Tristan had no issues spending his half of Juliet’s policy. But then again, Tristan had no blood on his hands.
Delilah’s money simply sat in the bank all this time, collecting a pitiable interest for no apparent reason. Until the rotisserie. Which even Tristan was keen enough to realize was Brandon’s fault.
Her stomach rolled again.
She fought her nausea by ordering a set of marvelous kitchen shears off another infomercial. They promised to cut whole chickens and tin cans with equal ease. Besides, she’d grown tired of tightening the screw on her current pair.
By seven, she called Tristan.
At eight, he showed up with her requests. She wasn’t sure if she was happier to see him or the plastic grocery store bag as he let himself in through her front door.
Delilah dove for the striped round peppermints, practically ripping the bag to shreds then fighting to free one of the little suckers. She sighed in relief when the first one hit her tongue.
Tristan watched with great amusement before he started talking.
Delilah knew the price for sending Tristan on an errand was suffering the third degree. So she readily agreed to it, even if she knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. For the peppermints, saltines and sprite it was worth it.
When he started in, she answered to the best of her ability. No, she hadn’t eaten anything since the day before. Yes, she should be hungry. That didn’t mean that she actually was hungry. At last he gave up and sent her back to bed, where finally she slept.
She woke up at two in the afternoon, and checked her phone. She was totally bummed there were no messages from Brandon. But she was happy her stomach ailment seemed to have passed.
Now, she was hungry. It had been almost two days since she’d really eaten. In her desire for food, and soon, she sliced a hunk from a small loaf of bread then slit it sideways. She stacked it with roast beef, provolone cheese, thin sliced roma tomatoes, and green peppers. Usually she added sliced mushrooms but today she wanted extra oil and vinegar. Besides, the mushrooms looked like they were on the verge of going bad although she couldn’t say why.
Maybe it was some sixth sense about food.
Then again, who cared? She turned her head sideways and bit into the fragrant sandwich shark-style. Oh, that was good. Delilah stood there, over her kitchen counter, and savored each bite. She didn’t think about the mushrooms again until she was almost at the end of the sandwich. Maybe they really had gone bad.
Or, she realized, becoming absolutely still as she polished off the very last bite of the sandwich, maybe it was for another reason entirely.
Brandon hadn’t called.
She hadn’t confessed.
He hadn’t forgiven her. Because he didn’t know he should. And that only made the whole thing worse.
Because it was plain as day as soon as the thought entered her head.
Oh, crap.
She was pregnant.
Chapter 23
Brandon sat on his beautiful hard wood floor in his circle of salt, right in the middle of his living room, coddling the big glass of the last of the wine, and thought for a moment.
Tomorrow he would need to hit Target and buy a really good vacuum broom. He’d been thinking about getting one for a while and the thick line of white grains around him clinched it. There was no way he’d be able to adequately sweep that up. And there’d be no way to explain it to Dan or his sister either.
Four candles flickered around him. They were as closely aligned to the four compass points as he could get them. He wondered if the people at Target would figure out what he was up to, what with the weird list of things he’d bought: wooden table top, wooden candle holders, tchotchkes and matches.
He now owned a small wooden table, hastily made with four by fours cut down for legs and held together with peg construction. The internet said the spell altar could contain no metal. That meant a trip to Home Depot and an hour in his garage. It looked like crap, and wobbled just a little, but fit the bill.
He’d gone to the liquor store and bought a huge party wine glass and two glass dishes. And a really expensive bottle of vintage merlot. He figured if it really was all going to hell in a hand basket then revenge ought to be served with a fine red wine. Delilah would appreciate the gesture.
Brandon decided to forgo the sun and moon representations on his altar. Yasmin, the friendly instructor at Blessed Be, led a discussion how some people just did the spells, were merely magicians, but that there was a whole religion associated with it. Half the class consisted of useless chat about worshiping the rivers and the air and the souls of everything around them.
At one point, Brandon asked about the need to sacrifice small animals. Yasmin at first looked shocked—as though she would never stand such an occurrence—then patiently explained that his was a common misconception. She went on to say what he’d read online was actually a subset of Voodoo or maybe Santeria, an entirely different religion that the uneducated often called witchcraft. He hadn’t thought it would go over well if he raised his hand and asked if they could just get to the part about causing pain. Yasmin would have frowned on his revenge.
Well, Yasmin The Good Witch could just stuff it.
Still, it was noon on the second day.
Thursday night he’d cast his first stupid spell, feeling like a moron the whole time. He’d stopped twice to be sure the curtains and blinds were all tightly drawn, afraid his neighbors would see him and string him up for being a witch. Which, of course, would be the ultimate irony. He also didn’t want anyone to see him being such a fool.
He’d carried everything he needed to his little unsteady altar, lit his candles, repeated the rhymes, and poured the circle of salt right from the bag, keeping himself inside.
The book and Yasmin both stressed the need for pure emotion. There was also the theory that strong emotion worked better. Well, he had that in spades. Even if he looked like an absolute idiot in his white cotton t-shirt and a pair of plain white drawstring pants he’d bought for the occasion.
Thursday night he’d packed it in early, needing to show up at work and put on a good front. He hoped to hear from Delilah. Something to let him know it had worked.
But she hadn’t called.
All day Thursday he’d been pleased with himself. He’d cast a love spell on her. That would be the best revenge: he could leave her begging at his door while he shut her out. The taste-of-her-own-medicine seemed perfect.
But she hadn’t called.
She must not feel it bad enough.
He wanted her begging. On her knees. Crying when he slammed the door on her.
Mad didn’t begin to cover it.
He steadied himself with deep breaths. Begged off work early. Ate a microwaved dinner and told himself that, while he couldn’t pronounce half of what was in there, at least ‘deceit’ wasn’t on the list of ingredients. He napped.
Midnight was the right time. He’d listened to Yasmin at the beginner class. He hadn’t liked all she’d had to say, but he’d paid attention.
Again he cast his circle, this time with the added anger that it hadn’t worked the night before. He burned more tansy, drank more wine, threw down more salt. And he hoped.
Until the sun came up and here he was, still sitting in his salt ring. He was glad he’d brought the entire magnum of wine inside the circle with him. Blessed Be at least sold quality candles. The black and green tapers were burned only halfway, even though they’d stayed lit all night. Then again, he’d been lit all night too. But he was burned to the nub.
The wine was gone. The whole thing. And he hadn’t had that much the first night he’d tried to cast. Now all he could do was sit right here on the hard wood and think. Or else he’d have to break his circle and that would end the energy of the spell. If he’d done it right, it would work for a while, maybe a week, before it wore off.
He sighed. He hadn’t figured on getting himself drunk while he did it. So he hadn’t brought any Tylenol into the circl
e. With a smirk, he realized next time he should—there wasn’t any metal on a Tylenol bottle. It wouldn’t harm the spell.
Not that he knew what in God’s name metal had to do with anything. Or if it made any difference if he sat here being angry for a while longer.
But he was angry. So he might as well sit here. The pounding in his brain was almost a comfort.
There was water, and he contemplated drinking it right out of the dish, until he remembered that he had thrown a generous amount of salt into it several times as he said the stupid little rhymes.
As the room brightened with the new day, he looked at the altar. It was as crude as it could possibly be. The store offered some beautiful handcrafted pieces, but he’d only needed to get the job done.
It turned out Witchcraft was expensive. Whole, well-preserved herbs didn’t come cheap. That was, unless you wanted to grow your own and bundle them and dry them, for which he did not have the time. Or, he could scour the countryside and pick them fresh. Although, given his level of education on the subject he’d likely either get arrested for picking something protected by national law or kill himself with something that looked exactly like a kitchen herb but was deadly poisonous to the touch. Wouldn’t Delilah just love that? If her little plaything killed himself trying to work a counter spell? Of course, Delilah had a kitchen full of all the herbs she needed. Then again, Delilah had been at it a while.
The athame he’d bought—which he’d been assured was essential to spell work—was twenty dollars. It was the cheapest, simplest one they had. It looked it, too. Beautiful ones, like what Delilah owned, ran upwards of two hundred dollars—each. Yasmin assured him you couldn’t buy spell quality with a better knife. The only way to get a knife that worked better from the get-go was to inherit it from a powerful witch. So he gladly handed over his twenty dollars for this cheap, tacky, little silver blade.
His ass hurt from sitting on the hard floor for too long. His chin prickled with beard growth. His head pounded every time he moved or thought anything. But his heart beat a steady rhythm that was its own for the first time in days. And that made him smile.
There was also a great irony to the whole thing.
He’d been raised catholic. In a move he never figured out, his father had walked his two kids down the street to the catholic church at the end of the block every Sunday morning. They didn’t do the Wednesday night dinners, and he and his sister only went to Sunday school when it didn’t require they show up early or stay late. His father wasn’t Catholic, he’d only partially completed his conversion by the time Bethy was born and their mother had run off. Still, the two kids were baptized in the church and had done the whole first communion thing.
The three of them stopped going when Bethy hit eighth grade. It just faded out of their lives. But Bethy had gone back during college, married a catholic man, and even sent her kids to catholic school. And she believed. All of it.
She would have the mother of all hissy fits if she knew her brother was sitting in a salt circle casting spells. Dating a witch. So far, she’d had nothing but good things to say about Delilah. Unfortunately, all Bethy had to go on was the idea of Delilah. The reality was turning out far different.
Brandon laughed.
He was a catholic, by blessing if not in his heart, and they were one of the few remaining religions that still believed in that thou shalt not suffer a witch to live stuff. He wondered if he should tie Delilah to a dunking stick and hold her underwater until she confessed. No one still had a dunking stick, did they? Were they maybe on sale at Blessed Be? Unlikely.
He shook his head. Then regretted it, as the pounding swirled through his brain from the simple motion.
His thoughts were running away from him and he didn’t like it. As much as he hated what Delilah had done to him, he wasn’t a violent person. He’d always broken off relationships with a good attitude. Revenge hadn’t been in him since he was fifteen and he toilet papered his archrival’s house for trying to frame him for cheating to get him kicked off the basketball team. But that had merely been a petty act of treason against him, and he’d retaliated with a petty act of retribution. It had been fair, in a stupid, high school kind of way. Regardless, it was a lifetime ago. And he thought he had gotten far beyond the boy he’d been.
Now he wondered if the hate was some kind of residue of the spells she’d put on him.
Screw it. He couldn’t wonder anymore. It wasn’t getting him anywhere. And besides, his head hurt, his butt hurt, and he was out of Tansy.
He was going to have to go sleep off his drunk.
Brandon stood, stopping for a moment to steady himself on the arm of the couch as the room swayed dizzily around him. Then he shuffled his way out of the salt circle, destroying the neat line and supposedly the energy along with it.
As he turned to look back at it, he saw it was a mess. The empty wine bottle was on its side with the cork propped in the corner across the room. The big wine glass had a smear of red in the bottom--all that was left of his vintage merlot. He’d spilled more salt than he’d thought, leaving white crystals trailed across the wood in various places. But the hammering in his brain offered an easy explanation for those misses as well as the misperception that they hadn’t existed.
Even so, he saw remnants of his feelings for Delilah scattered there among the refuse. The first feelings. The fake ones. They still clung to him, were still trying to worm their way inside. He was desperate to excise them. He just didn’t seem to be able to.
A very strong part of him still wanted to see her and hold her. Sensed that she needed him. Reminding himself it was all false, he shuffled his way into the bedroom and threw himself at his bed. He moaned at the tidal wave that one action set off in his brain, and he waited it out while the room stopped its violent rocking. As soon as the sloshing quieted to a gentle sway, he closed his eyes and passed out.
Chapter 24
Delilah sat on the edge of her bed, repeating in her head every swear word she knew. And ignoring the fact that the repetition was likely creating powerful magick. She didn’t care if she created a storm around her, when there was already one raging inside her.
Tristan would say it was her own fault. That fate had a way of getting back at you when you hadn’t done what you were supposed to. Fate probably thought it was hysterically funny that she’d been agonizing over telling Brandon what she’d done and what she was. So when she hadn’t done it in time to satisfy, she got this thrown at her.
Tristan would tell her she’d brought it on herself.
Tristan would be right.
Still, she felt terrible. Her stomach rolled.
Her brain rolled, too. And she searched for every reason she could cling to that she just couldn’t be pregnant.
She was irregular. She’d thought she was pregnant a few times before. But it was just her weird cycle.
Delilah smiled until her stomach turned over on her again. Of course there had been that one time when she actually had been pregnant. And it felt just like this.
That made her stomach turn over again. Even more violently than before. Leaping from the bed, she ran to get a mint from the bag Tristan had brought. Even as the taste permeated her mouth and sinuses, bringing sweet relief, her hopes sank. In the name of honesty, she had to admit that only the actual pregnancy had brought on this kind of nausea. Only the actual pregnancy left her downing bags of red and white swirled peppermints as though they were an oxygen source.
Her mind searched for anything else that might mean it was all okay.
This stomach thing came on pretty quick. With pregnancy it ought to sneak up on you, right? She read all about it last time. Morning sickness—which was horribly misnamed because it struck at any time—was a result of baby hormones, which grew as the baby grew. So a sudden attack didn’t make any sense. But she couldn’t remember how it all started the last time. Of course, she’d known she was pregnant first that time. Rather than figuring it all out like this.
Delilah crawled back under the covers and huddled there with her pillow and her unhappy thoughts while her stomach staged its coup. She tried to imagine all the ways she might tell Brandon what she’d been up to.
She could see him in her mind’s eye, all happy and thrilled. She’d say, I’m having a baby and he’d respond, Just what I wanted, a baby! She’d tell him I’m a witch and he’d just smile. That’s okay. No, better yet he’d say, I figured all that out a while ago. Delilah didn’t have the imaginary chops to create an image of him saying that he was a witch, too. That was why the initial forget spell had been so hard to enforce.
In fact, the whole thing was pretty ludicrous. There was no way this was going to go over well. At least now he wouldn’t kill her because she was carrying his child. Right?
Delilah shook her head to herself. He would likely either be angry she’d cast a spell on him or just laugh at her and think she was crazy. People tended to think what they themselves didn’t understand or couldn’t do just wasn’t possible. Delilah could fix that really fast. Blowing a candle to life was remarkably easy, but nice and showy. The problem was that it was too easy. It made people afraid of what else you could do. Afraid you might try to control them.
Even lying there in her bed by herself, Delilah had to wince. Because that was exactly what she’d tried to do to Brandon. Would he think it was okay because it hadn’t worked? No, likely he’d be just as angry as he had every right to be.
The whole thing was so tangled she couldn’t even find a spot of happiness in herself that she was pregnant. She sure hadn’t been trying to get herself knocked up, but she’d always wanted children of her own. She’d just become convinced it wasn’t going to happen after David and Juliet died. She’d become certain she wasn’t fit to be a mother. But there was a certain inevitability to this she couldn’t argue with.
Delilah hugged her pillow a little tighter and tried to blank her mind. She hoped she might find some rest if she could stop the hurricane of thoughts crashing through her brain.
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