After the Summerland (The Witches of Spring Hill Book 1) (15 page)

“Why are you asking?”
Xavier asks, suddenly interested in the conversation.

Chloe starts to ask them
again, when Kaiden stops her and says, “They weren’t in the car, Chloe. It
wasn’t them.”

Xavier stands up and raises his voice, “What the hell are you
guys talking about?”

Rowan says, “Sit down,
Jet, and let Chloe explain what happened last night.”

Chloe starts telling them
what happened, but midway through she stops, “This sounds ridiculous, it’s not
like she really did anything.”

“No, Chloe. She did do
something,” Kaiden says, encouraging her to finish.

Chloe starts again,
explaining what happened in the car. When she finally finishes,
leaving out the part about the protection spell she cast, she says, “I hate to
admit it, but I was actually really scared and I’m worried about my family. So
if you weren’t in the car, then maybe you can tell us what your aunt was doing
at my GG Peter’s house last night,” Chloe blurts out.

“Oh my God,” Cian says
and looks at Brianna and Xavier. “This is totally getting out of hand and we
have to do something.”

“What is getting out of
hand?” Rowan asks Cian, while watching Brianna and Xavier’s reaction to what he
said. They both look scared, worried, and pissed at the same time.

Xavier drops his head into
his hands and in frustration pulls at his hair a little. When he looks back up,
his hair is disheveled and standing up where his hands were, but it’s his eyes
that have Rowan catching her breath.

In his eyes is a world
of pain, frustration, and fear. She instantly forgets how she should be acting
and lets down her guard to his pain. And when she lets it in, it washes over
her and all she wants to do is reach out and hold him. So she does.

She gets up, walks
around the table and grabs his face in her hands. “What is it, Xavier? Tell us.
Maybe we can help.”

He looks into her green
eyes and finds himself speechless. Her kindness is overwhelming, especially since he was just
getting used to her bitchy attitude.

He pulls away and
shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know what to say. Chloe, I’m sorry. I’m sorry
that my aunt scared you. She is… unstable, and
that’s all I can say for now.”

“Unstable? Unstable?!? She’s not unstable, she’s effin
crazy,” Brianna shouts.

Kaiden, surprised by
her anger asks, “What do you mean, Brianna?”

“The woman is crazy and
manipulative and dangerous and I don’t want to be a part of this anymore.” Her
eyes fill with tears and she says, “I just can’t do this anymore.”

Cian gets up and
comforts his sister. He hates to see her in this much pain and although he
expected that she was getting close to her breaking point, he did not expect it
to happen here and now, in front of the Alexanders. Cian can’t help but wonder
if it started because of Rowan’s kindness toward Xavier. Cian can’t remember
the last time someone was that kind to Brianna.

As if reading his mind,
Chloe comes over and picks up Brianna’s hand. “I have no idea what is going on
right now, but if we can do something to help, we will. But we need answers,
too. What the hell is going on? Why did you guys move here? And what is it
about you three that is so…” She leaves the thought blank when she can’t
come up with the word.

“What my sister is
trying to ask is, are you witches and are you here to hurt us?” Rowan says
bluntly.

Xavier, Brianna, and
Cian look up at Rowan, Chloe, and Kaiden and realize that it’s time to tell the
truth. Cian starts, “How much do you guys know about yourselves?”

Kaiden replies, “We
know a lot, maybe even everything, but we only learned recently, so if you asked
us that question a week ago, we wouldn’t have known anything. I hope you won’t see
that as a weakness and exploit it.”

Cian nods and says,
smiling, “We won’t, but I’m sure you know we can’t speak for everyone in our
family.”

Kaiden takes that as a
sign that they can at least trust everyone present in this room. He looks at
Xavier who has dropped his head in his hands again, avoiding eye contact. It’s
obvious he is uncomfortable so Kaiden asks outright, “Xavier? Can we trust
you?”

Xavier looks up at
Kaiden and shaking his head says, “Honestly? I don’t know.”

Rowan inhales sharply
and steps away from him. “How can you say that?” she asks.

Chloe says
resignedly, “At least he’s being honest…”

Xavier looks around at everyone in the
room, but before he has a chance to explain himself the door to the conference
room opens abruptly.

“What the hell is going
on?” Liam asks when he sees them all clustered on the opposite side of the
conference room table.

“Dad
!?
”
Chloe says, shocked to see her dad here when he never comes to the library to check
on her. “What are you doing here?”

He looks at Chloe,
disappointed. Then to Kaiden he says, “Miss Anderson called the house looking
for you, Kaiden. She wanted to know if you still needed the study room since
you didn’t show up at noon for your reservation.”

“With what has been
going on,” he continues, looking pointedly at the Silvans, “I figured I’d stop
by and check to make sure everything was okay. When I got here Mrs. Kelley
kindly told me you were up here with the new kids. So now, I will ask you again,
what the hell is going on?”

Xavier stands up, but
quickly sits back down when Cian shakes his head no.

“Mr. Alexander,” Cian
starts.

“It’s actually ‘Chief’
Alexander, Mr. Silvan.”

Rowan rolls her eyes
and shakes her head, a little embarrassed by her dad’s correction. “Dad. Stop.
You are not here on police business, so please, just be cool for a minute.”

Liam raises his
eyebrows at Rowan and before he has a chance to say anything, Chloe speaks up
and says, “Dad, please don’t be mad. We just ran into them and decided we
should talk to them to find out what’s going on.”

“No more lies, Chloe,”
Liam says sharply. “I don’t believe for one minute that you just ran into them. I think you
intended to meet them here all along, which is why Kaiden convinced me to pick
up the car last night so I wouldn’t find out who you were meeting here today. Am
I right? No need to answer, I can tell by the look on your face. So why don’t
we all just sit down and start talking.”

He takes the seat that
Kaiden was sitting in at the head of the table and crosses his hands in front
of him.

“So… let’s start talking,” he says, nodding
toward Xavier, Cian, and Brianna.

Absolutely mortified at
being chastised by her father in front of everyone, Chloe bites her tongue and sits
back down in her seat next to Liam.

Without saying anything
Rowan goes back to the chair she was sitting in and Kaiden takes the seat to
the left of his dad. They are both too stunned by the way their dad spoke to
Chloe to say anything at all.

“So, who is going to
start?” Liam asks looking around at the group in front of him, finally focusing
on Xavier.

“We don’t
have
to say anything to you,” Xavier
says, with more confidence than he is feeling.

Liam purses his lips,
leans forward in his chair, and nods at Xavier. “Alright then, Xavier, it seems
like you want to be the one to start. I have to tell you,” Liam starts and then
leans back in the chair, “I’m not surprised by your attitude, but I guess at
this point I was expecting more from you.”

“What do you mean?”
Xavier asks, suspicious of how familiar Liam is speaking to him.

“Well, Xavier — it’s
just that I’ve been doing some research into your family…” he pauses here
to gauge his reaction and when he doesn’t get one he continues, “I’m not sure I
like what I’m learning about you, especially when it seems my daughter has
taken a special interest in you.” Rowan blushes deeply, but has no idea how her
dad could possibly know… and then realizes that he was just saying it to
see who would react. Liam looks at Rowan, not a bit surprised at her reaction.

“Of course, you
understand, I’ve got to protect my family, so when I got to the station today, I
made some calls. It seems there were some… issues at your last school. Do
you want to talk about it?” Both Cian and Brianna look at Xavier, perplexed.

“You can’t bully me
like this,
Mister
Alexander,” Xavier
says, adding, “And I have no idea what issues you are talking about.”

Liam is satisfied with
Xavier’s reaction and is about to bring up some of the issues that he has
become aware of, none that actually have to do with Xavier, when his radio chirps
to life, “Dispatcher One to Chief Alexander.”

“Go ahead,” Liam says.

“Chief, we received a
911 call from your grandfather’s house, and we are not getting a response when we
call back — are you anywhere near there?”

Chloe gasps audibly and
Liam, thinking of the kids sitting in the room, responds, “Close enough. Give me two
minutes and I’ll call you direct.”

He stands up quickly
and looks back at Xavier and says, “We’ll finish this later, and Chloe, Rowan,
and Kaiden, I want you to go straight home now. I’ll call you when I find out
what’s going on.”

Chloe stands up and says,
“No, Dad. No. We are going with you and…” She looks at Cian, and then
looks back at her dad. “We need to tell you about what happened on our way home
last night.”

“What happened, Chloe?
Never mind, we’ll talk in the car. C’mon, let’s go. Now.”

They run out the door
without looking back and once they’re out of sight, Xavier holds up Chloe’s
keys. “C’mon. We’ve
gotta
follow them,” he says as he starts out the door.

“Xavier! You stole her
keys?” Cian asks appalled.

“Look, we’ve got to get
out to her great grandfather’s house, too. Aunt Selene was going there today to
talk to him — that was the appointment she had to go to,” he explains as he
heads toward the exit.

“What the hell, Xavier?” Brianna
asks grabbing his arm. “Was all of that an act in there?”

He slows down and looks
at Brianna closely, “Are you serious, right now? You really think I was lying?”
He laughs sardonically and shakes his head as he walks out to the parking lot. “What
do you guys want from me? I’m trying,
alright
! Aunt
Selene is in one ear telling me what
she’s
doing and then I’ve got you two in my other ear telling me what
I
should be doing. Fuck! I can’t stand
this shit anymore!”

Cian and Brianna look
at Xavier, somewhat surprised by his outburst. He’s always been quick to anger
and more so lately, but to be fair, they hadn’t considered what he must go
through all the time between them and Selene.

Xavier clicks the
unlock button on the fob, looking around for the Subaru. Of course it’s parked
in the back, he thinks as he starts jogging to the car, not even checking to
see if they are following. He yells over his shoulder, “I have no idea where their
great grandfather lives, so will you two pick up the pace so we can at least
follow them?”

Cian and Brianna look
at each other and jog to catch up with their brother.

Xavier slides in the
Forester and pushes his seat back as far as it will go. Cian hops in the
passenger seat and Brianna gets in the backseat, as usual.

“Two questions,” Cian asks,
“First, how are we going to explain why we took their car and second, what are
we going to tell Aunt Selene if we see her there?”

Xavier shakes his head,
tired of always having to have all the answers, he says, “Just leave it to me,
brother. As always, just leave it all to me.”

Liam calls his
grandfather’s house before he is even out of the library. When it goes straight
to voicemail, he tries his grandfather’s cell and gets no answer. Before he
calls Marcus, he calls the station. “Margo, it’s Liam. Tell me what you’ve got.”

Amy explains that about
ten minutes ago 911 received a call from Peter’s house, but no contact with the
caller. After a moment of dead air, the call was disconnected. When the
dispatcher called back, the call went straight to voicemail. Amy adds that she also
called Marcus since he lived near Peter, but she didn’t get an answer.

“Thanks, Amy. I’m on my
way over there now. Keep trying my dad and I’ll try to get in touch with him,
too. Let me know if anything else comes in.”

Before Liam even
disconnects the call, Chloe, impatient to find out what is happening, asks,
“Dad, what’s going on? What happened to GG Peter?”

“I know as much as you
do, Chloe,” he replies, before remembering what she said at the library and adding,
“Well, actually you must know something that I don’t know. What happened last
night?”

Chloe explains for the
second time that day about the white Mercedes tailgating them and how
frightened they were. She also explains their concerns that Selene was either
at GG Peter’s when they got there or she was following them since it would be
the only way she would know that it was them in the Forester.

“Chloe? I have to ask… are you absolutely certain she was acting in a threatening way? Could you
be suspicious of her because of what you know about her? Maybe she just drives
really aggressively and didn’t even know it was you guys?”

“Dad! I can’t believe
you are even asking that question,” Kaiden says.

Rowan adds, “We
know
that she knew it was us and even if
she didn’t, what was she doing on the back road to GG Peter’s late on a Friday
night?”

“All right. I see your point,
but I just have to make sure,” Liam concedes. “And you’re sure that it wasn’t
one of the kids?” he asks.

“Positive,” Chloe
responds. “We brought it up to them and by their reactions I’d say they knew
nothing about it.” Chloe looks at Rowan who is obviously remembering the pain
in Xavier’s eyes.