“What?” I looked around me.
“Can you go tell Chad to grab the slate from the truck?” He pointed to Chad and Matt, who were walking back over.
“I can just . . . ”
“He will need a hand with the other stuff, too.” Chester pointed at me to go.
I gave a growl of frustration at him and spun around, leaving a hole where my boot heel dug into the dirt. I didn’t care to have any more one-on-one time with Chad. When I got in speaking distance, so Chester couldn’t hear me, I asked Chad to get the slate and for Matt to give him a hand.
Chester yelled for Matt to help him with switching out the pedestal and log to make a proper altar, so I turned back and followed Chad to the truck. The slate was lying in the bed, and there were a few bags in the back seat of the cab.
“I wasn’t done talking to you,” he said as he lowered the tailgate.
“Then I guess you shouldn’t have walked away, which is what I’m doing this time.”
He ran behind me and spun me around so fast I dropped the bags. I didn’t hear anything shatter, so I figured it was okay. I tried to bend down and pick them up, but Chad grabbed my shoulders.
“I needed to ask permission before telling you something.”
“What?” I tried to pull away from him, but he held on so tight, I couldn’t even wiggle. “Chad, let go.”
“No, I need you to hear this.” He reached down and grabbed my hand, pulling me down the driveway so we were far enough away to shout, if need be.
“I had to ask, because it’s not my truth to tell, but I need to tell you.”
“Why? What does this have anything to do with us if it’s not about you?”
“So . . . is there an us?” He looked up at me.
“No, you’ve made that perfectly clear.”
“Did I really? We were getting ready to go out on an actual date the day you were attacked in the woods. I let you go off alone and do the girl thing. I wasn’t there when you were grabbed off the street in broad daylight, when you needed me the most. It would have killed me if anything ever happened to you. I thought I was letting my feelings for you get in the way of protecting you . . . I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Oh for goddess sake, would you stop? You’ve already let me know you’ve been protecting me out of duty. I don’t need to hear any more!”
It was a good thing he had brought us farther from the house. I couldn’t stop the overwhelming anger from returning, which meant I was yelling again.
“That’s not it at all! You’ve got it all wrong!”
“You mean you weren’t protecting me because it was something that’s been done forever?”
“Of course I was.”
“Then I don’t know what you’re saying, Chad! You say yes, it was your responsibility, and then you say that’s not why? Well . . . then why?”
“Because . . . I just need to explain.”
“Explain what?” I turned to head back to the group, but something stopped me. I felt as if someone had put their arms around me, not to harm, but to hug. “Mom?” I asked in a whisper.
“What? Please don’t leave,” Chad begged.
I could feel my body being nudged to him, so I turned and walked back. I would let him tell me what he wanted to explain because I think it was important to my mother that I hear him out.
“Explain,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“My father . . . err, Chester protected your mother even after his heart was crushed.”
He had gotten my attention and he knew it. He turned around a few times, and I left him to his thoughts. Once it looked like he had figured out how to start, he walked back, but didn’t try to touch me.
“I had to ask Chester if it was okay to tell you. He was in love with your mother. A protector spends so much time with the witch they protect that over time . . . it happens. It was more than that, though. He had come to realize, after she disappeared, that he really only just thought he loved her. He was jealous of your father, and Silas knew it, for so long and for no reason. Your father was kind to him . . . he told my father that he could leave them if it was too much to be around them. Your father said he couldn’t blame my father for loving Gwen, but Silas couldn’t walk away from her. Even to let my father have a chance with her. Your father loved her deeply . . . loves,” he corrected himself.
For the third or fourth time that day, my eyes started to fill. Only this time, I let the tears fall.
“He was in love with the idea of her, but he didn’t realize it then. Chester left them there. They were in hiding, and he went back home to the rest of the coven. Two days later, your parents were presumed dead. It killed my father.” Chad looked up the hill, past me and the house, to the direction of Chester and our friends.
He ran an agitated hand through his hair and continued. “He had let his feelings cloud his judgment, and your mother didn’t have all of the protection she should have had. If my father had stayed . . . well, things might be different. He blamed himself for years. Until he really fell in love . . . with my mother. Chester said she taught him to forgive himself and helped him find out what really happened. He found your parents shortly after, still alive, stuck here of all places.” He pointed to the house and I looked at it. I knew that part was true. I felt her here. Not just the hug and nudge, but something else.
“I thought when you got attacked that you would end up just like your mother. That I was going to fail you like my dad thought he failed her. I needed time to think about it . . . about us. Last weekend, I was ready to tell you.” He stepped away then.
I wanted to grab and hold him. I ached to be in his arms, for him to hold me and make me feel safe and protected as only he could. Instead, I hugged my arms tighter across my chest.
“I needed to tell you,” he said, “but you pushed me away. So I thought maybe you had changed your mind about me. After not spending so much time together, maybe you realized you didn’t have feelings for me.”
The tears were still falling down my face. I didn’t bother wiping at them, and they fell to make dark spots on my black shirt.
“I just felt that maybe I needed to concentrate on the ritual and not getting anyone killed, more than I had been,” I told him. “The weeks you and I didn’t spend together . . . I thought of nothing else. I kept messing up; school, circle, and where Sabina is concerned. I needed to focus on this . . . tonight, and be the High Priestess, not some silly schoolgirl with a crush.” I moved towards the house a few steps, and felt the resistance still there.
“What more is there to say?” I screamed to the air, and the invisible wall disappeared.
“I’m in love with you,” I heard Chad say behind me. “The time we didn’t spend together, I was worried about you all the time, but it was more. I missed you . . . my heart missed you.” He moved as quietly as an animal, and before I could register what he said, he was turning me to face him. “I know what that means for us. I realize after tonight, we are going to be bound together for life, just like our parents. I also know it will change nothing. I will protect you till the end of time, whether you feel the same about me or not.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t,” he said with an exasperated tone in his voice.
I couldn’t get the words to surface. I had a hard lump in the back of my throat from the start of the conversation, and couldn’t swallow it down to speak what needed to be said.
“I see.” He put his arms down and started to turn from me.
“No . . . ” I grabbed him. Everything and everyone around us disappeared.
He looked at me and then our surroundings. Thick green grass covered the ground, and above our heads, the trees all held large green leaves.
“What did you do?”
“I don’t know, but this is how I feel when you’re with me.” I looked around and smiled as a blue bird started to sing nearby.
I didn’t want to talk anymore just then, and pulled Chad to
me. I looked at him, studying his eyes. I had always found that I could lose myself in his eyes. Staring at them was like riding the waves in the ocean. My hand went to his face and he turned back so his arms could wrap around me. I leaned into him and he met me. When our lips touched, I closed my eyes and rode the slow wave until he broke free.
When my eyes opened again, we were back in Dublin, at the little house surrounded by woods. Chad’s arms were wrapped securely around me. I placed my hands on either side of his face and drew him back to me, but stopped short.
“I’m in love with you.” The lump in the back of my throat receded, and I spoke to him as I swam in his eyes. “We won’t make the mistakes our parents did. We already have enough of our own to contend with.”
We looked at each other for a beat and he kissed me again. The passion of it overwhelmed my senses and left me dizzy.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The walk-through went better than any of the meetings over the last week had. Chester’s mood even improved by the time we ended. We didn’t cast a circle. We just walked through everything as if we were doing the ritual itself, but speaking our actions. Chester had us talk it out a few times before today, but each time we did, it would end up in an argument.
We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging around the small house. Nobody lingered further than the small living room off the kitchen, and Chester mostly spent his time outside. I followed him at one point, when Matt and Chad looked as if they were going to go another round at chess. Apparently, men were competitive at everything they did.
“You hiding from them?” I asked Chester when I found him at the clearing. He had replaced the log with the pedestal and slate, and was arranging our tools on the altar.
“No, Chad and I play like that too.” He grabbed the bags that had come from the back of his truck and pulled out sage and rosemary. The rosemary was used around the circle to help fortify and purify it. The sage was used to purify our circle of any unwanted spirits that may have wondered in during the cast.
“I don’t mean the boys and their chess match.” I looked at him and sat on the log, just outside the clearing.
I could hear rustling in the woods around us. I shot a look in the direction of the house, and then back to Chester.
“That’s not what you think. We’re safe out here.” He held his hands out as he registered my sudden fear.
“Mom’s letter?”
“Yes, I’ve already spoken to Ophelia. She’s out there with your father’s coven. Sabina would never expect them to have come to protect your circle. She’ll have spies watching the others.” He continued with his task. “To answer your question, no . . . I’m not hiding from them. I can’t even see them, for heaven’s sake. Why would I try to hide?”
“Don’t want to intrude on their home, then?” I knew what he was thinking, even if he didn’t. He knew Chad had told me his story because he had given his permission.
“Yes, something like that. I can feel them here. All around us. I know she understands, and when this is all over and we have them back, I will apologize properly.”
“I don’t think you have to. I think they have already heard the first ones.”
“How could you know that?”
“I don’t know. Something I’ve felt since being here. I feel connected to this place somehow, and to them.” I hugged myself, rubbing a hand up and down my arm when I felt a shiver take hold of it. “It’s almost as if my power is strongest right here . . . on this mountain. I could feel her.” I thought back to earlier, with Chad.
“We know she’s here. Of course you can feel her. I feel her essence too, and Silas.”
“No . . . I felt her touch.”
Chester looked at me as if what I said was the most surprising thing he had ever heard in his lifetime. His eyes went thin and he opened the big leather book in front of him, hastily searching for something. I moved off the log and went to the altar, opposite him.
“What did I say?”
“I have to find it.” He stopped, looked at me, and turned the book so it was upright and I could read it. “If it’s what I think . . . you can find what I’m looking for.”
“What . . . me . . . how?”
“Feel it.”
I had seen it on television at some point, in a movie I couldn’t possibly remember the name of at that moment. I placed both of my hands over the book, palms down, and closed my eyes. I could feel the eyes of those who surrounded us, and they were focused on me as much as Chester. The pages began to turn on their own, forward then backwards, and settled on a passage titled “To Call a Witch.”
“Is that what you were looking for?”
“Yes . . . she helped you.”
“I don’t . . . ”
“Your powers are passed down from generation to generation. Your entire family would be born with powers, but when a Priestess gains the power of the last, it’s more than what you’re born with. Your mother has that power still. We need to add this,” he said, poking the page the book displayed, “to the ritual. So you can be passed the power that is rightfully yours. If not, you won’t become the High Priestess. We need that power in you, and this coven, if we are going to free them.”
“I’m taking her power. Does that mean she won’t have any afterwards? Sabina will be able to kill her!” I screamed.
Chad came up from behind and put his arms around me. “No, she will have the same powers she was born with, and a priestess keeps a touch more. The powers you will receive are the ones that will make you stand apart from all others,” he whispered it in my ear, ever so softly, and I felt calmer at his voice.
Chester started to pace the woods and walked to the tree line. I stayed where I was, Chad holding me from behind, his arms wrapped around me like a shawl. After a few minutes, I saw Bellatrix Sigmis walking from the wood.
“Come, we have more to discuss.” She held out a hand for me, but let it drop as Chad led me towards the house. She entered into the house and up the stairs, behind the small living room. “Come!” she yelled behind her.
Chad and I followed, and I could hear Chester enter the house and tell the others to come as well. The stairs led to a wide-open room that was as big as the entire downstairs, storefront included. There was a sofa, an oversized armchair, and a television on a stand across the far end of the room. In the middle, there was a dining room table and four chairs. Lining all of the walls were book cases.
“What are we doing?” I asked as Bellatrix searched in a chest she had pulled from behind the sofa.
“This is what we need.” I looked on as she pulled a large box, similar to my mother’s, from the chest. “Your father inherited his powers, just as you will. It works the same for priests as it does for the priestess. Only . . . ” She trailed off as she thumbed through, what I could only guess was, my father’s Book of Shadows.
“Only, there is no documentation to show a witch who has inherited from both a priestess and a priest,” Chester finished when my aunt hadn’t continued.
“Right . . . what he said.”
“So?” I prodded.
“So,” Bellatrix explained, “we didn’t think that you would need both of your parents’ rituals in order to call all of your powers.”
“Wait, I don’t want anything to do with his powers. I don’t think he would want me to call them either. They should stay dormant,” I declared to everyone in the room.
“A witch’s power is not good or evil, just as you were not born good or evil. They are powers, and how you use them will determine what type of witch you are, not the power inside you!” Bellatrix shouted.
I felt ashamed for my outburst in front of her. She had no more control over what her parents were than my father had. They had escaped their family, and she was there helping me, keeping us all safe from Sabina.
“I’m sorry, this is just so new to me.”
“I get that.” She pulled herself from the floor and carried the book to the table. She set it down and
closed her eyes, still holding it. “If I had known where you were, I would have taken you in myself . . . me and Barnaby, of course. We would have raised you and prepared you for this. As it is, we couldn’t find you because of the spell that hid you. We really don’t know who gave it to you. We had thought, like the rest, that you were given up.” She looked up, and I could see the sorrow in her eyes.
She was my aunt twice. The sister of my father, and the wife of my mother’s brother. I felt hands on my shoulder and looked behind me, but Chad had moved and nobody was there.
“Silas,” I said out loud, and everyone looked at me.
“You’re getting his powers, too. The closer to midnight, the thinner the veil between the two planes will be, and the stronger your connection to your parents,” Bellatrix said as she started flipping through the pages of her family’s Book of Shadows. “This is mostly filled with dark magic spells, so your father put it away and never used it again. The blood ritual is in here. We will need to amend your family’s ritual to include mine. The wording is always important.”
I saw her quickly wipe away a tear as we spoke of Silas. I had thought about how each of my parent’s coven members must have missed my parents, but never began to think about their families. I saw it in Alistair, how much he missed his daughter, but never considered how Bellatrix must miss her brother.
We sat there, in the big room, for over an hour until Chester and Bellatrix were satisfied that the two rituals could be rewritten to accommodate the powers of the priestess and the powers of the priest. I had thought to question how I would receive a priest’s powers when I was so obviously female. The powers of the priest were passed to the oldest son. In the event that there was not a son, it would pass to the next brother, and so on. However, the Sigmis family had run to the end of their line. Sigmis and his wife had only given birth to two children: Silas and Bellatrix. Since Bellatrix had no children, and since I reached my eighteenth year, the power would pass to me.
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