Secret Worlds (33 page)

“Whatever you want,” he said, running his hands down my back and resting them near my big beautiful butt. “We’ve got the rest of our lives. All we have to do is live it.”

***

On our third day in Grimold, Abram took me for a walk along the ocean. The mist of all that had happened dissipated there. It was no match for the sun, sand, and sea. It was no match for the man standing next to me or for the way I felt about him.

“Tell me again,” I demanded, smiling and leaning into him.

“Again?” he asked with a secretive smile.

“You owe me,” I said, kissing his bare arm.

“I love you,” he said, and he dropped a kiss on my hairline. “I love you,” he repeated, kissing me again. “I love you. I love you. I love you. A thousand times over, Charisse, I love you, and I always will.”

Satisfied by his proclamation, I let my cheek rest against his shoulder, my fingers entwined with his, breathing in the smell of salt and sun on his warm skin.

This was my life now. Unending happiness.

And then I heard
her
.

“This sounds familiar.”

Satina’s voice was about as welcome as a hangnail. I spun around to find her standing along the shore in a fringe bikini. The crystal clear waves lapped at her feet, and she had one of those ridiculous drinks with the little umbrellas.

Abram’s body tensed against mine. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, his voice dropping to a protective growl. “How did you find us?”

“Two questions with but one answer,” she said, her voice lilting. “I told you fate wasn’t done with your little Supplicant here. There’s more to your story.”

“No,” Abram said flatly. “We are done with this, Satina. Leave now.”

“I could,” she said. “And I will. But that won’t change anything. These things will happen whether I’m here or not. So I suggest you hear me out and prepare while you still have time.”

I stepped forward, half terrified and half resolved to hear what she had to say.

“What?” I asked, crossing my arms in a poor attempt to stop my hands from trembling. “Skip the riddles and cut to the chase.”

“I have the answer to the question you never asked,” she said, tilting her head. “You know—how you used magic. Supplicants can’t use magic, Charisse. They can only facilitate it. And yet your blood performed magic without a Conduit to conduct a spell. Don’t you find that strange?”

“Well, I guess you were just wrong then,” I said, rolling my eyes.

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Yes and no. I was wrong about
you
, but now I know why. You aren’t just a Supplicant, Charisse. You’re the bridge. You’re the fuel
and
the fire.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You’re not just a Supplicant. You’re a Conduit, too.”

I stepped back. “No, I’m not.”

“You are,” she insisted. “And you’ll either be the key to fixing this mess or the key to destroying our world, so I suggest you take what I have to say seriously. The hunt for you will not end here. Mystics all over the world have been prophesying about you, and it won’t be long before every Conduit on this planet knows who you are and what you are. And they will come for you.”

I shook my head, trying to will away everything she had said, but there was no unhearing her words. “Fine. Let’s say you’re right,” I said. “Then what happens now?”

“What always happens, Charisse. The next.”

“Enough,” Abram barked. “You promised me you would give us—”

“I already gave you time!” she shouted, a storm taking over her features. “I gave you as long as I could. There is no more time, Abram.”

Abram clenched his jaw, and he stepped past me, right up to Satina. His body was hulking compared to the body she had borrowed. “I said we’re done, Satina.”

“Uh-uh.” She didn’t even flinch. “Sorry, lover boy, but your romance will have to wait. What is will turn into what needs to be.”

“Great, more riddles,” I mumbled.

Just then, a mass fell to the shore, landing with a thud and bursting in warm red ribbons.

No. Not ribbons.
Blood
.

It splattered against my legs and the skirt of my sun dress. And that mass … it was a man. A very dead man, with two simple words carved into his forehead.

She sleeps.

I covered my mouth, holding back a horrified gasp, and lifted my gaze to Satina. “What does it mean?”

“It means,” Satina said, waving her drink to the side, “that you two have work to do.”

The End

Charisse and Abram’s mission to end Sleeping Beauty’s curse leads them to the island king’s castle, where the beauty and her beast find themselves at the mercy of a kinky ruler whose sexist mentality and BDSM fetishes soon begin to rub off the pair.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B010562MG8/

Conner Kressley is a USA TODAY Bestselling Author represented by Rossano Trentin of TZLA. He is an avid reader and all around lover of storytelling. His book “The Breaker’s Code” is the first in the epic “Fixed Points” series that pits free will against fate and true love against good intentions and bad situations. You can learn more about Conner and his books below.

http://www.amazon.com/Conner-Kressley/e/B00N1JVL6O/

Rebecca Hamilton is a USA Today Bestselling Paranormal Fantasy author who also dabbles in Horror and Literary Fiction. She lives in Florida with her husband and four kids. She is represented by Rossano Trentin of TZLA and has been published internationally, in three languages. You can learn more about Rebecca and her books below.

http://www.amazon.com/Rebecca-Hamilton/e/B0072J4RS8/

MY MOM DIED DURING AN EXORCISM on my eighteenth birthday. On that same day, an ever-present static moved into my head like a squatter I couldn’t evict.

Ever since, I
thought
getting rid of the noise would be my best shot at survival—like all I needed was silence, even if only within myself, to feel at home again.

I was wrong.

I crossed the black-and-white tiled floor to the jukebox, hoping Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ would drown out the wasping in my mind.

Instead, Mrs. Franklin’s high-pitched, singsong voice cut into my thoughts. “So-phiii-aaa!”

Bound by my waitressly duty, I gripped the sides of the jukebox and turned my head toward her. “Yes?”

She smoothed invisible wrinkles from her paisley, ankle-length dress. “Check, please. I’d prefer to leave before any secular music touches my ears.”

She actually touched her ears as she said this, and it took all I had to suppress a groan.

I walked to the register, printed her check, and headed over to the red vinyl booth where she sat. “Anything else, Mrs. Franklin?”

“I was hoping you’d reconsidered my offer on your house.”

Of course I hadn’t. Why would I sell my inheritance unless I would make enough to leave this rotten town?

“I’m not interes—”

She grabbed my arm, and I forced my glare from her whitening knuckles to her scowling face. I considered pulling free, but if we caused a scene, I would be the one to go down. The customer’s always right, after all.

She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Your mother would have wanted it that way,” she said sweetly.

I stared back, uncertain what to say. But I didn’t need to say anything. She gave me a long, condemning glare, then released my arm, gathered her purse, and hurried to the checkout counter.

I get it
, I thought at the back of her head.
You think it’s
my
fault my mom died during the exorcism.

Why not? Everyone else did. After all, it’d been my touch that killed her. At least they weren’t blaming me for my father’s murder, but that was likely because I was only six at the time.

On my way back to the kitchen, one of the two boys sitting at table four flagged me down to request a milkshake. I tried focusing on the order as I ran the blender, but I couldn’t tell where the sounds in my head ended and the sounds of the real world began.

“
I heard she’s a witch
,” the older boy whispered loudly.

His friend grinned. “She’s blonder than your sister, even…and probably twice as dumb.”

Right. Sophia Parsons, town idiot. Pale, blonde, and brown-eyed. As bland as oatmeal, yet somehow I was the rumor mill’s hot sauce.

I wanted to dump the boy’s shake over his greasy little head, but instead, I recalled the Wiccan Rede that had so long guided me:
An it harm none, do what ye will
.

Too bad my Colorado State University education was proving fruitless. Apparently, no one wanted to hire a twenty-two-year-old fresh out of college to teach history.

The greasy-haired boy nodded toward the diner’s front door. “Let’s get out of here. She’s giving me the creeps.”

Though they left, the itchy feeling of their judgments did not. I blew a stray hair from my eyes and gazed past the booths, out the window to the Rocky Mountains on the horizon. Belle Meadow was thirty minutes from Denver but ages from the modern day. This town was a trap, a collection of crazies. Including myself. If Colorado was the heart of the southwest, Belle Meadow was a clogged artery.

The ding of the diner’s front door opening brought me back to reality: burnt grease and coffee on the air, along with my duty to serve whoever strolled in. It just so happened that ‘whoever’ was Sheriff Locumb. He entered the diner with a purposeful gait, scanning the room before heading my way.

“Hey, Sheriff.” I righted an upside-down coffee mug and began to pour. “Anything besides the usual?”

His mustache twitched. He brushed some crumbs from where his stomach bulged against his brown police uniform and lifted his gaze. “Miss Sophia Parsons?”

I stopped pouring mid-cup.
Hello
?
I serve your coffee every day.
“Yeah?”

Jack came up beside me, drying his hands on a towel. “Hey, Sheriff. What’s going on?”

Locumb cleared his throat. “I’m, uh, afraid I need to ask Miss Parsons to come with me.”

Jack and I stared at each other and then back at the sheriff.

“Is this a joke?” I asked.

I didn’t really think he was joking. Sheriff Locumb wasn’t the joking kind. Everyone in the diner watched. Even the jukebox went silent.

Jack leaned closer to the sheriff, lowering his voice. “What’s this about, Jerry?”

Locumb sniffed. “Can’t discuss it. We just need to ask Sophia some questions.”

My heartbeat picked up. Sheriff Locumb could be a nice guy…
in a diner
. But I didn’t want to be on the other end of his questioning. Not again. Not ever.

Trying to appear calm, I removed my apron and gently placed it on the counter.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me get my stuff.”

After promising Jack I would make up my shift over the weekend, I headed to my Jeep and pulled up behind Sheriff Locumb’s cruiser.

I spent the drive to the sheriff’s office in a cold sweat. No handcuffs, no reading of my rights. At least this time I wasn’t under arrest. He was even allowing me to follow him to the station.

That whole thing with Mr. Petrenko—that was long over with, right? I’d only
found
his body.

I hadn’t killed the man. No matter what anyone thought.

***

SHERIFF LOCUMB AND I sat in a small room with a table and two chairs and a cheap light embedded into the suspended ceiling overhead. I wiped my palms on my pants, but the sweat kept coming.

He pulled up a picture on his cell phone. “Look familiar?”

Maybe he should’ve gotten an eight-by-twelve print. What was the picture of? Wood? A reddish-orange figure eight and a cross? I frowned and shook my head. “
Should
this look familiar?”

“Someone spray-painted this on the abandoned grain elevator,” he said coolly. “Why don’t you tell me what you know?”

“What I know about spray-paint?”

“Look.” He leveled his gaze at me. “Mrs. Franklin said one of the women in her congregation—well, her daughter got sick. They think you had something to do with it.”

“Mrs. Franklin thinks I have something to do with everything.”

“Well?” he asked.

“Well, what? I didn’t get anyone sick.”

He puffed his cheeks and blew out a breath. “I’m not saying you got anyone sick, Sophia. They think you hexed their child by spray-painting this satanic symbol.”

“You think I
hexed
someone? You’re kidding.”

Belle Meadow might be a small town, but surely it wasn’t so dull that they needed to call me down to the station for
this
.

“You’re here because Mrs. Franklin suggested you might be the one who vandalized the abandoned grain elevator, not because you ‘cursed’ someone.”

“And?” I asked.

“Well, did you?”

“I’m Wiccan.”

He stared blankly. “What’s that have to do with the case?”

“Wiccans don’t
believe
in Satan.”

“Listen, lady. I don’t care what you believe in. Why don’t you just tell me where you were when the offense took place?”

“Which was when?”

“May tenth.”

“At Colorado State, taking my senior year finals.” Something a few minutes of research would have told him without dragging me down here. Besides, how did Mrs. Franklin know the date? Did she take daily drives around town with her calendar and journal, looking for signs of demonic worship?

Sheriff Locumb leaned back in his chair, slapping his hands against his knees before standing. “I’m sure you wouldn’t mind waiting here while I check with the school?”

I gestured toward the door. “Go ahead.”

I would like to say I enjoyed the silence while he was gone, but the constant hushing in my brain made that impossible.

Sheriff Locumb returned with a cup of coffee and an apology. I didn’t drink the coffee, but I did ask him about the sick kid, and he told me it’d just been a case of chicken pox. Not a demonic plague or anything like that.

After squaring everything away, I returned outside to my Jeep and gripped the steering wheel. I couldn’t deal with Mrs. Franklin’s crazy accusations
and
the damn hissing. Something had to give.