29. Dead Bitches
Chapter 29
Dead Bitches
“ D o you have an element, Laura?” I ask as we walk to the shop. Mom and Grandma are in front of us, quietly murmuring to each other as their feet crunch fallen leaves.
The image of Noah strapped to a chair, or beaten on the floor, sticks in my head permanently. I can’t scrub it from my brain no matter how hard I try. Maybe focusing on Laura, and how I’ve also failed her, will help distract me.
“A what now?” she asks, blonde hair whipping and tangling around her face in the breeze I can’t quite control. Her arms are crossed and she keeps a few feet between us as we walk. Closed off as ever.
“Every witch has an element we’re connected to. You know, water, fire, earth, and air. Grandma is earth and I’m air. Mom is water.”
“Hmph.” She glances at their backs. “I didn’t know that.”
There’s so much you don’t know. There’s so much we both don’t know.
“I’m sorry they took Noah,” she continues, her eyebrows drawing together in concern.
The breeze ruffles my hair, sending a shiver down my spine. “He was taken while he was getting coffee. I was only a few feet away and I had no idea. He’s gone and I didn’t even try to protect him.”
Our next few steps are in silence. The early fall morning swirls around us in a wash of reds, oranges, yellows, and greens.
“Do you feel like it’s your fault? Like he would’ve been better off if he weren’t your soulmate? Because I think sometimes Mom regrets falling in love with Dad...”
I kick a pebble down the sidewalk. “He’d be better off without me for sure. At the very least he’d be safer. But I can’t regret a single moment spent with him. I love him.”
Her eyebrows raise up into her hair as those liquid-gold eyes burn a hole in my side. “You love him? I didn’t think you could love anyone.”
“Thanks.” I try to hide the physical pain that comment causes. Doesn’t she know how much I love her? How I’d do anything for her? She was my entire life, I practically raised her. I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t love her.
“That’s not what I—” she blows out a heavy breath. “Never mind.”
The shop comes into view, as do the residents of Chagrin Falls enjoying their mornings. Completely oblivious to the pain enveloping four random women.
“How do you know what your element is?” Laura asks, arms still wrapped around herself like a shield.
I shrug. “You just know. Something happens that’s out of your control and it’s like a little clue. I controlled a breeze and Grandma said it was because I was connected to the air. Then I levitated.”
Her forehead creases in thought.
“You haven’t allowed your magic to run rampant. Mom has suppressed it in us for years. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never really had any accidental magic.”
She nods, but her expression hasn’t cleared. I don’t know if there’s anything I can truly say to help her feel better, so I say nothing at all.
Grandma opens the shop door and ushers us all inside. She flutters around, lighting candles and collecting items as the rest of us stand in the doorway allowing her to do as she pleases. I think we’re all too scared to get in her way.
“Come, come!” Grandma directs us to the middle of the circle she’s created. She positions us in a little square. “North, south, east, and west. Yes.”
“One guess as to who’s the Wicked Witch of the West,” Laura mumbles under her breath.
I don’t think I want to know if it’s me or Mom.
“Unhelpful, Laura.” Grandma’s gaze is sharp, brokering no argument. “Join hands and open your mind. Allow magic to flow through you freely.”
It starts as a gentle breeze, flowing over us in a warm wave. It slowly morphs into the scent of seawater, salt heavy in the air, then the smell of earth. Trees and flowers so potent that I would swear we were in a forest.
It burns away in a crackling fire that heats me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.
It’s comforting and strange, natural and unexpected. Each element, each part of us morphing together to wrap us in the thing that makes us special and binds us.
Pure magic.
“We ask the women of our line to protect and strengthen us this evening as we defend our own. Noah is one of ours, and we refuse to lose him. Stand with us,” Grandma says, the words muted as the room has gotten smoky and hazy in the candlelight.
The scent of approval is sweet and heady. It’s like hundreds of hands are helping keep me standing. Generations of witches that came before are with me.
“Thank you,” Grandma says, a gentle smile on her face. It’s the first smile I’ve seen from her in a while. “Sisters, we thank you for your blessing. And we close our circle.”
“Let’s eat some lunch and rest. We’ll leave at sundown,” Mom says.
Laura scoffs. “Don’t know what a bunch of dead bitches are going to do for us, but whatever.”
“ Laura .” Grandma’s voice booms across the room, bouncing off the bookshelves. “I will not have you disrespecting your ancestors in my presence.”
“Grandma, she doesn’t know. We haven’t taught her,” I quietly interject. Despite where our relationship is right now, I can’t help the protective sisterly nature.
Grandma’s stormy face mellows as Laura’s darkens.
“I don’t need your help,” Laura hisses.
For the first time, it feels like Grandma, Mom, and I are on one side and Laura is on the other. And I can’t understand how it has happened.
Time moves at a snail’s pace. I barely taste my lunch despite it coming from the literal best sandwich shop in the country. The chatter of my family—Mom and Grandma, mostly—hangs above my head like the candles Grandma has bewitched to float around us.
I’m glued to the corner of the room in one of the poofy armchairs next to the bookshelves. It’s situated in front of the window overlooking the town.
People walk around as if it’s just another normal day. As if my person wasn’t kidnapped by a literal crazy warlock with a horde of daemons.
“I know how you feel.” Mom’s voice startles me out of my daydreams.
I sigh, stretching out my sore legs. They’ve been underneath me for who knows how long now. “That doesn’t help. But you probably are the only person who actually gets it, aren’t you?”
“I never wanted this for you. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but my own daughter? It’s my worst nightmare.”
I hold my tongue. It would be so easy to attack her, to blame her. To tell her that if she had just talked to me, there’s a high chance we wouldn’t be in this situation. That Noah wouldn’t be in this situation.
But there’s an ache in her voice, a pain in her eyes, that I know is reflected in my own. I can’t kick her when she’s down.
I gesture to the opposite armchair instead. “How do you breathe each day?”
“At first, by force.” She collapses in the chair as if all the energy escaped her body at once. “Because I knew if I left you girls, Peter would never forgive me. I believe I will see him again, and I want to be worthy of that moment.”
It’s honest. Too honest, if the painful thumping of my heart is any indication. Part of me understands—couldn’t imagine putting one foot in front of the other without Noah. But part of me, the daughter, can’t rationalize why my own mother has to force herself to keep going for me.
She heaves a heavy breath. “It was awful in those first few years. But breathing has gotten easier as I’ve gone on. I haven’t done anything right since Peter died, but I’m in a better place than I was.”
“You didn’t leave. That was right, at the very least.”
“At the very least.” A weak chuckle leaves her.
“It’s sundown,” I say, watching the sun dip below the buildings. “We should get going.”
“Hazel.”
I turn to my mother as I stand.
She stands as well, taking my hands in hers. “I will not let anything happen to Noah. It doesn’t matter the price, I promise you he won’t be harmed.”
My brows furrow. “Mom?”
“Let’s go, girls!” Grandma calls.
Mom squeezes my hands and drops them, going to Grandma.
It seems that any time I think I get a handle on my mother, she always pulls a twist. Why do I feel like she knows more than she lets on?
“Hazel!” Grandma snaps. “Come!”
“I’m not a schnauzer,” I grumble, following her out of the back door regardless.
We walk to Grandma’s car, the air crackling with magic burning under the surface.
Laura scoffs as we sit together in the back seat. “What? No broomsticks?”
“Would you prefer to ride one? It can be arranged.” Grandma’s eyebrow raises in the rearview mirror.
“You’d have to pull it out of your ass.”
“You first, dear.”
My forehead falls against the cool glass of the window.
I just want Noah. I hope he’s safe, I hope Draven hasn’t...Shit. Images of Noah beaten, bruised, strung up, and worse flit across my mind. Draven only said he wouldn’t kill him, but he said nothing about hurting him in the meantime.
“Hurry, please,” I whisper.