Bound In Blood (The Adams' Witch Series Book 1) (24 page)

“Don’t listen to him anymore. He—”

“He thinks he’s in love with you.” Drake peered at me with half-lidded eyes, unscathed, innocent baby-like eyes. “God Sarah, I’ve been trying to hold back because you were so unsure. You’ve got a lot going on. Your dad, your mom, meeting your aunt for the first time. But come on, from the first time I saw you, we clicked.”

He reached for me, and it wasn’t just a hand reaching out, it was like two hearts melting to one. My uncertainty washed away in a tide of emotions freed after a surge of tsunamis happily broke my incomplete heart.

Someone loved me. Someone wanted to spend time with me. I couldn’t remember feeling this way…like, ever. My dad wrote about it in his journal. Wrote how great of a family we were. I never got to experience a tight family unit though. Mom was always off trying to pick up a new step-dad to make us a whole family, never realizing what I needed was her. Just her. A mom to make me feel whole. A family tree that didn’t matter if it was only a two-person deal, it was still complete and real.

I reached out to Drake, a tear running down my face. He smiled at me, one lip higher than the other and those cute, tiny lines creased his mouth.

A sting flared on the back of my calf. Tiny beads pelted me from behind on my bare arms and legs. Some struck Drake in the face. He shook his head. “What the…what’s going on?"

“Drake?” The question dropped from my lips like lead. I didn’t know what to ask him. I needed everything from him and I wasn't quite sure how to ask him for everything. It was like asking someone for a rainbow or a star.

What should I do?
There were so many possibilities and not enough time to sort them all though.

Jennie ran forward and grasped me by the elbow. “Get in the car!”

My elbow screamed in pain. She dragged me back and pushed me toward the passenger seat. Drake stood sullenly, looking after us, his mouth pulled down into a frown, face smeared in confusing pain.

Off to the right, movement caught my eye. Corn stalks blew in the wind and then Rose emerged. Nothing touched the green plants, nothing moved them from her way, but the stalks parted for her like a countrified automatic door. So unnatural, like nails scraping something so hard, the body cringes, or knees folding in the wrong direction the body automatically repulses.

“Oh, jesus. Get in the car!” Jennie pushed me so hard that I fell into the open door. I hopped onto the seat and a couple seconds later, Jennie jumped in, turning the car over too hard that the engine squealed in protest. “Shut the door!”

“Drake? What about Drake?”

“Shut the door!” Jennie put the car in drive and slammed on the gas. A cloud of dirt swirled around the vehicle. I pulled the door shut and peered out the window as we gunned it down Drake’s driveway.

Drake and Rose stood together. The older woman’s hand around his shoulders as she comforted him.

“You better start talking.”

“I knew you would come here first. Why? I told you I needed to talk to you.”

“What are you talking about? I haven’t talked to you all day. I haven’t talked to
anybody
all day.”

“I talked to you on the phone not less than five minutes ago.”

“Hello. Did you not just hear me? Nobody called me all day. Nobody. The only person I’ve talked to is Rose.”

“Shit!” Jennie banged her hands against the steering wheel. “It’s worse than I thought.”

“What?”

She spoke to the air, almost in awe. “Oh my god. She can transfigure.”

“Transfigure?” Mentally, I scanned the pages of Jennie’s book. The name sparked something, but it couldn’t be.

“Yes. She can make herself whoever she wants.”

I saw the picture in the book now, an ugly, warted hag turning into a beautiful woman with the figure of a dancer. “Body or voice?” I asked. The script had said something about there being a difference. “You only heard her voice, well, my voice.”

Jennie’s face turned cockeyed, unbalanced, a ghastly awe. I didn’t know if she was terrified, or if I had shocked her with my black magic knowledge.

“I’ve been reading your Wiccan Handbook,” I clarified.

“I don’t know. Maybe both?” Jennie steered the SUV around a sharp corner, it tittered on its wheels. “Both would be bad. Really bad. We wouldn’t know who she was or wasn’t.”

“You’re sure? Absolutely sure it’s my aunt?”

“Positive. Did you not notice the freaking corn? Hello? I don’t know if that happens where you’re from, but it sure as shit doesn't happen around here.”

“This isn’t happening. Any of it.” I clenched the dash in front of me. “Why her? Why?”

“Think about it. It may not
be
her.”

My face pinched together as I shot her a look.

Her voice came out low, hypnotic. “She can transfigure, take over bodies. I know everything.”

“What do you know? Tell me.”

“Gladly.” Jennie rounded another corner again, a less severe one that only sent the SUV’s tires screeching against the pavement. "You know that journal we found in your aunt’s library?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well…I read it. I pulled your car into the driveway before I left last night and I saw it on the passenger seat from the other day. I figured since you were…incapacitated, you'd want me to do some snooping.”

I rolled my hand over. “So…”

“So I know what’s happening. The journal belonged to this girl named Isabella who lived here a freaking long time ago. She was in love with this guy named Thomas—”

Scenery blipped by like seconds on a timer. I didn’t want to know what happened when it blinked zero. “Please, Jennie. Get to the important part.”

“I
am
at the important part. His father didn’t approve and mysteriously she was convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake. She was one of the witches burned here in Adams."

“Okay…and this has to do with me because…”

“Because the symbol we’ve both seen is in her journal. It isn’t the sign for the devil. It was a sign of a local family, the Shipton's.”

I sighed, about to open my mouth to tell Jennie to get to the freakin’ point already when she rushed out, “Mother Shipton to be exact.”

“Mother? The one you guys conjured in the ceremony yesterday night?”

Face pasty white and voice hollowed out, Jennie said, “I didn’t know, Sarah. Really, I didn’t. There’s something else. Something worse.” Jennie squirmed in the leather seat. “She put a curse on the family that killed Isabella. Drake is a direct descendant of that family. I went to the library first thing this morning and looked it up. Thomas Ludington's family tree reaches all the way to the Connors. They changed their name sometime after the witch was burnt here. Tried to hide. There are local conspiracy books filled with the mysterious curse at the library.” She pounded the dash. “I tried to get Drake all day. I tried. Your aunt got to him first.”

My stomach jittered in an ugly roil of acid as I ran a shaky hand through my hair, processing everything. The Ludington’s. The name wasn’t unfamiliar. I read it on Drake’s family tree from the canvas above the mantle pictures of his lost loved ones.

The loved ones he lost from this curse.

I finally understood the infatuation Rose had with Drake now and his grandfather’s reluctance to say anything. She needed to keep them close. I studied the double yellow line as it whisked underneath the Escalade at seventy miles per hour. “Where are we going?"

“They know we know. Something needs to happen or we’ll end up like your dad.”

I pressed a hand over my mouth. Fantasized movie pictures flashed in front of me of what my father described my life to be like. Me with my mother, sliding at playgrounds and baking together. Smiling at one another like in those corny Hallmark cards.

My body stiffened. Drake had had that to once. She took it away. She took it away from both of us. “I don’t know about you, but I think we need to get the bitch.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Isabella

1639

Thomas stood off to the side, next to his father. The elder Ludington held a firm hand around his son’s waist.

“Prepare the other.”

Thomas hesitated. If he stepped to move, would his knee buckle beneath him, send him falling to the dirt in the town square? Would everyone notice then? Would they realize Thomas Ludington just stood by and watched his love burn?

His father explained before that his feelings were not his own. The conniving witch made him feel. Made him love her, sin for her. He was supposed to feel this pain in his heart. He would ache for her like any other lost love. Mourn her as if she did not influence his heart. But it seemed too real.

The magistrate released his hold. “Son, it is time now.”

Thomas took a silent step toward Mother Shipton, the third witch to burn tonight. He walked steady, relieved to feel his limbs working correctly though his heart and head were a different matter. With each step toward the devil’s daughter, his heart splintered and his head clouded in an angry fog.

Thomas stalked up next to a large mess, a shuddering knot of clothes. He kicked her. The toe of his boot glanced off the woman’s shoulder. He mimicked his father’s words, “It is time.”

Mrs. Shipton lifted her shaking face. A pool of tears flooded her eyes and ran over. Her wrinkled skin caught the clear water and funneled it through the deep grooves. “You do not know what you have done.” Her lips, cracked with thirst, trembled.

Thomas signaled the two men waiting with the next spire. She turned her head, her eyes picking up the men carrying the log. She tossed her head back and forth, and her brown hair, laced with wiry silver strands, tangled itself on her wet cheeks. “I tried to tell you. I did. Your love was not a witch. She burned an innocent.”

Mrs. Shipton gathered herself up and stood eye-to-eye with Thomas. He waved away her guards who reached out to restrain her.

“Your father made me do it. He used me. He did not want you to marry her.”

Mr. Austen and Mr. Leigh balanced the heavy wood beam next to Thomas, one end in the dirt, the other angling off toward the darkening night. Mr. Leigh handed Thomas the rope. The guards dragged the witch to the log as the other men held it steady, waiting for the weight of the woman to bear on it.

Thomas interlaced the rope around the old woman’s feet, winding the coarse cord about the wood and flesh, pulling and tugging the wiry rough against the witch’s skin. He cared not if he marred the hag’s old wrinkles, not like he did with Isabella.

When he wound the rope around Mrs. Shipton’s waist and hands, she whispered to him, “You know why they call me Mother, do not you?” A taunting smile played across her lips. "I gave her the dreams. With her…and me. I know she told you of them. I have powers. Ancient powers. Your father thought if I scared her she would stop seeing you.”

She giggled and Thomas tightened the knot around her wrists tighter.

“He did not realize your feelings were true. You loved her. You loved one another.”

Thomas lingered over the last knot.

“Then when you came to him and wanted him to sanction your marriage, he lost it. He had to take care of her.”

Thomas’ mouth slackened.

“You are wondering how I know all this.” She bit down on her lip as the rope cut through flesh. The spire jostled as the men stepped toward the waiting crowd. “Your father is watching me as you did your Isabella.” Mrs. Shipton laughed, pitch rising as they carried her further away. “Except he knows I am a witch. I partnered with evil some time ago to get my powers. You only thought your love was lost to the devil. She was not."

Thomas staggered forward, following after the mad laughter. “Why?” he choked out, but his words were smothered silent by his father’s booming voice, listing the accusations as Mrs. Shipton swayed above the villagers. Her spire found a place to rest in the hole next to the other two.

A thick, black smoke hovered in wisps amongst the crowd. Spots of dark gray clouds still billowed from the ashes, rising in the air.

“Do you have any last words?”

The wind shifted. A gray veil crossed in front of the hanging witch. The torch man waited on the cusp of the brittle hay and browned grass.

“You stare at me. Mock me. Curse me.” Mother Shipton leveled her eyes at her fellow neighbors. They glanced away or down at their dusty shoes. No one screamed out as was done with the Lynnes’. No one threw stones or stared hard. They cowered under her gaze, the dark stare of power. “But you shall not forget me.”

She turned toward the magistrate and mirrored his proud head, chin high and straight faced. “The honored line shall perish, starting with the two.”

The judge ran to the torch man. “Throw it on. She speaks her evil.”

The man dropped the torch, hands flying to his ears. The crowd followed, scattering and running in a tangled spider web to their homes. Cries rang out and rose up to the night. Men clung to their wives, tugged at their dresses as they scampered to their homes.