Page 25 of Wicked Love
My brother Caleb was older, and he’d gone into the Navy. Which left me, at fifteen, with nowhere to go. I’d already been helping at Magnolia House, and two days before Caleb was supposed to leave for basic training, Talia had come to the house.
“What are you going to do once your brother is gone?” she asked, walking around our small shotgun shack, looking at everything but touching nothing.
“Live here. Get a job,” I said. I didn’t need her or anyone else prying into my life.
“I could get you a job, and a place to live. And something to study. A calling,” Talia looked up at me.
“Yeah? Like what?” I asked. Life had taught me that no one gave something away for nothing.
“With me. In the coven’s library,” Talia said simply.
I went with her. Although in hindsight, where would I have gone? By the time I was seventeen, I was attending college, and working with Talia on anything she happened to work on.
That’s what had been bothering me about the file on Melasina’s mom. I’d seen it before. I just couldn’t remember where. But now, standing in the shower hoping I didn’t stink, I remembered.
Talia had worked on it. She’d been working on it when I’d first come to work with her in the library.
She never let me work on it with her, of course. I was an intern, a kid. There was no way in hell I’d get to touch a case like this.
But the notes—the odd notes in the back of the file. That had been Talia’s handwriting. Shit.
Shit shit shit.
I needed to go and see her. See why it was that there were people who had reported seeing Sariah Cormier to the librarians, why this file was popping back up onto the radar.
I stayed in the shower until the water ran cold. I thought about Talia, and I thought about Melasina. What would I say to her? That I knew the woman who ran your mother off? That Ihelpedher? A long ago memory came to me unbidden. I was watching—oh, Goddess. I was watching Melasina’s house. Well, her parents’ house. I remembered seeing a small girl, with long wavy black hair, holding the hand of Sariah Cormier. And then seeing Marshall Cormier come home, and swing the little girl through the air, and kiss his wife. I sat there all night, and in the dark hours of the morning, I watched Sariah Cormier head out of her house alone, in a long, dark cloak. She went straight to a local church, and began to dig at the graves.
I’d called Talia immediately. She told me to use my phone to record Sariah, and assured me that she was on her way. Seven minutes later, as Sariah was tugging a corpse out of the coffin of the small crypt, Talia arrived. She’d strode over to Sariah and stunned her.
That was the last I’d seen of the woman. I didn’t know it at the time, who she was. But now, I saw it all again, and I knew this had to be Melasina’s mom.
Which meant I had to tell Melasina.
Shit.
I didn’t know which fire to try and put out first.
I’d only been seventeen. I was desperate for a family, and Talia provided it. I hadn’t questioned her. Who would? She was the Head Librarian. I hadn’t even thought about the family I was watching, what would happen to them, to the little girl, as I recorded the woman at the graves. I’d only thought about how proud Talia would be of me.
And then I wondered how the curse had hit Melasina. What was the cure? Face your greatest fear?
Where did I start?
I feared the loss of security. Of a home, and a place to belong. Of a job. Of the ability to take care of myself.
Most of all… I shook my head and got dressed. “It can’t be that easy,” I said out loud. That couldn’t be it. It had to be more.
Unwilling to think about my fears any longer, I went to my messenger bag and pulled out the file. The damned file that was haunting me. I looked up Melasina’s number and called her.
She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Jasper.”
“Hi,” she breathed into the phone, and I wanted nothing more than to go over and spend the rest of the day making her scream, making us both scream until we were hoarse and worn out.
“I wanted to come see you today, but I have some work to do first.”
“I didn’t get up until late,” Melasina said. “For which I think I have you to thank.”
