Seduced by Innocence (5 page)

These times of woe afford no time to woo.

— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Dear Diary,

There's an order to Community, a sense of things getting done and things working out. Someone handles all the food, someone else the money, and someone yet again handles all repairs. It gives everyone an assurance; the same assurance parents give their children, that everything will be okay. Some look down upon our living, but I don't find it so strange. I've never been to a village, but I've read of them, and if our Community had need of another name, I suppose I'd call it that, a village. We raise kids together. We spend nights by the fire. When the morning rooster sings its song, we all hear the same melody and move to the same tune. We all breathe the same northern wind, carrying the scent of pine and the chill of winter. We all walk the same earth and leave footprints in the mud. My mother started Community in Oregon as a place where people can be themselves, but we became more than one self could ever be alone. We raised each other on our shoulders and built a place sturdier than any other home. There's an order to Community, a sense of things repeating and things fitting in. Someone handles all the rules, someone else the punishments, and someone yet again handles all our futures. Everyone works together. Everything fits.

Except me.

MOTHER LEAD A
discussion on what our response should be to the recent attacks on our coven as my mind wandered to my time with Derek. The way he'd said my name, the way he'd touched me… I just couldn't stop thinking about him.

Flutters of butterflies swarmed my belly when I envisioned what our date that night would entail. Would he try to kiss me? Would I let him? That would have been an easy question to answer yesterday. Of course no one could touch me or kiss me. I couldn't risk it. But now, all I wanted was to feel his body pressed against mine for more than just martial arts training.

Ocean leaned over to whisper in my ear. "If you're trying to keep lover-boy a secret, you might want to stop gazing off into the distance with that lovesick grin on your face. Someone's bound to notice."

I forced myself to frown and focused my eyes on my lap. "You're right. I'm never going to be able to keep this a secret!"

"You don't have to, you know. As I believe I mentioned before, you're an adult. You're allowed to date anyone you want." Ocean stuck her tongue out at me and I giggled, then covered my mouth.

Grandma Florence caught my eyes and smiled at me with a mouth full of dentures. I blushed, sure that she could read my mind and tell all my secrets. What would Grams think of what I was doing? Part of me wanted to confide in her, to have an ally other than my impetuous best friend, but if she didn't approve and she told Mother, I'd be busted.

Despite Ocean's assurance that I could do what I wanted, I still had to deal with Mother's outbursts, and my whole world revolved around this coven; without them I had nothing. No one. The risk of exposure was too great to bring anyone else in on my secret.

Time to focus back on the meeting, if I could get my head out of the clouds.

The room smelled of old things and stories long forgotten. Each member of our coven had left their mark in this well-used room over the years, and the collective energy settled into the wooden floors that creaked and the soft couches and cushions that didn't.

The room, though large, couldn't grow to meet the demands of our ever-growing coven, and large pillows had been added to accommodate comfortable seating on the floor, giving the whole affair the look of a confused sleepover.

Amber Carlisle, a talented witch of earth magic, held tightly to her wife Lauren's hand as she voiced concerns about taking on the Druids. "We're not as strong as you'd like for us to be, Rainbow. Going up against them like this could be dangerous, even deadly. Have you considered the risk to our coven? To our children?"

Aside from my sister, who was nearly an adult, there was only one child left in our group, a darling three-year-old, Mist. Karen and Darren Kurtis had joined us a few years ago and brought their healing skills and their adorable daughter with them. Any of us would have done anything to keep that little girl safe.

At that moment, Mist popped her head up off her mother's shoulder and looked at all the solemn faces in the room, then laid back down and fell asleep.

It would be nice to live once again with the innocence of a child, to not have to face adult decisions and adult consequences. Children couldn't appreciate the gift of that life until they'd grown past the point of enjoying it. That hardly seemed fair, but then, life was rarely fair in the fates it chose to hand out.

Everyone had come to this last-minute meeting, so the main house living room was packed. Ocean and I had scored prime spots on a love seat, so at least we could whisper without anyone else being too close to hear.

Nick, a single gay man with tremendous talent in acting and singing, sat in the chair nearest us and every once in a while glanced over and winked at our giggling. Richard and Elizabeth sat nearest Mother, as her right hand helpers. Half the time she yelled at them to divorce and make themselves happier, the other half she worked them hard on the kennel business. They seemed happy enough to me, but we weren't close.

Wolf Song and Wildflower, the artists in our group, sat on the floor wrapped in each other's arms and paying close attention to Mother.

My father, Rain, had slipped off to check on the kennel dogs and the new pups Sandy had recently given birth to. They'd been pretty upset since the wolf incident. I could relate to that.

Blake sat across the room, next to my sister, and spent far too much time staring at me for my comfort. His attentions had escalated recently and it made it harder to be sneaky. It also creeped me out a bit, the way he just stared at me and followed me. Perhaps I was being hard on him. We used to be pretty good friends until he started crushing on me. He had always been faithful to our coven and worked hard to take care of our property. Plus, he was definitely easy on the eyes. Still, I couldn't help feeling uncomfortable by his interest in me, especially now that I knew what it felt like to reciprocate that kind of attraction. 

Being surrounded by family, my blood family and coven family, made me feel complete and a part of something bigger than myself. We weren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but who was? Humans would be humans no matter where I went; at least here I had a solid foundation of love and support with people who understood me. I feared losing that more than anything else, which made this date with Derek all the more risky.

A blend of regret and fear and desire warred inside me. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't risk losing this. "Ocean, I can't go through with it. I'm going to call and cancel on him as soon as we're done here."

She turned her fierce eyes on me and shook her head. "You're going if I have to drag you there myself tied up and gagged."

"That's kinky, even for you."

Her laughter brought all eyes to us, and we both shut up and focused again.

"I understand you all are scared, but we can't define our lives by fear," Mother said. "We have to fight back, take a stand, otherwise they will never leave us alone. They will force us to leave our home and our life here, and quite honestly, we can't afford to do that. We'd never be able to sell this property for what we purchased it, and that would make it impossible for us to find another property where we could all live in community."

She paused and made eye contact with each of us, letting her words sink in. Mother was the queen of dramatic pauses.

"If we don't do something soon, we will lose our way of life, and our coven will be disbanded, leaving each of us to fend for ourselves in a world void of any magic or sympathy for magic users. Is that what you want? To be forced out on your own?"

Heads dropped as people considered what their lives would be like without our coven. My stomach twisted into a knot at the thought of losing anybody here, even Blake. We could lose if we went against the Druids, and we could lose if we didn't.

I hated no-win situations. "Mother, why do they want to destroy us so bad? They're more powerful. They're rich. They have everything they could want. What could be so important about our simple life? We've only lived here a few years, so no one even knows us. We have a bit of mortgaged-to-the-hilt land and some dogs. We don't have anything that could help them. So what's this about?"

Mother stretched her spine to full height until she looked like a queen commanding her throne room. "You take much for granted, young lady. We live in splendor here. I grew up poor, impoverished, living on food stamps and sleeping in an empty corner of our tiny apartment. What power I had then couldn't help me, it only served to make me an outcast. Look around at the opulence you have at your fingertips.

"What we enjoy here is coveted by many. This community, these teachings, this way of life and even our magic, so grounded in the elements. They want what they can't have. They are motivated by greed and restlessness of the soul, which is why we must stop them."

I didn't refute her or argue, as that wouldn't have served a point, but her explanation left a lot of questions in my mind.

My dad returned at that moment and sat a few seats away from Mother. "The pups have been fed and the kennel cleaned."

Mother nodded. "Did you wipe the floors the way I showed you?"

He hesitated. "Not exactly, but I did clean the floors thoroughly."

Her voice escalated. "Rain, we can't run a business if you don't adhere to the guidelines I set up. Your way of cleaning is not effective. You risk leaving contaminants on the floor, which could make the dogs sick. Go back and redo it correctly. And don't take shortcuts this time."

He looked so defeated as he got up and left again. My heart broke for him, but he also made me angry. Why didn't he defend himself? Or tell her to clean the damn floors if his way wasn't good enough? Their relationship perplexed me, and I knew for a fact that if I ever could have love and truly be with someone, it wouldn't be like that. But it worked for them, at least enough that neither of them wanted to end it. I just hoped they were both happy.

"We need to destroy their base of power, somehow," Mother said, pulling me from thoughts of marriage and love. "They have to have something that's making them so strong, so undefeatable. If we can find that and take it from them, then we can infuse our own coven with that power, and we will no longer be their victims."

Darren raised a hand and spoke. "How do we know they actually have something like that? What if they just have power in them, like us? And besides, Rose defeated one, so they aren't really undefeatable, are they?"

"Rose neutralized one, true, but they are many and will not likely come at us so unprotected again. I've been around a long time, and I've heard stories of them, of their power and where it comes from. They have something feeding them, and we need to find it. Their shifting abilities and magical strength is simply impossible without a base of power. I'm certain of this." She stood and paced the room. "I want to send Blake in to find out what they're hiding and what their weaknesses are. We will form a circle and feed him power to see what cannot be seen and to remain unseen as he does so. Since he is empty of his own magic, he will be able to carry the combined power of ours without damage or consequence."