Broomstick Breakdown

her, questions in his eyes. This close it was an easy matter for her to mutter the words to the spell, sadness tainting the energy she formed and shaped into a pattern of forgetfulness. She flung the result at him.

His eyes widened, and in a rush she spoke. “You will forget ever meeting me. Last night after closing up, you felt an urge to go for a drive. You went farther than expected. But now you need to go home, back to your life, and forget you ever met me.” His eyes clouded with hurt, then confusion. She bit her lip in an attempt to not cry, not understanding why this affected her so. She whirled and walked away, her steps heavy and her heart a dead weight in her chest.

A part of her hoped she’d failed in her spell and that at any moment she would feel his hands on her, spinning her around to tell her magic would never make him forget. Instead, the heavy rumble of his truck engine filled the air, a sound that receded as he drove away from her.

Blinded by tears, she told herself it was for the best. A human and a witch-it would have never worked. But, oh, how I wish things could have been different.

* * * *

Aidan slammed the steering wheel and cursed as he drove away from his mate. She’d rejected him. Sent him away as if he meant nothing. Could his senses be wrong? Was she not his mate? His wolf growled in his mind. No, I’m not wrong. She is mine. But what had just happened then? Did she not feel the same magnetic draw?

Too upset to pay attention to the road, he pulled over a few miles away and thought. She’d never explained why she’d gotten so upset when he’d pleasured her-a pleasure quickly disrupted. What caused her hysterics? She’d wanted his touch, there was no denying it, yet she’d acted guilty. Could she possibly have a boyfriend already back home? Aidan’s wolf side growled menacingly, angry at the thought, but the idea bothered Aidan’s human side even more. She is mine. I will allow no other to touch her.

As he let his mind work over the few facts he had, it occurred to him that she had to be single. She didn’t have the scent of another man clinging to her, and surely a lover would have kissed her goodbye. He also realized in retrospect, she hadn’t been unaffected by their parting. He’d let his hurt cloud his mind, but when he thought back on their last moment together, he could see her eyes swimming in tears.

And then he cursed himself for an idiot. Even if she didn’t have a boyfriend, it could be that her reluctance lay in another direction. Sophia didn’t know what he was. She thought him a mere human, while she was a witch. If her coven was anything like his pack, humans, especially those privy to their secrets, were more than rare. It was quite possible she’d felt like she had no choice but to send him away.

Fat chance of that. Like it or not, she was his. He’d let her have her little witchy celebration for Halloween. However, he’d be nearby, and once the gathering was done, he’d turn the tables and become the one giving the orders-and pleasure.

And somewhere in there, he’d share the truth of what he was and what she meant to him.

Chapter Five

Sophia paced her room. Her mind still spun as she waited for evening to fully fall before she descended and joined her coven sisters. She tried to regain her excitement over her first Halloween gathering as a witch. The exhilaration she’d basked in just days ago when the invitation arrived in the mail had vanished. Now, instead all she could think of was Aidan, his last look of pain carving a wound into her heart.

I knew him for only a day. Not even. How could I have come to care for him so much in such a short time? She kept wondering what she could have done differently. How she could have kept him with her? However, everything revolved back to one simple fact. He’s human, and I’m not anymore.

Sophia hadn’t even known of her witchy heritage until a few years back. Her parents had adopted her when she was still a baby, found supposedly abandoned. Her parents, her birth ones that is, remained to this day unknown to authorities.

She’d always know she wasn’t the same as others. Even as a young child, Sophia had wondered if something was wrong with her, because she’d always seen the world differently. This was a fact she learned to keep quiet about when her adopted mother dragged her to countless psychiatrists looking for a cure. She stopped telling people about how she could sometimes see colors swirling around her and touch those invisible streamers. She sealed her lips shut, not mentioning the ghosts she saw, along with other odd creatures like the gremlin that lived in her dad’s garage. Silence was preferable to the strange looks and drugs. At the late age of sixteen when she finally began her menses, her otherworldly sense went into overdrive. Sophia feigned ignorance even as her mother called in the priest to rid the house of the poltergeists-the only ghosts, though, were Sophia’s awakening power, which manifested itself in floating objects and odd incidents.

Desperate to understand what was wrong with her and reassure herself she wasn’t crazy, she went online, searching for her symptoms. She never found anything, but someone found her. Apparently, witches had embraced the technological age, because her searches sent a red flag to the mother house, and in the dark of night, Sophia suddenly found herself abducted and given a lengthy interrogation followed by a set of tasks where finally her special abilities came into play.

When they’d told her she was a full-blood witch, one whose special parents had perished, Sophia laughed. Once the shock-and mirth-wore off, she was pleased to know she was normal, for a witch at least.

Thus had begun her lessons. As an older student, she’d struggled and worked hard to catch up to those who’d grown up in the lore-the varied rules and protocols adopted to keep them safe from humans. The Salem trials, which had seen countless innocents killed, served as an example of intolerance, one which even today served as a brutal reminder that safety lay in secrecy, or so the coven thought. Personally, she thought the modern world could handle the idea of witches, but one junior witch wasn’t about to change hundreds of years of doctrine.

Along with history, spells, and witch law, another thing they’d taught her was while she could dally sexually with humans, she could never tell them what she was or think of a forever-after with one. Part of being a witch meant a longer lifespan-two hundred years or more wasn’t unheard of. Although it wasn’t exactly forbidden to intermarry, the warning was clear. The most a witch could hope for was 10 to 15 years before she had to disappear, for the lack of aging eventually became noticeable and raised questions. Witches who refused to leave ended up finding their partners and children gone one day. Talk about incentive to look at their kind first.

Knowing this made Sophia’s painful decision to let Aidan go seem noble, even if she didn’t understand why she wanted him so much. She did know she didn’t want to see Aidan hurt. He deserved a real life with a woman who could give him children and grow old with him. Not someone who would be forced to abandon him and their children within a decade or so.

But how she wished things were different. If only Aidan were one of the special folk allowed to know their secrets-elf, angel, demon, shifter, merman. So many species were allowed to know about her witch status, and although not approved of for marriage-not that it stopped some-sexual dalliances were not uncommon.

The time for introspection passed. As the midnight hour approached, Sophia composed herself and left her room in her flowing robe, joining a chattering stream of witches out into the night. Lanterns lit the night sky and hung on branches and poles, illuminating their way to the gathering spot.

The Covenhouse Inn sat on over a hundred acres, ensuring the witches’ coven privacy for ceremonies such as the one for Halloween. Most of the land was wooded, but as Sophia followed others of her kind through the meandering paths in the shadowy forest, it wasn’t long before they emerged in a clearing with trampled grass. In the center of the huge space a bonfire snapped and crackled, the flames licking up into the sky and popping with colors not usually seen-gold, red, purple, blue, and even some green. This close to the witching hour, power sizzled visibly all around her in a kaleidoscope of color. Excitement hummed in the air.

The witches stood shoulder widths apart and formed circles radiating outward from the fire. Sophia stood in one of the outer rings, her face tilted up to the sky staring at the fat, bright moon hanging over the assembly.

As if silenced by a spell, an instant quiet fell upon the clearing, and the chattering and rustling of hundreds of women was gone as expectancy hung heavy in the air.