Chapter 2
WHEN THE PHONE RINGS, I know who’s calling.
I’m in my shop, Wildes Crystal and Jewelry, wrapping an amethyst pair of earrings as the ringing fills the room from my back pocket.
I pull it out and his name sits on the screen as my stomach flutters and the baby kicks all at once.
I silence it, setting it next to the package I’m wrapping.
I want to answer, but I smile at my customer instead.
“When are you due?” she asks, looking at my giant stomach with a kind smile.
“It feels like two years ago,” I say with a laugh.
“It does feel like that toward the end, doesn’t it?” her wife chimes in from behind her, and they share a look, a memory from their pregnancy experiences. I always look forward to seeing them, regulars that come in every time they’re in New Orleans for their anniversary.
“It does. But I actually have another seven weeks.”
“So exciting. Do you know what you’re having?” It’s the question I get asked at least three times a day by customers.
Smiling, I tighten the velvet pouch. “A girl,” I say because witches only birth girls and it was confirmed by the tech at my early ultrasound, just as expected.
The elder of our coven, Violetta, wanted to throw me a pregnancy party when I finally announced the news.
I was the last true witch of our coven, but now my daughter will carry on that legacy, as it was my ancestor who started our coven and our bloodline that must be carried on.
My customer claps, excitedly taking the bag from my hand. “There’s nothing like the mother-daughter bond,” she says as my phone starts ringing again.
It’s him, and now—now my heart drops. I look at the clock on the wall. It’s ten a.m. on a Sunday. Why is Cassius calling me?
“I’ll let you get that. Congratulations,” she says with a wave. “See you next time!”
“Next time,” I say as I slide the button on my phone, answering quickly.
“Aster,” his commanding voice drills from across the line.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, blood racing through my body like a bee to honey. Cassius never calls me, let alone twice in five minutes.
“Nothing’s wrong, I just wanted to reach you before I slept.”
Blowing out my cheeks, I sit on the stool behind the counter. “Okay?”
“I’ve been thinking, thinking a lot. And as the birth grows near, and as my heart grows a little lighter, I have some pressing issues to discuss with you regarding Bastian’s estate.”
I find myself blinking rapidly, the words not quite registering. “Bastian’s estate?”
“Yes. But it’s best to speak in person, don’t you think? When can you come?”
“Come where?”
“My home office. It won’t take long. How’s tomorrow evening around eight?”
“Cassius, what’s this about? You haven’t spoken to me since I saved your girlfriend’s life.” Spite bubbles up inside me.
He’s silent for a moment, and after picking his words carefully, speaks. “It’s about finally making things right, Aster. Please come. Please.”
“I’ll be there,” I say and hang up the phone before I say something I might regret. I stare at my phone, wondering about Bastian’s estate, wondering what this could mean.
As my heart grows a little lighter, Cassius said on the phone, and I can only shake my head in disbelief, because Cassius in love still blows my mind. His Ma Petite Cherie didn’t run—no, she stayed and maybe I was wrong. Maybe she has softened him.
I look around my shop, Wildes Crystal and Jewelry. Handed to me from my grandmother, and I remember the first time Bastian came to me with his illicit request. Create a potion to allow vampires to walk in the sun.
I said no because vampires and witches are forbidden to create side deals.
I protested. But he begged me, told me his brother needed it to survive.
It would be our secret. No one would know.
And he offered to pay off my home, and I was barely scraping by.
Vampires and witches formed a sacred agreement over a hundred years ago.
So the vampires would stop killing the city’s population, we provide them with potions that temporarily make tourists fall asleep, allowing the vampire to feed, and then a cream that heals bite wounds in seconds is applied.
In exchange, they pay us very well, except the majority of the proceeds go to our coven elder, Aunt Violetta.
And for all my work of creating and delivering the potion, I was left with pennies.
So, I said yes. And then broke the second rule of the agreement. Never fraternize with a vampire, especially romantically.
Sometimes I still see him within these walls, see his hands on the display case, how his arms crossed as he watched me perform magic, a look of amusement on his face. I see his eyes in thin air, as if watching me, as if aware he’s coming back to me.
“I love you, Bastian,” I call to the air and hope that wherever he is, he can hear me and know one day he’ll be mine again.
“Over my dead body will you be going to that man’s house without me, you silly girl.” Mother points a finger at me, like she did when I was a child in trouble.
“We can all go,” Chantal pipes in from the floor where her magic folds her laundry. I look around the room, a sudden burst of claustrophobia clouding me.
Though the shop has been fine to work at, my apartment has taken so much longer to reconstruct since…the fire.
Mother and I remain holed up in Chantal’s tiny house, where Chantal and I share her bed and Mother has the couch.
“A family outing,” Jade pipes in from the kitchen, her combat boots clunking around like she’s ready to go to war at any moment.
“Absolutely not!” I yell and look at Jade like she’s lost her mind. “You’re all loose cannons and can hardly be trusted when it comes to vampires. I am perfectly capable of protecting myself.”
“Chantal, do you think I’m a loose canon? I feel like I’ve gotten better with age.” Mother’s eyebrows rise, expecting a positive answer from Chantal.
But Chantal and I look at each other and simultaneously laugh at how ridiculous that thought is. My cat, Mercury, stretches his black arms on my lap, our laughs waking him from his slumber.
“Um, okay, Delta,” Chantal sings. “You just tripped a teenager at the grocery store.”
“No, she didn’t!” Jade snickers, disbelieving, but this is my mother we’re talking about. Of course, she did.
Mother’s eyes squint, and she drops her phone on her lap. “That little shit had it coming. But I have been a very good girl delivering potions to those bastards.”
The agreement between my coven and the vampires has carried on without me.
Mother delivers the potions to them in exchange for the money she delivers to Violetta, our elder.
Mother took over seamlessly—they still hate her, and she still hates them, and they don’t speak about Bastian or the pregnancy, and the relationship continues to be mutually beneficial.
“Listen. All four of us are not going,” I say, my shoulders suddenly feeling unbearably heavy.
“Well then two of us are, and that’s me and you, babe. I’ve got a grandbaby to protect now, so get with the program.”
I’m too tired from a long day at the shop to protest. I look at the clock; the meeting is only a couple of hours away, and my heart races. What could Cassius want to make right? What will we be walking into?
The women exchange looks around me. It’s hard to forget these three went with me to kill Franklin Maltese and we all almost ended up dead because of it.
Jade’s mind reading saved us on so many levels that night, and I consider bringing her to read Cassius’s mind.
But Cassius doesn’t really know her and probably won’t talk with a witch he doesn’t trust in the room.
“Fine,” I say, defeated. “You can go, Mom. I’m going to rest for a minute.” I sigh and walk toward Chantal’s bedroom, but Mother grabs my hand.
“Rosemary and Violetta are asking about the blessing ceremony.” She frowns when I roll my eyes because that’s the last thing I want to talk about right now.
The ceremony that welcomes a new baby witch into the coven. Under normal circumstances, it’s a perfectly lovely gathering. But we don’t know if my daughter will have vampire tendencies, if she will even be able to be in the sun.
Besides, the idea of seeing Violetta, the elder of our coven and thorn in my side, and her horrid sister, Rosemary, makes me want to throw up.
“Can we talk about it later please?”
She reads my tortured face and drops my hand, and I escape into Chantal’s room, grabbing Winnie and sitting cross-legged on the bed.
“Open,” I whisper, and her velvet cover flies open, the pages rifling to where I left off…
the spell to bring my dead lover back. Pulling the drawstring bag from my bra, I sigh—its contents feel so light in my hand, yet it’s everything I’m clinging to.
Bastian’s ashes. What’s left of him lies next to my heart all day, every day.
I look at the door, my hackles raised from doing something prohibited in my coven. Raising the dead. The forbidden spell that could mean my death. But also Bastian’s life.
I hold two of the three things needed to bring him back. One, his ashes, two, my magic, and the third, I’m carrying inside of me. His child, his blood. I must wait for the baby to be born to conduct the spell, and now I’m so, so close.
I think about Cassius and what I’ve been meaning to ask him but have been hesitant since we haven’t been on the best of terms. I want to know if Bastian kept any kind of journal or diary that would prove helpful in my spell work of bringing him back.
Just reading something he wrote, a poem or a note, anything to help connect with his soul.
It’s a daunting task ahead of me, and I need all the tools I can collect.
Because when I bring him back, the witches will come for me, and I have only one loophole up my sleeve.
Bringing a human back is forbidden, but there’s no law about bringing a vampire back.
It’s what I cling to, this small caveat I hope will hold up in a court of witches.
Because vampires aren’t supposed to die, and just my luck, the one I was completely and utterly in love with did.