17
Some relationships cannot be fixed, no matter what you do.
—Love Spells: A Witch’s Guide to
Maintaining Healthy Relationships
I woke up with my hands tied behind my back. I was outdoors, in a forest clearing, tied to a tree near a campfire. The full, pregnant moon hung overhead. I could see Uncle Jack’s little cabinet propped against a tree near my head, the drawers spread wide in dramatic “display” fashion. My mother was standing close by, examining the athame in the light of the moon.
“All this fuss over such a little thing,” she mused, holding the athame in her hand.
The years had not been kind to Anna McGavock. The once delicate beauty had a face like a road map, lined and craggy. She tried to hide the damage with heavy makeup, but the eyeliner had smeared and bled into her crow’s feet. Deep, unhappy lines bracketed her mouth, giving her a permanent expression of disdain. Her skin was sallow and had a cheesy sort of sheen. I immediately suppressed any instinct to diagnose what was wrong with her. I didn’t want to know.
“Oh, good, you’re awake.” She tittered, tucking the athame back into the cabinet and draping the box in a white sheet. She wiped her hands on too-tight jeans that exposed everything between her belly button and her bony, protruding hips. She’d paired those with a thin black tank top and a lacy red bra. Her hair fell in a dark tangle down to her waist.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I ran into a little trouble in Florida. I needed to disappear, and there are plenty of disposable people when you know where to look. My business associates stopped looking for me when the body turned up, and no one was the wiser.”
“You let your own mother think you were dead. She mourned you. She thought about you every day.”
“Oh, spare me. I came to your stupid little dirt patch a few weeks before the old lady died,” Mom spat. “I was going to confront her, once and for all, to demand answers. But she wasn’t there. So I looked around. I figured everything in that dinky little cottage should have been mine, anyway, so what was the point in leaving it there to rot?”
And suddenly, the silver that had come up missing shortly before Nana’s death made so much more sense. “She saw you?”
“Well, she didn’t exactly serve me tea. She saw me coming out of the house. I was in my car and down the road before she put two and two together.”
I thought back to the night just before Nana died, how she’d urgently whispered, “Your mother,” before drifting off to sleep. And then, when Nana was speaking through the Ouija die, she’d said, “Mother.” She was trying to tell me my mother was alive.
When this was all over, I was going to contact Nana through the Ouija die, and we would discuss her cryptic and unhelpful postmortem transmissions.
“Why would you come to the house but not see me? Did you consider for one second that I might like to know that you were still alive?”
Wait, this was my mother I was talking to. Normal maternal, or even human, standards didn’t apply.
She smirked at me. “I dropped by to look through the papers she kept buried under that mattress. I found the address for the Wainwright house. And I was able to make a deal with the Kerrigans. I bring them all four Elements, I get paid. Handsomely. I am finally going to get my due, after putting up with so much bullshit over the years. Wainwright didn’t give me anything in life, not even his name. Now he owes me the Elements.”
“They weren’t his to give!”
“Why shouldn’t I have them?” Mom demanded. “Why shouldn’t I decide what to do with them? They’re mine, by blood and by right. I’m my mother’s only child. I’m the heir, the rightful matriarch of our family.”
“You were never Nana’s heir. And you couldn’t get the family to follow you out of a burning building.”
“And whose fault is that?” She sneered. “Always the favorite, always kissing up to my mother. You think I didn’t know what you were up to? You wanted everything for yourself; you wanted to shut me out, starting with your father. I got tired of being second best, second fiddle, so I got out, but oh, it was like I was some sort of demon for leaving you. My own mother never forgave me for it, did you realize?”
“Never forgave you? Why do you think she gave you money every time you asked? Never reported it to the police when you robbed her blind? She loved you!”
“But not like she loved you!”
“Because I loved her in return!” I shouted back. “You wouldn’t know what that is. You’ve never loved anyone as much as you love yourself. Nothing was ever as important as what you wanted, what was best for you. How could you do this? Do you know what’s going to happen to your family if you do this? To the village?”
“You think I owe loyalty to that bunch of lunatics?” she asked. “They’re no more my family than your father was.”
“Well, who the hell is your family?” I demanded. “I would really like to know. Dad wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. Nana, the aunts and uncles. Is there anybody in this world you care more about than you?”
“Not really,” she said, placidly examining her manicure. She stopped suddenly, giving me a satisfied smirk. “Do you want to know what I find funny in all of this? It was your boyfriend Stephen who was so helpful. I told him all about you, you see. I arranged for the two of you to meet. I even provided him with a little liquid love potion to slip into your tea when you didn’t respond the way a normal woman would.”
I stared at her for a long moment. Love potion. That explained the ambiguous distaste I’d felt for “ideal boyfriend Stephen” since I moved to the States. He wasn’t around to refresh the potion or maintain the thrall. It explained why I couldn’t seem to remember all of the things we had in common or the reasons he was so bloody perfect. I wasn’t a bad girlfriend. I just had a fecking terrible mother.
Who was still monologuing, it seemed. “He’s been here all this time, didn’t you realize? He followed you just a few days after you arrived. We’ve been inside your house, rifled through your sad clothes and your sensible shoes. The only time he’s been in Ireland in the last few weeks was to pump your idiot cousin for information. Thanks to some herbal additions I put in a box of chocolates, your darling Penny spilled every secret she’s ever held in that empty head of hers. And I helped him ensure that she would never remember talking about you.”
I deeply regretted not whacking Stephen harder with that geode. Suddenly, my spontaneous nude snuggling with Jed didn’t seem so bad by comparison.
“Stephen was a tool,” she said. “A useful tool but a tool all the same.”
“I won’t argue with you there,” I muttered.
“You don’t think I know you, but I do. You want normal. You want to pretend you’re just like everyone else. It’s a criminal waste of talent. You didn’t think twice about meeting some nice little broker at a business meeting. You wanted that so badly you didn’t even question it. I would pity you if it wasn’t so damn pathetic.”
“I’m pathetic?” I started laughing. “Well, at least I’m smart enough to recognize that you’re about to be screwed. The Kerrigans didn’t trust you enough to leave the job to you. They hired someone else to look for the Elements. Your dear friends the Kerrigans are trying to cut you out.”
Her hand was just as lightning quick as I remembered it, striking me across the cheek with a flick of her wrist. “Don’t be smart.”
“I’m smart enough to know that the Kerrigans don’t think of you as anything but a slaggy pawn. If you think you’re going to waltz away from this as lady of the manor, you’re even more deluded than I thought.”
In the distance, we heard a sharp crack, as if someone had just stepped on a limb. My mother began fussing with her hair and straightening her clothes. And then reached into her bra cups and pulled her breasts into proper alignment. Classy.
“Mom. You need to understand that if you continue with this, if you make this choice, you will be dead to me,” I warned her. “Truly dead. There’s no coming back from this. I’m not a little old woman you can twist and manipulate. I know exactly what you are. This is your last chance.”
“Do shut up and let the grown-ups talk, sweetie,” she cooed, pinching my cheek with a bit more force than necessary.
“You better have the goods this time, Anna,” a voice growled from the trees. Three shapes emerged from the treeline, materializing in front of my mother. A tall, gaunt man in dark posh clothes, with a teenage boy and a woman at his side. There was a lean and hungry look about them, as if they hadn’t had a proper meal in the last few years. They were well heeled and sleek but looked tired and unsatisfied. I supposed living without magic when you were genetically conditioned for it would make you feel that way.
I recognized John Kerrigan, the head of the family, which would make the other two his wife, Melinda, and his son, Cameron. McGavock children whispered about the Kerrigans as if they were bogeymen, the baby-eating ogres who made us check under our beds. But up close, they didn’t seem so threatening. They were just like me, with an essential part of them bound up and unhappy about it.
“No more tricks,” John grumbled. “No more false hope.”
“Oh, trust me, John,” my mother purred. “I’m about to make you very happy.”
“So this is the famous Nola,” Melinda said, sniffing and running her dark, empty eyes over me. “I don’t see what’s so impressive.”
“I’m tied to a tree,” I pointed out. “You try looking your best when you’re tied to a tree.”
“You have them here?” John asked, ignoring me.
My mother smirked and unveiled the Elements with a flourish. It was like the prize showcase on a witchcraft game show. John stepped forward, his hand hovering over the case reverently. My mother cleared her throat. “If you’ll recall, we set a price of two hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
“A fair price, to be sure,” John Kerrigan said, while his wife’s mouth twisted into an unhappy line.
“Well, that was before my expenses and the unfortunate emotional trauma of having to strike and truss up my own offspring. So the price has doubled.”
“Doubled?” Melinda spat.
“We’ll pay it,” John said absentmindedly as he pored over the detailing on the bell. My mother made sure to stand in John’s immediate line of sight. Melinda Kerrigan hissed indignantly while my mother preened. The reality of what I was witnessing hit me full-force. I’d lost the Elements. Centuries of heritage and tradition were at that moment slipping right through my fingers. Because I sucked at scavenger hunts. My family had only a few minutes more as viable witches. I would lose my magic. Permanently this time. That strange, occasionally annoying energy that I’d taken for granted for so many years would be gone. I would be able to adjust, but what about the others? Penny, Seamus, the cousins who hadn’t come into their talents yet—they would lose everything. Silent tears began to slip down my cheeks, soaking my collar.
“Why did you bring me here, Mom?” I asked as John Kerrigan closely examined the candle. His son looked mildly bored, and when I questioned the necessity of my being present, he shot a commiserating look my way. “You could have just left me at the shop.”
“I didn’t want you to miss this,” she said, sneering. “And neither did the Kerrigans. They wanted to do the binding right away. They need you here for that. You are, after all, the McGavocks’ representative.”
“You realize that they’ll bind you, too,” I told her.
“When you have money, you don’t need magic,” she said.
“You never knew how to use it in the first place,” I muttered, before getting another taste of my mother’s backhand. Frankly, I was lucky she hadn’t used the hand that was holding the athame. My lip split under the blow, and the hot, coppery taste of my own blood filled my mouth. The tears stopped. And misery made way for the cleaner burn of anger.
How dare my mother do this? How dare she put me through this, have me thinking she was dead for so many years because she was too selfish and too lazy to be a decent human being? She’d terrorized me, belittled me, stolen from me, for most of my life. Why was I letting her get away with it again? Why was I just sitting there like a lump?
From the eastern edge of the clearing, something was tickling my brain. I shook my head, wondering if I was imagining it. The nudging turned into all-out poking. Impatient and persistent. Jane. My friends—the supernatural cavalry—were here.
I opened my mind fully, letting Jane see everything that I was seeing—the number of people, their placement, a special admonition not to hurt the boy, and my suspicion that there could be more Kerrigans hiding in the woods. I would apologize for the headache this gave Jane later. The nudging retreated, and I looked up at my mother, looking so smug and sure of herself while she sold out her family.
I felt Jane’s mental nudging again, closer this time. The head poking was more urgent now. What would she want? Would she want me to shut up? To stop provoking my mother? Unlikely. If anything, she would probably want me to cause distraction. She and the others would want the Kerrigans and my mother distracted so they could sneak up on them.
Magic had to work for me this time. Forget the binding. Forget inconsistency and random explosions. I was more powerful than Penny’s binding. I was no longer ambivalent about my own talents. It simply had to work. There was no other option.
I focused on the energy around me, the light and heat coming off the campfire. I drew that into my mind, focusing on the nerves and muscles of my hands. I pictured a spark growing between them, the heat traveling along my fingertips and feeding that spark until I could feel the flame glowing pleasantly against my skin.
“Mom!” I called out while she flirted shamelessly with John in front of his wife and child. I called louder. “Mom!”
She turned her attention to me, exasperated. “What?”
“There’s something I’ve wanted to say to you for a long time,” I told her.
She simpered, as if this was some warm Hallmark moment between mother and daughter. “And what’s that, darling?”
“You were never a proper mother. Despite having the best example in the world, you never managed to learn about loving someone or caring for someone more than you cared for yourself. You’re selfish, cruel, and unable to see anything past your own wants and needs. You were never a mother to me. And you were never the daughter Nana Fee deserved. You want to know why you were never Nana’s heir? It’s because you’re weak. Your soul is weak, your spine is weak, and your magic is weak. You feel so little emotion, so little real energy for anything except for what you think you’re missing out on, that you’re barely human enough to qualify as a witch. I think that’s why the magic seems to have passed you by. It’s a living, breathing thing, Mom, and you can’t be trusted to care for a goldfish.”
“Shut up, you little bitch!” she hissed, her grip tightening around the blade in her hand.
“You forgot about me.” I chuckled, squirming against the tree in an attempt to stand, to no avail. “All those years when I thought you were out there trying to fix your problems so you could come home to us. You’d just conveniently forget about the fact that I existed, until you needed money, of course, or something from Nana Fee. You forgot that I needed you, that I loved you, that I would have forgiven you anything if you’d only asked.”
“Cue the violins,” Melinda Kerrigan huffed. “We’re on a schedule here, John.”
“Really, madam, we don’t have time for this,” John insisted, although I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or my mother.
“What have I ever done to need your forgiveness?” my mother demanded, ignoring them. The athame glinted in her hand as she gestured wildly, the blade coming closer and closer to my face. “You ruined my life, not the other way around. Always needy. Always noisy. And when I needed you, when I came to see you, all you did was scream and turn to Daddy.”
At the mention of my father, my anger spiked, from a minor blaze to volcanic in the space of a second. Instead of trying to fight it off, I embraced it. I could feel the last of Penny’s restraints fall away and the spark of proper energy flowing through my body. I took a deep breath, feeding that spark, picturing it growing into a flame, larger and hotter, until it caught the ropes binding my wrists. It wasn’t burning me; it was as harmless and welcome as sunlight. I was in control. I was a McGavock. This was who I was. And no one was going to take this from me. Not even another McGavock.
I leaned away from the tree as the rope smoldered and smoked. “Never mind the fact that you tried to snatch me out of Dad’s hands and kidnap me. Another thing you’ve conveniently allowed yourself to forget,” I scoffed as the ropes’ hold on my wrist weakened.
Just beyond the ring of trees, I could hear movement. Fallen leaves crackling and branches moving as something large made its way through the trees. John’s and Melinda’s heads turned toward the noise, while my mother’s overbright eyes stayed focused on me.
“What’s that?” John demanded.
“Probably just a deer,” my mother assured him without even looking up. “They’re thick as rats around here.”
But the crackling sounds grew louder, closer. I could hear distinct footsteps now, lumbering, heavy footfalls that had John standing in front of his wife and child in a protective stance. And still, my mother was entirely focused on sneering down at me, the point of her blade hovering carelessly close to my eyes. I had no doubt she would use it, if just to intimidate me into shutting up. She was too far gone. And I was embarrassing her, which was something Anna McGavock could never abide.
Still, I continued. “I guess that’s how you survive, right?”
I could hear beastly, laboring grunts as the branches just beyond our circle bucked and swayed. My mother’s attention wavered as she glanced toward the trees.
“You forgot about me. You forgot about my dad.”
An enormous hairy shape emerged, with long furry arms and a twisted, apelike face. I couldn’t help but grin at Jed’s choice of creature projection. He’d made himself a Yeti for me. My mother gasped and stumbled back from the approaching Sasquatch, closer to me. The athame fell from her hand.
“Mom, there’s one more thing you’ve forgotten.”
Her head whipped toward me, a menacing snarl half-formed on her lips.
I yanked hard and freed my wrists. I grinned at her and wiggled my free hands. “I’m a witch.”
I sprang to my feet, tossing the burning remnants of rope at the Kerrigans, who instinctively ducked away into Jed’s path. I pressed my palm against my mother’s chest, and a strange, enormous energy surged through my arm and sent her flying back against a tree. I stared down at my hand, stunned.
John moved toward us, but Jed picked him up by the shoulders and tossed him into the trees like a rag doll.
Melinda Kerrigan shrieked and lunged for me. I cranked my fist back and swung for her face, just as Dick had instructed. My knuckles connected with her jaw. She yelped, flailing back toward the fire.
I heard a loud whooping at the edge of the clearing, and dark shapes emerged from the trees. Suddenly, the clearing was filled with vampires. Jane and Gabriel, Andrea and Dick, even Jamie. But there were others, more dark-clad Kerrigans, waiting to get their licks in on a McGavock. Jane was engaged in a hair-pulling contest with Melinda. Andrea and Gabriel were chasing the nameless Kerrigan men into the trees. Jamie and Cameron were slugging it out. Jed had shifted into what looked like a Minotaur and was charging a Kerrigan henchman alongside Dick. And from nowhere, a weight crashed against my ribs, throwing me to the ground.
“You little bitch!” my mother howled, her face white and skeletal, hovering over mine as she clawed at me. “You think you can use magic against me? I made you! You’re nothing without me. You’re nothing!”
I yanked my hand loose and swung at her chin. She shouted, covering her face with her hands. I swung again, letting the heel of my hand collide with her sternum. I took both hands and popped them against her ears. She howled, falling to her side. I shoved her off of me, jumping to my feet and kicking her in the ribs.
With my mother on her knees, wheezing, the woods seemed incredibly quiet. I turned to see that the Kerrigans were subdued, their hands secured behind their backs with zip ties that Andrea had pulled from her purse. Suddenly, Jed appeared at the edge of the clearing, tossing two more strange men into the firelit circle.
My mother used this moment of distraction to punch me in the face. I stumbled back and punched her in the stomach.
“Keep your guard up!” Dick yelled.
“Let her do it on her own,” Gabriel admonished. “She’s never going to learn if you’re hovering all the time.”
My mother and I grappled, wrestling back and forth, her hands wrapped around my wrists. My muscles were starting to burn from the extended use of magic and the effort of fighting her. She had to be getting tired. I shoved her against the large oak, Uncle Jack’s cabinet bumping against my shins. I felt sparks at her fingertips. She was actually trying to use magic against me. She barely had enough power to sting me. Even with her study of dark spells, she was weak. She was a weak woman, a weaker witch, and a shameful mother. I’d spent years being afraid of this woman, and she couldn’t even sting me.
Ouch. She had a hell of a right hook, though.
Rather than stumbling, I threw my momentum forward, knocking her to the ground. Gasping for air, wiping at the blood dripping from her mouth, she glared up at me. “You think I’m afraid of you? Little Miss Perfect? The Half-Assed Witch?”
“You should be. I’m done letting you walk all over me. I’m done with your games. I’m done with forgiving you and giving in to you because you’re the only mother I’ve got. Give me that cabinet, and get the hell out of my face.” I nodded toward Jane, giving her a mental picture of what was about to happen. I placed my hands on my mother’s shoulders and used every bit of the authority I had to say, “I bind you, Anna. I bind you in the name of your mother, in the name of our ancestors. I bind you from doing harm, from doing magic. You spent every day of your life abusing the magic in your blood. You will live the rest of your life without it.”
I felt it leave her body before I spoke the last syllable. The spark of my mother’s energy fizzled out like a doused candle. She was dead space, cold and empty—which wasn’t much of a change, really.
My mother stared at her hands as if she were suddenly missing a few fingertips. She flicked them as if trying to spark a lighter. Nothing.
“No,” she spat. “No!”
Jane gasped, but before she could move, my mother had grabbed the athame from the ground. She lurched to her feet, swinging the blade directly at my stomach. A force from my left knocked me out of the way like a wrecking ball, throwing me into the ground so hard that I left a trench in the dirt. I removed my face from the forest floor, looking up to see a giant armadillo creature standing over me, a black enamel handle sticking out of its chest.
“NO!” I howled.
She’d stabbed Jed in the heart. His life was over. I couldn’t even feel his pain. Jed was going to die, and it was my fault. We would never have the chance to figure out the weird relationship between the two of us. I would lose the only man who had ever loved the real me. I would lose Jed.
As Jed stumbled back, I pushed to my feet, roaring, and head-butted my mother in the face, soccer-hooligan-style. My forehead collided with the bridge of her nose with a sickening crunch. She shrieked, her head slamming back against the trunk. She dropped like a stone at my feet, unconscious. And if the throbbing pain in my face was any indication, her nose was broken in several places.
Despite my mother’s unconscious state, Andrea swooped in to zip-tie her hands together. Dick was helping Armadillo Jed sit up, attempting to draw the blade out.
“No, wait, if it’s lodged in his heart, we’ll want to leave it until he can get to surgery.” I dropped to my knees in front of Jed, feeling his pulse at his wrist, his fast but incredibly steady pulse. I pressed my ear to the leathery gray flesh of his chest; his breathing was quick but untroubled. I peeled the shirt away from his chest and frowned. There wasn’t nearly enough blood flowing for a chest wound. “What the?”
Jed’s armadillo features squinched up as he concentrated on his form. The gray body armor faded away, and he slowly transformed back into human. And fortunately, what appeared to be the chest of an armadillo creature was only the shoulder of a shirtless man. The wound would hurt like hell, but he would live.
“You idiot!” I yelled, smacking his good arm. “You wonderful, stupid idiot!”
“Ow!” he yelped, protecting his injured shoulder. “I’m a wounded man, here!”
He cried out again as, together, Dick and I drew the knife from his shoulder. I placed my hands over the wound and concentrated hard. I visualized the tissue knitting itself back together into healthy muscle and skin. I could feel the warmth of the healing energy emanating from my palm. Dick grinned widely as Jed’s shoulder repaired itself.
“Impressive,” John Kerrigan murmured, before a stern Melinda elbowed him.
“You don’t get the actual form, remember? Just the appearance of it,” I said. “You do not, in fact, have natural body armor.”
“I forgot about that part. I just thought of the biggest, toughest shield possible, and there I was.”
“Aw, you picked a form, and you got it!” I said, smiling. “I’m so proud.”
“Yeah, well, I had to contribute somehow,” he grumbled, flexing his arm.
“I’m sorry my family is nuts,” I whispered. “My aunts and uncles are actually really nice people.”
“They’re not so bad. Wait until you meet my family. At Thanksgiving, we kill everything we can find, put it into a pot, and call it ‘holiday gumbo.’ ” He grinned down at me and kissed my forehead.
A bored but sullen voice called, “Pardon me, as fascinating as I find your vulgar backwoods canoodling, I would like to be untied.”
We broke apart, turning to see an irritated John Kerrigan staring us down. In fact, all of the Kerrigans were both irritated and staring us down. I had several Kerrigans under my control. What the hell was I going to do with them? I could hold them hostage for enough money to put a new roof on the clinic and restock our dispensary until doomsday. I could bind them for another hundred years and continue the family tradition. Or . . .
I squeezed Jed’s hand and knelt down in front of John and his wife.
“I give up,” I told him.
John clearly expected something else, because he frowned at me as if he’d heard wrong and said, “Beg pardon?”
“Aren’t you tired of this?” I asked. “This started as a policy debate who knows how long ago, and it’s still biting us on the collective arse. I think we can all agree that the ‘do no harm’ debate is settled. It’s a bad thing to remove parts of people using the power of your mind. If nothing else, it leaves behind a big mess to explain to the authorities. Let’s just split the objects. Two for you, two for us. That way, there’s a balance.”
“Do you think that’s fair?” Melinda demanded. “We’ve lived without our birthright for centuries, and you want us to just forget what you McGavocks did to us?”
“No,” I told her. “You’ve lived without your magic for forty years. And I am very sorry that happened to you as a result of our families’ troubles. But it didn’t start with us. We can’t let the decisions of people who lived centuries ago continue to control us. In a hundred years, your son’s great-grandchildren would be the ones in charge of protecting the objects. Is this what you want for them? Years of worrying about magical war and protecting your family from mine? Or would you rather they live out their years exploring the gifts that your family is blessed with?”
Melinda cast a sidelong look at her son, her lip trembling. “She makes a point,” she murmured to her husband.
“Our ancestors agreed years ago to the binding,” I said. “Now we can agree to abandon it. It doesn’t work anymore. Forcing you to give up your magic was wrong. And I am sorry.”
John and Melinda whispered in hushed tones, their exchange growing heated, until John seemed to relent. Finally, Melinda gave him a curt nod, and they both turned to me.
“We would have to discuss this at length,” John said sternly.
A relieved smile broke out over my face. “Agreed.”
John eyed Jed carefully. “You seem fairly accepting of the fact that we lied to you.”
“Well, there’s no cure for what I am,” Jed said. “It’s not a disease or a curse. I can’t change it. That doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole.”
“I am sorry,” John told him, sounding very nearly sincere. “But in our defense, you did betray us and help our rivals locate the items first.”
“What are you going to do about your mother?” Melinda asked me. “A number of us have matters to discuss with her.”
I looked down at my mother. I had no idea what the Kerrigans had planned for her. I did know that whatever it was, she probably deserved it. Anna hurt, stole, or defiled almost everything she touched. She’d all but admitted to murdering some unfortunate because she needed a body to throw her “associates” off her scent. I was finished with her.
“I don’t know who that woman is,” I told them blithely. “She’s not bound to me or mine through magic or blood.”
Melinda’s eyes widened at my wording as she recognized its significance. I understood her surprise. Binding was one thing, but she’d probably never heard someone magically disown her own mother before, abjuring her from family and coven. From that moment on, Anna really would be dead to us, even if she showed up on our doorsteps. We wouldn’t see her or hear her or even smell her. It was one of the coldest, cruelest things a witch could do to her own kin. And I’d done it to my own mother.
In terms of negotiating tactics, it was a heck of a way to establish one’s position.
“That’s settled, then. We’ll take her home with us. You’ll not hear from her again. And I’d like the use of my hands, if you please,” John added, a little prim. “This is demoralizing.”
I nodded to Dick, who snapped the plastic tie on John’s hands.
“And Melinda’s?” John asked, rubbing his purpling wrists.
“No, just you,” I insisted. “I said I was open to negotiations, not that I was stupid.”
Melinda’s face was thunderous, but John conceded. “It’s a wise decision.”
* * *
Several hours later, after outlining a basic but fairly historic interclan treaty, the Kerrigans were left somewhat mollified with my offer of Flame and Air, while I kept Sea and Earth. Of course, they also had to take my mother with them, so they may have considered the whole experience a wash. We agreed to hold a full meeting at home to iron out the details. But for now, we’d split the elements, and by dawn the next morning, the Kerrigans’ magic would be restored. That would be the true test of whether they took this peace seriously or not.
I figured I should probably leave town as soon as possible.
Jed stroked his hand down the length of my hair and gave me a blithe grin. “So how was your day?”
“Typical.” I sighed. “My dead mother conked me over the head with an Egyptian idol. I made fire with my mind, confronted some upsetting lingering parental issues. And I negotiated a peace treaty in a centuries-old witch war.”
“Somebody’s getting milk and cookies when we get home,” Andrea said sweetly, patting my head.
I smiled nastily. “Thanks, Granny.”
The patting turned into a light slap.
“So how did you know how to find me?” I asked.
“Well, earlier tonight, we did find your ex-boyfriend locked in my office, next to some damaged equipment and a smashed, extremely rare geode,” Dick said, lifting his eyebrow. “All we had to do was shake him a couple of times, and he sang like the proverbial canary. He gave up your mom, the meeting location, everything.”
“Prick,” I muttered.
“Oh, don’t worry, Gabriel messed with his memory,” Jane chirped. “Stephen won’t remember anything from your time together, other than that you were the best thing that ever happened to him, but he let you get away through his own sheer stupidity.”
“Aw, Gabriel, I didn’t know you cared,” I said, nudging his elbow.
If vampires could blush, Gabriel’s face would have been rosy pink. He cleared his throat. “From now on, every time Stephen hears the word ‘tea,’ he will soil himself.”
I marveled. “I’m glad you’re on my side.”
Gabriel mussed my hair while Jed jostled my shoulder. “Always.”