Beautiful Souls (17 page)

    
              “It’s just still a little unsettling. It’s a lot to have thrown on you all in one night.”

    
              “I know,” he said, and he placed his warm hands on the sides of my cold rosy cheeks, kissing me lightly on my wanting lips. “But you’re safe. I promise you. I want you to keep this necklace on at all times, do you hear me?” he asked, as he touched the antique key hanging from my neck. “It will protect you, too,” he reminded me.

    
              Leo held on to me for another minute, then sent me inside as he disappeared into the unknown of the night. There was so much now that was unknown to me, and I realized that light or dark, day or night, didn’t have anything to do with my unknowns anymore.

                                    
 
Chapter 7.

Destiny

des-ti-ny

/’destine/

Noun

1. The events that will necessarily happen to a

    particular person or thing in the future.

2. The hidden power believed to control what

    will happen in the future; fate.

    
              School was the last thing on my mind as I wondered zombie-like from class to class on Monday. The only thing I looked forward to was the measly thirty minutes we were allotted for lunch. That was when I was finally able to spend some time with Leo.

    
              There had been no contact between the two of us, if you didn’t count our walk from the parking lot to my locker in the morning, since Leo broke the news to me last night about what he was.

    
              We sat side by side at our usual lunch table, flanked by Emmy and Will, Livi, Grace, and Justin. Leo kept his head low most of the time, only raising it to periodically shoot me glances of worry, yet still understanding, over my sullen mood. Apprehension, not about him but over the situation, had taken residence in my brain, and I could feel it spreading from the roots of my hair all the way down to the tips of my toes.

    
              I reached over toward him and grasped his strong, rough hand, holding it under the table in an effort to let him know nothing had changed between us. If anything, my feelings for Leo had grown.

    
              The others all went about there normal routines, their light-hearted, nonchalant chattering surrounding us. Before we were ready, our time together was cut short by the bell releasing us to our dreaded afternoon classes.

    
              The hours dragged that afternoon, and I only saw Leo once more when he met me after school beside my Bug in the parking lot. We said our goodbyes before I drove off toward The Square in town to help my mom at her shop that afternoon.

    
              Once I had arrived at ‘
Better Than It Ever Was’
antique shop, I reluctantly walked through the menagerie of collectibles, mindlessly making my way to the back room. Thoughts of Leo still swirled in my mind, and I craved a mind-numbing, droll activity to preoccupy the clouds of thoughts taking me over.

    
              I started unpacking the boxes that had been delivered earlier that day. There weren’t many from what I saw, and I thought that maybe my mom would allow me to leave early this evening.

    
              I quickly sorted through the few boxes, taking out each item, then one by one  pricing and cataloging them according to my mom’s system. I assigned each collectible an item number, and when I had worked my way through to the final box, thankfully much faster than I’d anticipated, I pulled out a decrepit-looking book from the box and its wrapping.

    
              Instinctively, I began the mindless routine again of assigning a price, catalog and stock number, but as I wrote the title in my mom’s cataloging system, it struck me as strange.

    
              ‘
Witch Families, Bloodlines, Descendants, & Specialties’
written in centuries-old gold-leaf, styled in long-forgotten script lettering, glimmered up at me from the packing. Sunlight beamed in through the one and only stock room window, and it cast its rays on the cover of the book, drawing my attention to the gleaming gold letters.

    
              I quickly shoved the book back into its packing before my mom could see. Where had this book come from? The box had been tucked in a corner behind the work table, but had my mom really ordered this?

    
              My new-found knowledge of Leo and his family secret had made me become insanely and irrevocably curious about the subject. I was determined to find out any and all tidbits of information this book may hold, so I decided then and there to
“borrow”
the book for a little while.

    
              My mom called from the front of the shop, notifying me that she would like me to stay another hour then close the shop on my own. She had a handful of errands to run and wanted to make sure she was able to make it to the bank before it closed.

    
              “That’s fine, will do,” I called back to her. I heard the jingling of the bell over the shop’s front door as she let herself out moments later.
So much for leaving early today
.

    
              I stayed in the stock room, assured that the bell over the front door would alert me to any customers. I’d be safe taking a few moments to look through the book --- whatever it was. I pried the flaps of the shipping box open again and pealed back the layers of protective tissue-paper wrapping. The book was beautiful.                   

             
The dark leather cover, worn edges, and cracked binding that was even torn and peeling from its age, only added to the antique beauty and intrigue being exuded from the mystery between it’s covers.

    
              I slowly and carefully lifted the thick book from its protective wrapping once more, and was immediately taken back by its weight. I gripped my fingers around the edges more firmly to avoid letting it slip from my grasp. I held the book closely, inspecting every square inch of the decaying cover, turning it over and over again, while I ran the palm of my hand delicately over the rough, flaking leather.

    
              I knew that a few minutes with a polishing rag and oil, my mom kept here in the shop for this exact purpose, would be time well spent. A hint of shine and richness that had once been cast from the leather surround could be brought out with only a small amount of elbow grease, but for now that could wait.

    
              I wanted to peer inside, and not even the jingling of the bell from over top of the shop’s front door tore me away from discovering the secrets and mystery held inside the covers. I lifted the heavy front cover and was drawn to a faint script that had been handwritten at the top of the first introductory page. The writing had faded with age over these past hundred or more years, but I could just barely make out what the beautiful, handwritten script read, definitely written in another time:

To my darling children, my bloodline,

Hold this, and all it contains, dear to your heart and body;

For it will be the key to your survival.

I love you, my darlings.

                 
“Hello?”

    
              I jumped, letting go of the book.

    
              As it landed hard, back into the packing box I had just lifted it from moments before, I turned to see Zoey standing in the stock room’s doorway. Her body blocked the showroom floor from me, and I stood frozen in the mess and disorganization I caused that afternoon by only unpacking shipments but putting nothing away.

    
              “Zoey! Um, what, what are you doing here? I thought we were meeting later at the diner?”

    
              “That’s why I’m here,” she replied, eyeballing the box that the book fallen into. “I wanted to let you know that I’d be running a little late. Something, well, something came up.

    
              Zoey’s eyes glanced up toward my face for a split second, checking for my reaction. I haphazardly stashed the box with the book onto an empty slot in the plywood stock shelves to get it off the floor and out from between us.

    
              Zoey continued speaking while eyeing me with her fierce green eyes, fixed intently on me now instead of the box containing the book. “Do you mind going ahead without me for a little while and saving us a table at the diner? I just have the one thing to take care of, but I won’t be too long before…” she drifted off, something out front in the store catching her attention.

   
              I glanced quickly but saw nothing. “Sure, not a problem,” I answered.    

    
              I honestly didn’t mind waiting for her. The extra time would give me more of an opportunity to explore the book, plus I didn’t want to jeopardize the kindling of this hopefully new-found friendship.

    
              Just then, I heard a crash a few yards beyond the back door of the stock room, which let out into the alleyway behind the shop. All the local proprietors used this alley to stack their leftover packing crates, boxes, and garbage cans.

 
 
                I motioned toward the door, and we both hurried to see what had caused the commotion. Zoey and I barreled through the back door as quickly as possible, but we were only in enough time to hear something scuttle off at the far end of the alleyway.

    
              A gust of wind whipped up as we took our first steps out into the alley, sending a chill down my spine. The gust picked up strength and littered garbage and dried, crumpled leaves around our feet. The wind intensified more and everything was sent spinning around our heads, playing off the brick wall behind us. It all funneled in a tornado-like fashion, finally losing life and finding their places again on the concrete ground beside our feet.

    
              “Well, whatever it was seems to be gone now. Sure took off in a rush, didn’t it?”

    
              “Probably just a cat or dog scavenging through the dumpsters,” I commented, but the truth was that I was simply making up an excuse. I couldn’t seem to shake that spine-tingling chill that had ran up my up and down my back.

    
              I stood staring down the alley for a minute longer, considering it to be a possibility the ruckus-maker may make a second appearance, but that wasn’t likely. I could see Zoey becoming a little anxious, or strangely nervous, and actually seemed captivated by an object she had fixed her eyes on.

    
              I glanced down toward the front of my shirt to see what had caught her attention, starting to become a bit anxious myself. I finally breathed a sigh of relief. The tension quickly exited my body when I realized that it was only the antique key necklace, tucked almost completely beneath my t-shirt, that had caused her admiring but slightly shocked gaze.

    
              A few exposed beads caught a hint of the orange glow from the lowering sun, and their sparkles refracted from the cast sunlight, bouncing off the surrounding surfaces. This was the only hint that the necklace even existed beneath my shirt.

    
              Zoey began to retreat, walking backward one small step at a time, her eyes still fixed on the chain of glass garnet-colored beads strung around my neck.

    
              “Well, I’m off…um, to handle something…then I’ll…”

    
              I glanced back and forth a few times, my eyes shifting from where the antique brass key hung just over my breasts, then back up to Zoey’s wide icy eyes, still shifting over the chain.

    
              “It’s beautiful isn’t it?” I filled the air with a few words between us in an attempt to shake her strange behavior and this awkward silence. “It was a gift from Leo.”

    
              The edges of my lips turned up slightly thinking back to the night Leo gave me the necklace, but that quickly faded due to puzzled thoughts swirling in my head. I was still somewhat taken back by Zoey’s sudden retreat.

    
              “Yes,
beautiful
,” Zoey repeatedly, almost mockingly.

    
              “I’ll save us a table,” the words barely made it past my lips before Zoey turned and disappeared around the corner of the building at the end of the alleyway.

    
              The eeriness still lingered, but I attempted to ignore it and made my way back inside the shop to finish closing up for the day. I grabbed the book from its stashed position on the stock shelves, pulled the it from the box, zipped it up in my school bag, somewhat straightened the chaotic mess I had made in the stock room, put the register drawer in the safe inside my mom’s office, then shut off all the overhead lights, lastly locking the front and back doors.