Vampires & Vinca (Hawthorn Witches Book 4) (3 page)

Chapter 2

Kendra was sitting in front of me at the workbench. She’d set out a tablecloth and laid out a spread of doughnuts and tea. Lyssa sat next to her looking as serious as usual. Kendra gave me a wide grin.

“Annie, so nice to see you again!” she rose and started to walk toward me, her red hair brilliant in the natural light of the greenhouse.

I took a step back and raised my hand out in front of me.

“No,” I said again, shaking my head. “I have classes today at noon. I don’t have time for witch and demon crap.”

“She also has to do laundry at six,” Charlie added.

Kendra stopped, furrowing her brow. “It’s laundry. Just ask Charlie to do it.”

Gates barely contained another laugh, and Lyssa rolled her eyes.

I shook my head. “Charlie’s not getting anywhere near my laundry. What do you want?”

Crossing her arms and smiling again, Kendra looked me over and smiled. She gestured back at the table as she swayed on her feet.

“I’ve got raspberry-filled doughnuts,” she said. “They’re your favorite.”

I cocked an eyebrow. I didn’t know if Lyssa had told her, or if Charlie had dug the detail out of my mind, but one of them was going to get an earful later.

“Do you want something?” I asked.

Kendra laughed. “I’m not a demon, Annie! I can’t have a coming home party with my nieces? You saved the day, and I want to thank you for—”

“Charlie said you wanted to talk,” I said bitterly.

Lyssa sighed and shook her head. “She wants to apprentice you. Both of you. Which is ridiculous.”

My eyes wandered from Lyssa’s bitter scowl to Kendra’s hopeful smile. She wrung her hands.

“Thanks,” I said, a little relieved. “But no, thanks. I’ve had all the magic I can handle, and as I said, I have classes.”

Kendra’s smile fell a little, and her eyes grew a little sharper. “Gates?”

Gates looked stunned. “Oh, I’m not a witch.”

“I’m aware,” Kendra looked sad for a moment. “But we can make do. Not all warlocks are bad. You don’t have the blood, but you can learn it from the book.”

Gates looked at me, and then at the floor, and she slowly shook her head. Kendra’s eyes grew more focused, and she turned away from us, putting her hands on her hips.

“I told you so…” Charlie said in a sing-song voice.

Kendra spun back around. She forced both of her hands to her sides, and looked at Gates before turning her authoritative gaze on me.

“Anise Hawthorn, you’ve caused me a great deal of trouble, and while I’m willing to forgive it because you’ve helped Charlie, no amount of good deeds can undo what you’ve done. And that’s part of the reason you need to be educated, and part of the reason that you
will
be accepting this apprenticeship. Both of you.”

I stared at her. She was a few inches taller than me, but she was thinner, and the presence of jelly doughnuts underscored exactly how threatening she really was.

“No,” I said without blinking.

She picked up a book from the corner of the workbench and turned back to face me.

“Recognize it?” she asked. Her voice grated, and this time she sounded more serious.

“The book!” Gates said, running forward and taking it from her hands. Lyssa almost stood to stop her, but a glance from Kendra stopped her.

“The book,” Kendra repeated. “
The
book.”

I glared at Charlie. “I asked you for that book. You wouldn’t give it to me. You gave it to her?”

“It’s her book,” he said lightly.

“I was your bridge,” I said sharply. “And you said it was
your
book.”

“She’s my bridge too. And it is my book. The way to summon me is in it, therefore,
my
book.”

“
Our
book,” Kendra clarified. She was still staring at me and not blinking. “That grimoire has been passed down for generations. It’s one of the oldest anyone has ever seen, and the contents of its pages were meant for Hawthorns’ eyes only.”

I watched as Gates looked up from the pages she was reading. She started to close it.

“You’re fine, honey,” Kendra said without looking over at her. “You wouldn’t be able to read it if Annie hadn’t screwed up.”

My jaw fell open a little, and I looked to Lyssa for support, but she looked straight at the ground.

“Screwed up?” I asked. “I didn’t do anything!”

“I left that book sitting beneath Althaea’s skull because she was the original scribe and protector of those spells. Only a Hawthorn could have taken the book out from under it. No one else would have even been able to
see
it, and Lyssa didn’t do it, which means it was you.”

I looked to Gates, dumbfounded. “You said that skull was fake!”

“Looked fake to me,” she shrugged, still reading the grimoire. “Who the hell keeps a human skull hidden in a hole in the wall?”

“Annie, that book was protected for a reason,” Kendra said. “The spells in there were a family secret that was meant to be passed on until there were no more Hawthorns to carry the legacy. When that happened, the book would have been given to a carefully selected and trustworthy individual who would have honored all of these generations by devoting their life to the sacred use and perfection of these spells. The spells have been growing in power with each generation, and in the wrong hands, some of them have destructive potential I don’t even want to imagine.”

Gates had glanced up from the book to stare, unblinking, at Kendra.

“And you gave it to Gates,” Lyssa said with a weak flourish of her hand.

Gates’ eyes shifted from Kendra to me. “Yeah…you screwed up.”

“
She
left a precious family heirloom hidden in a wall and didn’t warn anyone about it,” I said, pointing at Kendra. “And
you
were the one who decided to go poking around in there. I wouldn’t have found it if it hadn’t been left in that wall without a warning.” I looked at Lyssa. “Did
you
know about it?”

Lyssa shifted uncomfortably. “No. She didn’t tell me.”

“I’m not blaming you,” Kendra said quietly. When I looked at her, I believed it. “But I’m telling you, that’s the reason Gates doesn’t have a choice here. She has to stay and help me rebuild that grimoire, because the second you gave it to her most of those spells became unusable to anyone who isn’t Gates or one of her descendants.”

“Wow,” Gates snorted. “Annie, you
really
screwed up.”

“
We
screwed up,” I corrected. “Fine. So Gates is stuck. Why am I here?”

Lyssa rolled her eyes and looked away, and I knew.

“Because of the demon thing?” I asked.

Kendra pursed her lips. “Annie, I’m sure Charlie told you about the ecosystem of terror that keeps most people mum on any magical ability they possess.”

I took a deep breath. Charlie had told me a lot of stories about the various parts of magical beings that warlocks needed in order to cast spells, and I distantly recalled that Kendra’s first meeting with Stark involved him needing a witch’s heart. I braced myself, wondering what I now possessed that could make someone rich on the black market.

“It’s nothing like that, Thorn,” Charlie said quietly. “Quite the opposite. You’re unfit to be butchered, now.”

“You’ve been touched by the darkness,” Kendra said. “There’s an old belief that people like you are bad luck, and you’ll bring misfortune with you wherever you go. It’s likely to get you killed, because anyone who has a bad enough day when you happen to be close by is going to look for a cause. And…” She sighed, shaking her head as she looked at me. “You’ve drawn some unfortunate attention. Martha came here looking for me because of some old business between me and her brother, and necromancers and vampires are serious business. They are a superstitious group, and Draven has a fickle personality. I am very afraid of what he might do to you when he arrives.”

Kendra watched me and waited. I slowly looked around at each of them. After just freeing myself from Charlie and all of the drama that he had brought into my life, I couldn’t believe that I was getting sucked back in on pain of death.

“I’ve always kept a personal apartment here, tucked away behind the office,” Kendra said encouragingly. “And I haven’t lived with other witches since I was a little girl. I think it will be fun if you give it a try. Charlie found a few places to expand the living arrangements and give you each your own space, and I know he’d be happy to help you customize—”

Gates snapped the book shut. “Show me my room.”

My mouth fell open. Kendra gave her a winning smile.

She had immediately adored the room that Charlie had made for her at my apartment, but I didn’t think her loyalties would be swayed so easily. “Gates!”

“Annie,” she said frankly. “I get that your family are a bunch of freaks capable of fighting vampires, but mine aren’t. I’m not dragging them through that again. And this is an amazing opportunity. Someone just showed up and offered to teach you magic. You’re really going to turn that down?”

I stared at her in awe. After everything that had happened to us, I couldn’t believe she was still mooning over witchcraft like it was the antidote to all of our problems instead of the cause.

“Someone already showed up and offered to teach me magic,” I said. “And then he put Jennifer Wilmot in the hospital and turned you into a cat. He cursed my niece, ripped apart my sister’s family, and brought werewolves and vampires into my life, and apparently cursed me to be a bad luck charm until I’m dead. And now I’ve got this other person, my aunt, who keeps saying that
I
screwed up and caused all of this, but it was
her
book, and
her
demon, and
her
ex who came after me!”

Gates wasn’t impressed. “And if you had known magic, you would have been able to prevent all of that.”

“You paint a very dire picture of the time we spent together, Thorn,” Charlie said lightly. “You don’t recall me setting up your dad with Janet? Or when I helped your werewolf boyfriend? Or the time I saved your life? That feels a little unfair.”

Gates pointed at Charlie. Frowning, Kendra turned back to me.

“I can’t force you to do anything,” she said. “But I don’t want to watch you die because you didn’t know how to defend yourself. You’re still a little girl in my mind. The vampires are coming, and if you won’t do it for me, at least do it for Charlie. I can help you break the bridge with him now, but that would mean his life hangs on me, and believe me, Draven isn’t likely to just walk away when I refuse to give up that book—
and
your friend, as she’s the only one who can read all of it now. Without a second bridge, if I die, Charlie does too. Before you walk away, I want you to ask yourself if you owe this to him for saving your life.”

I closed my eyes. She had hit on the one sore spot that could change my mind, and I saw the rest of my free time that semester going up in smoke. But if Charlie could still take me to the Other Side when I needed more time for my assignments, I might still have a chance.

“Fine,” I said stiffly. “But I need to be back to campus by noon, and I have plans tonight. Tomorrow is better, I only have one class.”

Kendra shook her head, confused. “Annie, you can’t be serious. You’re dropping out.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but to my utter shock, Lyssa was already on her feet.

“No,” she said, and suddenly all the mothering authority she possessed was in her voice. “She’s going to school. She’s worked too hard, and I’ve worked too hard, and she’s going to school!”

Kendra looked to Charlie. He held up his hands.

“I’m not choosing sides in a fight between two bridges,” he said. “That gets ugly for all of us very quickly. Your fights are your own.”

Kendra narrowed her eyes. “Fine. Trial basis. But if it causes a problem, school gets the ax.”

I furrowed my brow. “You’re not my mother!”

Kendra started to say something, and from the look on her face, it wasn’t something nice, but Gates spoke over her as she hugged the book to her chest.

“Annie, let’s just go look at our rooms, okay?” she said. She started walking toward Charlie, and he immediately took the lead.

With a final glare at Kendra, I left her and Lyssa standing alone in the greenhouse as I followed Gates and Charlie.

The silence was unbearable and the tension nearly strangled me, so I spoke.

“You knew about all of this?” I asked Charlie. “The book, and Gates, and that this was going to happen?”

He gave me a glance, but kept walking. A cold fall breeze blew a scatter of cottonwood leaves across the grounds around us as we approached the old shed where we stored the outdoor gardening tools.

“I suspected,” he said. “But I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t think Kendra was coming back. And a lot of the time, I thought I would kill her if she did. Gates wasn’t qualified, and I had the book, so it was a moot point.”