame,” I said softly. “I feel your guilt about what you did, even though it wasn’t your fault. I feel your frustration, and I know how terribly lonely you are. You feel like you have no one to talk to. Like you’re this outsider…this freak.”
I could see his jaw tighten. He kicked at some dried seaweed beneath his feet as he plodded along. Now he felt insecure…embarrassed. Great!
“And the reason I’m telling you this is because you have to stop…it’s killing me,” I pleaded with a small smile, hoping to lighten the gloomy mood that had suddenly descended on us.
He lowered his head. “I’m doing something that’s killing you again?” he mumbled.
“Justin, no! It’s not about me. It’s you. It’s what you’re doing to yourself. How positively awful you feel all the time, and how much you hate yourself for what you did, who you became. It’s not your fault! You have to stop punishing yourself this way!”
He glanced over at me, his blue eyes sad and moist. I shivered, more from his grief than from the cool ocean breeze. “Well, I guess I won’t be such a burden to you after tomorrow, or whenever it is that your people do their hocus-pocus to make me forget everything. I mean, I’ll be lucky to remember my own name, right? So I’m sure I won’t be feeling all that awful for trying to kill you.”
“Justin…”
“I mean, it’s for the best, right? All I do is hurt you, even when I’m not trying to. If you can feel all my feelings like you say, then you already know how much I like you. In my letter I told you I loved you, but that was so stupid—”
“No it wasn’t…it was sweet.”
“It was stupid! Love goes both ways. When it’s only one-sided, it’s not love. It’s… just… lust. Or a pathetic crush. Or complete lunacy. Whatever.”
“That’s not true,” I whispered.
“It’s ‘cause of him, isn’t it?” His voice was subdued. “It’s because you love Nicholas. I mean, I can’t really blame you. I can see why you’d like him. He’s way more suitable for you than I am…obviously.”
“Justin, I care about you deeply. That’s why I’m so worried about you now. It hurts me to know how much you’re beating yourself up over this. I mean, really…if you think about it…it was actually a good thing this all happened!”
Justin stared at me like I’d just pulled a unicorn out of my ear. “How in a million years is this a good thing?”
I thought fast. Why had I said that? In my desperate attempt to find the silver lining, I suddenly realized I wasn’t sure there actually was one.
“Well…umm…first of all…if it hadn’t happened, we would’ve never known what you really were, and you wouldn’t have been cured of it.”
Justin nodded, his expression serious. “Yeah…you’re right about that. Thank goodness we found that out. That part was really terrific. Highlight of my senior year, to be sure.”
“Well, okay, think about it. Really…it was sort of a best-case-scenario. Nicholas was able to stop the attack, and he Healed me right away…it wasn’t even two minutes after you…well…I wasn’t hurt for long—”
“That it even happened at all…that you were hurt for even one second—”
“But i
t was me—your friend. Someone who was able to help you. And now you know the truth, and you’re all better! Well, almost, anyway. But what if it had been someone else?”
Justin glanced up.
“Say you happened on another maiden witch somewhere, and she’d triggered the Hunter curse. But say this time you were successful…” I let the sentence fade as my words sunk in. I realized that I was right after all. Had it happened almost any other way, the results would’ve been catastrophic…and permanent.
Justin shook his head, visibly shaken. “I guess I never thought of it that way,” he admitted. “If I’d ever actually…killed someone…like, literally ended their life, no matter who it was, even if it was someone I didn’t know…”
“See? So even though the circumstances were terrible, we were able to make the best of it. I’m okay…you’re cured. That’s pretty good, don’t you think?”
He shrugged and stared at the sand. “I guess you’re right,” he finally admitted. “And maybe if I wasn’t going to have my brain zapped I might be able to forgive myself and move on. In fact, I’d really like to be able to do that…” He abruptly stopped. Shoving his hands in his jeans pockets, he turned to stare out at the water again.
“Justin?” I put my hand on his arm. “What is it?”
He shook his head. “I mean, I don’t have a choice, right? It’s what I get. What I deserve. I just have to shut up and accept what’s coming to me—”
“Justin—no. This isn’t to punish you. It’s to help you. It’s to make you forget the horrible things that happened and to protect you from knowing too much…stuff that can make you crazy.”
He spun to face me, his eyes intense, and his mouth drawn. He shook his head. “But don’t you see…I don’t want to forget.”
“Why not? I would think you’d welcome the chance—”
“Because the only person who would actually be forgetting what happened is me! It won’t undo the past or take away the pain I’ve caused. Nothing will change, except for the fact that I’ll be totally oblivious of my role and who I really am. I’ll be an ignorant blind man the rest of my life!”
What could I say? He was right. We’d all know the truth. He’d be the only one in the dark.
“And you’ll know, Callie,” he continued, his voice lower. “You’ll always know what I did to you, but I’ll have no idea. Say this spell does work and by some miracle I do maintain most of my brain and things go back to how they were before. It will all still be totally wrong. It will be a lie. There will always be this thing between us, and you’ll know what it is, and Sophie and Lily and Nicholas and all your other witchy friends will know. But I won’t. There will always be this huge, terrible secret between us.”
“Are you saying you don’t want them to do the spell on you?”
He threw up his hands, exasperated. “Would you? Come on, let’s be real. Who would want that? Who would want their brain to be magically fried?”
“It’s just to help you get over the painful memories—”
“That’s what I’d like to do, Callie. Get over them. Heal, learn, and someday…when I’m ready…move on, and hopefully be better for all this, somehow. But I can’t do that if my mind and my life are stolen from me. Pain, I can eventually recover from. And maybe all these horrible feelings I have now will someday make me a better person. But what they’re going to do to me…I’ll have no chance of ever recovering from that. Zero. Even if it all goes perfectly, I’ll still be just some sort of zombie. I’ll be living one version of the truth, while everyone else is living another.”
I glanced up the shore. Nicholas and Max were nothing but tiny specks in the distance, yet I knew that Nicholas was watching us right now. I didn’t know what to do. I felt how deeply distressed Justin was, and more than anything I wanted to help him.
But there was nothing I could do.
Chapter 18. Sanctuary
After dinner, I told Dad I had a lot of homework to do and retreated to the sanctuary of my bedroom. Without thinking I locked the door behind me, something that had become a habit of late. Whether it was Nicholas visiting at all hours of the night to kiss me and hold me in my sleep, or Sophie and Lily shimmering in just to chat, there seemed to be more and more reasons to ensure my privacy.
Of course I told myself I was doing this to protect my dad…to prevent him from being exposed to anything that may confuse or alarm him. But deep down I knew that increasingly, I was feeling the strong urge to be me—to be as free as I wanted to be. To do what I wanted to do, with no restraints. I wanted to open and close my drapes from across the room with a swish of my hand and not worry about being caught. I wanted to flip the pages of my book without touching them. And I wanted my magical best friends and boyfriend to be able to shimmer in whenever they wanted and not have Dad wonder how in the world they got there, or, heaven forbid, catch them coming or going.
I lay on my bed and pondered…how was it possible to totally hide from someone you loved, the fact that you’re a witch? How was Mom able to keep it from Dad? True, they were only together a short time before she died. And to be totally honest, Dad wasn’t exactly the type of guy who’d ever suspect anything supernatural even existed…not by a longshot. But what about other people? I’d met Sophie’s dad, and he was a sharp guy— a banker for some mortgage company or something. How had he not figured out after all these years that, not only was his wife a witch, but his daughter was one too?
I sighed and rolled off my bed and headed into the bathroom. I started to run hot water in the tub, then poured in some coconut scented bubble bath. As I waited for the tub to fill I flopped back down on my bed, flicked out the lights and gazed up at the stars.
I had so many questions…about magic…about our life. So much I needed to know. Yet somehow, many of the truly important answers seemed always just out of reach. I loved Ana. I trusted Ana. But sometimes I got the feeling she wasn’t telling me everything, or she was ‘sanitizing’ the truth. Like, why did it take her so long to tell me about my mom? I could understand her not coming out the first day and saying, “Welcome to Crystal Cove. Oh, by the way, your mom dabbled in black magic and got your grandfather killed.” But she could have told me a lot sooner. I deserved the truth.
But I didn’t want to rock the boat. Deep down I knew I was always afraid of losing everything we had here. Like any moment it could all be ripped away, and we could be sent packing, back to the bayou, back to that cramped shack with no air and scant food, away from my new friends and my life of magic. Dad and I owed Ana so much. Everything. We couldn’t go back to how it was before. Not after being here. It wouldn’t be fair to Dad. It would break him…and me.
But sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder if the things Ana had offered us had bought my obedience and my loyalty, without my even realizing it. Was I so afraid to lose this wonderful life she’d given us that I automatically went along with everything she wanted, without challenging or questioning anything? Were my fears costing me more than I knew? But really, what choice did I have?
When the entire bathroom had been filled with the aromatic scents of a tropical island, I stripped off my clothes and gently lowered myself into the hot water. After adding a few effervescent salts to the foaming bubbles of vanilla and coconut, I swished my hand to turn off the lights in the bathroom. Then I gently touched the candles along the ledge by the tub, igniting their wicks.
I sank further into the comforting warmth, and felt the tension slowly release from my shoulders. I closed my eyes, and my thoughts drifted to Justin…how his aching torment was tearing him apart. What had he ever done to deserve such a cruel and wicked fate? Nothing, that’s what. He was simply born. And then he was cursed. Damned to continue a legacy of hate and murder. And then the cure had created a whole new set of problems.
“If this isn’t the loveliest sight I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what is.” The husky voice broke through my reverie.
My eyes flew open. “Nicholas! What are you doing he
re?” I demanded in a loud whisper. I glanced down, relieved I was completely hidden beneath thick layers of bubbles.
He smiled in the candlelight and kneeled beside me, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of my hair behind my ear. “I wanted to check in on you…see how you were doing.”
“You coulda knocked first,” I said, my tone light, although I was only half-teasing. What if I’d been standing here buck naked?
He chuckled. “I’m sorry. I certainly didn’t mean to invade your privacy. I saw that you were just relaxing here in the tub, and not exposing me to anything that would corrupt my innocent mind.” He winked, but added quietly, “I wouldn’t have come over if I thought it would bother you.”
I smiled and lifted a wet hand from the water. “Of course it’s no bother,” I said softly, pulling him in for a kiss. “I always love seeing you. You know that.”
“I’ll shimmer to your patio and knock on your back door from now on,” he murmured, nuzzling my neck. “I don’t want to abuse my privileges.”
“You don’t have to do that. I kind of like having you show up when I’m least expecting it. I like feeling that I’m never really alone. That you could be here at any second…like you belong here.”
“I do belong here. I belong anywhere you are,” he whispered, and kissed me again. Then he got up and grabbed the chair from the vanity, turned it around and straddled it. “Did Justin tell you what was on his mind?”
I nodded and poured some more vanilla oils in the sudsy water. “He doesn’t want to have the memory spell done. He doesn’t want to forget what happened.” I frowned.
Nicholas arched his eyebrow. “And you don’t agree with him?”
I shrugged and played with some of the bubbles. “It doesn’t matter if I agree or not. Ana and the Council are going to do whatever they want. It’s not like I can tell them not to do something. But I just think…”
“What?”
I sighed. “I dunno…I mean, even though he doesn’t want to forget, I just think it’ll be better if he does. I mean, you should feel how much he hates himself for all that’s happened. He says that he’ll forgive himself in time and come to terms with everything, but I’m not so sure.” I shook my head and sighed again. “His pain runs deep…deeper than anything I’ve ever felt before. Even from my dad.”
The Complete Spellbound Trilogy Bundle Page 39
