Chapter 38
WE SIT AT THE KITCHEN table as I stare at Aven in Bastian’s arms. My boys.
Aven kicks his feet as Bastian feeds him a bottle, cooing to our son in baby talk.
The sharp edges since being brought back from the dead seem to soften when he’s holding his son.
Everything is happening so fast, I can hardly keep up.
The agony that lived in my heart seemed to make time stand still during my entire pregnancy.
But since I brought Bastian back, it feels like we’ve stepped on life’s gas pedal and we can’t slow down, even if it’s all we want in the world.
When Bastian and I arrived home last night, our clothes wet and sticking to our skin, Mother left the moment I told her that Bastian didn’t remember everything Grandma whispered.
I told her the words he did remember, and she agreed it sounded like the beginning of an incantation, but we desperately need the rest. Not having all the answers produced a look in her eye I hope to never see again, yet she kept her rather large mouth closed, which came as a huge yet relieved shock.
I didn’t have it in me to fight her, not after all of Bastian’s emotions, not after the sex we had.
I went to sleep, wrapped in his arms, wishing we could just slow down, wishing we could have a normal life.
“What are you thinking about, baby?” Bastian asks, his chest slowly exhaling, the muscles softly moving Aven’s head side to side as he drinks. “I know that look in your eye.”
He knows me, my worries, my fears. There’s no use in lying. “I just wish we could push pause and be a normal family.”
And when I think he’s going to agree, to look at me with those sad eyes, he laughs instead.
“Oh, there will be nothing normal about our family life, mon couer. You’re a witch, and I’m a former vampire brought back to human form, and we have a son.
We are in for a life of adventure. But that’s okay.
We tend to survive and if we don’t, I know some witches that can bring us back.
” He winks at me, and I can’t help but smile, his beauty looking more vibrant than it has in weeks.
Maybe, hopefully, we made some kind of breakthrough last night.
Hopefully, each day will bring him closer and closer to who he once was, but I will always love him for who he is right now in this moment and any moment that’s to come.
My head turns when the sound of heels marches down the hallway, and I step forward, collecting power in my fingertips as Bastian jumps to his feet.
“The alarm was on,” he says, pressing Aven toward me. “Take Aven.” Extinguishing the electricity, I pull Aven into my arms.
But it isn’t a burglar that’s broken into our home, no, it’s just my mom. Her face is flushed with a determination I’ve come to recognize as dangerous.
She slams something onto the island, my eyes following her fingers as she says, “They’re about to fuck around and find out.”
There, standing on our kitchen island, is our coven’s sacred chalice, the same one Franklin drank from for the protection spell.
“How did you get that?” I ask, my skin suddenly burning.
“I broke into Violetta’s and stole it.” She looks pleased with herself, her mouth turning upward, her black bangs fanning across her forehead.
But she’s also fed up. It’s been a year since Bastian was murdered.
Since Franklin almost killed us in Nightwalkers, and she’s been looking for answers almost every day since.
“She’s going to notice it’s gone!” I yell.
“Then we better hurry. I’m tired of it, Aster.
I’m done. I’ve been thinking about this since the blessing ceremony.
You are on the verge of being a Seeing Witch, like my mother, I know it.
She saw something special about Bastian…
though we don’t know what.” She looks at him with an annoyed glare, and he lifts a shoulder in response.
I shake my head. “I’m not a Seer.”
“You had a vision at the blessing ceremony. You can have another one. You need to see who was with the aunts and Franklin so we can take them all out, and fast. This has gone on long enough. It’s ending now.”
Bastian looks back and forth between my mother and me, quietly digesting her words, and he nods. “She’s right. What were we just talking about? The life we want. No sense in dragging it out any longer.”
“I don’t know how the vision at the ceremony happened, how I was able to bring it on.”
“I think you being a mother has unlocked this power. It happens all the time. You had a baby and had a vision only a Seer would have. Let’s give it a shot. We’ve got nothing else to lose.”
“Yeah, just my entire life. Everyone and everything I love. If I’m a Seer, why can’t I see parts of the future, like Grandma?”
“Yours is different. Grandma’s was visions of the future that came to her without asking. Yours is visions of the past that come to you without asking. You can go in the past without a person’s memories taking you there.”
My jaw tenses as my mind turns her words over and over. I’ve always known I was a powerful witch, but I had never considered having any extra gifts.
“You really think I’m a Seer?”
“Let’s see if you are,” she whispers.
Under normal circumstances, I would be overjoyed to have a new ability. But right now, the load just keeps getting heavier and heavier.
“The aunts wanted me dead but didn’t want the blood directly on their hands. What other lengths will they go to wipe us out?”
Mother walks over to me, pulling Aven into her arms, and he instantly beams into a smile. “We aren’t going to find out. Are we?” she says to Aven, and he giggles instantly. “If you can pull this off, then you’re a Seer. Now, get Winnie. We’ve got work to do.”
I sit in the circle of my spell room, my face flushing in waves of hot and cold, the pressure on me to perform this time. Aven naps only two rooms over, Bastian lounges in the chaise he bought himself, while Mother crosses her legs in front of me.
“I’m scared I’ll get sick like last time,” I say, stomach dropping from how weak I felt.
“Last time happened without your permission. You’ll get stronger. And this time you’re welcoming the vision, asking for it. You’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” I say, clearing my throat and looking around my new spell room.
I light the candles around us with a sweep of my hand, the glow they create inducing an immediate calm, my cauldron in the corner bubbling with sage for focus and valerian for calm.
I meet eyes with Bastian, and it’s as though he can sense my trepidation, feel my heart banging inside my chest. Because he licks his bottom lip slowly, dips his head, and says, “This is what you do, baby girl. You make things happen.”
I inhale, nodding, grateful for his vote of confidence, his voice soothing me. To love someone as much as I love him, to have my heart completely wrapped around his. I still can’t believe he’s back, and it’s like he was never gone.
“I love you,” I tell him, and he winks, then I look to Winnie.
“Show me,” I softly instruct my grimoire, and her pages fly open, rattling until it reaches a spell titled “Ojo.”
My wrists pull, Winnie telling me we’re on the right track. To keep going. Don’t stop.
“The wine,” my mother calls to Bastian, lifting the chalice in the air. He rises, pouring red wine into the chalice until it’s near brimming. She gulps from it, then hands it to me.
The words glimmer upon Winnie’s page, looking three-dimensional, goading me to read them out loud.
I place my lips to the chalice, the wine feeling warm against my mouth.
I let it sit there, my mind going back to the blessing ceremony, back to when my lips were upon the same chalice that very day.
I go deeper until I’m back inside Violetta’s parlor, Franklin in front of her, Rosemary standing by his side.
Pulling my lips from the chalice, pressing my head back as far as my neck will allow, I whisper the words I memorized from Winnie’s pages.
“Videam, videam. Oculis videam.”
And I’m sucked back—right where I left off, right after Franklin’s words. “That one has dreams about to come true,” Franklin says, before cheering, “Bottoms up!”
He slams the chalice on the table, and my blood grows cold. I chide myself, reminding my heart not to pull me from the vision. Stay here.
“We have our way of handling traitors,” Rosemary says. “If this gets out, you pay with your life. Simple as that.”
Franklin looks behind him because Rosemary isn’t speaking to him. She’s speaking to whoever else is in the room.
“I completely understand,” a feminine voice whispers, quiet, yet resolute.
A voice I know all too well. A voice with an English accent, and I’m pulled out of the vision before I can see her face, but my mind, my heart, everything beating inside me knows who was in the room with Franklin, who betrayed the vampires she claimed to love so much.
“Oksana.”
“No,” Bastian insists. “No way.”
“You are shitting me.” Mother covers her mouth with her hand, her eyes blinking rapidly. “No way. Why would she help Franklin?”
“She wouldn’t,” Bastian responds, standing from the chair.
“I know what I heard. I know her voice anywhere.” My defenses rise.
“Did you see her with your eyes?” His suspicion frustrates me, so my eyes shoot at him like blades.
“I heard her with my ears. I know it was her, Bastian. I’ve heard that voice talk down to me for years.”
His head shakes, hands resting on his hips. “She wouldn’t, would she? Betray my family. She promised her life to my family. She’s been a part of us for twenty years.”
Heat blooms across my face. The fact that he’s questioning me causes a deep-seated fury in my chest. “She would and she did.” My voice is stern, probably the sternest I’ve ever spoken to him. “And the fact that you don’t believe me is—”
“No,” he says, walking to me, reaching his arms out to pull me up.
I don’t take them. Perhaps it’s childish, perhaps I’m overreacting, but I know what I heard.
“Come on,” he moans, bending down to take my hands and pulling me to my feet swiftly.
“If you say it, I believe it. I just don’t understand why, okay? Can you understand that?”
I breathe out heavily, his words making sense. “Yes,” I whisper as Mother rises to her feet.
“I just don’t get why she would do it. She loves Cassius and my mother the absolute most. I don’t know how she could turn on them so easily. Unless she was forced?”
“In my vision, Franklin said her dreams were going to come true. Do you know what that’s about?”
“No. Unless he was going to pay her off. Give her a ton of money? But she’s never cared about money. I have to tell them. She works with them every night.”
“Well, we have to confront her and get to the bottom of it.” My head pounds, but I don’t feel as weak as I did when I had the vision during the blessing ceremony. I guess Mother was right. It was magic I called upon, so it didn’t leech my energy.
With tortured eyes, Bastian looks at me, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip.
“Tonight we’ll go to Nightwalkers and squeeze every detail out of her,” Mother says, her fist tightening as if they were around Oksana’s throat.
Bastian sighs, turning his back and taking a few steps away from us.
“Delta…with all due respect. I think only Aster and I should go. This is a betrayal that will knock the wind out of my brother and mother. And, no offense…but you tend to—”
“Provoke them,” I say, knowing where Bastian is going with this and completely agreeing.
“I will not,” she says, crossing her arms, her face twisting in revulsion.
“Do you remember the last time you and Nicola tried to have a serious conversation?” The memory of Cassius jumping on Nicola’s desk to keep them apart rings through my mind.
She takes a few steady breaths, her logical mind knowing we are right. “Fine. I’ll watch the baby. But if they pull any shit—”
“They won’t,” Bastian says. “They will be loyal to me over Oksana a thousand times over. We need to get to the bottom of it without distractions.”
Mother rolls her eyes but then her expression changes to something resembling pride. “You’re a Seer, my baby. Congratulations.”
“Does that mean I could return to the alley with Grandma and Bastian? Finish hearing what Grandma said?”
Mother lifts an eyebrow. “As a Seer, you’ll have visions two ways.
The first is by being called upon a vision from a higher power without your consent.
Like what happened at the blessing ceremony.
The second is what we did here in this room.
We had the chalice that we knew was at the scene of where you wanted to go, and both you and Violetta have touched it.
I don’t have anything Grandma had that night in the alley.
So, no. I’m sorry, baby. It won’t work that way. ”
I can only sigh. I don’t feel like celebrating this new ability that I didn’t ask for. And another door just slammed in my face.
“I need a cigarette,” Mother huffs and heads to the door. Before exiting, she turns to me with a wink. “Go get ‘em tiger.”
Bastian slinks toward me, grabs my belt loop, and yanks me against him.
My arms wrap around his waist, my head falling onto his chest. The weight on our shoulders only seems to get heavier with each passing day, and I don’t know how to fix it, and I can feel the sting of betrayal in Bastian’s body against mine.
“Cassius and my mother are going to be so devastated, Aster. Oksana has worked with them for almost twenty years. She must be wealthy with what they’ve paid her. I can’t see a motive as to why she would work with Franklin and your aunts.”
“I don’t either, so let’s find out,” I whisper, the night seeming so far away.