Anathema (Causal Enchantment #1)(26)
Author: K.A. Tucker

“The perfect revenge requires a fair amount of risk,” the woman answered coldly. A wave of recognition hit me. I’d heard that bitterness before. It was the young woman from the park. I thought she was dead!

“Revenge for what?” Sofie’s bewilderment seemed authentic.

“For the worst betrayal,” the woman replied acidly.

There was a long pause as Sofie no doubt worked hard to recall where their paths had crossed.

“You’re not the only witch who has found a form of immortality,” the woman hinted.

Another long pause. Suddenly Sofie gasped in recognition. “Ursula?”

The woman cackled viciously. “You’d be surprised what you can do with host bodies. I’ve gone through dozens now. It’s exhilarating, like shopping for fine furniture. I’ve tried out every ethnicity … always beautiful, though. And young. Those are my prerequisites. It’s a lot of work, but worth it. I’ve been able to remain alive, year after year, studying you, waiting for the perfect opportunity to punish you. I can’t believe I missed the connection between you and the girl all these years. That bloody dog was constantly in the way so I could never get too close.”

Old news, Ursula. I knew she was spying on me. Tell me something I don’t know. Like how Sofie betrayed you too.

“All of this because of Nathan? I think both he and I were sufficiently punished, don’t you?” Grief filled Sofie’s voice.

“Nathan was mine and you murdered him!” Ursula ear–piercing shriek startled me.

A chill ran down my spine. With everything else, Sofie was capable of murder.

“He never loved you,” Sofie calmly answered, pronouncing every word with slow precision.

“Oh please, save your lies.” Ursula turned her head slightly, the only indication that she was aware of Viggo and Mortimer’s presence in the shadows. “Those two imbeciles of yours hired me to watch over you five years ago. They wanted to know what kind of magic you were playing with. Of course they didn’t know who I really was.”

Sofie gasped. “I knew it!” she screeched, her finger pointing accusingly at Viggo.

“I think you’ve divulged enough information, Ursula,” Viggo said, sidestepping to close in on her, Mortimer on the other side.

“Did Sofie tell you that the pendant is a key?” Ursula asked, avoiding Viggo’s outstretched hand.

Sofie lunged for Ursula’s neck but Mortimer intercepted, holding her back.

“What do you mean?” Viggo said, a sharp undercurrent in his calm voice.

“It’s a key. Plug it into the right lock or portal and you’ll get whatever you need with it. It’s obvious to anyone looking at it, including Sofie.”

Mortimer whirled on Sofie, hurling her back to smash through a ground–level French door with the power of his wrath. “What else have you been keeping from us?” he thundered.

Ursula’s speckled green eyes darted up to lock with mine for a split second before moving on. The others didn’t notice. “I did some digging after I met your girl at the park,” she said to the others. “It was interesting … The police report for her mother’s death was in your handwriting, Viggo. If you were going to kill her, why didn’t you just bite her?”

In one fluid motion, Viggo reached up and snapped Ursula’s neck. Her body dropped to the ground, its life extinguished, her last words ringing in my ears as I collapsed to the floor.

17. Murderer

Max limped out to rub his wet nose against my cheek. It barely registered. “Is it true, Max?” I choked out.

Silence.

“Don’t go mute now. What do you know?” Max blinked, averting guilty yellow eyes. He knows something. “That woman’s crazy, right? Viggo never would have killed my mother. There’s no way, right?” I pressed, on the verge of hysteria.

I tried to stop it, Max finally answered.

“What?”

Max closed his eyes and sighed—an odd reaction from a dog—and a peculiar thing happened. Images flashed through my mind. At first they were fuzzy and faint, but the clarity strengthened until it was like a movie trailer was playing inside my head.

It was night. Someone walked along a dimly lit sidewalk on a quiet street in drizzling rain, though the person had no umbrella, just a jacket hood. The camera angle in my head shifted to show car lights approaching. There was nothing unusual about it until the car’s engine revved. The person’s head turned, the headlights illuminating a female face. The face of my mother, as young and beautiful as I remembered her.

The driver suddenly gunned it and swerved, sending the car up onto the sidewalk. I caught the fleeting look of confusion on my mother’s face a second before the car struck her.

She didn’t have a chance.

I gasped, my hands flying to my throat. So many times I had recreated the accident in my head, but this was a thousand times worse.

And it didn’t end there. The car stopped after hitting her. The door opened and the driver stepped out. I couldn’t make out a face in the shadows but I recognized that it was a man. He took several long, casual strides over to my mother’s motionless body. When he stooped over her lifeless body to dip his fingers in her blood and the headlights shone across his face, I saw a blonde man with piercing blue eyes. And I knew who it was.

Viggo murdered my mother.

I cried out as wounds that had closed but never healed tore open as surely as if it were happening all over again. Only this time the wounds gaped wider than ever before. But why? Why would they kill my mother? What did Viggo gain?

The vision blurred, then disappeared altogether. I scrambled to my feet and swayed, barely able to stand upright, then bolted into my room, intent on escaping this prison. Instead I found myself face to face with my mother’s murderer.

“Thank goodness you’re okay. You were gone four days this time. We were beginning to worry,” Viggo said, stepping forward. I recoiled. He chuckled. “Oh, you heard that nonsense? She was a delusional witch. Pay no attention.”

“Why?” I quavered. “Why would you—” I couldn’t say the words—couldn’t get them to form in my head, let alone my mouth. “I saw!” I finally whispered. Mortimer and Sofie had stepped into the room behind him, but I kept my eyes on … the murderer.

“What do you mean, you saw?” Viggo’s eyes narrowed, their typical calm morphing into something altogether unfamiliar.

I nodded toward the giant dog, now standing at my side.

“What?” Mortimer’s whisper was harsh, and his eyes bulged. “How is that possible?” He turned to Sofie. “How is this possible? Did you do this?”

Sofie’s head fell back as she laughed hysterically. “No, but it makes me so happy!”

Mortimer glared at the dog. “You disappeared from my mind, but I thought you were just angry with me! I didn’t think you had traded allegiances.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I interjected, forcing bravery. “Why? Why would you do something so …” My eyes burned but no tears came. Even my eye ducts were in shock.

“Monstrous?” A smile flickered over Viggo’s lips. “Well, at least we can give up this silly charade. It was becoming quite taxing.” His voice, once placid and soothing, had a sinister edge now. Maybe it had always been there, but I’d been deaf to it until now. “I need to move somewhere less … cluttered.” Viggo’s eyes skimmed over the corpses and destruction in the room. “Sofie, why don’t you explain why I felt the need to kill Evangeline’s mother? And make sure you explain your part in it.”

Sofie was part of this? Of course she was. She’s a murderer. Ursula confirmed it. My stomach twisted, all the same.

“Do I tell her the truth, or your version of it?” Sofie retorted bitterly.

Viggo responded with a wicked chuckle. “Do you even remember what the truth is anymore?” With that, he vanished, Mortimer in tow.

“Let’s get out of here,” Sofie said quietly.

I nodded, not because I wanted to go anywhere with Sofie, but I needed to get away from this death zone. I zeroed in on the hallway beyond the door, not allowing my eyes to wander for even a second as we maneuvered around the blood and gore.

We went to the library. “Where to begin,” Sofie said, settling on the leather couch. She folded her hands in her lap and stared at them, lost in thought.

“How about explaining why you’ve been watching me my entire life,” I snapped, drawing her emotionless, pale green stare to my face, “and why you cursed me. And about my mother’s death.” Once the questions began, they spilled out like an overturned jar of beans, scattering uncontrollably. “This crazy Ursula woman, who was she? And Nathan, the guy you murdered?”

My last question sparked a reaction. Sofie’s pale eyes displayed raw pain. I had struck a cord.

“Nathan is the vampire who turned me,” she answered quietly, then exhaled as if to compose herself before launching into a long explanation. But then she was up and pacing around the room, nervously chewing on her thumbnail. I wasn’t used to this side of Sofie—anxious, uncertain. I watched in silence, intrigued.

“Nathan and I were desperately, madly, irrevocably in love,” she began, running one of her slender hands through her silky red hair, a waver in her voice. “You should have seen him, Evangeline. He was the inspiration behind the tall, dark, and handsome cliché. Gorgeous. I remember the moment I first laid eyes on him. It was 1887. I was sure my chest would swallow itself whole.” She dropped her hand to her side. “Anyway, Nathan was a vampire and I was a witch and our kinds abhor one another, which made our relationship tricky, to say the least. Like the Montague and the Capulet families in Romeo and Juliet.”

So now you’re trying to compare yourself to the greatest love story of all time? I wanted to snort.

Sofie smirked. “Maybe not as enchanting, but definitely as heart–wrenchingly impossible.”

Ugh, I forgot—she could read me like an open book.

“We wanted to spend the rest of our lives together and, for Nathan, that meant eternity. Now, that was trickier. You see, witches, if exposed to a vampire’s venom, will simply die. Every single time. We can’t survive the transition. I don’t know why; it’s in the genes, I suppose. Anyway, naïve and ambitious as I was, I was bound and determined to figure out a spell around this certain death. I knew I was a uniquely gifted sorceress and I was arrogant enough to believe I could solve what others had been unable to. I did solve it …” Her eyes sparkled with excitement that was extinguished almost instantly. “Or I thought I did. Never once did I imagine such terrible consequences.”

Sofie paused long enough to sit down in the leather chair. “Nathan was such a fool. He fully trusted me. I told him to bite me, to inject me with venom, and he did. When I woke up, I was immortal. I knew it instantly. I could feel the overwhelming power coursing through my veins. It was exhilarating.” Sofie sighed sadly. When she continued, her voice was thick with torment. “I found Nathan’s lifeless body lying beside me. The spell had reversed the consequences. It killed him. I killed him.”

She’d cast the spell for love. Not for selfish, foolish gains, as Mortimer had said. He had lied as well.

“I killed my soul mate, Evangeline. And I would have jumped into a flaming pit, had it not been for Veronique.” Sofie was out of her chair again and standing in front of the mantel in the blink of an eye, smiling adoringly at the painting of the dark–haired beauty. “Veronique was my younger sister.” Her voice fell, grew distant. “She was normal … Not a witch, I mean. The sorceress’s gene skipped her. She was always so supportive of my love for Nathan, for a vampire. The only supportive one. That’s because she understood implicitly. She was madly in love with not one, but two of them—one named Mortimer and the other named Viggo.”

I thought my eyes were going to pop out of their sockets.

Sofie turned to me and chuckled. “Yes, my silly, sweet sister saw something in both of them. Outrageous, isn’t it? Veronique was waiting to decide between the two before transforming to spend eternity with them.” She swallowed hard, looking down at the floor. “When I cast my spell, it destroyed that possibility for her. Mortimer felt the change immediately. He described it as the only life force within him, drained. Later we learned that every vampire felt something strange happen. They soon discovered that their venom was rendered useless. It was an unexpected outcome of the spell. Things like that can happen.

“In my attempt at eternal love and life, I destroyed any chance Veronique had of the same. As inconsolable as I was after Nathan’s death, I couldn’t leave my sister like that, to suffer and die alone. And no other witch would ever dream of helping her, even if they could.”