Secrets and Spells

by L. Danvers

  He was seriously getting under my skin. But... I couldn’t help but wonder... “Have we ever been on an airplane together?”

  His eyes lit with intrigue. “Why do you ask?”

  I shook my head, knowing how stupid my explanation was about to sound. “I had a weird dream last night. It felt so real, but it doesn’t make any sense. We were on an airplane and you were trying to comfort me. There was something about my brother and dad...” I couldn’t recall the exact details.

  Xander’s jaw twitched, and I knew at once that it wasn’t just a dream. “That was a long time ago.”

  “What was that about? I remember feeling guilty, but I don’t know why. What was I so upset about?”

  “It’s not important,” Xander said, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “Not important? That’s the first thread of a memory I have, and you don’t think that’s important? You were there. You claim to be my friend. What are you hiding from me?”

  At that, Xander swerved to the side of the road. I instinctively pressed my heel against an imaginary pedal as I braced myself for a crash. The car screeched to a halt, and Xander turned to face me, eyes blazing. “Let’s get something clear. I’m not hiding anything from you. I’m protecting you from the truth.”

  “So, you admit you’re keeping secrets from me?” I shook my head in disgust. “Then we aren’t as close as you claim we are. That, or I was an idiot to ever trust you in the first place.”

  He exhaled deeply, and it looked like it was taking every ounce of willpower he had to keep from screaming at me. In an eerily calm voice, he said, “You’ll know everything when you’re ready to handle it.”

  “What could I have possibly done that was so horrible?” I spat. “What could I have done that was so horrific that I can’t even know about it?” It didn’t make any sense. And he wasn’t offering any explanation. I closed my eyes. I was so frustrated I thought I might cry—but I would never give Xander the satisfaction of seeing me so vulnerable.

  Growing angrier by the second, a rush of fire flooded my veins...

  And then I remembered.

  I remembered the recurring nightmare I’d had.

  The one with the man burning to death.

  The one where he smiled right before I killed him.

  What if that was a memory, too?

  And then I remembered how Xander had reacted when I asked what had happened to my father. It was a similar reaction to the one he was having now. This... protective rage.

  I drew my hand to my mouth, understanding the answer to the secret Xander had tried so desperately to keep.

  “I killed him, didn’t I?” I said, turning to face him. I could feel the color draining from my face, and my voice was faint, like I was a mere shadow of myself. “I killed my father.”

  “IT’S MORE COMPLICATED than it sounds,” Xander said. And there it was. That look. That look that revealed there was more to him than being the charming and smug and sometimes downright obnoxious Blood Heir. That look that suggested that he really did care.

  I wanted to try to understand. But it felt like my entire world had crumbled. I’d waited my whole life to find out who my father was. To meet him.

  And now, I was learning that I was the reason he was dead...

  “Your father was a bad man, Grace,” he said. “And that’s coming from a vampire.”

  I curled my lip in disgust. “Is that supposed to be a joke? Because your timing sucks.”

  “He gave you a choice: you were either with him or against him. He threatened everyone you cared about. He threatened you. And when he dropped the boundary, he unleashed a supernatural war. I know you don’t remember it, but it was bad. And it was only the beginning of what he had in store. You knew that.”

  “And so, I killed him?” I asked, trying to understand.

  “No. You wanted to stop him.” He lifted his wrist, revealing the weird bracelet he always wore. “Do you know what this is?”

  I shrugged. I decided against offering my theories.

  “This is the Bracelet of Wynstar. Years ago, Reed put a curse on me. Like you, your dad was freaky powerful, even for a witch, and he’d found a way to overpower my mind. He was bent on getting revenge against my family. And he took it out on your friend Danielle. He wanted me to kill her. And I would have if it weren’t for you.” He held the bracelet out so that I could get a better look. “Thanks to your spell, Danielle was safe. And I got my life back.”

  “That’s nice and all. But what does this have to do with anything?”

  “You were planning to use a similar spell on him. You wanted to overpower his mind—but instead of making him do evil things, you wanted to make him be good.” He paused for a moment. “You were trying to save him, too, in a way.”

  I hugged my arms around myself, taking it all in. “So, what happened?”

  “We infiltrated a party he’d thrown and conspired with your brother, Nick. You and I waited for Reed in his hotel room, thinking we had the upper hand. But Reed saw right through it. He tried to kill me, and you saved me. But then, he turned on you. You took your brother’s hand—and because you were Carlisle twins, doing so amplified your power. You killed Reed, yes. But it was self-defense.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It’s the truth. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

  Grace

  Xander and I barged into the hospital room, eager to speak with Ben. The muscles in Ben’s face relaxed when he saw me, and in a faint voice, he managed to say, “Grace. You’re safe.”

  The sincerity in his tone made my chest cave. I felt awful for running away like that. “I’m so sorry,” I said, crossing the room until I reached his bedside. “I should have told you I was leaving.”

  He reached for my hand, and I took it. “You don’t owe me an apology, Grace. All that matters is that you’re safe.”

  “From whom?”

  Not knowing the answer, Ben shook his head.

  “It has to be Sofia or Ruby,” Xander offered, stepping closer so that he was now standing over my shoulder. “Either Sofia was taking revenge against Ben for rescuing me and finding you or Ruby discovered he stole her ring.”

  The reality of the situation hit me dead-on. I was stupid for thinking I could run back to Bellamy and pretend like all of this never happened. Sofia and Ruby knew who I was. Which meant that as long as Bellamy and I were together, he’d be in danger. I cared about him too much to do that to him. He might be capable of taking care of himself when dealing with humans. But witches? Werewolves? It was selfish of me to think we could be together.

  And as much as I didn’t fully understand my past, I knew that Ben was a good person. A person who would do anything to protect me. And if I had the power to help him, I owed him that much, didn’t I? I couldn’t run away again knowing that someone was after him. I wasn’t a monster.

  Lifting my gaze, I locked eyes with Ben. “What do we do now?”

  “We?” Xander asked. Even though he was standing behind me, I could sense his smirk.

  I spun around, raising my chin to look him in the eye. “That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it? You need my help. I’m the all-powerful witch, aren’t I?” I asked, raising my hands in question. “So, what’s the plan? Go after Ruby? Face off against the Albrights?”

  “The plan,” Ben said in a strained voice, “is for me to heal. Once I am well enough, we can regroup and come up with a plan of attack.” He erupted into a coughing fit and then slid his hand to his side, groaning. “Have you had a chance to check my place out?” he asked Xander.

  “Not yet.”

  “Would you two mind going there and assessing the damage? If any of those objects got into the wrong hands...” He didn’t have to explain further. “I keep a log of all the objects in the attic. I need you to go through it and see if anything’s missing.”

  I had been so fired up about avenging Ben that it hadn’t even stopped to consider the fact that
he had an entire arsenal of magical objects at his disposal that might have been tampered with. “Of course,” I said, trying my best to sound reassuring. “Whatever you need.”

  A RUSH OF CHILLS ROLLED up my arms as we neared Ben’s door. Xander gave the front door a couple of knocks before pushing it open. Ben’s dog Fangs started barking—you’d never guess such a cute, cuddly pup could sound so intimidating. She pounced on me when we stepped inside.

  I was relieved to see Fangs appeared unharmed, and I bent down to pet her. She licked my hands and cheek and practically climbed into my lap. “It’s okay, girl,” I said, trying to comfort her. “Your dad’s okay. He’ll be home soon.”

  While I was busy tending to Fangs, Xander was surveying the damage on the first floor. The family albums were strewn across the room, and Ben’s La-Z-Boy had been thrown to its side. There were splatters of blood on the floor—Ben’s, Xander determined.

  I should have been here. I could have stopped this.

  I blinked away the tears that were threatening to come. “Is anything missing down here?” I asked, still tending to Fangs as Xander went through the many books.

  “No,” he said, shutting one of the albums and placing it back on the shelf, “but if whoever did this had any doubt that he was related to vampires before, they definitely know now.” He held up another album that was opened to an old sketch of him and his siblings. It was hundreds of years old, if I had to guess, based on their attire and the deep yellowing of the paper.

  I finally got to my feet and helped him clean up the downstairs. I’d been shown an album or two already, but seeing them all laid out in front of me was hard to wrap my head around. Xander had lived through so much. I couldn’t decide whether it was a blessing or a curse.

  I stumbled upon one of the more recent albums. One picture in particular caught my eye. It was of me and Jasper laughing together in one of the booths at Books & Brews. And Xander was there off to the side in the background, his lips curving into a smile. The way he was looking at me almost made me think... “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” I asked him.

  “What?” he asked, busy focusing on the task of getting Ben’s place back in order.

  “Were we ever, you know, together?”

  He stopped what he was doing and turned to look at me. “Why would you ask me that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. You just seem to care about me, that’s all. And in some of these pictures...” My voice trailed off. “I’m just trying to make sense of it all.”

  He blinked.

  “So, were we?”

  His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “No,” he sighed. “We were never together.” And then he got back to work.

  And so did I. I suddenly felt embarrassed about bringing it up. I must have read into things too much. And why would we have been together anyway? He was a vampire—and a ridiculously handsome one at that. With those cheekbones, he could have any girl he wanted. Why would I have thought he would have wanted me?

  It didn’t matter anyway. I had Bellamy.

  For now, at least.

  Grace

  Once the living room was in order, we made our way upstairs, Fangs practically attaching herself to my legs all the while. I couldn’t blame the poor thing. She must have been terrified.

  The upstairs was just as much of a wreck as the downstairs. Maybe worse.

  We went to the attic first since that’s where Ben kept his log and stored most of his artifacts. Xander rummaged through the many boxes until he found the log Ben had said would be there. His eyes widened as he flipped through it, realizing just how much work we had in store for us.

  “This is going to take days,” I said after he’d flipped through five pages or so.

  “Maybe not,” Xander said. He handed the log over to me. “It’s all categorized. And there are pictures, too. That’ll make it easier.”

  “I guess,” I said, feeling overwhelmed. It wouldn’t have been such a daunting task if these objects didn’t look so foreign to me. It felt like I was in a real-life version of an I Spy book. And I was terrible at I Spy books. Thankfully, though, Ben had at least categorized the items by their location. So, we started in one corner and made our way around the entire attic. We began by sorting through an assortment of jewelry—amulets, rings, you name it.

  I realized Xander was eyeing the tattoo on my shoulder. I swiftly readjusted my jacket to cover it better. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I got that tattoo, do you?”

  “It’s not a tattoo,” he said, flipping to the next page of the log. “It’s a Mark.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He let out a heavy sigh. “When witches kill, they’re Marked.”

  I grimaced, mindlessly drawing my hand to my shoulder. “Why?”

  Xander shrugged. “Who knows? Something about balance, blah, blah, blah. You know how witches are.”

  I scowled at him. “No, I don’t. Please elaborate.”

  “There’s a price for everything, or so they claim. I always figured the Marks were the price for taking a life. Like a constant reminder that you carry with you forever.”

  “Great.” I frowned, thinking of my father. “Did I ever kill anyone else?”

  “No. Just Reed.”

  We moved on to the rest of the attic. Multiple objects were missing. My heart began to race as questions arose in my mind.

  Once we had finished checking out the attic, Xander pointed out that we needed to check the bedrooms, too. While Ben took care to hide most of the magical objects, there were a select few that he kept on display. Luckily, he’d made note of those on his log, too.

  We eventually made our way to the guest bedroom where I’d been staying and quickly rummaged through the dresser drawers. The bottom drawer was filled with more jewelry. The middle drawer was mostly stones, vials and powders. And the top drawer was filled with random boxes etched with runes, loose papers with notes written in code and ancient grimoires. Everything was right where it was supposed to be. Finally, we checked the top of the dresser. Ben kept a few random magical objects up there, too: a dagger, a wooden stake (which Xander had a few choice words to say about), silver bullets and—“Where’s the siphoning tool?” Xander asked.

  “The what?”

  “It’s a golden ball used to siphon magic,” he explained as he pointed to the log, his voice rising in panic. “Where is it?”

  I slowly turned around, surveying the room. “It has to be here somewhere.”

  “Does it?” he snapped.

  Good point.

  “What would Ruby or Sofia want with a siphoning tool?” he wondered to himself, referring to our two prime suspects.

  I thought on it for a moment, trying to recall the contents of the various grimoires I’d read in recent weeks. The siphoning tool had a specific purpose: to siphon dark magic. But in the wrong hands, the magic wouldn’t necessarily stay stored. It could be used. Worry creased my brow. “I’d say someone’s planning something big.”

  “Care to explain?”

  “If they’re siphoning magic from something, one would think they’d have a use in mind for that magic...”

  He grunted. “Let’s keep looking. Once we go through everything and see what else is missing, we can decide where to go from there.”

  He was right. We needed to go through everything and see what else had been taken. Then, we’d know what we were up against.

  “Why didn’t Ben have some sort of security system installed in his house?” I wondered aloud. “Seems like it would have saved him a lot of trouble.”

  “The problem with security systems,” Xander explained, moving on to the closet, “is that when they go off, the police come.” He gestured vaguely to the room. “This wouldn’t be easy to explain now, would it?”

  “Fair enough. But you’d think he would have had a witch put up a boundary spell around his place or something.”

  He glanced at me over his shoulder. “He did.”

&nb
sp; “Oh,” I said, realizing he was referring to me. “Then how did whoever did this get in here?”

  “They must have have been working with a witch who’s even more powerful than you.”

  I decided not to press the issue. It didn’t do any good to think about what he should have done. It didn’t matter. He’d been attacked in his own home and was now in the hospital. And multiple magical objects had been stolen from him... I wished I knew of a spell to pick up magical fingerprints or something. What’s more, I’d have to look into setting up an even stronger protection spell for Ben’s home.

  Xander shook his head. “You’re right,” he said. “This stuff should be kept somewhere safer than this.”

  “Such as...?”

  “I’ll come up with something.”

  And with that, we got back to work.

  WE HAD WORKED THE ENTIRE day, and we still hadn’t finished going through everything. Xander ordered a pizza, and we made awkward small talk while we waited for it to arrive.

  “So,” he said, searching for something to talk about that didn’t involve witches, “how did you and Belly meet?”

  “His name’s Bellamy,” I scowled. “And we met on my birthday.”

  “Let me guess,” he grinned. “You met at a bar.”

  “He was saving me from some jerk who was hitting on me.”

  Xander pressed his finger to his lip and tapped it. “So, he saved you from someone who was hitting on you... by hitting on you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “And your first date?”

  I swallowed, knowing telling him would only lead to jokes. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Come on, it couldn’t have been that bad.”

  “It wasn’t bad. It was wonderful.”

  “So, where’d he take you?” he asked. “Come on, don’t make me compel it out of you.”

  “You wouldn’t do that...”

  He raised a brow. “Wouldn’t I? I guess I could always get it out of him...”