Chapter Twenty-Six
Holy crap. Calista, Luke’s mother, not Luke, was now being possessed by Hecate. Blair stood frozen in shock, the wind whipping around her. Why had Hecate entered Calista instead of Luke? Sure, Calista had eaten the spinach, but Calista wasn’t a descendant of Hecate; Luke was.
Or maybe there were more secrets in the Caldwell family that they hadn’t uncovered yet.
Another gust of wind circled its way around the bakery, whipping Blair’s hair into her face.
Bianca took a step toward Luke and Calista. ‘No one in this town has hurt you.’
Blair looked at Luke, whose expression was a mix of confusion, terror and concern. He took his mother’s hand, no doubt worried she was having a psychotic break.
‘Lies!’ Hecate/Calista spit out, eyes dripping with anger. ‘This town despises our kind!’
‘It doesn’t,’ Belinda pleaded, joining Bianca. ‘Not anymore. Moonbeam Hollow is a safe place now. We’ve lived here our whole lives. We’ve thrived here. The town loves us.’
Blair needed to do something. She couldn’t let Hecate stay inside Calista very long, but this was their only chance to convince Hecate to leave the town and the festival alone.
She went straight to Luke, taking his hand.
‘I can prove it! This man loves me. He loved me when I was young and he loves me now. He doesn’t care that I’m a witch, or that we’re different.
That any of us are. He accepts me for what I am, just like the rest of Moonbeam Hollow!
’ Blair couldn’t believe what she was saying – but she had no choice.
And she knew her sisters were right. Luke loved her.
He wouldn’t reject her because she was a witch.
Luke looked between Blair and Calista, confusion in his eyes. ‘Lies!’ Hecate screamed again. ‘Be gone from this place! Your kind will never survive here! My sisters and I were like you, and Moonbeam Hollow murdered us! They murdered our families! Our children! Leave this place!’
This wasn’t working. Blair pulled on Luke’s arm. ‘Tell her, Luke!’ she pleaded desperately. ‘Quickly! Tell her you love me!’
Luke’s eyes narrowed, the confusion changing to something else.
An expression Blair had never seen on Luke’s face.
Not even back when they were academic rivals.
Not even when she was chosen as valedictorian over him.
Betrayal. He forcefully let go of Blair’s hand.
‘What have you done, Blair?’ Luke snapped. ‘Make this stop.’
Blair blinked, feeling like she’d been slapped.
Bianca grabbed one of Blair’s hands, and Belinda took the other.
‘Hecate, I order you to release this woman. Now,’ Belinda and Bianca said in stereo.
Both had hair blowing into their faces, and eyes that had turned nearly black.
Blair couldn’t say the words, still stung by the hatred in Luke’s eyes. Blair looked at Luke and his mother.
He was right. What had she done?
Calista slumped forward and Luke caught his mother.
‘She’s still here,’ Belinda warned, eyes wide.
At that moment several of the bistro tables along the far wall exploded, causing a burst of splintered wood and metal to fly through the bakery.
Luke and Bianca pulled Calista under the banquette table for cover, and Belinda ran behind the counter.
Blair crouched on the floor covering her face with her arms. Another explosion sounded, and searing pain bathed Blair’s exposed arms, like hundreds of burning embers hitting her all at once.
Blair may have screamed. She wasn’t sure; it might have been someone else. The wind got even louder, crashing through the bakery as the tables continued to explode, sending pieces of wood flying.
And then it was silent. The screaming, the exploding tables, the wind. It was over.
Blair removed her hands from her face. Her bare arms were covered with blood from lots of small cuts from splintered wood and metal.
She looked around. The bakery was destroyed – all the tables and chairs shattered, and the glass chandeliers on the floor.
Plus, the front window was broken. Blair winced at the crowd of people outside.
Her eyes searched for Luke. He was crawling out from under a broken table.
When he saw Blair, his eyes were full of confusion and hurt.
He looked so pained. Which was fair. His beautiful bakery that he’d been building with his bare hands for his mother was nothing but debris.
‘I’m sorry, Luke, I can explain,’ Blair pleaded.
Luke only shook his head, fury in his eyes. Blair had no idea what he was thinking, but she was pretty sure he blamed her for what happened to the bakery. And he’d be right. ‘You need to leave, Blair,’ he said, teeth gritted.
Calista was also looking at Blair, her eyes narrowed.
She didn’t look a lot like her son – her hair was a touch darker, and her face a bit rounder.
But the brown eyes were pure Luke. Blair couldn’t read her expression.
Calista scanned the room, taking in the destruction of her beautiful bakery.
She closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath, then opened them, looking straight at Blair again.
‘Be gone, Witch,’ Calista said loud enough for them all to hear.
‘There are people in here! Call for help!’ someone from outside the window yelled. The door opened. Several came in, asking if anyone was hurt.
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen.
Blair intended to convince Hecate to leave them all alone.
Not to hurt anyone else in Moonbeam Hollow, most of all, not to hurt Luke and his mother.
She loved Luke. And he loved her. But she’d ruined him – because Blair was a witch, and where there were witches, there was violence.
‘Come on, Blair,’ Belinda said gently. She took Blair’s arm and guided her to the door that Bianca was holding open. Blair went outside where the sun was now shining. She didn’t turn around to look at Luke again. She deserved his hatred. Every last bit of it.
* * *
The Briarwoods rushed straight home, not saying much until they were locked into the house on Acorn Lane. Blair dragged a chair from the dining room and wedged it under the doorknob.
‘What’s that for?’ Belinda asked, voice small.
‘Security,’ Blair said. ‘For the first time since our family moved to Moonbeam Hollow, there are people in town who know we are witches.’
Bianca exhaled long, perching on the sofa. She curled in on herself, covering her eyes with her hands. Belinda sat on the armchair and Kass immediately jumped on Belinda’s lap, rubbing against her arm, clearly wondering why the three of them were so upset. Belinda spoke softly into Kass’s ear.
‘Trying to communicate with Hecate while she was invading another body was a bad idea,’ Bianca said quietly. ‘There was too much interference from the host body angry about being possessed, which made Hecate even madder and more violent.’
Blair nodded. They’d failed again. This time catastrophically.
Blair stood in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do next.
Board up the windows? Cast protection spells on the house?
Blair wanted to scream. She wanted to throw up.
She wanted to run to Luke and explain why they’d done all those things.
To tell him that she hated lying to him, but she hadn’t been lying when she said she loved him.
She wanted to finally tell him that she’d loved him before, too, when they were eighteen.
She’d probably never stopped loving him.
She wanted to tell him that being a witch didn’t automatically make someone a good or a bad person.
That most witches were regular people who were just a little different.
There was no use, though. The mess she and her sisters had caused was too colossal, too big for simple apologies to fix.
Because of Blair and her sisters, a vengeful spirit possessed Luke’s mother, a woman who he was very protective of because of her chronic illness.
Because of them, Shirley’s Sugar Mountain, the bakery that Luke had been building with his bare hands, his mother’s dream, had been turned to rubble.
And the worst part, they hadn’t even been able to convince Hecate that Moonbeam Hollow had changed.
They hadn’t been able to make the witch see that this place was accepting now.
So, the festival was probably going to be ruined tomorrow, too.
Maybe Moonbeam Hollow wasn’t as accepting as they thought.
Luke and Calista had looked at Blair with such disdain, such hatred.
Luke looked betrayed, and his mother had called her a witch.
Maybe a regular person could never knowingly love a witch.
Blair felt the hope she had been harbouring for a future with Luke wither away.
Blair finally went to the kitchen and put the kettle on.
Whenever there was a crisis when they were kids, their mother would brew her famous masala chai, and the scent of black tea, ginger and cardamom would soothe all the Briarwoods.
Blair wished her parents were here right now.
They’d know what to do. Hell, they probably wouldn’t have let things get to this point at all.
Blair had only been thirteen when her father died, and eighteen when her mother died.
She was made guardian of her sisters, because as the oldest she was best equipped to guide them, to look out for them, and to make sure they were safe and comfortable.
But sometimes Blair felt so . . . alone, even with two sisters.
Who had been there to guide Blair so she knew what to do when problems didn’t seem to have a solution?
Who had been there to make sure she was comfortable?
It was no wonder Blair had screwed everything up.