“Showing our respect for our departed loved ones is important to my family. Seriously important.” She sighs. “My mom is planning some sort of service a month or so from now so that my whole family can attend. But tomorrow, what family is able to make it will gather at eight in the morning to say goodbye to my dad. Can you come? Hold my hand and lend me your strength?”
“Of course. At your side is the only place I want to be tomorrow morning.”
“What did you do to me?” My mom slaps the phone from my hand.
Chapter Thirteen
With a shiver and a start, I jump back and ogle my mom.
“Mom, what are you…” I blurt.
She lurches forward. Grabs my arm and shakes. “What did you do to me? I want to know.” Her face is dark and shadowed and cut with endless lines of emotion. Most of them red.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I shake my head.
“Don’t play dumb with me, child.” Her eyes tighten on me. “Ever since I first met you, I saw the trouble you and your siblings would bring. But the power… the power made it worth the minor miseries.”
“Mom?” My eyes widen, and my gut drops to the floor.
She torques her head, and her eyes dilate with crazy. “Sorry. She can’t come to the conversation right now.”
Bat dung. Bat dung. Bat dung.
“If you’re not my mom, who are you?”
“Oh, come on Mirabelle. You should know me. We used to share a home,” she sneers. Only, she isn’t really a she. Only in body. But the current inhabiting soul is nothing sweet or gentle.
“Caleb?” I whisper. Mom’s old boyfriend? The guy who tried to kill us all in a house fire?
“There you go. Turns out, there is a brain in there after all.” Mom’s finger taps the top of my skull.
I yank back, try to pull away, and stumble on the phone cord. The receiver spins at my feet, and repetitions of my name bellow from the line. The call with Luna is still connected.
My mom, powered with the strength of Caleb, yanks and pushes my arms. I crash into the wall, sending my rack of spices crashing to the floor. Bottles break. Spices and broken slivers of glass spray outward, covering the vinyl floor.
I lurch forward, grab a shard of glass. It bites my skin, and the warmth of blood begins to trickle along my arm.
“What are you going to do with that?” Caleb asks. “You willing to cut your mother’s pretty face?” Her finger traces the side of her cheek.
I inhale and breathe deep. Remind myself that the person in front of me looks like my mom, but really isn’t. Not currently.
“If I have to,” I say. “But I doubt it will come to that.”
She laughs, her body jolting back with the action. “And what is it you propose will happen? Huh? I’m twice your size. You’re unschooled in the craft. Not to mention, your siblings got the true power.” She stands straight and gazes down at me, her lips pulling into a smug smile. “How does it make you feel, being the least magickal in the family?”
“I’m plenty magical to whoop your ass.” I raise my hand through the air and then shove it toward him. Twist my arm upward.
The spices swirl up and around my mom’s body. The glass shards rise, create a splintered outer barrier.
“What is this?” Caleb asks. He reaches forward, touches the glass. “Ouch,” Mom’s voice sounds.
I will not be fooled.
With a forward flip of my hands at the side of my head, lids pop free from the remaining jars that still cling to the precariously hung rack. Spices swim through the air and join those already swirling around my foe.
“With spice of earth, I bind to thee. The elements shall now make you sleep.”
The cyclone of herbs and spices drop to the floor and with them, my mom. I stare at her resting face. Breathing, breathing, to catch my breath. I wipe my brow.
My name slips through the air, soft and tiny.
I spin on the floor and recover the phone. “Luna,” I say into the receiver and pull myself to a stand. “I’m sorry. I’m okay, but I have to go.” I press the reset button and dial the number for my brother’s school.
Please, please, please be there. For the love of all that is magickal, be sitting near the phone.
“Hello.” Someone, not Michael, answers the phone.
“Is Mike Roussard there?” I ask.
“Maybe. Think so.”
“Could you get him?” I press, my blood warming. Rising.
“Probably.” The guy sounds unmotivated and lit. Flying a magickally induced high.
My skin is burning. Every inch of my upper body, fuming. What if Mom—slash—Caleb wakes up? “Get him!” I yell. “Get Mike now.”
The guy drops the phone, and I begin to pace. What if it ends up like last time, and no one ever comes back to the phone? What will I do?
“Hello?” Michael’s voice is pinched with tension. Likely warned that an angry caller was on the line.
“Oh. Michael. Michael, I need you now. Can you come? Please?” I plead.
“Belle? What’s happened?”
“It’s Mom.”
I hardly have to finish my first sentence. Michael hangs up the phone after promising he’ll come straight here. I wait impatiently, cowered in the corner of the kitchen, unwilling to take my eyes off the sleeping body on the kitchen floor. Outside, the weather turns from dreary to stormy, sending the rain and wind to bang against the sides of the house.
Five minutes feels like thirty, and then, an hour. The drive time between our house and where Michael currently lives is twenty to thirty minutes depending on traffic. The change of weather, likely slowing his commute. The rumble of his car pulls up to the front of the house, and
