Chapter Four
Amelia
Another headache kicked in, so I napped before dinner. My dreams were disturbing, more unsettling than usual, even though not a lot happened in this last dream, aside from Kali getting all blushy-faced over a hottie. Oh, and losing the rag with his wife. Boundaries, Kali.
Still, I felt more connected to her than ever. She had lost her mother, too. She also felt ostracised because of mistakes her father had made. How could I not relate to her? I carried guilt because I couldn’t remember my mother’s face unless I saw it in a photograph. I felt alone because my family members made decisions that kept me out of the loop. I had been in danger for perhaps my entire life, and not one of them had seen fit to warn me. They preferred to treat me like a child incapable of comprehending the situation. Even now, they weren’t talking. I still didn’t know where my grandfather was or how he had managed to fake my grandmother’s death certificate. I didn’t even know if I was still in danger. I was as frustrated as Kali.
She, however, was determined to redeem herself. I couldn’t disagree with that sentiment.
All of the talk of darkness and black magic sickened me. Kali—and I—had felt true fear in the dreams, and the memory of that sensation followed me around all evening, lingering in the background.
Byron and Nathan were both lost in their own thoughts at dinner, and I felt so alone that I thought about the spirit board again. What if Nathan had been wrong? What if Mémère really wanted me to use it to contact her? I had to try, but I also had to make sure nobody would interrupt me.
Byron excused himself quickly from the dinner table, barely meeting my eyes as he said goodnight. Nathan wasn’t much better, and I could see he was preoccupied with thoughts of Perdita again, which didn’t surprise me. He had become pretty one dimensional since he’d discovered his mate.
Left alone at the table, I found it hard to force food past the lump in my throat. The night was silent, and all I had was a wolfhound and a view of an empty, dark garden. Shadows licked the window, and I had second thoughts about the spirit board. In my dreams, I knew what magic felt like. Okay, so maybe magic wasn’t real, but the darkness Kali had felt had crept along my spine, too, and I grew wary at the idea of messing about with it.
I stood, almost falling as my knees suddenly buckled. Stabbing pains in my head had crippled me night after night, but I usually managed to cover the agony. This time, I struggled to breathe, gasping for breath as an invisible sledgehammer pounded at my skull.
“Christ,” I groaned, half-crawling up the stairs and hoping nobody would see me.
Half-hoping they would.
I made it to my room without passing out. Something was definitely happening to me. Whether it was a brain tumour or something mystical, I needed help. I had wanted to talk to Nathan about the dreams and explain everything, but I couldn’t put into words how disturbingly realistic the dreams were. I couldn’t explain how bad the pain was, because I wasn’t a werewolf, and as far as my family was concerned, that meant I couldn’t handle pain or responsibility. Or, you know, the actual truth.
With a plan in mind, I gathered up some candles and tried to calm myself. Negative energy would attract negative spirits, or so Mémère would have said if she’d been around. She had often told me of the old days, back before she met and was mated to Opa. She made a living performing psychic readings for people. Fortune telling was the more accurate term. Her mother, my great-grandmother, held séances, and was pretty much a psychic bad-ass. I wished I could have met her. I might have understood more about the magic in the world.
Opa hadn’t liked Mémère telling stories of the past. He had warned her never to speak of magic to me, which meant he’d stolen it from me, stolen my heritage and my capacity to understand. Sometimes I wondered if I would ever again feel anything other than anger and bitterness toward him.
Nathan and Byron might have been arrogant enough to think they were the only “special” people in the world, but there had to be other kinds of magic and folklore that were real. I knew it. Deep in my soul, I knew that the entire planet was full of forgotten magic, like veins of power under the surface. If I could only open one… maybe I could find a way to get my grandmother back to me. My parents even. And maybe I could find a way to stop Perdita’s death, because that’s what the curse was to her: a death sentence. That Nathan would mourn her was a guarantee, no matter how long my family all chose to ignore the consistent outcomes of our curse.
My grandmother’s death had only confirmed what we already knew, that the men in my family were cursed with lycanthropy, with the hunt for their soul mate, and with the early death of their beloved, and the curse would remain until a girl was born to break it. My birth, though, hadn’t changed anything. We learned that, for sure, when my brother unexpectedly turned into a werewolf for the first time at the age of sixteen.
Even if the curse didn’t kill Perdita, the werewolves who hunted us might. We weren’t sure if the wolves wanted to murder me so I couldn’t end the curse, or if they wanted to end Perdita’s life to lessen the chances of our family line continuing. Either way, they were out for blood, at least while the curse was active.
That thought worked as an incentive. That I needed help was a certainty. I didn’t know enough about what was to come or enough about my role in ending the curse. My grandmother had known a lot more than we ever expected, and maybe there were secrets she still had to share.
I lit the candles, shivering a little as the flames flickered and swayed as one. The tapers stayed lit, which was the main thing. I pulled out the spirit board and placed it on the floor in the centre of the candles. Mémère had once told me there was power in the flames, and more importantly, that they helped us focus. A lack of focus while dealing with a spirit board wasn’t a road I wanted to travel down, especially if its magic was real. All I needed to do was believe, and a whole new world would open up to me.
Staring at the flames, I realised I had always been open to more than my fair share of the unexplainable. I had always had faith. It was the one thing that got me through the horrors of the past, and the only thing that pulled me forward into my future. My faith was not based on religion so much as it was an optimism that everything would work out in the end. I had faith that I would find my way through the darkness and come through the other side a stronger, better person. A faith that I could ask for help, and help would be given, one way or another.
Something in my subconscious knew things I didn’t, and it was dying to let them out. I already held the secrets, and all I needed to do was find the key to opening them. I was ready for whatever I had been waiting for my entire life.
Excitement squirmed in my belly as I touched the cup on top of the spirit board. I hoped the board would work with me. A shiver ran through me as the latent energy came alive against my skin. I sensed the energy there, a wriggling darkness dying to escape. I had to make sure it didn’t, so I spoke words I’d heard Mémère say when Opa wasn’t around—words I’d read in books that offered protection or aimed to soothe, not provoke. All of the candles’ flames extinguished as one and then rekindled. A thrill of anticipation had the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up.
“I have respect for the board and respect for the other side. Protect this house, and let me speak to the one I need. Mémère? I really need you right now.”
The cup moved under my hands, hesitantly at first, then faster. Almost too fast, but I heard the words in my head and didn’t have to work them out as the cup raced from one letter to another.
The time is coming.
“Mémère?” I bit my bottom lip to stop a squeal.
Watch carefully.
“Watch out for what? What time is coming? My time? The curse?”
No. Her death.
“Whose death?” But I already knew, and a sinking feeling made me want to vomit.
Too soon. Unless.
“Unless what? What can I do? How can I help her, Mémère?”
My voice rose in desperation, but it was too late. Feeling cold again, I felt the spirit leave me. I tried to call Mémère back a couple more times, but there was nothing there. Blowing out the candles, I mused on how unfamiliar the spirit had felt to me, and how her words confused me. But it had to be Mémère. Who else would want to speak to me?
Then I remembered the message and the point of the whole spirit conversation. Perdita’s death was coming much faster than it should have been.
And I was the only one who could stop it.