Witchling (Curse of Kin) (6 page)

I listened to Brie talk to Sully about telekinesis. I could tell by his expression his scientific mind argued against it, while at the same time hoping it was true. I lifted my head and looked directly in his eyes.

“Did you throw him against the wall?”

“I think so.” The endorphins from the attack had subsided and I started to shiver, my anger now replaced by fear. “Sully, what am I going to do?”

He pulled me closer and wrapped both arms around me protectively, resting his forehead against mine.

“I think you should tell Jasper, Nera,” Brie insisted. “Remember he said that if you were the girl he thought you were going to be, that you could do anything. This has to be a show of that power.”

“I don’t want to be the one who does this. Don’t you understand? Let someone else have the powers, and leave me alone.” I wrapped my arms around Sully’s waist, tucked my head into his neck, and closed my eyes.

“I don’t think it works like that, or I’m sure Brie would gladly take them off your hands.” Sully’s warm breath brushed over my face.

“I admit it, okay.” Her voice was tight. “I’m jealous, Nera. I’ve always wanted to be a witch. You know that. But I would never let the fact that you have those powers come between us.” She leaned forward and took one of my hands.

“I wish it could be you.” I gave her a weak smile and her hand a squeeze. “I would gladly share it if I could.”

We sat through the rest of lunch break quietly. There was so much I wouldn’t admit to just yet. Mrs. White handed me a letter for Mom and Dad about the “incident” during my last class which I stuffed in my bag.
It’ll be a fun evening ahead when they read that.
On the bus home, Connor’s friends gave me the dirtiest looks they could manage, but I ignored them.

“Bye, Brie, Sully. Catch you tomorrow,” I said and hopped off the bus at my stop. I slowly walked up the back lane to our house, kicking at the downed petals from the flowering dogwoods on my way. My mind was trying to organize things into little boxes again, but no matter how I tried I couldn’t find anywhere for the magic.

“Hi, Nera,” Roman called out to me. He was covered in dirt and had a big smear of it down his face. “I’m helping Mrs. Freeman weed her garden.”

“That’s great, buddy.” The old lady smiled at me, and I waved at her but hurried inside to avoid a conversation that would last forever and be about absolutely nothing interesting.

“Hi, honey.” Mom blew me an air kiss as I threw my bag in the hallway. “Have a good day?”

“No. Not at all,” I grumbled
. I might as well get this over with
. I retrieved my school bag, dug out the letter from the headmistress, and handed it over to her before slumping into a kitchen chair.

Mom took it without a word and ripped it open. She looked at me then her face paled when she read the contents. “Oh, honey, no!” When she finished reading, she knelt by me and pulled me close while stroking my hair. After the past week, the tears came. Mom held me while I cried, gently patting my back and whispered soothing sounds.

I managed to pull myself together and grabbed a tissue from the table to wipe my eyes and blow my nose.

“Do you want me to call Dad?” Mom stood in front of me with the letter tight in her hand, waiting for me to answer.

“No, Mom, don’t. He will probably want to go and punch Connor out for it. I will be okay, promise. It was just a bit of a shock.”

“Of course it was, Nera. Let me make a cup of tea, and we can have a girly chat and some cake. That always makes me feel better.” Mom bustled around the kitchen, the letter stuffed into her pocket. I tried not to berate myself for letting her think that Connor was the reason for my tears. I didn’t like keeping things from my folks; it made me feel sick and just a little bit dirty. We were a close family and didn’t have much in the way of secrets from one another.

Mom poured me a cup of tea and passed me a huge slice of her chocolate cake. We sat and chatted about boys and their teenage trials. Before I finished my tea, she had me laughing again and over my one-man pity party.

My parents were all for us taking responsibility for ourselves, and Mom believed that Connor would be feeling sorry now for his actions. I figured he would also be worrying about what I had done. He knew I hadn’t laid a hand on him, and when he had time to think it through, he might decide to give me a wide berth. That’s what I was hoping anyway.

Roman hurried up the back stairs to the kitchen door with his usual enthusiasm and ran into the room toward me with flowers in his little hands.

“Nera, look what I picked for you.” He thrust a bunch of small red blooms at me.

“Thanks, Roman. Just what I needed,” I said. My eyes were moist with fresh tears, and I grabbed him close and squeezed him tight.

“Mom, I’m going to put these in a vase for Nera, and she can put them in her room.” Roman bounced over to the cupboard where Mom kept her collection of vases before she had answered him, determined to organize it himself.

“Sure. Use that little one there.” Mom pointed to a small glass one with flower etching. She got up and filled it with water for him, and he brought it to me. I handed him each stem, and he put them in the water, one at a time, his face a mask of concentration.

“There you go. They look beautiful now.” Roman stood back and admired at his handy work.

“They do, buddy. Want to come and show me where I should put them?”

He picked the vase up off the table and carefully carried it up the stairs to my room. He walked over to my bedside table and placed it beside my lamp. Standing back, he looked at them and then smiled at me. “There, Nera.”

“Thanks, Roman. That was very sweet of you.” I crouched down and pulled him close.

“That’s okay.” He patted me on the arm. “You can talk about your feelings, you know.” He turned and left me in the middle of my room. I guess he must have picked up on my bad mood when I walked in the gate.

I knew I would feel better after a run so I changed into my sweats and running shoes for a jog before dinner. I called to Hugo, waved at Mom, and ran down the backyard to the lane. I replayed today’s incident in my mind as I ran, wondering if I could do the same thing again. I let the emotion build inside me. I remembered Connor’s hands groping and pulling at my body, which left me with a sickening feeling in my stomach.

Jasper’s house came into view before I realized that was where we were heading. Why not? I called out as I came through the kitchen gate. Hugo, as usual, was way ahead of me.

“Nera, girl dear,” Jasper said when I walked into the kitchen. “I didn’t expect to see you today. Is everything all right?”

“I guess it depends on what you call all right.” I jumped up on the counter and proceeded to tell him about what had happened at school. He leaned against the kitchen table and listened to me without a word until I had finished.

“I hope your father has a word with that boy.”

“It has been dealt with, Jasper. That’s not why I told you. Sully, Brie, and I were talking afterward, and they thought it more important that I may have already tapped into another type of power. What do you think?”

“I don’t have to think about it, girl dear, because I know what it is.” Jasper was watching me closely. “And I think that you do too.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I could feel myself falling farther into the realm of the unknown. It was a heady but sick feeling that fluttered deep in my stomach. I looked at Jasper beseechingly, wanting the reassurance only he could give me. My whole world changed in that moment. The last slim thread of normality in my childhood slipped away before my eyes.

He quietly wrapped his arms around me, and the tears slid down my cheeks. We stayed there, holding each other until my tears dried and my heart slowed. He stepped back until he could see my face.

“Welcome to my world, Nera.” Jasper smiled, the small movement lifting the corners of his mouth, his blue eyes twinkling.

“Thanks, I think.” I laughed at myself. Had I accepted my fate so easily? It had crept up and taken over while I was still trying to put it in its place. It left me shaken and anticipating the future at the same time.

Would I be the girl that Jasper thought I was? Could I change the curse so that he could have a normal life? We both had different hopes for the future. Whose would come true?

By the time I left Jasper’s for home, I was more at peace than I had been for awhile. He had a way of soothing me. Afterward I was able to look at things so logically that at times it infuriated me. Clever or sneaky? I wasn’t sure, but he had a way of convincing me that he was always right. If I was honest, I’d say it was a good thing that someone was able to get the better of me. Life would be boring otherwise.

Dad was waiting for me when I ran in the back gate. His eyes were dark and angry, his mouth tight, and a sheen of sweat sat on his top lip.

“Are you all right, Nera? He didn’t hurt you when he grabbed you, did he?”

“No, Dad, I’m fine, honestly.” I put my arm over his shoulders. “I think he ended up worse off, as he was the one that will be left with a scar, not me.”

“What about scars that cannot be seen? I don’t want you frightened to be around young men, thinking they will all treat you so roughly. One day you will have a relationship that is serious, and I don’t want what happened at school to come back and haunt you.”

“Honestly, Father of mine, that will not happen. I am fine, believe me.”

“I couldn’t bear it if anyone hurt you,” he said while he hugged me and started to relax now that he could see I was okay.

“Settle down, Dad. It was just a grope in the hallway. I dealt with it, okay?”

“So you say, but I felt sick when Mom told me. I could cheerfully have gone over and hit him.”

I laughed at the vision of my pacifist father hitting anyone. With our arms around each other, we headed for the house where the smell of Mom’s cooking reminded me of how hungry I was.

“How about I bathe Roman tonight and you help Mom do the dishes, Dad,” I suggested when we had finished dinner.

“Thanks, honey. That would be great.”

***

I watched Roman stir up the water and make a mass of bubbles while I texted Brie and Sully and told them of Jasper’s plans for the weekend. Not surprisingly, they both loved the idea of spending time over at Jasper’s house. The whole witch deal was giving them a buzz, and they were eager to dig into it a lot deeper. They were much keener than I was, but they weren’t the ones that had to break the curse.

When Roman decided to pull the plug from his bath, I wrapped him in a big towel. I followed him to his room to help him get dressed. Afterward I curled up in his bed and read him a story. His eyelids started to droop with tiredness and he snuggled down into his blankets. I brushed the hair from his head and kissed him good night.

I stopped when I walked in my room. A chill hung in the air. I checked to see if I had left the window open, but it was closed. I could see nothing out of place and no reason for the coldness that filled the room.

Roman’s flowers, I couldn’t believe it. The beautiful little red flowers drooped over the edge of the vase black and dead. I picked them up and looked at them, stunned. A shiver ran down my back followed by goose bumps. I took them out of the vase and threw them in the trash. There was no reasonable explanation for them to die so quickly, and the thought jarred in my mind. I gasped and jumped back, my hand at my throat, when a scraping noise sounded at the window. There was nothing there but a bird flying past in the night. I had to pull myself together. I was letting my imagination run away with me. We probably hadn’t put enough water in the vase, no big deal. I tidied up my mess and crawled into bed with a book. It only took a couple of pages, and I was ready to turn out the light.

As I relaxed under the covers, I could feel myself slipping into another dream. The cold hit me first; then the darkness grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. I called for help, but my voice was lost in the depths, and I struggled to breathe. The pressure around my head was building. I panicked and tried to get myself free. Then I felt weightlessness as the dark took over.

I threw the blankets off and pushed myself up, gasping. Sitting on the side of the bed, my body heaving, I gulped down oxygen, breathing the air had been sucked from my lungs. Hugo pushed his nose into my face, bringing me back to the present. I was fighting for control of what I did not understand. Wrapping my arms around Hugo’s neck, I held onto him until I calmed down.

Shaken, I took a pillow from my bed and went to sit on my window seat and looked out at the black night. Hugo stayed by my side until I braved my dreams and fell into a troubled sleep.

***

The next morning when I woke, I was stiff and sore from sleeping at the window. I struggled to straighten my legs and rubbed my calf muscles while watching the sun came up. The
thud
of the newspaper hitting the path made me lift my head to look out my window. His gaze bored into mine again before he passed, prickling something in the back of my mind.

I dressed in my sweatpants and an old shirt before pulling on my running shoes. A quick run before school would shift some of the doubts that my nightmare had left behind. I would ask Jasper to help me try to sort them out. Were they premonitions of things to come? Or were they just plain nightmares? I needed to know before they drove me insane.