Hold Me Closer, Necromancer - Lish McBride [54]
I dried for a moment, letting everything soak in. I could see why my mom had done what she’d done, that it all stemmed from good intentions and a need to protect me. That didn’t stop me from being angry. She had just postponed the inevitable. I still had to deal with Douglas, only now I had zero knowledge and even less training.
I put away the cereal bowl. “Why didn’t you tell me all of this? Especially after Kevin left. Unless Dad made you hide, too?”
Glancing over, I could see her mouth crook up a little. “Haden never made me feel ashamed of anything. He found out what I was and didn’t care. In fact, he seemed delighted.” She handed me the last dish and pulled the plug out of the sink. The water gurgled out noisily. “We argued about telling you. He said you needed to know. But I was still so afraid. I think part of me hoped you would never have to find out. I felt guilty about what I’d done, how weak I’d been.” She turned on the faucet, rinsing the last bubbles from her hands. “Sam, what’s going on? I mean, why is this coming up now?”
“Let’s just say some things have surfaced.” I didn’t think I was keeping secrets as payback, but with so much to sort through, I had no desire to get into the whole mess with her. Besides, she’d worry.
“Sam.” She stopped when she saw the expression on my face. “Fine. I guess you don’t owe me an explanation.”
“Later.”
“Fair enough.” She flicked the excess water from her fingers. “Promise you’ll take care of Brooke?”
“Already planning on it.” I handed her my towel so she could dry her hands. In the switch-off, my fingers met hers, and I felt my vision open up like it had in the park. Now that Douglas had shown me how to do it, I couldn’t help myself. It was automatic. The difference was that in the park I’d had to close my eyes and work at it. But this time it was much easier. Maybe because I was touching her, or maybe because her emotions were running high. Either way, it felt like a wildly spinning Rolodex in my head. It whirled madly before clicking abruptly to a spot. I could see a lot on that page. I knew that my mom was a witch, and I could really understand what that meant. By the greens and browns, my guess was that her specialty was earth magic. I could feel emotions spilling over me: relief that she was telling, worry about my reaction, love for me and Haley, sadness.
Most surprising was her fear. I blinked at her and pulled back my hand. “You’re afraid of me.”
“Sam—”
“No, don’t. I saw it. You’re afraid of what I am, what I can do.” The idea that my mother, the one person who was supposed to love me without reservation, could fear me made my stomach clench up. I stepped away. “Please,” I said. “Please don’t argue.”
She dried her hands and hung the towel on the stove. “A powerful necromancer can raise the dead. He can read the soul, like you just did. I’ve heard some of them can even push on a person’s spirit and influence the people around them to do things. If that isn’t a power to be feared, Samhain, I’m not sure what is.”
I shook my head. What she said sounded scary, but I couldn’t agree with her completely. “I was born with it. You always said nothing is born bad. How can the gift be given to me by nature and be inherently evil? Seeing the dead is freaky, but—”
“I didn’t mean just the dead. I said soul.” I saw her eyes fill with pity as she looked at me. “Some races are more secretive than others. Whether they do this out of fear of persecution or the desire to keep family knowledge, I don’t know. We all have our secrets, I suppose. A few are unknown because of their general rarity.” She sighed. “Necromancers manage to fall into all of those categories at once: secretive, afraid of persecution, and rare. From what I saw Nick do, and from what I’ve seen you do, my guess is that necromancers have more than a connection with the dead. You have some connection to the human spirit as well. Otherwise how could Nick read me when he met me? How could you read me just now?” She reached out, paused, then straightened my hair like she used to do when I was little.