Anathema (Causal Enchantment, #1) (29 page)

“
Why?” I quavered. “Why would you—”
I couldn’t say the words—couldn’t get them to form in my head, let
alone my mouth. “I saw!” I finally whispered. Mortimer and Sofie
had stepped into the room behind him, but I kept my eyes on … the
murderer.

“
What do you mean, you saw?” Viggo’s
eyes narrowed, their typical calm morphing into something
altogether unfamiliar.

I nodded toward the giant dog, now standing at
my side.

“
What?” Mortimer’s whisper was
harsh, and his eyes bulged. “How is that possible?” He turned to
Sofie. “How is this possible? Did you do this?”

Sofie’s head fell back as she laughed
hysterically. “No, but it makes me so happy!”

Mortimer glared at the dog. “You disappeared
from my mind, but I thought you were just angry with me! I didn’t
think you had traded allegiances.”

“
It doesn’t matter,” I interjected,
forcing bravery. “Why? Why would you do something so …” My eyes
burned but no tears came. Even my eye ducts were in
shock.

“
Monstrous?” A smile flickered over
Viggo’s lips. “Well, at least we can give up this silly charade. It
was becoming quite taxing.” His voice, once placid and soothing,
had a sinister edge now. Maybe it had always been there, but I’d
been deaf to it until now. “I need to move somewhere less …
cluttered.” Viggo’s eyes skimmed over the corpses and destruction
in the room. “Sofie, why don’t you explain why I felt the need to
kill Evangeline’s mother? And make sure you explain your part in
it.”

Sofie was part of this? Of course she was.
She’s a murderer. Ursula confirmed it.
My stomach twisted, all
the same.

“
Do I tell her the truth, or your
version of it?” Sofie retorted bitterly.

Viggo responded with a wicked chuckle. “Do you
even remember what the truth is anymore?” With that, he vanished,
Mortimer in tow.

“
Let’s get out of here,” Sofie said
quietly.

I nodded, not because I wanted to go anywhere
with Sofie, but I needed to get away from this death zone. I zeroed
in on the hallway beyond the door, not allowing my eyes to wander
for even a second as we maneuvered around the blood and
gore.

We went to the library. “Where to begin,” Sofie
said, settling on the leather couch. She folded her hands in her
lap and stared at them, lost in thought.

“
How about explaining why you’ve
been watching me my entire life,” I snapped, drawing her
emotionless, pale green stare to my face, “and why you cursed me.
And about my mother’s death.” Once the questions began, they
spilled out like an overturned jar of beans, scattering
uncontrollably. “This crazy Ursula woman, who was she? And Nathan,
the guy you murdered?”

My last question sparked a reaction. Sofie’s
pale eyes displayed raw pain. I had struck a cord.

“
Nathan is the vampire who turned
me,” she answered quietly, then exhaled as if to compose herself
before launching into a long explanation. But then she was up and
pacing around the room, nervously chewing on her thumbnail. I
wasn’t used to this side of Sofie—anxious, uncertain. I watched in
silence, intrigued.

“
Nathan and I were desperately,
madly, irrevocably in love,” she began, running one of her slender
hands through her silky red hair, a waver in her voice. “You should
have seen him, Evangeline. He was the inspiration behind the tall,
dark, and handsome cliché. Gorgeous. I remember the moment I first
laid eyes on him. It was 1887. I was sure my chest would swallow
itself whole.” She dropped her hand to her side. “Anyway, Nathan
was a vampire and I was a witch and our kinds abhor one another,
which made our relationship tricky, to say the least. Like the
Montague and the Capulet families in
Romeo and
Juliet
.”

So now you’re trying to compare yourself to
the greatest love story of all time?
I wanted to
snort.

Sofie smirked. “Maybe not as enchanting, but
definitely as heart–wrenchingly impossible.”

Ugh, I forgot—she could read me like an open
book.

“
We wanted to spend the rest of our
lives together and, for Nathan, that meant eternity. Now, that was
trickier. You see, witches, if exposed to a vampire’s venom, will
simply die. Every single time. We can’t survive the transition. I
don’t know why; it’s in the genes, I suppose. Anyway, naïve and
ambitious as I was, I was bound and determined to figure out a
spell around this certain death. I knew I was a uniquely gifted
sorceress and I was arrogant enough to believe I could solve what
others had been unable to. I
did
solve it …” Her eyes
sparkled with excitement that was extinguished almost instantly.
“Or I thought I did. Never once did I imagine such terrible
consequences.”

Sofie paused long enough to sit down in the
leather chair. “Nathan was such a fool. He fully trusted me. I told
him to bite me, to inject me with venom, and he did. When I woke
up, I was immortal. I knew it instantly. I could feel the
overwhelming power coursing through my veins. It was exhilarating.”
Sofie sighed sadly. When she continued, her voice was thick with
torment. “I found Nathan’s lifeless body lying beside me. The spell
had reversed the consequences. It killed
him
.
I
killed him.”

She’d cast the spell for love. Not for selfish,
foolish gains, as Mortimer had said. He had lied as
well.

“
I killed my soul mate, Evangeline.
And I would have jumped into a flaming pit, had it not been for
Veronique.” Sofie was out of her chair again and standing in front
of the mantel in the blink of an eye, smiling adoringly at the
painting of the dark–haired beauty. “Veronique was my younger
sister.” Her voice fell, grew distant. “She was normal … Not a
witch, I mean. The sorceress’s gene skipped her. She was always so
supportive of my love for Nathan, for a vampire. The
only
supportive one. That’s because she understood implicitly. She was
madly in love with not one, but two of them—one named Mortimer and
the other named Viggo.”

I thought my eyes were going to pop out of
their sockets.

Sofie turned to me and chuckled. “Yes, my
silly, sweet sister saw something in both of them. Outrageous,
isn’t it? Veronique was waiting to decide between the two before
transforming to spend eternity with them.” She swallowed hard,
looking down at the floor. “When I cast my spell, it destroyed that
possibility for her. Mortimer felt the change immediately. He
described it as the only life force within him, drained. Later we
learned that every vampire felt something strange happen. They soon
discovered that their venom was rendered useless. It was an
unexpected outcome of the spell. Things like that can
happen.

“
In my attempt at eternal love and
life, I destroyed any chance Veronique had of the same. As
inconsolable as I was after Nathan’s death, I couldn’t leave my
sister like that, to suffer and die alone. And no other witch would
ever dream of helping her, even if they could.”

Intrigue overshadowed my anger with Sofie for
the moment. “But you said that was a hundred and twenty years ago.
So … Veronique died?”

Sofie shook her head. “I knew it could take
years to fix my error and there was no way to reverse it because of
the nature of the spell. As I told you before, once these types of
spells are cast, they can’t be undone. Veronique didn’t want to get
old and gray, waiting, so we decided to ‘preserve’ her and place
her somewhere where she could safely wait.”

“
Where?” I whispered, picturing an
underground tomb or coffin of sorts, dark and dusty and
morbid.

“
You’ve passed her many times, even
admired her.” Sofie smiled secretively. She watched intently as I
tried to decipher her riddle. When I frowned, shrugging in a sign
of concession, she prompted, “In the atrium … ?”

The atrium … I gasped. “The statue! You turned
your sister into stone?”

“
No!” Sofie laughed. “She’s
inside
it. Entombed—like a mummy, only without all the
white gauze.”

I shuddered involuntarily, shocked at the
realization that an actual person was trapped inside. But it
suddenly made sense. “That’s why Mortimer and Viggo spend so much
time there.”

She snorted. “It’s not for their love of fine
art, believe me.”

“
So she’s alive in there?” I
whispered.

“
Sort of. She’s basically frozen,
her mind in a coma, her body not aging. Once you bring a vampire
back with you, I can release her and she can be transformed and
live happily ever after with whichever of those two urchins she
sees fit to choose.”

“
Which one will she choose?” I
wondered aloud.

“
Good question.” Sofie leaned back
in her chair. “It’ll spell disaster for the other one, surely. I
want to be as far away from them as possible when that
happens.”

“
They’re not your friends, are they?
Viggo and Mortimer, I mean. The fighting … it isn’t an
act.”

Sofie smiled. “We tolerated each other until
five years ago. The night Viggo killed your mother.”

“
Why did he—” I couldn’t finish the
sentence. Renewed agony stabbed through my heart.

She cringed, sensing my pain. “Because I kept
you secret,” Sofie admitted reluctantly, shutting her eyes. “I cast
that Causal Enchantment one hundred and twenty years ago,
Evangeline. We waited for the fates to respond, to provide us with
the solution. Then one day, eighteen years ago, the answer flooded
into my mind. The spell had affixed itself to a newborn baby.” Her
eyes popped open. “You.”

A cold chill slid through my body.

“
The spell had set all kinds of
rules and boundaries, specific things that couldn’t happen or the
spell would corrupt itself. You couldn’t know about the existence
of vampires before the night of your eighteenth birthday; you
couldn’t be compelled—ever. And you had to wear that necklace and
touch the statue of your own free will. All kinds of stupid
rules.”

She spread her arms, the movement like an
unconscious plea. “I never chose a human to bear the brunt of this,
Evangeline. Believe me. Your name, your birth date, where you lived
… it was all decided already. Please believe me, I didn’t intend
any of this for you … Anyway, I kept it from Viggo and Mortimer.
For years, they didn’t know the fates had responded, that the spell
was finished. Max kept you secret too.” Sofie turned to gaze
adoringly at Max, all signs of hatred gone.

“
When I suddenly moved to
Portland—not exactly the mecca for urban life—Mortimer sent Max
there to
protect
me.” Sofie rolled her eyes, snorting. “I
wasn’t stupid. I knew why he was there. It was a cover, of course;
he was to keep tabs on me and report back. But I discovered he was
feeding lies to Mortimer about basic things that I was doing. It
was his way of telling me he was on my side. It’s shocking, really,
that a werebeast would disobey its master like that. I didn’t know
why, but I thanked the heavens every day. Eventually I revealed you
to Max and we watched over you, trying to protect you while you
grew up normally. While I tried to break the spell.”

“
What happened, then?”

Sofie paused, swallowing. “They found out …
Mortimer somehow forced an answer out of Max and they learned of
you. Viggo swooped in, ready to kidnap and imprison you. Exactly
what I expected would happen. So I explained why he couldn’t—all of
the rules. Viggo was furious that I had kept you secret for
thirteen years, but he wasn’t willing to risk breaking the spell;
he decided it was best you had no bonds in the human world. So he
killed your mother.”

I flinched at her words; they may as well have
been a solid punch to my stomach.

“
And then he promised that anyone
else who got close to you would die. He wasn’t bluffing. So I spent
the next five years compelling everyone to stay away—your foster
families, your friends, the boys at school—everyone. I didn’t want
you surrounded by death.”

“
Is that why …” My whisper faded to
nothing.
It wasn’t me after all?

“
There’s nothing wrong with you,
Evangeline,” Sofie confirmed, her expression sorrowful.

My whole life had been staged, controlled by
vampire puppet–masters on a quest to fulfill their love for their
entombed one hundred and twenty–year– old girlfriend and sister.
“Why keep this story of Veronique a secret?” I asked, adding
bitterly, “Viggo could have told me the other night, while he was
painting himself as a martyr.”

She sighed. “Because Viggo thinks you’ll
default to trusting him if you hate me. Plus they’ve sworn me to
secrecy in all things Veronique–related, on penalty of injury to
you.”

“
But …
why
?” I was
beginning to sound like a broken record.

“
They’re terrified of someone
finding out about her who could cause her harm.”

“
She’s encased in marble and magic!”
I exclaimed.

Sofie chuckled. “When you’re madly in love, you
don’t act rationally. Like Ursula.”

I had forgotten about her until now. “How is
she involved in all this? She was at the park, you
know.”