Chapter 15
15
AVA
B ram shifts in his seat and grunts for the fourth time since we got in my car.
“I didn’t realize you were so particular. Do you need a special pillow to sit on? I could probably order one of those beaded car seats for you. Do they still sell those?”
“If your car wasn’t the size of a postage stamp, I wouldn’t have a problem.”
In all fairness, my car is small. Bram has the seat all the way back and his knees are still pressed against the glove box. Stellan refuses to ride in my car. I knew Bram would be uncomfortable, but I couldn’t resist.
“I suppose your car is large and manly, and not at all a symbol of your masculinity.”
“No, it’s normal sized and not made for clowns.”
The visual of all my friends piling out of my car like a circus act, with Bram having to unfold himself as the last to exit, brings a smile to my face. “Are you calling me a clown?”
“No, but your car is small enough to fit inside a larger car.”
“I’m all about economy and reducing my global footprint.” I flip my hair, or I would if it wasn’t stuck inside my coat.
“This car was built before you were born. I highly doubt that.” Bram shifts and his elbow rams into my boob.
“Ow. How the hell are you so massive that you can’t contain yourself to one side of the car.”
“I am massive.” He gives me a look, and I roll my eyes.
His aura when I walked into Morty’s this morning was a dingy brown and the shadows were almost calm, but still somehow heavy. They’ve retreated to the edges of his aura, which has turned a pinkish-yellow color.
He’s so confusing.
Fitz’s house is just outside of the city limits. We’ll be lucky if we make it in ten minutes. She’s probably going to yell at us, maybe even throw a hex our way for being late. She’s unpredictable like that. The radio is playing the song of summer from a few years ago. I think we’re just going to quietly mind our own business until we get to Fitz’s, when Bram opens his mouth again.
“Have you been crying?”
“What? No,” I deny.
It’s a lie. I spent half the night crying because I felt like shit. Jamie popped up out of nowhere to grace me with his attention once again. Bram declared that our kiss was a mistake. It had me thinking that I’m not even worthy of Jamie’s attention and definitely not Bram’s. I’m just some sad schlub and maybe I should be grateful that Jamie still remembers me.
“Your eyes are all red.”
“I’m hungover.”
Bram pauses and then lobs a hit from out in left field. “What’s your curse?”
I jerk my head to look at him, and the car swerves so hard I nearly drive us off the road.
“Shit,” I hiss, my heart in my throat. I straighten the wheel and prevent us from dying in a ball of flames. “That’s a little personal,” I huff out once I’m assured we aren’t going to fly off the road again.
“We’re friends, aren’t we?”
I sneak another look at Bram. What’s he playing at? Are we friends? I like the idea of being friends with him. Even if he’s kind of a dick. It’s okay when it’s pointed at other people though. It’s actually kind of nice when used in defense of me.
“Um, okay. Sure, friends.”
“Tell me your curse then.”
The branches of the trees lining the street are weighed down with ice. It looks beautiful, like a winter fairyland. The thing is, those branches are brittle. They look like they’re extra strength, encased in a glassy shell. In reality, one sharp blow would cause it to shatter.
“What’s the potion for?”
The song about pollen and summer fills the silence. I guess we’re just going to keep punting this question back and forth. I’m not about to tell him my secrets first.
There’s a long pause. I assume we’re going to drop the interrogation, but then Bram’s deep voice fills the car. “My humanity is slowly burning out. Like a candle in a room that’s gradually losing oxygen. My curse feeds on the negative emotions of others. Every day, any glimmer of joy or happiness gets snuffed out. Eventually, I’ll be taken over by a darkness that won’t allow any light in.”
The shadows in his aura.
“The potion helps numb the curse. Sometimes, it surfaces as a rage so potent I want to destroy anyone who speaks to me. To tear them to shreds with my words and my hands. Other times, it’s complete apathy for everything. Someone could be bleeding out in front of me, and I’ll feel nothing. It’s like a living being infecting my body. I never know exactly how it will affect me. When I think I have a handle on it, the curse changes just to fuck with my head. I used to be able to go days without thinking about it, but no longer. It’s a weight that drags me down every day.”
My eyes are focused on the road, but it grows blurry as tears well up. Fuck this town and the curses we’re all saddled with. They are a unique kind of torture, horrible, every one of them. I blink and swallow. I’m sure Bram wouldn’t appreciate words of pity.
“My curse is to be forgotten.”
Bram shifts in his seat, the chair making an alarming creek. His gaze is laser focused on mine, but I keep my face forward.
“How?”
“It’s gotten worse over time.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bram nod. That’s how many of our curses work. They gradually intensify as time goes by. “If I don’t see someone after about a week these days, they won’t remember me. It’s like I’m erased from their universe.”
“And when they see you again? Do they remember?”
“It used to be that. When I would run into an old teacher or classmate, if I reminded them who I was, some knowledge of me would come back. But now that’s not always the case. The longer I’ve known someone, the faster they recall who I am, but just seeing me doesn’t always jog someone’s memory.” Like with Jamie, at the New Year’s coven gathering. He’d looked right at me, and it was a blank. I was a stranger. And yet, somehow, he knew who I was last night. How?
“That’s fucked up.” Bram leans back in his seat. What else is there to say? Any of us with curses know they all blow.
I pull up in front of Fitz’s house with one minute to spare. The sky is heavy with impending snow, but Fitz’s house is a bright spot in the dim bleakness of January. The French rustic style house is far too adorable for someone as sharp and biting as Fitz. I stare out at the stone exterior, the perfect arched doorway, and sloped roofs and imagine the witch luring in Hansel and Gretel with all the sweetness.
“Are we going to get out of the car?” Bram and I stare out at Fitz’s house. Despite it being the dead of winter, her flower boxes overflow with lush blooms of geraniums, lantana, verbena, and trailing ivy.
“You first,” I whisper.
“Chicken.” Bram needles.
“She won’t remember me anyway.” Bram and I turn to stare at each other. He narrows his eyes, and I offer him a smirk. Sure, I saw Fitz yesterday, but I’m going to use this curse to my advantage for once.
“Lucky.” Bram sighs and opens his car door with a creak. I stay put until he gets out, watching with amusement when he hits a knee against the door and then his head on the roof. “Fuck.”
I slip out my side of the car with a chuckle. Even though Bram is mumbling under his breath, his aura is a warm green and the shadows are barely visible.
“You’re late,” Fitz calls out, and I nearly jump out of my skin. I lean against the car and place a hand against my hammering heart.
Fitz is standing at the gate that leads to her garden.
“Get in here. It’s fecking cold out.” She has a hint of an Irish accent that points to her heritage, but no one really knows where she’s from. She’s lived in Mystic Hollows as long as I’ve been alive, and for several generations before me. No one knows exactly how old she is, but there’s no doubt she’s up there in years.
Her long white hair is neatly tucked away in a braid and she’s wearing her signature track suit, in a mustard yellow today. Bram and I follow her into her garden, where the temperature shifts from a frigid zero to a beautiful seventy. Fitz closes the gate with her dragon-headed cane and then uses it to wave us into her backyard. I skip ahead to avoid getting cracked with the thing.
Fitz’s backyard is breathtaking. It’s a fairy garden mixed with the perfect landscape of a prim English country manor. I’m not even sure how you marry those two aesthetics together, but Fitz knows how.
“Sit.” Fitz gestures toward a small wrought-iron table. On top of the table are an assortment of items that have me taking a closer look. The last time I was here, she was crafting a voodoo doll. It looks like she’s up to the same kind of shenanigans today. There are a handful of small burlap pouches laying on the table along with bowls of herbs. Face down are several photographs. I wonder what they’re pictures of?
“No, don't sit there, you dummy, that’s my seat,” Fitz snaps at Bram, who immediately pops up out of the seat, looking annoyed as he takes another. I can’t help but smile.
“What, have you forgotten all your manners, or did those dolts who raised you forget to teach you any.” Fitz smacks the open chair with her cane. “Get the chair for the girl.”
I realize she wants Bram to pull my chair out for me. “That’s really not necessary.”
Bram’s already out of his seat, pulling back my chair for me. The metal makes a terrible scraping sound against the stone patio.
Fitz nods. “Of course it is.”
I sneak a look at Bram. He raises one brow and his lip crooks a small smile. Fitz immediately goes to work pinching herbs out of the bowls and placing them in the burlap pouches. She methodically adds them in a little assembly line. She’s not even looking at what she’s doing, though. She stares at me and Bram for an infinity before finally speaking. “Why are you here?”
“Morty sent us.” Bram is lounging in his chair, his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. His dark hair is artfully messy and his arms are crossed over his chest. He’s wearing a pair of well-worn jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, looking more casual than usual. In the warmth of Fitz’s backyard, his sweatshirt is too much. He slips it off, his T-shirt riding up and giving me a view of hard muscles. I’m not even wearing a bra under my sweatshirt. It was supposed to be a quick trip to Morty’s, then back to my couch. I keep my layers on and suffer in the heat.
“I know that already.” Fitz sounds bored. A yawn practically cracks her jaw as she looks away from us and focuses on her pouches. She chuckles as she rips up one of the photos into pieces and shoves it in the bag.
“Morty suggested we come talk about fated bonds,” I hesitantly answer. Is she hexing someone with those bags? Maiden help me if I ever get on Fitz’s bad side.
“I wondered when one of you bozos would get up the nerve to ask me about that.” She rips up the second photo with a cackle and spits inside the bag. She winks at me when she sees me looking. “They deserve a little extra something.”
All I can do is nod, as if I know who she’s hexing or why.
“So you know about them?” Bram’s eyes are lit with intrigue as he watches Fitz work. She sets the pouch down and pats it like it’s a pet before her eyes lift to the sky. Even with her magic keeping us in a perfect day bubble, it can’t disguise the heavy gray clouds closing in. The trees in her backyard wave in a gentle breeze, but farther away the branches of ancient pines whip back and forth.
“Our magic is like a river.”
Great. We’re going to get a metaphor instead of answers. I admire Fitz, I respect her, and I’m scared of her, but the woman does not like to shoot it straight.
A vine snaps against my leg. “Ow,” I hiss. That hurt.
“Pay attention.”
“I am.” I try to keep the whine out of my voice. Bram chuckles and a vine snaps up and slaps him across the face.
I burst out laughing and Bram sits up straight, his hand pressed to his cheek.
“What was that for?”
“A reminder that the bad shit that happens to someone else could easily happen to you.”
“I thought you were going to tell us about the fated bonds,” Bram grumbles, slumping back in his chair, but not nearly as relaxed.
“Indeed. Stop talking and let me get my words out.” She grouses as if we’re the ones who started this tangent. I keep my mouth shut and Bram does the same.
“Think of magic like the water around us. There are rivers that flow into oceans. Water evaporates and lifts to the skies, where it turns to rain or snow before tumbling back down to earth. It’s all linked, just like our magic. There’s a thread that ties us all together, but some threads are woven, while others are left untethered.”
Fitz looks back and forth between us and then sighs. “You daft fools don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Um…” I say to stop the oppressive silence. I feel like I’ve been called on by a teacher and I don’t know the answer.
“A fated bond is bigger than everything. A curse, blood magic.”
“What’s blood magic?” I ask.
“Pfft, we’re not getting into that.” Fitz is back to ripping up photographs and shoving them into the little bags. “I’m just saying, our magic comes from a place of balance. You don’t think it's a coincidence that Roman and Josephine are light and dark witches, do you?”
Bram sits forward. “I thought light and dark magic was just something the council used as a cover when they broke up the original coven in Mystic Hollows?”
Before our town was cursed by the Briar Witch, there was one coven. They split to keep the secret of how the curse originated from the rest of the town. One side, the Lumen coven, were light magic witches. The Tenebris coven members were dark magic witches. Growing up, we were led to believe that dark witches were evil, dangerous, basically bad, awful people. Which is obviously not the case.
“They really don’t teach you lot anything in the covens, do they?” Fitz sighs. “There’s a difference between the magic in that light magic tends to heal and create growth. Dark magic can conceal and usher in change. Neither are inherently good or evil. They are simply a part of life.”
“What does that have to do with fated bonds?” Bram asks, getting impatient.
“A fated bond is someone who is perfectly aligned with you. You don’t complete each other like a fucking movie script might say, but you balance each other. When one is too dark, the other brings light. When one is trapped by their own thoughts, the other will pull them free. Their magic sings together because it was always meant to be woven. That’s why it’s stronger than a curse.”
“But why are Josephine and Roman the first fated bonds we’ve ever known? It sounds like this is what we’re meant to find.” A blush creeps up my cheeks, but I refuse to look at Bram. He’s staring at me, and I don’t want him to laugh at my words.
“Because this town is rotten. Generation after generation sold off their children to marriages meant to boost magical family lines. Where there is no love, the magic will falter and die. Maybe not in our lifetime, but eventually.”
Fitz ties up her little bags and tosses them into a bucket. Her mouth tips with a sly grin as she pulls a fresh set of photographs out of her pocket, produces more bags from under her chair, and starts the process all over again.
Bram’s nod toward the exit is so minimal, I barely catch it. I give a little shake of my head. I’m not leaving until Fitz says we can go. Bram raises his eyebrows, his mouth pursed tight. I use my eyes to point at Fitz and Bram makes a frustrated sound.
“Oh, go away. The two of you are worse than these arseholes.” She slaps the stack of photos against the table.
“Okay. Sure. Thanks for the information,” I blurt out, and Bram pulls my chair out, nearly dumping me on the ground. He offers a rushed thanks, and we slink out of Fitz garden like two children.
Bram sighs loudly in relief, but then groans when he remembers he has to squish back into my car.