Chapter 41
Swallowing tightly, Annelise looked down at her phone. Nothing was happening, so she held it below the desk and lied. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m getting a message coming in.”
Then she looked up at the two clients sitting across from her. “I’m not going to be able to stay late tonight.”
She watched as the woman’s lips pressed together.
It wasn’t the kind of customer service she wanted to be giving, but something was up.
She could feel it. She needed to go. She held the phone up then, knowing that the screen was blank, and waved it as though something had just come in.
“It looks like it may be a family emergency. I’m so sorry, but I will get back in touch and we can finish this later. ”
When they were out the door, she told herself it wouldn’t be that much of a loss if they didn’t come back.
Leaning back against the heavy wood, taking a breath, she closed her eyes, hoping for some kind of clarity on what had shaken her nerves.
Someone was in trouble somewhere. Someone she cared about.
Story. That was all that came through.
Son of a bitch. Story was in Belle Hollow, almost forty minutes away.
It took only a few seconds to make the decision.
In fact, Annelise wasn’t sure she made it.
It must have been made for her somewhere a long time ago.
She would run to the grandmother who’d been there for her all along.
The one who had been daycare for her and for Rowan, and occasionally for some of the other kids in the area when their mothers had gone to work.
The woman who had stayed steady and true even as Annelise’s own mother faded and passed.
Story, who had held her when she came home crying that she and Rowan Velasco were no more.
The only family at her high school graduation.
Story was the one who let her stay home for one year, earning money to help pay for the house, and then almost kicked her out.
You need to go to college, girl, and now is the time. I’ve got this.
Story, who didn’t have much of a formal education of her own, insisted that her granddaughter get hers. At the time, Annelise thought maybe her grandmother was just wish-fulfilling through her, but Story insisted it would make a difference. Here she was once again proving Story was right.
Her heart was beating faster as she slung open the door, grabbed her bag and headed out into the parking lot.
In her peripheral vision she noticed the couple, still having a conversation, or maybe arguing over their car, look at her and quickly climb in.
She didn’t care. Something was wrong, and she had to go.
Annelise peeled out of the lot with a squeal of her tires.
Well, hell. She’d told them it was a family emergency, at least she was acting like it.
She was grateful the car knew the route by heart.
Turning the wheel, she took each of the small roads that led her out of her warehouse district and the back route toward the freeway.
She blinked heavily, fighting tears that threatened to push through. She wasn’t quite sure what she would find, and she heard Story’s voice again: The flood is bringing change to the Hollow.
This time she gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles were white. Thinking, oh, hell no, she was not going to lose her grandmother.
“You can’t go,” she whispered into the air, knowing that Story would hear her voice if she could. Jenna had just found them, and Annelise was not about to invite her newfound cousin to her first Lockheart funeral. “Story, you hang on.”
She didn’t whisper it this time. She ground out the words, the force of a spell behind them. It bothered her, though, that she heard no response.
She and Story sometimes did this. In high school, Annelise had been at a party, and she had heard her grandmother’s voice whispering to get out.
She had pushed back, and so did Story, again and again, until Annelise gave in.
She managed to leave—she and Rowan driving down the street, arguing if it had been the right thing to do—just as the police cars rushed by.
It had been Story’s voice in college telling her to check on her friend in the dorm room several rooms down. A suicide attempt. Annelise’s timely intervention was chalked up to luck, but Story had saved the young woman’s life.
Her whole life had been run that way. Her grandmother didn’t live in her head, but she certainly had the ability to push into it when she wanted.
So Annelise pushed now, waiting for her grandmother to push back.
Fighting the pain and the clench in the back of her throat she held on, but nothing came.
She took the turns on the winding road too fast. With a blink and a snap of her fingers, she protected the car and herself. Driving off the side right now would only compound the problems she knew were here, even if she didn’t know yet what they were.
Instead of driving more safely, she simply spelled herself to not cause problems, and sure enough, as she hit the next turn, she took it wide, not surprised when a car was coming the other direction.
The driver flipped her off. It looked like they yelled something.
She didn’t care. She just kept going. She had to.
At last, she cranked the wheel, pulling the car up the driveway and slamming the brakes. She turned it off but didn’t even close the door as she ran into the house.
She knew Story was here, and something was wrong. But what?
Racing across the front porch, she didn’t hear as the old boards creaked.
It was a comforting sound through most of her life, starting when she was a kid.
Only then, she had been running excited, her tiny cousin Teagan following behind her like a younger sister, thinking Annelise hung the moon.
When she’d been running in to grab something, when her grandmother and her aunts had been here.
But this was different. She was deaf to the sounds from the roar in her head. No longer fueled by childish glee but by raw fear.
Slapping the door open, her mouth fell wide as she spotted Story lying in the middle of the room in front of her.
Her grandmother lay in the center of a chalk pentagram, the candles at five points, not four—all black.
“Jesus, Gram,” Annelise whispered. What had she done?
She tried to figure it out. Story had called on strange forces, not the four corners like Annelise taught Jenna. The black candles gave more power, but could pull it from dark places. Whatever had happened, Story believed it was worth the risk.
Leaning over, Annelise touched her grandmother’s hand, waiting for the fingers to twitch beneath hers, but they didn’t. Instead, images poured through—surgeons over a woman. Concerned murmurs. Medical terms she didn’t understand but knew were not good. Jenna’s mother.
Annelise knew it. Story did, too. Something was very wrong for Jenna’s only remaining family. Aside from them.
Glancing around the circle again, she saw it. Shit. No salt ringing the spell. The magic would be stronger, but Story lacked even that basic protection.
Moving her fingers to her grandmother’s neck, she prayed for a pulse and instead saw Story’s determination. Jenna would not have come here only to quickly head home and lose her own mother.
But as her fingers searched, Annelise grew more and more frantic.
There was no pulse, no force of life beneath her fingers.
The images she was reading had been left behind.
Anger flared up once again, and for a moment she almost laughed.
She hadn’t been angry like this in so long, and it felt like now she was actually really good at it.
In that moment, she had pure rage directed to her grandmother—for trading her own life for another.