“I know you would.” My words are careful now as I watch the physical transformation happening in front of me. She’s starting to hunch a bit and suddenly has a twitch in her left cheek as she looks around, as if she’s confused about where she is.
“Mama?”
“Huh?” She eyes me and then scowls. “Who are you? I ain’t got no chillins.”
My hand immediately flies to the amethyst around my neck, and I start to chant the spell from my dream, the one Lucien made me memorize a lifetime ago. I watch as whatever or whoever has taken over my mother’s body turns from confusion to rage.
“You stop that,” she growls. “You won’t bring that voodoo hoodoo shit around me. You stop it right now.”
She stands and raises her hand as if she’s going to hit me, but I duck out of the way and keep chanting, starting over at the beginning when I reach the end.
Lord and Lady, lend me your might.
Guardians of the Watchtowers, make this right.
Ancestors and guides, hear my plea.
Toxic energy there will no longer be.
Evil and darkness be out of my life.
Leave my space with only light.
But it doesn’t help. She only gets angrier as she curls her lip. With wild eyes, she forms her fingers into claws and comes after me. The noises coming out of her mouth don’t sound human as she’s suddenly pulled back from behind, two men in scrubs holding her arms.
A nurse comes running with a syringe and plunges the needle into Mama’s arm, only infuriating her more.
“What’s going on?”
Lucien’s suddenly at my side, and his eyes take in my mother from head to toe.
“Ruth.” His voice is loud and strong. “Ruth, I know you’re in there. You fight back, darlin’. Whoever’s got you has no right to you.”
Mama’s slumping now from the medication, and all signs of the being that possessed her is gone. She’s crying softly, murmuring, “I’m so sorry,” over and over again.
“Mama.” I frame her face in my hands. Her brown eyes, now free of the blue, look back at me. “It’s okay, Mama. I love you. We’re going to protect you.”
“You can’t,” she whispers before she falls asleep and is carried away on a gurney to her room.
Lucien and I wait for her doctor to examine her, and then we meet with him in his office.
“It’s not abnormal for patients to have moments of regression during their treatment,” he says.
“That’s not what this was.”
His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline as he stares at me from across the wide, expensive desk. “And where did you get your psychology degree?”
He’s not going to listen to me.
“You’re right,” I reply. “It must be regression.”
“We’ve given her a sedative. She should be back to herself tomorrow.”
“I’ll check in on her.” I stand and nod at the doctor, then lead Lucien out of the hospital. Once we’re in the car, I let the pent-up words out. “That motherfucker. Misogynistic asshole thinks he has all the answers, and I should just smile and nod. What a prick. What a piece of shit.”
“But how do you really feel?” Lucien asks as he pulls out of the parking space and drives away from the hospital.
“She didn’t regress.”
“Tell me everything that happened from the minute you stepped inside that place,” he urges. His voice is still hard, angry. He rubs his hand over his lips, moving back and forth in agitation.
The man I love is good and pissed off.
I relay the information, word for word. “And then you were there. How did you know I needed you?”
“The spell you were chanting,” he says. “Not only is it for fighting him off, but because I created it for you, infused it with my energy when I recorded it with the Akashic Records, it automatically links you to me, as well. I’ll always know to get to you as quickly as possible.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“I didn’t know you still knew it.”
“It was in my dream the other night.” I swallow and lean back in my seat. “Lucien, taking Mama to the house was the wrong thing to do. The damn spirit or demon or shadow or…whatever it is, reattached itself to her.”
“Something definitely happened,” he agrees. “We need to go back tomorrow, armed with your sisters, some potions, and a stronger protection spell.”
“We have some work to do.”
Chapter Fourteen Millie
It never ceases to amaze me how many people we can pack into Miss Sophia’s house. Her cottage isn’t big, but whether it’s just her and I here, or thirty members of the coven, everyone fits as if she cast a spell to expand and contract her home as needed.
And knowing the older witch as well as I do, it wouldn’t surprise me if she did exactly that.
My sisters are here, of course, along with Lucien’s parents, Mallory Boudreaux, and Miss Sophia’s granddaughter, Lena. Esme said that she wouldn’t miss it for the world, and she’s got her head buried in a spellbook, doing research.
Cash sits at the dining room table, directly across from me. Everyone here is researching the mystical arts, and my sister’s husband is doing what he does best: searching for a killer.
As a former profiler for the FBI, and currently working as an investigator with the New Orleans PD, Cash has vast experience hunting killers. He helped us find this madman once.
I know he’ll do it again.
Lucien passes me a book and takes the one I have in front of me.
“Let’s trade, darlin’,” he says. “You’re just staring blankly at this one.”
“Why do I feel so lost?” I ask and shake my head. “Like I don’t know where to start? We have two things happening. An undead psychopath is after us, and our poor mother can’t shake the goddamn spirit
