Chapter 29 A Blueberry Affair #2
"You want me out? Fine," she said. "Drag me."
Four seconds passed. Everyone could hear them tick by as they waited, as the air stopped moving, as her group of women watched her and she held her arm out separating herself from their support.
What was she doing?
Ursula and Eloise shared a quick look. Bess frowned, feeling an outrage as Rob nodded once at the men who then physically pulled Jessica from where she stood. She didn't go easily, but she was one woman and two men could overpower her without much effort.
"Hey!" Ursula shouted at them, moving toward where they were pulling on Jessica but she turned her stare from Rob to her friend and gave her a small smile and a slow shake of her head.
She did not want help right now. And they did not understand it. Ursula and Eloise were hesitant to comply, but then the men got the ground that they needed to pull her struggling form from the large room.
Shouts from her friends were heard, mumbling from others. Stares and shock, whispers that turned louder filled the now static room. Some cheered on the officers.
"Yeah, get these little girls out of here!" a man yelled from the second row wearing a baseball hat and a shirt with Rob's old political logo on it.
Tilly turned helplessly to Jen who pointed to Rob watching on with satisfaction. He was enjoying this.
"You have no right to quiet her," Jen yelled over the din, but Rob's eyes never wavered from tracking where the two men pulled Jessica from the room, the double doors opening to the night air before closing them in.
"What the hell is going on?" Bess asked Crystal who had a look of trying to work out a puzzle.
"They can't do that, can they?" Kelsea asked Carol who shook her head.
"No."
But the word was drowned out in the fragility of the environment they stood in. This was not their room, these were not their people, and their rights could easily be silenced without repercussion.
"I would suggest you sit down, be quiet, and let the night continue," came Rob's confident voice, cutting through the chatter. "Or better, leave. You understand now that you are not welcome here."
They turned as one to look at him.
The women and one man in blue tipped up their heads, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder stared at the man at the front of the room, their bodies tight and full of a different kind of magic - feminine rage.
The room vibrated, knocking everyone's attention around, looking for a cause.
There was a steady energy coming from the thin line of blue; it caused confusion and wariness.
Tilly could feel anxiety stabbing at her from so many places and when she looked around the room her eyes connected with the wide-eyed stare of Freida.
Did she fear them?
Freida's eyes, not hidden by the glasses hanging on her chest, did not move from Tilly's stare as something moved in the woman. She tried to discern what the woman was feeling, but there were too many emotions tangling up inside of her to be able to pick one person's emotions out.
Finally, she broke eye contact, a severing of something as her eyes shifted down in a move that Tilly understood well.
Jen laced her fingers through Tilly's pulling her attention to her friend who still stared at the man and now the three figures standing behind him, making a powerful statement.
There was one moment, one shift that was a blink in time, where Rob's bravery cracked, but then it was back. His face hardened, his smile widened and then Astra pointed to the door.
Yells were thrown at them.
Telling them to leave.
Threatening the witches to never come back.
To leave town. To take their magic with them and let their town become a shadow of its past. They stood together at the back of the town hall as Rob's voice echoed the library with false promises and threats against tolerance.
His eyes carefully jumped over their forms as he spoke and the sneaking looks of others felt like pinpricks.
When Astra strode toward them at the end as others mingled in clumps, Ursula looked to the others with her arm around Bess and asked, "What's the plan?"
"Someone needs to get Jessica," Eloise replied, but before anyone could move they were being descended upon.
"The bravery of witches is always an attribute I will admire," Astra said as a greeting.
Crystal smiled. "Your own bravery is noted." Her words were kind, her smile sincere, but Astra narrowed her eyes at the sneaking honesty. Then she turned her shrewd eyes to Tilly.
"I confess, I've always been attracted to the taboo."
"I'm sorry?" Tilly asked frowning.
"Witches and vampires. Relationships are taboo," she said matter-of-factly. She leaned forward, her smile unkind when she asked, "Has he bitten you yet?"
Her frown deepened but before she could answer Astra said the words Tilly had opened from an envelope further confirming their origin and intent.
"Ortes fortuna adiuvat." The vision of her kissing Theo, the odd feeling and anxiety that had taken ahold of Tilly resurfaced.
She had used magic, but was it to play or to do something much darker?
"It is the bold that will win this. Don't forget.
A small group of common women who look for signs in the stars with a mediocre touch on magic cannot move mountains. "
"You," Tilly said, stepping forward, a surge of anger filling her, "are the problem here.
You and your witchy stepford sisters came to our town to do nothing but cause trouble and pin it on us.
" She took another step toward the severe woman who watched her without emotion.
"We don't know what your game or your goal here is, but we will find out and we will take you down. "
A collective silence surrounded them. Astra's eyes never left Tilly's. Then the woman closed the distance between them and gently tucked a piece of emerald hair behind Tilly's ear, her long fingers cold.
Tilly grabbed her wrist, pushing it away from her as Astra whispered,"Careful, Tilly.
" She leaned in. "You might actually grow a backbone standing up to someone this way.
And then what would you do will all of that weak-minded anxiety?
People like a woman who has no boundaries and doesn't know how to say no. "
Tilly's hand tightened around Astra's wrist, her anger pulsing.
And then something happened. She hadn't been wrong before that Astra was frustrated sitting up there as Rob lost his composure.
She felt it now under her cold skin. But something else flared there, deep and hot and then a flash in Tilly's mind, pictures.
A dark room lit by licking flames of a bonfire.
Not a room, a cave. Blood seeping from a long straight cut in a slender palm.
Snow. The black of night sparking with a flash and then back to blackness, but more than before as the stars were snuffed out.
A woman laughing as others chanted in the background.
When the sudden wide-open jaw of a snake filled Tilly's vision, fangs bared and hissing filling her ears she dropped Astra's wrist and stepped back with a gasp. Jen pulled her into her side.
She stared at Astra who was looking at her with wide eyes that dipped into a deep and narrow look of calculation.
What had she just seen? What had Astra done to her, or had Tilly done something?
Astra quickly schooled her look of shock. "You and your pathetic excuse for a coven is going to pay."
Jen raised her chin."We've heard that one before."
"And while you might find us pathetic," Eloise jumped in sliding her arm through Tilly's, "we find you sad. Traveling around doing the bidding of a group of witches that have no real power and no one cares about anymore."
That landed and Tilly felt a flare of anger come from the woman. But she turned her shrewd eyes back to Tilly and with a cold smile said, "If he bites you, know that he's using you. A vampire who drinks from a witch uses her magic to strengthen his bloodline."
"Leave," Jen growled.
But she kept going. "Your blood is the reason he wants you.
Your blood can ensure he continues his bloodline.
Didn't you know?" She asked looking around at all the women standing with Tilly.
"A vampire cannot sire another vampire without a witch's magical blood in their system.
And siring is what they do for sport in their unnaturally long, miserable lives. "
"What do you want?" Tilly's voice was low, her emotions were hovering at the surface and about to bubble over. Control right now was her only lifeline.
Astra lowered her voice to match Tilly's, her words only reaching tilly's ears. "I want you and your friends gone. Leave and we won't report your careless use of magic to The Grand Mother."
Tilly frowned. "Why us?"
"Because you are the reason witches have to hide. You are the reason dark magic is too often sought after. Go, and you won't be punished for your use of it. I can ensure a curse follows all of you for the remainder of your lives."
"We don't use dark magic."
Astra didn't respond with words. But her eyes said something else.
And something else in her spoke to Tilly; something darker. The soft body of an animal Astra forgot to feed reached across the small distance between the women and wedged itself between Tilly's ribs. It felt wild and raw. She swallowed and took a step back from its intensity.
"Go tighten your bun, Astra," Eloise said. "And you two," she pointed between Esther and Beatrice, "get personalities. Really starting to freak us out."
Then she and Jen turned Tilly in tandem, their backs now to the women as they ended the conversation.
Once they were gone, Tilly let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"How much of our souls would be tainted if we dabbled in dark magic?
" Jen asked as she watched over her shoulder as the trio descend on little groups like a malignant shadow.