Keeper(48)

“Like with wings and stuff?” I finally asked, unable to get the image of Tinkerbell out of my head.

Gareth laughed loudly. “In a manner of speaking, but with less glitter,” he replied, almost as if he could read my mind. “I’m a bladesmith by trade.” He took a step forward, urging me to take the dagger he was offering.

Not knowing what else to do, I gripped the thick handle of the dagger. It was heavy in my hand and incredibly foreign.

“Move around a little,” Gareth encouraged. “Get a feel for the blade. You might like a short sword better, but I thought we should start small.”

I took a step forward, holding the dagger awkwardly away from my body. My brain was muddled, and the longer I stood with the blade in my hand, the more overwhelmed I felt. With my pulse echoing in my ears, I dropped it onto the ground.

Gareth started to rush over, but I held out a hand to stop him.

“I can’t do this.” My voice was shaky, but strong. “I’m trying really hard to process all of this, but every time I think I have a handle on things, something even crazier happens.”

I clenched my hands into fists. “One minute I find out that everything I know about my family is a lie, then it’s ‘oh, hey, guess what? You’re a witch!’ And now, I find out that my mother was some kind of guardian for a book that got her killed, and my uncle is actually not my uncle at all. He’s friggin’ Tinkerbell!” My voice was high and shrill by the end of my tirade, and Gareth was staring at me, pain and guilt etched across his face.

“Lainey,” he began.

“No!” I shouted at him. “Just leave me alone.”

I turned on my heel and ran across the room to the pathway that led back to the house. Gareth called my name, but I kept running. It felt like the walls were closing in on me; I needed to get out of there, and fast.

I plowed into Gareth’s office. It was disorienting to return to the modern world, and I shook my head to clear it, slamming the door behind me.

I grabbed my purse and keys from the table in the hall and walked outside. There was no way I was spending one more minute in that house.

I threw myself into the car. I didn’t pay attention to where I was going, and I didn’t have a destination in mind. All I knew was that I needed to get away from my life for a while. I needed some kind of distraction.

So, I kept driving, determined to find one.





CHAPTER NINETEEN


My phone continued to ring.

I rolled my eyes, not even bothering to glance at the screen. Gareth had been calling nonstop ever since I’d fled from the house, but I had nothing to say to him.

It was getting late. The sun had set hours ago, and I’d already driven to the state line and back. I knew I should probably just go back home or at least stop wasting a perfectly good tank of gas, but the anger coursing through my veins only made my foot press down harder on the accelerator. I didn’t have a specific destination in mind; I was driving on autopilot.

When I pulled into the familiar gravel parking lot of the cemetery, I wasn’t completely surprised. I didn’t know what had drawn me back, but then I saw her, standing beside the wrought iron entrance gates. Josephine. Unlike earlier when I had hoped to see her, the very sight of her made my blood boil.

I slammed the car into park. “Seriously?” I glared at the apparition across the blacktop. I shoved the door open and stalked toward her.

“Now you’re here?” I threw my arms out. “What do you want from me?”

She just stared at me, her face sad.

“Oh that’s right, you’re here to warn me. Well, message received,” I yelled across the parking lot. “You can go now!”

Lainey. The whispered word came from behind me. I whirled around, but there was nothing but my car. I looked back toward the gate. Josephine was gone.

“What game are you playing?” I yelled into the wind. I wanted to punch something, just beat the crap out of it until the ache in my chest stopped hurting, until all the anger and frustration flowing through me evaporated.

I sagged against my car. This isn’t my life. The truth about my parents, my own supernatural lineage, the sightings of Josephine, Gareth—it was all hitting me like a slap in the face. “This isn’t me,” I whispered, but the words tasted like ash on my tongue. Don’t lie to yourself, Lainey. This is you. Who you are, and who you’ve always been. The voice in my head was my own. I thought how good it had felt in the graveyard with Maggie, how those three little words had felt: I’m a witch. But now everything was muddled, and I wasn’t sure how to wrap my head around it all.

I got back in my car and kept driving. Still reeling from the emotional cyclone swirling inside me, I drove slowly down the darkened streets, not really paying much attention to where I was going.

Before long, I ended up near the railroad tracks on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t the nicest or safest area, but it was fairly secluded, and a lot of the local teenagers used it as a place to hang out away from the watchful eye of adult supervision. From the looks of things—a slew of parked cars, loud music, and a large bonfire—there was some sort of party going on.

It wasn’t a smart idea to stop—the tracks were known as a place where bad decisions were made—but I couldn’t go home. Not yet.

Besides, this looks exactly like the type of distraction I need. I pulled off the main road and parked next to an old, rust-colored Bronco.