Page 46 of Ghoul Kisses

“Ava Clemons and Jasper Clemons.”

“You knew my parents?” I ask in a surprise voice.

“No, but I know of them,” she states. I never knew my biological father. He and my mother split before I was born. I’ve never heard from him, and if I ever see him, I’ll ask him why he left. How can a man abandon his wife and kids? He’s a deadbeat.

“Your mom put that key around your neck so you can protect it.” I don’t know how to respond so I listen to the water dripping from the faucet in the kitchen.

“Your mother was a black mage; meaning she performed dark magic. Your father is a human,” I gasp at her words. I don’t want to hear more of her lies. Balling up my fist, I begin to grind my teeth.

“You’re lying,” I whisper.

She gives a humorless laugh.

“Why would a normal woman have a magic key? You’re in denial, half-breed.”

“The man she married is a black mage, Tom Luther.”

I shake my head. She has to be messing with me. This can’t be real, this can’t be real. I’m normal.

“That’s why your mother left you and Jessie alone, because she didn’t want you to get involved with the magic world.”

“Shut up, you lying old hag!”

She is full of shit, and she knows it.

“You don’t believe me? Go to Tom, and ask him for your mom’s journals,” she says.

Anger surges through me as I storm out of the house. Eric is already sitting in the driver seat. Slamming the car door, hot tears slide down my cheeks. She can’t be telling the truth. The more I think about what Meagan said, the angrier I become. I fold my arms across my chest. My mother was not a witch; she is just trying to get me worked up. But what if she is right? I do have the key. No, my mother would have told me, right? There’s a tug-o-war going on in my brain, and I want to go to sleep and forget this trip ever happened. Eric looks at me with concern.

“What’s wrong?” Eric wipes my tears away with the pad of his thumb.

I shake my head then glance out the window.

Eric drives down the dirt road, and I close my eyes, trying to forget the conversation I had with Meagan.

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