This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Secret of the Rose

Ellen Dugan

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to the friends and family who have enthusiastically supported me.

A very special thank you to the folks who provided me with new and improved editing, for both content and copy.

Finally to the fans who gobbled up Legacy of Magick and demanded to know how soon the second book in the series would appear.

Here you go. Enjoy, and Blessed be.

CHAPTER ONE

The last thing I expected when I came home from the university that afternoon was to walk into the kitchen and trip over the body of a cheerleader.

My heart stopped in my chest as I saw bright red spilling out across the hardwood. Horrified, I grabbed for the counter to keep from falling on top of the body on the floor. My backpack fell off my shoulder, hit my bent elbow hard, and yanked me down. My long hair spilled in front of my face obscuring my vision, and for a couple of hideously long seconds, my mind raced as I imagined the worst.

The “body” that had been sprawled on her belly moved, and the heart that I swore had stopped in my chest began to beat again.

“Oh no, the paint!” someone squealed.

Paint.
The spreading red pool was
paint.
I rapped my fist against my chest and tried to breathe while I waited for my heart rate to ratchet down from critical. Meanwhile, the girl I’d tripped over, who apparently was painting a large banner while lying on the floor, hopped up.

A half dozen other girls wearing cheerleading uniforms jumped up from various spots on the floor and scrambled to clean up the mess.
Oh god.
I flinched.
There are six uniformed high school cheerleaders in my Aunt’s kitchen.

I, Autumn Bishop, grad student, Seer, and the clumsiest Witch in town, had literally tripped over a football banner painting session.

Having The Sight, or being a clairvoyant, was a mixed blessing. Sure, the heightened instincts and accurate hunches helped in my everyday life. But I’d had to suppress my witchy talents for most of my life, and because of that, I was only now learning to embrace my psychic abilities. And as for my magick... it was still hit or miss.

Resigned, I shoved my hair out of my face, slung my stuff on the counter and reached for the garbage can under the sink. The least I could do was to offer to help clean up the mess I had caused.

Somebody tossed me a roll of paper towels while the rest of the girls bopped around the kitchen all perky, cute and energetic. Which was only
slightly
less disturbing than thinking that I had tripped over a dead body.

“Sorry…” I quickly searched the spot where I knew the name for the latest victim of my clumsiness would be embroidered. “Cypress. I didn’t see you down lying down there,” I said to the pretty girl with the caramel colored skin that I had fallen over.

“No worries,” Cypress smiled at me, and started gingerly tucking paint-soaked paper towels in the garbage can that I held carefully away from my jeans.

Seeing the red smeared paper towels made my stomach roll. As I stared down at them, the noise of the cheer squad bopping around the kitchen faded away. I could hear my blood pounding in my ears, while my physical vision disappeared, replaced by a new scene all together.

Blood was splattered on a white paneled door, thick and deep crimson, it dripped slowly down. The blood was smeared and it spelled out a word. There were letters written in that blood.
The vision started to fade away... so I focused my intention and reminded myself to reconnect to the earth. The vision returned, along with a feeling of dread, but I made myself look again.
Letters, scrawled across a white door. A red letter ‘H’.
The mundane noises in the kitchen resumed, and the vision faded away.

Slowly, I came back to myself. It had been a quick precognitive vision, just a flash into the future.
And
damn it, I ought to be used to these visions by now!

I reminded myself that these witchy talents were a part of my family’s legacy, and I really needed to learn to roll with them whenever they occurred. (Even when I saw and felt things that were less than pleasant.) Suppressing the shudder that was trying to take over my body, I began to focus on the present.

“You’re not going to get sick are you?” Cypress said.

“Ah, no. I’m okay,” I lied, and tried
not
to be creeped out by the disturbing images I’d seen.

“You look like you’re gonna throw up,” Cypress frowned at me.

I felt like I might throw up, but I tried to smile instead. “Nope. I’m good.” I sat the garbage can down and purposefully looked anywhere else but at those red, dripping paper towels. Goose bumps ran down my arms as if I’d been hit by a cold breeze.

While the other girls rescued any other banners in the vicinity, Holly, my spirited cousin, grabbed a mop and a bucket from the garage and was competently filling it with water and soap. She turned from the sink and began to mop up any remaining paint.

“Let me do that,” I offered.
There, that sounded almost normal.
I silently congratulated myself for keeping my cool around my empathic cousin. There was no reason for her to worry about the vision too.

“I’ve got this,” Holly said waving me off, her strawberry-blonde curls bouncing as she turned to the other teenagers in the room. “Hey girls, this is my cousin, Autumn.”

I was greeted with a chorus of hellos. I waved to the group and tried to settle down. Which was not as easy as people would think. After what we’d been through three weeks ago when my perfectly gothic cousin, Ivy— Holly’s polar opposite twin sister— had been abducted, my nerves were stretched a little thin.

My musings were cut short as the girls all took their banners out to the garage to dry. The topic of their cheery discussion centered on their upcoming Homecoming parade, game and dance.

“Sorry, again,” I said as a trio of cheerleaders carried a banner past me.

“It’s not the first time paint has been knocked over,” one of the girls said.

“I’m looking forward to the big Homecoming parade.” I moved to hold open the door to the garage for them, and the comment about the parade earned me smiles all around.

My new home of William’s Ford, Missouri was a pretty little college town with a strong love of high school football. It was also, as I’d recently come to learn, a town with plenty of secrets as well as magick. So, I was admittedly curious to see the ordinary side of things. After everything that had happened since I had moved here for grad school,
normal
would be a nice change of pace.

I walked over to Holly. “Where’s Ivy?” I didn’t want to hover, but I felt better when I knew where she was. I couldn’t even imagine how my aunt let her daughter out of her sight these days. But Aunt Gwen was a very capable Witch. I imagined she was keeping tabs on her daughter through some type of sophisticated locator spell... or something along those lines.

“She’s upstairs in the turret room.” Holly neatly dumped the mop water down the drain. “Go on up, so you can stop worrying about her.”

“I will.” I nodded at Holly’s accurate perception. Turning to pick up my bags, I said to the group, “Bye girls, it was nice meeting you.”

“Bye Autumn,” responded each girl in a terrifyingly cheerful kind of unison.

Gathering my stuff, I headed upstairs. I tossed my purse and backpack on the padded bench at the foot of my bed and kicked off my neon green running shoes. My mismatched, ankle length socks clashed violently, but they made me smile. The right sock had purple and yellow stars while the left featured pink and green stripes.

I studied my reflection in the mirror over the dresser and discovered that my face was slightly pale, and my green eyes were a little too wide. I scowled at the mirror. “Some Witch you are. Pull it together.” I told myself, and tucked my long brown hair behind my ears.

I stood there and made an effort to ground and center myself before I went to check on my cousin Ivy. After a few moments of concentrating on my breathing, I pulled my magickal energy towards my center, I felt steadier.

I checked my reflection again.
There, I don’t appear quite so frazzled.
I pulled the chain on the Tiger’s eye pendant I wore to the center of the scoop neck of my navy t-shirt. The golden striped stone was thought to be protective against dark magick, and I’ll admit it did seem to make me feel less vulnerable these days. I psyched myself up, thinking to project self-confidence instead of anxiety, and moved to poke my head in Aunt Gwen’s sitting room.

Ivy sat in the window seat of the turret, her back lit by the afternoon sun, with a half dozen modern books on magick spread around her. Ivy’s hair was currently dyed a more natural color. And the soft brown shade still caught me off guard, I had gotten used to the coal black color. She sat in a full lotus position on the curved seat, and Celtic music played softly while she studied.

As soon as I saw her, any of the stress that I still carried from tripping over the “dead” girl downstairs and then the blood-spattered vision, slid away. I attempted casual and strolled into the turret room. “Hey Shorty.”

“I’m five foot six. I am
not
short,” Ivy said, not even glancing up from her book.

“You’re still three inches shorter than me,” I told her, hoping for a reaction. When I got nothing in response, I tried again. “What are you studying?” I asked, and scooped up a few books so I could sit next to her.

Ivy lifted her head. Her black eye and bruises were fading, but still visible. “I’m okay. Don’t worry so much.”

“I wasn’t worried,” I lied and drew my hair over one shoulder.

“Cousin, I could
feel
your worry as you walked up the stairs a little bit ago.”

I frowned at her. “I didn’t know you were empathic. I thought only Holly could read a person’s emotions.”

“Well, I don’t consider myself especially empathic. But you tend to psychically broadcast your emotions.
Loudly
,” she said.

“I do?”

“Yeah. You are going to want to work on that,” Ivy said, and returned to her books.

“What do you suggest, Yoda?” I picked up a book as if the answers to her recommendation were to be found within.

Instead of answering me, she pulled her gray hoodie closer around herself. She flipped a page in her book, and tried to change the subject. “How’s your contractor boyfriend doing?”

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