The Lightning Prophecy (The Lightning Witch Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

“HEY, RONALD,” I
said in a shaky voice.

“Oh, hey, Delaney. What’s up? Is the store okay?” Ronald asked nervously.

Deep breath, Delaney, deep breath. Just tell him what happened and maybe, just maybe, he won’t fire your ass.

“Um, yeah, Ronald, everything is fine. But …,” I couldn't spit the words out. Maybe I could just tell him the store was robbed. And instead of guns they used flamethrowers and blew up the register. Setting the money on fire? Seems logical.
God, I’m in such deep shit
.

There was a long pause and I could hear the buzzing of the phone connection.

“Delaney, hello? Are you there?” Ron shakily questioned.

“Oh yeah, sorry.” I felt the bead of sweat roll down my back and pool at the base of my spine.
Get this shit together
, I chanted in my head. “Um, well, the cash register kind of … blew up.”

There was a pause the span of a few heartbeats.

“Ronald? Are, are you there?” my voice squeaked out. I sounded like a three-year-old.
Way to instill confidence in your employer. Sheesh
.

“I’m sorry, did you just say the register BLEW UP?” he raged into the phone.

My mouth gaped in shock at his fury-filled reaction.

“You have got to be kidding me!” he continued.

My heart began to race. I could feel my power rise along with my fear and anxiety. Electricity began to jolt from my fingertips. I clenched my fists, trying to control the lightning. My nose filled with the scent of burnt plastic and fried electronics.
Calm thoughts, Delaney
. I opened my eyes to focus on a fixed point on the wall. Several heartbeats went by as I tried to bring my heart rate down. I slowly felt the lightning ease from my body, and belatedly realized I had dropped the phone and could hear Ronald’s muffled frantic screaming pouring out of the speaker.

I picked up the phone and held it about six inches from my ear, where Ronald could clearly be heard. Ronald was prone to hysterics when it came to his vinyl or when I was involved. I couldn’t really blame him, as this wasn’t the first time I had blown something up.

“Hi, yes, I’m here and no, I’m not kidding. Ronald, calm down. I don’t know how this happened. It just did,” I lied.

“What about the vinyl? Is the vinyl okay?” He sounded utterly and completely panicked.

“Yes, Ron, the records are fine,” I said calmly. I tried to hide the panic in my voice even from myself. The last thing I needed was to out myself as a witch.

“Delaney, just close the store and get out,” Ronald said in a hurried tone.

“But it’s the middle of the day, what-” I was cut off by Ronald’s frantic words.

“Leave the keys under the mat and GO,” he ordered.

“Ronald, please I need this job. I’m not doing this, it’s, it’s, it’s just happening!” I begged to him.

“Delaney, this is the second time in four weeks something has blown up with you there. Look, go home for now and when the register is fixed, I’ll call you. But, if anything else happens, you're gone. I mean it, Delaney,” Ronald said in a father-like tone. He quickly added, “The vinyl is okay, right?”

I rolled my eyes at the phone and exasperatedly said, “Yes, Ronald, your preciouses are fine.”

“Hey, Gollum was cool. Bye, Delaney,” he said before the call ended.

I placed the phone on the receiver and slid my sweat-soaked back down the wall, plopping my ass on the floor. I rested my head on my hand with my palms pressing into my eyes. I had to learn how to control this thing or I was going to burn down a building. I was twenty-six years old. I should have control over my ability by now.

I stood up on wobbly legs and moved toward the door. As I reached it, I slowly turned around to view my current disaster. The register lay in a melted heap of smoking, charred electronics. I could see faint handprints melted into the drawer that dangled down from the base, and could still hear faint popping noises coming from the charred lump. Were those sparks flying from the heap?
Crap
.

I ran past the racks of records and busted through the back office, grabbing the red fire extinguisher and aiming it at the heap. White foam exploded from the nozzle, covering the mass of burnt mess. How did I get here? I mean, I know physically how I got here, but how and when did my life get to be such a damned mess?  

The toe of my sneaker caught the lip of the outdated Persian rug and I went flying forward. In an effort to catch myself, my hand tightened on the handle of the fire extinguisher, causing the foam to spray with more force than I thought possible. Yup, this was my life. Lying on a cheap rug, probably bought from Wal-Mart twenty years ago, covered in foam, surrounded by the mess I made.

Slowly, I got up to survey the damage one last time. Now, the glass counter that once held “priceless” - according to Ronald - records was covered in foam. The counter behind that where the cash register sat looked like a snow-covered mountain in miniature.
Yup, when Ronald sees this, I am so fucking fired
. I was better off spraying my own ass with the damned extinguisher. I spared a glance down at myself and the ground. Too late for that. It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

I opened the front door of the store and was immediately blasted by the heat and suffocating humidity of a Savannah summer. I locked the door and picked up my phone, dialing a number. After six rings I heard a sweet southern voice sound from the speaker, “Hey, y’all this is Sierra. I can’t come to the phone right now so…” I hung up the phone. Looked like I’d be huffing it home. If only I could find some other witch in a Coven to teach me, I wouldn't have this issue. Witches, unfortunately, are difficult to find, even if you are a witch.

Witches can be hard to find for a reason, though. It’s known we exist, but we are persecuted and made to register ourselves. Humans are ruled by fear, what can I say? Most registered witches live on reservations. But, some witches, like me, choose to live as a human and
fend for ourselves. Okay, so reservations might not be so bad, but they stuff us on a plot of land as though we have smallpox and finding a job is nigh impossible because there is a demarcation on your license that states your witch status, including your power and power level. Plus, it’s not like there are signs in windows that say, “Witches wanted.” Yeah, we were wanted like a rat infestation.

Witches have secret covens over the whole United States. There is also a governing Coven that mediates and - let’s just say it out loud — controls with the iron fist of a god all of the smaller covens and witches. As a registered witch, you are subject to the rule of the Coven and, like any group of bureaucrats, they are corrupt and will use you within an inch of your morality.

Now, there are a few benefits to being with a coven. They help witches come into and control their powers. Most witches can control an element of the earth, such as air, fire, earth, and water, in a minor way, but some can do some pretty amazing things and have a great control over their power. This is the exact reason why I do not have control over my power. I control the lightning. No one knows how to teach me. And if the Coven were to find out about me, well, my new job title would most certainly become lab rat or utensil. I am better than I used to be, but, on occasion, I still tend to kind of blow things up, just a little. In other words, I am a walking disaster.

One cannot just become a witch. You must be born one. Geneticists and scientists have worked for years to isolate the “Witch Gene” and breed it out of existence. But, it hasn't worked. All they have done is found out it’s a mutation in the genome and can happen to anyone and happen to any family.

As I walked down the sun-drenched street, my thoughts slipped to my great aunt. Maybe she was right. Maybe I should have continued to move every year. But come on. Who could do that every single year? I was going crazy! And really, what were we running from? Sure, my great Aunt Mil was all the family I had left after my parents died when I was five. Mil raised me. But, just six years ago, I told her I wouldn’t move again. I found somewhere I blended in, somewhere I could appear human. Every year she would just show up and try to make me pack my bags.

“Aye, me girl, it be time we take our leave and I not be leavin’ without you,” she would say in her stiff Irish lilt, all the while stuffing my shit in boxes.

As I calmly removed my things from the well-used boxes, I would say, “Mil, listen, I am safe here. We do not need to move all the time.” This is about the time she would cut me off and say she was my elder and that I needed to show her respect, blah blah blah. Then I would retort with, “Mil, I am too old for you to tell me what to do!” Then there would be tears and hurt feelings. Yes, the Coven would use me, but she had spent years teaching me how to avoid them. I was a grown-ass woman and I needed to start acting like it. And these were all points I told her.

Every time I expounded on these points she scoffed at me, saying, “You, girl, are a silly twit.”

I shook my head to try to loosen the thoughts and clear my head of the depressing memories. I picked up my phone to look at the still-blank screen. Where the hell was Sierra? She should have called me back.

I awkwardly shoved the too-warm phone in my pocket.
This Savannah heat and humidity may kill me
. When people come to Savannah they think, “Oh, it’s going to be hot.”
Well, it’s a whole other kind of heat. Today, it was about 90 degrees and the humidity level out of 100% is currently 416%. I am not sure how Savannah defies the laws of physics and Mother Nature by having 416% humidity, but it does.

All in all, it took me about an hour to walk home. By the time I got there, my hair and shirt were soaked with sweat and I smelled like I was fished out of a river. And my hair, now it was in a special state caught between an Angora rabbit and lion. This day kept getting better and better.

I peered up to the forty thousand cement stairs that led to my apartment. They were single handedly put on this Earth to kill me. By the time I made it to my front door, I had about two gallons of sweat soaked into my clothes.
Boy, I’m sure I smell like a rose
.

I opened the front door and a whoosh of cold air greeted me. Thank goodness for central air. My apartment was pretty small. It was a one-bedroom studio apartment located near downtown Savannah. I don’t do the decorating thing much, so things are pretty sparse. It’s mostly Goodwill finds and hand-me-downs. I don’t have a flat screen or stereo system. Technology and I have a love-hate relationship. I want to love it, it hates me, and I hate the bills that come from the damages acquired when we have a spat.

The clock read 4:32 P.M. and I still hadn’t heard from Sierra. I called her for a third time. This time I left a message. “Sierra, where the hell are you? You were supposed to pick me up from work. By the way, this is D.”

Sierra, much like myself, was an unregistered witch. That’s where the similarities ended. I was about 5’5 with a slim waist and curves in the right places. I had shoulder-length, mousy brown hair with glints of red. Sierra was 5’10 and beanpole thin with very few curves and beautiful, long, bouncing blonde ringlets. Her eyes were a stunning bright blue while mine were storm cloud gray. She had a nose that on anyone else would look like a beak, but on her long face looked just right, whereas mine was more of button nose that turned up slightly at the tip. I had a round face where hers was narrow.

I settled in for the evening and turned in around 11 P.M. No sense in dragging this disaster of a day out.