04 Shadow Blood - Witch Fairy (14 page)

Mom stares at me for a long time without saying anything.  I do my best to stand tall, not wither under her gaze.  “Do you hate me?” she finally asks.

I’m scrambling to replay my little speech to figure out where she got that from.  Yeah, I sounded arrogant, maybe a little too self-important, and definitely whiny, but I never said I hated her.  I shake my head.  “Of course I don’t hate you.  Why would I?”

“For letting you walk into all of this blind,” she says softly.  She reaches out and puts her hand on my cheek.  Since I got all worked up as I walked back and forth, and with the apparently burst capillaries and all, the coolness of her hand feels good.  “You’re right.  You’re not a little girl anymore.  You’ve had to become a woman a lot faster than I was planning on.  But, in my mind, you will always be my five year old that I have to protect from getting burned or lost in the snow.  That’s just how it is with mothers.  And I’m pretty sure that no mother wants to walk in on what I walked in on.  Dancing fire people aside.”

I can’t help a small, embarrassed giggle.  “No, I can’t imagine any would.”  I put my hand over hers.  “I’m sorry about my little tirade just now. That probably didn’t go very far to show how mature I am.”

It’s her turn to laugh, but hers is sad, not embarrassed.  “Oh, you’d be surprised.  You’re right, you have had to make life and death decisions that you should never have been forced to make; and if I trust you to make those, I should trust you to make this one, as well.  But, I still would like to ask you to slow things down a bit with Kallen.  Just take it down a notch or two.  There is so much going on in your life, I don’t want you to fall into something because it makes you happy for the moment.  I want you to be happy forever, like I am with your father.”

I nod and smile.  “I can do that.”

“Thank you,” she says and she steps forward to wrap her arms around me in a hug.  Hey, this muumuu thing is keeping me pretty warm.  I’ll have to put one of these things on anytime I want to hug one of my parents.  Nah, keeping warm can’t make up for how atrocious the thing looks.  It’s truly hideous. 

Stepping back, Mom says, “Now, will you please change out of the awful thing you’re wearing?”

Guess we do think alike on some things.  I bite my lip and say sheepishly, “I’m sort of not allowed to try to change my own clothes yet.  I tend to dress everyone in the house in the same thing I’m wearing.”

Mom laughs.  “Now, that’s something I’d like to see.”

“Are we good?” I ask her.

She nods.  “Yes, we’re good.  But, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop giving my opinions and acting like your mother.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.  You wouldn’t be the mom I love if you did.”

She wipes at her eye as if she has a tear.  Maybe ghosts can cry.  “Alright, let’s find someone who can get you out of that thing.  And then you’re going to tell me what, exactly, you were talking about when you said there are pieces of other people’s souls attached to yours.” 

Oh, yeah.  She was upstairs when I learned that and she doesn’t know anything about it yet.  Well, at least this conversation will be easier than the sex one.  How sad is that that I’d rather talk to my mother about my trip to hell than about sex?  Yeah, I probably still have a bit of maturing to do.

Chapter 15

I’m not at all surprised to find Kallen pacing outside my door when I open it.  He stops and puts on his best blank face as he says to my mother, “Ms. Smith, if you feel that a right hand-fasting is in order, I would completely understand.  I would be proud to marry your daughter.”

Mom’s eyebrows rise.  “How about if the two of you just slow down some.  I may be a ghost, but I’m still too young for grandchildren.”

He tries to keep his face blank, but for the first time, that perfect poker face of his won’t hold.  His skin is getting redder by the second.  “Of course,” he says, embarrassment oozing out of every pore.

“Hold up a minute,” Dad says from where he’s floating a little bit down the hall.  “What
exactly
went on in there?”

Mom looks at Dad, looks back at me, and then looks at Dad again.  “Nothing that we need to be concerned about at the moment.  Xandra is about to tell us about the pieces of souls that attached to hers when she was in hell.” 

“What?!” he practically yells.  Nice segue, Mom.  I think Dad’s already forgotten that something may have happened in my bedroom he wouldn’t like.

Mom’s mouth forms a grim line.  “I don’t have all the details yet, Xandra’s going to fill us in now.  We should go downstairs and find Isla and Tabitha.” 

Dad nods and floats next to Mom as they head to the grand marble staircase.  Technically, they could just float through the floor, but they try to keep most of their human mannerisms. 

I start to follow, but Kallen grabs my arm and says quietly, “May I speak with you for a moment before we go down?”

I frown a little.  “Okay, but we shouldn’t be too long.”  Mom’s already upset enough.

He runs a hand through his hair and his eyes are a dark, shimmering green when they meet mine.  “Perhaps we should become legally wed.”

“What?  No.”

Again, he runs his hand through his hair.  “Xandra, if your mother talks to my grandmother about this…”

I snort.  “Um, I don’t think that’ll be an issue.”  No way would Mom say something to Isla.  She’s not stupid.

Kallen doesn’t look convinced.  “Your mother is not insistent that we have broken the rules of the left hand-fasting?”

I look at him with more than a little suspicion.  “Is there something I don’t know about this left hand-fasting thing?”

Sheepish is too mild of a word.  Guilty and embarrassed better sum up the expression on his face.  “We may have…pushed the rules to the absolute limit.”

I put my hands on my hips and glower up at him.  “I would like a list, a
specific
list, of what the rules are, because I was under the impression that things only changed if we have sex.”  I have had enough conversations about sex now to make me not care if I ever have it.  Well, at least right now.

“Xandra, we practically were.”

That is a good point.  My turn to look guilty and embarrassed.  “Yeah, about that.”  I bite my bottom lip as I get up the courage to tell him what Mom and I talked about.  “I kind of promised my mom that we’d slow things down a bit.”

He chuckles and puts his hands on my waist.  “I think that would be a good idea, as well.”

“Maybe we should have a fully clothed rule?” I say quietly.  I don’t want anyone to overhear this conversation.

Kallen nods but I can’t miss the disappointment that washes through his eyes.  Truth be told, there’s probably some of that in my eyes, too.  “Agreed.”  He drops his hands back to his sides.  “We should join the others.”

He’s right, we should go downstairs.  Otherwise, we may talk each other out of our new agreement.  He takes my hand in his and we turn to walk the short distance down the hall to the stairs.

“Is this place always this loud during the night?” Aunt Barb asks, startling me.  When did she get here?  She’s standing against the railing wearing a black satin bath robe and slippers.

“Sorry, Aunt Barb.  It’s been a rough night.”

Something closely resembling the smile of the Cheshire cat folds her lips up.  “You two are quite the naughty pair, aren’t you.”  Not a question, a statement.  “Are you sure keeping your little secret from Isla is the right thing to do?  You have made a binding agreement, after all.”

My brows knot up in puzzlement.  “Aunt Barb, are you okay?”

She laughs but it doesn’t sound cheery.  “Of course I’m okay, why do you ask?”

“I guess I thought you would be on Mom and Dad’s side and not want me to get married right now.”

She cocks her head.  “But rules are rules, Xandra.  If you break them, you have to deal with the consequences.  Didn’t your little trip to the Shadow realm drive that point home?”

Alita picks that moment to poke her head out of her bedroom door, giving me a reprieve from having to answer Aunt Barb.  “Xandra, I thought I heard your voice.”  She opens the door wider and comes out into the hall.  “I wanted to thank you for what you did earlier.  You saved my life.”

And I tried to kiss the guy you’ve had a crush on practically your whole life.  I don’t think I’ll go with that response.  Instead, I smile and say, “You’re my only friend.  I couldn’t let anything happen to you.”  I hope she doesn’t notice the guilt behind my smile.

She laughs.  “Yes, that would leave you in a pickle, I suppose.”  An eyebrow goes up over her left eye as she looks me over.  “And as your friend, may I say that your fashion sense has suffered greatly from the last time I saw you?”

Shoot.  I forgot.  I turn to ask Kallen to change my clothes, but he’s way ahead of me.  Suddenly, I’m in black shorts and a gray t-shirt.  “Thanks,” I say, smiling up at him.

Turning back to Alita, my eyes have to travel past Aunt Barb.  And for some reason, she looks really pissed.  “Aunt Barb…” I start to say, but I’m cut off by Alita’s cry of pain.

She had been on her way over to me, but as she passed Aunt Barb, she dropped to her knees and grabbed her head with both hands.  I’m at her side in a flash.  “Alita, what is it?  Is it the poison, did I miss some?”

She shakes her head slightly and grimaces.  It must have hurt her to move even that little bit.  “I was fine until right now,” she says through the pain.

Something clicks inside of my brain.  Something that probably should have clicked about an hour or so ago.  Aunt Barb has been so different since coming here – bristly, mocking, sarcastic.  Nothing at all like she usually is.  Gee, could she possibly have some soul barnacles just like me?  And is that why Alita keeps getting these headaches?  Thinking back, she’s only gotten them when she was around Aunt Barb.  Then again, she hasn’t gotten them when she’s around me.  That’s odd.

“She’s certainly high maintenance, isn’t she,” Aunt Barb says with more than a little disdain in her voice.

I’m not even going to acknowledge that statement.  “Um, Aunt Barb, how about if you and I go downstairs and Kallen helps Alita back to her room.”

With what can only be described as a look of disgust in Alita’s direction, Aunt Barb turns and walks down the marble stairs.  All right, then.  I guess she agreed. 

“I will be right down,” Kallen says as he easily lifts Alita from the ground as she grimaces in pain again.  I nod and follow Aunt Barb down the stairs.

Chapter 16

As usual, the kitchen island counter is the place to be.  I’m actually beginning to wonder why the house has so many rooms when everyone seems to use only two – their bedroom and the kitchen.  Okay, the bathrooms should be included, too, but most of the bedrooms have their own.

Aunt Barb is leaning against the sink with a steaming hot cup of coffee in her hands.  There are several stools free around the island counter, so I’m not sure why she’s way over there.  Guess her barnacles want to keep her aloof.  Wish mine were more like that.

“No, you don’t,”
a voice says in my head.  I’m beginning to feel schizophrenic. 

“Shut up,”
I say in my mind.

“You liiiiiikkkked kissing Kegan.”

“I don’t even remember kissing Kegan, so how can I have liked it?”
I ask the voice as I pour out some hot tea from the carafe on the counter and take a small sip. 

“Maybe we could be the middle of a Kegan and Kallen sandwich.  That would be soooo much fun.”

The sip of tea I was swallowing suddenly finds its way simultaneously into my nose and my wind pipe.  If anyone missed me coming into the room before, they know I’m here now.  The shower of tea from my nostrils and the hacking up a lung bring all eyes to me.

“Too hot?” Mom asks.

If only.  “Yeah,” I say when I’m finally able to breath correctly again.

“You should be more careful,” she admonishes.

Thanks for the sympathy.  Crap, I said that out loud.  The dirty look and eye brow raise I’m getting confirm that.  Sheepishly, I say, “Sorry.”

Tabitha comes into the room looking a bit frazzled.  Isla opens her mouth to say something but Tabitha puts up a hand.  “I’m just here for tea, my mind wants to stay awake, but my body keeps reminding me it’s the middle of the night.”

“No luck finding anything yet?” I ask her.

She shakes her head as she pours out her cup.  “Not yet.”  She reaches over and pats my hand.  “But I promise you, I will figure this out.”

I smile.  “I know you will.”

“Why can’t we stay with you?  We like it in here.”

“Because you keep making me do things I don’t want to do and I don’t want to spend my life with other people in my head.”

“Can’t we work something out?  You take the day shift and we take the night shift?”

Am I seriously having a conversation with the voice in my head about whether we can take turns using my body?

“Yes,”
the voice says.

“Thanks, apparently rhetorical isn’t in your vocabulary.”

“You shouldn’t mock the dead.  It’s not nice.”

I roll my eyes. 
“You’re trying to play the death card now?  Technically, you’re not dead.  Just your collective bodies are.”

“It was worth a shot.”

I shake my head.  I’d write a book about everything that’s happened to me lately, but no one would believe it.  I have a hard time believing it.

“Xandra, are you planning to participate in this conversation or are you going to continue to daydream?”  Isla says shortly.  Wow, she gets crabby in the middle of the night.

“I’m beginning to think she’s more witch than Fairy, if you know what I mean.”

“Sorry, I was lost in thought.”  I say, completely ignoring the voice.  A little quieter, I say, “Um, Tabitha, since you’re in here, would mind checking Aunt Barb out?  I think she may have the same problem as me.  She’s been acting really weird.”

Tabitha’s eyes narrow in Aunt Barb’s direction.  Aunt Barb acknowledges her with a scowl.  “What?”  Snarky, snarky, snarky.  Geez.

Dad looks taken aback.  “Barb, is there something wrong?”  Glad others are starting to realize she’s not acting right.

Aunt Barb slams her coffee cup on the counter and some splashes out.  “Wrong?  How about if you spend a couple of days in hell and then
you
tell
me
if something is wrong.”

Dad looks guilty now.  “Sorry, you didn’t sound like yourself, but I guess no one would after what you’ve been through.”

Mom turns to Dad and her scowl is bigger than Aunt Barb’s was.  “Let’s not forget that she brought our son to hell with her.”  She looks across the room at Aunt Barb.  “I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to forgive you for that.”  Uh oh.  Things are getting ugly in here.

“We could skip the drama and go swimming.  Sky-clad,”
the voice says.

“You’re not helping.  This is serious, they’ve never fought before.”

“Who cares, one’s a ghost and one’s a Human.  Not like they can actually hurt each other.  Let’s slip away now while they’re not looking at us.”

“Shut up.”

“You suck.”

“So do you.”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,”
it sings.

“What are you, two?”

“and a half….centuries.  Ha ha!”
 And now I have little pieces of soul laughing in my brain.  This has to be a nightmare.

“Perhaps if you kept better track of your son, instead of making me watch him all the time, he wouldn’t have ended up in hell.” 

Whoa.  Did Aunt Barb really just say that?  Mom’s face is beet red and she’s growing at an alarming rate.  I think she’s going to pull a Rashnu in a minute, but get even more monsterish and grotesque.

Mom starts zooming across the room towards Aunt Barb and she’s mumbling something that can’t possibly be good.  I have to make a quick choice here, throw up a wall that Mom will smash into because there isn’t time to warn her, or, let her do whatever it is she’s planning to do and let Aunt Barb get hurt.  I wish I had a coin to toss.

Finally, I decide to throw up the wall.  Mom goes skittering into it and for a moment, she flattens out against it from her momentum.  Like a cartoon character.  Oh, that looked like it hurt, even if she is a ghost.

“Julienne, I’m sure she didn’t mean it,” Dad says, completely ignoring the fact that Mom is flat, but even he doesn’t look like he believes what he said.  He’s staring at his sister like he’s never seen her before.  The sister who is laughing at Mom.  I think I made the wrong choice.

“What a clever daughter you have.  You should keep better track of her, as well.  I heard what she and…”

And I take her voice away.  She looks really mad now.  I’m pretty sure she’s mouthing profanities at me.  Drunk, belligerent, bar fight profanities.  Not that I’ve ever witnessed a bar fight, but I imagine this is how one starts.

Mom finally pushes away from the wall with an audible pop.  Kind of like a suction cup on glass.  Now, I get my very own, special homicidal glare from my mother.  This whole magic thing has brought us so much closer.

“You think a lot of facetious and sarcastic thoughts, did you know that?”

“I need you to shut up now so I can focus on this situation.”

“Why don’t you freeze them all and wait a few years before thawing them out.  They’ll be so happy to be free, they won’t even remember why they were so mad to begin with.  We could have a lot of fun between now and then.”

“I don’t think I like your kind of fun.”

“Prove it.  Try it and then judge.”

“Shut up.”

I’m pretty sure the voice in my head just gave me a raspberry.  Either that, or it’s choking on the little part of my soul it’s clinging to.  I was so focused on getting the voice to shut up, I didn’t realize Mom had zoomed in front of me.

“Xandra Illuminata Smith, you take that wall down right now!”  Mom screams at me.

“I think your ear drums just burst.  Now you’re going to be deaf
and
no fun.”

“Mom, I don’t think it’s Aunt Barb talking.  I think she brought back some pieces of soul from hell just like I did.”  I’m ready to cover my ears in case her response is as loud as the last thing she said.  The voice may be right; something at that decibel level is bad for your ears.

“Perhaps we should all sit down and discuss this rationally,” Isla says as she lifts her tea cup to her mouth.  She doesn’t look a bit ruffled by the happenings of the last few minutes.  “Tabitha, will you please attempt to establish if she has travelers on her soul, as well?”

“What do you mean by travelers?” Dad asks.  He looks calmer now that he’s reasonably sure that his wife is not going to kill his sister.

“If you take this wall down, you can explain what’s going on to your parents and I can tend to your aunt,” Tabitha says.  I give a quick glance to Mom.  I think she’s going to be okay if I drop the wall.  I hope she is, anyway, because the wall’s gone now.  And Aunt Barb has her voice back.

“What do you mean, tend to her aunt?” Aunt Barb asks.  She pushes away from the sink where she was leaning and is sidling along the cabinets toward the door.

“I just want to check your soul, dear,” Tabitha says in her best calming a wild beast voice.  “It will not hurt you.”

“I don’t want a Fairy touching me.  Don’t you dare put your hands on me.”

“Barb,” Dad says sharply.  “These people are trying to help you.”

Aunt Barb glares at Dad.  “You’re the one who told me not to trust these creatures.  You said they were all lying monsters who enjoy killing young girls.”

I’ve just learned that ghosts can get paler when two powerful Fairies with angry eyes turn on him.  “That was before I knew them,” Dad scrambles to say.  “The Fairies that came after Xandra were like that, but no one in this house is.”  Good backpedaling, Dad. 

“Aunt Barb, you’re being really rude.  If it hadn’t been for the Fairies in this house, I don’t know if I would have been able to get you back from hell.”  That’s probably not true since it was Rashnu and Adriel that actually helped me, but that’s beside the point.  She doesn’t need to know that.  “I don’t want to have to restrain you with magic, but I will if you don’t let Tabitha check you out.”