Flint Lock (Witches of Karma #10)
Read Flint Lock (Witches of Karma #10) Online
Authors: Elizabeth A Reeves
No portion of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any print or electronic form without permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and coincidental. Any resemblance between persons living and dead, establishments, events, or location is entirely coincidental.
Copyright© 2016 Elizabeth A Reeves
FLINT
I
opened the door, stepped inside, and let the mask drop.
The strain of pretending that I was okay was taking its toll on me. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could handle it. It was like the old elementary-school taunt—‘someday your face is going to freeze like that’. That’s how I felt. Frozen. Stuck.
My reflection in the mirror of the hallway of my house looked the same as it always had—dark hair, tall, blue eyes the exact same shade as my magic—or the magic I had once had, before my father had stolen it from me.
I searched the face in front of me for any signs that might show the wound I carried inside of me, but I might as well have been looking into the faces of my brothers.
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the locked door.
I was cracking to pieces. I couldn’t hold myself together anymore. I’d tried to force the pieces to stick together, but, like an antique Ming vase dropped from a balcony, I could only be patched up so far. My destruction was inevitable.
And I deserved every agonizing moment of my demise.
My hands shook violently as I crossed the hallway into the main sitting area of my small house. My familiar sat there, waiting for me.
“You look like something I left in my litterbox,” he commented.
“Thanks,” I said.
Parry waited until I was seated before he shifted his full forty pounds onto my lap. Parry was the largest domestic feline I had ever seen. Maybe it was, as he boasted, because he had so much power stored inside of him.
Then again, he was
forty
pounds.
I absently scratched his chin as I stared at the blank, black screen of the TV.
“You’re thinking of her again,” my familiar said, digging a claw slightly into my leg to tell me what he thought about that kind of occupation.
“Of course I’m thinking of her,” I said, bitterly. “I’m always thinking about her. Every day I wake up, I force myself to go to work, I try to help my family thwart the machinations of my evil father, and I come home. And every breath, every thought, it is all about her. She’ll never have another sunrise. She’ll never stand in the sunlight or smile or laugh again. How is it fair of me to keep moving? She did nothing wrong.”
“Neither did you,” Parry muttered. He dug just a little bit more claw into my leg.
It hurt. I didn’t care. I could handle the pain. It was nothing compared to what I felt inside. First, it had been a raging inferno, and then it had burned like volcanic ash.
Now, I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything at all. I was numb in a soul-sucking, empty kind of way.
“You need a change of scenery,” Parry suggested, looking up at me with his big, wide blue eyes. “Maybe you should take a vacation.”
I scoffed. “I can’t just leave the others in the lurch. We need all hands onboard if we’re ever going to hunt down that filthy bastard and send him back to hell.”
“You’re no use to anyone like this,” Parry insisted. “You’ve lost what you had left of your magic, anyway.”
My fists closed automatically. “How did you know about that?”
If cats could roll their eyes, Parry would have done it. Instead, he huffed through his nose and narrowed his sapphire eyes. “I’m a cat, wise guy. I know everything. We’ve been together how long? And you still think that you could hide something like that from me?”
I sank deeper into my couch, shifting my eyes to the blank canvas of the ceiling. My house was so silent. Still. Empty.
It never bothered me in the past.
But, that all changed when Natalie died.
At the hand of the man who claimed to be my father.
It was through him that I must have been infected with this darkness that sat so heavily on my chest. Only someone as cold and empty as I was could do the things that he had done, and continued to do.
It hurt to breathe sometimes. I couldn’t find joy in anything—the sunlight, the trees, my brothers and sisters… none of them could reach through the gaping hole where my heart had supposedly resided at one time.
And Natalie’s triplets…
I buried my face in my hands. They all carried her stamp in their features. I couldn’t look at them without seeing her last, pain-filled moments as my father ripped the infants from her body with no mercy for the woman who bore them.
There was a hole inside of me just as large as the hole he had torn in her. It was a gaping, endless hole of dark, unforgiving regret.
“You need some rest,” Parry said. “Some peace and quiet. I think you should take some time, not too much, of course, and get out of town. Get far away from all the bad memories and ghosts around here. Learn how to breathe again.”
Along with what my father hadn’t managed to steal of my fire magic, my ability to see and talk to ghosts had disappeared with Natalie’s death. I hadn’t told anyone yet. That would just make them worry.
All that meant, was that I couldn’t even see Natalie’s ghost anymore, though my sister, Amber, insisted that Natalie’s spirit hadn’t lingered.
I would have done anything to speak to her just one more time.
I didn’t have the energy to deal with worry and concern. I didn’t have the energy to deal with anything. I was drained, emptied, hardly more than a ghost myself.
Parry was right about one thing: I was exhausted. I could sit like this until my breathing stopped and the world couldn’t remember that I ever even existed. I could just fade into the nothing I knew I was.
“Stop it,” I muttered to myself.
Parry paused in washing himself to look at me.
“Not you,” I said quickly. “I’m talking to myself. And, yes, I know that that is a bad sign.”
I should get up. Maybe go for a run. Make some dinner. Check in on my siblings. Maybe even get some of my enormous work load taken care of. Judge Minchin was getting tired of issuing extensions on my latest case.
I didn’t move.
All the life had bled out of me, with every drop of Natalie’s blood that had poured from her body.
Her body had died.
I was pretty sure my soul was dead.
If I ever even had a soul.
Considering my parentage, that was in question.
My cellphone rang in my pocket. I sighed deeply. Was it even worth the effort to answer it? I winced as I dragged myself up enough to reach it. If I didn’t respond, one or more of my siblings were bound to show up at my door with questions and concerns and… all that fussing and caring business.
Didn’t they realize what we were? We were monsters! We were the legacy of an evil that should have never walked on the earth. His blood ran in our veins. We might pretend that we were the good guys, but were we really?
It was hard to believe that any good could ever come from the horrors our father had sown.
My thumb hovered over the ‘end’ button. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. Not now, not ever. What was the point?
Only the thought of those knocks on my door forced me to accept the call.
“It’s Flint,” I said.
“Jasper got his first tooth in!” My sister, Amber, stumbled over her words in a stream of excitement. “And Mica is already rolling over from her back to her stomach!”
I tried not to groan.
The last thing I wanted to deal with was Natalie’s babies.
Of course, Amber would never have been able to comprehend something like that.
“I think Larimar is more of a watcher than a doer,” she continued, not bothered by my silence in the least. “You should really come by. I think they could do you some… good.”
If I’d had anything left inside of me I would have smiled at her obvious attempt. Of course, Amber would know something was wrong. My little sister had magic that mirrored my own—at least, it had, until mine had abandoned me.
“I’m really worried about you, Flint,” she said, her voice dropping to its usual soft, uncertain tone. I heard her lick her lips nervously. I could picture her there in the nursery Geoff, her fiancée, had built in their house, holding one of the triplets, her orange hair a messy halo around her delicate face. She would have that haunted look in her eyes—the one that only ever disappeared when she looked at Geoff.
I was a jerk. She worried about me. She cared.
And I didn’t deserve any of it.
“There’s no reason to be,” I said breezily. Somehow, the words came out light with a laughing undertone. “With all this Ian stuff and everything else, I’ve just gotten a little behind at work. I guess I’ve been distracted.” I laughed again.
Parry shook his head at me.
“Okay,” Amber said uncertainly. “Do you need anything? I made way too much food for dinner and you’re always welcome here.”
“I already ate,” I lied. “I’m going to get some work done and head to bed. Thanks for the offer, though, sis. You take really good care of me.”
“I would if you’d ever let me,” she said, her voice even softer. “Goodnight, Flint.”
I stared at my phone in my hand for a moment. It beeped, letting me know that Amber had already hung up.
“You’re getting really good at lying,” Parry commented.
“It’s because I have a black soul,” I said wearily.
“Do what I said,” Parry pressed, turning so he could sit on my chest and stare straight into my eyes. “Get out of this town. Get out of your head. Get some rest. Maybe climb some rocks. Get your mojo back.” He nudged me with his broad head. “You know that I’m always right.”
Considering how close to my throat his claws were, I decided to let that ‘always’ slide.
Maybe he was right. Maybe it was time to get away, to take a break. Maybe it was time to step away from the family, and all the faces that knew too much about my secrets.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll leave tomorrow.”
Parry started to purr. I could tell that he was proud of himself.
I wondered how he would feel, when he realized why I had accepted his idea.
The sooner my father’s blood was erased from the earth, the better.
I’d just make the first jump.