Spellbound

by Michelle M. Pillow

  “Hello, Mom,” Jane answered. With her birth mother’s touch came clarity. Her mom hadn’t left her. Her mom was a bean nighe. The sorrow grew, becoming the unbearable depression that haunted her in the darkest of moments. Jane suddenly remembered why she was dying.

  “It’s time you take my place so that I can finally rest.” The creature’s expression softened, but Jane did not mistake tenderness for a mother’s love. “You were not supposed to live very long in this human form.”

  Jane didn’t need to ask if it would hurt. She knew her answer. The agonizing pull of life leaving her body would burn like the pits of hell were exploding inside her. Forgetfulness was the only real gift her mother had given her, the blank slate that took these horrific moments from her until the next touch, the next feeding. A mother’s touch was supposed to bring comfort. Her mother only brought sickness.

  The bean nighe’s mouth opened wide. Jane braced herself for what was to come. The tingling started in her toes and fingers, pulling up through her limbs, burning as the blood stopped flowing in her veins. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She’d been prepared for death, living on the hope of an afterlife haunting the forest and greenhouse she’d come to love. But her fate was much worse. She was to become the thing that killed her. She was to take her mom’s place as a bean nighe.

  The loud squawk of a bird shook Jane from her trance. Iain.

  The bean nighe’s body jerked forward without warning. Her grip slipped and she released Jane. The memories of Jane’s past slipped and began to fade.

  Sean swung a stick at the creature’s back. “I want what you promised!”

  The bean nighe screeched and turned her attention to the attacker. She flew forward, blurring toward the man only to reappear in front of him. She pulled his life force from him with a harsh inhale. Severe age marred Sean’s handsome face.

  “No, leave him!” Jane yelled. She surged forward. She grabbed the creature’s shoulders from behind. The rush of memory filled her once more at the contact. “Mom, let him go. You can’t feed on living humans. Let him go.”

  Iain swooped in from the trees, talons drawn to slice the creature’s arms. The bean nighe dropped Sean and turned her attention toward Iain.

  “No!” Jane screamed as her mother tried to blur off into the trees. She held on tightly, flying with her. Jane lifted off the ground before their combined weight pulled the bean nighe back down. She reached for a sucker tree and grabbed hold with one hand while gripping the bean nighe with the other. In her desperation to stop the attack, she felt herself transferring life from the bean nighe to the sucker. Despite what she was, the bean nighe was still her mother, and that genetic connection fueled her sorrow. “Mom, I’m sorry, but you have to stop.”

  The creature screeched. Even as she did it, regret filled Jane. She felt the hollowness of souls passing through her. The tree truck thickened and outgrew her fisted hold.

  This is what the bean nighe wanted—her own death. She wanted Jane to replace her, to end her suffering. The screeching stopped. Milky eyes stared at her. Her mom smiled. There was relief in the expression, a peace that had never been there.

  “Thank you.” Her mom’s words whispered through Jane’s mind. Then the creature let go, blowing through Jane, filling her with the pain of death before transferring life into the tree.

  All around Jane, the forest bloomed. Plants covered the forest floor in vibrant greens and whites, reaching into the shadowed corners. The sucker tree had become a forest giant with long sweeping branches that reached over her head.

  Iain landed on the ground before her. His feet touched the new undergrowth and it triggered a transformation back into his human form. He kneeled before her naked. Blood marred his fingertips where he’d scratched the bean nighe.

  “Jane?” he whispered. “What happened?”

  “She’s gone.” Jane shook her head in an effort to clear it.

  “Ya called her your ma.”

  “She’s my birth mother. She came to me when I was younger. She’s the reason I’ve been so ill. I remembered everything when she touched me. This is what she wanted. Well, not exactly this. She wanted me to take her place so that she could be free of her curse. I don’t think this is exactly how she foresaw that happening.” Jane looked up the giant tree. She felt her mom’s energy flowing inside the bark underneath her hand.

  Jane pulled her hand from the tree she’d grown. She frowned, feeling as if her memory was slipping into her subconscious as she stopped touching the back. “She went through me. She gave me…something.” She touched the tree again, and her memories cleared once more. “She wanted me to take her place, but I didn’t. Something else happened. I’m her daughter, so she could feed off me, but she was not supposed to feed off humans. So, when she fed off Sean, something weakened inside of her, and I was able to absorb her and put her into this tree instead of taking her curse into my body.”

  “Ya are half bean nighe. That has to explain your ability to transfer energy. Legend has it that a bean nighe absorbs the energy of the dead in order to live and then transfer the leftovers back into the earth by the act of washing burial clothes in the stream.”

  “Don’t let me forget where she is.” Jane patted the bark. She knew when she stopped touching the tree her memory of her mother would fade. Such was part of the bean nighe’s nature, a natural defense against discovery. It was why they were only known as myths. She turned to Iain. “How did you find me?”

  “I knew ya needed me and I had to find ya. I heard your heart’s call and took flight.”

  “And you transformed back. Twice. Your family made it sound as if that wasn’t very likely to happen.” She didn’t even pretend to avert her eyes from the fact he was naked. “I like this look better than feathers.” Jane crawled toward him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, knowing she didn’t want to be anywhere else. Iain held her gently. “I’m glad you changed back. Earlier, I was close to locking you in a birdcage.”

  Iain gave a small laugh. “Ya just fought a bean nighe and ya want to discuss my shifting?”

  “Iain,” she whispered.

  “What, love?” He stroked her cheek. As the bean nighe blood on his fingers touched her skin, the clarity came back.

  “I just killed my mom.” Power surged inside her, exhilarating and painful at the same time. “I did. I killed my bean nighe mom. She wanted me to take her place, which gives whole new meaning to joining the family business, but instead I transferred her into a tree.” Jane gave a small, humorless laugh.

  “Ya did what ya had to,” Iain assured her.

  “But, what if I become her now? What if she succeeded and I have to take her place.”

  A low moan sounded, interrupting them.

  Jane stiffened. “Sean.” How could she have forgotten her injured stepbrother?

  They turned to the man lying on the ground. His head rolled back and forth. The run-in with the bean nighe had left Sean weakened. As he moved, the thick strands of his hair fell away, leaving him partially bald. Wrinkles fanned his eyes and lined his mouth.

  “We should get him to a hospital,” Jane said.

  “If we must do anything, we can take him to Cait,” Iain offered. “Keep this off the human radar.”

  “No. I don’t want him anywhere near your family.” Jane flinched as she tried to stand. “He is the reason the bean nighe had me in her grasp. He tried to trade me for his dead mother.”

  “Why would he want his dead mother?” Iain grimaced. “No good spells can come of that.”

  “I think he wanted her brought back to life.”

  Iain’s frown deepened. “No good can come of reanimation of human remains. Zombies are not just something humans made up to scare each other.”

  “I don’t think zombies were his intention either.”

  “No matter his plan, he meant ya harm. That I cannot forgive. Let him find his own way out of the forest. I’m taking ya home.”

  “Please, Iain. He’s my stepbr
other. We have to get him help.”

  Iain looked as if he’d refuse but then sighed and nodded. “For ya, love, I’ll get him to the hospital, but only if ya promise to let me take ya to my home to let Cait tend your wounds.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “We don’t know what your ma did to ya.” Iain smoothed his hand over her hair before lifting a loose curl so she could see it. Her hair had turned white. “This is not negotiable.”

  Chapter 22

  “A bean nighe’s daughter?” Cait eyed Jane’s white hair. They were in the MacGregor library overlooking the outside gardens. Iain’s aunt had just finished applying ointment to a large scrape on Jane’s back.

  Jane gingerly pulled the back of her shirt down, not liking the way it stuck to the ointment but refusing to walk around the mansion half naked.

  “It would explain the air of death about ya,” Margareta said. “And why ya see ghosts.”

  “Aye,” Cait agreed. “And it explains your jagged lifeline if she was feeding off ya, and why those feedings didn’t kill ya. Normally, they consume spirits. Ya said the doctors could never figure out why ya were sick.”

  “And the nature,” Margareta added. “Plants grow from the fertilizer of other dead plants, and ya have the ability to renew and transfer life. Who knows what kind of powers ya will develop in time.”

  Jane shivered. She remembered what she’d told Iain about her mom, understood she needed to be physically touching her mom’s energy to recall the details of her interactions with her, and she knew her mom’s energy was now in a tree. What she didn’t know is what it meant for her to be a half bean nighe. “Iain mentioned how a bean nighe is meant to consume ghosts and release their energy back into the world.”

  “Legend has it that mnathan nighe—that is, more than one bean nighe—are women who die with their baby in childbirth. Their spirits can’t let go of the joy they expected to feel and their great disappointment. If such heightened emotion can turn the woman into a bean nighe, it would stand to reason the life of another child could somehow free her of it.”

  “How is that reasonable? A woman loses a child and her life, and so she is supposed sacrifice another child to end her curse?” Jane stood and began to pace.

  “Oh, dear,” Margareta chuckled. “Ya say that like this is one of your American fairy tales. Have ya never read the old stories?”

  “And not necessarily sacrifice. Ya are still here,” Cait said. “Those poor mnathan nighe have a horrible fate—feeding off the dead, purging souls, cleaning what remains. Maybe ya were meant to take your ma’s place. Maybe ya were meant to end her, as ya did. All I know is that ya must have been the key for your ma, and for her, death was a kindness.”

  “I was told my mother abandoned us,” Jane argued. “My mother didn’t die in childbirth. My father wouldn’t have kept that from me.”

  “Oh, no,” Margareta said. “A creature like her would have died centuries before ya were born. She would have to have been old to become so powerful. My guess is that she happened upon some mass tragedy and was able to gorge herself on it. From what I recall from my readings, a feast of souls would have shaken her out of her constant hunger and given her the power of consciousness long enough for her to seduce your father and give birth to ya. But I imagine the hunger would have been too hard to resist as it called her back to the graveyards. Consciousness couldn’t be sustained forever before her nature to feed took over once more. Feeding off of ya probably gave her strength.”

  “So I’m becoming a bean nighe?” Jane touched her hair, evidence of her heritage. She tried to remember what the bean nighe had said to her, but aside from the knowledge that there had been a physical struggle, the words and thoughts were as faded as an old dream. Only vague impressions remained. “I’m going to turn into that thing and snack on ghosts?”

  “Half bean nighe,” Cait corrected. “We do not know what that means for ya.”

  Jane took a deep breath. As strange as this was, it was the best explanation she’d had for the events of her life so far. “So I’m not dying?”

  “Euann, that little troll!” Malina declared from the doorway. “He got you too, Jane, did he?”

  Jane turned, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Your hair. He put something in the shampoo.” Malina gestured to the reoccurring white streak in her own hair. “Come with me. I’ll show you how to cover it until it fades out completely, and then we’ll hunt down—”

  “Leave your brother alone, Malina,” Margareta ordered. “He didn’t do this.”

  “Who else? Euann did this to me,” Malina pulled at her own locks.

  “Jane was attacked by a bean nighe.” Cait patted Jane’s hair. “But she won.”

  “I miss all the fun.” Malina pouted.

  “The bean nighe was her ma,” Margareta said with a bite of warning in her tone.

  “Nothing a little hair color can’t fix.” Malina quickly changed the subject.

  “I don’t suppose you can work something a little more permanent? Like an anti-aging hair spell?” Jane had no desire to keep the white. “To take away my premature gray so I’m not coloring it for the rest of my life?”

  “Come on, Jane. I’ll get you fixed up,” Malina said. “Though you kind of rock the whole banshee-chic. I have some magazines in my room. We can go shopping while your hair processes.”

  * * *

  “You have the coolest power ever.” Jane’s excited voice filtered out of Malina’s bedroom.

  Iain somehow knew he’d find her there. He’d felt her location the moment he’d entered his home.

  “Oo, do this one,” Jane said.

  Curious, Iain pushed his finger against the door and let it silently open. He found Jane and his sister sitting in the middle of her room surrounded by an ocean of half-eaten cupcakes and pastries. An open recipe book lay on the floor between them. Both women were biting into cream puffs that matched the picture on the page. Their eyes turned toward him at the exact same moment, and they stopped mid-bite as if they’d been caught doing something incredibly bad.

  Jane’s hair was slicked into a pile on her head. A spot of brown hair color stained her forehead. She laughed as she bit down and chewed. She offered the rest of the cream puff to him. Iain stepped through the cupcake minefield, leaned over and took a bite without bothering to take it from her hand.

  “Mm.” He nodded before swallowing. “It’s good.”

  “This is amazing,” Jane said. “I show your sister a picture and she makes me food.”

  “Should I be jealous? Ya didn’t get this excited by my powers,” Iain said.

  “You didn’t tell me you could materialize cupcakes off a magazine picture,” Jane said.

  “That’s because he can’t,” Malina informed. “Oh, and I didn’t tell you the best part. You get all the pleasure of eating but none of the weight. On the down side, none of the nutrition if you’re locked somewhere without actual food.”

  Jane dipped her finger in frosting and licked it. “Tastes real.”

  “She’s like a battery,” Malina said to Iain. She set her cream puff down by a red velvet cupcake and began flipping through the magazine. She touched Jane, then a picture of a banket. Almost instantly, the pastry materialized between them. “Oh, oh, oh, I just had a brilliant idea. With my power and your battery charge, we should find a giant billboard. I think I saw one to the south of town with—”

  “Stutzman Bakery,” Jane finished for Malina. “The five-foot wedding cake!”

  “All right, I’m cutting ya off,” Iain said. “No five-foot wedding cakes.”

  “But…” Jane said, looking around the room. She pouted. “Giant billboard cake.”

  “Ya cannot eat a five-foot cake,” Iain reasoned. “Not even if the rest of the MacGregor women helped ya.”

  “We could too,” Malina said. “How hard could it be?” She counted on her fingers. “Me, Jane, ma, Cait, Lydia—”

  Jane giggled. Her movements were
a little jittery from the magickal sugar rush she had to be feeling. “This sounds like a challenge. I think we need to materialize the cake and prove Iain wrong.”

  “We have ourselves a wager.” Malina jumped up. “I’ll tell the others. Lads versus lasses.”

  Iain groaned.

  Malina rushed out the door, only to come back and say to Jane, “You should wash that out now. Have Iain check the shampoo before ya use it to make sure Euann hasn’t tampered with the bottle.”

  “Are you going to check my shampoo?” Jane grinned.

  “Don’t ya want to know about Sean?” Iain asked.

  Jane smiled wider. “Yes. Tell me about Sean.”

  “Everything is handled. They admitted him for testing for the weakness. I explained that he was in town to see ya and that he hasn’t gotten over his ma’s death. Then, I induced Sean to put your name on the admittance form, giving ya access to his medical records so we can keep an eye on him. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing, but if he tells them what happened, they’ll think he suffered some kind of mental break.”

  “That’s nice.” Jane leaned over and dipped he finger into chocolate frosting and then licked it.

  “Here, look at me.” Iain lifted her chin and tipped back her head. Her eyes were glassy. “How much did ya eat?”

  “I feel sparkly,” she said.

  “I see that.” Iain chuckled and took advantage of the closeness of her mouth. He kissed her, enjoying the taste of frosting on her lips.

  “You feel sparkly too,” she whispered.

  “I think ya are drunk on magick,” Iain said.

  “Malina said the magick hair formula would cause me to be tingly.” She gave a little frown. “Will you still like me if I have white hair forever?”

  “Like ya?” Iain pulled her closer and kissed the tip of her nose. “Silly woman. Don’t ya realize I love ya?”

  “But I have to tell you…” Jane pulled away from him. “I’m half bean nighe, and I am scared I’m going to have to eat ghosts and do laundry.”