Chapter Nine
“Ihave to go.” He hurries down the steps to his car, pausing as he leans against it to suck in a lungful of air.
Dammit if it doesn’t pull at my heartstrings.
I don’t know what I was expecting from him.
I’ve heard the stories over the years and just assumed a criminal would have no remorse.
I forgot to take into account that everyone has a story.
Just look at Riggs and me. Plus, in all the rumors swirling around about Austin, I never heard any allegations of sexual assault or rape, and I’m sure I would have.
Gossiping seems to be a major hobby for most residents of Crowhurst.
I’d heard rumors about Andy, though, when I was in high school.
I’d heard girls talking about him getting handsy or how much of a dick he could be, primarily because of the chip on his shoulder.
I didn’t hear anything about rape, but I’m not sure how many teenage girls would come forward in this small-minded town, knowing that the victim is usually treated as the one at fault.
What were you wearing? Did you lead him on?
Were you flirty, or were you drinking? If you said yes, how was he supposed to take the no that came later seriously, especially if you were already half undressed?
I remember hearing a conversation when I was a kid about people choosing to be gay. A woman, upon hearing this, laughed in the person’s face and said, “Trust me, if women could choose to be gay, none of them would ever willingly date a man.”
I didn’t think much of it at the time, because I was too young to understand.
There isn’t much of a difference between boys and girls before puberty kicks in.
But once we shed that innocence and become women and men, the power shifts.
I didn’t see it until I got older, but I often think back to her words, especially after hearing some of the stories from the women I did time with.
Victims of domestic violence who finally snapped.
Young girls who were trafficked and yet arrested for prostitution.
Or in one girl’s case, attacking and killing the man who bought her.
She’d been young like me and tried as an adult.
She got twenty years for shooting the man who had just raped her because she shot him in the back as he walked away.
She shot him eight times, emptying the chamber, and the justice system hung her out to dry for it.
Austin stands up straight and puts his hat back on, trying to get a handle on what he’s feeling. I get to my feet too, trying to imagine what it must be like to be in his shoes.
Twisted as it was, he thought he was doing me a favor.
And then he had to live with the knowledge that he was the reason a young girl got raped and sent to prison.
And now, if that wasn’t enough, I just slapped him with the knowledge that it was his younger brother who raped me.
A man he’s probably spent countless hours with over the years.
Before that, he was a boy whom he teased, one he played with, and raised once their parents passed.
I wondered if, in the end, blaming him was necessary.
It would never compete with the blame he was placing on himself.
“Austin.”
He lets out a tortured breath before he turns to look at me.
“Don’t drive like this.”
“Why? Why would you care if something happened to me after everything?”
“You were kind to me once. I’m just settling old scores.”
Something tells me to tread carefully here. There is still so much I don’t know about this man, and I’d be a fool to take anything at face value.
He doesn’t move for a minute, and I’m sure as shit not going to force him to stay if he really wants to leave.
After a moment or two, he turns back and walks toward me.
I wait for him to take the seat he vacated before returning to my own.
Neither of us says anything for a minute.
His mood is blackening, making me feel like a storm is rolling in, and all I can do is shelter from it.
“So the book is called a grimoire?” I ask in an attempt to distract him
He looks from the spot on the ground where he was zoned out and nods, happy for a reprieve. “Yeah. As far as I know, most witches have them. And as a general rule, they get passed down through the generations.”
“So how did you end up with it?”
“One of my ancestors likely took it. I remember seeing it as a kid.”
“Let me guess, you kept it in the basement, which was more of a weapons and artifacts room.”
He nods and grins. “Good guess. We kept it in a glass case, like you’d see in a fucking museum, along with a…”
“If you say a black-flamed candle that when lit by a virgin—”
His roar of laughter cuts me off, and I snap my mouth shut in surprise.
I haven’t seen this man laugh like that before.
Granted, I don’t know him well, or at all really, but I’d seen him around.
He always wore this stoic, back the fuck off expression.
Sure, I’d made him almost smile, but this was something very different.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me.
“No,” he answers when he gets himself under control. “No black-flamed candle. Maybe an athame or two.” His face turns serious for a moment, and I can sense the unease over whether he should share with me.
“Jokes aside, we did actually have a room like that. Looking back, most of what was down there now feels an awful lot like souvenirs.”
“Souvenirs?” I ask, confused, before the penny drops. “You mean like a serial killer might keep?”
He nods once before looking away. “My parents were hunters, my parents’ parents were hunters, and so on, and so on.
Our family line can be traced back to the first settlers.
I’ve never known anything different. We were raised with the knowledge that witches were bad, and it was our job to rid the planet of them.
You don’t realize there is anything wrong with that mindset when you’re a part of it. ”
“Like a cult.”
“Yeah, and in many ways it was.”
“But something changed.”
He nods but doesn’t offer anything more. I let his silence settle over us again, though it doesn’t feel quite as heavy as before.
“My family’s history books mainly focused on its own ancestors and the witches that lived in this area.”
“Okay.”
“That means I don’t know if it’s the same for all witches, though I suspect it is.
But from what I can tell, witches live in a mostly matriarchal society because it’s the females of the bloodline that hold the power.
Sons can be born, of course, but they weren’t given gifts like the females were, only immunity from them. ”
“That doesn’t really seem fair.”
“No? Imagine if it were only men being granted the powers. Would one sit here beside me and say the same?”
I snort because we both know the answer to that.
“I’m not saying women can’t be evil. Of course they can. But from the first moment when Eve was cast as the villain and Adam the unfortunate soul she corrupted, women have always been less worthy somehow. I like to think this was Mother Nature’s way of answering the insult.”
“Men were killed in the witch trials,” I point out.
“Some. Not many, though.” He concedes my point. “More in Europe, I believe. But even then, it was only ten to fifteen percent. The rest were women.”
“And of those women, I wonder how many were witches and not innocent women who were scorned by men.”
To that, he has no answer. I rein in my temper and move back to the original topic. “You were talking about your family dynamic and how it changed, but you didn’t mention what changed it.”
“For me, it was high school. Kids in our circle were usually homeschooled, but my mom was too sick to teach, and my dad was too busy. So I went to mainstream high school with my peers and realized something was really fucking wrong with my homelife and that of my dad’s friends.”
I wait for him to give me more, but he takes a few deep breaths first.
“I didn’t know how subservient my mom was to my dad until I saw other family dynamics. Parents arguing, laughing, the mom calling the shots and making decisions, things like that. I never saw anyone hit their spouse for saying something embarrassing.”
I look up at him sharply, but his focus is a million miles away.
“He beat her every day of her life for a multitude of reasons. She was too pretty, too ugly, too loud, too quiet—you name it, it was a reason to beat her. And because she accepted it so readily, and all the families they surrounded themselves with did too, I didn’t question it. ”
He sounds cut up about it now, like he can’t believe he ever thought it was normal.
“You were a kid who didn’t know any better. This whole town knew what was happening to me. Do you know how many people stepped in to stop it?”
He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t need to. We both already know the answer to that.
“What happened to your mom?”
“She was sick for a long time. Nobody told us what, but I guessed it was cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t the cancer that took her in the end, it was my dad. She couldn’t perform her wifely duties, so he strangled her for it.”
“Shit.”
“I think that’s the root of the hatred, you know. It had nothing to do with your line having gifts. It was that they were bestowed upon women, and that was seen as unforgivable to the men in my family.”
“I’m guessing in the same vein that only women could be witches, only men could be hunters.”
“Except your line had no control over producing sons without powers or daughters with them. My line only accepted men as hunters because they were deemed stronger.”
“And now? If it weren’t for what you told me, I wouldn’t even know hunters existed around these parts.”
“They don’t anymore. I took care of that.”
I rear back and look at him harder then. The darkness swirls in his eyes, washing away the vulnerability from before, showing me a glimpse of the man who rules a criminal empire.