Page 22 of Spellbound
Not that I’d be hiking anytime soon with this leg. I was glad I had a nice view, because the density of the trees around Rosalyn’s house had made me feel claustrophobic.
I liked the cottage right away. It was a pretty little thing, white with a green, metal roof and a front porch big enough for two wooden rocking chairs and a porch swing.
It was really nice inside and fully furnished in a style that featured a lot of dark leather and wood floors. It had a big stone fireplace and though it was nothing too fancy, it certainly met my needs. Anyway, the price was definitely right. There was a living room connected by a wide archway to a small kitchen. It had an old table by the window, maple cabinets, and appliances that all looked fairly new. There were also two bedrooms and a nice bath, with a big shower. And that completed the whole tour. I took my suitcase into the largest bedroom and set it down on the floor by the bed.
“This looks great,” I said, turning to find Ben in the doorway.
“I’m glad you like it. Now, I have things I need to do this afternoon, so why don’t we sit down and have that talk I mentioned?” Ben looked over at me. He wasn’t frowning, but he didn’t look exactly friendly either, and it gave me a sense of unease, which I knew was foolish. I mean, he wasn’t going to do anything to hurt me, right? Make me angry, maybe, with his endless questions about things that weren’t any of his damn business—things I’d rather forget—but nothing more than that.
He was staring at me again, and his pale amber colored eyes shone in the light flooding in the kitchen window. They had always been kind of extraordinary as eyes go, and they met mine now and held them. I felt a little more uneasiness.
“We haven’t seen each other in a long time, Ash, so I don’t know if you really understand what my job is now.”
“I’ve heard you say you’re a magistrate, like my father was. Isn’t that some kind of police or something with the sheriff’s department?” Of course, I wasn’t exactly telling him the truth. I knew what it meant all right—it meant that he was part of that same cult my father had been in—a bunch of nuts who thought they could do magic. Damn it, why did every guy I ever got interested in turn out to be crazy?
“Look,” I said, “I remember how my dad was. And frankly, he had mental issues.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s just it. He didn’t. That’s something you made up in your head. Your father was highly respected and a talented practitioner, and you need to stop slandering him.”
I rolled my eyes as I turned away. “Whatever you say.”
He put a hand on my arm, and I felt a kind of weakness in my legs. I suddenly began to wonder why I had turned away from him and where I was going. I turned and looked back up at him. Was he doing this? Why did I suddenly want to sit down?
“We need to talk about what happened to you when you were younger,” he said. “Why don’t you sit down and give me a few minutes of your time?”
“When I was younger?” I said, dropping onto the side of the bed. “Why don’t you say what you really mean? You want to talk about my mother.”
“Yes.”
I heaved a sigh, but I was mostly irritated.My mother again?I didn’t talk about my mother, damn it.It was like the room went suddenly dark around me like the sun had gone behind a big cloud. I realized that I was absolutely furious. I stormed back up to my feet and brushed past him as I went into the living room.
“I don’t understand what my mother has to do with a goddamn thing,” I called back to him over my shoulder. “All that happened a long time ago, and sorry, but I don’t want to talk about her.”
Almost as soon as the words left my mouth, the rage began taking over, but the same weakness hit me again, even harder this time. So hard that I stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t suddenly been beside me, his arm slipping around my waist.
“Let’s sit down for a few minutes and talk about this. You’ll feel better if you get all of it off your chest, don’t you think?”
He was compelling me again, and I wondered why I was getting so excited. It was embarrassing in a way. In a more reasonable tone of voice, I said, “No, I don’t…that is, I’ve never liked to talk about any of that, but if you think it might help...”
The minute those words were out of my mouth, I knew he must be influencing me again and it made me furious.“Wait. No, I don’t want to talk about it. Why won’t you take no for a fucking answer? I’m trying to explain to you that my mother isnota subject for conversation.” He touched my forehead and again all of that anger melted away.
“I understand,” he was murmuring in my ear. I sagged a little and let him take more of my weight. “But you’ll talk tome, won’t you? I think we need to get some things cleared up, and then we don’t have to talk about them ever again.”
Her memory was dim, to be honest. It had been a long time ago since she’d passed away, and I’d tried hard over the years to put her out of my mind. Those memories of her weren’t pleasant ones, but mostly, I’d succeeded. Some days I didn’t even remember what she’d looked like, even if I tried really hard. And I didn’t try.
All of that period of my life, including her death, had been wrapped up in her…well, mental illness, for lack of a betterterm. She was always so emotional about things, it seemed, and she took turns hugging me and kissing me and then yelling at me and berating me and locking me in my bedroom or the storage room, sometimes for hours.
My father was little help, because he was so rarely at home. He was off on one trip after another and when he did come home, all they did was argue. I didn’t tell him things she had done, because I didn’t want to make the arguments any worse. I used to hear them fighting and shouting when I was in my room. I had convinced myself over the years that most of what I experienced when she passed away must have been glossed over by my father’s wild imagination—or maybe I should say his own psychosis—and what hethoughthad gone on. Because I thought now that they’d both been crazy and their craziness had fed off each other’s.
Even my eccentric grandma thought that magic “ran in our family” and that she was some kind of a witch, too. It was embarrassing as hell, and I never wanted to hear another wild story about fucking “witchcraft” ever again.
I managed to shove away the compulsion again and turned to glare at him.
“Stop doing that!”
If I’d known that was what I was walking into here in North Carolina, I’d never have agreed to come. My mother’s death was best left in the past where it belonged, and whatthe fuckwas Ben thinking bringing it up like this?
“If this is about so-called witches, then I’m sorry, but you just need to leave. I’ve left all that in the past, and I never want to talk about any of it again.”
