Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 (4 page)

“Speak to me,
then.”

“Rarely has so little
been certain. A whirlwind is coming. Of what sort, though, will be
a wonderful surprise to me.”

He dug his nails into
the palm of his hand. He found satisfaction in taking control of
his pain. Opening his hand, the marks closed quickly, and he licked
them clean.

"Do you possess any
means of guiding my search for her?" he finally asked.

Morgan
nodded.

"How?" the Sovereign
snapped.

"Should the one you
seek use her powers in extremity, and should I focus and reach, I
will feel her."

He reached his hand
into his cowl and gripped a fistful of blonde hair. "How extreme
would you need it to be?" the Sovereign asked.

"She must find her
limits and push far beyond them. The need must be great and the
situation dire. She must do that which she believes she cannot.
Sufficient would be a direct threat to her life or that of a loved
one."

The Sovereign moved
toward her again, slowly this time, and Morgan let him.

Inches away from her,
the Sovereign stopped, and sighed. "Until that time, I will direct
my agents amongst all the clans of the world to closely watch the
hidden populations of their territories."

"All around the world,”
Morgan replied, breathing in the immensity of the
directive.

The Sovereign snorted
and paced away. "Until you give me more, I have no choice. No
choice at all."

Chapter
Two

"Rai! Wake up, Rai!"
The shrill voice of Aradia’s mother pierced her dreams so swiftly
and sharply that she jolted herself awake and shot
upright.

After she realized
where she was and what was happening, Aradia groggily mumbled, “I
can’t wait to go to college.”

“Rai! It’s the first
day of school! Wake up sweetie!”

“In another state,” she
added. Only then would her mother, and especially her mother's
voice, be unable to disturb her slumber. Nevertheless, for now
Aradia was still in bed in her new home in Salem, Massachusetts. No
matter what her mother wanted, Aradia was inclined to say "to hell
with it all" and stay in bed all day.

Just as Aradia was
curling up to go back to sleep, her mother knocked twice and,
without waiting, threw open her door. "Come now, Aradia, get up or
you're going to miss the bus!"

"No. I am not," Aradia
grumbled.

"What makes you say
that?" her mother asked with her hands on her hips, an eyebrow
raised, and the puppy bathrobe she wore every morning looking as
ridiculous as ever.

"Because Dad said he’d
drive me," Aradia replied. She’d already pulled the covers over her
head, but Liza could sense her daughter was smirking.

After a few moments of
contemplation on how she wanted to play her hand, Liza said, "Ah,
well then, I guess you’ll miss the big breakfast I made for you,
the Belgian waffles, cheddar cheese omelet, orange juice, and
homemade blueberry muffins. All that will just have to go to your
father now. I’m sure he won’t mind cleaning his plate, and the
whole table, while you get a few minutes more sleep."

Aradia opened her eyes
and pulled the covers off her face. "You fight dirty. You know
that, don't you?"

"I prefer to think of
it as just being a good mother," Liza replied with a lovely
smile.

Aradia feigned a scowl.
Liza merely turned and slammed the door shut, knowing her daughter
would be up and about now.

She was right. Aradia
swung out of bed and walked, no longer groggy, over to her dresser.
Her nerves had wiped any latent sleepiness out of her.

There was one concern
on Aradia’s mind at the moment though and that was making a good
first impression at her new school.

She had no decision to
make on what to wear; she’d chosen and laid out her clothes for the
day weeks earlier. She’d actually spent a good deal of time in the
interim just staring at the outfit. She wasn’t so much eager or
nervous, but rather was, if anything, trying to be thorough. Most
girls did not have to start their freshman year in a brand new
school in a brand new state that was thousands of miles away from
their old home in Arizona. She felt that there wasn’t much she
could control about her situation. Her clothes, though, she could
control. So she did.

After dressing Aradia
turned to her chocolate brown vanity mirror and examined the girl
staring back. She was a waifish-yet-curvy, pale-skinned and
freckled, round-faced teenage girl. Her hair was long, wavy, and
shockingly red. Aradia alternated between thinking of it as fire
hydrant red and stoplight red. She loved her hair, in no small part
because of the way it made her green eyes pop all the more vividly.
Green eyes that her father swore that could see right through a
person’s soul.

Aradia expected to be
pleased with the visage. Her anticipatory smile, however, melted
into horror when she saw the disgusting whitehead zit on her
chin.

Her gut instinct was to
shriek and lock her bedroom door to prevent her parents from
dragging her to school with the evil blemish on her face. She could
skip the first few days and give her chin time to settle
down.
Not much happens the first few
days anyway, right?
she justified the
plan to herself.

She wasn’t so vain
generally, but today was different. More than simply looking gross,
that zit could ruin her intended first impression at her brand new
school. She knew first hand how hard a closed-clique school could
be when you were one of the ones on the fringes. She did not look
forward to four long years of more of the same. If she didn’t make
a good impression, people mocking her could be only the start of
her troubles.

A ray of hope appeared
to her as she remembered her latest concoction, mostly made of
herbs from her mother’s garden. Usually her mother got slightly
annoyed when Aradia helped herself to “raw materials,” as Aradia
put it. With the move, however, Liza knew she would have to leave
the garden behind anyway. “You can take whatever herbs you like,
honey bee,” she’d said. “Even more than you do already.”

Aradia had let herself
have fun with the options, and had spent most of that day mashing,
grinding, and mixing. Most of her mixtures were utter failures at
doing anything useful, but her efforts were not in vain. After
enough stirring to give her quite the arm workout, she had created
about an ounce of paste which, she believed at least, would clear
one's skin.

It struck her as very
coincidental and timely that she’d created such a salve so shortly
before desperately needing one, but she mentally waved that thought
away.

“Everything happens for
a reason, and all that jazz,” she said to herself.

Unfortunately, Aradia
had done a poor job of packing or labeling her personal things for
the move in any reasonable manner, and most of her stuff, including
the lotion, was still packed up.

That much did not
bother her, though. In fact, there was a good reason why she’d
never developed much of an organizational sense. She possessed a
sure-fire method to find anything that was lost to her.

Closing her eyes, she
held out her palm and envisioned clearly in her mind the small
bottle. It was one of those mini-toiletry shampoo bottles one finds
at hotels, that said “Marriot” on the side of it. Aradia was
especially big on the “reuse” part of “reduce, reuse,
recycle.”

Her hand began to glow,
dimly at first, but building up to a bright white intensity. The
light started to emerge from her outstretched hand like steam from
a kettle. Aradia opened her eyes, and with one last blinding flash
like the death of a star, the bottle and lotion-potion appeared in
her hand.

"Rai! Come on
downstairs! I can't keep protecting your breakfast from your father
forever!" her mother's loud voice disrupted the climactic
moment.

"I am coming, Mama! And
I appreciate your protecting my breakfast from the Daddy Disposal!”
Aradia shouted back.

"I heard that!" This
time a strong male voice responded to Aradia instead of a soft
female one. "And don't shout in the house!

"Okay, Daddy!" she
shouted back.

Aradia smirked and
turned to her mirror. She then smeared onto her chin a generous
glob of the precious, pale pink paste. Realizing it might take a
while for the balm to zap the zit on its own, Aradia decided one
more summoning might be in order. Pressing her fingers hard onto
the spot where she had just rubbed the paste, she called upon the
white light once again, “summoning” the ointment deep into her
flesh. Just as quickly both the medicinal and the zit
disappeared.

"Okay, okay! I have
arrived, no need to call my lawyer!" Aradia announced as she
skipped down the stairs into the kitchen where her family was
having breakfast. Her mother had not exaggerated the quantity of
food, and the quality looked just as impressive.

"Too late," her father
managed to murmur through a mouth full of toast.

"Oh yeah, that's
right," Aradia said in a voice that dripped with faux innocence.
"My Daddy is my lawyer. I hope you still have time for your number
one client even with your fancy new job.”

Ross was Salem’s newest
Assistant District Attorney. Technically it was a lateral transfer,
not a promotion, as it was the same title he’d held in Arizona. His
prospects for advancement were much brighter here in Salem,
though.

"Don't remind me," he
grumbled, swigging back on his glass of orange juice.

"What's your problem?"
Aradia demanded defensively. She tended not to take it well when
others failed to find the comedy in her frequent, and sometimes
successful, attempts at humor.

"Oh, ignore him,
honey," her mother said as she provided Aradia with her own glass
of juice. Aradia was already digging into a loaded plate of the
pre-described breakfast. "Your father is just nervous about being
the newest criminal lawyer on the block."

Aradia's father scowled
at his wife who just looked at him and said, "Well, you
are!"

"You can't really blame
me for being grumpy,” he defended himself, spraying a dozen or so
pumps of the calorie-free butter substitute his wife insisted their
family use onto a muffin. “It’s bad enough that my predecessor was
dismissed under a cloud of scandal–"

"And cocaine,” Aradia
interjected and automatically received a warning look from her
father before he continued with his complaint.

“What will you be
working on?” Liza asked. It was not common, but Ross did, from time
to time, throw himself a pity party. Liza had learned that
comforting him did nothing to help. The best way to get him out of
it was to get him talking about whatever subject bothered him. He
only ever got down on himself about things he was really quite good
at. She just had to guide him into talking himself out of
it.

“Okay, so they’re not
holding back on me,” he said, mood immediately shifting. “Three
weeks ago Salem had a murder. The press went crazy over
it.”

“Over one murder?”
Aradia asked. “Why?”

“Well, all violent
crime in Salem is way below the national average,” he replied, and
started rattling off statistics. “It’s a pretty small town, just
shy of forty-five thousand probably, by the last Census. Aggravated
assault, rape, murder, all are way below average.”

“Not so good for your
job security,” Aradia joked.

Ross wanted to chastise
her for taking the subject lightly. Rape and murder were not
laughing matters to him. He still chuckled before he could correct
her. Liza shot him a glance, with the clear message being: “Don’t
encourage that!”

“Anyway,” Ross went on,
“I hate saying this, but a murder here is news. It was the manner
it was committed that got the press all in a frenzy though. The
body was exsanguinated.”

Aradia responded, “Does
that mean what I think it does?”

“Drained of blood,” her
dad nodded solemnly. “Eerie, huh?”

“Oh,” she replied. “Not
what I thought then.”

“What did you
think?”

“From context I figured
it meant ‘really messed up,’” she joked morbidly.

“Aradia,” her dad
struggled, and failed, to hold back another inappropriate laugh,
“that is inappropriate.”

“Ross, should you be
telling us all this?” Liza attempted to change the
subject.

He waved her concern
away. “This is all public record. Don’t worry. Frankly, one of the
news stations must have an inside source somewhere close to the
investigation, because I probably couldn’t tell you much which
wasn’t already all over the television.”

Liza nodded. She didn’t
quite consider this an acceptable breakfast topic, but if it got
her husband out of his funk, she’d let it slide this
time.

“They’re calling him or
her the Vampire Murderer.”

“Well that’s silly,”
Liza replied in spite of herself. “That sounds like he kills
vampires.”