My mother’s handwriting.
“We haven’t read this letter,” Corbin said. “It’s for your eyes only. If you want to tell us what it says afterward, then we’re happy to listen. But it’s yours to do with as you wish.”
I clutched the letter to my chest.Aline, my birth mother.I held in my hand something she’d touched, the first piece of evidence that she even cared that I existed.
My heart pounding, I slid my finger under the seal and cracked it, pulling out a single sheet of faded paper, filled with tiny lines of that same cursive script. My knees wobbled. I sank back onto the couch, no longer certain I could hold up my own body weight.
Reverently, I smoothed the letter out on my knee and started to read:
My dearest Maeve,
My sweet friend John has just presented you into my arms, and you are the most perfect creature I have ever laid eyes on. I’ve passed many hours of my life by the pond at the bottom of Briar Wood, watching the swans float across the glassy surface, their necks held up in graceful arcs. I thought no other creature of such beauty existed, but you proved me wrong.
There are so many things I wish to tell you, but there is so little time. I will die tonight – of that I am certain. I saw my own death many years ago. The power of premonition is an ugly gift, and I pray that you will not inherit this curse from me. Your own powers will take some time to manifest (for unlike the other elemental powers, spirit develops from puberty and won’t fully manifest until you turn twenty-one) and it’s possible you may not yet even be aware of them by the time you receive this letter.
I imagine you have many questions about your powers and your heritage. Your father was a wanderer – he sought out our coven and stayed at the castle for some time to help us keep the fae hordes at bay. He went missing shortly after you were conceived. I came out into the garden one night to find his shoes empty by the gate at the edge of the field. We never saw nor heard another trace of him. I fear the fae got him, destroying his body to claim his great power for themselves.
Because of the things our coven has done, the authorities will not allow my dear friends, Kate and Andrew Harris, to adopt you. They will fight for you, but they will lose – this too I have already seen. You will be placed into an orphanage, and your adoptive parents will take you far away from Briarwood and your heritage, your curse. Although I am dying, my heart feels light because I know that they will give you a good life and love you as their own flesh and blood.
Without your power, the coven will never be strong enough to fight the Slaugh. The fae know this, and so they willeventually come for you, even as safe as you are with your new family. Kate and Andrew will keep vigil over you from afar. They’ll protect you from the fae until you receive your own powers.
I have done all I can to keep you safe, my beautiful daughter. I wish you to have a wonderful life, the life I never had – twenty-one years to be carefree, to be normal, before you are tied to this terrible duty.
You have my heart.
Aline, your mother.
I set down the letter, my head spinning. I could practicallyhearher speaking inside my head, her voice wispy and melodious. She spoke of future events as if she knew they were coming, but even if this so-called spirit element existed,precognitionwas impossible.
My mind whirred. Theoretical processes and ideas buzzing around in my head…unless we are talking about retrocausality, where causality is reversed to allow an effect to occur before its cause. But that’s really just a philosophical thought experiment laced with pseudoscience…
“I need evidence,” I whispered.
“The letter is evidence,” Corbin said.
“How do I know this letter is actually written by my mother, and that it was written the date she said it was? It could be forged. Anyone could handwrite a note and stain the paper with tea.” I sniffed the paper. “Okay, so this doesn’t smell like tea, but there are other ways to make paper look old. Before I can take any ofthis—” I gestured to the four of them and the note in front of me “—seriously, I need to know unequivocally that this is real.”
“Tell me you didn’t just use the word unequivocally in a sentence,” Flynn moaned. “I need to carry around a dictionary just to talk to you.”
Corbin rummaged around in his desk. “Hold on a sec,” he muttered as he sorted through a stack of documents. “It’s here somewhere…”
“Maybe if you learned the proper Queen’s English instead of your bastardized Irish nonsense, you wouldn’t need so much help with the big words,” Arthur said to Flynn.
“Suck me bollix,” Flynn shot back, waving his middle finger at Arthur.
“Ah, here it is!” Corbin held up a paper.
Flynn snatched it from his hand and slapped it triumphantly in my lap.
“Read it and weep, Einstein,” he grinned at me. “There’s your unequivocal proof.”
I stared down at the document. It was a deed for Briarwood Castle and grounds, stating that the property was to be held in trust for me until I came of age at twenty-one, and that the descendants of the other coven members were welcome to use it as a residence or for business purposes without paying rent, as long as they also “protected me from harm.” The document was signed by my mother and witnessed by a ‘Kate Harris’ and a lawyer from Emily’s firm. I checked my mother’s handwriting against the letter. They were identical.
“I can show you Aline’s death certificate, and the papers from the orphanage, authenticated and all,” Corbin said. “But I think you know what this means.”
My temples throbbed.This can’t be true. But there it was, the empirical evidence right in front of my eyes. My mother wrote that letter, and she wrote it before she could have possibly known the Crawfords would adopt me and take me to America.
My mother was a witch.
