Craved (13 page)

“What did Gwen just tell
you?”

Fiona thought for a moment and then
opened her mouth to speak but her lips just closed.

“I can’t tell you,” she said happily.
Micah squinted an eye at her, not quite sold on the fact that I had
magically booby-trapped my information. You’d think after dating
for eight months he’d realize and understand magic, but Micah’s a
cop, and therefore has no faith in things he can’t see.

“Hey, Micah,” I said to get his
attention back on me. He turned his head to shoot me a look and I
smiled. “Did you know that that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo?”
Everyone in the car became silent and looked at me like I’d lost my
mind. I smiled at Aiden and nodded at Fiona, she knew what I was up
to.

“Micah, what did Gwen just tell you?”
Fiona asked. Micah thought for a moment and with certainty opened
his mouth to repeat what I had told him, only to have his lips shut
and remain quiet. I had laced the information with magic and for
that reason, Micah couldn’t repeat what I had told him. I smiled
victoriously and Fiona laughed.

“Happy?”

He gave me a lopsided grin and nodded.
For the rest of the car ride home, we discussed brew and by the
time Micah pulled in front of our apartment building, I was feeling
depressed. It didn’t help my mood when the happy tourists were
still roaming the streets at midnight. Most sane humans wouldn’t be
out this late at night, but the vampire wannabes and the men and
women looking for vampire romance, like the ones they’d read in so
many books, still trolled the streets.

Fiona and I got out of the car and
headed for our apartment but I noticed Aiden staring at a group of
women walking across the park. He had to feed every other day so
today must be feeding time. It wasn’t illegal to feed on humans in
Flora so long as the human was consenting and no vampire glamour
was used. He noticed my glare and gave me a sly smile that I wasn’t
in the mood to return. Whether dealing with a werewolf or vampire,
there would always be stipulations. Maybe a nice human boy would be
the smarter choice for my heart. If I dated a human guy, then we
could eat together, have children together, and be on the same
sleeping schedule.

I let out a heavy sigh and turned to
walk up the concrete stairs with Fiona trailing. After showering
and eating some leftover pizza, I headed for bed. Tomorrow was the
beginning of Founders Day and I would need my sleep to deal with
the bustling crowds. Fiona and I hadn’t talked much since returning
home. Maybe she was realizing the severity of the situation. I
drifted off to sleep, those electric blue eyes haunting my
dreams.

The old farmhouse looked as
decrepit as I remembered. I was standing in what would be the
living room, surrounded by a sea of stacked newspapers. I wasn’t as
scared this time, since I knew what was going on. I looked for the
spirit I had seen before but I was alone at the moment.

I scanned the dates on the
papers that stood in stacks all over the musty worn carpet. The
first paper was from 1980 and a picture of Bridget Downing stared
back at me. She was young, probably only seven. The article went on
to say that this little girl had used magic in her second grade
class.

The Otherworldly
Revelation happened in 1983, so Bridget had been discovered three
years prior to the world finding out about us non-humans. From the
articles, it seemed the world was in an uproar over a
seven-year-old magic user. Most didn’t believe such a thing could
be real and attacked the school and media for treating Bridget like
a science project.

I flipped through the
other papers and discovered they were all about Bridget and the
Otherworldly Revelation. I caught a dark shadow out of the corner
of my eye and swiveled my head in the direction.

“Bridget?” I called to the
emptiness. There was a doorway leading into the kitchen that I
could see, the moonlight lending enough glow to illuminate the
house. I stood up and walked toward where I had seen the
silhouette. The kitchen was small and looked like it had been built
in the seventies, orange countertop, cracked yellow linoleum, and
dark wood cabinets. A small table sat against the wall and sitting
in one of the worn chairs was Bridget’s ghost.

I froze momentarily and
then remembered that she didn’t want to harm me. I’d always heard
from witches with psychic abilities that ghosts just have
unfinished business; maybe Bridget needed my help.

“Bridget?” I said again.
She had been looking down at her hands that were folded in her lap,
but looked up at the mention of her name. She was no longer just a
figure of gray. I could make out the woman I had seen lying at the
edge of the forest.

“Did you want to tell me
what happened to you?” She watched me with confusion. Maybe she
didn’t remember what happened; maybe she didn’t realize she was
dead. I had no clue how to handle a ghost who seemed to pull me
away from my reality and into the ghostly plain.

“He was watching me,” she
said, her voice sounding garbled. Her eyes were wide with what
looked like fear, so much that I actually turned around to see if
someone was standing behind me. After realizing the empty living
room was the only thing behind me, I turned my attention back to
Bridget.

“Who was watching you?” I
asked. I needed more information and I wasn’t sure if her spirit
was strong enough to give it to me. It had only been a day since
her death so her spirit could still be confused. When she didn’t
answer, I walked a little closer to where she sat and knelt on a
bended knee until I was at eye level with her.

“Bridget, who was watching
you?”

“Vampire,” she
responded.

“What’s his name
Bridget?”

“England.”

I arched a brow in
confusion. “What’s his name?” I tried again. She began to waver
like a heat mirage and I knew that she’d soon disappear. I wasn’t
sure if I’d see her again and I needed to know who killed
her.

“Who killed you?” I said
louder. She held out a faltering hand and I grabbed it without
hesitation this time. White noise filled my head and I tried to
discern anything useful.

A scene played within my
memory, of a warehouse, just like the one I’d seen with Amy Harper.
A man in jeans and a dark, zip-up hoodie was standing at the end of
a cot and I could just make out his voice when he spoke to someone
behind him. His accent was English.

My eyes shot open and I stared at my
bedroom ceiling. Aura was lying on my chest staring at me as if she
knew what I’d just witnessed and, most likely, she did. The man I’d
seen from Amy Harper’s memory was the same man Bridget had shown
me. Whoever this vampire was, he had a strong English accent. You
might think that would be an easy thing to track but most vampires
were older than the United States so most have accents to begin
with. Aiden was born in Florence, Italy but had been in the United
States for so long that he’d learned to speak without an accent,
making him sound American. I had a feeling, though, that if I were
around this specific vampire, I’d be able to recognize
him

My alarm clock rang out loudly, making
me jump. I slapped it so that it would shut off and reluctantly got
out of bed. I was abnormally tired, as if I hadn’t slept all night.
I went through the motions of showering and dressing, but still
couldn’t wake up.

At the shop, I lazily watched
customers buzz around the glass shelves as they looked at all of
the otherworldly goods. Penny had been talking to me about some new
band and I caught myself saying a lot of “uh-huhs” and “yeahs”. I
felt completely drained and even coffee from Espresso Self couldn’t
get me out of my funk. I rang and bagged sales in a fog, not
thanking or smiling at my customers.

“Gwen?” I heard my name called. I
turned to see that Penny was watching me with worried eyes. I
sluggishly turned my head to see if the threat was behind me but
saw nothing menacing there, just customers.

“Gwen, are you feeling okay?” Penny
asked.

“Just tired.” I shrugged my
shoulders.

“Were you up late?”

“Not really. I got to bed
around one in the morning but I still got seven hours of sleep,” I
told her. My normal sleep pattern was six hours so I had actually
gotten an extra hour in. I usually had a lot of energy, even with
only
four
hours
of sleep. I had no clue why I was so tired today.

“Why don’t you take your lunch and go
see Ms. Ozland; maybe she’ll have a remedy for your
sleepiness?”

I looked around the store; we still
had a lot of customers. Penny must have seen the wheels turning in
my head because she said, “I can handle the store.” I nodded my
head and grabbed my purse that I stowed under the front
counter.

“I’ll be back within forty
minutes.”

I bumped into a few patrons on my way
up the block to Ms. Ozland’s house. She lived in a small
cottage-style home with a weathered picket fence outlining her
property. Worn wood shutters decorated her windows, and brightly
colored flowers filled her front yard. She had a handful of pixies
that lived in her garden that kept her flowers in bloom all year
long.

I pushed open the wooden gate and
walked up the stone walkway. I knocked twice on her rounded door
and waited for an answer. It had been rainy and cold all day so I
wrapped my arms around myself to preserve any warmth I retained.
The front door opened to reveal Ms. Ozland’s petite frame. She was
only five-foot-one with long salt and pepper hair. Her eyes were
the bluest I’d ever seen and her skin was almost too young for her
age of sixty-eight years.

“Gwen, please come in,” she said in a
melodic voice. I smiled at her and stepped inside her home. If
you’ve ever seen a fairytale cottage in movies, then you have a
good idea what Ms. Ozland’s home looked like. Worn wooden floors,
exposed beams on the ceiling, very rustic and charming.

“Did you get the inventory I sent
you?” she asked, motioning for me to sit while she poured
tea.

I nodded my head. “Yes, thank you. I
love the compacts and I have your payment.” I had written the check
out the other day and forgot to drop it by, so I handed her the
check and lifted my teacup. I didn’t know much about Ms. Ozland,
besides her talent for spell casting. As far as I knew, she didn’t
have any family in Flora and hardly ever came out of her
house.

“What did you need, my dear?” she
asked with knowing eyes; maybe she held a little psychic ability? I
set the teacup back on the floral saucer and clasped my hands in my
lap.

“I was hoping you might have something
for exhaustion. I slept last night but I’m still tired,” I told
her.

“Did you have a visitor last night?”
She looked at me through her eyelashes as if she already knew the
answer. I thought for a moment, not quite getting what she was
saying. I shook my head,

“No, I was alone last night.” It was
odd that old Ms. Ozland was asking about my sex life. Sadly I
hadn’t had sex in almost two years, but I wouldn’t tell her
that.

“Not of the solid body sense, girly.
I’m talking about the spiritual sense. Your aura is all over the
place, purple swirled with dark gray. I’ve only ever seen dark gray
with spirit walkers and as far as I know, you’re not one of those,
are you?” She strummed her fingers against her knobby knee and
waited for an answer. Spirit walkers were few and far between and I
hadn’t ever met one. I read about them in the Magic Encyclopedia.
They were witches who could jump from our reality into the realm of
death and walk amongst the spirits. Not like regular psychics, who
could only see spirits, but were prohibited from going where they
lurked.

“I...there is a spirit, Bridget, who’s
been visiting me. I had a dream about her last night and the other
day it felt as if I were sucked into a dark void where she was. I
don’t purposely visit her though. My cat is my link to the spirit
world and allows me to read the thoughts of the dead,” I told
her.

Witches all have special abilities and
some are more powerful than others. You had your spell casters,
like Ms. Ozland, who made potions and could enchant objects. There
were psychics who could communicate with the dead and see glimpses
of the future. Seers who could predict the future, and witches who
could literally shoot magic from their fingertips. It seemed I had
a mixture of abilities, from being able to manipulate and form
objects, to producing magic in my hand; but the last, and maybe
most rare, was my ability to see glimpses of the memories of the
deceased, with the help of Aura. I’d never thought about being the
only witch I’d ever known who could see into the memories of the
dead. Maybe that was a tiny power of a spirit walker?