Storiebook Charm (A Spellbound Novel 1) Page 10

Illegal moonshining wasn’t the answer, at least not in Reid’s book. It was understood, if not spoken, that while he was proud of Reid, Jiggs needed more than a successful son. He needed his own legacy to pass down, even if it was as a moonshiner. Reid knew he couldn’t turn his back on his father. Not now. No matter how his dad had used him to get what he needed, or how many lies he’d told along the way, Reid had to do what he could to help his dad feel proud. He walked beside him, ushering him out the door so he could drive him home. “I know, Pop,” Reid said. “I know.”

  Chapter 9

  Storie waved her hand at the rows of upside-down flowers hanging in the stairwell. One by one they floated down, righting themselves into a five-gallon bucket. That little effort wiped her out. Her magic mojo was fading. Before long, she wouldn’t have any witchcraft left in her.

  Outside the door, Reid’s hammer pounded against the bookcase. Damn Harper for letting him back in. But once he was here, Storie had asked him to secure the secret door until she could get someone in to clean out the room. She and Harper could expand the business and hold little girls’ birthday parties there, and it could be a magical haven for Piper and Scarlett. Closing up the hidden passageway in the meantime was the very least Reid Malone could do.

  In truth, she planned to take care of cleaning out the garden room. They’d leave it locked up for now, and when everyone had pushed it to the backs of their minds, she’d cast a spell and make it all disappear. If she had any magic left in her.

  Her eyelids drooped, her head foggy.

  As she gathered the last of the dried flowers, a dark feeling of foreboding draped over her. It filled her lungs, snaking through her veins like oil spreading over water.

  She opened the door, setting the bucket of astrids off to the side, looking around the tearoom. Nothing was out of place and everything seemed just as it should.

  Harper was in the kitchen, as usual, the girls were off with their dad, and besides Reid, the shop was empty. She tried to shake the feeling that something wasn’t right, but it grew.

  She snuck a glance at Reid. Maybe he wasn’t what he seemed to be. Where there were witches, there had to be evil, didn’t there? That was one of the things her father had warned her about. “I discovered that not everything is as it seems when there’s magic involved. It changes people,” he’d said. “I didn’t want it to change you.”

  Not for the first time, she wondered again if Reid could know the truth about her powers.

  She considered him. He always looked like his mind was working, and now was no exception. He had his hands tucked in the pockets of his jeans, and his broad chest filled out his plain T-shirt, his biceps firm and defined under the sleeves. That tattoo peeked out from under the left sleeve. She wondered what it was, but finding out wasn’t in her plans.

  “Woolgathering, darlin’?”

  “What?”

  “You’re staring at me like…like you want to devour me,” he said.

  Bringing on the charm full force. That’s what she got for daydreaming. Before she could answer, darkness swept through the room again, washing over her like a shroud. “Do you feel that?” she asked, looking this way and that.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Feel what?”

  How could she explain without sounding like a lunatic? “Like a…a dark cloud’s hovering.”

  “It’s the humidity,” he said. “This is Texas.”

  The air did feel thick and heavy and filled with moisture, but that wasn’t what she meant. “No, that’s not it,” she said, but she didn’t have an explanation so her mind wandered again.

  Straight to how it had felt when they’d fallen, how his body, rock-hard beneath hers, had sent her nerve endings firing. She redirected her thoughts. How many women did he barter with, trading labor for favors? She was probably one in a long line, all the more reason to stifle her attraction for him.

  Then again, he’d been searching for the opening to the garden room, so maybe not too many after all.

  The sound of the front bell dinging drew her attention away from him, clearing her head.

  A woman’s voice trilled, “Hello?”

  Harper would answer.

  “Hello?” the woman called again.

  “Headphones,” Reid said.

  “Right.” Harper almost always had her earbuds in and her iPod cranked.

  The woman called again. “Storie Rae Bell?”

  She cringed at hearing her full name, but Reid grinned. The smile reached his eyes and lifted his cheeks in a way that relaxed the hard lines of his face, his smile softening the bad-boy look his soul patch gave him. “Storie Rae.” He muttered her name as if he were feeling the sounds of the letters on his lips and tongue. “Fits you. All Southern and mysterious.”

  Her name had always been another thing to make her stand out. Boys had laughed and girls had been brutal. She tried to gauge whether he was mocking her, but his gaze had dropped and now it slipped over her. He definitely wasn’t laughing.

  “In the back,” she called out as Reid dragged his smoldering eyes back up to her face.

  Oh yeah, he knew how the game was played. Just one more reason to steel her emotions and keep him at a distance. “I’m not mysterious at all,” she said. Total lie, but she thought she sounded convincing.

  His smile faded as he cocked an eyebrow at her, but said, “I disagree, darlin’.”

  For a moment, the darkness that had tinged the edges of her consciousness turned to a cold chill that started in her toes and slithered up her body. She sensed a distinct burning inside of him, like lust and desire tumbling together, fanning a hot flame. Her father had said no man could accept a witch, but was he right?

  Another breeze, colder this time, swept through the room. The light, steady tread of footsteps followed. A pleasant-looking woman with ginger-colored hair cut in a stylish bob stood in the frame of the door between the tearoom and the front of the store. She wore a cream beret, a matching shawl, and underneath it, purple pants tucked into black boots.

  Peculiar outfit, given that it was August.

  “Can I help you?” Storie asked. The cool air vanished and the foreboding grew as the words left her mouth.

  “I certainly hope so.” She didn’t quite have an accent, but there was something unusual about her voice. An affectation of some sort. She definitely wasn’t from the South. “You’re Storie Rae.” Not a question, a statement.

  Reid had grown still behind her, but Miranda the cat had appeared, winding herself between the woman’s legs as if she were taking stock.

  The woman sidestepped until the cat left and returned to Storie. “Ye-es,” she said.

  The woman clapped her hands together, but it made no sound. She rushed forward, clutching Storie’s shoulders and pulling her in for a hug. Oddly, she was stiff and there was no joy in the movement.

  “My name is Millicent,” she said swiftly, as if she didn’t want to linger on the letters and leave it hanging in the air for very long. “It’s been twenty-eight years.”

  “What’s been twenty-eight years?” she asked, forcing the words out. She glanced at Reid, but he couldn’t offer her any comfort.

  “Twenty-eight years since I’ve seen you,” the woman said.

  Storie’s hands turned clammy. The woman’s words were sluggish in her mind. Surely this wasn’t… It couldn’t be…

  “Storie Rae,” the woman said, “it’s true.”

  “What…what’s true?” she whispered, barely able to find her voice.

  “I’m sure I’m the last person you thought you’d see, but I’m here now.”

  Her vision blurred. From shock, or maybe from tears welling in them. She couldn’t be sure which. “Who are you?” she asked, but inside she knew. This woman with hair that matched her own, eyes that sparkled with flecks of gold, and with the odd aura shimmering like a cobalt blue band outlining her body. There was only one person she could be.

  “I’m your mother,” the woman said. Her thin voice sent a chill d
own Storie’s spine.

  “My mother.”

  “You can call me Millie.”

  Millicent. The room spun. God, how could this be happening? She needed to sit down. To put her head between her knees. To stop shaking.

  Millie continued, completely oblivious to the emotions coursing through Storie. “I was very sorry to hear about your father passing. I’m sure he did his best raising you. You look like you turned out satisfactorily, but I imagine you have some questions, yes? There were certain things, of course, that he couldn’t teach you. Are you quite all right? A bit tired, perhaps?”

  Every tied-up emotion Storie had felt from the moment she learned her mother had chosen to give her up came spinning out. “You let him take me,” she said, her voice trembling and hollow. She couldn’t keep up with the direction of Millie’s sentences. She didn’t care what her father had or hadn’t been able to teach her. What she cared about was that her mother hadn’t wanted her.

  “Water under the bridge. Ted’s gone now, so the pact I had with him is null and void.”

  Storie’s blood chilled in her veins. She had an urge to run. To get far away from here, but she couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t. Harper was counting on her. Piper and Scarlett needed their happy ending.

  She looked to Reid again, searching for a lifeline. An invisible thread connected them for a quick moment. Right this second, it didn’t matter why he was at the café, or what ulterior motive he had. Even the brief conversations they’d had suddenly held more weight than anything her mother could possibly say.

  He came up next to her, his shoulder brushing against hers, bolstering her with his mere presence. His body emitted heat that took the edge off the chill encircling her, and when he placed his hand on her lower back, his strength seeped into her, giving her enough gumption to swallow her nerves and realize what Millie had just said. She stilled her racing heart, steadied her breath, and asked with an unbelievably calm voice, “What pact?”

  Before she answered, Millicent waved her arms and uttered something Storie didn’t understand, and Reid froze, turning to a statue before her eyes.

  “What did you do?” Storie yelled. She wrapped her wrist around his and felt his pulse under her fingers, but he didn’t stir.

  “He’ll be fine,” Millicent said, waving away her concern. “Your father didn’t know there were three of you. True, it was a horrible miscarriage that I never told him, but it was better that way. Astrid and Declan stayed with me, and your father took you. I gave him the seeds to the flowers. I knew you’d be able to grow them. I could keep track of you through them. Every time you grew them, it was a conduit to you.”

  Her mind reeled, taking everything in. “Declan and Astrid?”

  She nodded. “You have a brother and sister.”

  Triplets. Her head still swam from that bomb.

  “You don’t fit in here, Storie Rae. You’re a witch, and you belong with me. With Declan and Astrid. I never should have listened to your father, but we can fix things now. We need you.”

  Astrid. The name of the flower seed her father had given her. She racked her brain, trying to remember the story, but her mother seemed to read her mind.

  Her head felt heavy and her heart stopped beating for a moment. “The flowers were…are like a touchstone?”

  “If you will.”

  She bit her lower lip, her eyes burning. “You kept the other two, but gave me up? Why?”

  Millie shrugged. “I could have kept any of you. I cast a spell to decide. You floated up out of your bassinet.”

  Floated up in her bassinet? She couldn’t even fathom that. “Why’d you come back?” she asked. She’d grown up without her mother, and it was too late to fix that. Things were going well. She had The Storiebook Café. She had Harper and the girls. Even Reid seemed to be here for her. But her mother? She suddenly felt as if she were in a snow globe that was being shaken.

  “You’re one of three, an anomaly. Connected in a way that doesn’t often happen in the magic realm. They need you now. You must return to unite the trinity.” She continued before Storie could ask any questions. “They’re not complete without you, just as you aren’t whole without them. You feel your magic waning, don’t you?”

  The dizziness. The weak knees. Her witchcraft really was fading?

  “They need you. Get your affairs in order here, close up your quaint little shop, and you can return with me. I’ll take you back to where you belong.”

  Her limbs felt heavy, rooted to the ground. “I don’t understand,” she finally managed to say. “You want me to leave Whiskey Creek?”

  She glanced at Reid. He was frozen, his arm in the air, the hammer gripped in his hand, the gray-blue of his eyes unmoving. His body was encased in gossamer webbing.

  He’d commented that she had no friends. Maybe this woman—her mother—was right. She pressed her hands against the sides of her head, confusion clouding her thoughts.

  “You should know from experience how difficult it is to live in one world when you belong in another. If you cross the gap to the magical realm, through the seam, you’ll be able to do everything you’re not able to do here. You’ll be united with your siblings. Your power will grow and multiply.” She glanced at Reid then, and added, “And you’ll be safe.”

  A chill ran up her spine. Was she in danger? Was that why her father had always kept them on the run?

  The woman nodded, as if agreeing with Storie’s thoughts. “No fear of discovery. No fear of persecution. No worry that people will judge you and won’t show up to your little opening. The whispering and the curious stares will all stop. You’ll be free.”

  She started, taking a step back. She and Harper worried that the opening would be a bust, that they’d end up staring at each other. “How did you…”

  “I know everything about you, Storie. I know that Harper is your closest friend. Your only friend. I know that your father put his head in the sand about your powers, but you can’t pretend away who you are, and you can’t deny that you feel incomplete. I know that your favorite place is the fishing shack at the lake, and I know that summoning thunder and lightning makes you feel in control. But just wait. When you’re reunited with your brother and sister, then you’ll know real magic.”

  “But how…?”

  Millicent glanced at the bucket of dried flowers. “They kept us connected. I may not have been here by your side, Storie,” she said, her gaze flashing to Reid’s immobile body for a split second, “but I’ve been here.”

  An ominous blanket pressed down on her as she processed what that meant. Her mother had known about her all these years, but had never come forward.

  “Yes, I’ve known.”

  “Why now?”

  “Because it is time. I was powerless before, but now the pact is broken. Your siblings need you, before you all wither away. Because you must be together to survive.”

  Storie sank to the ground, trying to wrap her head around what her mother was saying. Just when things were starting to come together for her. Just when she’d finally begun to figure out how to balance who she was with the life she wanted. Just as she was finally putting down her roots. Why now?

  The woman gave another long, pointed look at Reid again. “You’re a witch, Storie. No one here can know who you are. What you are. Your father knew. Surely he made you see that. What I did with your father was a mistake, and it cost me you. Mortals can’t accept you. They don’t understand magic. They can’t, and you must protect yourself. But you must decide before it is too late, and if you refuse, the deaths of your brother and sister, and your own eventual demise…they’ll all be on your head.”

  Her head throbbed, her breath short. “Do I have a choice?”

  “You always have a choice, my dear. The question is whether you make the selfish choice or the right one.”

  She exhaled, defeated. Was leaving Whiskey Creek the right choice? She didn’t know, but she listened to her mother tell her about Declan’s and Astri
d’s fading power, about their weakening spells, and she realized that she couldn’t be the one responsible for their deaths. If she had the power to help then, she had to take it.

  “Okay,” she said.

  A satisfied smile played on Millie’s lips. “The right choice,” she said. “You will cross beyond the seam with me when the moon is full.”

  Miranda meowed, rubbing up against Storie’s leg. Storie looked at Reid again, feeling his vacant gaze on her even through the strands of silken thread. She didn’t even know if she liked him, but she was drawn to him. Unfinished business. And when she left, they’d never have a chance to finish it. The knowledge made her heart clench.

  “He wants something from you,” the woman said, “but it’s not what you think.”

  Storie’s attention flew back to him.

  Millicent—her mother—continued. “People share only what they want you to know, nothing more, nothing less.”

  She fiddled with her hair to hide the blush she felt creeping to her cheeks. “I have a pretty good idea what he wants.”

  Her mother narrowed her eyes, looking at him, then at her. “Do you?”

  And then, poof!, she melted into thin air, leaving Storie to pick up the pieces of the life her mother had just torn apart.

  “Reid? Are you okay?”

  Storie’s voice sounded far away. She leaned over him, her lips thin, her eyes wide. He’d collapsed to the ground and now she crouched next to him, her hands on his shoulders. Christ, what had just happened? He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. The last thing he remembered, the strange woman had appeared, claimed to be Storie’s mother, and…and that was it. Everything after that, until this moment, was a blank.

  He brought his forearm to his head, closing his eyes for a second. “What the hell was that?”

  “I-I don’t know. You fell.”

  He peered at her. “I fell?”

  Her face turned ashen, but she nodded. “Yes, you fell.”

  Right. And he had some prime property in West Texas selling for a cool ten million. “What time is it?”