Chapter 11
LORDE
The moment we were in the car and on our way back to my aunt’s house, I expected her to demand answers, but she didn’t. She was quiet, almost too quiet.
“Aunt Pat?”
She responded with a quick shake of her head, her lips tightly pressed together. I thought I could trust her with one of my secrets, had I been wrong? Was she planning to tell my mother everything I’d done tonight? Bugger! This was not good.
It wasn’t until we were home and I had my foot on the bottom step of the staircase that she spoke to me again, “I’m sure you have your reasons for bidding on the book and Max, but do you really know what you’re doing?”
My back faced her, and I had not moved from the staircase. “I do,” I said with ease, my determination and will speaking for me.
“Lorde—”
“Thank you for a lovely evening, Aunt Pat. I’ll see you in the morning.” In an instant, my fa?ade cracked.
“Lorde!” she called after me as I ran up the stairs and into my room, slamming the door shut behind me.
My body slumped against the thick wood, drawing in ragged breath after ragged breath.
I was struggling, the panic inside me rising like the tide and threatening to drown me.
Max did this to me. If he was a normal man from an average family, I could easily find myself falling for him, but he wasn’t.
For a split second, I allowed myself to think about what it would be like to have some sort of future with him.
Yes, I’d gone past dating and thought about a future, a future I wasn’t allowed to have, and then the book had come up for auction.
The bloody book I left behind in my haste to leave had served as a gentle reminder that nothing could exist for us.
That saying, it’s not you, it’s me, certainly applied to this situation.
In our case, it was actually, it’s not you, it’s our ancestors.
I came here intending to do everything expected of me, then return home, and while I had doubts, especially about myself, I had decided not to veer from the path set before me when I was a child. Meeting him could not change that.
“Lorde?” Pat knocked on the door, and the vibrations thrummed against my back.
“Yes?” I steeled myself against what she had to say. For whatever reason, she’d been trying to get me to pull out and forget about my whole purpose for life.
“Open the door.”
“I’m a bit tired. I’m going to bed.”
I heard the handle jiggle and turn. Tilting my head back, I quickly realized I’d forgotten to lock the door, but with my body plastered in front of it, I doubted she could open it. I was wrong.
“Bewegung.” The word was spoken in a deeper tone than her normal melodic sing-song voice, and it sounded as if it echoed throughout the house. Charged with magic, that word held the power to open the door and push me out of the way.
“Bloody hell. Can’t you sod off? I’m tired, Aunt Pat!”
“There’s my boy. With your mother, you’re overly polite, but when you are in a pissy mood, you don’t hold anything back. I much prefer you like this.”
I should have known I wouldn’t get rid of her that easily. “What do you want?” I got stood up and dusted off my trousers.
“I’ll talk, you listen.” She paused and didn’t say anything else until I nodded. “Brilliant!” My aunt sat on my bed, patting the space next to her.
The sooner I complied, the sooner she would tell me whatever it was that she needed to get off her chest, and the sooner I could go to bed.
Sighing, I dropped onto the mattress, causing both of us to bounce slightly.
“What?” I grumbled in annoyance. My walls were up, and I was in the process of reinforcing them.
“Once upon a time,” she began, and I growled.
“Life is not a fairy tale, Aunt Pat. Get on with it.”
Her head twisted, and she glared at me balefully. “Fine. I’m not going to ask you what you plan to do with your new purchases because I believe that would be nothing except a waste of time for both of us.”
“It would be.”
“What I will say is, whenever you want to talk, I’m here.”
“I know.” I kept my voice clipped and my responses short.
She bit her lip as her fingers pinched the material of her dress.
“I’m sure you’ve been able to guess I don’t quite see eye to eye with my sisters.
They think I’m still on board, but then again, they also think I’m weak-willed and a pushover.
Someone who will roll over and do whatever Kelly orders, the bitch. ”
“I noticed. So?”
“First, I won’t tell your mother about the money, and you won’t tell her about me.”
“She hasn’t been clued in? At all?”
Pat shook her head. “No, not yet. The time is drawing near, and she will discover my infidelity as well as how wrong she is about me and herself.”
“What do you mean?”
Patting my shoulder, she shook her head. “If this is truly what you feel is right, I’ll help you.”
“But?” I asked, knowing she had more to say.
“But you need to think about everything. Are you doing this because it’s the right thing to do, or are you doing this because you were told to do it?”
Her words made my anger flare, and I jumped off the bed, my fists clenched at my sides. “I am not some mindless animal who does anything and everything they’re told to do. I am perfectly capable of making my own decisions, of telling right from wrong! Do you not remember what they did to us?”
“Not us, dear boy. Not us.” She stood up and glided over to the door, pressing her hand to my warm cheek as she passed by. “Lorde, remember, there are two sides to every story. I’m here when you’re ready, and if you decide to follow through with whatever you have planned, I’ll help you.”
“Schlie?en.” The door closed behind her without her ever touching it.
My aunt had always been proficient in languages, able to memorize and communicate in new languages without any effort.
She said the more languages in which one was fluent, the more it could impact their spells and magic because they could read more, and thereby, learn more, and she was right.
Throughout my travels, I’d found grimoires and other books written in various languages, some no longer spoken.
Each tome took time for me to decipher, and there were several I had to give up on until I could recruit Pat to help me.
Unlike her, languages never came easy for me. I did well to be fluent in French and English and never thought about catching up with her thirty-plus. Not even my mother or Aunt Virginia understood or spoke that many languages, nor did they ever aspire to do so.
I could speak some spells in ancient languages, practicing hard to learn the meaning and how to pronounce everything precisely as I should.
Eventually, thanks to Aunt Pat, I discovered the language didn’t always matter.
It was the words and the power one infused into them.
It was why she could use the simple German words for open and close to manipulate my door tonight.
It was also the reason, much to my mother’s dismay, most of my spells were spoken in English.
I heaved a heavy sigh and walked over to the window to stare up at the cloudless sky. The moon glowed brightly against the dark backdrop of the night as the stars twinkled like jewels.
“If I planned to go through with everything?” I pressed my head against the cool glass and shook it back and forth. It wasn’t if, it was when.