by Amber Lynn
Copyright ©2018 Amber Lynn
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter One
Magic.
I pause on that single word not because I’m stuck trying to come up with something to say. My hesitation to continue stems from the fact that there is so much I can say about the subject. Rambling through exactly what I mean by that would confuse rather than educate, so let’s think about what the word means.
Magic means different things to different people.
Clearly, this train of thought may not be any less rambling but hear me out. The word itself is so cool that people have taken to calling themselves it. There are games and bands and movies and TV shows that I’m sure all use that single amazing word to sum up what they are.
In the general sense, I think we can all agree that magic is the use of supernatural forces to do something. Whether it be controlling the weather or flipping on and off light switches, magic does stuff. I hate that word “stuff” but it does a good job of taking the place of the millions of possibilities.
So now that we’re on the same page as far as what magic is, and how vast that word really is, maybe you can understand why it’s hard for me to come up with the right flow to start this story. Or maybe you still don’t understand what I’m talking about.
That makes sense. Very few people live, eat and breathe magic the way I do. I’m not a novice human practitioner – that’s the nice way us enchanters describe humans who dabble with things they don’t understand. That’s right. I said enchanters, not witches, warlocks, wizards, sorcerers or sorceresses.
Enchanters.
One might ask what the difference is between all those labels, other than of course the obvious gender differences. The simple fact is that the list of labels are made-up words to try to describe who I am, and enchanter is the real deal. That would be the singular form of the word for all you keeping track.
I should have probably mentioned at the very beginning of this that I have been told I’m an acquired taste. So, if you’re already trying to figure out where this story is going and how long you’re going to have to listen to me, you’re going to have to wait a little longer on the former, and for the latter, you’re totally stuck with me since I’m the narrator.
Why am I writing anything at all? That’s a great question.
You see, I’ve been forced into therapy by the Grand Council, and my therapist thinks I should start a journal of sorts. With very little guidance on what exactly that means, you’re currently reading my first entry.
Lucky you. I can’t promise they’re going to get any better.
I suppose it would’ve been smart to start with who I am, rather than jumping right into magic and what it means to me. Do you need to know who I am, though? Do you need to know any of this at all?
If I haven’t scared you off already, I’m going to say yes.
My name is Periwinkle Jasmine Rose Lavender Tulip Murphy. I’m sure you can tell just by that why I’m in therapy. Who in their right mind names their daughter after five flowers?
My mom. That’s who.
I don’t know if she thought naming me that craziness would make me soft and delicate or what, but I’m sure she’s been greatly disappointed if that’s the case. Having a daughter who is going through her fifth Council-appointed therapy session in two hundred years isn’t what any enchanter mother wants. That’s not even getting into the fact that I’m two-hundred-years old and I’m stuck in the body of a seventeen-year-old.
I imagine by revealing that information some people wonder if I’m some sort of vampire. I only use that word because I assume it’s one most people know. I’m not a freaking bloodsucker, so don’t even go down that road. Yes, bloodsucker is the accurate word, if you ask me. Other people probably have a nicer word for it.
The people I’ve come across equate never-aging to bloodsuckers. I can see why, with the million different books and movies and such about them, but they aren’t the only ones who can have a little trouble in the aging department.
Enchanters, generally, will age until they look like they’re in their late twenties, maybe early thirties if life has been rough. They can use their magic to compensate and look other ages if they want, but most don’t.
I’m cursed to not only never age to my perfect, roughly thirty-year-old self, but I also can’t mask my age with a spell. A logical person would explain now why in the world I was cursed, but we’ve already gone over the fact that I’ve been disciplined by the Council five times, so I don’t think we need to get into specifics right now. Plus, I think you need to know a little more about me and my life before we get personal.
The fact that I look seventeen isn’t essential to this story. As far as anyone out there needs to know, I’m two hundred and thirty-three years old.
Impressed? I didn’t think so. I wouldn’t be impressed either. I know people who are almost a millennium old, so not even hitting two-fifty seems weak.
I’m currently stuck living in a dinky town in northern Michigan called Newberry. Stuck probably isn’t the right word, but my mom decided people were getting too suspicious of our never-aging appearances after spending the last five years in another equally tiny town in Arizona. The schedule is consistent, so I’m used to moving. I just wish for once we could move to a city with more than a couple thousand people in it.
Other enchanters do it, but other enchanters haven’t been cursed to be a teenager forever. The curse is the only reason I’m still living with my mother. It’s bad enough that I can’t age. The stupid curse also makes it so I can’t be more than five miles from my mom. Talk about complete torture.
Sure, I could live in a house across town. We’ve tried that before, and we used to get away with it, but in the present days of the village raising the child, it doesn’t work so great. Multiple times I’ve been told I need to move to a group home. The humans don’t think I look old enough to be living by myself. With no fancy paperwork saying otherwise, we tend to move the next day.
&n
bsp; I’ve tried to produce birth certificates with fake ages, but the curse is a tightly-woven headache that doesn’t even allow that. It’d be great if I was one of those seventeen-year-olds who can pass for twenty, but I’m not. I was a lanky child growing up, and evidently, I will continue to be the skinny redhead who barely has any boobs for the rest of my life.
Obviously, I really pissed someone off. I’ve spent over two hundred years trying to make it up to her and get my freedom back, but we’ve already touched on my winning personality, which has made my shackles only squeeze tighter around my ankles.
If you take nothing else from my journal here, please believe me when I say you don’t want to piss an enchanter off. And kissing someone they believe is their soulmate will do just that.
You’d think with our long lives that we’d be above that pettiness. It was an innocent mistake, at least that’s what I keep saying, and it happened centuries ago. I don’t get why anyone would still be upset about it.
“Jazz.”
My mom’s voice carries easily up the stairs to my room. I can already tell from the annoyance in the yell that I’m not going to like whatever it is she wants to tell me. The nice thing is that she’s caught on to my current preferred name.
When we move, we tend to change our names to make sure the humans from our previous homes don’t try to follow us around. Although, my mom is currently using her real name. I ran into trouble in the early fifties when a human male decided he was in love with me. He clearly needed glasses, but that’s beside the point. We’d moved before the usual five-year limit, and he followed us. It’s surprising that it took so long for that to happen, because I could totally see men following my mom around. Once it did happen, we got better at vanishing into the night.
You know, the fun thing about being an enchanter keeping a journal is that I’m not even writing or typing this stuff. I’m relaxed on my comfy pillow-top queen bed staring up at the ceiling as my thoughts are sort of recorded. It’s not all my thoughts, nor are they spilling out the jumbled way they occur in my head, but it’s something I don’t really have to concentrate on to keep up.
If you haven’t figured it out, that is a very good thing. I have the tendency to let my mind wander and don’t always follow through with my commitments. That’s probably why my therapist made me take a journal that would write itself.
“Jazz!”
I sigh as I take in the fact that Mom’s voice is now making the house shake. I feel for the woman, even if it seems like I hate her, which is something I’m sure you’ll pick up as we go along. She’s been tied to me for years. That means her social life sucks as bad as mine does.
Any cool vacations with a new beau would involve me tagging along. That’s not exactly a recipe for romance. I haven’t touched on my dad, mainly because he’s completely out of the picture, so he’s one of those topics that will be off limits in my journal.
I’m sure the good doctor who’s making me do this is hoping I’ll write all about him and how I feel like there’s a piece missing in my life or something. You can’t miss what was never there, and from the time I was a baby, he wasn’t, so like I said, off limits.
I hear my mother taking in another breath to scream at me, so I roll out of bed, letting my feet thump soundly on the floor. Enchanters have excellent hearing when they want. I have no doubt she hears me moving around. Adjusting my cute purple sundress, I smooth it down and head for what I’m sure will be an enthralling conversation.
Chapter Two
I feel I need to explain a little more about this whole journal thing. Yes, I’m aware that we’re on the way down to see what in the world my mother wants, but I want to make it clear that while I’m trotting down the twenty-two polished oak stairs to get to my mother, the journal keeps going.
It’s interesting that it seems to be breaking itself up in to chapters. I wasn’t expecting that, but it will probably make it easier to go back and read later. Whether I do something crazy like that is still up in the air. It might be interesting to see what it pieces together from our misadventures while it’s keeping track of things.
If you couldn’t tell, I’ve injected you into my journal. I’m already talking about us walking down the stairs together. There may not even be a you, but everything in life is easier when you have someone by your side, so you’re a part of this. Rest assured that this is probably just leading up to me heaving you off on whatever has my mom’s panties in a bunch. Now that I’m closer to the apex of the storm, I can hear she’s talking to someone, a female someone.
As I mentioned, enchanters have great hearing, which means I could’ve listened in from my room to figure out what’s going on. You’ll find I’m a glutton for punishment and tend to get blindsided when I could’ve made things easier on myself. It’s something I’m working on with my shrink. After six weeks, we aren’t making any progress.
“It really is so nice of you to go out of your way to welcome us to the neighborhood.”
Mom’s voice is so full of saccharine that I feel the need to scrub my teeth. She’s laying it on thick for someone, another sign I’m not going to like where things are leading. I can only think of three times in my very long life that she sounded like she was kissing up to someone.
All three times included her trying to convince the Council that killing me wasn’t necessary. In my dealings with them, I haven’t felt I’ve pushed them that far, so I’ve always thought it was a wasted effort on her part.
The woman she’s talking to isn’t an enchanter. That makes her sugary voice even odder in my book. There is absolutely no reason to butter up a human. We’ve been living in town for two weeks, and no one has shown any interest. I’d hoped we could keep that going indefinitely. Once the humans start wanting to make friends, I usually just lock myself in my room and try to throw away the key.
I’m not saying there aren’t tolerable humans out there. I’m saying I have extreme difficulty finding them. Time after time, I get the short end of the stick when it comes to friends. Mom tends to find a few friends to make living with me tolerable, but it just doesn’t happen for me.
I imagine you’re thinking it’s because of my winning personality. Chances are good you’re right. When people try to get close, I push them away. More about that later since I’m rounding the corner to the kitchen, where Mother is entertaining our company.
“Well, when I heard a rumor you had a daughter, I knew I had to come over and make sure you have everything you need to get her enrolled. School has been back from summer break for a few days, and if you don’t want her to fall behind, you’ll want to get her started. Maybe even tomorrow.”
My step falters as I hear the woman’s raspy voice. The voice reminds me of my grandmother’s just a little bit. It’s been at least a hundred years since I’ve seen my mom’s mother, but her voice isn’t something you forget. The woman commands a room even when her voice sounds like she’s chain smoked a carton of cigarettes a day and isn’t much more than a whisper.
It’s not the subtle familiarity I pick up in the voice that keeps me from walking over the threshold of the kitchen. It’s the topic of conversation.
School is not something I do, even stuck in a body of someone who looks like they belong there. I cannot convince people I’m old enough to live alone, but I can pass any and every test someone throws at me. I could write the tests they give.
I wait for my mom to tell the woman that. To tell her that I don’t need to go to school.
She’s silent as she turns to face me, smiling widely. Something I’ve never felt starts fluttering deep in my stomach as I look at her straight white teeth revealed by the curling up of her lips. As long as I’ve lived, I didn’t think there was something I haven’t experienced before.
Running afoul of many people, one would think dread filtered into my system at some point. Unease about what is to come is natural, but I’ve always dealt with things without worrying about what they mean. As someone who is practically immo
rtal, fear doesn’t register.
I’ve been threatened with death many times. Every time it happens I laugh. It’s usually humans doing the threatening, so the fear I see associated with death never registers for me. That goes for just about everything someone could fear.
It’s hard to say exactly what it is about the way my mother’s painted red lips smile, but like her voice when she called me downstairs, it isn’t pleasant. Whatever her evil plan is, I want nothing to do with it.
“Now, now, Jazz, don’t go stomping off,” Mother says before I can do just that. “I know you’ve been homeschooled up until now, because you’re so smart, but I think Mrs. Kline here has made a great case for you to spend your senior year at her school.”
Mrs. Kline’s hazel-colored eyes had been glued to my mother, but as soon as she mentions me, they find a new oddity to focus on. There’s way too much excitement in them. They’re practically headlights.
“Aren’t you darling. Your mother tells me you have such a thirst for knowledge that your old school couldn’t teach you fast enough. I think you’ll find at Newberry High we realize the needs of our students and adjust curriculum for them.”
It doesn’t take much to get my magic flowing, emotions can really set it off, so I must be careful where my thoughts go when I’m around humans. That fact doesn’t stop me from picturing the tight gray pantsuit Mrs. Kline is wearing squeezing around her torso, trying to push all the air out of her lungs.
My mother’s scolding voice quickly dashes away the image of the other woman’s eyes popping out of her head. It’s for the best, but only adds to my non-friendly mood.
“Jazz.”
The single word is stretched out to sound like ten. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, but I swear my mother can do that. By the way, her name is Ophelia, and since she’s annoying me so much right now, I think I’m just going to call her that.
“Why would I go to school when I can just go take a test and pick up a diploma, Ophelia?”
Ophelia’s eyes squint as her head turns to the side and she crosses her arms just under her breasts. Thankfully, she isn’t wearing one of the shirts she slips on when she goes man-hunting. Hoisting her breasts up even the fraction she is would’ve spilled them out for all to see. Again, I’m exaggerating. It’s just the mood I’m in, so you’ll have to forgive me for a few minutes while I get this all sorted out.
