7. Kirsten

Small beads of sweat slipped down my forehead onto my nose. I wrinkled my nose at the tickle of it and swiped my face across the sleeve of my shirt. One more turn of the wrench, and I had the sink drain reattached with the new rubber gasket installed underneath.

"There. You better work now, asshole," I muttered to the thing as I pushed myself out from under the sink.

The job had been simple. The hardest part had been twisting and bending myself into position. I'd been fully focused on the repair job, but at the back of my mind, I couldn't stop thinking about what Jace had said to me. Not-so-nice ladies. What exactly did that mean? My grandmother had been a saint, so how could the women who raised her have been any different?

Though, I did remember how the townsfolk had acted toward Nana when I'd gone with her as a child. They'd all sort of given her a wide berth. It was a distant and fuzzy memory, but one that stuck out now that I thought about it. Almost like they were afraid of her, or confused by her in some way. Was that what it was about?

While I contemplated that question, I turned the water on to test my repair job. No leaks. Yay, me!

My phone vibrated as I turned the water back off. It was Dad.

Did you make it to that place safe? Just checking.

Wow, Dad. A couple days late, but I guess it's better than nothing.The idea of calling him made my skin crawl, but I did need to see if he was okay. I was afraid he'd be strung out or drunk off his ass, but I dialed before I could talk myself out of it.

He answered on the second ring. "Hey, kiddo. How's it down in the middle of nowhere?"

He sounded surprisingly sober. I must have caught him at a good time.

"It's good. I made it here safe. How are things there?"

"Well," he grunted, "I had a visitor this morning."

"A visitor?" I said, frowning, unsure what he was talking about.

"Yup. Some tight little redhead shows up at damn near the ass crack of dawn. I came stumbling out of my bedroom thinking some burglar had broken in."

I grinned to myself. Harley. "I'm assuming she didn't steal anything?"

"Oh, you know damn well she didn't," Dad grumbled. "She said you gave her a key! Anyway, she's bebopping around my kitchen, making me breakfast and cleaning up. I told her I wasn't hungry, but the woman wouldn't take no for an answer. If she's your friend, you can tell her I said she doesn't need to be so fucking pushy all the time."

"I wanted to make sure someone I trusted would check in on you. That's all."

Rather than getting angry or defensive like he usually did, he only grunted. "Yeah, well, at least you sent someone who's easy on the eyes."

I switched to speakerphone and fired off a quick text to Harley:

Thanks for this morning. Dad enjoyed breakfast.

"I'm sure Harley was happy to help," I said. "Are you off work today?"

"Yeah. Factory is closed for two days for the annual equipment shutdown and inspection. Only the snooty engineers and management staff are there. Goddamned kids are half my age but act like they know everything."

Dad had bounced around so many jobs, I couldn't keep them straight. Almost all of them were manual labor—factories or warehouses. I honestly had no clue how he ever got hired anywhere with the drug tests most places enforced. I figured he must have had some kind of system for getting by, but I never asked how he did it. It would probably only depress me more.

Harley texted back a moment later.

No problem. He's a pain in the ass, but I made sure he ate something healthier than Pop-Tarts.

"Listen, Dad," I said. "Have you ever been to Nana's cabin?"

"Nope. Never had any interest. In fact, she always acted a bit weird about that place when she talked about it. Almost like she didn't want to be in Crestwood at all. More like she had this weird idea or thought that she had to go there every now and then. Your grandmother and I…" He paused and took a few breaths. "Well, we never meshed like a mother and child should have. At least, not in my mind. If I can be honest here, there was always something about Mom that, I don't know, struck me as weird."

A niggle of interest burrowed up in my mind, peeking its head out. "What do you mean?"

He took another deep, contemplative breath. "We were always moving around, bouncing from place to place. Dad never questioned it, either, just nodded his head and went along with it. We never went anywhere interesting, either. Always ended up in podunk towns in the middle of nowhere. Every damn place was shoved back in the woods. It's part of why I hate the outdoors as much as I do. We only ever stayed in one place for three or four years at most, then we'd pack up and move someplace else. She'd leave for weeks at a time, too, always going back to Crestwood to stay at what she called her ‘home place.' Me and Dad never went on those trips.

"Anyway, we finally stayed in one spot right after Dad died. Once I hit eighteen, I signed up for the army and never looked back. Mom stayed in that town for several years, then moved on again. I think she moved someplace else until you were born. Then, boom! She moved again to be close to you."

I didn't say a word, letting him get it all out. These were the most words I'd ever exchanged with my father, in, lord, maybe ever.

"I'll tell you what. I had a lot of resentment toward her," he said.

"Resentment? Why?"

"Think about it, kiddo. Imagine you're a little boy, no siblings, and every year or two, you have to pack up and move somewhere new. I could never make any real friends. It felt like I was homeless even though we always had a house. Dad was really distant, too. As I got older and started to understand things, I always thought maybe he was, you know, having fun with other ladies while Mom was off doing God knows what in Crestwood. It wasn't a really healthy childhood is what I'm saying. The worst part is I never got any closure on why we did that."

"So she never spent a lot of time in this cabin?" I asked. "She never moved back here full-time? Even after your father died?"

"Not that I know of. Like I said, it was always sporadic. Sometimes only a day or two, sometimes a week. Again, it was weird."

Very strange. Nana had only ever taken me to the cabin during summer when I was out of school. It had been like clockwork. The last time we'd come here, I was sixteen. After that, it was like Nana was over the place. She'd settled down in one spot after that, not moving until her diagnosis.

Why had she kept the cabin, though? Why hold on to a place if you didn't want to go there? Hell, the property taxes alone should have been reason enough to get rid of it.

"This has been nice, Dad," I said, and for once, it was the truth. He could be semi-pleasant when he wasn't drunk, high, or hungover. "I'll let you—"

"Hang on," he cut in. "One more thing. I was thinking about it this morning, and I have no clue what it means, but I wanted to pass it on."

I raised an eyebrow. I really hoped he wasn't about to ask me for money or something and ruin what had been a fairly pleasant conversation.

"What's up?"

"It was a conversation I had with Mom—er, your nana. About six weeks ago, right when she was at her sickest."

That was a surprise. When the hell had Dad talked to Nana? He had to have visited when I wasn't with her. I'd had the impression they'd basically been no contact for the past five years at least.

"Go on," I said.

"I'm not sure if this will make sense to you. She was pretty gone on pain meds," he said. "She was really worried about you. I couldn't get her to tell me what was bothering her. All she kept saying was that she—meaning you—would need him. That you would need him. At first, I thought she was trying to guilt trip me. Like she was talking about you needing me when she passed, but then she went on and on about this guy, whoever he is, being in Crestwood. I'd never been there, so I sort of dismissed it as the ramblings of a dying woman, you know. Kinda shitty of me, I know. And I never thought to tell you the other day when you came by." He cleared his throat. "I was, er, still a little out of it that day," he said uncomfortably. "But now that you're in that place, I thought you should know.

"She was really upset about it and told me she planned on telling you everything the next time you visited," he continued. "I have no clue what the hell she meant by everything, though. Maybe… ugh, maybe she had a lover or something in that town she never told anyone about? Gross to think about, but maybe that's what she meant? Some super-secret husband or boyfriend none of us knew about? Did she ever tell you what she meant?"

If it was six weeks ago like he'd said, then it would have been right before Nana lost her ability to communicate. They'd had to give her more and more drugs in hospice to keep the pain at bay. She wouldn't have been able to say anything to me. But if it was so important, why would she wait until right before her death to tell me something?

"She never did, no," I said. "I doubt it was a boyfriend, Dad. That's something she wouldn't have been able to hide. Plus, if she had someone, they would have checked in or visited while she was sick. I don't think that's what she meant."

"All right, then. I passed it along. Maybe you'll meet someone down there who can give you more insight, but I had to get that off my chest. I'd have regretted it or something if I didn't tell you. Anyway, are you staying safe?"

"I am. I'm good. I'll only be here a couple months at most, then I'll be home. "

"Sounds good." There was an awkward pause as I waited for him to say more. Then he finally spoke again. "Welp, I guess I'll talk to you later."

And with that, he hung up.

"Wow. Love you, too, Dad." I sighed as I put my phone down.

Now that the sink fiasco was taken care of, the big job could start. Since arriving, I'd been sleeping in my old room, not wanting to go into Nana's bedroom, but today was the day. There were lots of boxes in there, some looking as old or older than my father. No amount of cleaning or repairing would be as emotionally exhausting as going through all of them. Deciding what would be thrown out, donated, or come home with me—how did one do that kind of thing? Dig through the remnants of someone's life and pick and choose what was or wasn't important?

There was a bottle of wine in the fridge I'd picked up that morning in Scottsdale, but it was best to tackle Nana's room with as clear a head as possible.

As soon as I stepped into her room, I caught a whiff of my grandmother's smell. It shouldn't have lingered after all these years, but it was there. Lavender, lilies, and an underlying pleasant scent of woodsmoke. Memories flooded into my mind, all brought forth by that fragrance. I'd read somewhere that the sense of smell was the one that was most closely tied to memory, and those first few seconds in her room confirmed it.

The cabin was small, but the master bedroom was decent-sized with a spacious walk-in closet, which was where most of the stuff I needed to go through was stored. It took a few moments of staring at everything before I decided where to start. The only lights in the bedroom were the two lamps on either side of the bed, so I hauled all the items out to the living room, where the better lighting would help me see what the hell I was doing. My back ached as I set down the last box, and I cursed not having someone else here to help.

The first box I cut open had my father's name scrawled on the side. This had to be the one the lawyer had said was left to him. Nothing else had his name on it. The box was full of strange old objects, most ancient-looking and coated in dust—bookends, a weird-looking knife, some small trinkets, some sort of old necklace, and more. A strange combination of objects, and not one of them looked like something my father would want or need.

On a hunch, I took a photo of the items and did a reverse image search on them, curious to see what they might be worth. The first thing that came up was the knife. An athame, some kind of dagger used in séances. What the hell would Nana want with something like this?

An identical knife was on an auction site, and my eyes bulged when I looked at the current bids. They were already at over two thousand dollars, and there were still four days left to bid on it.

"What the hell?" I gasped, laying the knife aside with more reverence than I'd used to pull it from the box.

The other items were equally or even more valuable. If my math was right, the box Nana had left for my father was worth almost twenty thousand dollars. Jaw hanging open, I gaped at it all. Worry nagged at my insides. Should I call Dad back now and tell him? It would be the right thing to do, but… we'd had a fairly normal and productive conversation on the phone, one of the few we'd ever had, but that didn't mean I trusted him with this kind of money. Part of me was happy he bounced between dead-end jobs. It meant he never quite had the money to buy enough drugs or booze to accidentally kill himself.

With no idea what to do, I decided to save the box for later, repacking everything as gently as I could and sliding it aside. The next box was filled with stacks of old books, files, and an old-fashioned photo album. The album drew my interest first, and after digging it out, I opened it to peruse the old pictures.

One of the first photos was a black-and-white image that looked incredibly old and faded with age. A very young girl, maybe five or six years old, stood beside an adult. Even with the faded picture and the youthful appearance, I recognized Nana. I smiled and ran a finger across the photo. I'd never seen a picture of her as a child.

My eyes were drawn to the woman holding her tiny hand. She had to be my great-grandmother. Both she, Nana, and I had similar cheekbones, and my great-grandmother even had the same nose I did. I had my mother's raven-black hair, but other than that, it appeared I definitely took after my father's side of the family.

A grin slowly formed on my face as I flipped through the pages, watching as my grandmother grew and aged. Seven, ten, thirteen—the years blew by as I paged through the album.

Her smile vanished on one of the later pages, where a strange photo greeted me. Nana, clad in a peculiar and ornate dress, stood before a huge bonfire. She had to be around sixteen in the picture, and my great-grandmother stood next to her.

The longer I looked at the picture, the weirder it became. What at first looked like shadows became clearer. Twisting figures, obscured by the dark and flames of the fire, caught mid-dance, their arms flailing back in some sort of supplication. Something about the image sent a chill through me, raising gooseflesh on my arms.

Flipping the page, I found an even stranger photo. Nana again, at a similar age but a bit older. She stood in front of another bonfire, the same dancing figures twined around the very edges of the picture, ghostlike and amorphic. In fact, the entire picture had a dreamlike quality, an otherworldly look. Nana almost looked like she was both in and out of the picture as she was more faded than the surroundings.

My head and skin buzzed. I truly had the sense that I was looking at something that shouldn't be real. Before I could stop myself, I slid the photo from the page and flipped it over, checking to see if there was a note. What I read made no sense whatsoever and made my head spin.

Lola. Winter Solstice. 1910.

What?I flipped the picture back over, taking a close look at it again. I thought I must have looked at it wrong, but there was no denying it was Nana. I'd know that face in my dreams even with all the age lines and wrinkles gone. No, that number must have meant something else.

Quickly, I flipped back to the previous page, tugged the photo of Nana out, and flipped it over.

Lola's coronation ceremony. 1905.

"Coronation ceremony?" I mouthed, the words tumbling from my lips in a breathless whisper.

With numb fingers, I slid the two photos back into their slots, then continued turning pages, watching as the years flipped by. My curious and nostalgic interest had vanished, and a dark, confusing thought bubbled at the back of my mind. I wasn't sure what it was, what it meant. All I knew was that I needed to follow this strange trail to its conclusion. My heart fluttered, and my stomach twisted into knots. I had the sense that I was about to discover something big, something important. Something existential in scope and breadth.

As I turned pages, the photos slowly changed from black-and-white to color. Nana looked like she was in her early twenties, then her late twenties. More and more bonfires, but less and less of the twisting and dancing figures, until, in a photo of her at around the age of forty, it was Nana alone, standing before the fire with that same strange gown on, arms stretched toward the heavens before the fire. The pictures grew newer, yet Nana wasn't aging as fast as it seemed she should. Not until the later photos did she look closer to the age she should have been.

A marked change took place over the pictures after that final one of Nana alone. Gone were the bonfires and strange clothes. Now it was her with me. The first image was nearly a carbon copy of that first photo of Nana with her mother, except it was a very young me standing with Nana.

The last page held a copy of the photo I'd kept in my classroom. We'd taken it the last time she and I had come to the cabin. I was sixteen, and Nana was in her mid-to-late sixties. We stood, arms around each other, laughing wildly. The image was tilted at a weird angle, and I remembered the camera had been set on a timer and had tumbled over a moment before taking the picture. We were laughing because it had taken forever to get it set up right, and it had still fallen.

The backs of my eyes stung as I looked at our laughing faces, and a smile once again spread across my lips. Flipping the page over, I sucked in a breath. An envelope was taped to the hardback binding. The crisp white paper was unblemished except for one word written in Nana's sloping copperplate script: Kirsten.

A strange, rasping sound echoed through the living room, and it took a few moments for me to realize it was my own strangled breath exploding in and out of me in short, ragged gasps. I didn't even want to touch that envelope, but I was desperate to know what was inside it. In the end, my curiosity overwhelmed the strange, bone-deep dread that battled against it.

With a quiet pop, the tape came away from the back cover, and before I could talk myself out of it, I tore the seal on the envelope and pulled out two folded pages of thick vellum. Nana's distinct script covered the pages. With trembling fingers, I unfolded the paper and began to read.

Kirsten, my darling girl.

I'm sure you have many questions. I also know that if you are reading this letter, I have gone on to be with my sisters in the summer lands. I am so sorry I've left you, that I can't be there to guide you during this time. After seeing the photographs in this book, you must be confused and scared. For that, I hope you will forgive me.

Our family has many secrets. Secrets even my husband and son didn't understand. Secrets even you don't know. I held them back because of your father. Having a son should have broken the line. I assumed you had not inherited anything at all, so I kept my secrets in hopes of giving you a normal life. I waited years to see if your power might manifest. Sixteen is when most show signs, but by the time you were twenty-one, I'd seen no signs of magic within you, so I resigned myself to the fact that my gift would die with me.

I froze, reading and rereading the word magic again and again. Magic? What the hell was Nana saying in this letter? What was happening? The room around me seemed to be tilting wildly as everything I thought I knew and believed was thrown out the window.

Desperate for more information, I continued reading.

When I was younger, I was so proud of my heritage. We witches are a proud people, and I loved all the powers that had been bestowed upon me. The change came when I ventured out to start my own family. Your grandfather was a decent man, if distant. Even as much as I loved him, I never told him my greatest secret at first. After your father was born, things became more difficult. I aged much slower than humans, which forced us to move often. At first, the questions were simple ones, but as my husband grew older, he began to look at me strangely. He knew something about me wasn't right. It drove a wedge between us. Part of me thinks that his fear of what I was might have contributed to his early death. I know for a fact it is what pushed your father to join the army and run. Both my boys were kept in the dark, and it ruined them. That is my greatest shame and regret in this life. I'd meant to keep them safe, but in the end, I did the opposite.

When I found out you were going to be born and you would be a girl, I prayed to the gods and goddesses that my gift would not be passed down. All I wanted for you was a normal human life. A life of love, happiness, and simplicity. A life where you would not have to hide, lie, or run. And most of all, a life you could share with the ones you loved rather than keeping them at arm's length to keep your secrets.

I truly thought you would live the life I wished for you, but then the cancer came. Even witches aren't immune to the ravages of disease. Our power can keep it at bay for a time, along with human medicine, but I know that this sickness will be the end of me. The doctors still hold out hop—as do you, dear girl—but I know the truth. It seems my powers do as well.

I was shown a vision, and that vision is part of why I am writing this letter. I have to tell you what I saw. It's a vision my own mother saw many, many years ago. She said it was my daughter's future, but when I only had a son, I assumed it was a mistake or a misreading of the future. Now I have seen the same thing, and I know it was not my daughter, but my granddaughter. The child who was as close to a true daughter to me as could possibly be without being born from my own body.

Kirsten, you must hear me. A man is coming. He will be drawn to you and is meant for you. That destined love will awaken the dormant powers within your mind and body. He will be unable to stay away and will be drawn to you the way a magnet is drawn to iron. He will be your greatest protector, and you will need him, for I see danger in your future.

I can't tell you more. That, unfortunately, is hidden in shadow. I can see something dark and furious, but nothing more than that. All I know is that you must be careful and prepare for your powers to manifest.

I lie here now, on what I know is my deathbed, and my sorrow is overwhelming. I desperately wish I could have told you all this months ago, before my voice was taken from me. Even now, hours before I see the end coming, I am terrified of telling you this. Please don't hate me for hiding these secrets. I was so scared that you would hate me, or disown me. Even as death marched slowly toward me, I couldn't work up the courage to tell you. I am old in ways you are only now understanding, but in some ways, I am still but a child, afraid of reproach. I will use the last of my powers to put this letter here in this book of memories, in the hopes it finds you after my death.

Kirsten, you are all that I ever could have hoped you'd be. You are beautiful, kind, smart, and powerful. I am in awe of you, and I always have been. I love you, my dear. Be strong, and remember what I've told you here. Prepare, and be careful, my child.

–Nana Lola

I read the letter three times to be sure I'd understood every word of it, then my trembling fingers went slack and the pages fluttered to the ground. If it had only been a letter, I would have assumed it was the ravings of a woman deep in sickness, drugged and not in her right mind. Except there were the photos. Proof that my grandmother was older—much older—than she'd appeared. And then the strange sensation I'd felt when looking at the pictures, almost like something was reaching out of them to touch my mind.

Magic.

"Nope. No way," I said and walked to the kitchen.

I grabbed a spray bottle, squirted cleaning solution on the spotless counters, and wiped them down aggressively. Instead of taking my mind off the insanity of the letter and the photos, it only seemed to focus my thoughts. Images of Wiccan séances flashed through my mind like a flipbook. I dropped my rag and braced my hands on the kitchen counter, closing my eyes and taking deep, steadying breaths.

How did you reconcile that your grandmother was a witch and the revelation that you, allegedly, were a witch, too? It wasn't terribly outlandish for witches to exist. I mean, shifters existed. What was more magical than a man transforming into a wolf? Still, I had the distinct feeling that I was standing on some kind of precipice, waiting to be pushed over the edge. If I did go over, something told me there would be no turning back.

A man is coming. He will be drawn to you and is meant for you. Those words, more than almost anything else in the letter, had the heavy weight of truth. What man would that be? Who could I possibly meet that would—

Jace.

The name blipped into my mind like a strobe light, and I flinched. Jace? Really? That full-of-himself jackass?

Well, screw this. There was one way to find out. Plus, I didn't want to be in the cabin for another second. I needed fresh air. I needed answers.

I'd also need some sort of proof, so I pulled several photographs from the album and tucked them into my purse. After they were secure, I snatched up my keys and practically ran out the front door.

Gravel flew into the air as I shot down the driveway. A thousand different thoughts crashed through my head as I sped toward Jace's house. The way he'd been standing in the woods early that morning, watching. Drawn to you like a magnet to iron.

A storm of swirling anxiety fluttered in my stomach. His strange desperation and fear of me being near Eren. He will be your greatest protector, and you will need him, for I see danger in your future.

"What the fuck is going on?" I asked the empty car, disturbed by how shaken I sounded.

A few minutes later, I pulled up at a guard shack at the end of the long driveway that led to the alpha's house. The first time I came here, Waylan had led me through. Now, two large men stepped forward, flagging my car down.

"Can we help you, ma'am?" one of them asked.

"Yes," I said, doing my level best to stay as calm and composed as I could. "I need to speak to Jace Stone. My name is Kirsten Holly. He knows me."

The guy nodded and looked at the other guard. "It's the human staying in the old cabin," he said to him. "Heard the boss talking about her."

Jace had spoken about me? Why did that fill me with a pleasant warmth rather than irritation?

"Hang on." The other guard pulled out a radio. He spoke into it, but I couldn't hear either side of the conversation. A few seconds later, he turned back and waved me on. "Go on up. He'll be waiting."

"Thanks," I mumbled and drove forward, clenching my teeth and forcing my foot not to slam down on the gas pedal.

Jace stood outside his house, looking nervous, by the time I pulled up out front. After jamming the car into park and turning the engine off, I got out, taking a few steps toward him, not even bothering to close my door.

His face was unreadable, but I thought there was a bit of anxiety in his eyes. We stood several paces apart, staring at each other in silence.

Finally, I worked up the courage to speak. "What do you know about my family?"

Jace took a deep breath, pulling air into his broad chest and then blowing it out in a rush. "Come inside. We need to talk."

"You've got that right."