Chapter 36
Elodie didn’t remember getting up. She didn’t remember walking to the door. She looked down to find her hand on the knob. All she had to do was turn it. A single piece of wood stood between her and the past.
She just had to turn. Once she faced the past, she could have the life she’d always dreamed of. She would no longer feel as if she carried the burdens of the world on her shoulders. She would be free.
Her heart beat a slow thump in her chest, banging against her ribs.
“It’s just a door,” she whispered. “It’s only the past. I know what happened.”
Even if she hadn’t looked inside the room, she knew the truth. Why was it so hard to face it?
Scott tried to use magic to flip the lock. When that didn’t work, he attempted to pick it himself. Still, the door held.
“Fuck!” he bellowed to the sky.
He got to his feet and paced away. Filip took his place and tried, as well. Each time they failed, it felt as if Scott were losing Elodie. That was silly because he had already lost her.
“Elodie!” he shouted and banged on the door again. “Elodie!”
The sound of tires squealing made Scott’s head turn in the direction of the drive. A car barreled toward the house and came to a stop, sliding on the dirt. The vehicle’s door flew open, and a man jumped out without shutting off the engine.
“Get out of my way,” he demanded.
Scott blocked his path, noting the man’s wet clothes and the blood running down his face from a gash on his temple and several cuts on his face. “You’re no’ getting anywhere near her.”
The man halted and looked from Scott to Filip, then back to Scott. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
“I doona have time for this,” the man stated angrily, his fists clenched.
Scott didn’t budge. “Make time.”
“Elias?” Filip called as he walked around Scott. “Is that you?”
Elias squinted at Filip and nodded. “Aye. Now get out of my way so I can get to my sister.”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to do,” Scott told him. “The house is warded, and we doona have a key.”
Elias searched the flowerpots and lifted a key. “Move,” he all but shouted.
Scott watched Elias in the porch light. The hair color was similar to Elodie’s, and Scott supposed he saw a resemblance. His thoughts halted when the door swung open. Elias was the first one through, followed by Scott and then Filip.
“Elodie!” Elias called as he hurried through the cottage.
Elias suddenly stopped in the kitchen. Scott looked over his shoulder and saw Elodie with her hand on the doorknob to her parents’ room.
“Elodie,” her brother called. “You doona want to do that.”
Scott frowned, wondering what the big deal was. He’d been in that room. Nothing in there could harm Elodie.
“Hey, lil sis. I’m home,” Elias coaxed. “Just like I said I would be. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Come away from the door.”
But Elodie didn’t seem to hear him.
“Bloody hell,” Elias whispered.
Scott moved closer to him. “What’s going on?”
“She can no’ go into that room, that’s what,” Elias stated without taking his eyes off his sister.
Scott took a breath, fear clutching him firmly. The panic in Elias’s voice told him all he needed to know. “Elodie?”
Scott. The sound of his voice reached her as if from a distance. She slowly turned her head and saw him with Elias and Filip. What was her brother doing here? She wanted to ask, but she had something to do first.
“Look who’s come to see you,” Scott continued. “Come greet your brother.”
Elodie remembered the taste of Scott’s kiss. How he had made her feel again. She didn’t want to go back to the way things were, but she wasn’t sure she could be with him. He had betrayed her, used her. And for what? She had no magic to help him.
“Elodie,” Scott called again. “Doona open that door.”
She looked down at her hand that gripped the knob. “I have to.”
“You doona,” he told her, his voice growing closer. “Let go of it. That’s all you have to do.”
“You told me to face my past.”
“Look at me,” Scott beseeched her.
Elodie found herself gazing into his dark blue eyes. She saw him reaching for her hand. He was going to stop her, and she couldn’t allow him to do that. Elodie twisted the knob, and the door opened as if on its own.
“NOOOO!” Elias bellowed.
Elodie looked inside the room. In an instant, she was taken back in time.
“You heard that, right?” Elias whispered.
She nodded. “Is Mum hurt?”
“Da’s with her.”
There was another grunt, this one followed by soft crying. It was Mum, Elodie knew it. She raced to the door to help. Elias tried to stop her.
“You doona want to know what’s happening. Trust me,” he said as he yanked her away.
But she slipped free of his grasp and threw open the door. There, she saw her mother on the floor between the bed and the wall. Blood poured from her nose and trickled from her lip. There was a red mark on her cheek. But worst of all, her father had his hands around her neck and was squeezing.
Elodie was immobilized by the rage she saw on her father’s face. She didn’t recognize the man who always sang to her. His skin was blotchy and red, his eyes wide as he glared at his wife, his hands gripping her firmly.
Elodie’s mother’s gaze met hers, pleading with her to leave. But there was no way she could do that. Fear got her moving. Everything she loved and held dear was on the verge of shattering. She had to stop it.
“Get off her,” Elodie shouted as she ran at her father, shoving him as hard as she could.
He backhanded her so violently, she slammed against the opposite wall, momentarily stunned when her head banged against it. She blinked at the lights dotting the edges of her vision. All she wanted to do was stay there, but she couldn’t.
“Well, well, well,” her father said as he straightened and turned to Elias. His voice was cold and cruel, nothing like the teasing man she knew. “Look what we have here. Come back to learn more?”
Elias lifted his chin, but Elodie saw his fisted hands tremble. “Get away from her.”
“Think you’re a man now, aye? I told you before that what happens between a man and his wife is no one’s business,” her father stated, spittle flying from his lips.
Elodie pushed herself into a sitting position. Her head throbbed; her stomach knotted in fear. She didn’t know what was happening. Who was the man standing before her? Because he wasn’t the father she knew and loved.
“Did the lesson I gave you last week no’ sink in?” her father demanded as he moved closer to Elias.
Elodie watched in horror as her father struck her brother.
Elias tried to raise his hand to deflect the hits, but it did little to hinder the blows.
Elodie glanced at her mother, who was struggling to get to her feet.
That’s when Elodie saw the ripped nightgown and the bruises along her mother’s ribs and arms.
Suddenly, her father flew through the air. He crashed into the dresser, toppling everything off as he dropped to the floor. Elias stood with his hands clenched at his sides, breathing hard, his face bloody and already swelling.
“Magic?” her father bellowed as he pushed himself up. “You dare to use magic on me!?”
When he regained his feet, Edward MacLean had a knife. Elodie had no idea where it had come from. She rushed to Elias to protect him, but he wasn’t her father’s target—her mother was.
Something snapped inside Elodie when she saw the knife raised over Edward’s head as he went to plunge it into her mother’s chest. The horror that had kept her motionless vanished, replaced by a calm she’d never experienced before.
Her power rose so quickly, she stumbled with the force of it before finding her footing.
The magic pooled in her hands without her even calling to it.
She felt as if she might explode with the force of the magic inside her.
Elodie tried to think of a spell, something, but there wasn’t time.
She could do nothing but throw out her arms and release what had built inside her.
The magic that flew from her felt foreign, and yet she knew it was hers.
She watched as it wrapped around her father, stopping him just as the point of the knife pierced her mother’s chest. The magic lifted him into the air as it sparked and hissed, forming a circle around him.
He struggled against it, but there was no getting away.
“Elodie!” he shouted. “You know me. You know how much I love you. I’d never hurt you.”
“No.”
One word. That’s all she said, and her magic curled in on itself, taking him with it until there was nothing left of her father.
Scott knelt on the floor and cradled Elodie in his arms. “Open your eyes, sweetheart. Open your eyes and look at me. You have to come back to me. Please.”
“Nay!” a woman’s voice behind him wailed.
Scott glanced over his shoulder. Elias had stopped just inside the room, Filip behind him. Beyond them was an older woman, who came running down the hall. She dropped to her knees on the other side of Elodie, tears streaming down her face.
Scott then found himself looking into Rhona’s eyes. Balladyn and others he didn’t recognize stood behind her, but he didn’t care who they were. He gazed down at Elodie and gently tugged a strand of hair from her lashes.
“How?” the woman demanded. “How did this happen?”
Elias walked to her and knelt beside her, an arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Mum. I tried to get here in time.”
Emily MacLean leaned her head against her son and sobbed uncontrollably.
“Someone tell me what just happened,” Scott demanded in a voice thick with fear and anger—for what, he didn’t understand.
Emily sniffed and folded her hands around one of Elodie’s. “The spell I used only worked if she never returned.”
“I don’t understand,” Rhona said. “You spelled your daughter?”
Elias sighed. “Mum didna have a choice.”
“Elodie saved me,” Emily said. “Edward was always careful about when he…beat me. We both went to great lengths to keep it from the children. He liked that the kids thought him cool and funny. He also liked having them to himself. But that morning, I told him I wanted a divorce. He began hitting me while the kids were still here. Elias and Elodie heard.”
Elias swallowed loudly. “Da had begun hitting me a few weeks before. Told me it was to toughen me up. I tried to stop Elodie. I didna want her to walk in on that, but she did anyway. Da was in a rage. He was choking Mum. Elodie tried to pull him away. He backhanded her. Then he came after me. I tried to get away, but I knew he was intent on harming someone. So, I used magic to get him off me.”
“That set him off,” Emily said and sniffed. She looked up at Scott, then at the others. “He knew then that I’d kept my magic from him. I don’t know where the knife came from, but it was suddenly in his hand and aimed at me.”
Elias squeezed his mother’s shoulder. “That’s when Elodie used her magic.”
“How?” Scott asked softly.
Emily shrugged. “I would say it was a spell, but she didn’t move her lips. She was gifted with her abilities, but the force of the magic that came from her then was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. She caught Edward up in it, held him in midair. And then it…it…”
“It was like it ate him,” Elias finished for her. “There was nothing left of him.”
Rhona’s brows drew together. “I saw the police report. There was blood everywhere.”
“Magic,” Emily answered with a shrug. “Elodie was hysterical after it happened. There was nothing I could do to calm her. Edie was on her way back into the house at that time. I had to think fast. I sent Elias to occupy Edie, and then I did what a mother does best, I protected my children. I promised Elodie that she would never remember any of it. I told her I was taking the blame and that she would be free to live her life.” Emily smoothed Elodie’s hair back.
“That wasn’t enough, though. She feared herself.
Her magic. So, I bound it for her. With my spell, I put a thread of fear in her anytime Elodie thought of this room. I thought it would keep her away.”
Scott felt like a fool for pushing Elodie to go inside. “It did.”
“No’ enough,” Elias declared.
Rhona shook her head. “But her magic? She should’ve learned to control it, not run from using it.”
“Mum made her decision,” Elias answered.
Emily brushed away her tears. “Elodie asked me to. What she did had terrified her. I tried to tell her that she was only protecting me, but she wouldn’t listen.
So, I did what she asked. After Elodie left the room, I staged it.
Then I screamed. Elias and the girls came running.
The police were called, and they took me away. ”
“For a crime you didna commit,” Filip said.
Emily shrugged. “I should’ve stopped Edward earlier. I thought as long as he was just hitting me, then I could endure it. When I found out he had begun abusing Elias, I made plans to leave with the kids. Just not soon enough.”
“What now?” Scott asked into the silence the followed.
Emily shrugged. “I don’t know. I did the spell in haste. I don’t know what’s happening to Elodie now.”
“Let us figure it out,” Rhona said as she and two other women came forward.
Scott didn’t want to loosen his hold on Elodie, but Rhona laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. He reluctantly lay Elodie on the floor and moved back as the three Druids stood around her, their hands outstretched and palms-down over the woman he loved.