The Red Witch (Amber Lee Mysteries Book 6) (6 page)

“You did all this to celebrate the anniversary of the day we met?” I asked when he sat down.

“I did,” he said, “I wanted you to remember me how I was and see me for who I am now.”

“You didn’t need to go through all this trouble for that. The Aaron Cooper I know is much more awesome than the Aaron Cooper from before. It’s amazing how much you’ve changed in just a year.”

“It’s been a rough year, at least in some places. For both of us.”

“Tell me about it.”

Birds were chirping around us, and a breeze was rolling in from the west picking up that wet smell of the Geordie River and floating it along to where we were sitting. This was nice. No, it was perfect.
Perfect
. And then it hit me like an electric jolt. A moment later, my stomach felt like it had been dipped into a bucket of ice.

“Amber,” Aaron said.

Oh Gods,
I thought.
My heart started to race.
Is this…? No… it can’t be.

“When we first met, I… I didn’t… fuck, I mean; I didn’t know much about you except for what I knew from the things Kyle said about you.”

I didn’t know what was worse; that he was stumbling through his words, or that I couldn’t find my own.

“All I knew for myself,” he continued, “Was that looking at you made me feel something I had never felt before with anyone else, and… I mean, my father, he… he didn’t really teach me how to process that kind of feeling, you know? I know I goofed around and acted like a jerk, but I liked you. A lot. And then when Kyle… when I first found out he had cheated on you, and he was talking to me about it… we got into a fight that night.”

Snap
. I found my thoughts again, and my voice came back to me. “You got into a fight?” I managed to say.

“He was acting tough,” he said, “I hated it, but I wasn’t good at showing it. Anyway so we went out into the parking lot later, the whole group, and we were hanging out, talking. It had been raining while we were eating, so the hood of the car was wet and slippery, but Kyle didn’t notice and when he went to sit on it like he always did he slid right off and hit the ground.”

My belly wanted to laugh, but my mind rebelled. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. We all laughed. But then I said something about how Karma had bitten him in the ass for cheating on you, and he got real defensive. And guys, well… we don’t
talk
about stuff for very long.”

“You hit him…”

“He came for me first; I just defended myself. Of course, I was stronger than him, so I cracked one of his ribs and busted his lip without meaning to.”

What you send out comes back times three,
I thought. That must have been the first-time something bad happened to Kyle for having cheated on a witch. I’ve had mine, obviously, but Karma had my back too.
The sword that cuts both ways.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because,” he said, “I’m trying to tell you that I’ve been in love with you for a very long time.”

A catch caught in my throat, stealing my ability to speak again.

“I didn’t know it then,” he continued, “Or maybe I did, but I just couldn’t process it—not until the night you were attacked and I looked after you. But I know now. I’m in love with you, and I always have been.”

My chin was starting to quake, and my eyesight was blurring a little. I wasn’t good to him when we were fooling around. I was using him. Gods, I thought Damien was
better
than him for a time. But I couldn’t see beyond Aaron’s thick skin, couldn’t see the guy beneath it trapped behind an inability to articulate feeling.

Aaron reached for his interior jacket pocket, and my heart started to pound. He put the plastic cup down on the mat, shuffled around to one knee, and produced a tiny box from his breast. When he opened the box and the brilliance of the gem inside came spilling out, I felt like I could have fainted. The world started to spin. My heart was beating hard enough to dull all sounds around me, my skin was so warm even the cool touch of this October morning breeze was making me tremble.

“Amber Lee,” he said, “My witch with red hair. Will you—?”

CHAPTER 6

The child of witch and wolf, touched by the hand of a demon…

The words came barreling at me like a freight train, and I was caught on the tracks; tied up and helpless like the damsel in so many Westerns. Engagement. Marriage. Children.
With Aaron?
I felt faint. The world was still spinning, darkness was creeping in all around, and I was sure I was swaying like a tall tree caught in a strong gust of wind.

“A—A—” The words wouldn’t come. It was like having a stutter; I wanted to let the words out, but instead they chose to hold onto my tongue as if for dear life.

Aaron’s face twisted, although I couldn’t tell whether it was concern or disappointment melting into his expression.
Didn’t I want to marry him?
That was the big question. Screw whatever prophecy I had been given. This wasn’t about a prophecy. This was about…
shit, why aren’t I answering?

“Are you okay?” Aaron asked.

That must have been hard for him,
I thought, aware about the fact that he was waiting; waiting like a man about to be delivered a fatal prognosis or be given the all clear. How long had passed? One second? Ten? A minute? How long would Aaron wait for my answer? And why the heck wasn’t I giving him one.

Didn’t I want to marry him?
The question surfaced in my mind again like a swimmer coming up for air a second time.
Think, Amber
, I thought,
bring yourself back.

I took in a deep breath of air, exhaled, and my vision returned. Aaron was still waiting, the birds were still chirping—I could hear them again, so that was some kind of process—and the browning leaves of the pines and sycamores all around us were still rustling and swaying. Some, even, were falling. This would have been the perfect place for a yes. The most romantic, most beautiful place.

“Amber,” Aaron finally said, “What is it?”

“I… I’m sorry,” I managed to say, “I didn’t… I wasn’t expecting this. It’s hit me kinda suddenly, that’s all.”

“It’s okay,” he said, “Take your time.”

“I feel like an idiot.”

“Why do you say that?” He lowered the box, and when it closed the snap it made ripped out like a gunshot.

I was about to tell him not to close it, but my mouth still wasn’t working.

Aaron looked at the box, pressed his lips into a thin line, and then looked up at me. “I sprung this on you,” he said. “I know how you feel about surprises but I did it anyway. That was stupid.”

His hair is really long,
I thought, randomly. It was true. His blonde locks were shoulder length now, and the breeze had them firmly in its grasp, tugging and pulling at them gently… away from me.
Come with us,
it would have told him if the breeze had a voice,
spare yourself.
But it didn’t, and here he was, waiting for me to get over whatever was blocking me from saying those simple words I knew he wanted to hear and yet couldn’t say.

Didn’t I… want… to get married?

A chirping sound, alien to the forest, snapped me out of the spell. Aaron too, by the sudden jerking of his head. At first I thought some exotic bird had flown in from some faraway place and landed nearby to sing its song, it was only my phone.
My phone!
I reached for it—lightning quick—and answered like my life depended on it. That was stupid, I knew. And rude, too. But it was my way out, so I took it.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Ma cherie,” said the voice on the other end.
Collette.
“I must see you at once.”

I mouthed the word Collette to Aaron and said, into the phone, “Is everything alright?”

“Oui, but I have some important information to share with you; time sensitive information.”

“Where are you?”

“At ze bookstore with Frank. Can you come?”

“Can I come?” I asked, eyes to Aaron. I should have said no. I should have asked her to wait an hour, or made something up. I should have stayed with Aaron and given him the answer he wanted, or at least given him the closure he needed. But instead I said “I can come.”

And then Aaron put the box away.

I stared at the blank screen for a few moments after ending the call with Collette before looking up at Aaron.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s fine.” But his reply was curt and short, and punctuated way too harshly. He only did that when he was pissed, and we’d disagreed enough times for me to know that.

“It isn’t, though. I need you to know that—”

“Amber,” he said, cutting me off so hard it felt like I had been tackled by a football player. “Go. I’ll take care of all this stuff.”

The picnic
. He was talking about the basket of food, the drinks, and the blanket. This whole thing he had set up just for us, the thing he had put so much thought and effort into. Gods, even now I was calling it a
thing
instead of referring to it in the way I knew I had to. A proposal, that’s what this was, Aaron’s proposal.

And I had destroyed it.

“How will you get home?” I asked.

“I’ll manage.” He was up, now, and getting ready to pack things into the basket. But he tossed me the keys to his car and I only just managed to pluck them out of the air.

I stared at the keys in my hand for a moment. The key chain consisted of two keys, one for the car and one for the house. There was also a picture of a wolf howling at the moon and another with the iconic “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign on it. Then I stood and tried to get near him, but his posture—his aura—kept me away. It was like approaching a dog that didn’t want to be stroked and listening to the way it would growl a little louder with every step you took. A warning; an unconscious one, to be sure, but a warning nonetheless.

An angry heat rose to my chest. It turned my cheeks red and furrowed my brows, but I didn’t let him see that. Instead, I turned around and made tracks the way we had come. I was sad before. Annoyed at myself for what I had done. But now I was annoyed at him. Didn’t he know who I was? Where I had come from? We’d had a good run, but in the grand scheme of things we had barely gotten off the starting point.

How long had it been? Nine months, give or take?

I mean, sure, our relationship was strong. We were both happy, and we connect on so many levels. But was he truly ready to marry me? To hear him tell it he had been in the relationship for a much longer time than I had… but what did that mean for me? Did I have to say yes? Did I
even
want to get married? Marriage meant commitment, a physical and spiritual binding.

And what if he wanted children? Who was I kidding—of course he would want children!

The child of witch and wolf and demon,
I thought, helpless to stop the words from coming back to me. The trees started to thin around me, and beyond them was the road and Aaron’s car tucked away to the right. I staggered as the soft earth turned to gravel and rocks under my feet, then clambered into the car—which smelt so much like him it made my head start spinning again—and took a series of deep breaths to calm down.

In the rearview mirror, a woman was staring back at me; she had crazy red hair, puffy eyes, and swollen pink lips, and for a moment I couldn’t recognize her. Sure, I had seen her before, but I hadn’t seen her in so long I had almost forgotten what she looked like. My life truly had changed for the better in the last year, despite all the trials, and yet here I was, about to flee from the site of the bomb I had just dropped.

Ground zero.

And I did flee. I started the car and pulled out onto the freeway, then wheeled it around and headed toward the center of town. The car was an animal. It took me a couple of moments to adjust to the pull of the beast, but I managed, and when I rolled down the driver’s side window and let the wind tug and pull at my hair, my composure returned to me.

It was easy to see how, riding on the back of Gods only knew how many horses, all of one’s cares can disappear. I wanted to take the car onto the interstate, maybe take the road Aaron and I had taken countless times, sip a cocktail on the beach, and enjoy last few weeks of summer warmth we had left. It was as if the car itself was speaking to me, begging me to open her up on a road somewhere and just drive. But I couldn’t do that.

Collette sounded urgent, and the Mistress of Darkness rarely ever spoke with any urgency.

The pines turned into suburbs, and then the suburbs grew up into low-rises as I neared Houston Boulevard, circled around it, and hooked into Rosella Avenue. I had to circle around a few times to find a good spot to park, and then there was the matter of slotting a car that was way too big for me to handle into a spot that was, as far as I could tell, too small to accommodate it. I managed without any fender benders, but more than a few wandering eyes went to the ginger
woman
driving the muscle car than I would have liked.