Page 116 of Enspelled

Still smiling, I tug on my arm. He holds on for just a little longer, and then his hand falls away as he looks at Aunt Mel. “If you so much as—”

Aunt Mel snorts. “I wouldn’t be so eager to throw threats around, wolf. The only reason you’re not dead already is because I’ve decided not to kill you. That can change at any time.”

Before the situation turns nasty, I begin the short walk to Aunt Mel with the grimoire in my arms. I feel Keane’s gaze in the center of my back as I walk away, my heart pounding harder and harder with each step, hoping I’m not about to do something stupid.

Less than a foot away, I stop and hold the grimoire toward her. I’d thought nothing would be more important to me than this book, but there is. My friends. The only people I have left in the world, who have helped and protected me all this time.

It’s about time I did something more than just let them. All this time I never knew what I was supposed to do, other than survive. Everyone had a purpose: Keane was determined to find out who killed his pack, Sera was determined to help me get rid of the souls clinging to me, and Bodie, for some strange reason had decided to help her.

But I never knew what to do. So I was pulled along by everyone else’s wants and needs. Now I know what I’m supposed to do. I just have to be brave enough to do it.

Aunt Mel frowns as if she knows I’m up to something. “What are you planning?”

I push the grimoire closer toward her. “Nothing. Here.”

Her frown transforms into narrow-eyed suspicion. “Why are you so suddenly eager to get rid of it? Did you do something to it?”

“No, I’ve just decided to let you have it. If this is what you need to feel like less of a disappointment, then take it. I don’t need it.”

She’s poised to take it from me when my barb hits home. Her face tightens. “What did you just say to me?”

Keane says my name, but I ignore him. “I said you must feel like a disappointment, because Dad deserved the grimoire and not you. So take it.”

She snatches the grimoire from me. “It’s mine. It should always have belonged to me. Men don’t—”

“Possess powers?” I interrupt. “You felt his power. He was one of the strongest witches in town. If he’d been born a woman, he’d probably have been the coven leader. Your parents knew that. It was why they gave the book to him.”

Her fingers tighten around it as if someone is threatening to take it away from her. “We shared.”

I raise my eyebrow. “Is that why it was always at our house, and when you wanted to read it, you had to come to us?”

Redness sweeps over her cheeks, making the burn on her cheek stand out in sharp relief. “You don’t know anything,” she says, her voice emerging as a whisper so soft that I barely hear her.

“What I understand is that you’re jealous. You wanted power, and you wanted attention, but your older brother got it instead, and you hated it. That’s all this is. There wasn’t a carbon monoxide leak, was there? My grandparents died because you killed them, didn’t they?”

Her lips tighten, but she doesn’t deny it.

I stare into her eyes and will her to read the truth of my words. “I feel sorry for you, because all you have to show for everything you’ve done is a power that isn’t yours and a stolen grimoire.”

A wall of heat pummels me. It grips me in a hold so tight, I know there’s no escaping from it.

My vision turns orange, then red, and then black as agony rips through me. A high-pitched scream floats all around me, and by the time I realize it’s me, the scream has stopped.

But not only the scream. All thought, pain, and even the heat strangling the air from my lungs disappears.

And there’s nothing.

Am I dead?

I’d thought there would be more than this black space. Maybe not pearly white gates, butsomething.

An enraged snarl breaks the dead silence surrounding me, and instantly I know who it is.

Keane.

My eyes snap open, and then I’m staring up at a darkened sky with trees fluttering in the wind.

Aunt Mel hit me with my power and it burned through me right to the bone. I felt it. But as I lay on the hard ground, none of me hurts, so I get up.

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