Page 11 of Cursed Bonds: An Alpha's Destiny

“No,” I said, a little harsher than intended. “Keep it quiet for now. I don’t want to drag them into this until we figure some stuff out.”

“Easier said than done. What happens when she heads into town to shop for milk and eggs and shit? Like you said, her magic is faint, but it’s freaking there. People are gonna notice it. That secret won’t stay a secret for long.”

“Shit,” I muttered. Waylan was right, but it was too late to worry about that now. “Grab your computer,” I said. “Let’s see what we can dig up on her. That way, we won’t be going in blind.”

Waylan got his backpack and set his laptop up on my coffee table. Within ten minutes, we were digging into everything we could find on Kirsten Holly.

“Looks like she’s a teacher,” Waylan said, pointing at her work history on an employment-related social media site.

“College?”

“Looks like elementary school,” Waylan replied.

A few more clicks, and we’d found a couple other social media profiles.

“Whoo,” Waylan said with a chuckle. “She’s got hot friends.” He was pointing at a picture of Kirsten with a pretty redhead.

I ignored the friend and scanned the page, taking control of Waylan’s mouse despite his objections. After scrolling down, I discovered that she’d shared a funeral home notice for the passing of her grandmother, Lola Holly. So, she hadn’t been lying about her grandmother’s death. I scanned the few paragraphs, trying to find some hint of how Lola passed. At the bottom of the notice was a message asking that in lieu of flowers, mourners donate to their nearest cancer research center.

Like shifters, witches had extended life spans, but we were not immune to accident and disease. Cancer was something that could put us six feet under, and it appeared that was what had taken out her grandmother.

That gave me an idea. I pulled up Kirsten’s photo gallery and scrolled down as far as I could.

“What are you doing?” Waylan asked.

“Give me a second. I want to check something.”

At the bottom, I found the oldest of Kirsten’s pictures—a group of girls in what looked like a high school hallway. A younger Kirsten was in the middle, holding the camera out at arm’s length to take the selfie. The comment below read: Last day of senior year. Two of the five girls wore shirts with their class year printed in bold red letters. It was only fourteen years ago. I pointed at the dates on the shirts, and Waylan nodded.

“She’s aging normally?” he ventured.

“Yeah,” I said. “As a witch, she should have looked like she was sixteen for like ten or twenty years. That’s the age when their magic is supposed to manifest, right?”

“Supposedly. Sort of like when we shift for the first time.”

“This means her magic has never manifested.” Fascinating. What could have stopped that from happening?

Waylan took the mouse again and checked her other pictures on the rest of the site. Sure enough, it appeared as though Kirsten was aging like a human. Every second, things were getting weirder and weirder.

“Can you find anything out about her mother?” I asked. “We know everything about the grandmother, but so far nothing about the mom.”

Waylan rubbed a hand through his stubble, thinking. “I think I can find birth records, especially since I have the first and last name. Let me work on it a bit.”

My anxiety had me wired, and that damn coffee scent was still in my nose even though Kirsten had been gone for almost an hour. Leaving Waylan to it, I went to the kitchen and put a pot of water on to boil before getting my French press out of the cabinet. Waylan tapped away at the laptop while I made my drink.

“You want a cup?” I asked.

Waylan frowned at me. “Dude, it’s like almost eleven o’clock at night. How are you in the mood for coffee right now?”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

When the coffee was finished, I poured a couple teaspoons of cream into the cup and held it to my nose, inhaling deeply. A warm emotion, similar to nostalgia, came over me. Along with that, the image of Kirsten filled my head, souring the moment.

“Uh, I think I see the problem,” Waylan said.

“What did you find?” I asked as I hurried over.

“It seems Lola Holly only ever had one child, and that was roughly fifty years ago. Derek Holly, who, based on this birth announcement article I found from thirty-two years ago, is Kirsten’s father.”

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