by Amy Marie
“What a twat,” I snapped.
“She was,” Pat snickered, but I didn’t hear any humor in her voice.
“What did you do?”
Clearing her throat, Pat answered, “I went through all of his belongings eventually. I couldn’t do it on the day of the funeral, though. It was more than a sixteen-year-old girl should be expected to do.”
Sixteen? I shook my head, unsure of what to say and at a complete loss for words.
“The day of the funeral, I found myself back in the library. After my dad had taught me a lot of what he knew, my understanding of the grimoires and other books surpassed that of Virginia and Kelly, although my mom never found out. My ability and power exceeded what they had, tenfold. Again, no one realized this except my father, and he kept it a secret. He didn’t want my mother to decide I could be of use and suddenly focus on me. For the most part, she left me alone.” She smiled wistfully. “When she did bother to pay me any attention, I acted like a bumbling idiot who could barely do magic 101. Between Kelly and Virginia, Kelly was stronger and thus put in charge. It was up to her to find a husband and produce a daughter who would—”
“Take over the world?” I interrupted, biting my lip when she glared at me. “Apologies.”
“You’re not completely wrong. Kelly met your father at a bar. She got him drunk, cast a love spell, and they were married shortly after.”
“A love spell?” I choked out. Sure, I’d often wondered why my father stayed with my mother, but I never imagined she would be that devious. I should have known better.
She knocked my arm with her shoulder. “Even without it, he would have been besotted. Your mother could charm the pants off a snake-oil salesman, and I think in the beginning, part of her cared about your father. There was a time, when we were much younger, that she wanted to be a ballet dancer. Our mother squashed that dream real quick. A lot of things were killed before they could take root.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, the day of the funeral, I went into the library and found the book of potions I’d used before and decided to try it again. I understood so much more than I did the first time: order of things, how to stir properly, measurements, and the language. I have no idea how I pronounced the words you have to speak at the end, but I can promise you, it was nothing like I spoke them that day. It worked. I could read and understand languages which had been dead for thousands of years. Now, I’ve always had a knack for languages, but it’s hard to learn something when no one can speak or read it any longer. We can guess and hope, however, with spells, doing something like that can set off a chain reaction, cause an explosion, or something else. Magic is not something you should mess with.” Chuckling softly, she shook her head. “Still tasted like crap, and I still felt sick as a dog for a day or so, but this time, there was no one there to clean up my mess and put me to bed. I had plenty of time to do it myself.”
“Maybe I should try it. I suck at languages.”
“You could. I can show it to you, and you can use my chamber downstairs.”
“How long did it take you to pack up grandfather’s things?”
“Two weeks. Mother had called to inform me they were extending their trip. Dad had been gone for two weeks. I got off the phone with her and slowly trudged up the stairs. The closer I got to his room, Mother stayed in a different room, the harder it was to breathe, and the more I cried. In his desk, I found letters for Kelly, Virginia, Mother, and me. Theirs weren’t sealed, so I read them. They were nothing more than him saying he wished he could have spent more time with them and telling them goodbye.”
“I thought he died of a heart attack.”
Nodding, Pat wiped the tears from her cheeks. “He did, but he’d been sick for a couple of years and had already suffered one heart attack. He wrote the letters after the first one. Mine was started then and finished a few days before he died. He made forty-seven entries and sealed it in an envelope. I think he understood the end was near. My mother didn’t want to admit it, but he had some magical abilities and could sometimes see into the near future with a precision most seers wished they possessed.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“Kelly and Virginia didn’t know, and my mother believed she was all-powerful, the sole contributing factor to our magical abilities. Besides, they didn’t give a shit about Dad. When they got home, I gave them the letters, and they burned them without reading them. I knew they would, and they didn’t disappoint.”
I was utterly gobsmacked. How could anyone do that knowing they would never see their father or partner again?
Pat continued, “You were born, and soon after, your grandmother died, leaving Kelly in charge. To this day, everyone thinks Kelly is the most powerful, but she’s not.”
“You are.”
Shaking her head, she grinned. “You are wrong, my dear boy.”
“But I thought you said—”
“I said out of the three of us, I was the most powerful. There is someone stronger and more powerful than me, someone who holds more magic in one hand than I do in my entire body.”
I frowned, baffled as to whom she could possibly be hinting about. “Who?”
She nudged my shoulder again. “You.”
The noise coming out of me sounded like a cross between a snort, a bark of laughter, and me being strangled. “M-Me?” I sputtered. Swallowing hard, breathing in deeply, and releasing it, I tried to keep myself from sounding a bit hysterical. “Me? Have we been hitting the ‘herbs’ again?” Occasionally, Aunt Pat had been known to either hit the sauce or partake in Mary Jane, which might explain her current delusion.
“I’m probably more sober than you right now.” She lifted one of her eyebrows and scrunched her nose a little, giggling as she did so. When she was like this, it reminded me of my childhood, of those times when I would cry because I was bullied or just needed some comfort. My mother was never there to provide it, but Aunt Pat would hug me, rub my back, and tell me it was going to be all right. Other times, she would start a food fight or hit me with a water gun when she thought I needed to lighten up because a boy my age shouldn’t be that serious. Until we moved, she’d been my refuge and my friend.
It physically hurt that I didn’t know whether I could trust this woman when all she’d ever done was help me. But time marched on, and people changed—some for good, and others for the worst. I was not the same person I was when I left, and she isn’t either, even if she looked exactly the same.
“You might be,” I offered with a small grin.
Pat clucked her tongue and scooped up a handful of sand, allowing the minuscule grains to fall through her fingers, returning to the beach. “Sand, when you step, lay, kick, shovel, and do any number of things to it, goes back to the way it was, but not really. Do you think those little specs are exactly where they were when I picked them up?”
I scoffed as if she’d gone completely mental, which I was honestly beginning to think was a very real possibility. “Of course not.”
“Real changes can happen in someone, and they don’t appear any different. At some point in time, you are going to have to make the hard decisions, Lorde. Will you break the yoke that binds you or become the man you were always meant to be. The power lies deep within you, an ancient magic the likes of which hasn’t been seen on this earth for a long time. And there may come a time when you have to choose between love and your family. When the time comes, you can’t hesitate.”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I dropped my head. “Aunt Pat…” I growled, not understanding what she meant. I’d already made the decision, and my mother was probably not going to like it. Her hate was deep-rooted, and I had to be prepared for her retaliation.
“Life is about finding your own path, making your own mistakes. Be like the sand.”
“Be like the sand? Everything you said before that makes more sense.”
“Sorry, just bear with me for another minute.”
I swore this woman could make the most brilliant person confused an
d question their life choices. “Get on with it, please.”
“When you were born, your mother expected a daughter. Everyone did.”
“I already know this,” I snapped. Being told I should have been born a girl hurt more than anyone knew. I wasn’t good enough, couldn’t be powerful enough, couldn’t be brilliant enough because I’d been born the wrong gender. My hands were clenched once again into tight fists.
“This family has always been matriarchal from the time before the fuck up with the swan spell. Most married to produce offspring, but not for much more. Rarely has anyone produced a son. In the past, some of the boys were sold off or abandoned somewhere.” She made a noise in the back of her throat before she sneered, “And they want to judge others? We were monsters.”
I’d had no clue that had happened in previous generations.
“Around the beginning of the 1800s, they stopped being so barbaric and would leave them at orphanages without a note or anything to identify them. Some, like your mother, did keep their sons, raising them as they would any of their other children, yet instilling in them that the woman is large and in charge.” She turned her head, her gaze meeting mine and holding it. “When you were born, there were complications. Your mother bled a lot, and your grandmother tried to stop it with herbs and spells. Nothing worked. She couldn’t have any more children, and Virginia was barren, so there was no way she would produce a daughter. They didn’t even ask me because I was nothing more than a bumbling fool. The second I saw you, I knew. I could feel it in you, but I wasn’t the only one. They could all feel the magic in you. When you opened your mouth and cried, there was a spark, and then all of the lights and power went out. You took out a whole city block. You were special.”
My throat felt tight. “I didn’t know that.”
“Of course not. They wanted you to think you were a nobody, that you were mediocre at best.” Pat reached a hand over to cup my cheek. “But, my dear boy, you are so much more.”
“Mother said no one else could do this. That it was my destiny. Why? If it was so important, why couldn’t she come herself?”
“Because she is right.”
“Pardon?” I pulled back as if I’d been hit.
“When she was still pregnant with you, she ran into Christoph, and he had Max in his arms. That little boy was a handful at three, and from what I understand, it got worse.”
I felt my lips pulling up into a smile. “I can imagine.”
“Our mother wasn’t with us that day. It was only Kelly, Virginia, and me. Kelly grabbed our hands and began chanting a spell, using our energy to enhance hers. Virginia’s voice joined hers, realizing what she was doing. I moved my lips but refused to help them. You don’t understand how ill-prepared you are until you’re in the moment and in the middle of a battle that requires you to think quickly and be ready. My mind was blank. I was trying to think of something to counteract her incantation. Goddess, I was at a loss, unable to come up with anything. But it turns out, I didn’t have to. Max, who had been climbing all over his father’s shoulders, looked toward us and smiled. Suddenly, there was a surge of energy, and it knocked your mother off her feet and threw Virginia into the tree a couple of feet away. It was the day your mother went into labor. That surge came from you. When Max focused on us, he said, ‘Mine.’ A split second later, all hell broke loose. We got your mother home, and she delivered within the hour.”
“Me?”
“I suspected what happened, but after you fried all of the circuits in the house, I knew.”
I laughed. “How is that even possible? You probably weren’t standing anywhere near them, and I was in the womb. There was no way I heard him or knew he was there.”
“That’s the funny thing about mates, though, there is this pull, something that transcends space, time, and everything else. In a crowded building, they will find each other, their eyes seeking until they do.”
“M-Mate?” I choked. Sure, I’d fallen for the man, but mate? I wasn’t a shifter, and their shifts were not natural. They were the result of a spell that had been cast.
“It’s been over a thousand years; their animals and shifting are as much a part of them as a wolf, bear, or dragon. Besides, how do you think shifters came to be? There has always been magic involved. Either from the earth, a creator, or something else. It’s been written into their DNA and cannot be changed. What began as a curse, has become their legacy. And the pull is felt on both sides regardless of whether you are a shifter or not. You were claimed at birth.”
“Not possible,” I whispered, unable to speak louder than that. My mind was racing, trying to comprehend and wrap my head around everything she said.
“Well, they say real magic isn’t possible either, but…” Pat snapped and unfurled her fingers to display a tiny flame dancing in the middle of her palm. “People often try to explain away what they don’t understand.” Staring into the fire, she asked, “You’ve heard of the saying ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’?”
“Yes.”
“It’s true. Your grandmother, your mother, your Aunt Virginia, they all wanted more power, believing if they had it, they could avenge the past. They were left unsupervised and unchallenged because they ruled over this family without anyone questioning them—not even me. Power mixed with this unquenchable desire for revenge turns your soul black, it festers and slowly eats away at you from the inside. There is more to the story than anyone knows, more that I ought to probably tell you, but I can save it for another day.”
“You have power,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but I don’t rule over anyone. One of the things in the letter from my father was his reminder that my power could be used to help others. So, I watched over Max for you, I volunteer here and there, and do what I can to better the people around me. Trying to change the whole world will take more energy than I have, but I can start with my small circle. And it grows and spreads from there.”
“I still don’t get the whole being born for this.”
She narrowed her eyes and sighed as if thinking about how to explain everything. “When the surge happened, the spell she was casting blew back onto her. You’d put a protective shell around him that still exists today. Yes, bad things can still happen to him, but those are normal everyday things like a papercut. A spell intended to do his person harm, won’t do anything to him. When he rescued you from the grave and Christoph brought you home, she couldn’t get within five feet of Max’s father without feeling a blinding pain in her head. Virginia too. They assumed I felt the same, but I didn’t. In other words, they couldn’t touch him. The blowback from the spell only affected those whose intent was to harm the child.”
“So, it was Max that day.”
Nodding, a smile appeared on her lips. “It was.”
“I don’t remember much except being terrified I wouldn’t be able to get out, and the gravediggers would find my lifeless body. Then his face appeared, and I knew everything would be all right.”
“Your mother raised you so you wouldn’t know your true potential because she was afraid of what would happen. I know it’s hard to trust anyone right now. You’re confused and maybe a little hurt. You feel things for Max you shouldn’t because you were sent here to get rid of him. After being taught for so long that this is the truth,” she held out her left hand and shook it, “only to find out there might be more to the story,” she lifted her right and shook it, “is confusing.” Using her hands to hold my face, she forced me to look into her eyes. “Your mother was right about something. Max is your destiny. Be like the sand. Change, yet stay the same. Figure out what you want, find the magic deep within you, take charge of your life. In the end, it will draw them in and allow you to take control of your life. It’s the only way if you choose Max. Being with him will also make you stronger.”
“I love him,” I admitted.
“Then what are you still doing here? He’s going to have questions after I called him by his name.” She shrugged as if
it didn’t matter to her all that much.
“Some loon forced me to stay and listen to her ramblings.”
She moved her torso this way and that, her eyes squinted, her lips pressed together. “Funny, I don’t see any shackles.”
“Thanks, Aunt Pat.” I kissed her cheek and left her sitting in the sand.
Chapter 21
Max
What the hell just happened? Something pulled me to the beach close to my parents’ house after I flew away, and I found Lorde. He looked sad and angry. I wished to soothe him, but how was I supposed to do that when I had flown in and was covered with white feathers. Then his aunt showed up and called me by my name like it was a regular occurrence.
She called me Max.
She knew it was me.
HOW?
I flew toward my home, but when I was a mile away, I shifted my course, flying anywhere else. Was the apartment safe? Was Fizz there to ream me a new one? Fuck! I didn’t know what to do any longer. My heart was thundering, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was different now.
