Chapter 19 Anchors and Sexpots
Chapter nineteen
Anchors and Sexpots
Trissa
I’m fucked. I’m sooooooo fucked! And it is fan-fucking-tastic.
It literally couldn’t be any better! I squeeze my thighs together as I yawn into Cian’s bare chest, snuggling into his side like some kind of heat seeking rodent—even though Cian isn’t actually warm.
Okay, so maybe it would be a little better if he was warm…
or, you know, alive. Although, those tentacles…
whew! Which brings me back to ‘I’m so fucked’, because after tonight there’s no way I’ll ever find someone who lives up to this. Ha.
Wow, bravo me—way to intertwine excitement with gloom.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Cian’s sexy lightly lilting voice mumbles into my now tangled poof of hair. He runs his hand in a lazy pattern up and down the back of my arm.
I look up at him from my position on his chest and smile.
Gosh, seeing him in my bed (well, technically his bed, I guess) is so unreal.
After the shower last night we tumbled into bed and alternated sleeping, talking, and orgasming—not in that order.
I haven’t been able to take my hands off him, partly because I think I’m still in shock that Operation Ghost Cock actually sort of worked, but also because I’m terrified if he disappears, I’ll never see him again.
“I was just thinking… I was wondering why you can’t control the disappearing. Why can’t it be like this always? I don’t want to be afraid that I’ll roll over by accident and you’ll just be… gone.”
It’s not what I meant to say, but now that I’ve said it I need to know the answer as much as I need my next breath.
Cian’s hand stills on my arm and he frowns, “I—I don’t really know how it all works, to be honest. I’ve never been able to touch anyone or turn corporeal before I met you. Lots of things are new since meeting you, actually. The tentacles, for instance…”
My eyes widen and my heart beats faster, wondering at the implication of being the only person he’s ever been able to touch. A smug satisfaction shoots through me at knowing that no one but me has ever gotten to take those magic tentacles on a joyride. “So what changed? I mean, why me?”
I feel his smooth chest rise with a deep breath and he pauses, as if he’s considering what to say. “The romantic part of me wants to say that it’s just your effect on me, and I’m not entirely unconvinced that’s not the truth…”
“But?”
He sighs, “But I’m not sure why I’m able to do any of this since you’ve moved in… I was going to ask my friend, Seth, but I—I never got around to it.” His brow furrows and he winces, “According to my friend my situation has to do with something my best friend did to me before I died.”
I frown and lean up a bit, crossing my arms on his chest and laying my head on them as I study his features. “What did he do?”
“She bound my soul to hers, and then she disappeared. She never came back to finish the ritual, so I’m stuck like this. I can’t cross over, and I can’t leave this house.”
Ritual? I squint in disbelief, “Like… a witch? Like actual magic? Seriously?” Despite my best efforts I can’t keep the doubt out of my tone.
Cian chuckles good-naturedly and raises a brow, “Really? That’s where you draw the line? A ghost with ectoplasm tentacles fucking you all night long gives you no pause, but a witch doing a bit of blood magic is what makes you question reality?”
I purse my lips and hum in consideration, “Mmm, yeah, that’s fair. Okay… Okay, so what now? Can’t you just finish the ritual yourself?”
His handsome face sobers and he shakes his head.
My stomach sinks like a lead weight and I frown, trying to put a lid on the unexpected rage that flares through me. How could anyone do something like that to another person? His best friend? Jealousy coils in my gut at the knowledge that this witch bitch messed with my ghost’s soul!
“Why the fuck would she do that? So… so you’re just trapped here, forever?
” I can feel my eyes fill with angry tears and I bite my lip.
I don’t really have any desire to leave this house, but somehow knowing he’s stuck here indefinitely makes my own self-imposed walls feel like they’re closing in tighter.
He nods weakly, “I wish I knew. I thought, at the time, she was trying to help.” I can see the pain in his eyes and my heart splits in two.
“Cian, I—” A flash of light interrupts what I was going to say and I impulsively tighten my hold on Cian’s solid chest.
“Well, well, well…look who’s found himself an anchor. Ms. Haunted Halls, I presume?” A deep voice that somehow slithers through my mind as surely as it booms in my ears fills the room and I scream.
Cian’s head snaps up and he blinks as he sits a little straighter in the bed, “Seth? What are you doing here?”
I scooch up, still pressing myself tightly into Cian, while he pulls the blankets up around my shoulders and wraps me in the safety of his arms. I chance a glance at Cian’s friend—who can apparently just pop up in our bedroom without making a sound!
My eyes widen and I gasp, because the mother-fucking Grim Reaper is in my gods-damned house!
“This is your friend?” I gape, I can’t help it. I know it’s rude but I mean, come on.
Seth smiles, showing off a row of sharply pointed teeth before he strolls over to the corner of the bed and hops up, casually draping himself across our feet. He looks at Cian and winks, “I’m here, stud muffin, because I heard my name.”
Cian rolls his eyes and I feel my shoulders start to relax now that the shock is starting to pass. That is, until Seth’s swirling otherworldly eyes meet mine and they narrow. I gulp.
His deadly smile is stiff as he continues, “Since we’re asking questions though, I’d like to enquire as to why in the seven hells I had to sit through the worst coffee date in the history of…
ever… with a self-righteous necromancer, when you’ve had this delightful little solution to all of our problems here the whole time.
” He tilts his head unnaturally, sizing me up as if I were some kind of threat.
Cian frowns and holds me tighter against his chest, “Would you cut it out? You’re scaring her. Shift, now.” He looks from Seth to me and back again before shaking his head, “Wait, I thought you cancelled the date with the necromancer?”
Seth shrugs, pitch black shadows rolling off his shoulders with the movement, “Eh, by the time I messaged her she had already ordered a latte. Seemed rude.”
He looks over at Cian and I let go of a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
And then promptly suck it back in as Seth’s form blurs with heavy shadows until he’s completely obscured.
A beat passes faster than my thrumming heart before the shadows swirl with a blue light, quickly receding around a new—more human-looking form.
My eyes widen as I try to absorb everything that’s happening and process it, but I feel like I’m staring at a puzzle with giant missing pieces.
“Wait, rewind. W-what’s an anchor?” My voice is barely a whisper as I croak out the question. For some reason beyond even the obvious Reaper in the room, there’s this sense of foreboding soaking into my very being that keeps my heart beating faster.
They both pause to look at me and I feel my skin crawl with apprehension. Cian’s brows draw together in a frown and he looks questioningly at Seth who holds my gaze for a beat longer than is comfortable before he nods and sighs.
“Well, this just got exceptionally awkward.” Seth rubs his temple and nods as if I just answered a question he never asked. “You, little Witchling, are an anchor.”
“What are you talking about Seth?” Cian’s voice is hopeful but nervous as he sits up a little straighter.
“She’s not a human. At least, not a full human. She’s a witch by blood… and coming into contact with her—with her flesh and blood—is what’s allowing you to temporarily assume the full Witch-bound form.”
I look between the two otherworldly sexpots in my bedroom and snort.
“I—I’m not a witch! I have legit zero idea what you’re talking about!
” I can feel a bubble of laughter lodge in my chest at the absurdity of the notion as words continue to tumble out of me, “I can’t be a witch, I mean I had a teenage witch phase but what private school orphan doesn’t—am I right?
” I purse my lips. The Craft had a solid hold on me in high school and I dabbled in paganism, but I’ve never been able to handle any kind of ‘organized’ religion…
after a while keeping up with even the laid back rituals felt like too much work.
I smile wryly remembering the time I convinced Gabbi and one of the other girls in my dorm to let me test my ‘skills’ with them—but the only thing magical about that night was that no one ended up spraining a finger.
“I couldn’t even do ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board’ so there’s like, no chance I’m a witch. Right, Cian?” I look up at him, expecting to see that knowing humor glinting in his eyes, but pause when I see how serious he looks.
Cian cups my face in his hand and licks his lips, hesitating, “What you were doing in the bathtub earlier?”
“Drowning?” I deadpan.
Seth cuts a sideways look at Cian and raises his brow ridges doubtfully mouthing, ‘In the bathtub?’ as if what he’s really asking Cian is ‘you sure about this one, buddy?’
Cian glowers at Seth and tries again, “No, love, not drowning. Scrying… Not everyone who dabbles in divination is a witch, but…” he trails off and I let out a huff of impatience.
This is starting to feel less like a fun little joke for the group and more like I’m the village idiot who everyone tries to patronize.
“But what?” I snap, and immediately feel like shit.
He’s just trying to help and I’m getting defensive.
I take a breath and attempt to relax, but there’s this feeling in my gut indicating that I’m not going to like where this conversation is going.
There’s also a not-so-small part of me that feels a little bitter that I’m having trouble entertaining this as a real possibility because I just…
don’t think that I’m special enough to be some mystical being.
I sigh and look up at Cian sheepishly, “I’m sorry, I’m just… this is, I mean… please, just come out with it. I’m too frazzled to handle subtly right now.”
“You told me in a text that you saw your parents die in a dream… that your mom talked to you the night she died…” He winces, presumably at how explosively direct that was. Although I can’t really complain, I did ask him to rip off the proverbial Band-Aid.
Still, my throat closes up at the unexpected veer in conversation. I swallow the shock and lick my lips, “What’s that got to do with anything?”
Cian’s eyes are stormy as he scrunches his nose, as if he’s forcing out his next words against his better judgement.
“Dream divination—oneiromancy—combined with the water scrying in the tub without any actual training or ritual. It’s…
it’s not really something humans do on accident.
You’re from this area, right? There was a coven here, fifty years ago who focused on divination so it’s possible…
” Cian swallows and I stare at him, and then at Seth, who now looks decidedly uncomfortable.
Thoughts swirl dizzyingly around in my head and goosebumps break out over my skin.
Holy fucksticks! Could I actually be a witch?
The thought sends little bolts of excitement racing through my veins.
The dream with my parents wasn’t the first one like that I’d ever had, or the last…
but, wait… the bolts of excitement fade as apprehension settles in the pit of my stomach, making me nauseous.
“So,” I close my eyes and take a deep breath against the tightness suddenly clogging my throat and squeezing my chest. “So, if that dream was real… my p-parents.”
I shake my head, not wanting to be a witch if this—this knowledge is the price.
Not if it costs me all my carefully curated sanity…
fortified with years of avoidance. My eyes meet Cian’s and he looks at me with tenderness, and regret.
I feel like I’m hovering above an abyss with nothing but a pair of wings that turn out to be cheap, flimsy paper.
I can’t avoid it anymore though—the abyss.
I was never meant to. All the broken little pieces of myself that I’ve held together with duct tape and humor are being shredded as surely as those paper wings.
I feel a tear slide down my cheek as I whisper, “They orchestrated it. They… pulled their car over and waited to get hit. I watched them hug each other goodbye. They knew!” I can see the truth of it in Cian’s melancholy green eyes.
And I fall. I fall like a wingless bird into the abyss and not even my superior disassociation skills can save me from feeling the pain of this revelation.
I collapse against him and curl up into a ball, unable to stop the sobs now racking my body.
“They knew. H-how could they do that? Why?” My voice breaks along with my heart and I bawl into Cian’s chest, too far gone to care that I should probably be embarrassed at falling apart so completely in front of them.
“Fuck.” Seth’s eyes go round and he rubs at the back of his neck for a minute before he scoots up onto his knees and shuffles toward us.
Cian is rocking me and whispering gentle words into my hair, but I can’t understand him—can’t process anything beyond the pain… the betrayal.
“Can you do anything?” Cian begs.
“Give me her forehead,” Seth sounds genuinely concerned, no trace of his teasing tone left to be found.
He leans down over us and gently places a soft kiss on my forehead.
“I’m sorry, kid.” His voice is a gentle whisper fading into the inky black of my unconscious.
Right before I succumb to the blissful peace of the dark, my granny’s voice rings out, singing a long forgotten cradle song about keys.