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Authors: Tara Fuller

Perigee Moon (24 page)

BOOK: Perigee Moon
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I pulled it into my lap. It was the same, only in much better condition. The leather wasn’t worn and the binding was firm, intact. The pages were a beautiful cream color, the aged yellow gone. Alex leaned over and flipped to the back. Page after page were sketches of a girl. Not just any girl. Me. Clear as day. In some the charcoal was so recent it left smudge marks on my fingertips when I smoothed my hand across the page.

He leaned over to a small desk beside his bed and pulled out another handful of papers and handed them to me. At least twenty sketches, all of me. I couldn’t breathe.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “These are me? All of them?”

“Rowan I’ve been drawing you since I was eight years old,” he said.

My eyes slowly rose to meet his after looking at the dates.

“How?” It was all I could say.

“I don’t know. I’ve been having dreams about you for as long as I can remember. My mother always said I’d inherited some of her gifts, that these were some sorts of visions, but I was hesitant to believe it until the day I saw you with your grandfather outside. Then I knew it was true. I knew I hadn’t been dreaming about someone who didn’t exist. I knew because I was in love with you before I ever met you.”

“If that’s true then why did you try so hard to stay away from me?” I said, my brain starting to function again.

He took a deep breath and continued, “I told you my mother could see the future. She saw you too. And she saw what would happen to me if I didn’t stay away from you. I thought I could. I didn’t think any girl could ever have the power over me that you do. But I was naive. I promised her I’d try to stay away when the time came, but Mother knew better. She always knew that this would be my end. Even when I was too blind to see it.”

Through all of the unbelievable babble my brain was trying to process as reality, this rang true. Alex had always said it was dangerous for us to be together and it finally hit me with the weight of a wrecking ball.

“What do mean your end?”

He half smiled at me and my eyes locked with his icy blue gaze. “Rowan, my mother was a witch. She was hanged for it. They’ve always kept a close eye on me. Not just the town’s people, but also the elders in her coven. She was a high priestess. The seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. And that gave her great power. Enough power that the others in her coven were terrified, including my aunt. When my father was dying she became desperate. She wasn’t discrete and she threatened to expose them all. After enough time they took care of it. Just like they’ll take care of me when they find out I’m practicing and using the gateway.”

“Gateway?”

“My mother used a time travel spell to open a gateway when my father was sick. She was trying to find a cure for him. One that wouldn’t exist for centuries.”

“She didn’t find it in time.” I’d read the book. I already knew what had become of Alex’s father.

He shook his head. “After he died she kept it open. We traveled quite a lot together after that. I suppose it was her own way of escaping a reality that didn’t include my father. We even stayed for a year once. 2008. I attended a private school that year. That’s why I’m more accustomed to your way of speaking. Why I know things about history and books that aren’t a part of my world yet. And after she was gone I swore I would never go back. But when my Aunt fell ill I had to. At the time I had to do whatever was possible to keep her with me. She’s the only family I have left.” He grabbed my hands. “But now that she knows, Rowan, it’s even more dangerous. She helped have my mother killed. And if she feels that I’m putting her at risk, if she thinks I’m a risk to her plans, she’ll do the same to me.”

We stared at each other in silence for a few minutes after that. Me trying to find the right words or a way to wake up from this nightmare and Alex respectfully giving me time to decide.

Finally I took a shaky breath and Alex tensed in response.

“If this is all real. If I’m not about to wake up from some nightmare, then you have to come back with me. You have to come back and stay.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Yes it is. Unless…” I swallowed thickly. “Unless this is what you want. If you’d rather have this life.” I glanced around the empty room.

“Of course I want a life with you. You are everything to me. Can’t you see that? Can’t you
feel
it?” he said, his eyes bleary with tears, his voice breaking in two. “Rowan this spell…it’s not that simple. There are consequences. The time I get to spend with you comes with a price. When I’m in any time that’s not my own I don’t age. I can’t grow up with you, have a life with you if I stay there Rowan. And even if it weren’t for that I have responsibilities. I’m the only one that knows what Marion is capable of. If I just left her here…the things she could do, and
would
do to people…

He looked away. “I know I’m the only reason she hasn’t lost control. She knows if she wants my help that I won’t stand for hurting people. If I leave here we might be saving my life Rowan, but believe me when I say it will be at the cost of countless others.”

I picked at a lose thread on his thin bedspread. “I wish you were lying. I wish I were dreaming,” I whispered. “I don’t want this to be real.”

“Give me something of yours that I could never replicate,” Alex said, holding his hand out expectantly.

“Why?”

“Because tomorrow, whatever happens, I can’t have you believing that this wasn’t real.”

I glanced down at the amethyst birthstone ring that had been my mothers. I slipped it off and handed it to him, knowing that this one simple gesture meant that I trusted him completely.

I dropped it into his palm and he squeezed it with a smile. He walked over to his desk and jotted something down on a piece of paper then wrapped the ring inside and tucked it beneath the floorboard under the window.

“What are you doing?” I asked. My voice sounded foreign to me. And so did my body.

“Don’t you see Rowan? In three hundred years this will be your room. Your home was my home.”

My head pulsed with pain and my eyes fluttered in response. Something dark and painful slithered under my skin. What was happening to me? Thoughts were dancing circles in my mind. The time travel. The fact that I was a witch and it wasn’t even a choice. It wasn’t escapable. It was in my blood. My soul. And so was Alex. I couldn’t lose him like Mom. I couldn’t… I couldn’t…

“I can’t breathe,” I gasped.

“Rowan?” He pulled my hands away from my chest. “Rowan? Are you alright?”

I couldn’t answer anymore. I opened my mouth but my voice was lost. The room was spinning and going dark around the edges. It hurt. Everything hurt. I blinked to try to regain my bearings but it didn’t help. Alex’s voice was just a muffled sound in the distance now. The darkness was pulling me under. And it felt so good…I let go.

Chapter 20
 

Her power is stronger than I’d ever imagined. To be able to cross the gateway untrained, with no knowledge of what she really is. It’s unthinkable. Unless she had help. What spirit would be bound to those pages? Would know those spells? My mind reels with the amount of darkened doorways my mother opened with that book. The evils she pleaded with in an effort to save my broken father…Goddess what spirit has she set free? I feel I should be afraid to find out. And if Marion learns of her power and the spirit that aids her, then God help us all.

~ Alexander 1692

***

“Rowan.”
My eyelids twitched as the cool breath whispered against my face. “
Rowan,”
it whispered again, tickling my nose with a chill. I was somewhere in between sleep and consciousness. The colorful shapes and faces from my dream were fading into a swirling mass of light, being pulled away as the unfamiliar voice persistently danced across my face, coaxing me awake. I rolled over and buried my face into the cool fabric of my pillowcase and shivered. Why was it so freaking cold?

“Rowan!!!”
The scream whistled through the room like wind, blowing the blankets onto the floor. I instantly scrambled to sit up, drawing my legs up to my chest. My eyes scanned the room, peered through the dark of night. Wait…my room. I was back in my room. I could feel my heart pounding against my knees. A silvery shape danced across the room like a breeze, shifting and twisting into unfamiliar shapes. Terror swept through me and I couldn’t move.

“What do you want?” I meant to scream the words, but instead they escaped my lips in a frightened whisper. I sat paralyzed by fear as it moved towards me, twirling and pirouetting against the darkness like a shimmery mirage.

“Know yourself child,”
it whispered as it blew through my hair, its smoke-like tendrils curling around my neck. I yelped and squeezed my eyes shut as a pair of ice-cold lips brushed along my ear. “
Know your power if you are to save my son.”

“Go away!” This time I managed to scream with more force than I was expecting, causing the smoky shape to shrink back, its color flashing to an iridescent ice blue.

“Rowan? Are you alright?” Gram’s voice echoed across the room and in an instant the silvery blue shape swirled out the window and into the darkness. Within seconds the room had warmed to a normal temperature but it didn’t help the chill that ran bone-deep within me.

“Rowan?” Grams prodded again as she crossed the room.

I nodded, the blood returning to my face. The tension in my stomach began to uncoil and I folded my legs up into an Indian-style position. Obviously Grams hadn’t witnessed whatever that was. No way she’d be keeping her cool like this. And speaking of, what the hell was that? A ghost?

“How’s your head?” She eased down onto the bed, her eyes tainted with concern.

“My head?” My hand flew up to my head before I could stop myself. What was wrong with my head?

“Alex brought you home, had to carry you the whole way. Poor boy looked like he was about to collapse himself by the time he got you here. He said you hit your head and passed out,” she said, bewildered. “Is that really what happened?”

“Oh, yeah.” God I was bad at this. I had never been a very good liar, and never really needed to be before Mom died.

“You can talk to me you know.” She squinted at me as if she were trying to pry the truth out of me with her eyes. Mom used to warn me about that look. “I know I’m not your mom, but I want you to know you can trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

She stroked my hair. “Your dad is going to take you back when he comes out here and finds you damaged.”

“I seriously doubt that he would care Grams,” I said. Her questioning eyes raked over my face as she put her hand over mine.

“What’s wrong sweetheart?” Her voice was so thick with concern it made tears spring to my eyes. It was the way Mom would sound when I’d come home from a really crappy day at school.

I sucked in a deep breath and let the words spill carelessly from my lips. “He doesn’t even care enough to call me, Grams.” I swallowed thickly as she watched me.

“It’s not easy for him you know,” she said. I knew she’d only meant to comfort me but all that sprang up inside was anger.

“It’s hard on all of us. Not just him,” I snapped, instantly regretting the tone I’d taken with Grams. It wasn’t her fault that my dad had deserted me. “I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s hard enough to lose...” I hesitated for a moment before I finally choked out, “to lose her. It doesn’t help that he’s completely turned his back on me.”

Grams reached out and ran her hand over my head to smooth my hair, and I stifled a sob.

“I know honey. He’ll come around. Just be patient. I think you just scared him when you…” She glanced down to my wrists and closed her eyes. “He didn’t know how to handle it honey.”

I shrugged. There was no point in arguing with her. Besides, I had plenty of other crap to deal with in my life right now. Like a ghost haunting my room and a boyfriend who, if I was remembering right, claimed he was a witch from 1692. Not to mention my own supernatural powers. Couldn’t forget about those. At this point I was just waiting for a vampire to crawl through my window and finish me off. Yeah, I had enough on my plate at the moment.

She smiled wide and it warmed me from the inside out. “Promise to be more careful and learn to take better care of yourself.” She motioned to my head.

“I know. I guess maybe I wasn’t cut out for hiking in the woods. I do better in malls. Leave it to me to find a boyfriend who likes to traipse around in a national forest for fun,” I said with a laugh.

BOOK: Perigee Moon
10.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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