21. Paul #2
While legends spoke of ancient shifters once being able to cast spells and enter into patronships with ancient gods or spirits, somewhere along the way we’d lost that. Magic users were magic users, and shifters were shifters, with never our two bloods to mix.
“I did what any mother would do to protect the future of my children,” she said, shifting slightly. And it must have been an effect of hanging around Cherry too much, because I felt my mind locking onto everything about the movement and picking up micro-cues I never would have noticed before.
She shrugged one shoulder higher than the other. It looks unnatural. Why? An injury?
Unlikely.
Then what?
My gaze went down to her arms, and I noticed a heavy tome was tucked under one of them.
It looked quite old, and even from where I was bound, I could tell the pages were slightly different sizes and yellow from age.
My mind raced through the magical studies course that had been a prerequisite for my degree in sophomore year, and I realized exactly what had happened.
“That’s a grimoire. You made a pact with another worldly entity.”
While there were all sorts of magic in our world that I was not familiar with, I also knew that witches, warlocks, sorcerers, and the like all employed the natural magic that existed within our reality.
It had its own set of rules and dynamics, but it was just as much a part of nature as the very air we breathed.
But there were entire realms beyond ours that ancient magic users had learned were not meant to be messed with in ours.
That was the same reason why necromancy had been forbidden.
Once the soul passed, it was beyond the natural cycle of our plane of existence.
Wrestling it back caused all sorts of issues to the fabric of reality.
“I did!” she said, raising her chin in defiance. “I gave up my wolf so I could have the power to right the injustice you have forced on my husband and his family for generations!”
My conversation with Cherry rushed back to me. In some ways, the people before me had every right to be infuriated and try to change their position. Our family had been benefiting from their services far beyond the scope of what was right.
But that didn’t mean my father had deserved to be murdered or for Luther to have been… whatever they did to him.
“So, what, you brainwashed our brother to take out our alpha? Was that your big plan?” Jackson spat, not a hint of his usual levity or nonchalance in his words.
And honestly, I was filled to the brim with anger too.
But I was also learning. I learned a lot from Cherry, but another lesson was that people often revealed far more than they thought they would when you really let them talk.
“You VanMarches have always been so small-minded,” Vincenzo gloated.
“We started this plot decades ago. In fact, things went into motion right when you entered the world, Jackie. ” The way he said my brother’s name was like poison, and I couldn’t stop the growl that escaped from my throat. Apparently neither could Chris.
“I bet you didn’t know that, did you?” he continued. “I bet you’ve been blaming yourself your whole life for killing your mother, and everyone around you has assured you that no, it wasn’t your fault. Well, it was, little Jackie. You were the catalyst that ended your poor mother’s life.”
Now I snarled outright while Jackson fell into utter silence. Only Penelope seemed able to speak, although her voice sounded wrecked. “A birth curse? Please, tell me it wasn’t—we had protections!”
“Please, as if I would give up my ability to connect with part of myself for something as simple as a standard birth curse,” Arlene scoffed.
“It was something far better than that. It was supposed to attach to each of your fates and feed off all the good luck and fortune you were meant for, corrupting it into the opposite. It was meant to go from youngest to oldest and poison each of you with a deathly anti-luck until you eventually succumbed. Your family was first because your father didn’t have any remaining siblings, so you’re the quickest line to destroy.
Not like those McElroys, who can’t seem to stop breeding. ”
“Are they bunny shifters or wolves?” the grandfather joked in that grating voice of his like he was at some sort of comedy special.
“What happened then?” I asked, my voice shaking with the intensity of the emotions swirling within me. “Why didn’t it work?”
“Who can say?” Arlene said, waving her hand dismissively, like she was bored with the topic.
“Perhaps your mother’s soul instinctively protected her precious Jackie and you all by absorbing it herself; perhaps I just got it wrong.
It was the first contract I made with a spirit from beyond the veil.
” She smiled as if she wasn’t casually discussing the death of our mother, the kindest, sweetest woman any of us had ever known.
“I learned a lot from that, but now I can say that I applied that and was flawlessly pulled off the perfect combination of spells to get you where you are today.”
I was so caught up in her dramatics that I didn’t expect Jackson to interject with a soft, wounded voice. “So… she did die because of me?”
“What?” I said, resisting the urge to whirl entirely to him. But I wished I could. I hated hearing my brother sound so wounded, and I was having trouble processing what Arlene was saying anyway and the broad ramifications. “Of course not!”
“But no, she did. You, lady?—”
“It’s Arlene Parracida! ”
“Yeah, whatever. You’re saying that if I hadn’t been born, that curse would have never been able to take root, right? Dad was right; I was the catalyst that killed Mom!”
I opened my mouth to object, to comfort, to do so many things at once, but it was Chris who spoke. “No, Jackie. They killed our mother. She died protecting all of us. She was a true wolf through and through, unlike these cowards who’ve had theirs stricken away for generations!”
“Enough of the adlibs,” Arlene said, her mouth twisted into a pout. “Comments from the peanut gallery can end after you deal with the result of the second contract I made from beyond the veil. Your darling big brother, of course!”
At that, the woman gestured to her daughter, who looked absolutely miserable even though her face was blank.
Alexandria crossed to the other side of the room and pulled aside a curtain, revealing a small alcove, the kind usually made into a reading nook or had a fancy statue shoved into it.
Instead of a fancy statue or bookshelves, a cage occupied the space. A cage that held Luther.
I wasn’t exactly surprised to see him, but the way in which he was revealed was so high-school drama club that I couldn’t help but think that the Parracidas were viewing this revelation as a performance of sorts.
The grand finale of a plan they had been working on since before Jackson was alive.
It was pathetic, of course, but it also told me a lot about them and how they saw this situation playing out in their own heads.
“Your destruction was assured once your brother chose to abandon his responsibilities to his family to have a clandestine affair with a human. Can you believe that?” Arlene Parracida cackled, actually cackled, with her head tilted back and everything.
If she was an actress, a director would have stopped her and told her to stop chewing on the scenery.
“A human! How utterly plebian. The mighty VanMarches of the even mightier Marchendi pack brought down because of a pathetic human!”
“What are you even talking about?” Chris spat, but my thoughts immediately went back to when Cherry had described what she’d seen when she got sucked into Luther’s contained emotions.
We hadn’t had nearly as much time to discuss it as I would have liked, but I remember her saying there was affection there.
Even love. It made me hope that somehow our brother still had positive emotions toward us, but now I realized she’d seen something else entirely.
I looked at the unconscious woman on the fifth stake, and so many things fell into place at once.
How Luther never seemed very interested in mating contracts, and how a series of bizarre circumstances always seemed to subvert any from really getting started.
How, as he got older, he began to go on more runs to center himself.
How he never really seemed interested in going out or socializing, and how in those quiet moments when he wasn’t aware I was watching him, he always seemed a bit melancholy.
“You used her,” I breathe, horror rolling through my mind in centric ripples of realization. “You found her and used her to set a trap for Luther!”
“And it worked like a charm,” Vincenzo chimed in, clearly tired of his wife hogging the spotlight. “It was simple, really. He had a choice. Either surrender himself to us or let his love die and deliver us to justice. He had to agree to the spell of his own accord. And he did, insanely fast too.”
“So what,” Penelope hissed, “you hypnotized him or something?”
“Oh no, that would be far below my power,” Arlene continued, and I swore I saw her husband give her a disgruntled look.
“Your precious brother, the supposedly mighty alpha-heir of your pack, is buried deep within himself in a sealed prison. Nothing about him can reach the surface, so really, he’s little more than a puppet we control entirely. ”
That explained his emotionless state. My brother was still in his body, forced to watch what he was doing, but it wasn’t really him doing those awful things.