“I asked for Tyson not because I like him better than you, though, to be fair, you weren’t wrong, I do like him more than you. I asked about him because he promised to explain what in the hell’s going on here. He promised me. I trust him not to lie to me so I wanted him here for whatever this is.” I shrugged my shoulders as if that explained it.
I could feel a headache coming on. Come to think of it, I’d had a headache off and on since my mother hurt me.
“It’s simple,” Quinton said. “You don’t need Ty to explain it to you. There was no flu outbreak and those students weren’t poisoned. What happened today happened because I made it happen. And I did it with magic.”
Chapter Twenty
The room had gone as still and quiet as the inside of a tomb. They didn’t even look to be breathing.
“What do you mean by magic?” Ah, my voice was back to sounding angry.
Magic. Magic. Magic.
The word seemed to follow me everywhere I went. There was no escaping it.
I had an image in my head of Quinton standing in the middle of a dimly lit stage wearing a black cape and holding onto a black magician’s wand. Underneath his cape he wore tight, black leather pants and a bright, blood red vest. The vest hung open, exposing his naked chest. The silver in his nipples shined like a beacon against his skin.
I blinked and the image was gone. I wondered if he had leather pants in his closet. The cape, however, did absolutely nothing for me. The vest I could work with.
Abel’s hand on my thigh rubbed up and down in a soothing gesture. “We’re witches, Ariel,” he told me.
My heart skipped a beat.
Fingers very gently tangled in my hair. My head was pulled backwards and I was suddenly swallowed up by blue, blue water.
“We were born with magic in us,” Addison said quietly. Not quite a whisper but his normally deep, rumbly voice had dropped to something gentler. “As were our fathers before us. It’s hereditary. You, pretty girl, were born with magic in you, too.”
My mouth dropped open. He was crazy. They were all crazy. Then, a thought came to me. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten.
“Where did the heat go?” I asked.
Addison smiled down at me. “You’re coming into your magic. I don’t know why it’s stayed dormant all this time, but it has. Your magic calls to ours and that’s where the heat comes from. The more we touch you and the more you use your magic the more the heat will fade. It will still be there under the surface but it won’t hurt you anymore to touch us. The pain will turn to pleasure and you’ll like it.”
There was a lot there to dissect and I had no idea where to begin.
They didn’t give me a chance to ask questions. Addison released his hold on my hair. He moved around the couch with a grace not suited to his size. He moved around his brother on the floor to sit beside me on the couch. Abel lifted his hand off the couch and put it on the thigh he wasn’t already touching. Addison scooted so close to me that our thighs touched. His arm went behind me to lay across the back of the couch. Abel shuffled closer on his knees while his brother wrapped his arm around my shoulders. Abel moved so close both his knees rubbed up against my feet on either side of me. His hands moved up my thighs the closer he got to me. Finally, when he was as close as he could get,
his hands were damn near in my lap. Way too close to my crotch. His big hands spanned the tops of my thighs, gripping my legs tightly. Those green, green eyes met my own and the look in them plus the vicinity of his hands had my stomach clenching low.
Abel laid his head on his arms and stared up at me from my lap.
“Before the witch trials and the burning there were more female witches than males,” he said. “The men hid like cowards while our women were tortured and burned at the stake. Not all of our women died, but a great many of them did. After the witch trials ended females just stopped being born to us. Every so many years a miracle would happen and a girl would be born, but it’s rare and few and far between. It’s so rare, Ariel, that there are only three known female witches in the U.S. Now with you, there’s four. Each one belongs to a coven and there are only seven across the states. Most claim it’s a curse. While our women burned, our men hid themselves away in the shadows until they had a chance to run. They did nothing to try and save their wives, mothers, aunts, daughters, sisters. Because of that, most of our people believe we are undeserving of females born of our own kind. It’s either a curse or we’re being punished today for what our ancestors failed to do years past. Because of this, female witches are coveted and precious. You, Ariel Kimber, are precious.”
My stomach clenched a second time for an entirely different reason than it had clenched earlier. He was crazy. They were all crazy. Witches weren’t real and magic didn’t exist. Were they part of a cult?
I swallowed painfully past the growing lump in my throat. I’d never had real friends before and the thought of losing Tyson and the twins because they were nuts did not make me feel good.
“I’m not a witch,” I croaked out past my lump. I felt slightly claustrophobic with the twins clinging to me but I couldn’t imagine pushing them away.
“Babe,” Quinton spoke from behind Abel. He was closer to us on the couch than he had been before this little chat started. He’d left my bag behind. I let out a breath of relief when I noticed my underwear was no longer out in the open. Then I had a frightening thought. Where had they gone to?
“Babe,” he called again. He was even closer than he had been a moment ago. “You’re a witch. We’re all witches. We’re the Brothers of the Flame. I am a witch. My father and my father’s father were witches. And it was me who made that asshole give up his blood today. I did it for you and I did it with my magic.”
I gaped at him. Oddly enough it was his “I did it for you” that freaked me out the most about his little speech.
I planned to ask him what he meant by that, but what came out of my mouth had nothing to do with that and was completely unexpected.
“My mother is not a witch.”