Destiny

by Amanda Lynn Petrin

  “Anything interesting?” Embry asked, walking into the kitchen. He put a cup under the Nespresso machine for his morning shot of caffeine. He looked more at home here than anywhere else, even if he said he hadn’t been back in years.

  “Haven’t you read them before?”

  “I have, but you and I have very different interests. I could spend hours poring over a handwritten grocery list from Beth, which would bore you to tears.”

  “Fair enough,” I considered his question. “We all have different handwriting. Even though we’re identical replicas or whatever. Like this note was slipped in Beth’s section, but it was clearly written by Cassie.”

  “Clearly,” he agreed with me, but I got the impression he had no idea. “I could tell it wasn’t Beth,” he shared.

  “And Beth decides out of nowhere to leave blank pages, or ones that have nothing but pictures of teddy bears and imaginary flowers.”

  “You sound upset by this,” he smiled, the pictures making him a lot happier than they made me.

  “Cassie and Beth had the most interesting sections, full of adventures and remedies and potentially useful information. I thought I had pages and pages, but out of her last twenty, ten of them are blank,” I explained.

  “You were gypped.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I can’t defend her ways, although that is a beautiful work of art that deserves to be admired,” he said of the six-legged horse we landed on. “I might have something to make up for it, for you at least.”

  “A museum?” I teased.

  “An apothecary.”

  “Like a pharmacy?”

  “It’s time you meet Ingrid,” he decided, finishing his espresso and going upstairs.

  By the time I came down after getting dressed and ready for a potential adventure, Embry and Gabriel were both at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Family outing?” I asked.

  “If you’re leaving the property, we’re both coming,” Gabriel explained, giving Embry a warning look.

  “Are we going far?” Excitement mixed with fear to form a ball in my stomach. Adventures were exciting when I thought protecting me was a ridiculous precaution, but I was coming to enjoy the protective cocoons that made me feel slightly safer than the world at large.

  “Just the Quarter,” Embry said like it was nothing at all, so I pretended to know exactly where that was. Gabriel, for his part, was ever-alert, as if we were heading right into a war zone.

  We drove to a parking lot where they gave me a sunhat to keep me slightly disguised, with my long hair falling down my back to cover the birthmark. Embry walked ahead of us on the pedestrian street to show the way, while Gabriel stayed back with me. The Big Bad wasn’t currently on our tail, but he was going to be looking for the three of us together, and we didn’t want to make things too easy for him.

  “Have you been here before?” I asked Gabriel. We were keeping a leisurely pace to not draw suspicion. I was grateful that I didn’t have to half-run to keep up, but I could tell he wished we were going a lot faster.

  “New Orleans and the Quarter many times, but never to the apothecary.”

  “But you stayed with Embry when you came?” I found it weird that Eric met him, since the guys avoided each other if it wasn’t to protect me.

  “I’ve met Charlie loads of times over the years. I met Eric once when he was very little. Charlie asked for Embry’s help when he was away somewhere, so he sent me.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “Neighborly stuff,” he shrugged it off, which could mean they didn’t want me to know, or he didn’t want to make a big deal of whatever he did.

  “Where do you go when you’re not with me?” I asked. “Before this summer, when you weren’t visiting me at the manor, where did you live?”

  “Why do you ask?” he looked to me with a slightly raised eyebrow.

  “I’ve been realizing how little I knew about you and Embry before this. How much I still don’t know.”

  “You weren’t supposed to know,” he said simply, but part of me was hurt.

  “Not even where you live or what you do? I can’t believe I never asked.”

  “If we had shown up when you were older you would have asked all the questions, but you were so young when we met you. By the time you cared about those things, we were no longer new, or strangers, we were just there.”

  “I was also afraid of you,” I admitted.

  “Of me?” he sounded surprised, so I looked at his face to see if he was joking. It was as dark and intense as ever.

  “Sometimes there were glimpses of what I assume is the you from your first life, but most of the time you were this stoic presence that kept his distance and dressed entirely in black.”

  “What changed?” he asked me with a smile, since I mostly described what he was like to this day.

  “I saw glimpses,” I admitted, nervous under the very different intensity of his current gaze.

  “Of what?” he pressed.

  “Of someone who cared,” I shrugged. “Mostly about Annabelle, but sometimes about me too.”

  “Only sometimes?” he asked.

  I could feel my face blushing until Embry came out of an alley we hadn’t seen him turn into.

  “Over here,” he ushered us in.

  “I.V. Strauss Apothecary?” I read the sign. It was old and musty, like it hadn’t been changed in centuries, but the window dressings made it look like the inside was a Pottery Barn.

  “I think you’ll enjoy it.” Embry had the same look on his face as when he handed Clara her birthday present and waited impatiently for her to discover the chef’s hat inside.

  Wind chimes went off when I opened the door, but they were coming from somewhere deeper inside the store. The first fifteen feet were exactly like an Anthropologie or some fancy home decor and knickknack store. Different sized jars lined the walls, fauteuils were covered with soft throws, antique tables housed assortments of crystals...there were minimal items on the shelves and lots of open spaces. It had much more of a one-of-a-kind vibe than most stores this size.

  The next few aisles were covered in pots and jars and bags of ingredients and spices. It smelled like a combination of cinnamon, vanilla, and pepper, with a vintage register at the end.

  The rest of the store was separated by burgundy curtains that looked like a wall until you got close enough to see the sheer section that served as a doorway.

  “Ing?” Embry called once we were the only patrons.

  “Em?” A voice came from behind the curtains a second before they parted to a cloud of smoke. A little girl rushed to us and nearly jumped into Embry’s arms. She was wearing a burgundy dress with an olive colored shawl, her long blonde hair cascading down her back.

  I raised an eyebrow before she looked around and saw they weren’t alone.

  “Oh...I didn’t know you brought company, I would have kept…” she was incredibly nervous, with her eyes darting to the curtains like she wanted to run back inside.

  “They’re friends,” Embry assured her.

  “Beth!” she exclaimed when she finally looked at me. She came close and took my hands in hers. “Is this Marilyn’s daughter?”

  “Lucy,” Embry agreed.

  “He warned me, but you look just like her,” she told me.

  “Except for the hair,” Embry pointed out.

  “No, you’re what? Eighteen? Nineteen?” she asked, getting a good look at me.

  “Eighteen,” I said.

  “She kept it like this until her twenties. I told her she shouldn’t cut her beautiful hair, that no man would ever look at her…” she looked from Embry to Gabriel and changed her mind on what came next. “But she looked gorgeous with the bob as well.”

  “You’re the Ingrid who was like a sister to her?” I asked, having seen the name in the Chronicles many times recently.

  “They were inseparable,” Gabriel agreed, letting me know that although he hadn’t been to the apothec
ary, he still knew Ingrid, or at least of her.

  “We were the same age, once upon a time,” Ingrid told me. “The day she moved here I decided we would be best friends and we stayed that way until the day...until the end.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said of her loss, before the wind chimes went off somewhere above us.

  “I’ll be right back.” I could tell it was Ingrid, but she now looked to be about thirty.

  “What happened?” I asked Embry.

  “I tricked her into showing you her true self, but she normally presents herself as older, so people don’t assume they can take advantage of her, and child services don’t get involved.”

  “Is that her Gift, or…”

  “A spell?” Embry finished for me. “I believe she was a ‘witch’ in her first life, but her Gift is to alter your perception of reality. I would not want to get on her bad side.”

  “She looks so young…”

  “Eight,” Gabriel shared. “They were both thirteen when I first met them, but Beth had been living here since she was four.” Which meant Beth was there for Ingrid’s death, and coming back to life, before she found out about Gifteds and what she was. Unless Ingrid kept it from her, but I didn’t think that was the case.

  “Where were we?” Ingrid came back to us and waited until the customers left the shop before reverting to a woman roughly my age.

  “I brought Lucy here to see if you had anything useful to teach her, or wisdom to impart as she follows in Beth’s footsteps.”

  “I could feel it the moment you walked in,” she told me.

  “Feel what?” I asked before the chimes rang out again, a warning for her to assume a different appearance.

  “Mr. Fraser, how can I help you?” the thirty-year-old version of Ingrid asked a man in his fifties who slowly made his way to the register, shaking his head.

  “They got Frankie too.” He sat in the antique chair like it was too hard for him to stand with the weight of his news.

  “Who got him?” Embry asked.

  “Who are they?” Was Mr. Fraser’s response.

  “Friends,” Ingrid assured him, but he looked at us with suspicion, before I felt like a huge hand was trying to push its way into my skull. I aggressively shook my head and grabbed my temple, making Embry and Gabriel turn to me before Mr. Fraser cried out, “Ow!” and they all turned to him.

  “I said they were friends!” Ingrid got upset and slapped the back of his head, which made him cry out again.

  “What did he do to you?” Gabriel came to stand between us with a look that could kill.

  “I don’t know,” I looked to Ingrid.

  “Mr. Fraser can read minds. Usually, he’s in and out with none the wiser, but I’ve seen that happen once before…” Ingrid was smiling, which told me the last time she saw it was with Beth.

  “Is everyone in New Orleans Gifted?” I asked.

  “He’s not Gifted, he just pays a heavy price to age very slowly.” She put a green ceramic pot on the counter for him.

  “You trade in secrets that you steal,” Gabriel accused, the vein in his forehead pulsing.

  “She’s a friend,” Embry stood between Gabriel and Ingrid.

  “Who got Frankie?” I asked, bringing us back to before everyone was defensive and on edge.

  “We don’t know,” Mr. Fraser admitted, looking like he trusted me even less now that I blocked him out. Or maybe he could see that I looked like Beth.

  “Frankie is the fourth person to disappear in the middle of the night. There’s no sign of forced entry, no struggle, nothing to make the cops take any of it seriously.”

  “Did they maybe just run away?” I ventured.

  “One of them was a six-year-old boy. He didn’t run away,” Mr. Fraser was upset.

  “He was kidnapped?” I asked, my heart tightening with thoughts of Clara. “Cops would investigate that.”

  “They think his father took him, so they put out an Amber Alert, but they’re looking for the father, not the child.”

  “Isn’t that the most likely scenario?” I asked.

  “Not when the father was a violent SOB who is buried in the backyard,” Mr. Fraser said under his breath.

  “He read it off the mother, he didn’t participate,” Ingrid assured us.

  “Was everyone who disappeared a patron?” Embry asked with concern, putting his hand protectively on Ingrid’s arm.

  “No, just Frankie and Billy’s mother,” Ingrid defended herself. “We see the missing posters all around town.”

  “Do you think it’s…” I started to ask the guys, but Embry and Gabriel both shook their heads, even though it was one of their signs for danger being close by.

  Mr. Fraser didn’t look like he would be leaving any time soon, so Embry and Gabriel exchanged a look. “We have to head out, but we’ll try to stop by another time,” Embry told Ingrid.

  “Bring her by on Wednesday. It’s usually quiet, so I can show her a few things,” she said before grabbing the middle book in a stack she was using as a table for a vintage Tiffany lamp. “In the meantime, a little light reading,” she smiled as she handed me the large volume and brought Mr. Fraser behind the curtain.

  On the way back, Embry walked with me and Gabriel went off on his own.

  “What’s up?” he asked me.

  “How much do you trust her?”

  “Beth made her godmother to Helen and to Jack,” he said simply.

  My mom chose Mr. and Mrs. Boyd for me, because she didn’t have anyone else she trusted, and you couldn’t be baptized without godparents. I considered this a moment, then asked, “Did you ever think of Gabriel for godfather?”

  “He was my first choice,” he gave me a sad smile. “Why don’t you trust Ingrid?”

  “She’s basically paying a man to invade people’s minds and tell her their secrets,” I pointed out.

  “He’s an unsavory character, but he’s harmless. And it’s more like she pays him not to tell anyone else what he finds out when he hears people’s thoughts,” he defended her.

  “He was pushing hard to get into mine.” I could still feel a pressure, although that might be the wall my mind put up to keep him out.

  “If every door you came across flew open when you walked up, wouldn’t you try a few things if you suddenly found one that was closed?”

  Chapter Eight

  My next lesson was making things float, which evolved into seeing how much I could move before I lost all accuracy and safety went out the window. I got nervous when floating heavier or dangerous things over people, or anything involving breakable objects, which usually made me lose concentration and drop them. I managed to lift a really big rock, but a mole ran out from under it, so I panicked and dropped it. Thank God it wasn’t on the mole

  “How is this useful?” I asked, rubbing my hands together to stop the tingling.

  “Patience, padawan,” Embry teased.

  “What’s next, Master Yoda?” I asked instead.

  “I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I think that’s enough for today.”

  “We have things to take care of, but Charlie will be next door if you need anything,” Gabriel sounded reluctant, but looked resigned.

  “Is this the kind of thing where you leave me for days?” It wasn’t that I hadn’t enjoyed spending time with Terrence and learning to knit when they abandoned me last time, but I didn’t want to be left behind again.

  “We’re looking into those disappearance, making sure it doesn’t have anything to do with you,” Embry assured me.

  “But you’ll be back today?” I verified.

  “Take the rest of the day off and we’ll be back in time for dinner.” I looked into Embry’s eyes and decided I trusted them to come back to me.

  “Just don’t leave the property,” Gabriel amended.

  “And let us know where you are at all times.”

  “Of course.” I rolled my eyes at their predictability before going to my room to get the Chronicles. I proba
bly would have secretly explored the house, looking for clues on Helen, Jack and Beth, but I would never snoop when there was a possibility Embry could find me.

  I brought the huge book to a garden swing deep in the yard and got comfy. I was half-hoping and half-terrified that Beth would use the Chronicles as a diary, but she only wrote about noteworthy adventures, remedies, potions, and some spells. So far there was absolutely no mention of Embry as more than her protector. Helen was the only child in evidence, from drawings and scribbles rather than actual mentions.

  I was reading about a celebration Beth did with her friend Ingrid, when Charlie walked up to me. “I’m sorry, there isn’t usually anyone here when I take my afternoon stroll,” he apologized.

  “I can go if you…”

  “No, I was rejoicing at the company,” he corrected, taking a seat beside me on the swing.

  “Company would be nice,” I agreed.

  “Isn’t school out for the summer?” he asked, nodding to the Chronicles.

  “Stories from my ancestors.” I closed the volume, not sure I wanted him to know about any spells or magic it might mention.

  “Don’t stop on my account. I spent sixty years with a woman who always had a book in her hands,” he said fondly. “She died last spring, but there wasn’t a single idea that she shared with the world before sharing it with me first.” He must have noticed my reaction, wondering why he was such a controlling and restrictive husband, because he elaborated, “She wrote books, and I always got to read them first.”

  “What kind of books?” I asked.

  “Mostly on science, but she wanted them to be understood by the masses. People like me, not just the ones with PhDs. That’s not to say I’m not smart, but it’s a different kind of smart than she was.”

  “You’re Mr. Haynes,” I realized, remembering when Embry told me about Laurel Haynes, whose husband was Gifted in the sense that he was the one who convinced her to publish her books. She would have written them no matter what, but shared them on a much smaller scale if he wasn’t around.

  “No, Laurel kept her maiden name for the books, that way no one bothered us out here. It’s Mr. Finch, but friends call me Charlie.” His hand was callused from a lifetime working outdoors, but when I shook it, I was surprised to find it was still soft.