Confined (A Tethered Novel, Book 3) (8 page)

I had Callie text me directions to her neighbor's house.
Even though I’d been to her house before, I had no idea how to get back there
or if the neighbor she was babysitting for was next door or down the street.

Turns out, it was down the street a little ways.

I pulled up to the cedar-shingled, two-story house and cut
my engine. This house was the American Dream complete with a white picket fence
in the front and a gorgeous lawn. Knowing that the McNeelys already had one boy
and one girl added to this American Dream image in my head.

Standing at the blue front door, I knocked and waited for
someone to answer.

“Someone’s here,” a little boy shouted. I remembered his
name was Brayden. “I think it’s your friend. Want me to let her in?”

I couldn’t hear Callie’s response—it was muffled—but seconds
later, the front door opened, and there was the dark-haired little boy I
remembered from the beach standing in front of me.

“Hi, Callie said she’ll be out in a minute. She’s in the
bathroom, pooping,” Brayden said without a trace of a smile.

I drew my eyebrows up at his bluntness. “Okay.”

“I am not!” Callie shouted as she came around the corner
from somewhere. There was a large smirk on her face, and her cheeks were tinted
pink. “Stinker, you lie so bad!” she said, rubbing the top of his head. “Go
help your sister put the popcorn in the microwave, please.”

“Ha-ha.” He laughed. “Fine.”

He ran around the corner and slipped in his socks on the
hardwood floor. Why was it kids always ran everyplace they went? And when did I
lose that energy? I sure could use it now.

“No running in the house! I don’t think your parents want to
come home to a little boy with broken bones,” Callie shouted after him. “Good
grief, he’s a handful sometimes.”

“I can imagine,” I said. I stepped inside and closed the
door behind me. The smell of fresh paint wafted to my nose, and I noticed how
glossy the front door actually was. “Did they just paint their door?”

Callie nodded. “Yeah, I like it. It used to be a shade of
yellow, but I think the blue goes well with everything. They even painted the
ceiling of the porch too.”

“It’s nice, but I bet the door looked good as yellow,” I
said, glancing up at the ceiling while thinking how strange it was that they
had painted it the same color as the door.

“I thought so too, but Mrs. McNeely has been talking with
Twila Van Rooyen—the old lady at Fisherman’s Brew who makes all the Hoodoo
spells in town—about getting rid of the negative energy and spirits she thought
were following her around and causing a string of bad luck.”

We walked through the small foyer and cut a left into a
kitchen/dining room area. It was beautiful, as expected. Brayden and the little
girl I remembered from the beach were in the kitchen banging their popcorn
bowls on the counter, counting down with the microwave timer.

“What does the color blue have to do with that?” I asked in
a low voice so the kids wouldn’t hear, in case they didn’t know their mother
dealt with a Hoodoo Conjurer on occasion.

“It’s called Haint Blue, and it’s actually supposed to
confuse evil spirits and keep them at bay. Lots of people in town have their
front doors, their windowsills, and even the ceiling to their porches painted
that color. Some even have it throughout the inside of the house as well.”

“Huh, so does Twila Van Rooyen do Hoodoo for a lot of the
townsfolk as well as the Elementals?” I asked, whispering the last word lower
than all the others.

Callie nodded. “Yeah, she’s known by the locals as the
Voodoo Queen. Even though we both know what she does is not Voodoo, but Hoodoo.
Locals don’t care about that though. All they care about is whether or not the
spell she gave them works and staying on her good side.”

I was shocked. Soul Harbor was not the innocent Southern
town I’d initially thought it was. It had secrets everyone was in on—except the
tourists.

“Do the locals know about Elementals as well?”

The timer on the microwave beeped, and Brayden raced Payton
to open it. Brayden ripped the bag open and began pouring it into the two bowls
they’d set out.

“No, they have no need to know about us,” Callie said.

The kids began arguing loudly over who had more in their
bowl, and Callie walked over to them. She placed both of their bowls on the
counter, and stared at them intensely to make sure they were indeed even.

“They look the same to me,” she said. “Who wants cheese on
theirs?”

Both of the kids shouted, “I do!” at the same time. Callie
reached into the little cabinet above the stove, pulled out a small blue and
white bottle of something, and began to sprinkle it on the kids’ popcorn.

“There, now, Payton, let’s go watch your movie. Brayden, are
you watching too or are you playing video games?” Callie asked.

“Video games. I’m not watching
The Little Mermaid
!”
he said, sounding so offended and disgusted I laughed out loud.

“All right,” Callie said. “I’ll be in the living room if you
need me.”

Brayden scooped his bowl off the counter and headed to
wherever his video games were.

“Have you ever seen
The Little Mermaid
?” Payton asked
me, her eyes large and excited. “I haven’t. This is my first time ever. I love
mermaids!”

“I have. It was one of my favorites growing up,” I said.

“Who’s your favorite Disney princess?” Payton asked me as
she popped a piece of popcorn into her mouth.

I felt like she was testing me in some way, because she
continued to stare at me as she chewed, waiting for my answer. I’d never been
interrogated by a little girl before. It took all I had to keep my face
serious.

“Belle, from
Beauty and the Beast
,” I finally
answered after a little thought.

We started toward what I presumed to be the living room.
Payton walked beside me with her big bowl of popcorn in her little hands.

“Why?” she asked me.

I glanced at Callie and noticed her large grin. My smile
practically mirrored it.

“Umm, well, because she was the only princess with brown
hair like mine, and she loved to read as much as I do,” I said, hoping my
answer would suffice and the questions would stop.

Payton smiled. She was missing one of her bottom teeth, and
stuck her tongue through the little gap when she grinned.

“I like Belle too. And I like to read,” she said. “Come on.
Let’s go watch. You can sit by me too.” She raced ahead of us and plopped down
in the center of the couch, spilling a little of her popcorn from the bowl and
scurrying to toss it back in.

Callie turned the DVD player and TV on. I sat on the couch
beside Payton, not thinking that this was how I was going to be spending my
babysitting time with Callie.

“We don’t really have to watch the whole movie,” Callie said
to me as she sat down on Payton’s other side.

“Yes you do,” Payton said. “My mama says girls need romance
in their lives.”

Callie and I laughed at the same time.

“Romance, huh?” Callie asked. “And when does your mama say
that to you?”

“When she’s mad at my daddy for forgettin’ one of her
special days, and she has to see Miss Carrie at the bank gettin’ flowers from
her new boyfriends all the time for no reason,” Payton said around a mouthful
of popcorn. “She tells me that then.”

“Oh,” Callie said with a laugh.

Kids were so funny. No wonder she babysat these two; they
were entertainment.

Callie and I ended up sitting through the entire
Little
Mermaid
movie and then
Beauty and the Beast
, because I had said it
was my favorite. “All right, time to go play outside,” Callie said to Payton as
she turned the TV off. “Go tell Brayden
nicely
that I said he has to
turn off the video games and play outside too, please.”

“Okay,” she said as she ran down the hall.

I followed Callie back to the kitchen.

“Did you enjoy the Disney movie marathon?” Callie asked as
she set Payton’s empty popcorn bowl in the sink.

“Honestly, I can’t believe the message in them targeted
toward little girls. I mean, in one she gives up everything about her—everything
she loves most—to be with some guy she barely knows. And in the other, she
falls in love with a complete jerk who treats her like crap. I don’t know what
I ever saw in those movies,” I said.

Callie chuckled. “That’s not what they’re about. They’re
about sacrificing everything you have for that one chance at true love and
finding love in a person who has lived without it for so long.”

I scrunched up my face. I could see her point, but still,
the Beast locked her in her bedroom!

“I don’t know. I think we might have to agree to disagree on
this one,” I said.

“I can do that,” Callie agreed. “So, are we still on for
shopping?”

“Absolutely. I have no clue what to wear to this,” I
admitted.

Tightness entered my stomach as indecision squirmed through
my mind about the initiation. I’d been making a mental list of the pros and
cons of becoming initiated. So far, the list was short, on both sides.

Pros:

No
more tether.

I
would be able to tap into my magick.

I
could leave whenever I wanted.

Cons:

I’d
be stuck in Soul Harbor if I wanted to continue using my magick.

I’d
let people down that I cared about if I left after.

I swallowed hard and pasted a smile on my face when I
noticed Callie staring at me from across the kitchen.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I nodded.

“The McNeelys should be back any minute.”

“That’s fine. I’m in no rush,” I muttered.

And I wasn’t.