Eye of the Storm (The Charmed) (7 page)

“Sorry to hear that.” Jaden said.

“Yeah, well, thank god it ended when it did. One more date and I would have ended up in either the hospital or the police station. I couldn’t do the badger spell on a kid at school.”

Jaden was mildly relieved. He hated the guy but agonized over screwing around with his will.

“The thing I want to know is, if I can turn someone into a badger and avoid a Bender’s intrusion for thirteen years, why can’t I avoid a spell to make the mind slip?”

“That’s confusing for sure. Wait a minute. Do you think a Bender could find out what happened to us?”

“Yep, it’s what they do.”

“Do you think you could ask….”

“Nope. I refuse to see him while the parents are out of town. We’ll have to get someone else. Mine will just report it to my parents.”

“Good point. I wish my dad was here, he’d probably know how. I’ll try to find one.” Jaden sighed.

After dinner Jaden drove Kayla home. Since it hadn’t been a date, there would be no walking along the lake.

“Are you sure you want to stay another summer alone in there?”

Kayla paused at the car door, just before opening it. “Yeah, I’m used to it and besides, I’m not exactly a prisoner anymore. Thanks for dinner, Jaden.” Kayla turned and jumped out of Jaden’s truck.

He watched her get all the way inside the house before he drove home, information weighing on his mind.

Kayla leaned against the door and looked into her cold dark house. She sighed, dropped her purse onto the side table and walked into the living room. A movement caught her eye. She threw a field of energy to the chair by the window but the something was too fast and Kayla found herself pushed up against the wall by a force of energy so powerful she found herself gasping for breath.

“Hello, Kayla.”

“What are you doing here?” Mr. Taylor, her so called therapist or Bender was standing a foot away from her. The house was dark and nobody would hear her scream.

“Who was that boy you were with?”

“Nobody.”

“Was it Chase? Is he back in town?”

“No. I don’t know where he is.”

“But you were betrothed to him, you must know.” Mr. Taylor was a short heavyset man who sweat constantly and was always dabbing his bald head with a red cloth. Today he wore suspenders, suit pants and a short sleeved buttoned down white shirt that already had sweat marks under the arms. Kayla despised him. He walked right up to her and enunciated every word he said. “You will let me know when he gets back, won’t you?”

Kayla was always leery of him. She knew that the wrong words would cause anger so she said the only thing she could. “Of course.”

Mr. Taylor dabbed at his forehead, smiled and walked out the front door, slamming it as he left.

Kayla was instantly released from the energy force. She ran to the front door and tried to open it. She couldn’t. Kayla stood in the doorway and did the first thing that came to mind, screamed. She slid down the door and cried for a while. When she felt she was composed she stood and said, “I want to go to a safe place.” Kayla’s world upended and spun quickly. She saw a whirring of objects and wind hit her face. Kayla closed her eyes so she wouldn’t get sick. When she felt her world come back to normal she cautiously opened her eyes. She was standing on Jaden’s front doorstep. Kayla looked around and knocked frantically. Her heart raced as she waited for Jaden to come to the door and it hammered in her chest until she felt she might faint, worried he might not be here since it had been an hour ago since he dropped her. She looked around and finally heard the sound of the door unlatching.

Jaden opened the door in a pair of jeans and no shirt. He was holding a sandwich in his left hand. “Kayla? What’s wrong?”

Kayla looked around. “Can I come in?”

Jaden stepped back to let her in and then shut the door, peering at the dark as he did. “Come on in, I was just making a snack.”

Kayla followed him into the one story home to the back where the kitchen was. “How come guys can eat so much? I mean, we just had dinner.”

“I was a football player, remember? We eat like every hour.” He looked at her and narrowed his eyes. “What happened?”

Kayla began fidgeting and pacing. “When I went inside my house, the bender was there.”

“What!?” Jaden abandoned his sandwich and moved closer to Kayla.

“I’m okay, he just scared me.”

“What did he want?”

“That’s the odd part, he thought you were Chase.”

“Chase? What the hell?”

“Yeah, I know. Thing is, I don’t talk about any of you. I just sit there while he tries spell after spell to get into my head.”

“Maybe he’s one of them, one of the people who tried to attack us. Did you see him at the hotel that day?”

“I saw strangers and Chase’s parents, that’s all. The look on their faces was trippy, that’s where my memory goes away. It feels like we left there and came back here but that was over two weeks ago. Where have we been, Jaden? Why was someone able to put a spell on me when a Bender can’t?”

Jaden sat down in the chair opposite Kayla in the front room.

“Does the Bender know you came here? Did he see you leave?”

“No. I couldn’t open the front door. It was like I was a prisoner all over again, like I hadn’t turned eighteen. I focused my mind to go to a safe place from inside my front door.” She wiped a tear away from the corner of her eye.

Jaden swallowed hard. “You what?”

“I was locked in, I panicked.”

Jaden’s heart did a roll. He reached out and clasped her hand. She felt safe here, with him, but this was no time to let on how happy it made him. “Good, looks like you’re staying with me then.” He gave her a smile.

“Are you sure I’m not imposing?”

He squeezed her hand. “Kayla, we’re both in this together, besides, I hate being home alone, and it’s boring.”

Kayla smiled. “Thanks Jaden. I’ll get set up on the couch then.”

“Nope. We have three bedrooms. I’ll go change the bed in the spare. Don’t go anywhere.”

Jaden let go of Kayla’s hand and moved into the hallway to the left of the kitchen to where the bedrooms were. He plucked some fresh sheets out of the hall closet and went to work cleaning up the room Chase usually stayed in. Jaden didn’t want to be selfish but couldn’t help it, he didn’t want Kayla to know Chase slept here most nights. After the bed was changed he removed everything resembling Chase from the room and placed it in a box. He took the box to his room, he felt guilty but the last thing Kayla needed was to feel emotional about Chase.

He walked back out and saw Kayla looking at the pictures on the wall in the hallway. She stopped at one, Jaden peeked over her shoulder and laughed.

“What is it?” Kayla was looking at a picture of feet coming up out of the water next to a boat.

“We went to Montana one summer. Chase pushed me out of the boat. Dad took the picture.”

“Guys only trip?”

“Yeah, it’s only ever been us though. With Chase’s parents leaving all the time it was always just us.”

“How come Chase never dated much?” She was looking at another picture of Chase and Jaden smiling. “I mean, I used to think it was because he was supposed to…uh, were um…”

“Supposed to be married?”

“Yeah. Now I know it’s not that, so why didn’t he? I mean, you dated all the time.”

“Well, yeah…I dated a bit, but not all of it was real.”

She gave him a quizzical look.

“A lot of the girls I dated just wanted to be near Chase. Once I caught on I tapered off with the dating.”

“You dated Celia for a while.”

“Yeah, she was around for a while.”

“Two years Jaden, that’s more than a while. What happened?”

“Kind of just grew apart. Anyway, I made the bed up, come on.”

Kayla realized she had just made Jaden a bit uncomfortable and regretted asking.

Jaden showed Kayla the room and the bathroom. They said goodnight and Jaden went next door to his room. He lay in bed that night listening to the sounds of cars going by. Celia had been the hardest hit on him. After two years of dating she had approached Chase and told him she was in love with him. It was the story of his life. He couldn’t resent Chase, he was his family, but it got tiring always being compared to someone who everyone thought was perfect. His thoughts drifted to Kayla, he worried she would never get over him enough to see what else life had to offer. His mind lingered over her in the next room. Why did Kayla know so much about them but they knew very little about her? To find out she had been alone every summer was a shock. Kayla came into their circle around ten, so she had been alone for four years before that. What did it do to a person to have to face that every year, and at such a young age, and what her uncle had done to her? Jaden closed his eyes. It had been a long day of mulling things over.

S
am walked into the very busy Pike Place Market. Vendors selling their wares lined the aisles. Jewelry, hair ribbon extensions, hats, clothes, shoes, paintings, you name it and it was there. He glanced to the left across the street. There was a person looking at him, he turned his head away. Maybe it was just his mind playing tricks. The guy was sipping on some coffee. He looked at the store and noticed it was Starbucks, the very first store with a line going out the door and down the sidewalk. Looked to be a tourist spot here. Sam darted through the crowd just in case coffee man was indeed trailing him. Sam saw what he was looking for. Just to the right of the fish throwers was an old set of rickety stairs. He jogged down them two at a time, continuing to another floor below until he spotted what he was looking for. The book store was located in the back right corner, tucked almost out of sight. He walked in, turned the door sign to closed, and locked the door.

An old woman came out from a doorway in the back that was covered by beads. “Sam, thank heavens! Hurry into the back before someone sees you.” She motioned for him to switch the light off and Sam darted through the small eclectic store. He spied books under glass on the verge of destruction, stones were in bowls located throughout the shelving. Posters of old rock icons littered the walls. A tapestry hung behind the counter in blues and reds and somewhere, he could tell a sprig of incense was burning the familiar scent of pine.

Sam moved the beads aside and walked into the back of the store. This area was larger than the front. Amanda, the storekeeper was waiting at the couch located just inside the open doorway. He looked around, this was clearly her home. He wondered if her lease included her living here, he seriously doubted it. The walls were covered in red and orange paint and off to the left he could see a kitchen with a small table overlooking the view of the water. To the left of the kitchen was a door he could only guess was her bedroom. Sam sat in a chair opposite Amanda. A large round table separated them and on that table sat a large beaten leather-bound book with a symbol Sam recognized, the symbol of Occlumency.

“Where did you find it, Amanda?”

She and Sam went way back. She was the last of the group his parents formed that studied, ate and breathed the affliction called Occlumency. When he took the fanaticism up in high school after his parents died, she had kept an eye on him.

“I didn’t find it, it found me.” Her eyes sparkled.

Sam stopped and lowered his glasses at her. “Say what?”

“I ordered a box from overseas of old books. The owner died and the widow was unloading all his books. I told her I’d take whatever she had. I don’t know how she managed to be on the end of the phone talking to me when there are a million book shops around the world.” She scratched her head. “Guess it was fate. I’m too old to chase an urban legend anyway…” She trailed off staring out the window.

“What if I told you it wasn’t?”

Amanda turned her intense light blue eyes toward Sam. Years of wariness etched in her features, line upon line of weathering on her face, her gray hair a mop of curls and frizz. Amanda stood, her bracelets jangling at the motion. She wrapped her red shawl around her shoulders as if a chill entered the room. She walked in soft leather moccasins toward the large window overlooking the water and traffic below.

“Then maybe it’s not an accident the book ended up here. Have you been followed, Sam?”

“Possibly.”

“Then I would tell you to take that book and run.”

“Don’t you want to hear?”

“Sam, I chased that dream for so long, I forgot to have a family. If it’s true as you say, then that book will only bring me more unhappiness. Conceal it. Look at the contents as soon as possible because you never know who might be right around the corner.”

Sam shook his head. “Then thank you.” Sam closed his eyes, placed a hand over the book. To the unobservant eye, it was now The Shining by Stephen King. To Sam though, he knew to handle it with care. These pages would crumble from very little movement, he placed the book in his bag.

“Is there a back way out?”

Amanda turned from the window. “Yes, follow me.” She motioned for him to follow her. She walked to the door by the kitchen and opened it to a small bedroom. She walked into the adjoining bathroom and pointed at the bathtub, a door appeared just behind it. She stepped back. “Whoever opens that door need only to think of where he wants to be and they will.”