Mathilda, SuperWitch (Mathilda's Book of Shadows #1)(92)

I watched, searching for something, some sign.

But everything seemed kosher.

Even…

Friendly.

Ack!

Of course Aidan would tell me Ash wasn’t a traitor.

Because they both were.

No wonder he was so very agitated when I asked.

One would father my children, one would die for me.

Bullshit.

I watched, tears in the back of my throat and stinging my eyes.

How stupid was I?

You could tell they were plotting by the way they stood, talked, looked around. This wasn’t the first time they met; there was a familiarity about them.

Then Ash looked toward my hiding spot and I could swear he was looking right at me.

Shit!

I hadn’t controlled Mavis’s mind-meld.

I held my breath, cleared my mind and didn’t move.

Then Agatha said something and he dipped his head to hear her, respectfully, attentively.

My chest started hurting.

But he didn’t raise any alarm.

I still did not breathe easy. Ash was highly trained. BecBec stayed hidden and I didn’t move a muscle, I barely breathed.

Not too long later, they all left. Agatha on her broom, Addison turned back into a bat, and Jeremy and Ash went up the steps.

I waited a long time to make sure they were gone before I left my hidey-hole. I wasn’t that stupid, I knew Ash would know if I was following him so I wasn’t going to try.

I kept BecBec with me, Ash could see faeries. I didn’t want her in trouble.

While I waited, I thought about things and how some of it made sense.

How Aidan and I just happened to be at the Swank Italian Place when Agatha Darling and Douglas Addison showed up. How Aidan took me directly to Agatha at the Community Centre and Ash appeared out of nowhere to help Aidan fight off the baddies in the end (and Agatha got away). How Aidan “found” the electric wand. How both Aidan and Ash were mysteriously lured to the bomb and how Ash knew so damn much about its workings and what it was intended to destroy. How Aidan told me “never to trust an oracle” when Althea drunkenly told me I had a traitor in my home. How, after years of animosity from Le Société and neutrality from The Institute, somehow they’d been talked into “working together” by two double agents. How, no matter how hard we looked, we could find hide nor hair of Jeremy Bligh.

But why?

I knew why, destiny said one of these two men could die for me. I knew that, at least, was no lie by the way my family immediately accepted them.

They never liked my choice in men.

Never.

Especially Viv.

(Then again, most of the men I chose were dicks.)

But why should Aidan and Ash die for me?

Some unknown, loopy American girl stumbles into their life and rocks their world and they have a fifty percent chance to “bleed” for her?

Ack!

I knew one thing for certain, Sebastian Quincy Wilding and Aidan Knightly Seymour were the type of men who would take destiny in their own hands and manipulate it how they saw fit.

I had a beautiful smile and smelled like oranges, my ass.

When I thought it was safe, I walked back to Viv and Su, BecBec with me the whole way, both of us silent and watchful. I held my wand at the ready.

My wand and I shook my sisters awake.

They didn’t get angry when they woke up, just took one look at my face and then led me back to The Gables.

They washed my arms and palms while BecBec talked to them in her mile-a-minute, dolphin voice.

Viv understood what she was saying.

“Do you speak Faerie?” I asked.

“Faeries speak English,” Viv told me.

I stared at her.

Viv explained, “She speaks ten times faster than normal, like a tape on fast forward. BecBec’s a young faerie, she hasn’t learned to slow down her speech and you’re a young witch and haven’t learned to speed up your hearing. It’ll all come together one day.”

Well at least that was sorted.

Kinda.

They left and I lay in bed staring at the ceiling.

BecBec lay on the pillow next to me, staring too.

Daphne eventually made it to bed when the sun started to rise. She walked right up my belly and lay down on my chest.

I dipped my chin into my throat, looked into her pretty black kitty face and her gorgeous green kitty eyes.

Aidan gave her to me for my birthday.

It was then that I finally started crying.

18 August

Viv and Su told everyone I had flu and I needed to be left alone.

What I really needed was time for the scratches on my arms to heal so no one would see them and wonder.

And time to think.

Su took some of Mom’s magical potion and added her own ingredients and put it on my scratches to hasten the healing.

Viv confirmed that what Ash and Aidan told me about Josie was indeed The Prophesy as she understood it, that Josie would change the world for the good.

So at least they hadn’t lied about that.

The Prophesies also mentioned Ash and Aidan and that one of them would die for me, one of them would marry me.

Viv went to the library to check with Elly and Mathilda’s Register.

Elly confirmed it.

One dead dude, one Dad dude.

(And quit calling me Elly!)

But even Elly couldn’t confirm that, in so knowing, one or the other or both could not also change destiny especially with the might of a powerful coven like Edwards behind them.