The Oath
The Oath
Book Two of The Coven Series
By Apryl Baker
The Oath
Copyright © 2014 by Apryl Baker. All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: October 2014
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
Formatting: Limitless Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1502393081
ISBN-10: 1502393085
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
For my Dad who has shown me what
true strength and courage is.
Table of Contents
Prologue
She killed herself.
Everyone asked why, why would she have done it? She’d had everything a girl could want. She was a junior, dated the quarterback, and had a gaggle of friends. Everyone aspired to be like her, Little Miss Perfect, the All American Girl. Blonde, beautiful, bubbly, and all those other B words that made me gag and want to puke. Jenny had no reason to even think of killing herself, but she’d done it. That fact was undeniable. When I got my hands on her diary, though, I understood exactly why.
Now, six months later, I stared at the girl in the mirror as I removed my nose ring. Gone was the black hair, replaced by golden blonde locks that made my sapphire blue eyes shine and my California sun-kissed skin glow. The Goth chic clothes had been put away, and I wore a pink tank top and a pair of khaki colored Capris. Stylish sandals completed the outfit. I wanted to barf.
They were all going to pay for my sister’s death. By the end of the week, they’d be praying to whatever god they worshipped to hide them from the hell coming for them.
I swore an oath to my sister the day I finished reading her journal. Retribution would be hers. She would be avenged, or my name wasn’t Melinda Rose James.
May the Fates have mercy upon them all, because they would pay the same price they’d demanded of her.
Their lives.
Chapter One
~ Arrival ~
My dad swore I used to love the snow. He lied through his teeth. Five inches of snow blanketed Falls Church, Virginia when my plane landed. I burrowed deeper into my light jacket and thought of a million ways I could get even with the old man for telling me it couldn’t be that much colder in Virginia than it had been when I left LA. I grabbed my carryon and raced out of the biting wind and into the terminal. My grandmother waited patiently by the baggage claim area. She looked like she was in her forties, but she had to be at least eighty if she was a day. Elizabeth James looked good for an old woman. She could be my mom instead of my Granny. I hoped I’d inherited her genes. Dad was already turning gray, and he was barely thirty-eight.
“Melinda!” I cringed at the bear hug she wrapped me in. I loved Gran to death, but I hated anyone touching me. She knew this and ignored it. “Let me look at you.” I dutifully turned, and she beamed at me. “I swear you look just like your mother, bless her soul.”
Mom died when I was four and Jenny five. I didn’t even remember her, really, only a vague recollection of someone who used to pour me cereal in the mornings. I couldn’t even say I missed her because I didn’t remember her, but there were times I did miss having a mom. Like the first time I’d gotten my period and I told my dad I’d needed him to go the store and buy some pads. He’d looked confused until I’d explained to him what type of pads I was referring to. He’d driven me to the store, his face as red as the fire engine we passed on the way to the supermarket. I grinned at the memory.
“I’m so sorry about your sister, Meli. I know you two had gotten close the last few years.”
My mind skidded to a halt on the happy memory. Jenny and I had only seen each other once since our mom died. We shared the same mother, but had different fathers. My dad tried to talk Jenny’s dad into letting her stay with us. Dad had raised her since she was less than a year old and loved her like his own, but Mr. Melton refused. He’d taken Jenny and moved to whereabouts unknown at the time. Dad, unable to cope with the loss of both his wife and his daughter, had taken me to Los Angeles.
Jenny and I found each other on Facebook about three years ago, and we’d been Skyping ever since. She’d been a little standoffish at first, but then she hadn’t expected me to be a Goth Queen. I couldn’t say I’d been all that happy to find out she was freaking Miss Pom-Pom either, but we were sisters and we coped. She and I talked every day for three years. We’d become real sisters again. That was the reason I was here in this frozen icicle of a town. She and I may have been as different as two people could be, but we were sisters, and we loved each other.
We discovered we’d been within miles of each other every summer and hadn’t known it. I spent most of my summers here with Gran, while she’d played in the next town over. We’d all lived in Ohio before Mom died, and then Gran migrated to Virginia after Dad and I went to LA. Fate could be cruel sometimes. If we’d found each other sooner, maybe none of this would have happened. She’d be alive, and I wouldn’t be about to commit mass murder.
I hated deceiving Dad and Gran. They both believed I wanted to come here so I could be closer to Jenny, to deal with my grief. I’d let them believe that was the reason for the complete three-sixty in my appearance as well. Jenny and I shared the same color blonde hair, but when I decided to go Goth to piss off Dad and thumb my nose at society in general, I’d gone all the way. Black on black. I hated the stigma of being blonde, but I forced myself to tolerate it for her. I had no remorse for my plans, only for deceiving the people I loved. When this was over, I hoped they’d be able to understand and forgive me.
A boy caught my attention further down the baggage claim belt. He stared at me from under a mop of unruly golden locks with an intensity I couldn’t even begin to describe. His black eyes looked straight through me. I fidgeted, feeling guilty for my thoughts of revenge when he looked at me with those eyes full of the remorse I should be feeling, but didn’t. It made me angry. I glared in return. He smiled and turned away. An uneasy and slightly slimy feeling hit me, believe it or not. I’d never had that feeling before, no matter what type of black magic I used. I tended to like the darker spells. You got more oomph out of your spells if you steeped them in black magic. The emotions running amok through me just then didn’t sit well with me. I needed to focus on the task at hand. I needed to avenge my sister’s death.
“Let’s get you home, Meli, dear.”
Gran had already gotten my luggage while I’d stood staring at the boy like a ridiculous blonde. Wait. My hand went to my hair. Damn, I was the ridiculous blonde chickie now. I sighed heavily.
I followed her outside, and we rode the airport shuttle to parking. I turned on the heater in the car and shivered for the first fifteen minutes. The cold and I were not going to be buddies. Gran chatted away at me, and I nodded where I thought I should, but I didn’t really pay any attention to her. Instead, I kept thinking about tomorrow when I’d go to school. I still wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to get “in” with the seniors. My junior status didn’t help. The new blonde image and the bubbly – gag – clothes might help, but could I pull it off? I would find a way. Failure was not an option.
Gran’s house never failed to amaze me. I loved it. The three story structure was an old Victorian she’d restored from scratch. Its wrap-around porch was perfect for just sitting and idling the day away. I’d spent many a lazy summer afternoon on that porch reading and daydreaming. The house was bright, warm, and inviting. It felt like home.
My usual room was done in pale grays and a deep rose color. It fit my personality to a tee, or at least it used to. Gran fixed up the room I called the Princess suite for me. It was done in pale pinks and purples with white furniture and a big white canopy bed. The adjoining bathroom was also done in soft shades of pink and white, not gaudy, mind you, just soft undertones. Gran had too much class to ever have one of those cheaply decorated places you saw on the fixer-uppers on HGTV. If I needed to have friends over, I had to have a room that fit the new Barbie look. Gran never blinked when I asked her if I could use the Princess room instead of my own. She assumed I was trying to be closer to my sister by being more like her. I hated deceiving her, but there was no other recourse.
Miss Nell’s steaming hot cocoa waited for me in the kitchen. It helped with the shivers. I hadn’t been warm since we’d hit the Rockies. I gave her a huge grin and settled at the kitchen table to soak up the heat from the stone mug. Nell Johnson, or Miss Nell as everyone called her, had been my Gran’s housekeeper for as long as I could remember. She made the best hot chocolate in the world and never once blinked at us practicing witchcraft when she herself was as religious as any bible-belt fanatic. I’d always admired her for not judging, but accepting us for who we were.
The kitchen smelled of apples and cinnamon, another favorite childhood memory of mine. I loved Gran’s apple pie. Christmas was around the corner, and I knew Gran would drag me into the kitchen to help her with the baking. Although we didn’t technically celebrate the Christian aspect of the holiday, Gran loved the decorations and the sentiment of family behind it. She put up a tree, decorated outside and inside, and baked herself silly every year. Gifts wrapped in bright packages with little Santas and Frostys arrived for Dad and me each year.