Page 17 of Blood Magic (Ariel Kimber 3)

With my back to the door, I paused. Boxes were neatly stacked on the floor in front of the bed. I counted six of them. My personal belongings filled up a whole six boxes. I was expecting there to be a box or two less than what was there. The light blue comforter with the large red rose blossoms all over it that had graced my bed at Mr. Cole’s house now sat folded neatly on the wicker love seat that was in front of the window. Two pillows with cases matching the comforter were stacked on the seat beside the comforter. Hopefully it would fit under my bed because there was no way I could store it in my coffin sized closet.

The comforter on the queen-sized bed in here wasn’t all that different from the one that had been brought over from Mr. Cole’s house. This one was black and covered in yellow, open bloomed roses.

I was more partial to the one with the yellow roses than the one covered in red ones. Canary yellow was my favorite color. The guys knew this because Tyson knew this, and I was beginning to think they all gossiped about me behind my back. As a result, the walls in here were painted a bright, lovely shade of yellow so I guess I couldn’t really complain all too much.

The general theme for the room seemed to be bumble bee because most things were black and yellow. The paint on the walls, the comforter on the bed. The curtains surrounding the window were black, gauzy and see-through. The pillows on the bed were black and purple. Some of the black ones were covered in sparkly, silver sequins. On the wicker love seat, underneath the matching comforter and bed pillows, were a pile of black decorative toss pillows. On the floor in front of the love seat was a thick, black hand-woven circular rug. A matching rug laid on the floor beside the bed. The rugs were the only thing in the bedroom that didn’t look brand new. I liked them. I imagined the hard wood floors could get quite chilly in the winter and I didn’t want to wake up in the morning and drop my feet down on to something freezing cold.

Continuing with the color scheme, on the wall above the tall dresser hung an oval, black framed mirror. Even the tall bookshelf beside the door was black in color.

Above the bed hung my beautiful dreamcatcher Tyson had gifted me with. The circle was black, the inside intricately woven with silver beads placed sporadically on the inside of the circle. Black and silver beads hung down on long strings with black and white feathers hanging off the ends. There were white markings and strange words written around the black circle. They were designed for my safety and protection. Tyson had put a lot of work into it for me. The whole thing was absolutely gorgeous.

It was almost my favorite part of the lovely bedroom they had put together for me, coming in second only to the framed black and white tarot cards that hung on the wall over the bed. They put even the dreamcatcher to shame.

They were priceless heirlooms that had belonged to the Alexander family for over three hundred years. The Alexander family had once owned an entire deck of poster sized black and white ink, hand drawn tarot cards. There were seventy-eight tarot cards in a complete deck. The family had lost the majority of the deck in a fire many years ago. Only eight remained. Tyson and Quinton had spilt them between themselves.

They had each given me one of theirs, something that had left me speechless the first time I had seen them hanging there on the wall. Julian had asked me at the time whether or not I knew what it meant that they were hanging on my wall. It meant Tyson and Quinton were serious about this situation with me and they were in it for the long haul. If they hadn’t thought there would be no end to me being in their coven they wouldn’t have given me those drawings. I hadn’t actually needed those tarot cards to know that the two of them were in this for the long haul and serious about me. But the gesture had been nice, sweet, and I had loved it.

The Magician and The Moon. The Magician had come from Tyson and The Moon had come from Quinton. Given their meanings, the cards were perfect choices for me.

After seeing them the first time, I had gone online and looked them up. The Magician card could mean two things. The first meaning represented control, taking control over your life and having a certain level of success. The second meaning had to do with being creative and talented. I wasn’t creative or talented, so I preferred the first meaning to the second. I loved the thought of being successful in something and hoped like hell my day was coming sooner rather than later.

The picture showed a bald man in a cape standing in the center of a pentagram. He held a sword in one hand with the tip pointed towards the ground. In the bald man’s other hand, he held a cup raised up high in the air. The wordsThe Magicianhung in the air over his bald head. He was an unfortunately unattractive man.

The card represented taking control of your life and I loved that Tyson had chosen to gift it to me.

Quinton had given me The Moon out of his collection. The Moon is the card of intuition, dreams and the unconscious. I thought this one had been given to me because of the dreams I always had. They meant something. I couldn’t always figure out the meaning, but I knew they meant something.

The card itself showed a moon glowing high up in the sky. Wolves were on the ground with their heads thrown back, howling at the bright, glowing orb in the sky.

Even though I liked them both a great deal, The Moon was my favorite.

I wished they hadn’t given me something so precious to hold on to. To me, they weren’t really mine, I felt like I was simply borrowing them for the time being. Like, I was renting them to take up space on my wall. If you could rent things for free from boys who were by far prettier than you were.

Ignoring the boxes and everything else, I moved towards the dresser. The top drawer was half full of fuzzy socks. They’d been a gift from someone. I’d assumed Dash had put them in there. I had forgotten all about them. I pulled open the second drawer and sighed. The drawer was empty. If I wanted to wear my own clothes, then I would have to go through the boxes.

My silk robe was in one of the drawers, but I didn’t want to prance around the house in my silk robe and fuzzy socks. That would be me making myself too comfortable in Dash’s home. Not that I thought he would mind, or anybody else. It was tempting and would likely be extremely comfortable. And, I was dying to put the thing on and wear it, to feel that smooth silk against my skin. But modesty demanded I find actual clothes to wear.

Without thinking, I lifted a flap on the top of the cardboard box sitting on top of the bed. Too late, I realized it was not a box full of my belongings. Instead, it was the box I had found hidden in the back of Vivian’s closet. A box half full of letters and old pictures. Letters that had told me that Vivian Kimber, the woman I had grown up with and known as my mother, might not be my actual mother after all but my aunt instead. A woman who, if the contents of the letters were to be believed, had stolen me away from her brother, my would be biological father.

I had read all of four letters out of the box so far and barely touched the photos. I couldn’t bring myself to read more than that. I closed the top flap on the box. Today wouldn’t be the day where I read the rest of them. Maybe tomorrow?

Procrastination, thy name is Ariel Kimber.

You would think I would want to read it all right away in one go just so I could know every little thing I could possibly find out.

I couldn’t do it.

I was weird like that.

I felt like if I read the rest of those letters and got to the end, I wouldn’t even come close to being the same person that I was when I started reading them. This wouldn’t exactly be a bad thing, I knew this. Part of me chafed at being denied the growth, the knowledge. A larger part of me wanted to light the entire box on fire, burn it to ash and forget the damn thing had ever existed in the first place. I couldn’t bring myself to actually do this to the damn thing no matter how badly I wanted to. Eventually, I would be brave enough to look through the rest of the box. Eventually, I would come to terms with the fact that my mother wasn’t really my mother and I would want to learn about my bio dad.

Sadly, today was not that day.

I had a feeling with the things going on around me that tomorrow wouldn’t be that day either. Maybe not even the next day.

One crisis at a time.

One day at a time.

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