“Right,” I agreed. “Have you dated many earth witches?”
He groaned. “We kissed. Are we dating now or something? Does that entitle you to know my entire romantic history?”
Mortification swept over me. And a tiny surge of anger too. Why did he have to confuse me so much, damn him?
“No,” I said. “You’re right. A few kisses mean nothing. Nothing at all.” I stalked into my room.
“I didn’t say that! Don’t put words into my –” He rushed toward my door, and I took great satisfaction in shutting it in his face, cutting off whatever he’d been trying to say.
“Stupid,” I cursed, flinging myself across the bed, unmindful of the fact I was wearing one of the Lady Regent’s gowns. “How stupid can you get, Demetria? You’ve never been able to really talk to men, and now it’s clear you can’t kiss them either without misinterpreting every damn thing.” I punched my pillow hard, then buried my burning face in the cool pillowcase. I focused on breathing so my anger and humiliation wouldn’t spiral up making the floor decide to cave in because it thought I might like that or something dramatically awful like that. Being an earth witch sucked.
Chapter 10
Long past midnight, the heavy tread of someone’s booted feet roused me from a fitful slumber. I sat up, bracing myself on my elbow, and stared at my door, listening intently. Logan? Had he come to see me?
Forgetting I should be angry at him, I flung back the covers and scrambled out of bed. I snatched my robe, and stuffing my arms through the armholes, ran for the door.
After yanking it open, I looked both ways down the dimly lit hall and was just in time to see someone with red hair and wearing a Regiment Thirteen uniform turning the corner by the staircase. Captain Clark?
I rushed down the hallway in my bare feet, skidding to a halt when I came to the staircase where a young guard barred my way. Catching a glimpse of the red-haired guard descending the stairs, I called out Captain Clark’s name, but after stiffening his shoulders, he kept moving. Why would he do that?
“Halt!” The young guard spread out his arms to block my passage. “No witches allowed downstairs at this hour.”
“I want to talk to Captain Clark.” I tried to duck under the guard’s arm, but he grabbed me and gave me a rough push. My breath was knocked from my body when I hit the wall.
For the first time the young guard seemed to realize I was wearing a diaphanous white nightgown and a satin robe. His scowl transformed into a leer.
He dropped his hand to his crotch. “The captain doesn’t seem interested in what you’re offering. But I sure am. How about you get on your knees for me, earth witch? I’ll give you something to do if you’re having trouble sleeping.”
“I will kill you if you touch me,” I vowed. The staircase creaked and shifted beneath his feet. He grabbed for a handhold on the railing, terror washing across his face.
“Just kidding. Can’t you take a joke?” He straightened to full height, but didn’t let go of the stair rail.
I didn’t bother to answer him. After giving him one long glare, I turned around and walked back down the hall, shoulders tensed in case he came after me. He didn’t. Savage satisfaction swelled within me. I hadn’t precisely controlled the staircase’s sway, but the earth had obviously leaped to my defense. Perhaps being a witch wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Halfway down the hall, I noticed Mother’s door was ajar. I peeked inside. Her bed was made, and she was nowhere in sight. I checked my room. Not there either.
I looked at Logan’s door. Surely she wouldn’t be with him. Jealousy twisted my guts as a puff of air fluttered the hem of my nightgown. Turning, I saw the door at the end of the hall was slightly cracked. I’d thought it was another bedroom, but when I pushed it open, I saw a winding staircase. Intrigued, I cast a glance over my shoulder to make sure the guard wasn’t looking at me. He wasn’t. I quickly ascended, the stairs cold and slightly damp beneath my bare feet. A door at the top led out onto a small widow’s walk on the roof of the mansion. My mother, oblivious to the rain, stood braced against the rails as she stared out to sea.
I strained to see through the darkness, picturing Father out there on the wave-tossed Regina.
“I’m sure he’s all right, Mother.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt. The briny scent of the sea mixed with the night wind. A desolate smell somehow. Without hope.
Mother drew in her breath, perhaps shocked to see me.
“Why wouldn’t he be all right?” she asked.
I curled my fingers around the wet railing and looked down to the dark courtyard four stories below. The twin palms had been cleared away. Even their stumps had been dug out of the earth and carted away, leaving behind dead space.
“Aren’t you scared for him? Two ships are missing already. What if the Regina is lost too?”
Mother made a soft, hurt sound, and I damned myself for adding to her anguish. Of course she was scared for Father. So was I.
“Seems as though we’ve got enough to worry about without fretting about something we can’t control.” She sounded so weary and heartbroken.
Yet I couldn’t help whispering, “Was Father very angry at me? When he realized I was a witch? He has such disdain for witches. Now that the Lord Regent has annulled your marriage and practically disowned me, do you think he’ll even want to talk to me?”
“Demetria, your father cares deeply about you. You can be sure of that always.” Mother wrapped her arm around my shoulders. When she burst into wracking sobs, guilt swamped me. I was always making things worse, not better.
“I’m so, so, sorry,” she choked, stuffing a fist to her mouth. “I knew better than to fall in love with a non-magical. I never meant to. He was so dashing and handsome, and I told myself I just wanted a good time. Not anything permanent. I was so young. So stubbornly sure I knew what I was doing.”
I put my arm around her waist, and we huddled together, fighting tears. I tried to picture my father being young enough to be thought dashing and handsome. All I knew was the solid, middle-aged man with a bald spot and spreading waistline. A kind man, but remote. Always reading a book or the paper. Wanting another cup of coffee but unwilling to get it for himself. Lecturing about being frugal. Did age really change people that much? A sobering thought.
“When I realized I was pregnant, everything got so serious so fast. I had no time to think. To plan.” Mother wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve, but between the rain, tears, and her wet clothes, the action had little effect.
I stiffened. They hadn’t been married when she got pregnant? I was the reason they had married? She’d never mentioned that. I thought she told me everything. Shock coursed through me so hard I nearly reeled. Her voice sounded soft and far away as I struggled to listen to her speaking to me.
Through a dim haze I heard her say, “Everyone knows that when a witch and a non-magical breed, chances are only one in four the baby will be a witch. The odds were you’d be non-magical, Dem. That’s why I did what I did. Why I married Michael. To give you a home with your own kind so you wouldn’t be an outsider. I’d already screwed up so many things by being a headstrong idiot. I thought if I did right by you, I could possibly redeem myself.”
Mother turned to me and took my face between her palms so she could stare at me with her beseeching, dark eyes. “You understand that, don’t you? You don’t blame me, do you?”
I did blame her, but I would never, ever tell her that. Besides, faced with the same dilemma, I might have chosen the same path.
A strained, awful smile flitted across Mother’s lips. “Michael and I were talking about me having another baby. We’d agreed to start trying, and not two hours later I went outside to get you so I could feed you lunch, and the rocks were dancing around your head, and you were laughing. Laughing so hard, your chubby little face so filled with glee.” Mother pressed my cheeks and I tried not to wince.
“And just like that everything was ruined again. Everyth
ing I’d thought I’d fixed fell to pieces. My lies undone, my choices proved horribly wrong. And instead of confessing the truth to Michael – that I was a witch and so were you – I cast a spell on my own child so she wouldn’t remember who she was. I compounded my guilt a hundredfold. I told myself it was to protect Michael and his family and their social standing, and it was for that, but it was for me, too. So I wouldn’t be exposed as a fraud. And I wouldn’t have to go crawling back to my family, who for all I knew, hated me for running away without telling them where I was going or that I was having a baby.
“I never let myself think about you. About how this could affect you. I told myself you were better off this way, that I was doing the right thing.”
She turned to clutch at the cold railing, her face full of baffled anger. “This damned Reutterance. Othala curse it! I waited every day to hear the earth witch had been marked so I could breathe again.”
“You knew it would be me?” My eyes widened.
She shook her head, but without much conviction. “Not exactly, no. I feared it. I couldn’t tell my anxiety from my precog abilities. They were never that strong to begin with.”
Was there no end to magic? Precognition. What next?
“It wouldn’t have done any good to keep me inside anyway,” I muttered, hanging my head so I didn’t have to look at her. “The lightning finds you wherever you are. At least this way our house wasn’t burned to the ground.”
“The lightning bolt carrying the mark of Othala doesn’t damage anything. It only marks the earth witch and sea witch who can save us all,” Mother whispered. “But you’re right, it would have found its way regardless of where I tried to hide you.”
“You should have told me. Should have warned me.” I stared hard out to sea, but saw only black waves and rain.
“I know,” she said.
We stood should to shoulder in silence. Resentment churned my gut until I wanted to be sick.
“I don’t have any precog abilities, do I?” The thought scared the hell out of me.
“I don’t know,” Mother answered. “Not all earth witches do. Only some. I don’t know what you’re capable of, Dem. I just know you’re ten times stronger than I am, and once you find your control, there’ll be no stopping you.”
“Until I cast the spell of Reutterance and kill myself doing it,” I said, bitterness choking me.
Mother drew in a deep breath and held it so long I wondered if she would ever release it. “I don’t know what to do for you. What to say to you. I know this is all my fault, but I can’t change any of it. I could refuse to teach you how to use your magic, but to what end?”
“No.” I shook my head, raindrops spattering across my cheeks. “Better that only Logan and I should die rather than everyone on the island. I know that. I’m just angry. I always thought I’d grow up and get married and have kids, and be like everyone else. All I’ve ever wanted was to be like everyone else. And the joke’s on me because I never was. And never will be.”
Othala, how maudlin. Standing in the rain bemoaning my fate was stupid.
“What did Captain Clark want?” I asked. Anything to change the subject. “I heard him go past my room from this direction. Wasn’t he up here talking to you? I tried to get him to talk to me, but he ignored me as if he were angry. Was he?”
Mother was still for a moment before she said, “We were mostly talking about you.”
Me? I shifted from one foot to the other, trying to find my balance.
“He likes witches,” I said, offended by the idea of being talked about behind my back. But this was Mother and Captain Clark. Why would they say mean things about me? They liked me.
I unclenched my teeth. “He thinks I’m special.”
“You are.”
I shrugged, still uncomfortable with the idea they’d talked about me, and I didn’t know what they’d said. “Because of the mark of Othala. Why did he seem so angry? Why wouldn’t he talk to me?”
“I don’t know why he wouldn’t talk to you.” Mother drew her shawl more closely around her shoulders. “I think he’s angry at your whole situation frankly. I can’t say that I blame him. I am too.” She moved away from the railing, and headed for the door back inside. “It’s late, sweetheart. Why don’t you come in out of the rain and go to bed?”
“Aren’t you even going to ask about me and Logan?” I watched her reach for the door handle, then stop.
“He’s a very attractive young man,” she said carefully, but I still felt a sting of resentment that she didn’t seem to know anything about me anymore, and more importantly, that I didn’t know the first thing about her and probably never had.
“He kissed me like it meant the world, but then he acted like it was just something that happened,” I burst out, aggrieved.
Mother laughed softly. “Oh, Dem. Did you ever stop to think maybe he’s as scared and confused as you are?”
Still laughing, she disappeared down the staircase.
Logan scared and confused about me? Not likely. Snorting, I moved away from the railing and retreated to my room where I didn’t have to think about anything if I only could fall asleep.
Chapter 11
The next morning Mother, Logan, and I were already seated inside the windowless carriage when the door opened and the Lady Regent, dressed in casual clothes that screamed superior quality, climbed inside.
“Room for one more?” She smiled at us, especially Logan, who moved over on his bench.
So far this morning I hadn’t acknowledged his existence. Mother and I had eaten breakfast in my room. We were expected to eat in the formal dining room for lunch and dinner, but we’d been given the option of breakfast in our rooms, and Mother and I, at least, took advantage of the opportunity. One less meal we must endure with the odious Lord Regent. Bonus – we could eat in our pajamas.
“I’ve been cooped up in that dreadful mansion for weeks now thanks to the weather. Today I’ve decided to simply grin and bear it.” Regina propped her umbrella against the now-closed door and settled against the leather seatback. Logan gave her one of his cocky grins, which she returned with a placid smile.
“No offense, Logan. I know you aren’t causing all this rain.”
“But I am in a way,” he mused. He shot a saucy look in my direction that I ignored. “Demetria, too, if you think about it. Being sea cursed and all that.”
Did Regina’s mouth tighten at the words “sea cursed”? Could she know it was a test Logan set her, to see how she’d react? A rather unfair test since all non-magicals, including me before I knew I could perform magic, used that term.
“I also thought a more impartial eye than Matilda’s should oversee your training, Demetria. I’ve seen the way she sneers at you. Got off on the wrong foot, didn’t you?”
“I imagine no witch on Galveteen has fancy footwork enough to please that woman,” I said, making Regina chuckle.
“She’s determined to brave the elements sitting next to Captain Clark rather than inside here with witches.” Regina flicked a raindrop from the collar of her shirt. She gave us all a mischievous wink. “I hope she’s soaked to the skin and catches cold, the ninny. Besides, with her not here, we can all talk.”
I narrowed my eyes. Had her voice dropped in a conspiratorial manner as if she had some secret to share or was I imagining things? I still couldn’t tell when Regina was joking and when she was deadly serious. I’d never met a more elusive soul.
“If you don’t like her, why do you keep her on as your housekeeper?” Mother asked in such an innocent voice I was immediately suspicious she was thinking along the same lines as I was. “Surely as Lady Regent, you run the household.”
Regina tilted her head to regard my mother. The two women stared, obviously taking each other’s measure.
Regina said, “When you are married to a man like David, you learn to choose your battles wisely.”
“Why are you married to a man like him?”
Even Logan raised
his eyebrows at Mother’s boldness, but Regina merely smiled and shook her head. “It seemed a good idea at the time. Love does that. Haven’t you ever made rather ridiculous decisions in the name of the love, Helena?”
Mother stared at Regina for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Touché.”
The horses clip-clopped against the cobblestones, and rain spattered against the sides of the carriage. I pictured Matilda, sour-faced and drenched, sitting self-righteously tall on the seat next to Captain Clark and wished we’d hit a bump so she’d fall off and break a leg.
Mother and Regina sat composed and silent. So much for talking and perhaps confiding secrets. I fiddled with my hair. I’d put it up again to get it out of my way, but took it down and braided it. Silence made me nervous.
Logan gazed at me with his sexy blue eyes as if he were drinking in and memorizing everything about my appearance, storing it against a dark night. Othala! Where were these fanciful thoughts coming from? He was doing no such thing. He was staring at me to unnerve me, and damn him, he was succeeding. I fumbled with the end of the braid and the whole thing fell apart so I had to begin again.
“Want some help? I’m a fair hand at braiding. Having six sisters has that effect.” Logan waggled his eyebrows at me, and my fingers turned stupid and clumsy, wrecking the braid again.
“Six sisters?” Regina turned to him, a strange expression washing over her face. Bittersweet longing – or maybe I was being fanciful again thanks to anxiety and Logan’s proximity. “Your mother must have her hands full. Are you the oldest?”
“No, I have two sisters above me and four below.” Logan’s grin faltered a little as he obviously thought about his youngest sister, Chelsea.
Sea Cursed: An Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 13 (The Othala Witch Collection) Page 11
