Sword of Elements Series Boxed Set 2: Bound In Blue, Caught In Crimson & To Make A Witch

by Heather Hamilton-Senter

  I rubbed my eyes. “Right, you ate her skin and now you know everything she ever did. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  The corners of his mouth twitched. “Perhaps, since it seems you have no idea whatsoever who Viviane was. Maybe there’s a land where the spirits of my kind dwell after death, but I keep some part of them here in this world, within myself.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  Redcap didn’t respond. Shifting the car into gear with a jerk that rattled the windows, he drove back onto the road. Shivering, I switched off the AC with a snap. Had he fixed it? It was a reassuring thought that maybe he wasn’t planning on raping and murdering me if he’d gone to the trouble of fixing my car.

  Maybe he just really likes my car.

  I contemplated the man. Except for his eyes, he seemed normal: handsome, well-dressed, older. How much older, it was difficult to tell. Not as much as I’d originally thought. I couldn’t pin down anything exact about him at all.

  And I have to admit if you ignore the whole eating my mom’s skin thing, he’s been a perfect gentleman.

  “I guess I should thank you for saving me from that thing in the lake. And for driving me home too.” A thought occurred to me. “How will you get your own car back?”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  That’s weird.

  “And you’re welcome. For the air-conditioning too, I might add.”

  “You did fix it! Why?”

  Redcap was silent for so long that I didn’t think he was going to answer. “I don’t like broken things,” he said finally.

  We drove for a while in silence and I began to relax a little. “So what was that thing at the lake? You called it a name—Connie something.”

  “L'Inconnue de la Seine,” he corrected.

  “Whatever. What was it?

  He shrugged. “A story. A legend. In the 1880's, a girl’s body was found in the river Seine in Paris. A common enough result of either murder or suicide, but this one was strange. She wasn’t decayed and bloated as she should have been after her time in the water, and she’d drowned with a smile on her lips. Touched by her beauty, someone at the morgue made a plaster cast of her face.” He chuckled. “More touched by the desire to make a buck or two, he began selling copies. In a few years the girl’s death mask was a common decoration on the walls of the living rooms of Europe. Do you know CPR?”

  “I had a demonstration during a baby-sitting course.”

  A waste of time since no one’s ever called me up and asked me to baby-sit their kid.

  “Then you’ve seen her before. The man who invented the CPR dummy used her face as his inspiration.”

  “That’s creepy, but it doesn’t explain anything.”

  “Doesn’t it mo leanabh? There will always be foolish romantics ready to fall in love with beautiful dead things.”

  “But it was real!”

  Redcap glanced at me before returning his attention to the road. “Of course it was real. Fools who worship objects never stop to think about the power they’re giving them. But then, how could they know the body they dredged from the river was a goddess.”

  “A goddess,” I squeaked.

  “She was known by the Gauls and the Celts as Sequana, the goddess of the Seine, but when her worshippers abandoned her, she faded and died. This new generation bestowed adoration upon her image, wrote love poems to it, and gave it the kiss of life every day. That was enough to restore her, but it changed her too. Clawing her way out of whatever common grave her body had been dumped into, she was reborn as L'Inconnue de la Seine—the unknown one of the Seine. The image of her face has spread through the world and now she’s no longer bound to her river.”

  I had to swallow before I could speak. “Why was she at the lake?”

  He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but his face looked concerned. "She must have been drawn by Viviane’s ashes as I was. They are alike in some ways after all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Redcap sighed as he took the red baseball cap off the dash and put it back on. “Don’t you get it, lass? Just like the original Sequana, Viviane was a creature out of myth and legend.”

  “You’re crazy. My mother is dead. Because of you and Morgan, I lost my memories for an entire summer. I want to know what’s going on!”

  When the man didn’t answer, I sat back in frustrated silence. After a couple of minutes, we drove through Windfield’s gate and I pointed the way to the smaller road leading up to my house. He pulled in front, turned off the engine, and handed me the keys. With the headlights off and clouds now covering the moon, I could barely see him, and when he spoke, his voice was low and angry.

  “Mo leanabh—do you know what it means?” Redcap didn’t wait for me to respond. “It means my child in Scottish Gaelic. My mum used to call me that when I was little. But are you just an innocent child? How could you claim kinship with Viviane and not know what she was? How can you be ignorant of the world as it really is, mo leanabh?” The impossible red circling his irises burned.

  “I don’t understand anything that’s happening to me,” I whispered.

  Redcap cursed quietly and got out of the car. I hurried to follow him.

  “Rhiannon,” he said and his voice was now gentle, “I don’t know who or what you are, but there’s something I know for a truth—you are not Viviane’s daughter.”

  “What do you mean? Wait!” I cried.

  But he had turned and slipped away into the darkness.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I spent the next few days avoiding Peter, but since he had football practice and student council meetings to attend, he didn’t seem to notice. It was a relief. I’d never kept a secret from him before, but I didn’t know how to make any of what happened up at the lake sound real. He would tell his parents and I’d be back at the hospital with doctors dipping into my head again.

  Viviane is not my mother.

  Each morning I would wake up and think I could march into her room and demand some answers. On the third day, I made it all the way in before the sight of the empty bed reminded me she was gone.

  Mom wasn’t like other mothers. She wasn’t like Peter’s mom. Mom never hugged me or yelled at me. She never asked me how my day was. She didn’t like it when I went to the movies with Peter or stayed after school to work on a project, but she never said why. We were usually quiet when we were together. Sometimes she would smile, but I had no memory of seeing her laugh. I couldn’t remember her ever saying she loved me.

  I had a recurring nightmare when I was little. When she heard me crying, Mom would come and I would tell her about it. She would put her cool hand on my forehead until I calmed down and went back to sleep. Standing there staring at the empty bed, it occurred to me Mom never once told me the nightmare wasn’t real.

  Red anger flared across my vision and I went back to my own room. Grabbing some clothes off the floor, I dressed and began searching the house.

  Viviane is not my mother.

  Why should I believe Thomas Redcap? I had no reason to trust him, except that he’d saved my life.

  And fixed my car.

  Maybe he meant I was adopted. It would explain how different Mom and I were. I pulled the house apart but couldn’t find my birth certificate or anything else that might prove my theory. I even checked under her bed, but only found a family of lonely dust bunnies.

  Discouraged, I fingered through the jewelry in the small ceramic dish on the nightstand. Static electricity bit the tips of my fingers as they brushed against a delicate silver charm bracelet and I lifted it up to the light. A single charm dangled from it—a stylized daisy, or maybe a wheel—and the chain threaded through one of the spaces between the spokes. It was simple but beautiful and I wanted to put it on, but Mom’s things didn’t feel like they belonged to me. As I put the bracelet back, I noticed the corner of something peeking out from under the dish.

  It was a business card with R. Goodfellow & Associates printed on one side and a phone
number written on the back. It sounded like a law firm. If I was adopted, her lawyer would know, but wasn’t there attorney/client privilege or something? I went into the living room and popped the card in my purse just in case.

  I sat down on the couch. It was quiet. Mom liked things to be quiet. When I would turn on the TV, the noise would drive her out into the garden. Peter and I would go to the movies instead or watch up at his house so we wouldn’t bother her.

  In a surge of defiance, I hit the button on the remote and jacked up the sound till it filled the house. Then I went back to her room and began rifling through her armoire. I was almost tall and pretty slim, but Mom was skeletal and all legs—most of her skirts would be too long. Instead I hauled out a bunch of filmy tops I thought would fit. Claiming ownership of everything Mom had left behind, I also took the silver charm bracelet. The wheel shape was simple, almost childish, but I wanted it. As I draped the chain over my wrist and fastened the clasp, another spark of electricity ran across my skin, but this time it didn’t hurt.

  It felt exciting.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The light was strange—grey and dim. The trees around me were cruelly twisted and their bare branches appeared to be claws reaching out to snatch me from the arms of the woman who carried me. I pressed my face against the soft, wheat-colored hair spilling over her shoulders and down her chest, but the rapid beating of the heart beneath was no comfort. We came to an abrupt stop and I was put down on unsteady legs onto the smooth path cutting through the trees. Another woman stepped out of a dazzling light to meet us. Her hair was black and her eyes were pale and cold—it was Mom. She took my hand and tried to lead me towards the light, but I began to cry and pull away. I reached for the beautiful woman who had abandoned me, but she was already leaving. As a dark shape slinked after her and the trees closed behind them like a gate, I tried to scream, but there was no sound.

  I woke with my heart pounding and couldn’t see through icy blue streaks until it slowed down. I hadn’t had the nightmare in years; thinking about it must have resurrected it. The dull thud of my constant headache began again.

  I never told Mom she was in my dream. I didn’t even realize it was her at first. The woman in my dream was larger, brighter somehow. Now I knew it was undeniably her face, her thin hand that held mine, and her pale eyes that seemed to see nothing and everything at once.

  I dressed for school in jeans and a peasant blouse I’d pilfered from Mom’s wardrobe. I was still wearing the charm bracelet. The little wheel looked like some kind of good luck charm and I tucked it under my sleeve and decided to keep it on; I could use a little luck.

  Peter wasn’t the only one I’d been avoiding. After the novelty of the new kids’ attention wore off, I felt strangely uncomfortable with it. Perversely, I was also afraid of the disappointment when they began ignoring me like everyone else did. When the lunch bell rang and Miko stepped out of a classroom into the hallway in front of me, I stopped and hoped she hadn’t seen me.

  As she walked away, I felt relieved, but also unkind; from what I’d observed during the week, no one was going out of their way to make friends with the girl. Gathering my courage, I ran after her, but instead of heading to the cafeteria, she went through the door that led to the dressing rooms on the side of the stage. It seemed kind of stalkerish to follow her, but so did lurking in the hall waiting for her to come out. I was just about to leave when I heard singing and what sounded like a harp. Curious, I opened the door and went down the corridor to the girls’ dressing room. The door was open. Miko sat on the long counter running under the wall to wall mirror with a small harp in her hands. Looking up, she blinked in surprise.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I joked.

  Raising an eyebrow, she didn’t respond as she stuffed the instrument back into her bag.

  My heart sank as I realized she was now ignoring me like everyone else did. “That was pretty. You have a beautiful voice.”

  Miko went very still. “You heard that?”

  “Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Is that a harp?” When she didn’t answer, I plowed on with nervous chatter. “I thought they were bigger. I’ve never known anyone who could play the harp. You’re really good.”

  The girl stared at me as if I’d grown another head. “You could hear the music?”

  “Um, yeah, of course.”

  “I knew it!” Miko’s smile was triumphant. Grabbing me by the arm, she propelled me out of the dressing room and through the door into the hall.

  “What are you doing?” I protested.

  “Proving a point.”

  For such a tiny person, her grip was iron as she dragged me into the cafeteria and over to the table Peter, Tynan, and Daley were sitting at. Depositing me into a chair, she plopped herself down on Peter’s knee and her pink miniskirt hiked up to show even more leg than usual. Peter didn’t seem to know where to put his hands and his neck was so red I was afraid something was going to pop.

  “It’s Friday,” Miko announced. “Let’s do something.”

  “Count me in,” Peter said and was rewarded with a kiss on the cheek. The blush spread from his neck up into his face.

  Tynan brushed the hair out of his eyes and flashed me a quick smile. “I’m in.”

  “Like what?” Daley looked up from the massive book he was reading just as I yelped from the prickle of static running through the metal chair into my thighs.

  So much for making a good second impression.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Miko twirled a strand of hair around one finger and her eyes glittered. “Rhi likes music. Don’t you Rhi?” She turned back to Daley before I could reply. “She likes my harp. She thought my singing was really pretty.”

  Daley closed his book with a thump and Tynan pushed his tray away and sat up straight. Everyone was staring at me.

  Anxiety drifted like tangerine fog along the edges of my vision. “I don’t know where any bands might be playing. Sometimes in the summer there are underage dances, but . . .”

  Peter wasn’t going to let me ruin what he’d probably been angling for all week. “But we could go to that restaurant I was telling you about and then catch a movie.” I felt a twinge of jealousy; movies were our thing.

  “Great!” Miko said, hopping off his knee and flashing more leg at the student body. “It's a plan. You can pick us all up at 6:00.”

  I sat there as Miko arranged my very first date for me. It wasn’t until I was walking to my next class that I realized I wasn’t sure which one of the brothers was supposed to be mine. Touching the wheel charm tucked inside the sleeve of my blouse for luck, I made a wish.

  Let it be Daley, please.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The teacher droned on as if he somehow knew how desperate I was for the class to be over and wanted to torture me for it. I was excited at first, but the more I thought about going on a date—about socializing with anyone other than Peter and the Larsens—the more I felt like I was breaking apart. My head throbbed as colors streaked across my interior vision and my skin was tight and hot where the charm rested against it. When I lifted my sleeve and looked at my wrist, I was shocked to see a round mark, almost like a burn. I’d felt the charm’s electricity a number of times, but hadn’t realize it had actually raised a raw, red welt. The spot was painful, but I’d continued to wear the bracelet even though I must have known it was hurting me.

  What’s wrong with me?

  It was suddenly all too much. No matter what I’d wished for before, I no longer wanted to be seen. I tried to remember Mom’s voice, but it was thin and far away. Closing my eyes, I focused on the watery blue that usually calmed me, but I couldn’t grasp it and it dissipated like mist on the surface of a lake.

  Anger surged through me and a flash of light beneath my eyelids followed it. Startled, I opened my eyes and jumped to my feet, but the sparkles of pink I would have expected didn’t appear. Everything was too bright and the glare made the world look like it wa
s painted in black and white.

  When Mr. Porter turned and crossed his arms, it took me a moment to realize he was waiting for me to apologize. Someone in the back laughed. My cheeks flamed and I wished everyone would stop staring at me.

  Everyone is staring at me.

  “Is there something you’d like to share with the class, Miss Lynne?” After three years, five days, four hours, and twenty-two minutes, one of Eastdale’s teachers had decided to acknowledge my existence.

  “No . . . uh, sorry,” I stammered, “it’s just . . . I thought I saw . . .” I searched for a plausible excuse for jumping out of my skin and standing there like a moron. “I saw a spider.” More laughter. “I don’t like spiders,” I added unnecessarily.

  Mr. Porter had small eyes made even smaller by thick, black-rimmed glasses. They seemed to contract now into dark dots. “And is it too much to ask for you to take your seat, Miss Lynne? Or would you like us to all drop everything and go searching for spiders so you’ll feel more comfortable?”

  “No. Thank you. I’m fine now.”

  “Well that’s wonderful,” he drawled before turning and continuing to scrawl on the board in his illegible handwriting.

  Lacey McInnis leaned over from the seat behind and whispered, “Don’t mind old man Porter. I bet everyone here wishes they could stand up and walk out. He’s just mad you’re the first one to try it.”

  It took me a moment to process that she was speaking to me. Civilly. “Wish I tried it years ago,” I murmured and she laughed.

  After class, Lacey hesitated by my desk and then seemed to decide something.

  “Hey Rhi, I just wanted you to know, I understand. I bet it’s hard watching Peter drool all over the new girl.”

  So that’s it—the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  “I guess.” There was no point telling Lacey I didn’t care if Peter drooled all over every girl in town—she wouldn’t believe me.