Chapter 37

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

If there was one thing Holly had learned over the years, it was that bullies rarely possessed the courage and bravery to go along with their posturing. Autumn Celeste and her husband had probably been the only people to ever stand up to the councilman. The other townspeople would have bowed to his will, either out of self-preservation or because they believed him respectable. Holly suspected Miller’s perception of his own masculinity and importance was also his greatest weakness.

She took a step closer, and the ghost wavered backward, no doubt used to people quailing in his presence rather than approaching. “If you do not leave this world, I will hunt down the male heirs that carry your name, for I am not Autumn Celeste, but her descendent, and two hundred years have passed while you have been caught between worlds. When I have found these male descendants of yours, I will curse them all.”

Councilman Miller’s eyes narrowed into slits. “I’ll see you burn first.”

She ignored him. “I will curse your descendants so that they are poor and …” Holly tried to think of something else that would piss off a man like Councilman Miller, who believed men were the only worthy sex. “I will curse them to fall in love with Witches and only have daughters!” she exclaimed triumphantly.

Councilman Miller sucked in a breath. “You would not.”

Holly glanced at her two sisters. “Would we?”

Missy blew the ghost a kiss. “I already have my eye on a gem named Ryan Miller. I would consider it an honor to destroy your genetic legacy.”

Councilman Miller threw his head back and howled with rage. The sound was so full of anger and fury and bitter resentment that it bent the air around them, causing the blazing fire to die down. Holly threw up an invisible buffer of air and the fire instantly sprang back to life while the world outside their bubble quaked.

“Holly, the disturbance is causing the fabric between planes to thin,” Connor said in her ear.

He was right. Holly’s eyes widened as the air behind the councilman wavered as if being viewed through the heat of a grill. Beyond the haze, Holly glimpsed darkness, cool, beckoning, and seductive: a place where magic was the norm rather than an anomaly.

“Can you push him through?”

Holly tore her eyes from the warped curtain and focused on the grounding familiarity of Connor’s face. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. Autumn had tried to force Miller to the other side but hadn’t fully succeeded, and she’d known what she was doing.

“Together,” Missy said confidently as she took Holly’s hand. Winter’s compact body appeared on her other side, and she gripped Holly’s free palm.

“Come on, aunts,” Missy ordered. Rose held Missy’s other hand while Winter rested her palm on Daisy’s bare arm. All five Wickeds stared down the howling, twisted form of Councilman Miller.

“We’ll feed you energy,” Missy said, giving Holly’s fingers a squeeze.

“Do you know how to do that?”

“Nope, but now seems like a good time to try.”

Holly took a deep breath, and after one last look into Connor’s steady, gray eyes, she focused on Councilman Miller. For the first time in her life, she was going to give her powers free rein.

She only hoped they wouldn’t gallop away with her.

As she had with the dog, Holly channeled hurricane force winds at the councilman, forcing him to bend backward toward the splitting curtain between worlds. The ghost laughed mockingly as he rippled with the pressure, his presence holding firm in their world.

Holly exhaled and everything around her muted. She could no longer hear the flames flickering or the ghost’s howls or the grasshoppers’ song. Terrified of what she would find after so many years of leashing her power, she breathed in again and finally, fully opened herself to what lurked within.

Power instantly flooded her veins, and it tasted of balance: love and blinding hatred, determination and acquiescence, kindness and callousness. She felt the tenderness of her family sing in her blood and tasted the syrupy darkness of Wickedness as it coated her tongue. She felt whole in a way she’d never experienced before. It was as if two parts of herself had finally been united after decades of separation, and she could walk and breathe as a completed human being once more.

All these years she’d spent suppressing her power, locking herself down, suffering the consequences. And now … now she was finally, entirely, completely Holly.

She rejoiced in the feeling even as a new rush of power crashed into her. The energy drawn from her family mingled with her own, stoking hers higher and higher, until she blazed like an out-of-control forest fire. She began to feel intoxicated. High.

Unstoppable.

Councilman Miller didn’t stand a chance. With laughable ease she dislodged his hold on their plane. Miller’s anguished shriek ripped through the clearing before she slammed him through the curtain with enough force that she wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d knocked him into yet another plane. An echo boomed across the orchards as Miller disappeared.

The enticing darkness of the other side vanished, but the wind still roared around Holly, whipping her hair across her face. She felt invincible, as if she could rip a mountain from its base or drag the sun from the sky.

Her power dimmed when her sisters withdrew their hands, but not enough to bring her back to reality. Why had she always fought this side of herself? Why did Wickeds hide away when they had more power in their little fingers than most humans had in their entire bodies? She had been born for this, and she was never going to let anything get in her way again.

Not her family.

Not a man.

No one.

Connor’s hand gripped hers harshly. She was aware of the roughness of his palm on her skin, and a small part of her resurfaced. She wanted to go to him; these weren’t her real thoughts, but the Wickedness inside her cells had been imprisoned for too long.

Holly turned toward the fire, and when Aunt Rose saw her, she gasped and pressed her fist to her mouth. It was time Holly fulfilled her birthright and—

Nausea struck her with sickening force. Holly staggered and ripped her hand out of Connor’s to press it to her belly. She fought the debilitating twisting in her stomach as Stacy appeared in the clearing, flanked by her twin brothers. All three of them were dressed as if they’d just escaped a GQ party, their expensive scents layering over the smoke and pine.

“Get out of here,” Holly hissed, and her voice didn’t sound like her own, but something colder. Something … not fully human.

Stacy threw up her palms, and a shimmering, waving wall of light encircled the clearing, a barrier between the power inside and the innocent world that lay beyond. Even basking in her own whirlwind of power, Holly could recognize how beautiful Stacy’s magic was. It sparkled with a rainbow of colors, and the pressure of it felt warm and light in a way her own powers never did—but was no less potent for it.

Stacy strode past the fire with all the confidence of a supermodel. Holly watched her approach, the out-of-control part of her simmering with challenge. She’d never witnessed Stacy’s magic before today, had never been in a position where they both might be acting exactly as nature had intended them to act. This was uncharted territory.

Stacy didn’t waver or pause when Holly’s winds buffeted against her. Testing. Sampling.

Stacy shimmered like her wall, the shield of magic she’d pulled around herself allowing her to move through Holly’s storm. Holly considered fully letting loose. Was Stacy a match for her? Could she truly stop her?

Before Holly could decide if she wanted to go there, Stacy was in front of her. To Holly’s utter shock, instead of wielding her own magic like a weapon, Stacy threw her arms around Holly’s shoulders and hugged her tightly.

They both cried out at the jarring, blunting contact, but Stacy only clung to Holly harder. They began shaking so violently that they sank to their knees. Holly felt her powers begin to dim and soften, and then drain away like water in a bathtub, a slow, inexorable draw that she was terrified would leave her dead and empty inside. Stacy’s protective wall collapsed, her face haggard and absent of its healthy glow, her magic temporarily muted along with all of Holly’s Wicked power.

And in the silent darkness of the night, there was once again balance.

Holly held onto Stacy for several long moments, trembling with the whiplash of having unimaginable power suddenly wink out of existence, leaving her little more than a vacant shell.

Her nose was pressed into Stacy’s perfect corkscrew curls, and she could smell the Witch’s expensive, lightly scented shampoo. Holly opened her eyes, and the first thing she noticed was that Stacy’s stilettos somehow didn’t have a lick of mud on the heels.

Of course, she thought dryly, but she wasn’t sure she could ever feel true animosity for Stacy again. She was enormously grateful that Stacy was everything she wasn’t.

At last Stacy dropped her arms, and when they separated, Holly’s powers sprang back like a black flame flickering to life, but they felt normal rather than overwhelming.

“You can keep your ghosts,” Missy said to Connor and Erikson, breaking the hushed silence. Her cheeks were pale. “That was enough for me . Holly, are you all right? Your eyes were completely black. No whites. It was like a horror movie.”

“How did you know?” Aunt Rose asked Stacy. Her white braid had fallen down her back, and she seemed to have aged ten years, her cheeks sunken and her eyes disturbed.

“We felt the blast of power all the way at our farm,” Stacy answered as one of her brothers helped her stand. It was obvious he was in pain by the harsh line of his lips and the way he was blinking as if he were staring into a sharp light, and Stacy was rubbing her manicured fingertips over her temples. She and her brothers edged away, trying to put some distance between themselves and Holly’s family. “We knew there was trouble.”

“The trouble was that we had to get rid of a ghost, and then Holly went all power trippy on us,” Missy said.

“Thank you for coming.” Aunt Daisy faced the three Witches, a faint smile on her lips. “There is a certain beauty in balance, isn’t there? Each of us is here on this earth for a reason.”

“Maybe ya’ll aren’t so bad,” Missy said grudgingly.

Winter touched Holly’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Holly nodded, but she was too embarrassed to look anyone in the eye. She’d lost all control, had given in entirely to her Wicked powers. What would she have done if Stacy hadn’t stopped her? Connor had seen her use wind to rescue a puppy, but this—this was on an entirely different level of terrifying.

Holly took a deep, shuddering breath just as she was yanked into a pair of arms. She stiffened against Connor, but he wasn’t having any of that. He rubbed her arms and her neck until she finally relaxed and snuggled into his embrace. She pressed her ear to his chest, where his heart beat steadily.

“You were brilliant,” he murmured. “Absolutely brilliant.”

“I lost control. Aren’t you frightened of me? I am.”

“You can ask me as many times as you need to, but the answer isn’t going to change. I’m scared of a lot of things, Holly, but you’ll never be one of them.”