Page 30 of Spellbound
“No problem,” he said and kissed me again and gave me another little nip. “I told you I could eat you up, so you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I got up, pretending to be mad though I really wasn’t, and he caught me before I made it three steps away and brought me back to my seat, feeling me up thoroughly as he did. We spent the rest of the morning that way, along with cleaning up the kitchen. I was having fun for the first time in a while, and that’s why I hated it so much when he took me by the hand and led me over to the couch to sit down with me.
“Do you feel ready to talk about it now? You’re not being oppressed anymore, so it should be easier on you.”
“I-I guess so. I really do hate talking about it.”
“I know, honey. Let’s get it over with so we don’t have to do this again.”
“Okay. Fire away. Ask me what you like.”
“Did your mother ever hurt you? Did she hit you or abuse you in any way?”
I lifted my shoulders a little. “It depends on what you mean by abuse. She slapped me a couple of time when she got annoyed. She locked me in my room occasionally. And in the storage room a couple of times.”
“For how long?”
“Not long. A few hours. I never believed she’d really hurt me. She just wanted me to do what she asked. And I kept telling her no.”
“What did she want you to do?”
I sighed. “She wanted me to summon a demon.”
Ben gasped at that, and his brow furrowed. “Why on earth did she want you to do that?”
“She wanted things, and she didn’t have enough power to do it herself. She said that she read in a book of magic that if you needed more power, you could make a demon do things for you.”
“What kind of things did she want?”
“The usual, I guess. Money, nice clothes, power…. It was mostly about money. She liked nice things, but it was never enough. If my dad bought her diamonds, she’d want emeralds. Or bigger diamonds. I think her family had been really poor when she was growing up. She’d tell me, ‘You could do it if you wanted to, but you won’t. Because your father told you not to!’”
“Is that right? Did your father tell you not to?”
“Yes.”
He took my hand in his and looked directly into my eyes. “Did you kill her, Ash?”
I didn’t say anything at first, and he brushed his lips against my cheek. “I need to know, honey. No matter what you tell me, it won’t change the way I feel about you. I know you were young.”
“I never felt all that young. Around that house, I grew up fast. And I knew right from wrong. What she wanted was wrong. But in a way, I-I guess I killed her, but I didn’t mean to.” I sighed because it was such a bad memory—her face changing so fast and going so white and still.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Like I said, I didn’t mean for her to get hurt. I was just trying to get rid of the demon or whatever it was that she conjured up.”
“How did she finally manage that?”
“She used a spell someone had given her—another witch.”
“She actually managed to conjure one up?”
“Not her. It was the other witch. But then my mother couldn’t control it. It wanted to kill us.”
“Okay, back up. Tell me about this other witch.”
“I don’t know who it was. I can’t picture their face. I think they obscured it so I couldn’t see them very well.”
“Why didn’t this other witch just do it for her?”
