Blood Ties (18 page)

Julie wasn’t backing down. She had an excess of testosterone and pride. Then words slipped out of my mouth that I’d never thought I’d say: “You will stop this nonsense and phase back now! As your ruler I command you.”

Julie phased back to human form. But she was different, and something had changed between us. I knew the dictatorial posture I’d taken with her was probably not the best course of action. She was my best friend and my faithful shadow. But, if I had a mission, I had to assume my rightful position. A leader, a ruler, or whatever you call it. But to Julie I was simply power tripping and putting her in her place—as a footstool underneath me.

“So today you finally decide to embrace your destiny. And to think I couldn’t help you do it, nor could Aunt Evelyn or anyone else. This is all for James. And you willingly put down our friendship over this man. So typical,” Julie said, her words full of venom.

“Julie, this has something to do with him, but only a small part. I’ve been asked to embrace my destiny for a while now. So why question what day, month, or year I do it?”

“It’s his blood, Grace. That’s what you’re embracing. Can’t you see what it’s doing already? It’s turning you away from me.” Julie held back her tears.

“Never ever, Julie. I will always be your best friend. You will also always protect me—when I need it of course. Do we have an understanding?”

“The
only
understanding we have is that I have a mission too. That is to protect you when need be, and to train you. Otherwise we don’t have anything else to talk about.”

James fell onto the bed. He was relieved the strange ruckus in the woods had interrupted an extremely volatile situation. He regretted how he had almost allowed himself to become vulnerable to Grace.

Addison bounded in. “How’d training go? Is she getting the hang of telekinesis yet?”

“Yes.”

Addison was suspicious of James’s curt response. She squinted her eyes and looked at him sideways. “Spill it. What really happened?”

James realized there was no need to hide it anymore. “I’m in love with Grace.” He could tell she was disappointed, but not surprised.

“Like I couldn’t see that coming.” Addison let go of a chuckle—one of those laughs to keep from crying.

James’s demeanor became more somber. “There’s more.”

“You sound like I need to sit down.”

James pointed to a chair.

“Just give me a chance to brace myself,” Addison said. She took her time walking to the chair, purposefully prolonging the wait before she heard the news. She sat down in a very businesslike manner. “Okay, let me have it.”

“It’s becoming obvious that Grace may have a dormant Ancient spirit in her. Now that she’s awakening, it is too. And it wants to be fed. She almost died because it’s starving and trying to force her to feed. She is unaware of what’s going on, and I don’t know how she’ll take it. So today I had to give her some of my blood.”

Addison shot up like she was a Jack-in-the-box. “James, no! You know you’ve been forbidden to do that. That’s the first step in establishing blood ties with someone and permanently marking them. First it’s the blood exchange, then sexual consummation. You’ll be sealed forever. I’m not saying I like Grace or anything, but I have grown to admire her somewhat. And I don’t think it’s fair to put such a burden on her.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“James, did you go too far with this girl?”

“No, I didn’t. The last thing I want to do is bring harm to her.”

He could feel the air leaving his lungs as Addison’s body tensed up. The more upset she became, the more a vortex of energy formed around her. The air wasn’t being sucked out of the room so much as being drawn into her vacuum.

“There’s nothing we can do about the blood now. Go ahead and have your flirtation with Grace. Boys will be boys. But I suggest preparing for the inevitable. We are going back home after this ordeal, and you two can’t be together there. That’s just the way it is.”

“Don’t worry, Addison. I know my duty, my role. I won’t jeopardize it.”

Addison looked at James and knew he loved Grace too much to keep that promise. Between duty and love, she knew which one would ultimately win.

Chapter Nineteen

When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

—John F. Kennedy

A
new civil war was brewing in America. Not between north and south. Not between conservatives and liberals. Not even between Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj.

The unwitting opponents of this contention were Julie and me. Avoidance was our main line of defense, as if the other had just eaten a three-course meal of Ebola, herpes, and anthrax and washed it down with a leprosy cocktail.

Though surrounded by the smoke of our detonated emotional bombs, Julie and I somehow managed to keep our spat between us. Our strained cordial front left the others totally unaware of the angst simmering barely beneath the surface. To Julie’s credit she kept her word and gave me help when I needed it, albeit grudgingly and in deathly silence. However, if I dared enter a room and she was alone in it, she would promptly gather her things and leave.

I wasn’t about to tell James anything about the tiff. I didn’t want him to feel guilty or, worse yet, have resentment toward Julie. As a result he continued to carry on with copious but respectable amounts of PDA. But every hand hold or hug he and I shared in front of Julie was a Judas kiss to her.

As much as I loved James, I desperately missed my friend. But I could see no way to reconcile the damage I had done, except by breaking up with James. And I wasn’t about to do that.

Hell, I couldn’t wait for all the training to begin. It would be a welcomed relief from the tear-jerker drama.

My first training session was scheduled with Aunt Evelyn for the morning of the new Aries moon.

As soon as I stepped out of my room, I was greeted by the aroma of freshly baked blueberry scones. And they actually smelled like Aunt Evelyn had done a decent job of baking them. She was becoming a real Ina Garten.

The scones were a welcomed change from the new
refreshment
Aunt Evelyn had been forcing me to drink since that day I’d collapsed at the pond. It was a vile solution of unidentifiable red chunks floating in a cottage-cheesy, putrid liquid. I asked about the contents, but Aunt Evelyn went all secret agent on me—
if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you
kind of shit.

I was practically running down the hall on my way to grab one of those scones, especially since my appetite for carbs had made a vengeful comeback. However, I came to a sudden halt, causing the floor runner to slide and bunch up under my feet.

The mysterious door next to the attic had caught my attention once again. By then I was really tired of Aunt Evelyn’s evasiveness about what was behind that freaking door. I looked around to make sure it was all clear, and turned the doorknob. But Aunt Evelyn was totally on point when it came to keeping that
one
door in the house locked. Pissed, I grabbed the knob tighter and tried shaking it as quietly as possible. I could hear jangling. Something was hanging off it on the other side. Then I heard a
TINK
. The hidden object hit the floor. Its hollow clang reminded me of tiny sleigh bells.

What was Aunt Evelyn hiding in there? Hansel and Gretel? An S&M chamber? KFC’s eleven herbs and spices? Really, what?

I swore she must have had supersonic hearing because she appeared at the top of the stairs like two seconds later, all wide-eyed and breathless from her sprint. She proceeded to wipe a dust storm of flour off her old-lady-in-lingerie themed apron. “I thought I heard something. Are you okay?” she said while trying her best to put on a smile.

I gave her a sklent. “Yeah, fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Alright then. Breakfast is ready. Come on down while it’s still hot.”

Though Aunt Evelyn was already on the stairs, she didn’t go down. Instead she skirted to the side and waited for me to go first, but I wasn’t about to move. So we kind of just stood there looking at each other with weird smiles on our faces.

She ended up being the one who flinched. “If we’re going to have a session, we need to get on it. No time to waste.” She went back downstairs, but kept looking over her shoulder to make sure that damn door was still secure.

Aunt Evelyn and I had our session in her store. She shut it down temporarily so no wayward customer would catch sight of the magical happenings going down on the property. Though it never failed that some determined, self-proclaimed magus would ignore the big-ass “CLOSED” sign at the end of the driveway and show up anyway.

I was seated at a small, round, abnormally tall table similar to one you’d see in a bar. As my feet freely dangled about a foot off the floor, I saw colorful mounds of what looked like sand on the tabletop.

“This is pixie dust,” Aunt Evelyn said.

“No, really, what is it?”

She poured another mound of dust out—silver this time. “Really, it’s pixie dust. Every color has a magical correspondence. Take blue for instance. It is used to bring about tranquility, truth, and good fortune.” She presented the rest of the dust like a game show hostess. “Go ahead. Pick some up.”

I went for the pink. It wasn’t hard and gritty like I expected. The texture was fine, and it was warm to the touch, and it smelled predominantly like vanilla and sweet apples.

“Pink is for love and romance. Why am I not surprised you chose that one? Toss it up,” Aunt Evelyn said.

I hopped off the stool and threw the powder up and away from me. The particles suspended in the air and sparkled like rubies against a beam of sunlight streaming through the window. Slowly they came together like granular puzzle pieces. The result was a life-sized, pink effigy of James.

“The powder has the capability to concentrate the energy of whatever color, rather emotion, it represents. To do battle with Catherine, we obviously won’t be using pink. Black and red will be our colors—the colors of courage, power, and destruction.”

Aunt Evelyn started to cross the room. She stood next to “James” and shook her head, amused that I had conjured him. She lay her index finger on the figure, and it instantly disintegrated into a mound of dust on the floor. She then glided over to a rolltop desk and raised the tambour. She pulled a pair of startling-white cotton gloves out a drawer and slipped her hands inside. Out of another drawer, she retrieved a rectangular box made of pure ivory.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“It’s your wand,” Aunt Evelyn said, sliding the box to me across the table. “From now on no other hands should touch it—witch, human, or otherwise.”

I lifted the box’s heavy lid and saw what would become my lifeline. It was an expertly crafted rod of three twisted woods: hornbeam, makore, and wenge. It was about seven inches long with a thick, cherrywood handle attached to a tapering shaft. I was afraid to pick it up at first. The power emanating from it seemed too intense for me to deal with.

But then the pendant my mother gave me lit up in some sort of symbiotic response to the wand. A sense of calm came over me, and I took the wand in hand. The powerful energy surging through it made my hand involuntarily do a
swoosh
or two.