Chapter 15
Goddess, why did I agree to this?
My heart gallops as I lead Memnon up the steps to the big blue door of my childhood home, skirting around the nasturtiums overtaking the walkway and ducking under the wisteria that hangs over the porch.
I think I might vomit. The ring on my finger is feeling so very conspicuous.
“Olivia and Benjamin Bowers,” Memnon says to himself, trying to commit their names to memory. I hear a hint of his accent then, and it does strange things to me.
In all my lives, I’ve never been in this position—showing off my soul mate to my parents, hoping they’ll accept him. I’m not sure Liv and Benny boy will be nearly as accepting of Memnon as his mother and sister were of me.
“What do your parents know about me?” Memnon asks as I fish my keys out of my purse—a purse that had been in my wrecked car. It, along with the rest of the items in the car were lined up in Memnon’s entryway this morning.
He’d been back to the scene of the crash since we left it.
“Absolutely nothing,” I say as I slide my old house key into the lock.
He stares at me for a moment longer as I turn the knob and swing the door open. Inside I can hear some soft jazz, and already I can smell my father’s yeasty beer bread.
“Mom! Dad!” I call, gripping Memnon’s hand far too tightly.
He must sense my terror because he reels me in and presses a kiss to my forehead as my mother squeals from the kitchen.
“Hey Booger!” my dad calls out. “You’re here already? That was fast!”
Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, don’t throw up.
“We took a ley line,” I say.
This will all be okay, Memnon reassures me.
“You took a—” My mom’s voice cuts off as she steps out of the kitchen and into my line of vision.
She physically starts at the sight of Memnon, her eyes rising up the staggering height of him.
“Oh, my—hi there, you must be Selene’s…friend?
” she asks as her eyes take in our closeness and the way my hand is still locked in his.
She strides forward, opening her arms.
Please ease my parents into this, Memnon.
Of course, Empress.
The sorcerer pulls away from me. “I’m Memnon,” he says enfolding my mother in his arms. It’s a really good hug, the kind that actually mean something. “Your daughter’s husband.”
Maiden.
Mother.
And cursed fucking Crone.
That was as far from easing my parents into this as one can get.
I see my mom stiffen in his arms even as Memnon finishes, “It is my truest honor to finally meet you.”
“What?” my mother says, stepping out of the hug. She looks at him, confused, then at me.
“What did you say?” She returns her attention to Memnon.
I swallow, my heart beating fast.
“It is my truest honor to meet you.”
“No, not that part.”
Memnon’s eyes are twinkling, and there’s a smile tugging at the corner of his lips like Mama Bowers is adorable and not a terrifying hellcat. “I am Selene’s husband. She is my wife.”
My mom’s eyes dart to me. “No, you did not,” she says.
I clear my throat. “Surprise,” I say weakly.
“What?” she breathes, all of her shock and dismay and hurt rolled into the word. A bit of her magenta magic leaks out, twisting around her protectively.
My father comes out then, completely oblivious to my mother’s distress.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” he says, grin already on his face, his arms open wide. “You must be Selene’s friend.” He reels Memnon in for a hug, thumping my soul mate on the back. Memnon happily matches his energy.
“Wow, great hugger,” my dad says, and I want to bury my face in my hands.
“He’s not Selene’s friend,” my mom says, her voice a little shrill. “He’s her husband. They got married while we were away.”
My dad was pulling away from the embrace, but now he pauses.
“Well, isn’t that amazing news,” he says. He pats Memnon on the cheek. “Welcome to the family.”
My stomach flips.
“It’s an honor to finally meet you,” Memnon says with far too much fervor.
My mother turns on me. “How could you get married and not tell me?” She sounds unbearably crestfallen.
“I am telling you. I just didn’t want to do it over the phone.”
Didn’t really want to do it in person either, but here we are.
Even as I speak, my dad pulls me in for a hug. “Congratulations, Booger.”
My mom glares at him.
I swallow thickly while Memnon stands by, watching this horror show, a happy little grin on his face like this is all going so well. I guess between him and my dad, it is.
“How?” my mother says again.
“Mom, you know how people get married.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Selene. You know what I mean. Was this amnesia? Were you drunk? How did this happen?” She glances now back at Memnon, who steps forward.
Oh Goddess, that’s right. She doesn’t even know that my memory loss is gone.
I open my mouth, but the words get lodged in my throat. Confiding in her used to be so easy. It hurts that I now have so many secrets I’ve kept from her.
I take a deep breath—
“I forced her to marry me as an act of vengeance for a two-thousand-year betrayal I believed she committed.”
I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose.
Lycan’s left nutsack.
There is such a thing as being too honest.
My mom swings around and gives Memnon a look like he’s speaking in tongues. “What?”
“In 59 AD I was placed in enchanted sleep by a wicked fairy. A few months ago, when your daughter went on her magic quest, she found my tomb and woke me from eternal slumber, for she is my soul mate, and once, long ago, she was my queen.”
It’s quiet for a couple beats. Then—
“Well, I’ll go get the wine,” my dad says, fleeing deeper into the house. “Needs time to aerate,” he mutters to no one in particular.
My mother looks between the two of us, her eyes catching and lingering on Memnon’s facial scar, before her attention settles on me. “Do I need to call the cops?”
I bite back my groan.
Witches’ titties. This is going to be a long Thanksgiving.
It takes hours, many glasses of wine, one dry-ass turkey, and several more forgotten dishes to even start to smooth the situation over.
Memnon is absolutely zero help. I know he knows how to have tact, but it’s like he needs to be as raw and real with my parents as possible. And Ben and Liv are taking it about as well as expected.
The four of us sit in my family’s den, Memnon and I on the couch, my parents on two side chairs.
I’m grasping my wineglass for dear life and shamelessly leaning into Memnon for emotional support, which is probably incredibly fucked-up since he’s the one oversharing.
Then again, maybe it’s fucked-up that I was all too willing to never ever tell my parents these truths.
“…I have endured two thousand years of deathless sleep to be reunited with my soul mate, your daughter, and her life and love is the greatest honor of my existence.”
I down my latest glass of red wine before reaching for the bottle on the coffee table.
My parents’ gazes are bouncing between the two of us. This is far, far more dramatic than anything Ben and Liv Bowers are used to. Reincarnation, soul mates, undead love, centuries-old curses, and millennia-long vendettas.
“How are we only learning right now that you even had a soul mate, Selene? Isn’t that something your school was supposed to notify you of?”
“They likely did—I just forgot.”
My dad whistles. “That’s a helluva list of secrets you kept,” he says, giving his head a shake.
“Selene,” my mom says, “grab your glass and come with me.”
My heart sinks to the pit of my gut, and now I have to breathe through my nose to not upchuck the alcohol and everything else in my stomach.
Little witch, Memnon says across our bond, I have felt less fear from you when you faced down armies.
You clearly haven’t been around my mom long enough.
I swear Memnon seems delighted at the prospect of a bloodthirsty mother-in-law.
He is so unhinged.
We step into my parents’ room, and my mom quietly shuts the door behind her, leaning back against it.
“I am sorry,” she says.
My brows draw together in confusion.
She continues. “I have failed you somewhere along the way for you to do so many shocking things and keep so much from me.”
A lump forms in my throat. She thinks this is me acting out. Some long-buried rebelliousness that I unleashed only once she and my father were out of the country.
To be fair to my mom, before I enrolled at Henbane Coven, I could and did tell her anything. She would often serve as my memory in place of my journals.
I drop my face. “How was I supposed to tell you that I found a tomb and woke some ancient supernatural, especially when my own memory of it was spotty?” I say.
“He’s telling the truth,” I say, gesturing to the door and Memnon who must be somewhere beyond it, “and yet it sounds so unhinged you were ready to call the cops—you, who are a supernatural and used to unhinged things.
“Then,” I continue, “so much happened so quickly, and you and Dad were in Europe on a trip you’d planned for years—”
“None of that is important compared to your life and safety, Selene,” she says, her eyes still distressed. “That—that man in there is terrifying.”
I bite my lower lip. She still doesn’t even know the half of it.
“Are you okay?” she insists, peering at me. “I really can call the cops—or find a lawyer. You don’t need to stay married to him.”
“Mom—we’re soul mates.”
“I don’t care. Fate be damned, Selene, you can choose your own path.”
I draw in a deep breath. “Mom, I remember everything. Not just this lifetime, but a whole other one I did in fact live. “
“Do you hear yourself, Selene? This sounds absurd.”
“Pes dosa I’bnud wirpuburpus, Ama,” I say in Sarmatian.
I’m not making this up, Mom.
“Te amo. Quaeso audi me,” I say in Latin.
I love you. Please listen to me.
“Should I say something in Demotic? Aramaic? I know a little Hebrew as well—”
“Don’t get smart with me, Selene.”
“This is the true reason why I could read and write Latin. It is why I had magically induced amnesia. And why I can now remember our tire swing in the backyard, and baking ginger cookies with you. I remember Aunt Giselle and how, before I came into my magic, I used to be messy and very, very disorganized. And I remember how upset I used to get when you read me fairytales about princesses because I’d insist they wore trousers and fought on horseback. ”
As I speak, a tear rolls down her cheek. Aww, damn.
I reach out and wipe it away. “Mom, I know this is unbelievable, but it’s true. There really was a curse behind the amnesia, one Memnon lifted several weeks ago—I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it when it happened. I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings.
“But when my memories returned to me, with them came memories from a life I lived two thousand years ago, and in that life, I loved that man in our den with my entire heart—so much so that I died to save him.
“I know none of this makes sense to you and Dad, and I understand it will take a long time for you to accept any of this, but you can at least trust me when I say that Memnon is my heart’s deepest friend, and I have loved him with every fiber of my being for as long as I can remember.”
My mother is still looking at me like I’ve completely lost it. After a long moment she takes a deep breath, then a long draw of her wine.
Lowering her glass, she finally speaks. “I don’t like it.” She shakes her head. “I never would’ve wished this for you.”
I part my lips to speak, but what am I supposed to say?
“Do you at least believe me when I say that I have memories of a past life?”
She looks absolutely miserable when she says, “I don’t know. Damnit, I don’t know what to think.”
“Mom.” I switch back to Sarmatian. “Vak danus mi’rtis vutpuw wanagu vurnuvakvup di’nugapa? Tapgus situ gesavak vakapinaguva guvakawnutvu susgub iwnusavusapsa ubwad detubpa? Bima mupissa itsuvu witwad, pi’nlunvu invusapvu benmupguva ki’tasavaksa vekgap—”1
“Fine—fine,” she concedes. Again, her eyes water up.
“You should know that I loved this man once.”
She gives me a penetrating look. “Do you love him now?”
I take a long drink from my own glass and nod.
“You don’t have to be with him, you know,” she says, studying me.
“I know.”
“Tell me you’ve at least thought this through.”
“I’m mostly working with vibes.”
She lets out a deep sigh and brings her glass to her lips again.
“He is a billionaire.”
She chokes on the wine.
“Mom, really,” I say, leaning over to thump her on the back.
“Selene Imogen Bowers,” she gasps out.
“What?”
“We don’t support runaway capitalism in this household.”
I had to try. “Yeah, what a fucking asshole,” I say.
She starts to laugh. “Absolutely the worst sort of person.”
“He will give good Yule gifts though.”
“I tell you what, if he buys me an island, I will find it in myself to be nice to him.”
“Deal.”
1 Should I speak to you more in Sarmatian? Should I tell you about how I rode from Rome to the steppelands north of the Black Sea? Or the strain I felt in my shoulder when I pulled back my bowstring and took aim—