“You will.” Matilda placed hands on her almost non-existent hips and glared at me.
Outside the window, the wind howled, mirroring my rage and fear. Rain assaulted the windows. The fronds on the twin palm trees tossed and swayed.
This day! Would it ever let me go? Keening with rage, I dashed toward the bed, intent on destroying that damn dress. It represented everything evil that was happening to me. That afternoon at Amanda’s house when the earth had moved around me simply because I’d asked it to – that hadn’t been coincidence no matter how I tried to spin it. And Kelly and Amanda’s horrified gasps and accusing eyes – that hadn’t been bullying. It had been the plain, unvarnished truth.
But I was damned if I would wear black and broadcast the fact I was a witch. Bad enough I had to endure the shame of the mark of Othala, not black clothing too.
“What are you doing? How dare you!” Matilda ran for the bed as well, and tried to wrestle the gown from my hands as if she could undo the damage my fingernails had already inflicted.
Snarling at each other, we struggled with the dress between us – a grim tug of war I was determined to win.
A huge, booming crack that was not thunder resounded outside. Shocked, I stared out the window as both twin palms snapped midway down their rough trunks and crashed to the boulevard below taking out part of the wall shielding Moody Mansion from the rest of the island. Guards swarmed around the breach immediately, yelling orders at each other.
Matilda’s mouth dropped open in shock. She let go of the dress, and I staggered off balance before crashing into one of the chairs flanking the window.
She rushed to peer out the panes, her hands pressed to her sunken cheeks.
“Witch! Her accusing scream drilled into my ears until I wanted to claw them off. “You destroyed those palms on purpose! You dreadful, evil fiend! One of my ancestors planted those trees in honor of the victorious Lord Regent when he overthrew the foul witches that had plagued this island since just after the Before Times! Now they’re gone! Dead! You did it because of a dress. A temper tantrum from a slut witch! You’ll pay! I’ll tell the Lord Regent what I saw you do! And Reutterance or no Reutterance, you’ll suffer!”
“I didn’t do it!” Sobs wracked my body, forcing me back into the uncomfortable antique chair. Everything in this mansion was old and unpleasant. Made for suffering not ease.
“You did! You ruined the Lady Regent’s dress, and you destroyed the palm trees! You wicked little bitch!”
“I didn’t,” I wailed. I hadn’t! I’d been focused on the dress.
My bedroom door crashed open, and the man from the bathroom stood framed in the doorway. He stared around with growing incredulity. “What is going on? Can’t a man grab a few moments of peace before enduring dinner with all the pompous assholes around here?”
“That is no way to talk about the Lord Regent and his council, sea witch.” Matilda glared at him with a loathing I’d only seen her direct toward me.
Sea witch? For the first time I noticed the mark of Othala on the back of his left hand. He was sea-cursed the same as I. Of course.
“It may be rude, but it’s damned accurate,” the sea witch said with a grin that faded when he glanced at me. “Why are you crying? What’s the matter?” He talked to me as if he cared, but how could he? He didn’t even know me.
I tried to answer him, but a huge sob engulfed me, and I could only stare mutely at him, tears blinding me, doubling, then tripling him in my vision.
“The little slut threw a temper tantrum over a dress and toppled the twin palms in the courtyard in a fit of pique!” Matilda stabbed a finger in my direction, venom coating her tone.
The sea witch looked at me, a question in his eyes. I shook my head so hard my hair fell across my face obscuring my view of the room. I clawed it away so I could see.
The sea witch took a deep breath and stared at Matilda who bristled under his disdainful regard. “She says she didn’t. So she didn’t.”
Matilda’s mouth dropped open. Mine as well. He believed me.
“Of course you’d take her side. Both of you lying, filthy witches!”
“I may be a witch, but I never lie, and I’m not filthy. There’s only one scumbag in this room as far as I can see, and I’m looking right at her.”
“How dare you say such things about me?” Matilda sputtered.
“Don’t like it when you’re given a dose of your own medicine, do you? Well, tough. The lady says she didn’t knock down those ugly trees, end of story. Now what’s all this about a dress?”
“It’s black,” I snarled.
He cocked his head as if pondering my words. I sounded crazy, but it was all tangled in my head. That day in Amanda’s backyard. We’d been drunk on wine, silly with it. The way they’d looked at me when it had been their idea to play the game in the first place. Now today, branded by the mark of Othala and ripped away from my life.
“You don’t like black?” he asked so gently another sob threatened to overcome me.
I shook my head, afraid my voice would crack if I tried to speak.
He thought about it for a moment before turning his attention to Matilda. “Get her another dress.”
“You! You can’t give me orders! I answer to the Lord Regent!” sputtered Matilda so furiously I thought her head might spin around on her scrawny neck.
“And he presumably told you to get her a dress, didn’t he? He told you to get me a suit that first night I was forced to stay here.”
“Forced! You don’t know how lucky you are to spend time beneath this roof! This is Moody Mansion! Witches are never allowed to set foot in here unless they are sea cursed.”
“Witches built this mansion. Did you know that?” The sea witch shook his head, the anger in his stunning blue eyes belying his amused smirk. “Or do you prefer never to think of such horrible things?”
“This mansion was built in the Before Times. Witches didn’t build it.” I found my voice.
“Sure they did. There were witches in the Before Times, weren’t there?” The sea witch asked me. He didn’t even seem angry I’d contradicted him.
I nodded. Everyone knew that. The witches had kept the ravagers at bay. The non-magical people had never known about the ravagers until the End Times when the monsters somehow increased in numbers and launched an attack on the world.
“So you know the Witch Council saved sixteen sectors of the world after the ravagers destroyed the rest, right?”
“Of course,” I answered. “The witches used their magic to save what was left of the world – Othala. One witch to a sector. Everyone knows Galveteen was Sector Thirteen.”
“Ever wonder why there were sixteen witches and exactly sixteen sectors the ravagers hadn’t managed to take?”
I shook my head.
“Well, if you had, maybe you would have figured out they were magical hotspots. Places with lots of witches compared to the rest of the world. Never you doubt witches didn’t build this mansion.” The sea witch smiled at me, transforming his face into blinding beauty. I didn’t believe I’d ever seen a man so appealing. Certainly not in my little neighborhood. Were all witches so attractive?
“Balderdash.” Matilda snorted. “A wicked lie made up by witches. This mansion was built by non-magical people, and thankfully, is in the care of non-magicals now after years of suffering under the influence of dirty witches.”
“You still here?” The sea witch shook his head. “Shouldn’t you be fetching the earth witch a dress that’s not black to wear to dinner? We’ve less than an hour until that infernal gong is sounded.” He turned to me and rolled his eyes. “They’re so high and mighty here it’s nauseating. A gong!”
Despite myself, I managed a watery laugh. I didn’t think I’d ever even seen a gong, let alone heard one. I barely even knew what one was.
“I intend to tell the Lord Regent everything that has transpired here. The truth, not a pack of lies as you two would have him believe!” Matilda sna
tched the black dress from the floor where I’d dropped it and stomped out the door. She turned back to yell, “And if you think I’ll close this door and leave you two heathens to fornicate, you’ll think wrong!”
Heat stole into my cheeks. How that woman made me feel guilty for things I’d never do, I would never understand.
“If we’re such heathens, does she really think we’d need a closed door?” The sea witch burst into incredulous laughter. “I can’t decide if that woman needs to be murdered or put on stage to perform comedy she thinks is high drama. What do you think, earth witch?”
I scowled at him. “My name’s Demetria.”
“Demetria.” He eyed me up and down, and I resisted the urge to draw the robe tighter under his friendly scrutiny. “It suits you. I’m Logan.” He crossed the room to hold out his hand. Did he mean to help me out of the chair? Belatedly, I realized he wanted to shake hands.
Tentatively, I held out my hand, miserably aware of the mark of Othala branding me.
When he took my hand, his touch galvanized as if a secret, powerful energy was being exchanged between us. Did he feel it too? I couldn’t tell because he stared down at my hand, then moved his thumb across the silvery mark, making me shiver with mingled shame and pleasure.
“You don’t like this much, do you?”
I bit my lower lip. “I hate it.”
“Because you think it’s a death sentence?”
“Because it means I’m a witch.” I spoke the last word with such revulsion, he dropped my hand and stepped back, shock spreading across his attractive face.
“You’ve known that all your life, though, haven’t you?”
“I have not! I’ve lived in a respectable neighborhood. With normal people. Non-magical people. I don’t know any witches, and I don’t want to!”
“You know me,” he said. “Am I so bad?”
“I barely know you. And you don’t count. You’re sea cursed just like me.”
“It’s not a curse. It’s an honor to be chosen for Reutterance. The extra magic we receive from the lightning bolt that burns the mark of Othala on our hands makes us the two most powerful witches on Galveteen. One earth witch, one sea witch, who together reutter the spell that protects us all from the ravagers.” His tone took on a fervor that frightened me. He sounded almost like Captain Clark when he talked about witches. Only with Logan, there was a deeper level, probably because he was a witch.
“Powerful.” I snorted. “I’m not powerful.”
“You must be if you knocked down the twin palms.”
I gaped at him, my stomach sinking. “You told me you believed me when I said I didn’t do it.”
“I believed that you didn’t think you had,” he said. “But you did it. Earth witches have been required to cast protection spells on those palms for centuries. In order to be marked, you have always been more powerful than any other earth witch on Galveteen. Now thanks to the mark of Othala, you cut through so many interwoven spells it’s mind boggling, actually. So don’t tell me you aren’t powerful, Demetria.” He gave my hair a friendly tousle, but let his hand drop when I jerked away.
“I’m not a dog performing tricks. Don’t pat me like one.”
“Sorry,” he said, but his grin didn’t appear apologetic.
I needed distance between us, so I stood and moved as far as I could from him yet still be in the same room. I wore only a robe. I couldn’t wander the halls at will.
“Even if I did do it,” I said, and his grin intensified until it all but blinded me. “And I’m not saying I did! I don’t know how I did it! So everyone counting on me to know how to reutter the protection spell seems extremely optimistic to me. Don’t you have to know what you’re doing? Or does it just happen through instinct or something?”
“You’ll definitely need to know what you’re doing. It’s precision work.” All amusement vanished from Logan’s expression and grimness took its place.
“Maybe you could show me,” I suggested.
A dour smile twitched his lips. “I’m not an earth witch. And I don’t know even know my part of the spell. We don’t find that out until we’re sent out to sea. The Lord Regent must have it written down or something. I know I can perform the sea magic, but I can’t help you with the earth magic.” He blew out a huge sigh of frustration and drove a hand through his short hair with force as if it used to be longer and the buzz cut was something recent.
“If I can’t do it?”
“Galveteen will return to the mainland and within reach of the ravagers. We’ll be overcome and our deaths won’t be pretty.”
“How do you know? Nobody alive’s ever seen a ravager. I’ve never even seen a picture!” Panic strangled me, threatened to make me crazy.
“I’ve seen photographs of dead ones, taken just before they disintegrated, and dead witches too. If you’d grown up in the witch community, you’d have seen them.” He strode around the room with a nervous energy that made me want to scream. Halfway between the bed and door, he halted and shot me a suspicious look. “You sure you didn’t receive even a little training? From whichever of your parents was the witch?”
“What?”
“I’m assuming that at least one of them of was non-magical. That’s how your witch parent managed to infiltrate the neighborhood. They married in. Most likely the witch parent kept your non-magical parent completely in the dark. It’s not what I would have done in their place, but I don’t know the circumstances.” He heaved another sigh. “I wouldn’t have left my community behind.”
“Neither of my parents are witches!” I protested. I backed up until I hit the wall. “That’s not true!”
“It is true. You can’t be marked by Othala unless you’re a witch, and you can’t be a witch unless you’re descended from one. That’s how it works. Through the bloodline. So just accept the fact your mother or your father is a witch. Hell –” He drove his fingers through his hair again, grimacing. “Maybe both of them are.”
“Liar!” I screamed. “There’s not a chance my father is a witch! He thinks they’re worthless. Menial labor is all they’re fit for. We don’t need to make the magic to use it! That’s what he’s always said!”
“Stop shouting at me.” Logan fixed me with his ocean blue eyes. “I’m not the one who lied to you your entire life and crippled you and your powers. That was her. Your mother. You’re not screaming she’s not a witch, are you? Because you know. Haven’t you always?”
I squeezed shut my eyes hoping to banish this room and this man and fix everything back the way it was supposed to be.
“She didn’t want me to go out today. She had a feeling.” My chest hitched against sobs. “And then after I’d been marked and I ran home, trying to get to her, she stood there on the front steps, crying her eyes out, whispering she was sorry. So, so sorry.” I opened my eyes to find Logan staring at me. My mouth trembled, but I still forced the words out no matter how much I didn’t want to say them.
“She is a witch, isn’t she? And so am I!” I covered my face and slid down the wall, powerless to stand because the admission had robbed me of all my strength. “She lied to me my whole life.”
Logan slid down to sit beside me, his shoulder brushing mine. “Maybe she hoped you weren’t a witch. Odds are you wouldn’t have been. Most witch/non-magical pairings produce non-magical babies. But didn’t you ever do things? Magical things? Even if you couldn’t control them or meant them to happen?”
My head swam as a strange feeling of time warp engulfed me. A memory older than that afternoon at Amanda’s surfaced. A memory I’d long since forgotten or blocked out. I struggled to make sense of it. Had it really happened? How could I have forgotten something like this? Was this maybe why I’d tried to move the earth that day in Amanda’s backyard? Perhaps some vestigial part of this memory had spurred me on?
“I remember one day when I was around three or four. It’s all fuzzy in my head, and all I really remember is her shocked face and the dancing rocks
in the backyard.” The memory, stunted and blocked, tried to flood back, but all I received were hazy images. Her face. Rocks in the air around me. Giggling.
“She...she screamed at me.” I closed my eyes to focus better, before the memory dissolved again into the locked part of my mind. “Told me I was bad. A bad, bad girl. She...spanked me.” I shook my head. “If you’d asked me before now I would’ve sworn an oath to you that my mother never hit me in my life. But she did that day.”
The depth of her betrayal nearly undid me. I couldn’t seem to breathe right, and if it hadn’t been for Logan’s shoulder against mine, I might have melted into nothingness.
“Oh, Othala.” Logan slumped against me, his voice full of sympathy. “She blocked you. Did a real psychological number on your head. No wonder you hate the idea of being a witch so damn much. She made you feel bad about yourself. But being a witch is nothing to be ashamed of. This whole damned world wouldn’t exist without us. You have to remember that. Be proud of that.”
That idea was enormous. Huge. Too difficult to fathom. Especially when I was falling into a million pieces.
“What happened to the other fifteen sectors? Do you think they’re still there? They’re all on the mainland. Surrounded by land the ravagers took. What if Galveteen is the only one left? The last stronghold of the human race? And now because I can’t control my power, we’re all going to die.” I covered my face with my hands, too ashamed to look at him.
“Don’t give up without a fight.” Logan nudged me with his shoulder. “So there are unusual complications this Reutterance, but don’t count us out yet, okay?”
“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” I said. “Don’t do that. I’d rather you be straight with me. No rosy hopes. Just plain facts.”
Sea Cursed: An Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 13 (The Othala Witch Collection) Page 4
