I Wish... (17 page)

“A book? What is it about?”

Ramona chuckled. “It’s not a fiction book. It’s a book of spells.”

“Spells? I know we’re witches and everything, but I didn’t think anyone here actually needed to cast a spell to use magic.”

“When these pages were written the spells in question were more like folk medicine. There are pages full of herbal remedies for almost anything that might ail you. There are recipes for meals and pictures to identify different kinds of plants that were found in this area.”

I tilted my head and said, “Ok, so it’s interesting and probably worth a lot of money to a collector by now, but I don’t get why you’re showing this to me?”

She opened the grimmoire to a page near the end of the book. I caught glimpses of a family tree flipping by until she found what she was seeking. She pointed at a spot near the bottom of the page. “There you are.”

Jane Madison.
I tried to sneak a look at the spot where my father’s name should be, but Ramona had her thumb planted squarely on top.

“Surely you can see that you are a part of something much larger than yourself. Our traditions mean everything to us. Our position in the Coven is one our Family has occupied for generations. When you fail to adhere to the rules, you not only threaten our place in the community, but you make me look foolish and ineffectual as a Matriarch.” She glared at me. “I hate to look foolish.”

She pointed again at the page in the grimmoire. This time to an entry higher up. It was her name. “When I was a girl, I was best friends with Cora Spencer.”

I tried not to look as shocked as I felt, but my eyebrows shot up before I could stop them.

Ramona flapped a dismissive hand at me. “Oh, I know it’s hard to believe. I haven’t spoken to her for almost 40 years now. But it’s true. We were inseparable. Our Families were strong allies.”

“She pretty much despises you now. What happened?”

She sat down in her chair, leaning over one arm. Her eyes were distant. “I didn’t have much interest in Family business in those days. I was young and wild. I wasn’t so much different than other teen girls when I was your age.

“It drove my mother crazy, of course. She wanted me to find a man from a good Family, have my heir and settle down. Cora and I were considered to be the two most sought after First Daughters in town so finding a man wouldn’t have been hard. I just didn’t want to tie myself down with marriage and kids. There were so many adventures I wanted to have.”

She smiled a little. Her expression was softer than I could ever remember seeing on her face. “Cora’s Talent is creating illusions. We used to play pranks on everyone. We’d sneak off to the city sometimes and she’d cast an illusion on us so that we looked like famous celebrities. People would mob us for our autographs and restaurants couldn’t feed us enough free food so that they could say that they’d served some of the biggest stars of those days. I have never known anybody else who could make me laugh the way Cora could.”

Ramona straightened in her chair, frowning. “But I realize now that she had higher aspirations than I did back then. I was dating Shep’s uncle, Nathan. We’d talked about the possibility of getting married. He was from a good Family and quite handsome. We started… getting intimate before too long.”

Oh dear God, I'm not hearing this.
"Don’t you think I’m too young for this kind of talk?"

Her smile was frosty. “I think you’ll be ok.”

“I don’t know about that.” I muttered.

“One day Cora came to me and told me she was pregnant. I was delighted for her, of course. But surprised since she didn’t have a boyfriend that I knew of. I asked her who the father was and she told me it was none other than my boyfriend, Nathan Claphan.

“That would have been awful enough, thinking that my boyfriend had betrayed me, but then she told me that she’d cast an illusion on herself so that she looked like me. He’d gotten her pregnant without ever knowing that he’d even had sex with her. But the worst part was that the way she looked at me. She was so very smug and pleased with herself. Somehow she had managed to hate me so much without me ever realizing there was a thing wrong with our friendship.”

I mulled over Ramona’s words and a horrifying thought occurred to me. “Does this mean that Evan and I are related?”
I almost kissed him. Ewww.

Ramona looked amused by my disgust. “I think you’d probably deserve it if that were the case. Those are the kinds of things that happen when you disrespect traditions, but no. Even though I knew it wasn’t Nathan’s fault, I just couldn’t see him again. I went into a bit of a depression and isolated myself from everyone. I was reeling from the revelation that my trust was so misplaced. But I learned a valuable lesson from the experience.”

“That you don’t need a man to be a strong woman?” I suggested.

“No. I learned that revenge is delicious. She married Lex Baldwin a few years later. Everyone agreed that they were deliriously in love. He was willing to overlook the fact that he wouldn’t have a chance of having a First Daughter since the baby she’d had with Nathan was a girl.

“They had a few years of blissful happiness. I was bitter, of course. But I’ve always been a patient woman. When I stole him away from her, it came as shock to her. I wanted to make sure that she wasn’t looking over her shoulder for my attack.

“I know that at first she wouldn’t let him check the mail because she knew about my power. I thought about finding a child to hand deliver a special letter, but in the end I decided that waiting would give me time to find a more satisfying solution to my problem. And that’s exactly what happened. I saw an opportunity to not only destroy Cora’s marriage, but to have her do it herself.

“I managed to get my hands on an envelope that Elizabeth Fletcher, the High Priestess, had addressed herself. Stealing a few sheets of her stationary was easy. I sat down that very night and wrote draft after draft until I was convinced I’d planned out the wording exactly.”

Ramona leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. I wanted to tell her to stop before she shattered any final illusions I had that somewhere underneath the cold exterior lurked a loving woman who really did want what was best for me. Instead I asked, “What did it say?”

“I knew she’d throw the letter away the very moment she realized it was from me. I can work my magic through typewritten words, but it’s strongest when it’s written by my own hand. Besides, Coven letters are always handwritten. Elizabeth insists on it. She’s adapted to modern life very well, but she still clings to some of the old ways.

“To get around that reaction, I made sure that the first line of the letter read,
'You don't want to stop reading this letter.'
Then I instructed her to give the second page of the letter to Lex and to destroy all other evidence of having received the letter and to forget about it. She did exactly as I told her to.”

I swallowed, trying to wet my dry throat. “And what did his letter say?”

“Oh, the details are fuzzy now, but I sowed seeds of discontent in their marriage. I told him that she was jealous and overly critical of him and that he was full of contempt for her. I also told him that he found me irresistible. I suggested that having a First Daughter should be his first priority and reminded him that I hadn’t had any daughters yet so I was a prime candidate.

“Within days, we were having an affair. Lex was handsome enough, but then most men in Desire are. His personality never appealed to me and the fact that he went home every night and shared a bed with Cora made my skin crawl. He couldn’t get enough of me, but that was my own fault. I wanted to ensure that I got pregnant before my magic had time to fade.

“Before I found out either way whether I was pregnant, I started hearing rumors that things weren’t going so well between Lex and Cora anymore. In fact, that’s all anybody was talking about. It was remarkable that the two of them had such a happy marriage in a town where people marry because of duty. When it imploded, everyone felt validated.”

“So mom’s father was Cora’s husband?”

“Yes.” Ramona’s face was flushed with satisfaction.

“And Marla too?”

“Absolutely. I found that it wasn’t enough to have driven a wedge in their marriage. Cora was enraged when she found out that I was carrying her husband’s baby. Maybe my magic faded after time, but her anger started turning her into the person I convinced Lex she was. She became exceptionally bitter and possessive. She demanded he account for his every movement. He started drinking and took to writing me love letters. I saved them all.

“I pulled the same trick with a bogus letter from the Coven. The instructions were identical, give her husband his copy and burn hers. She gave Lex his letter and he gave it to me as instructed. I put it with the stack of love letters. And in record time I was pregnant again.

“I went to her house one afternoon. Lex was out puttering in the garden she said. The way she said it, I thought maybe she was warning me that I wouldn’t get my hooks into him on her watch. As if I had any use for the wretched man. I already had Savannah and I had a feeling that this new baby was going to be a girl too. By now Cora and Lex had had a couple of children together, but they were both boys.

“I was enormous and I waddled more than walked onto her porch to confront her. I declined her offer to go inside. I knew I was taking a fairly big risk since she could cast an illusion over us and kill me right on her front porch and nobody would be the wiser. I felt safe though because I’d written in both letters to her that she would never attempt to cause me physical harm or use her magic against me. Even if the magic had worn over time, I didn’t think she’d be able to shake it this soon.

“She offered me a glass of tea and I accepted and we sat side by side on her porch swing. It was the first time we’d been within spitting distance of each other in years. For a minute I could almost forget that I hated the bitch.”

Ramona leaned forward. “I didn’t say anything, I just handed her the stack of letters. She read a couple that were on top and then started flipping through them, glancing at the dates. Her knuckles were white and her face, a face made for playing poker if I’ve ever seen one, was flushed. When she got to the one I sent him she looked away. I told her that it was directed at him so she’d be ok if she read it.

“That’s true, you know.” She looked at me. “When I put a name to a note my magic targets that person. It makes the magic stronger, but the focus is extremely limited. When I write my novels my magic hits anyone who reads it, but it’s weak. All I can really do is manipulate their emotions. Not enough to do any lasting harm, but it makes my books really come alive for them and that’s the secret to my success.

“Since she knew it was the truth, she read the letter, including the part where I told him that he only received my letter because Cora gave it to him. She realized then that she’d had a hand in causing her own marriage to fall apart. She screamed at me to leave and I saw her struggling with the urge to slap me. I was afraid for a minute that her rage might give her the strength to break my spell, but her hand dropped to her side. Even though she couldn’t hit me, she never stopped screaming at me to go.”

“So did she end up forgiving Lex when she realized it wasn’t his fault?”

Ramona closed the grimmoire with care before she continued. “Lex was dead in less than a week. Mysterious causes, but there wasn’t much of an investigation. There never is in Desire.”

I shuddered. “I guess that explains her reaction when she saw me.”

Ramona crossed her arms and glared at me. “You do realize she could have killed you? My spell, if it still holds, won’t protect you.”

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my own arms. “And surely
you
realize that if you hadn’t stolen her husband, she wouldn’t have an axe to grind with me? Hell, she’s like my step grandmother, right? And what with grandpa buried in the back yard and all, we’re practically family.”

She gripped the edge of the desk as though she was fighting an overwhelming urge to hit me herself, but her voice was deadly calm when she said, “It has been brought to the attention of the Coven that you don’t have a proper appreciation our traditions and therefore can’t defend yourself. They’ve asked for a formal introduction. And they are going to have one.”

I opened my mouth¸ intending to argue, but she talked over me. “You are going to go before them and publicly claim your power. If they ask you to use it, you will do so. You will do whatever they ask of you without argument. If they were to find you a threat due to your rebellion, you will be taken care of before you even knew it was coming.”

“Are you threatening to kill me?”
We’ve just crossed way beyond the threshold of bad parenting and into a whole ‘nother ball game.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She snapped. “I need you alive to secure my position in the Coven. It’s my intention to keep you from getting yourself killed. Listen to me and you’ll be fine. You will see them tomorrow. Now go. I’m wasting writing time and I’m fighting a deadline here.”

She went back to typing like she hadn’t just told me more about herself in a quarter hour than in the previous seventeen years of my life all together. Unsure of what to think of the revelations, I left her office.

Hours before I was scheduled to meet with the Coven, I woke up with my stomach twisting itself into knots. I hadn’t slept the night before and after two restless nights, I felt like I was viewing the world through glasses with fogged lenses. To say I was nervous would be like saying Marlon Brando didn’t age gracefully. There are slight distortions of the facts and then there are gross understatements.

I worried that maybe I should dress in formal clothes or at least a skirt, but Ramona dismissed the concern. “People dress up when they want to prove they have more money or fashion sense than the people they are spending time with. There isn’t a single member of the Coven who doesn’t have more money than they’ll ever spend in this lifetime. Nobody will be impressed if you attempt to put on airs. Just wear your everyday clothes.”