Secret Of The Rose (Legacy Of Magick Series, Book 2) (3 page)

Once and for all.

CHAPTER TWO

The next few days passed quietly. Well, as quiet as it can be with cheerleaders bopping around the manor. I had retreated to my room to work on a paper for class as Holly and her cheer squad seemed to be underfoot more and more the closer it came to the big Homecoming Parade. A float was being built in the garage, which was also storing the colorful banners. Those terrifyingly perky girls had actually conned me into helping with the float a few times. It wasn’t a horrible experience, but I never wanted to see yellow and royal blue tissue paper again.

Merlin always seemed to be dragging a tissue paper flower or a bit of crepe paper around the house lately. He was in kitty heaven being cooed over by the girls on the squad. At the moment, he was crashed out on the foot of my bed, one white tipped paw wrapped protectively around a chewed up tissue paper flower he had probably liberated from the homecoming float.

I took a break and set my laptop aside to charge it. A soft breeze blew in my room and set the prisms that hung on clear line spinning. Rainbows from the refracted light of the prisms danced across the walls. I stood up to stretch, glanced out the window and noticed a woman kneeling in the rose garden along the side of the manor.

She was working on the plants and appeared to be trimming them back. I pulled the curtains back farther so I could study her. I knew Gwen was at the shop until five, so I was curious about what the woman was doing there. Was she a friend of Gwen’s, maybe? I sincerely doubted she’d be a minion of Thomas Drake’s, as she was out there in broad daylight. But still... it worried me. A few moments later, I had shrugged on my denim jacket and was walking around the side of the manor to confront her.

“Hello?” I called out. As I strolled closer, I saw that she was an older woman. She wore well used denim overalls. A thin pink sweater was buttoned over them. As she turned to face me, I saw that silly, hot pink flowers decorated the brim of her gardening hat. Hardly the outfit of a person bent on evil, or searching clandestinely for the grimoire.

“Well,” she said with a nod. “I wondered when you’d finally come and see me.”

“Ma’am, can I help you?” I asked as politely as possible in case she was lost or confused. It’s not everyday you discover an older stranger gardening in your own rose garden.

She studied me for a long moment. “You look like Arthur.”

The comment had me reconsidering her.
Must be a neighbor or a friend of the family
, I guessed. “I know, thank you.” I ignored the little pang her comment about my resemblance to my father had caused.

She gave a nod and started to prune a tall hybrid tea rose bush. “If you keep these bushes pruned, they’ll continue to bloom through November,” she said.

“Does Gwen know you’re here?” I asked, thinking that might be the most polite way to find out if she was supposed to be in our gardens.

“Of course.” She seemed to find that hilarious and let loose a cackle of laughter in reply.

Oh. Maybe she was swapping plants with Gwen or helping out with the gardening. I watched her prune back the roses, and, whoever she was, she knew her way around plants. She moved from bush to bush clearing away deadwood and old spent blossoms. She stopped and tilted her head to look at me. Almost as if she knew I was sizing her up for up any possible hostile intentions.

As she met my eyes, I felt a wave of warmth and affection. Those blue eyes weren’t confused or malevolent. Whoever she was, I had a hunch this older lady was harmless, and sharp as a tack.
Aw, the hell with it.
I followed my gut hunch, walked over, and knelt down beside her.

“Since you know who I am, why don’t you tell me your name?” I asked.

“You can call me Ro.” She tucked a long strand of gray hair under her hat, then kept right on pruning.

I watched her chuck a stem over her shoulder and towards the bucket at her side.
Two points.
I settled in and prepared to be entertained. “Hello Ro. It’s nice to meet you.”

“We’ve met before.” Another stem dropped into the bucket. “I used to change your diapers, young lady.” She seemed to be chastising me.

“Oh,” I smiled at her tone, “close friend of the family, are you?”

Ro pushed her silly straw hat back, revealing shiny silver hair and looked me square in the eye. “You need to study the family tree girl. Discover your roots.”

Her comment wiped away my smile. I was starting to get a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“So you’re settling in now. Embracing your power and stretching your wings a bit.” She neatly cut a long stemmed purple rose from a bush and set it at the base of a statue of the goddess Diana. “It’s been hard waiting for you to notice me.”

Notice her?
“I don’t understand.” I felt the hair rise up on the back of my neck.

“Just remember, my girl— I’ll be right here if you need any help.”

“Okay. That’s good to...” I sputtered to a halt as Ro began to fade away.

“Shit!” I squeaked.
Another freaking ghost!
I scrambled up and backed up from the apparition a few feet. The scent of roses hit me, intense and sweet, and I froze.

“You can always find me by the roses.” Ro’s voice was still strong, even as her image became transparent. The aroma of roses in the air faded. I blinked— and she was gone.

A breeze came through and a few bright orange maple leaves tumbled down to land between where I stood and the now empty area of the rose garden. I walked carefully forward to double check and discovered the purple colored rose that Ro had cut was still lying neatly at the base of the goddess statue. My mind raced as I stood in the October sunlight, and trembled.

Was that rose real or not?
Quickly, before I could change my mind, I bent over and tried to grab the flower. “Ouch!” I swore as I pricked my thumb on the thorns. The flower was definitely real. I lifted it up to study it carefully. “How could a ghost have affected physical reality like that?” I said to myself.

It was a damn good thing I had enjoyed the last couple of weeks of almost-normalcy. Because apparently those nice, average days were over for the time being. I walked back to the manor, shoulders slumped, and I resisted the urge to look back. I made it without incident. Once I was safely back in my own room, I sat the rose on my nightstand, grabbed a notebook and tried to write down everything I could recall about what I had experienced. Gwen had suggested journaling as a part of my magickal studies, and this seemed like the perfect time to begin.

When I’d seen and communicated with David Quinn’s ghost last month, I had dearly hoped that it had been an isolated incident. My cousin, Bran, had even commented about me having mediumship skills. I had sincerely hoped he was wrong, but now I had to wonder. I began to doodle on my notepad, reflecting on my latest ghostly encounter.

Yes, I was a Seer or clairvoyant— and had what they used to call in the old days “The Sight.” I’d hidden or pushed aside my ability as best I could my whole life. Well, I
had
hidden it up until I moved here with my father’s family. Living with Witches granted me the freedom to let my abilities, both psychic and magick, all come out. But letting my powers out to play had allowed other talents I’d never even known about rise to the surface as well. And while these had been exciting, I’ll be damned if they weren’t troublesome and sometimes a little spooky.

According to my own research, being a clairvoyant did
not
mean I was destined to communicate with the spirit world. Mediumship and clairvoyance were two totally separate things. Maybe this was happening because Halloween, or what Witches called Samhain, was right around the corner.

The veil between the physical world and the world of spirits was supposed to be at its thinnest. Maybe that’s why I was seeing ghosts?
With all of the other witchy talents that run in the Bishop family tree, has anyone else ever had to deal with this? And if so, would they be able to teach me how to control it?

I made another note in the margin,
Who is Ro?
I needed to find out— like yesterday. Was she a Bishop? I glanced down at the notepad and noticed that I had drawn a tree. I stared at it and recalled what the ghost had said to me. “Look at the family tree. Discover your roots,” I said to myself.

I jumped up and went directly to Gwen’s bedroom suite. I searched through the books on the shelf in her turret room and found nothing on our recent family history. Merlin padded into the room and sat by my feet.

“Hey Merlin,” I said as he leaned into me. “Don’t suppose you’d know where I could find a copy of the family tree, would you?”

Merlin
meowed,
and pawed at my leg.

I deliberated as he sat and stared at me with wise golden eyes. Well, he was a Witch’s cat after all. “Can you show me?” I asked and felt a little silly.

Merlin trotted to the doorway, paused and looked over a feline shoulder as if to say,
You coming or not?

I followed.

Merlin went down the hall and stopped at a door on the second floor landing. When he pawed at the door, I slowly opened it. As I did, the door gave a loud squeak. “Very haunted house-like,” I muttered to the cat as I studied the entry to the attic.

Merlin went in immediately and scampered up the steep stairs. I spotted a light switch inside the door and checked over my shoulder to make sure all of the girls were downstairs. With the coast clear, I stepped in and closed the door behind me.

I’d never been up in the attic area before. The family used it for storage as far as I knew, and I’d seen them bring big containers out when they had decorated the house for Halloween. But I had only helped to haul the boxes from the second floor to the main floor.

I found Merlin waiting at the top of the stairs in front of a white painted door. I smiled at the clear glass door knob and pushed it open. Not sure what I would find, my breath caught on a delighted gasp.

Light filtered in through a few fancy stained glass windows that featured an art nouveau rose pattern. Colored patterns of light lay scattered across the wide planked floor. The ceiling was high, so I went in and searched for another light switch. I didn’t see any, but there was a tall floor lamp with a ratty tasseled shade sitting nearby on a threadbare rug. I stepped over and clicked the lamp on.

What I found made me sigh in appreciation. The space was large and, despite the old pieces of furniture, clean. The walls were unfinished, and the wooden slats were stained in a pretty color. Along one slanted wall a short, deep storage shelf was arranged. I saw color coordinated plastic storage bins for the different holidays. Beyond that was a crib, a wooden rocking chair, and the frame for an old wrought iron bed. While some of the walls were at funny angles due to the Victorian architecture, I thought it only made the attic more intriguing.

I turned around and took in the whole space. I noticed that at some point someone had framed in a bathroom— the two by fours appeared newer, and I could see that plumbing had been roughed in. A few old chairs that needed reupholstering sat by the rough-in, as if waiting to be made pretty again. I noticed that Merlin waited for me in a colored beam of light from the windows. His tail flipped once.

“Coming, kitty.” As I walked over to him, I ran my hand over the arm of the old rocker and along the exposed bricks from one of the fireplace flues. Merlin trotted over and leapt up on top of one of a few old trunks that were lined up along the bricks. He started pawing at the lid.

“Okay. I get it,” I said. I knelt down in front of the trunk and waited for Merlin to hop down. The trunk opened easily and Merlin stretched up and started to sniff at the contents. I reached in and found a few pieces of vintage clothing and baby books. There were three of them. Pink ones for Holly and Ivy and a faded blue book. I opened the blue, out of curiosity, and discovered pictures of a young, smiling Gwen and a somber faced, toddler-aged Bran.

“So you’ve always been serious,” I murmured to his picture.

Merlin meowed at me again and jumped inside of the trunk. He was digging, not unlike a dog, at another old faded book. I reached in and pulled out the hardback book. It had words “Our Family” stamped in gold on the brown leather cover.

It only took a couple of seconds to realize what I was looking at. Births, deaths, and weddings were all recorded over the last one hundred years or so. I was in history-nerd heaven looking at the old book. The family tree had been carefully filled in, and the pages had been beautifully embellished with drawings of herbs and flowers. Delighted, I rested my back against the brick fireplace flue and started to read. The history began with the marriage of my great-grandmother Esther.

Esther Catherine Morgan, born in 1905, had married Walter Christopher Bishop in 1925. She and Walter had three children— Irene, Morgan (my grandfather), and Faye. Esther, I recalled, was the artist who had drawn and water colored a series of botanical subjects. I had three of the drawings that I had ‘inherited’ from my father framed and hanging in my room.

The trio of drawings may have very well been stolen from the family collection— a collection that dated between 1925 and 1926. The botanical drawings/paintings had originally numbered thirteen, and Gwen had the remaining ten. No one knew for sure how or why my father had ‘acquired’ those particular three prints. Running my fingertips close to the roses drawn so carefully around the family tree, I figured that this enhancement was also Esther’s work.

“Why isn’t this book included with the other family journals and grimoires?” I asked Merlin. He popped his head over the edge of the trunk and narrowed his eyes at me. No matter what his magickal talents, I didn’t think Merlin was going to be able to answer that question, so I went back to the book.

Further along the family tree, I discovered the writing changed, and now Rose Bishop, Esther’s daughter-in-law, appeared to have taken over the family history. I searched for Rose’s maiden name and found it in a section that listed the dates of her marriage. Rose was born Rose Olivia Jacobs in 1937, and had married Esther’s only son, Morgan Brandon Bishop, in 1960. My grandparents, Morgan and Rose, had two children— Gwen, my aunt, who’d been born in 1962, and my father, Arthur, who’d been born in 1964.