Bound In Blood (The Adams' Witch Series Book 1) (13 page)

Drake smirked. “That’s just another reason you can’t use not to date me.”

I thought about kissing him, but remembered how he wanted more the last time. Drake would always want more. He wasn’t like the use ‘em and lose ‘em type from Miami. The kind I used to lament about with friends. Now that I had a gentleman—a perfect gentleman who wanted me—I was scared. Who would want me when I’d probably end up being just like my mother anyway?

I sighed and laughed at the same time, my feelings as screwed up as my relationships. “No, I guess I can’t use that as an excuse.” I ran my fingers through my hair and wiped at my face. “I need to find out what that symbol is.”

I looked up at Drake, hoping for an answer.

He shrugged. “Google it?”

***

When I returned to Rose’s, I turned my phone on immediately, ignoring the beeps as new text messages came in. The signal wasn’t strong enough to get on the internet through the phone, but I could try to connect to a wireless signal.

The phone beeped.
No Connection.

“Ugh. I really
am
living in the 50’s.” I tossed the phone on the end table in the foyer. “Rose, are you here?” I called out. “You’ll never guess where I’ve been.” I searched the dark foyer. “I’ve been at the police station. I think something happened to my—”

“There you are,” Rose bellowed. “You are not the only one in this house, you know.” She pointed up the stairs. “I’m trying to sleep, but I can’t with all that noise you’re making up there.”

“Noise?” I shook my head. She’d known I left the house earlier. “I’ve been with Drake, I haven’t—”

The older woman’s eyes narrowed. A physical pulse of anger shockwaved through her body. Then, her voice turned haughty, like an 1800’s gentleman talking to a poor, ignorant servant. “If you weren’t here, then why did I hear bangs coming from your room? I know you’re upset about your father, but that is not the proper way to handle it.”

My voice sounded small next to the authoritative tone of my aunt’s. “I have no idea what you’ve been hearing.”

Rose’s face turned to disgust. “Did you have Drake over? Is that what you’ve been doing in your room?”

“No!” I shouted, shocked she would insinuate something like that. My cheeks burned in embarrassment. “We weren’t here…and I haven’t been doing anything like…like—”

“And I am not a small town hick as you may think I am. I have enough senses to trust my ears when I hear things.” Rose thrust her finger up the stairs. “You are the only one here besides me.”

“Rose, really, I haven’t been here. Come, check.”

“I will check!” Rose’s face enflamed, shaking with anger. I watched her implode, not understanding how the warm aunt I saw around Drake could flip like a switch and turn into Britney Spears with a shaved head and an umbrella.

Rose turned on the heel of her pink slippers and clopped up the stairs. I arched my eyebrows in amazement, remembering my father calling her “spry” in the journal. I thudded up the stairs right behind her and reached the top just as Rose turned the doorknob. She peeked back at me and smiled with one lip curved up higher than the other as if she were snarling.

I closed the gap between us in two strides. We both stood in the open doorway. I took a quick look around to make sure I didn’t have underwear lying anywhere or any other “evidence” to make Rose think Drake and I were actually fooling around. The other investigated for who knew what—a clue in some phantom bangs case?

“The noises are coming from here,” Rose said, walking to the corner of the room. A few steps in, her head snapped back, curlers jumping in an escape attempt, but they buoyed right back. “No wonder.” The older woman pointed at the desk. “You’ve moved it!” The wrinkled hand gave way to long, perfectly polished red nails. “Why did you move that desk?”

My pulse quickened, throbbing in my wrist first, then in my temples. Anger and apprehension swirled around inside in a tornado of mixed emotions. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t touch the desk. It’s been there since you told me to come up here that first night.”

“That’s impossible. I moved that desk to the attic years ago.”

“I’m not sure what’s going on here.” I exhaled a deep breath. It whistled out like a steam-run train.

Alzheimer’s was my first guess. Isn’t that what the woman from
The Notebook
had? She couldn’t remember things, even people. Maybe Rose was suffering from that. She was old. Old enough to forget if she had a desk in a spare bedroom she hardly used, but it was more than that. It was the bangs she claimed she’d heard and the fact that she’d forgotten I'd went to Drake’s earlier. I wasn’t even at home when she claimed to have heard the noises.

The rigidness of Rose’s shoulders softened. She took a deep breath and let it out all in one whoosh. Her face was expressionless while she stared at me, though judging by her opaque eyes, not really seeing me. Fleeting as it was, I caught the look and then suddenly she was out of it.

Rose walked toward the desk, letting her fingers play over the wood. Closing her eyes and muttering, she talked in whispers, her voice low. There was a repetition to whatever she said, a melodic tune.

“What’s wrong?” I took a few steps closer to the corner of the room where she stood. “Are you okay?”

Rose cocked her head. “It can’t be,” she choked out, face paling white. “It can’t be.” Suddenly, she ripped her hand away from the desk. Gaping down at her pointer finger, she gasped. The tip of her finger was red and bulging. “You brought it out! You brought it out!”

I started to tremble, uneasiness quivering through me. “Aunt Rose, I…”

The older woman came at me with careful, purposeful steps. When she was right in my face, she said, “No. You brought it out.” She turned and walked from the room, letting the door slam behind her.

I reached in my pocket for my phone. I needed to talk to Drake. Maybe my dad was right. Rose didn’t seem at all with it. She went through mood swings like crazy and she had to be way past the point of menopause symptoms. It could’ve been menopause on steroids, but I was betting on something more serious. Maybe she was losing herself…

Crap. My phone wasn’t there. I’d left it downstairs.
I bent over the desk, eyeing the wood design for any clues as to why Rose freaked. It just looked like a desk to me, an old one, but with the same drawers and cubbies like any other desk.

Hell, it looked a lot like the desk Mom bought me after engagement number one didn’t work out.

Johnny Brimbauer. His wife had died, leaving him with no kids. I really liked him actually, even begged him to stay. Plotted out a route to run away, straight to Johnny’s house on the water after they broke up. Come to think of it, my mother had bought me a whole new bedroom set for that one.

This time I ran away to true family. I wasn’t doing it again.

I crossed the room to the door and eased it open, listening, reminding myself of the first night, except this time Rose was the crazy one and not my mom. For once, not my mom.

Quick footsteps paced the wood floor below. My heart beat in time with them until I lost all nerve and turned to retreat back into my room. The house phone rang. The shrill ring screeched through the silent house, like the owl’s cry piercing the nighttime forest.

“Hello,” Rose barked. I didn’t need to descend the steps this time. My aunt’s voice was loud enough to hear standing on the landing outside my door. “No. No. She’s in bed already.” The footsteps halted. "A symbol? No, she didn’t tell me…” The older woman’s voice softened. "Well, I imagine she is upset.” I inched down the first couple steps. “David’s journal? It's in the library. Why?” And after a moment of silence, “Oh, I see. Huh. Well, it’s probably just some symbol that he liked." The footsteps started up again. They got louder as they neared the foyer, but they turned, sounding as if she moved toward the library door. At least in that vicinity. I hid in the hallway, out of view from the staircase. A big, throaty laugh echoed through the open room downstairs. “Yeah, she definitely is that, isn't she?”

I bit down on my lip. The phone beeped after Rose said goodbye and something about the lawn mower.

Her footsteps continued until the room fell silent. I only waited a minute before descending the stairs. I needed to get the journal back.

At the bottom step, I stood and listened. Off in the other room, a mattress groaned.

The journal was the key. Too bad it was in the library.
I’ll just slip in, take it out, and have it back before she gets up in the morning
.

Tiptoeing across the floor, cringing when the floorboards groaned and creaked, I stopped and listened. Rose’s room remained quiet. Only two more steps to the library and I’d be home free. One step…two steps…the board near the door sighed. I cringed again, ears straining to listen. Nothing.

The doorknob was cold and the metal rattled when I turned it. Well, tried to turn it.

“Sarah, is that you?”

I jumped and leapt back into the middle of the large room, eyes darting to the shadowy corners, searching for the voice. The lights flickered on and Rose emerged, one eye slightly closed as the light from the chandelier shone down on her.

“Sorry. I was just looking for…” The R drew out as I scanned the room for something to save me. “My phone! I was searching for my phone," I said, spying it on the end table. “I couldn’t remember where I put it.”

I crossed to the table and picked the cell up, holding it out to show Rose. The old woman nodded. “Okay, honey. Get some sleep now.” She rubbed my back as she guided me toward the stairs. “Drake said you had a bad day. We’ll talk about it later though. A nice, long rest will do you good.”

I nodded and managed to mumble a “Thanks.” In actuality, a nice, long stay in a sane town—let alone a sane house—would do me good.

What really worried me though wasn’t why Rose’s mood had flipped once again, it was why Dad’s journal had been locked in the damn library.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Isabella

1639

The rusted metal latch clinked into place as Isabella’s mother secured the door behind Mr. Lynne’s retreating steps again. It had become routine since her father started joining the rest of the males in the village on the witch hunts.

In her bedroom, Isabella’s ears perked, listening for the sounds of her mother busying herself for bed. The light of the full moon washed over her while she sat at the desk, waiting. The traveling cloak Mrs. Lynne passed down was already tied around her neck, warming her insides despite nervous chills spiking her skin.

Thomas had not come to her in weeks. She must see him.

From watching her father, Isabella learned he went witch-hunting every other night. The only piece of information she lacked? What night Thomas went out on. Happily, her father let it slip yesterday that Thomas Ludington led the party on the nights he did not go hunting. He griped that he got “Old Man Ludington, who could find a witch in a garden full of roses…”

As the first sounds of her mother’s wheezing snore sounded from within the room next door, Isabella willed herself to stay seated. By the time her mother’s usual deep groans reverberated, her fingertips ached from grasping the desk so firmly.

As easy as before, she slipped through the house and outside. Mrs. Lynne expected her daughter to be dutiful. She harbored no worries Isabella would try to see Thomas again.

A pang of guilt slowed her step, but as the road came into view, she ran toward the trees for cover. The night moved all around her. She heard not only her quick, light steps through the branch and leaf-toppled floor, but the scamper of small animals. Overhead, the groans from tree branches echoed as they succumbed to the weight of an owl or the pressure of the wind.

Halfway to town, a voice bellowed. It carried on the breeze until it smacked Isabella in the chest, sending her heart skipping. She sank low to the forest floor and hid her face behind the hood of the cloak. The earthen floor soaked the dress at her knees as she crawled behind the trunk of a huge oak tree. It smelled of fresh mud and bitter moss.

As the sounds of men talking drew close, she peeked around the tree. A group of twenty, some young enough that she bettered them in age, walked down the road with sticks that burned with fire. The orange flames licked at the moon. Mr. Ludington led them. A younger brother to Thomas held the fire high for the magistrate, sweeping it along the far side of the road. Both hunters gazed into the darkness of the forest with drawn-in, expectant faces.

Near the end of the pack, Isabella spied her own father. He held no torch or light and walked with his eyes to the road as if he expected a witch to appear there. Isabella remained still, as sturdy as the oak before her and breathed in shallow breaths to avoid sound. Only when the flames of the torches grew dim, and then dark, did she allow herself to move.

As she neared Adams village, Isabella’s expectations drained to the dank forest floor. A watchman stood guard at the point where the country road opened into town. Hope extinguished to a tiny burning flame of a candle. She would have to wait it out.

Wrapped in her traveling cloak, Isabella hid behind a pile of chopped wood. Her hiding spot left her with ample view of the guard as she willed him to fall asleep or tire of waiting and leave. Neither made any outward noises. The chirping of the grasshoppers’ chorus invaded the still of the town. No light came from windows, nor smoke from chimneys. No persons moved about tasting the alleviation of drink. This is not what she knew town life to be like.