A bone-chilling scream made everyone stop what they were doing and turn their eyes to Violet, who had her hands to her head, pulling them away and staring in horror at her fingers.
Big clumps of her luscious red curls came away in her hands before the fiery chunks dropped to the floor.
Bernie winced.
This was exactly why she wasn’t allowed to have nice things.
Chapter 9
“Do you have any idea the kind of power it takes to do what you did tonight, Bernie?” Ridge asked. “No one, not even Winnie, can grab hold of a spell that powerful and bend it to their will. You were amazing.”
Well, that was sort of the problem, wasn’t it? She didn’t know. She also didn’t know how she’d done it. But she did know seeing Violet threatening to hurt Gus had upset her to the point that she’d felt a rush of unimaginable rage.
Gus had been so kind to her, she wasn’t going to stand around and just let him end up annihilated by a stronger, younger witch.
She’d reacted. For the first time since she’d had a name for what was happening, she’d taken control. How she’d known what to do was just luck and Fee’s cheerleading.
Maybe what she’d done had to do with fear—stress? “Freaked out” was an understatement as she’d watched Violet and Doris talk while they played bingo. The entire time she’d been calling numbers, she’d wondered how Doris had found her, and why? Why would Eddie’s somethin’ on the side come to Paris?
Panic had begun to dig in by the time Violet set her sights on Gus, but she’d lost track of Doris in the fray. She’d scanned the parking lot after most everyone had cleared the center, but nothing. Doris had disappeared.
Maybe she’d just been seeing things? Maybe it hadn’t been Doris at all? She was starting to wonder what was real and what wasn’t anymore.
“So, wanna show me how you did that thing with your hands?” he joked, grinning at her.
Bernie stared at Ridge for a moment as he leaned against the Pacer and eyed her, pinning her with his intent gaze when she didn’t answer.
A change of subject was needed. “I crushed the center because this magic thing is bigger than I am. Demolished it. I’m struggling to…manage my magic. But I’ll help fix Hallow Moon. Whatever it takes.”
Ridge lifted his square jaw. “You don’t have to worry about fixing anything, Bernie. The seniors will handle it.”
“Uh, no. I’m not going to let them clean that up. It’s a mess in there, Ridge. I’m not going to have someone’s hip replacement on my conscience.”
Ridge cocked his dark head at her, pulling his Stetson off and setting it on top of the Pacer’s roof. “Bernie, no one’s lifting anything. They’ll cast spells, use their wands to rebuild. They have the technology.”
Right. She kept forgetting the magic part of her new life at the most inane times. It seemed at every turn, she was giving her secret away. Bernie winced, straightening her tracksuit jacket that Flora had kindly taped together with duct tape to keep her covered.
If she wasn’t careful, she was going to get caught, and then who knew how many classes and years of studying she’d have to do to get off probation? There was no margin for error here.
Looking down at the pavement of the parking lot, she nodded. “Of course. What was I thinking?”
“Besides, you didn’t trash the place. Violet did. She started this mess. She was ready to nail an elder over some plastic balls and a card with a bunch of numbers on it. That’s unacceptable.”
“And now she’s bald.” Her gut clenched. Violet had run from the center sobbing. Ugly, loud sobs of horror.
Ridge barked a laugh, clamping his mouth shut the moment she shot him an angry glare.
“Not funny.”
“Aw, c’mon. It’s definitely a little funny. Violet’s most precious resource is her hair, which leads me to believe your magical Spidey senses have the rare gift of reading others’ deepest desires. Interesting.”
They were getting too deep for her. She didn’t know the nuances of her magic because she’d never considered it magic, or even at all magical, until ten months ago. She had no frame of reference and all the kitschy catchphrases and topics applied to said magic were beyond her vocabulary.
“Where is Violet, anyway?”
“They called in Greta and she located her. Violet’s in some serious trouble. She’ll go before Baba Yaga and the Council for attacking an elder. When they locate Baba, that is.”
She took far more pleasure in that than she should, but she kept it on the inside. “Good. Now I have to go.”
“Is that all you have to add to this conversation, Bernie Sutton?” His tone was teasing, warm, and making her tingle all over.
“Yep.” She dug in her purse for her keys, avoiding Ridge’s eyes again. Avoiding the heat of his body, the scent of his cologne, the width of his thick chest.
Tilting her chin upward, he asked, “What coven are you from, Bernie?”
And now her trouble was really beginning. “I’m from the coven of cul-de-sac in small-town Massachusetts.”
“Cute. Now seriously?”
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “My parents were free birds. No constraints, no declared covens.”
“Right. I rather figured that. They chose to live among humans. I did, too, when I left college and went to Dallas. But they didn’t just hatch. They had family somewhere along the line. How old are they?”
She stiffened; the dull pain she always felt when her parents were mentioned took a stab at her chest. “Were they. They died before I went to prison.”
His thumb scraped along her lower lip. “I’m sorry. Mine are gone, too. Plane crash. My dad was a private pilot.”
So witches could die? They were immortal, not infallible. Check.
She felt the remembered sting of losing her parents on Ridge’s behalf. “I’m sorry. Losing your parents is hard.”
“Do you mind if I ask how you lost yours?”
“Murder.”
His fingers tightened on her jaw for a moment. “I didn’t know, or I never would have asked. I’m sorry, Bernie.”
“Me too.”
“Does the coven know they were murdered? Was there an investigation from Council or were they cast out when they chose to shun their counterparts?”
What was this, the Witch Inquisition? Shun? Is that what happened if you decided you didn’t want to be a practicing witch? Again, this was getting too deep. Dangerous, murky waters she knew nothing about.
“I’m not clear on the details. My parents were very private.”
Dropping his fingers from her jaw, he instead wrapped them around her waist and pulled her close. “Bernie?”
She gulped. All rational thought stopped when his delectable body pressed to hers; her head, resting against his chest, was dizzy and she was at a loss as to where to put her hands. But she was going to give it a go by placing them on his waist with a stern reminder they were to move no farther.
“What?”
“You’re lying.”
Her heart almost popped out of her chest.
What to do, what to do? Maybe gasp like she was insulted? No. Denial was always a sure sign of guilt. Don’t panic. Answer a question with a question. Avoid, evade, find the nearest bed with covers you can pull over your head.
“Excuse me?” she asked into his chest, which was hard and comfortable all at the same time.
“You’re lying and I’d really like to know why.”
“You hardly know me. It’s just a little shitty to label me a liar, don’t you think?”
“That’s true. But I know witches. I’ve been a warlock for a long time. That means the rumors about you are true.”
Her heart throbbed so hard, she almost couldn’t breathe. “The rumors?”
“I don’t pay much mind to gossip, but there’ve been plenty of rumors about you and your situation from day one. To not at least know the coven your parents came from? To have no knowledge of calling sanctuary when accused of a crime
like robbery? The look of complete surprise on your face when you stopped that mini-cyclone? It all leads to one thing. The rumors are true, Bernie. You really didn’t know you were a witch, did you?”
* * * *
They sat on the front steps of Ridge’s porch, a beer they’d decided to share sitting between them, with Fee at her feet snoozing and her favorite horse, Orchid, tethered to the railing of the stairs. The stars winked, bright and yellow in the big Texas sky, bathing the farm with a hazy glow.
Ridge had talked her into driving to the farm where they couldn’t be interrupted while she explained.
He’d caught her red-handed. Called her right out. To look him in the eye and tell him she wasn’t lying at all was going too far at this point. After tonight, after they’d experiencing the damage she’d wreaked, she couldn’t keep telling everyone she was innocent.
Orchid bent her head, rubbing it on Bernie’s shoulder. She reached up and cupped her muzzle, giving it a scratch.
“Orchid’s really crazy about you. In fact, all of the horses respond well to you. You’re good with animals, Bernie.”
That he’d noticed surprised her. “I like Orchid, too. I like it best that she’s one of the few animals in these parts who don’t actually talk.”
Ridge chuckled and nudged her shoulder. “Speaking of talking, let’s talk about how you had no idea you were a witch.”
Bernie took a long, satisfying swig of the beer and shook her head. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
“How about your arrest, and do me a favor—no-holds-barred. No judgment on my part either, but I can’t help if you don’t let me. If you don’t let all of us help—and we will, if you’d just stop running and ducking and apologizing. You apologize far more than anyone who’s not a serial killer should.”
The better part of her life was an apology. It was second nature to back out of a room with the words “I’m sorry” on her lips as walls crumbled and floors buckled.
But Bernie’s breathing shuddered, her limbs stiffened. This would be the first time she’d confided the full story to anyone. She hadn’t even told Fee everything.
“I was arrested for robbing a bank I don’t even remember robbing. Now, before you say that’s ridiculous, I’ll swear until the day I die that I have absolutely no memory of walking into that bank vault. I don’t know where all the money came from, but I sure had fistfuls of it in my hands. One minute I was in my car, waiting for my boyfriend Eddie. The next I was in the bank’s vault.”
“Your boyfriend?” His tone oddly changed from curious to hard.
“Well, nowadays he’s the scum-sucking pig who betrayed me and somehow disappeared when the smoke cleared, but back then he was my boyfriend.”
“So it was his idea to rob the bank, I take it?”
She’d never understand where something as crazy as committing a felony had come from. Eddie had never given her any indication he was a criminal. He managed a cleaning company, for crap’s sake.
That’s how she’d met him. When she’d bumped into him at the final job she’d had as night security at a big law firm in Boston before her incarceration, he’d made it his mission to get her to go out with him.
“I didn’t even know it was an idea. But I can assure you, it wasn’t mine. I met Eddie at the bank that day because he owed me his last half of the rent. I’d kicked him out after I caught him…cheating. We had a huge fight in the parking lot about it just before he went in to get me the rent money. It was pretty ugly.”
So ugly. The whole scene had been ugly. Coming home to find Eddie and their downstairs neighbor, Doris, naked in their bed. The damn bed they’d shopped for together.
She’d trusted him. He’d been the only person alive she’d trusted after her parents died, and he’d broken her.
But she’d booted his ass out anyway, brokenhearted, fear of being alone and all.
“So,” Ridge prompted softly. “He went into the bank to get the money he owed you, and…?”
“And the next thing I know, I’m in the bank, too, and the Boston PD’s screaming at me to get on the ground with guns pointed at me, and Eddie was nowhere in sight.”
“And there’s proof of this?”
Bernie closed her eyes and tried to ward off the memory. “Yep. The Boston PD. They found me in the bank vault—surrounded by a pile of cash. Which is why it was impossible for me to tell anyone otherwise. Not to mention, there were several people hurt. The security guard was blindfolded and handcuffed to a desk. The bank manager was unconscious, and the only two customers inside the bank were knocked out cold. The only thing working for me was the fact that no one was able to identify me as the person who knocked them out. In fact, the bank manager claimed it was Eddie who held a gun to her head and made her open the vault.”
“So then why don’t they have video of you entering the bank?”
“Because Eddie disarmed the cameras just after entering the bank, according to the police and Baba Yaga. He had on a black mask, but I’d know Eddie’s hands and arms anywhere. Baba showed me the video. He has a tattoo on his arm of a cross with a loop at the top, and they caught that on camera. So the claim was that once he took out the camera in the lobby, I entered the picture like some Bonnie to his Clyde.”
“And where was he in all of this? How is it you’re the only one who got caught?”
“I don’t know how he got out of there or why he’s on camera disabling it one minute and gone the next. All I know is, I was the one in the bank vault. One minute I was wondering what was taking so long to make a simple withdrawal, the next I was in handcuffs.”
“And Baba came and got you out of jail.”
Bernie closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes, and then I was in witch prison, where no one believed I had no idea what happened to me or that I didn’t know I was a witch…I know that sounds crazy. I know that all you magic people think I’m out of my mind, but it’s the truth. I swear it on my parents’ souls—I didn’t know I was a witch.”
Ridge turned to face her, his eyes soft. “I believe you,” he whispered into the dark night.
Tears instantly stung her eyes when she looked up at him. “Really?” she rasped.
Ridge grabbed her hand and cupped it in his. “Really. It makes perfect sense now. All this time you’ve been looking at me like I had two heads when I mentioned your trial and the realm. But explain this to me—how did your parents keep it from you? Are you adopted?”
“I thought of that, too, but there’s no denying I look just like my mother. The spitting image, in fact.”
“Okay, so maybe they put a suppression spell on you to quell your witch urges?”
Now that was something she’d never given any thought to. Who knew spells like that even existed? There were so many questions she didn’t know to ask.
“I don’t know. Can you do that? My parents were almost overprotective of me. I had leukemia as an infant, and it was always the reason they gave when they hovered. I don’t doubt they loved me, but to keep something like this from me? Do you think my parents were witches?”
That was insane. Wasn’t it?
“I don’t know. I do know it’s damn strange for them to have kept something so huge from you. It’s happened, but typically when you hit puberty, if you haven’t used your powers, they manifest anyway.”
“Puberty,” she muttered as that word sunk in. Then she grabbed Ridge’s arm and squeezed it in excitement. “Oh my God! That’s when all these crazy things began to happen to me—at thirteen. Chandeliers falling from the ceiling, people falling down stairs, glasses exploding for no reason—and that’s only the beginning of a laundry list of coincidences I have under my belt. Everywhere I went meant disaster for someone. In high school they called me Bad Luck Bernie. As an adult, I couldn’t keep a job for very long because inevitably I’d create chaos and have to leave or end up fired.”
God. That made so much sense.
What made no sense? Her parents keeping something of this m
agnitude from her.
Would they have let her suffer the humiliation of her constant “accidents” just to prevent her from finding out she was a witch? What purpose would that serve? Had they been hiding from something?
“And while I realize this is a sensitive subject, I have to ask. How did Eddie figure into this? What did he have to say about your alleged bad luck?”
“He was the first person I’d trusted since my parents’ deaths—the first person I let fully into my life. Looking back now, I realize I was vulnerable and lonely. We didn’t really have much in common other than he accepted me. Walking disaster and all. He chalked up my bad luck to coincidence. He laughed it off. He made me feel like I wasn’t such a freak.”
“How long did you date Eddie?”
“Several months before I caught him cheating.”
“Any idea where he is now? Where he landed after the robbery? Did he try to contact you at all?”
“Nope. Not a word. I googled him at Winnie’s, and I can’t find a single bit of information on him.”
“So, you stopped protesting you were a witch when you were in jail. Why?”
Bernie sighed. “Well, there’s the obvious. No one believed me. In fact, one of the screws—”
“Screws?”
“Guards,” she provided on a giggle. “Sorry. My prison lingo lingers. Anyway, the guards thought I was trying to worm my way out of hard time and get myself relocated to the psych ward so I wouldn’t have to peel potatoes or do latrine duty anymore.”
Ridge nodded. “Got it.”
“At first I thought it was insane that they thought I was the one who was playing at being nuts. Then, when some of the other inmates used their powers to cast spells or when Fee started talking to me, I thought I really was going crazy. Until I started going to all the self-help groups they offer at the prison. In fact, even after attending group, I still didn’t totally believe. I didn’t want to believe. I didn’t want to be a witch. So I shut up. I ignored. I hid from what was right there in front of my face. I did my time as clean as possible, all in an effort to get out of prison and figure this out.”
“What was the plan after you got out?”
Witch Is The New Black (Paris, Texas Romance Book 3) Page 11
