Mathilda, SuperWitch (41 page)

Ack!

Couldn’t bats see in the dark?

Could it see me?

Crap… why didn’t I bring my cloak?

And then… you will not believe… as it reached the bay, it dipped low, lower then right before my very eyes it turned into a man.

Poof!
Just like that.

And not just any man.

Douglas Fucking Addison.

Holy shit.

Douglas Addison was a vampire.

Ohmygoddess.

And vampires were our allies.

Right?

Okay, okay, I could deal with this.

This was okay, this could even be good.

He walked up to Ash and shook his hand.

They knew each other.

Ash never let on.

Why wouldn’t Ash tell me?

Is this what he and Mom knew?

Ash gestured to Aidan and Douglas and Aidan did that man handshake, grab-the-upper-arm-comrade thing.

Aidan clearly was not surprised at the bat-into-man-vampire display.

He knew, too.

Why didn’t
he
tell me?

I could normally trust Aidan to tell me everything.

Well, eventually.

The three of them had their heads bowed, talking, looking around furtively.

What were they doing?

What were they saying?

About five minutes later, Aidan turned and left, jogging through the beach stones and up to the steps – somewhat in a hurry.

Ash and Addison remained.

Ten minutes passed, maybe fifteen. My legs were hurting from being in a weird position.

Douglas and Ash had a lot to talk about. Addison did a lot of gesturing; Ash did a lot of listening.

I tried to think of spells to allow me to hear their conversation without letting Ash into my head via our mind-meld and to keep my mind off my palms which were digging in the underbrush.

Then BecBec burrowed in the crook of my arm, hiding her faerie light.

And I saw the broomstick against moon.

It swooped down and landed.

No.

Yes.

There she was.

The warlock was right.

There was Agatha Darling with Jeremy on the back of her broomstick.

No, no, no.

Please no.

I blinked.

There she was.

I closed one eye and squinted with the other.

It was still her.

Damn.

She walked right up and kissed Addison’s cheek.

Jeremy shook his hand.

Then she kissed
Ash’s
cheek and Jeremy shook
Ash’s
hand.

No, no, no.

Please
no.

I watched, searching for something, some sign.

But everything seemed kosher.

Even…

Friendly.

Ack!

Of course Aidan would tell me Ash wasn’t a traitor.

Because they both were.

No wonder he was so very agitated when I asked.

One would father my children, one would die for me.

Bullshit.

I watched, tears in the back of my throat and stinging my eyes.

How stupid was I?

You could tell they were plotting by the way they stood, talked, looked around. This wasn’t the first time they met; there was a familiarity about them.

Then Ash looked toward my hiding spot and I could swear he was looking right at me.

Shit!

I hadn’t controlled Mavis’s mind-meld.

I held my breath, cleared my mind and didn’t move.

Then Agatha said something and he dipped his head to hear her, respectfully, attentively.

My chest started hurting.

But he didn’t raise any alarm.

I still did not breathe easy. Ash was highly trained. BecBec stayed hidden and I didn’t move a muscle, I barely breathed.

Not too long later, they all left. Agatha on her broom, Addison turned back into a bat, and Jeremy and Ash went up the steps.

I waited a long time to make sure they were gone before I left my hidey-hole. I wasn’t that stupid, I knew Ash would know if I was following him so I wasn’t going to try.

I kept BecBec with me, Ash could see faeries. I didn’t want her in trouble.

While I waited, I thought about things and how some of it made sense.

How Aidan and I just happened to be at the Swank Italian Place when Agatha Darling and Douglas Addison showed up. How Aidan took me directly to Agatha at the Community Centre and Ash appeared out of nowhere to help Aidan fight off the baddies in the end (and Agatha got away). How Aidan “found” the electric wand. How both Aidan and Ash were mysteriously lured to the bomb and how Ash knew so damn much about its workings and what it was intended to destroy. How Aidan told me “never to trust an oracle” when Althea drunkenly told me I had a traitor in my home. How, after years of animosity from Le Société and neutrality from The Institute, somehow they’d been talked into “working together” by two double agents. How, no matter how hard we looked, we could find hide nor hair of Jeremy Bligh.

But why?

I knew why, destiny said one of these two men could die for me. I knew that, at least, was no lie by the way my family immediately accepted them.

They never liked my choice in men.

Never.

Especially Viv.

(Then again, most of the men I chose were dicks.)

But why should Aidan and Ash die for me?

Some unknown, loopy American girl stumbles into their life and rocks their world and they have a fifty percent chance to “bleed” for her?

Ack!

I knew one thing for certain, Sebastian Quincy Wilding and Aidan Knightly Seymour were the type of men who would take destiny in their own hands and manipulate it how
they
saw fit.

I had a beautiful smile and smelled like oranges, my ass.

When I thought it was safe, I walked back to Viv and Su, BecBec with me the whole way, both of us silent and watchful. I held my wand at the ready.

My wand and I shook my sisters awake.

They didn’t get angry when they woke up, just took one look at my face and then led me back to The Gables.

They washed my arms and palms while BecBec talked to them in her mile-a-minute, dolphin voice.

Viv understood what she was saying.

“Do you speak Faerie?” I asked.

“Faeries speak English,” Viv told me.

I stared at her.

Viv explained, “She speaks ten times faster than normal, like a tape on fast forward. BecBec’s a young faerie, she hasn’t learned to slow down her speech and you’re a young witch and haven’t learned to speed up your hearing. It’ll all come together one day.”

Well at least that was sorted.

Kinda.

They left and I lay in bed staring at the ceiling.

BecBec lay on the pillow next to me, staring too.

Daphne eventually made it to bed when the sun started to rise. She walked right up my belly and lay down on my chest.

I dipped my chin into my throat, looked into her pretty black kitty face and her gorgeous green kitty eyes.

Aidan gave her to me for my birthday.

It was then that I finally started crying.

18 August

Viv and Su told everyone I had flu and I needed to be left alone.

What I really needed was time for the scratches on my arms to heal so no one would see them and wonder.

And time to think.

Su took some of Mom’s magical potion and added her own ingredients and put it on my scratches to hasten the healing.

Viv confirmed that what Ash and Aidan told me about Josie was indeed The Prophesy as she understood it, that Josie would change the world for the good.

So at least they hadn’t lied about that.

The Prophesies also mentioned Ash and Aidan and that one of them would die for me, one of them would marry me.

Viv went to the library to check with Elly and
Mathilda’s Register
.

Elly confirmed it.

One dead dude, one Dad dude.

(
And quit calling me Elly!
)

But even Elly couldn’t confirm that, in so knowing, one or the other or both could not also change destiny especially with the might of a powerful coven like Edwards behind them.

I spent a lot of time thinking.

I may be somewhat of a ditz and relatively new to this witch business but I wasn’t a total lame-ass loser. There was no reason why Ash or Aidan couldn’t confide in me that they were playing at double agents.

No reason unless they
were
double agents.

Even if they weren’t, I’d had too many twists and turns in the last year to be anything less than cautious.

Not to mention too many secrets kept for no apparent reason.

I finally made my decision and told Su and Viv what I intended to do.

We talked, we argued, we worried, we fretted – none of us wanted to distrust Aidan or Ash and none of us wanted to believe we’d been deceived.

But we had.

The whole thing sucked.

Last night, we cloaked ourselves and went to the Tower Room.

We drew the circle.

We cut the tips of each of our fingers and stood in the sacred circle – arms high, fingers touching, blood mingling.

And we made our vow of secrets and silence.

No one would know of Ash and Aidan’s deception. We’d keep even Mom, Gran and Mavis in the dark.

We couldn’t trust anyone. Not The Institute, Le Société, the Council, the coven, no one. We didn’t know who was in on it and the fewer who we actually trusted who knew what we knew, the better – all the easier to keep it quiet.

And in the meantime, we would plan for Josie, Rory and I to be safe so Josie could eventually save the world.

They were my Spellbounds and I was taking them home… to Denver.

In Denver, I was on
my
turf and Agatha, Jeremy, Ash and Aidan would have to follow me home.

And fight me there.

But in the meantime, no one must know we suspected.

So we’d have to go on as normal.

I’d have to carry on, besotted and boy-crazy… simultaneously falling in love with two men.

Or, at least, trying to convince them I was.

While Su and Viv quietly planned our get away.

Goddess, help us.

The Month of September

1 September

Of course, deception wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

I mean, lying is hard.

Or, it was for Viv and me.

Su seemed to find it easy.

So we gave her most of the hard jobs.

Ash and Aidan both suspected something right away.

I know this because about two days after I resurfaced from my “flu” and after doing a twelve hour shift at The Dozen, I headed straight to Paulina’s house for a séance (we were just looking for some lighthearted entertainment and Antonia was pretty certain she could call John Belushi or Richard Pryor but all we got was someone telling us to, “Fucking leave me alone, you fucking bitches!” which could be practically any dead comedian from the last three decades).

Ash and Aidan were not pleased and both of them were waiting when Josie and I stumbled, exhausted, into The Gables later that night.

“Yo dudes… later,” I said, cool as a cucumber as I passed the Plush Parlor they’d just walked out of.

Ha!

Aidan caught my bicep as I tried to pass and I looked up into his narrowed, angry blue eyes.

“Where have you been?” he demanded to know in a low voice.

Uh-oh.

I’d never actually seen Aidan angry. Well, not at me anyway, around me, maybe.

Seemed kinda scary to have his anger actually directed
at
me.

“Séance… we were going for Belushi but I think we got Bruce,” I told him.