Blood Witch_ Book Three - Cate Tiernan [32]
Move, I told my body, my feet. Get inside. Move, dammit! But I couldn’t.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m Hunter,” he said with a sudden, wolfish grin that made me draw in my breath. He looked feral and dangerous.
“The youngest member of the International Council of Witches.”
My breath was now coming in shallow gasps, as if I were facing death itself.
“And I’m Cal’s brother,” he said.
12
The Future
I ran up the ice-crusted steps of our house and threw myself through the door. Somehow I knew Hunter wouldn’t follow me. The house was wonderfully warm and cozy, and I almost sobbed with relief as I pounded up the stairs and crashed into my bedroom. I had enough presence of mind to lock my door, and when Mary K. knocked a minute later, I called, “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” she replied. A moment later her feet padded downstairs.
My head was spinning. The first thing I did was run into the bathroom and examine my face in the mirror. It was me, still the same old me, despite the haunted look in my brown eyes and my shock-whitened face. Was Hunter right? Was I Woodbane?
I threw myself onto my bed and pulled Maeve’s Book of Shadows out from under my mattress, then started flipping pages. I’d thumbed through the entries before, reading bits here and there, but mostly I’d been plodding through slowly, savoring every word, letting each spell sink in, deepening my knowledge and my only link to the woman who had given birth to me.
Strangely enough, though, it didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. It was from when Maeve was still writing as Bradhadair. She wrote matter-of-factly: “Despite the Woodbane blood in our veins, the Belwicket clan has resolved to do no evil.”
With the force of a wave crashing on a beach, Selene’s words came back to me: “I know what it contains, and I wasn’t sure you were ready to read it.”
Selene knew Maeve had been Woodbane. Suddenly my eyes were drawn to a small volume on my desk—the book about Woodbanes that Alyce at Practical Magick had wanted me to read. So . . . Alyce knew, too? Hunter knew? How did everyone know except me? Did Cal know? It didn’t seem possible.
Hunter was a liar, though. I could feel the fury gathering within me all over again, like storm clouds. Hunter had also said he was Cal’s brother. I thought back. I knew that Cal’s father had remarried and that Cal had half siblings in England. But Hunter couldn’t be one of them—he and Cal seemed practically the same age.
Lies. All lies.
But why was Hunter here? Had he just decided to come to America and mess with my mind? Maybe he was Cal’s half brother and he was out to get Cal for some reason. And he was attacking me in order to hurt Cal. He was doing a damn good job of it if that was the case.
The whole thing was giving me a horrible headache. I shut the book and pulled Dagda into my arms, listening to his small, sleepy purr. I stayed there until Mary K. called me to tell me dinner was ready.
The meal was practically inedible: a vegetarian casserole that Mary K. had concocted. I wasn’t even hungry, anyway. I needed some answers.
Sidestepping a whispered question from Mary K. about Hunter, I told her I’d help her with the dishes later, then asked my parents if I could go to Cal’s. Luckily they said yes.
It started to snow again as I pulled away from the house in Das Boot. Of course I was still upset about everything Hunter had said, but I tried not to let it affect my driving. The wipers pushed snow off the windshield in big arcs, and my brights illuminated thousands of flakes swirling down out of the sky. It was beautiful and silent and lonely.
Woodbane. When I got home tonight, I would read the book Alyce had given me. But first I needed to see Cal.
In the long, U-shaped