The Witches of Merribay (The Seaforth Chronicles) (6 page)

The old man laughed
. He didn't seem threatened at all.

I didn't wait for anything else to happen
. I was out of there, running as fast as my legs would carry me. I arrived home and ran right past Gran and GG Edmund, who were still on the porch. “I have to use the restroom,” was my excuse for not stopping. Shaking, I ran up to my room and slammed the door behind me, leaning upon it to hold me up. Sweat dropped from my brow. Who in the godforsaken hell was that? And what had I done, agreeing to drink the blood of that old woman?

It was a matter of minutes before my sister discovered that I was home
. I still leaned against the door, shaking and breathing heavy.

She knocked
. “You ready? Let's get on with it.”

I took a deep breath and said, “Just give me a few minutes
. I haven't taken a shower yet.”

She walked away
, mumbling something that I couldn't make out.

I got into my bathtub and turned the showerhead on
, letting the hot water soothe me to the bone. The trembling subsided, but I knew deep down in my soul that I had not seen the last of that old man.

Chapter
Eight

Picking up the phone, I called Aunt Clover to set up my sleepover for Saturday night. I hadn't had a chance to ask her at supper. The atmosphere had been so thick that you could almost walk on it.

Aunt
Clover said she didn't have any plans and seemed thrilled about the idea. “We'll watch some horror flicks,” she said, which was fine with me as long as she fell asleep at midnight. No horror movie in the world could surpass what just happened to me.

Settling down, and normalizing my breath, I proceeded to walk to my sister
’s bedroom, three doors down. Taking my time, I slowly walked along the hallway and the wooden floorboards, admiring the red-and-cream-colored Persian rug. I even took the time to study a couple of pictures on the hallway wall. The picture I had always loved was a painting of a place in Ireland.
The border was a shamrock, and the picture itself, a castle.
My sister and I used to fantasize about living in this castle. We'd pretend we were princesses, and in our games that we played, she would always have to be the outranking princess, of course, and I would have to carry out all of her demands.

I wished that I could be there right now in that castle and not about to head into my sister
’s room. Finally arriving at the door, I raised my hand and knocked. She had the hair dryer blowing and turned it off abruptly.

“Come in.”

Walking into her room was like walking into hurricane aftermath; it looked like a wind tunnel had just whirled its way through. She had tried on everything in her closets, and their final resting place was the floor. I picked clothes up as I walked, to avoid stepping on them. A few of the items had been stolen from my own closet.

The screen from her open window was missing, as were the blinds, and the summery breeze blew through
, billowing out the yellow curtains in intervals.

Several glasses and coffee
cups were sitting around in various places, along with plates and bowls scattered throughout, even on her pillows. I had to wonder if she shared the pillow with the plates or if she actually moved them out of the way.

Fashion and makeup magazines
were sprawled out everywhere, from the bed to the floor and into the connecting bathroom. It amazed me that Gran hadn't complained to her about cleaning her room. It was nothing short of a pigsty.

“I know
, it's a mess. Maybe you can help me clean it. You know I'm not good with cleaning,” were her first words to me.

“Well, I suppose I can help you for a few minutes.” I wasn't one for uncleanliness
, and this toxic mess had to go.

“Great
. And then I can fix your hair—maybe apply some makeup. I mean, really, you could look so much better than you do,” she said with her usual uppity tone.

I cringed
. The last thing I wanted was a makeover from my sister, and cleaning sounded like the better choice. She tossed me a box of garbage bags, and I knew that somehow she had premeditated this. In her mind, if Gran forced us to spend time together, why not have Ivy clean?

Immediately, I set to work cleaning the mess, throwing crumpled trash into the bag and stacking magazines
. She sorted through the clothes, tossing what she considered dirty into one pile and clean into another.

When we could actually see the floor, she sat on her bed and watched me
. I continued to work, gathering the dirty dishes into a laundry basket. She picked up a plate of half-eaten marshmallow brownies from her pillow and handed it to me.

“Yuck!” I said
. “I thought you didn't eat sweets anymore.” What I thought were marshmallow brownies weren't really marshmallows at all.

“I don't
. That's why they have mold all over them.”

“You couldn't take this down to the kitchen a bit sooner? 

“I forgot about them.”

“They are on your pillow
, for crying out loud.” I had to wonder if she had even been sleeping in here lately.

“So?”
she said.

“Nice.” I scrunched my nose and took the plate
. Tossing it in with the others, I pushed the laundry basket to the side.

After another half hour, the room looked spotless
and the dishes were done, and I sat in front of her vanity. The girl staring back at me looked, for lack of words, wild. Earlier I had brushed my long blonde hair, but it looked tangled and unkempt. My hazel green eyes looked too big for my face.

“Thanks for the help
,” she said as she stood behind me, watching my reflection.

“Yup
,” I said.

She walked to the bathroom and came back with a towel.

“You can't look until I'm done.” She threw the towel over the mirror in front of me and began brushing my hair.

I don't know how many times I said, “Ouch
,” but I was getting sick of hearing it myself.

“Oh
, be quiet. I'm almost done.” After she brushed my hair, she glazed it with something and began curling it.

During this time
, she talked, but not about the usual things. And when I say she talked, I mean
she
talked. There had never been a “we,” and I didn't expect it to change now. I was th
e listener.

In the past she would talk of everything from new movies that she'd like to see, to what color her prom dress would be the next year, to how she wanted to be a nurse someday and what college she would attend
. She'd go on and on about finding the right man that would sweep her off her feet. She was a romantic.

But not this time
; this time was different. My sister sounded weird—almost like she had forgotten it was me she was talking to. She actually seemed almost…amiable. I don't think she gave a hoot about what movies were out, she didn't talk about dresses, and she didn't mention her future career or college, but she did, however, talk about someone sweeping her off her feet.

As she spoke, I noticed her own hair was lacking the usual luster, and her face seemed rather thin.

“I wish I could meet someone…someone with dark hair, smart—no, a genius—with dark brown eyes, a perfect smile, a perfect nose, and sensual lips…”

“Sensual lips, huh? Did you just say
‘sensual’?” By the way she talked, it sounded as though she already had someone in mind.

“Yes, sensual
. A word you are not familiar with, I'm sure.”

Then she continued
. “A gentleman that would love me and even…die for me.”

“I see
,” I said. She was sounding loopier by the second.

“Do you? I find that hard to believe
. You don't seem to be the type that would understand, but maybe someday you will. Although that is hard to imagine.”

“Thanks
,” I said.

And then she totally changed the subject.

“I suppose Gran wanted us to have this time together to sort some things out.”  She curled my hair around the barrel and continued. “Both of us hate discussing our feelings, but let's just get it out there and get this over with. For tonight, we should get along. I apologize if I haven't been pleasant to be around lately, but you never know what's going to happen. You just never know. So, tonight, let's just act like old times.” 

I figured the statement about
never knowing what was going to happen stemmed from my father's disappearance.

“I'm up for that
. Apology accepted. And I didn't mean the things I said the other day—”  She interrupted me. “Ivy. It's okay. Let's forget it.”

“There will come a time when you have to accept that he's gone.”

“I will not accept that. I…” I thought about telling her about Ian and Izadora. I even tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come out. Something in me didn't want her to know what I knew, and I physically could not speak the words.

“I don't know
, but I am tired of this place. I want a real life,” she said.

“You have a real life
. Why are you so antsy?” 

“Things have changed, Ivy
. I've changed. I am not the same girl I used to be, and there is no turning back for me,” she said.

“Turning back? From what?”

She didn't answer me and started to apply eyeliner and shadow to my eyes. Then she added a dusting of blush to my cheekbones.

After several minutes she said, “It doesn't matter now, it's just too late.” Looking thoughtful, she said, “One thing I know, Ivy,
is we'll always be sisters. No one can take that away from us.”

Just as I was about to reply, she lifted the towel from the mirror and said, “Voila!”

The young lady staring back at me...was it me? It had to be me, I was the one sitting in the chair. I had expected to look like a painted clown, but I had to admit that I didn't look half bad. I looked…pretty. My hair appeared glossy, not unkempt and sticking out everywhere; now it was smoothed down and tame. She had hardly put any makeup on me, and my eyes popped out at me.

“Oh
, I forgot lipstick.” She applied some color red that I had never seen before, and afterward I thought,
Now I could pass as a clown.

“I like it better with no lipstick.” I wiped it off with a tissue.

“So, you admit that you like what I've done?”

“It's not so bad
,” I said.

“Now you don't look so much like a tomboy.”

“I'm not a tomboy.” It was true that I never particularly liked makeup and curling irons and ruffled dresses, but I didn't consider myself a tomboy.

“You always liked climbing trees and shooting
BB guns.”

“So what?”

“And God knows what you did to scar the tops of your ears. I never could figure that one out.” 

I grabbed my ears
, and I felt the scarring under my fingers. Nowadays it was barely noticeable, but they were the reason that I always had long hair.  

“That doesn't make me a tomboy.”

“Father said you fell from a tree and scuffed the tops so bad that it left scarring,” she said.

He had said that
, but I'd never believed it. How does someone scuff both of their ears?

“So that makes you similar to a boy
,” she said.

“It does not.”

“It does.”

“Does not.”

“Does too.”

As I sat staring into the mirror, getting ready to say my next “does not,” she whacked me with a feather pillow from behind, messing up my new hairstyle
and making me look like I'd stuck my finger in the light socket.

She laughed
, which made me laugh.

“Payback is never fun.” I grabbed a pillow and walloped her back as hard as I could, sending her flying onto the bed.

She stood up and whacked me back, and I whacked her back, and it went on and on until feathers filled the air and covered the floor. We laughed and hee-hawed, and once she snorted out of her nose, which made me double over with laughter.

We had fun
, but in my mind the old man lingered.

Throughout the night I would check out the windows to be certain the old man wasn't standing in the dooryard
. I trusted Drumm for some unknown reason, and I believed what he said, that the old man couldn’t come to my house—although I was uncertain of what he'd meant by “wards.”

If Zinnia noticed me looking out the windows every so often, she didn't say a word about it
. After a while I fully relaxed and didn't think of Ian, Izadora, and Magella and my upcoming task, or even the old man.

We stayed up until well after midnight
and acted like fools, just like when were kids. We made chocolate cake, which I devoured most of. Zinnia ate carrots and celery. Not wanting to start any arguments, I didn't bother to ask why she had become obsessed with eating so healthy.

At some point nearing the end of our night, Zinnia offered to make me some mint tea to settle the bellyache I had developed after eating most of the cake.

Within minutes of drinking the tea, I must have passed out on the floor amongst the fluffy white feathers.

***

Surprisingly, we had a great time that night. It will remain in my memory forever—something to hold on to when times got tough. For little did I know at the time, we would never have such a night again.