The Witching Hour: 11 Enchanting Novels Featuring Witches, Wizards, Vampires, Shifters, Ghosts, Fae, and More!, page 47
I pushed to my feet, shoving the chair back under the table. As I stomped upstairs to my room, I realized that I was going to have to have this out with myself. I threw myself across my bed, facedown, burying my face in the covers.
Bubba came running up, landing on the bed beside me. He nudged my arm and finally, I rolled to a sitting position and let him crawl into my lap.
“I know this is wrong. I really do. I know I’m being silly, but here’s the thing, Bubba. I’m afraid…” My throat felt phlegmy and I realized I was tearing up. “I’m afraid that if I love somebody new, it means I’m betraying Tom. It’s so much easier when you know somebody died. At least, died for good. At least then, you can’t think, ‘Maybe they’ll come back. Maybe he’ll return to me someday.’ There’s always been a piece of my heart that’s believed he’ll come back to me. That maybe he’s decided to make amends. That he’s not still out there, hunting down victims. If I give into my love, if I commit to Aegis, it means that I’ve lost my hope for Tom. That I’ve given up on him.”
As I burst into tears, burying my face in Bubba’s fur, there was a soft swish behind me.
“Oh, Maddy. I didn’t know you were struggling that way.” Aegis’s voice was gentle, soft against my ragged nerves.
I turned. “I’m sorry—I’m so sorry. I feel like I’m letting you down and that I’m letting Tom down. I don’t know what to do. I have to let go of the past to embrace my future, but I’m so afraid. I feel like I’m the worst person ever.”
I threw my arms around him as he lowered himself to my side, and he held me, murmuring softly as his lips brushed my ear. Aegis let me cry it out for a while before he grabbed a tissue and began to dry my tears.
“I know you miss him still. I know he was the love of your life, but wherever he is, do you think he’d want you like this? Crying and afraid to love again? Do you think he’d be cruel enough to expect you to pine away for him, forever?” Aegis placed two fingers beneath my chin and tipped my head up so I was looking at him.
“If I love you, will I forget about him?” For all my magic, for all my powers and long life, my heart was like anybody else’s heart—easily broken, and easily scarred.
“Maddy, do you really think you’ll ever forget him? He’s part of you. His love helped make you the person you are. You can no more forget about him than you can about your mother or Sandy or Bubba. Every person we meet who touches our heart stays with us. Do you think I’ll ever forget about Astra? I loved her so much, and I don’t know what happened to her, but even if I never see her again and never find out, I carry that love inside me. Not to blot out new love, but to remind me of the person I was around her.”
He placed his hand on my heart. “You carry Tom’s love inside your heart. And that’s okay. We move on. We love many people in a lifetime. But the ones who truly touch our hearts, we keep them with us forever.”
His fingers were cool against my chest, and I softly reached up to clasp his hand, to press it between my breasts. “I never expected to fall for a vampire.”
“I never expected to fall for a witch, so we’re even.” He leaned forward. “Maddy, when I say I love you, I’m not just spouting off the top of my head. I mean it. I don’t say those words easily, and the few times I’ve fallen in love, it’s been that head-over-heels-meant-to-be-with-each-other type of love. The kind we have.”
I shivered, wanting to be free to love him, wanting to quit carrying around the dying hope that Tom would return to me. My emotions churning, I closed my eyes and found myself standing in a gray mist, and there was my Tom, staring at me from across a chasm.
“Tom, Tom! I miss you.” I wanted to go to him, but the chasm was deep and filled with mist, and I couldn’t see a way across. “Tom, come back to me.”
He reached out, holding out his hands. “There’s only one way for us to be together again, my love. And that’s for you to come to me. For you to become like me.”
“Are you still alive? Are you trapped somewhere?” I hung my head, weeping, but then yanked my gaze back to slake over him hungrily. It had been so long since we had seen one another. So many years since I had felt his touch.
“Yes, I’m trapped, but you can be with me, if you make the choice. You can walk into the chasm and then, when it’s done, we’ll be together.” His voice ached against my ears, and I felt myself moving to the edge of the cliff, stopping only when my toes were against the edge. One step and I’d fall into the crevice. One step and I’d be with my Mad Tom.
“Come to me, love. Maddy, me girl, you take that step and we can be together again. Take one more step and we’ll never be apart.”
But something off-putting about his voice struck me. I opened my eyes. There he was, reaching for me, but there was something wrong. He looked misshapen, oddly bent and twisted. And behind him, I saw another shape rise—this, too, was Tom, but he raced over to shove his broken doppelganger to the side.
“Maddy, don’t. Go back. Don’t—it’s deadly. It’s a trap. There’s no way for us to be together. You go back. I love you, but I’m letting you go because I don’t want you here. Go away and never look for me again.” He was screaming now, waving for me to turn and run.
My stomach clenching, I began to weep. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Go. Go! Live, Maddy. Don’t give up everything because of a dream long gone.” And then, Tom shoved his doppelganger toward the edge. The creature roared up, dark and frightening, made of bones and blood, and it turned on him, looming over the Tom I knew in a terrible fury.
I stumbled back. “Tom! No!”
“Maddy, I love you. Now get the hell out of here. Never come back. You can’t save me, but you can save yourself.” Running, he took off away from the edge, back the way he had come, with that horrible creature thundering after him.
Weeping, I stared into the mist, down deep in the chasm. One step and I knew I’d be on the other side, with Tom, wherever he might be.
“Maddy? Maddy? Come back to me.” A voice broke into my thoughts and I turned around. Aegis stood there in the twinkle of dusk and starlight, holding out his arms. He was real and substantial, vibrant with love and energy. I glanced over my shoulder, across the chasm where my Tom was screaming. Aching, horrified by what I had seen, I forced myself to slowly turn back, to face Aegis.
“Aegis, take me away from this pain. From this madness. Take me away from the loss and the ache and the memories.” I ran to him then, and he caught me up and spun me around, kissing my cheeks and my nose and my forehead and, finally, my lips.
“Come back with me, Maddy. Come back and be my love. Tom begged you to leave this place. He loved you enough to let you go. Let me love you enough to enter your life.”
Weeping, I wrapped my arm around Aegis’s neck as he carried me out of my memories, into the present, and into his heart.
16
“So, go with me to rehearsal?” Aegis asked. We had made love, and showered together, and now I was eating a bowl of clam chowder, along with a handful of crackers. Aegis had declined to join me—he wanted to change out the strings on a new guitar he had bought.
“I wish I could go.” Franny appeared, startling us both. “I never get to do anything.” Great, she was on another one of her jags.
“When things settle down, I promise to look into what’s keeping you tied to the house.” I didn’t have the strength—or the heart—to yell at her.
She smiled at me, which was a little ghoulish, and then let out a mournful sigh that would have rivaled any melodrama on the stage.
“Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you, Franny?” Aegis grinned at her.
“How rude can you get?” She glared at him for a moment, then flounced away, vanishing into the wall through the refrigerator.
“That always gives me the creeps when she does that,” I said. “Since when do you play guitar in the band?” My heart felt lighter than in decades. Tom had let me go and that had allowed me to let go of him.
“I can play. I can play a number of instruments. I just happen to be the singer. But Jorge may have to take a trip to visit his mother and I’d like to be able to fill in for him if we can’t find a guitarist to take over while he’s gone. We’re holding tryouts next week, but it never hurts to have a backup.” He grinned at me. “You’re my groupie, you know that?”
I snorted. “You have a lot of groupies, dude. Do you even realize how gorgeous you are?”
“Yeah, I do. But we make a good pair that way. You’re pretty fucking gorgeous yourself. I love your boobs and your ass…and your eyes and your neck and your mind.” He set down the guitar and moved behind me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders as I tried to balance the clam and potato on the spoon. Whispering, he began to nuzzle my ear. “I love your ears and your toes and your fingers and your—”
Laughing, I shook my head. “You’re tickling me now. Stop!” But I didn’t protest too loudly, and I ended up wearing some of my soup as he continued to tease me. Finally, he returned to his guitar.
“Yes, I’ll come to rehearsal. I haven’t been down there in a while and with everything that’s gone on lately, I need a break.”
“Good. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes? I promised the guys we’d start at eight-thirty pronto, and that we’d end by eleven. Sid’s wife really needs him to be home at a decent hour except for performance nights.”
I raised the bowl to my lips and drank the last drops of my soup, then grabbed my coat and stuffed my feet into a soft pair of fuzzy boots. Bubba yowled in protest—he didn’t want me going out—but I ruffled his hair.
“We’ll be home in a few hours, Bub. You’re safe here. Be good.” To Aegis, I said, “I’m going to take my own car just in case I need to leave early for some reason. With everything that’s gone on lately, who knows what the fuck will happen next?”
“Hopefully, a peaceful rehearsal and then we can come home and work on some of the details for the opening next week. Have you received any more bookings yet?” Aegis held the door for me, then locked it behind him as we exited the house.
“Actually, there were two online bookings today. I think my Prosperity spell is helping. But I still need to cleanse and ward the yard, given Rose’s death. I don’t know why I didn’t think about that earlier.”
“I’d say it’s because you’ve been busy with other things, maybe?” Aegis waited until I was safely inside my car and locked tight before heading toward his.
I eased out of the driveway with him following, and headed into the cloudy night. The skies were overcast but at least the snow was holding off. Given how much had fallen so far, come spring we’d best watch for flooding once all the white stuff started to melt.
By the time we got to Utopia where the band practiced during the weeknights when the club was closed, I was already regretting my choice to come. Not only had the temperature dropped to a balmy twenty-three—Fahrenheit—but I realized just how much energy the past few days had leeched out of me. I just wanted to go home, climb into jammies, and curl up under the covers with a good book. But I had promised Aegis and didn’t want to go back on my word.
I hauled ass into the club with Aegis behind me. The band members were setting up, and they waved when they saw me. I found the most comfortable chair in the club, and the row of bottles that Jack-Az allowed the boys to plunder, pouring myself a large glass of wine. As I sank into the overstuffed beanbag and stretched out my legs, it occurred to me this might not be so bad after all. If I fell asleep, Aegis could drive me home, then bring me back to get my car before dawn broke.
As they warmed up, I realized how much better they were sounding than even a few weeks ago. There were still some rough spots—Keth kept a good beat with the drums, but once in a while he would trip over a particularly grueling part. And Jorge’s fingers were fire on the guitar, but every now and then a riff would send him stumbling. But all in all, the more I heard, the more I had faith that they would actually land a record deal or make it big on their own. I wasn’t sure what their end goal was, I hadn’t thought to ask, but if they wanted to go big, there was a good chance they could make it.
They launched into a weaving medieval piece they had sexed up but then Sid suddenly stopped, shaking his head. “This is all wrong. To get the sounds we want, we need somebody who can play didgeridoos, shawms, and bagpipes.”
“Where are we going to find someone like that here on the island?” Aegis asked. “I’m not being facetious—I seriously want to know.”
“We won’t find anybody if we don’t look. We’re holding tryouts for a substitute guitarist, why not for the others?” Keth frowned. “I can play a little on the didgeridoo but not the extent we could use. And if I were playing on that, we wouldn’t have percussion in the piece. Unless it’s a track we lay down ahead of time and play in the background.”
I cleared my throat. “If you want a suggestion from the peanut gallery, I vote you take Keth’s suggestion and open up tryouts. You guys sound great, but you can take your music to a whole new level by adding in a few of those sounds. I’m serious—you have what it takes to become another Corvus Corax or Faun.” Two of my favorite bands were pretty much the role model for what the Boys of Bedlam wanted to become.
“Peanut gallery suggestions welcome, considering the comparison you just made.” Sid grinned down at me. “We can talk about that next time we get together to write some new material. Until then, let’s get started on rehearsing Saturday’s set. We had a few clunkers last time during the gig and don’t think that Jack-Az didn’t notice.”
I watched as they plugged in, turned on, and got down, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was just too tired and the wine was going to make me even sleepier. I set the glass down after a few sips and—once they finished the first song—stood.
“Aegis, I’m sorry, but I’m going home. I’m too tired to tough it out.”
“I’ll come with you.” He glanced at his band mates. “Sorry, guys, I’ll be back in half an hour.” They didn’t grumble but I could tell they weren’t thrilled.
“No, you just stay here and I’ll text you when I get there. I’ll be fine,” I added as he started to protest. “I’m just too tired to manage tonight. It’s not that far of a drive and I’ll be careful. Traffic’s light, anyway. Most of the people who are out and about are downtown, shopping for Solstice.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, now get back to work. If I’m asleep when you get home, just leave me a note, okay?”
He jumped off the stage, gracefully landing in front of me, and swung me in for a long kiss. Laughing, I patted him on the arm and disentangled myself.
“I love you. Play good. Become famous. Make me the happiest groupie around.” With that, I waved at the guys, who waved back, and headed for the door. Aegis was still looking doubtful, but he hopped back on the stage and, as the door swung shut behind me, I heard them start up another song.
I kept my guard up, but the sidewalks were deserted and I made it to my car without seeing a single person. As I fastened my seat belt and started the engine, I let out a breath of relief. So much stress over so many days had left me a nervous goose.
I was halfway home before I realized that the energy felt off. I couldn’t pinpoint it, but something was out of kilter. Given it would be stupid to lower myself into trance while driving, I tried to brush away the feelings but they kept up. Finally, half a mile from home, I eased into the parking lot of a city park and idled the engine, listening quietly to the silence around me.
Going into trance here might not be the best idea either, but at least I wasn’t driving. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up and I wanted to know what the hell was going on. Finally, I turned off the ignition after making sure all the doors were locked, and leaned back in the driver’s seat, closing my eyes as I lowered myself into the soft fog that beckoned.
I tested the space around me, looking for anything that stood out of place. The car felt normal, except there was a heaviness that didn’t belong. A sense of being latched on to, like a bungie cord attached to the fender. Yet, there was no sense that it had been tampered with.
You’re tired, Maddy. Pay attention. Get your ass out of trance because you’re in danger.
The voice echoed in my head, and I wasn’t sure who was talking, but a fear rose as I realized that there was a magical binding connected to my car and it was putting me in danger. I shot up in my seat, suddenly all too aware that I wasn’t alone in the parking lot. Figures were emerging from behind the trees. Five of them, they were coming in from all sides. I couldn’t see who they were from here, especially since we weren’t near the streetlights, but they were intent on my car.
I grabbed my phone and frantically texted Aegis. help. honeysuckle park in parking lot. somebody’s here and i don’t think they’re friendly.
I managed to copy and paste the text over to Delia before the figures suddenly sped up. They had surrounded the car before I could turn on the ignition. As I stared out the driver’s window, I saw Rachel, leaning down looking in at me.
Crap. And she had brought friends. No doubt lured in by the promise of witch’s blood for dinner. My doors were locked, but that was no guarantee to keeping out a determined vampire, especially someone who was as old and powerful as Rachel.
“Open the door, Maddy. You don’t mind if I call you Maddy even though we’ve never officially been introduced, do you?” Rachel’s voice was melodic and hard to ignore, even through the closed window. She knew she couldn’t get me with her gaze, but she could still win me over with her glamour. “Just accept that I win. Aegis will return to me, and you can’t stop him. It’s been a fun romp, though, hasn’t it?” She sounded almost wistful, as though she were remembering her own time with him.
I jumped as one of the other vamps slammed his hands against the passenger window, peeking in. “She’s a pretty one, Rachel. Can I play with her? For just a little bit?”
