Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Friday morning, Mira woke before dawn, anxious to get on with the day.
She hadn’t told anyone her plans to go to the Cleveland Mother Earth Store and talk to the Corners, because she was very certain they’d tell her it wasn’t worth it, that her powers would come when they did or not, and nothing would change that.
But it wouldn’t hurt to go see the Corners.
And maybe, just maybe, it would help.
The store opened at nine, but she was too keyed up to stick around the festival site for long, so she borrowed Nash’s car under the pretense of checking out a coffee shop that was well-known on social media.
She declined both Lark and Tamsin’s offers for company and struck out on her own to the Wiccans’ store.
When she got to the store, she was early, and they weren’t open yet. But that didn’t stop her from walking up to the front door to wait.
As she paced the length of the front of the building to ease some of the sudden anxiety inside her, she wondered what had possessed her to just show up without making any kind of contact first. What if the Corners weren’t going to be there? What if they didn’t take walk-ins?
What if they couldn’t help her at all?
“Can I help you, child?” a soft, feminine voice asked.
She paused and whipped around to face a female in her mid-thirties, wearing a long, flowing skirt and a peasant blouse. Her long hair was tied in a braid and fixed with ribbons, and she had a glow to her that made Mira feel instantly at ease.
She wasn’t sure why, but tears came to her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have called first.”
“Nonsense,” the female said. She pulled open the front door and gestured inside. “You’re clearly in need of something, and that’s what we’re here for. I’m Lorene, North Corner. How can I help?”
“Wow, you’re the North Corner?” That would mean she was the head of the coven and the most powerful member. North was earth, if she remembered right. But psychics weren’t magic like Wiccans, so she didn’t know much about them.
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m Mira. My parents are psychics, and we’re part of a house that’s nomadic. We’re in town for the festival.”
“We have a booth there. It’s lots of fun. I usually go on Sundays when the crowds have thinned.”
She turned on the overhead lights with a wave of her hand, and the interior of the store illuminated. Shelves lined the walls, filled with books and magical items, with tables and displays arranged to draw patrons into the store.
She stared at Lorene and wiped at the tears under her eyes. Then she told her what she’d come to see the Corners for.
Lorene hummed. “So you don’t have any power at all?”
Mira shook her head. “My mom is a dream walker. My dad sees glimpses of the future. I don’t have anything remotely like any kind of psychic power. I’m just… slow aging and fast healing like a supernatural person, but without a power associated with it.”
“That is a curious thing,” Lorene said. She led Mira deeper into the store, down a hall, and to what appeared to be a conference room with a large round table ringed with chairs, and more bookshelf-lined walls filled with magical things, and a round rug covered the old wood floor near the table.
She went to one of the shelves and looked at titles and said, “Now there certainly are people who have supernatural parents and don’t have any inherited powers themselves, like a shifter might have two shifting parents but not be able to shift. But it’s not common. How old are you?”
“Eighteen plus seven.”
“Well, if you were going to have powers, I think they would have shown up by now, frankly. But maybe something is holding you back.” She pulled a book from the shelf and came to the table, flipping the pages until she reached what she was looking for.
“This is a revelation spell, which will help me see what, if anything, is holding back your power. It may not work. Magic isn’t foolproof.
But it’s worth a shot if you’ve got some time for me to whip the ingredients together and wait for the other three Corners so we can work together. ”
“I’m definitely free.”
She’d stay as long as it took.
“Good. Can I get you some tea?”
“Yes, please.”
Lorene nodded and left the room, and Mira sank into one of the leather-padded wooden chairs.
She inhaled, picking up the scents of spices and magic, and looked around the room.
A crystal ball sat on a shelf next to what looked like an animal skull.
There were shelves of bottles filled with powders and liquids, and more books than a library.
Lorene returned with a cup of tea, the saucer holding sugar cubes and a small spoon.
She busied herself, humming quietly, as she gathered what she needed for the spell.
As the minutes passed, the other three Wiccans joined her—Bitty, Maritza, and Gwen—who greeted Mira warmly and happily joined Lorene to get ready for the spell.
Once they’d compiled what they needed, they asked Mira to sit crossed-legged on the rug as they surrounded her.
“This won’t hurt,” Maritza said with a kind smile. “But you might feel a little strange, maybe tingly as our magic works to reveal what’s going on with your nature.”
“I’m ready for whatever,” Mira said.
Candles had been placed between the four females, and they flared to life, lit with Maritza’s magic. Lorene marked Mira’s wrists and cheeks with a powder made from several herbs she’d ground together with a mortar and pestle. It smelled heavily of thyme and other herbs she didn’t recognize.
The four joined hands, and the candles flickered as their spell began.
The language of Wiccans was haunting and beautiful; the words were not known to Mira, but the tone of their words made her feel hopeful. The air grew heavy and damp like the moment before a summer storm hit, and the scent of thyme grew sharper, mingling with the other herbs in the powder.
Lorene leaned forward, her hand hovering just above Mira’s head. “Revelare,” she said.
A pale shimmer formed in the air, spreading like ripples on a pond.
Heat licked at Mira, not painful but somehow intimate, like sunlight on bare skin. Her heart pounded in her chest as the sensation washed over her.
Then something slammed into place. Not literally, but in her mind, as if she’d walked through a doorway and hit an unseen wall that was made of magic.
Lorene straightened with a gasp.
“That’s…” Bitty said, looking at Lorene.
“A suppression spell,” Lorene said grimly. “It’s old magic.”
Gwen crouched down next to Mira and touched the shimmer that hovered in the air around Mira. “Someone didn’t want Mira’s power accessed, but there’s something else going on.”
“Definitely,” Bitty said.
“What’s going on?” Mira asked.
Lorene spoke a few soft words, and the shimmer disappeared, and the candles snuffed out. She offered her hand to Mira and helped her to her feet. “You said your parents are psychics?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because that’s impossible,” Bitty said. “You’re a shifter, Mira. And your parents couldn’t possibly be related to you.”
* * *
Armed with more questions than she’d had when she arrived at the Wiccan store, Mira headed back to the festival grounds to talk to her parents.
Confront them, more like it.
She parked Nash’s car next to his RV and got out, scanning the area for her parents. She saw her dad first, as he stood watching the crowd that milled by.
“Dad?”
He turned and smiled at her. “You’ve been gone a while! How was the coffee?”
“Coffee? Oh, right. I didn’t get coffee. I need to talk to you and Mom. Now.”
His brows rose. “Is everything all right?”
“No.”
“She’s in the RV trying to get a pomegranate stain out of Lark’s favorite scarf. Let’s go see her.”
They found her mom at the kitchen sink in the RV, and the moment that the door shut and it was just the three of them inside, she said, “I went to see the Wiccan Corners to ask if they could figure out what was wrong with my power.”
Her parents froze, their smiles slipping to frowns.
“What?” Daphne asked. “Why would you do that?”
“The better question, Mom, is why would you say that I’m a psychic and your daughter when I’m really a shifter?”
“Hold on now,” her dad said, putting up his hand. “What did they tell you?”
“I won’t hold on! Tell me what the hell you did to me! You’re not my parents? What’s going on?”
They shared a knowing glance, and then her mom said, “It’s not what you think, Mira.”
“You’re damn right it’s not. I thought I was a psychic with screwed up powers.
But the Wiccans did a revelation spell, and it showed that my powers—of shifting—are suppressed with a spell.
The spell is so powerful that it’s fully suppressed my shifter nature, and they couldn’t even tell what kind of shifter I am.
What the actual hell happened? What am I? ” she asked plaintively.
Her mom’s lips parted, but she didn’t say anything. Her dad’s jaw went tight.
“Why?” Mira pressed.
“Sweetheart,” her mom said.
“No, don’t be comforting right now, just tell me the truth. The Wiccans said that only the person who cast the spell over me can undo it. So who did the spell? Who decided I shouldn’t know what I really am?”
Her parents shared a loaded look. Mira wanted to scream.
“We should’ve told you sooner,” her dad said, sighing as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“But it wasn’t safe. We’re not sure it actually is safe, but we’ll tell you.”
“Tell me what?” she asked.
“That you’re adopted.”
The Wiccans had told her that her parents couldn’t actually be her biological parents, but the word still shocked her.
Adopted.
“We took you in when you were a baby,” her dad said. “Your biological parents feared for your life, and they asked us to protect you and raise you.”
“Your birth family weren’t psychics, they were shifters.
But a very unique kind. Most of the clan were what we’d call gryphon shifters—with the head of a bird and the body of a big cat, like a tiger or lion.
Your parents were a trio—your mother was a madter, a catalyst between two powerful males—and your fathers were an eagle and a white lion.
” Mira’s mother and Daphne were old friends, and when Mira was born—a fraternal twin with a brother—her parents knew that something dangerous had happened.
“The children of a trio like your birth parents follow a certain lineage. The males are gryphons and the females are madters. But you were born with the eyes of a gryphon—one blue and one green, just like your brother—and they knew something strange had happened.”
Mira had always loved her unique eyes. She got compliments on them all the time.
She never imagined they might be related to her true nature.
“So why is my being a gryphon shifter dangerous?”
“Their alpha was a gryphon shifter who was very superstitious. He would have killed you himself if he knew. He would have seen you, being a female gryphon, as a threat to his leadership. Your parents gave you to us to protect and we contacted a Wiccan who cast the spell to suppress your shifter nature,” Daphne said.
Mira sat down heavily in a chair. “So you were just going to let me think that I’m a dud of a psychic forever?”
“We wanted to tell you,” Gideon said. “Hundreds of times. But it never seemed like the right time.”
“And unfortunately,” Daphne said, “your parents’ clan was destroyed and your entire family was killed when you were young. We tried to find the Wiccan who cast the spell, but she’d died, and since no one but her could reverse the spell, we just let things go. For too long. I’m sorry, Mira.”
“Is that even my name?”
“Your name is Calypso Sereket. Your parents were Rami, Auron, and Layla, and your brother was Theron,” Gideon said.
For a long moment, Mira couldn’t breathe past the truth that pressed down on her.
She wasn’t psychic.
She was a unique shifter trapped without the ability to shift because an alpha would have killed her on sight. But everyone in that nightmare scenario was dead, including the family she never even suspected existed.
“We love you, Mira,” Daphne said.
Mira rose to her feet. Her heart shattering, her mind spinning. “I need some time to think.”
She walked out of the RV, entirely numb, and strode away from the festival.
She was a shifter and not a psychic?
But she couldn’t shift.
So what did that even mean for her future?