Embrace (11 page)

“If you’re so innocent, then why didn’t you tell me about these powers, about being a witch?”

“Because you may not have wanted them, and once you know what you are, you have little choice but to embrace them.”

“That’s stupid. How can I choose if I don’t know my options?”

“Some people never know, and they live long, happy, normal lives.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyes locked on the ceiling. “Had I known you were going to embrace your powers with anger and vengeance, I would have told you. You could have killed yourself.”

“I didn’t embrace them with anger and vengeance.” I’d just tapped into those feelings to help kick-start the spell.

His jaw set tight. His voice strained. “The only thing coming from you was negative emotions. Don’t deny it. Your magic tasted like old pennies. You have to promise me you won’t do any more spells until you’re shown how.”

Seeing as I had almost roasted myself alive, it was a promise I could live with.

“I—”

Isaac put his finger to my lips. “From this moment forward, your promise is your word. With your powers awakened, your word is binding. Be sure to mean what you say.”

I swallowed audibly. “You mean if I said to my dad, ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ and I’m lying, I might actually die.”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

I studied Isaac’s face for any sign that he was joking, waiting for him to say,
Of course you won’t drop dead
. He never did. All I saw was sincerity, understanding, and wisdom I might never have myself. Either he was a very good actor, or he was telling the truth. The calm serenity I’d felt at the lighthouse was back, and it encircled me like a down blanket. I realized I had always been able to feel Isaac’s magic.

I reached out and touched his hand. The shock of electricity—power—didn’t surprise me this time. The tingly sensation I’d felt whenever Isaac touched me traveled up my arm and through my body.

“Do you feel that?” I asked.

“I’ve been able to feel your magic since the day we met.”

“Why is it I don’t always feel the pinch of electricity?”

“That would be our powers colliding. After the night at the bonfire, I’ve been using my magic to hide it from you.”

That was why he always paused before he kissed me. It made sense. I nodded. “But you couldn’t hide it completely. I could still feel your magic trickle through me.”

He raised his free hand up and smoothed my hair. His touch was warm, minus any jolt of power. “I didn’t want to block everything. I’ve been careful to only withdraw enough of my powers to keep us from getting shocked.”

And then I wondered again how much of what I felt when I was with Isaac was our powers playing with my head. Maybe what I deemed as affection was nothing more than magic twisting my thoughts into lust. I wanted him to be telling me the truth. That he was a good witch. That he didn’t use magic to harm the people around him. That once Kaylee was better, we’d go back to being a couple. While my heart begged me not to pursue the conversation, my mouth spilled my fears.

“That means what I feel when I’m with you isn’t real. It’s just a trick of our magic making me, I don’t know, believe I feel one way when I don’t.”

Isaac’s smile reached his eyes. “Oh, I’d guess our attraction to each other is some sort of magic, but nothing to do with our powers messing with our heads.”

He’d said
our.
That meant I wasn’t the only who had fallen quickly for someone I’d just met.

Isaac leaned closer to me, but I pulled away. There was one more thing I needed from him before I’d let myself become too excited.

“Prove to me that you didn’t put Kaylee in the hospital, and I promise I won’t use my magic until I’m shown how.”

He inclined his head. “Deal.”

A tinge of guilt overtook me. As I sat arguing with Isaac—possibly the only person who could help me—Kaylee remained in the hospital, held captive by a curse the doctors could do nothing about.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“I prove to you that I’m telling the truth, and then we find out how Kaylee is being trapped by the curse. Once we know that, we can break it. Then we find who’s targeting her.” Isaac stood, pulling me to my feet with him. When I didn’t willingly follow, he added, “I promise what I’m about to show you will be all the proof you need.”

It was a bold statement to make, only there didn’t seem to be any consequence if he was lying.

“Cross your heart and hope to die?” I asked in a teasing tone, but if we really were bound to our word and he was on the up and up, then he’d repeat the words back to me.

His expression hardened: a man on a mission or a man about to hang himself. I waited.

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” He even drew an X over his chest.

I figured he had a damn good card up his sleeve, and I couldn’t wait to find out what it was. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 9

Truth

B
Y
T
HE
T
IME
W
E
reached Isaac’s house, the sky had ripped open. Rain pelted the hood of the Jeep, bouncing off the metal with a hollow
ting
. I covered my head with my arms and ran to the front door behind him.

Once inside, Isaac shook his head, and a spray of water flew off his hair. We wiped our shoes on the front rug and headed to the basement stairs. A light had been left on; its amber glow seeped toward the stairs. Vanilla and spice beckoned to me as it had the last time I’d been here. Isaac led the way, and as he passed the first nook in the stone wall, its candle ignited.

I stopped to stare at it, then at the next and the next as each candle awakened at his passing. When Isaac reached the bottom of the stairs, he glanced over his shoulder and asked, “Are you coming?”

I descended the remaining steps to see Josh sitting on the floor with books all around him.

My gaze met Isaac’s. Josh knew what Isaac was. He knew about magic and curses and what ailed Kaylee. He had to or he wouldn’t have been there. By the amount of reading material sprawled around the room, it was obvious they were searching for a cure. I didn’t know what to say. Isaac broke the silence.

“We good?”

I nodded.

“We’re three strong now,” he said to Josh. “You find anything?”

“No. There are too many curses with the same symptoms. It’ll take forever to perform each of the counter spells.” Josh looked at me. “Hi, Madison. I take it Isaac explained everything to you?”

“Not yet.” Isaac touched the iron ring that circled the walls. In response, the ring glowed orange for a couple of seconds. A low hum reverberated through the room. “I’m reinforcing my protection spells, or
wards
, to use the correct magical term,” he explained. “I really couldn’t’ve built this room better if I did it myself. The stone floor and brick walls are all made from the earth and help maintain the strength of the spells. The iron ring distributes it evenly around the room, not to mention keeps unwanted visitors out.”

“Unwanted visitors?” I repeated and wondered, if school had an iron ring around it, would it keep Paige out?

“Some forces are allergic to iron,” Josh said, closing the book in front of him.

“Of course,” I muttered, not really understanding and still waiting for my new knowledge about the powers to fully sink in. “Are you expecting trouble? Is that why you have the, what did you call them?”

“Wards,” Isaac said. “No, I wasn’t expecting trouble. Most of them were for practice.”

“And now?” I asked, not missing his use of past tense.

“Now they will be put to the test. My intention ward will stop anyone with ill intent from being able to come down here.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “How can a spell know what someone is planning and then stop them from marching right into your room and doing it?”

Isaac took a moment to answer. “Say you wanted to steal from me. The ward would sense this and put up an invisible barrier. You’d be able to see the stairs, even think there’s nothing unusual about them, but you wouldn’t be able to cross the threshold. A wall of magic would stop you.”

“It’d be like walking into a sliding glass door you didn’t realize was closed,” Josh added.

I cocked my head to the side as I considered this. “Does it only stop those who have powers?”

Isaac shook his head. “It works on everyone.”

“And the other wards?” I asked, fascinated by what magic could do.

“The concealment ward will hide our powers from others. They won’t be able to sense our magic. There are a few others as well.”

I nodded. It was a lot to absorb in one afternoon, but after witnessing the type of magic Isaac could do, I didn’t need to question his ability to cast these wards.

“And you’re a witch?” I asked Josh.

“Not as strong as Isaac. Both his parents have powers. My mom doesn’t.”

I walked over to Josh and placed my hand on his bare arm. Sure enough, a jolt of power, like static electricity, shot into my hand.

I looked back at Isaac. “And your parents practice magic? Like family hocus-pocus time?”

Isaac remained near the wall. I got the feeling he was studying me, trying to gauge my reaction to all of this. “They taught me what I know and are members of a coven in Amesbury. They don’t use their powers unless they have to.”

“What about Kaylee? Does she have powers?”

Josh shook his head. He looked miserable, and his guilt at not being able to help her coursed through me. It was awful, choking me from the inside.

I hugged myself and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “How long have you known about each other?”

Isaac sat next to me. “Since the day I moved in. The energy in the air when our fathers shook hands was too powerful to ignore. After Josh passed the test of my intention ward, I invited him to add one of his own. It allows him to enter the basement when I’m not here. It also gives him a safe haven, should he ever need one.”

The day I’d helped Isaac set up his room, he’d been glad that his mom hadn’t liked the paint for the dining room. He’d said it had given him an excuse to get me down here
.
“Is that why you were happy to have a reason to invite me into your bedroom, to test my intentions?”

Isaac smiled sheepishly. “Past events have taught me to be careful and probably less trusting than most. I had to be sure you weren’t pretending not to know about your powers.”

There’s a test I passed with flying colors. If only English class were that easy.

“Does anyone else I know have powers?” I knew the answer, though, before Isaac even replied. It seemed so obvious now.

“Paige,” Isaac said. “And she has little to no control over hiding it. Her powers ooze from her pores like puss from an open wound.”

“And someone at the bonfire was using,” Josh added. “The air reeked of it.”

“Using?” I asked.

“Magic,” Isaac explained. “That’s what you call it when someone casts a spell.”

“Oh. So you mean Paige was using at the bonfire, don’t you?”

Isaac shook his head. “She was using when she introduced herself, so I know what her magic feels and smells like. She’s not a natural witch, which is probably why her powers reminded me of worms or fish. The magic we smelled later that night, though, made me think of rotten eggs or sulfur. Besides, Paige’s powers definitely aren’t strong enough to give off the type of energy we felt.”

I would have preferred that answer to be,
Yes, it was Paige,
because that would have meant we knew who hurt Kaylee. We could demand she make things right. Once she did, I’d yank out a handful of dark red hair to make myself feel better.

“Does she know about you and Josh?” I asked.

“Me, yes,” Isaac replied, “but I don’t think she realizes Josh has powers too.”

It was a relief to finally have some answers. Isaac’s powers had to be the secret behind his throaty laughs and sly smile. They were the reason he chose his words carefully. There was one important question left. “How do we help Kaylee?”

“Josh, Paige, and then you,” Isaac said. “It had me wondering how much power is in Gloucester. Most people never discover what they are. Hell, even those who have embraced their powers know they need to keep them a secret. It’s not something people wear on their sleeves. It would be the Salem Witch Trials all over again; only this time it would be death by lethal injection instead of hanging or burning. Always remember, people fear what they don’t understand.”

I would never forget the image of Isaac standing in my bedroom doorway with his hand extended in front of him, canceling my out-of-control spell as if he were blowing out a candle. He’d bound me without so much as a word. Moved me from where I’d stood to my bed without touching me. People had a very good reason to fear power like that. In the wrong hands, it could be dangerous.

“We’ve been digging into our past,” Josh said. “Isaac’s was the easiest. His parents had already researched their family, so he just had to ask them. I was able to trace my family back to Gerald and Margaret Corey, who lived in Salem in the seventeen hundreds.”

“And they were witches?”

“We know they were accused. Considering my father and I have powers, I’d have to say at least one of them was a witch.”

“We did a little digging into your mom’s past too,” Isaac confessed.

“My mom?” I asked. “How would you know where to begin?”

“Your dad mentioned her family was from the area that day Chase told me she passed away.” Isaac pulled out a notebook. “We believe your mom’s family goes back to the Salem Bassets. We can’t be sure without the names of your great-grandparents, however.”

“Do you think she possessed the powers?”

“They’re passed down through blood, so it would make sense that she did.”

“But wouldn’t I have known if my mom could move things with her mind?” I thought back to when Mom had been alive, and I couldn’t think of anything magical that had happened. Objects hadn’t moved by themselves. Fires hadn’t started without manual intervention. And the only scent that had lingered around my mom was the jasmine perfume she’d wear.

Isaac shrugged. “She may not have known what she was.”

They gave me a few minutes to process it all. If what Isaac and Josh were saying was true, a lot of people in Gloucester, maybe even Essex County, could have powers. It was a scary thought, really, knowing that your friends and neighbors could do terrible things to one another. What would tip the scale in favor of the good guys?

“When we came down here, you said we were three strong,” I said. “What does that mean?”

Isaac answered, “A spell performed by a coven is always stronger than a spell cast by a single witch. It means our coven has the power of three.”

“So, how do we help Kaylee?”

“That’s what I don’t understand.” Isaac rubbed the back of his neck as he studied a spot on the wall near the stairs. “This morning, when I was at the hospital, I couldn’t help noticing the curse is as strong as it was on Saturday, like it was just cast.”

“How’s that possible?” From the reading I’d done in the morning, I knew a curse’s power came from its source. Kaylee had been cursed three days ago. Since then, her parents hadn’t wanted a lot of people seeing her like this. They’d requested limited visitors, and the only ones they approved were in this room. So the person who did this to Kaylee couldn’t have gotten near her—not even to visit.

“We don’t know.” Josh punched the stone floor; blood trickled from his knuckles. “Not one of these books says it’s possible without some cursed object holding its victim prisoner.”

“You mean like a hex bag or voodoo doll?”

Isaac nodded. “It can be anything, but Josh took her clothes from the hospital, and you have her purse and backpack.”

Josh’s head fell forward into his hands. “The only things she has that are hers are the pajamas her parents brought her and the necklace you gave her.”

A wave of dread pushed through me.

I had done this to Kaylee.

I swallowed the scream building in my throat and said, “I know what it is.”