Chapter Twenty-Two
Wilder
Oomf.
My skin was a map of interesting colours today. Shades of red, pink and purple decorated my skin and my cheek was almost black. I gave it a tentative prod and winced. It didn’t feel broken, but it hurt. And it looked like it was going to decorate my face for a while.
I pressed against the bruise again and the sharp pain fizzled into a warm pool of desire in my gut.
“You should probably get that looked at.”
I flinched at the sound of the woman’s voice. There was no one else in the bathroom with me.
No one living.
“Who’s there?”
“Just someone with some well-meaning advice,” she replied, a sarcasm underlying her tone. She spoke quietly, and she sounded tired.
“Please can you show yourself?”
She scoffed. “I’m not a ghost. I’m not here lingering like a bad smell.”
So, she was a spirit then. Great. Just what I needed whilst standing in the bathroom in my boxers cataloguing the marks of a particularly brutal fucking session. “How would I go about seeing you then?”
“You’re the Shadow Witch. You should be able to just see me.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?” I really wasn’t in the mood for playing games. I was tired, my body needed rest and my mind was full of anxiety.
“You really don’t know? Did nobody teach you?” There was a sadness to her words that cut through me like a knife.
I should have had someone teach me, should have been educated in how to use my own power, but I didn’t. “I only learned I was a Shadow Witch last week.”
“Oh.”
“Look, I’ve had a pretty shitty few days and I don’t want to be rude, but can you let me know why you’re here?”
She sniffed and I could hear her indignation. “Well, I can see no one taught you any manners. Can’t say I expected anything less from your father.”
That caught my attention. “You knew Lawler?”
“Unfortunately,” she replied sharply.
I chuckled. “Not his biggest fan, then?”
“If he was on fire, I’d try to put him out with gasoline.”
Wow. Okay. I leant back against the marble counter and folded my arms across my chest. “Is there a way I can see you?”
“Of course. You just need to change to your aether sight.”
I huffed a laugh. “You say that like it’s the easiest thing in the world.”
“It should be to a Shadow Witch. You should be able to do it without thinking.”
“Well, I don’t come into my true power until I turn twenty-five so—”
“That’s bullshit.”
My stomach dropped. “What?”
“Who told you that? Shadow Witches don’t have any restrictions on their powers. If you’ve got one, it’s from somebody else.”
My mind flew at a thousand miles a minute. Did Dara have something to do with this? She was the one who told me about my birthday being the key to unlocking my power. Why was that date so important? Was she complicit with our father? Was I even really hiding or was this just another glorified cage?
“Are you alright? You look like you’re about to be sick.”
My heart was beating too fast, and my stomach was churning too quickly. I needed to breathe but I couldn’t seem to get my lungs to work. Black spots danced at the edge of my vision as I dropped my hands to grip the cold marble surface behind me.
The door flew open and Byron stormed in, a wild look in his eyes. He immediately cupped my jaw and filled my vision. “Breathe, baby.”
“I… I—”
“Don’t try to talk. Just breathe. In and out,” he said softly, his thumbs stroking across my cheeks.
Little by little, breath by breath, the panic subsided, and I felt steady again. “Thank you.”
“My, this one’s a handsome guy. Any chance he has a dead brother?” the woman said as if she were standing right by my ear.
“Shut up,” I whispered.
Byron frowned. “I didn’t say anything.”
Well, this was going to get awkward. “Not you. The spirit in the room with us.”
“I have a name, you know,” she huffed.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “What’s your name?”
“Adela,” she replied. “Adela Hawthorne.”
That was an old coven name, ancient even. The Rowan line was a long one, but it was nothing compared to the history of the Hawthornes.
Byron stared at me with a mix of confusion and curiosity in his eyes. “Any chance you can bring me up to speed?”
“So, Adela here pitched up whilst I was checking out my face and told me that there shouldn’t be a block on my powers which means that either my father fooled Dara or Dara has known all along and is in league with my father. Hence the panic attack. How did you know?”
The corner of Byron’s mouth tipped into a smile. “The tether.”
Oh. I hadn’t even realised it was still open. It didn’t seem to take much power to keep in place, it was just there. “Sorry, I’ll close it—”
“Don’t,” he said, grabbing my hand and placing it on his chest. My mark shimmered beneath his skin, a faint purple glow in the low light of the bathroom. “I like being able to feel you and sense what you need. I also like knowing exactly where you are.”
“Stalker,” I chuckled.
“Always and forever, baby,” he replied with a smile. “Now, back to Adela. You can hear her, but you can’t see her?”
“Nope, but it should be easy. Apparently.”
Adela huffed a frustrated sigh, clearly finished with being dismissed on the sidelines.
“Your magic is like a bridge, connecting you to the world beyond the living but in order to see it, you need to use a different sight. You’ve probably been aware of it, and if your magic has been suppressed, it’s probably been bleeding through in other ways. ”
“Like nightmares and visions?” I asked.
“Most likely. Without all your power, you’ve probably been receiving half a message.
An image with no words, words with no pictures or something that just seems garbled and out of sync.
Just lean into your hunk of a tether here and look out of the corner of your eye. Find that which shouldn’t be seen.”
I grasped Byron’s hand and held it firmly against my chest. “Okay, let’s see if we can do this.”
“Do what?” He asked, an adorable little frown above his eyes.
I waggled my eyebrows. “See dead people.”
“Cool,” Byron replied, excrement sparking in his eyes.
“You two have a weird dynamic,” Adela muttered by my ear.
She didn’t know the half of it. I drew on my power and pushed some into the tether, and then did what Adela said.
I stared deep into Byron’s eyes and then slowly looked towards the left out of the corner of my eye.
At first, I didn’t see anything but then, I caught a flash of something.
A wisp of a chestnut curl. A spark of violet. A slender shoulder.
The longer I looked, the more I saw, until finally, Adela came into view. “Hi.”
She looked about thirty, with long flowing chestnut waves and a face full of soft features. Except her eyes. They looked sharp and perceptive, and full of mischief. She wore a pair of denim dungarees, sandals and an oversized cardigan.
“She looks like you,” Byron said softly.
“You can see her?” I gasped.
He nodded, his eyes watching Adela closely.
“Wow,” Adela said as her gaze flicked between the two of us. “You must be soul bound.”
Excuse me, what now? “Soul bound?”
“It’s the witch version of soul mates. Interesting that you would be a matching pair,” Adela said, tucking her hands into the large pockets on her cardigan.
I huffed a nervous laugh at that. “Maybe we should have a coffee and put some clothes on. This feels like a conversation better suited to somewhere other than the bathroom.”
A matching pair. Wasn’t that ironic? Byron was already part of a matching pair and here he was, my perfect match.
My soul bound. No wonder the tether was so easy to maintain.
It was instinctual, woven into our very souls.
Magic with Byron was going to be as natural as breathing.
I settled further onto his lap, my hands idly holding my coffee.
“So how can I see you when I’ve never been able to see a spirit before?
” I asked Adela. I was still amazed that I could see her.
She didn’t look like a ghost and she wasn’t translucent.
More like opaque. I couldn’t see through her, but there was a shimmer like stardust whenever she caught the light.
She shrugged, her thick cardigan slipping off her shoulders with the motion. “No idea really. It could be because whatever is suppressing your magic is starting to wear off, or because connections to spirits who are related to you are always stronger. Maybe it’s a combination of the two.”
Did that mean…? “Are you my mother?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to meet you when I was alive.”
“I am sorry, too. For what my father did.”
“You are not responsible for that man’s actions,” she said vehemently, her purple eyes sparking with fury. “That man is a monster, and I hope he rots in hell.”
“Don’t worry,” Byron added coldly. “He’s not going to escape from me when I get my hands on him.”
“Good,” she said with a firm nod of her head. She was so angry and full of pain. She’d suffered at his hands, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting him dead.
“How did you stay hidden for so long? I thought there wasn’t a Shadow Witch alive for centuries?” Byron asked her, his breath tickling the back of my ear.
“I’m older than I look and my coven were proud to have a Shadow Witch in their numbers. They helped me stay off the radar of others who would harm me. The Hawthornes are good people,” she said, a wistful smile warming her face.
“Why are Shadow Witches so sought after?” I asked.
She pulled back, looking a little dazed. “You really don’t know much, do you?”
I shrugged. “I was brought up with green witches and healers and a father who spent my childhood siphoning my power. I didn’t get a lot of time to do much research on anything at all, let alone Shadow Witches.”
“That rat fucking bastard,” she spat. “What a prick. He forced you to crossover just to steal your power?”
I nodded, the memories of it stirring in the back of my mind.