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“After all I’ve done for you,” my grandmother snapped. Her hair was still in rollers, but it didn’t detract from the severity of her face. “I should have locked you up and thrown away the key years ago.”
“But why?” I asked. “What did I do-?”
“It’s nothing you did; it’s what you are.” My cousin rolled her eyes. “And you can’t change that, can you?”
“What she is?” Asher exchanged confused looks with me.
But in a split second, it dawned on me. “My power. That’s why you’ve stopped me from getting it, haven’t you? You’re scared of it.”
What power could I possibly possess that would cause them to repress it against my will?
“It doesn’t matter.” My grandmother plucked me off the wall with her power and held me a foot off the ground. “I should have known you would abuse your freedom. From now on, you will be confined to your room at all times. You’ll never see the light of day again. And as for you.” She shot Asher a murderous look. “You’re going back in your jar, and if you grovel just hard enough, I might release you. One day.”
An almighty roar filled the room, and my uncle snatched his bloodied hand to his chest. Hecate landed paws down on the ground, her eyes wild, but she didn’t skip a beat and dashed toward us. She launched herself through the air and pressed a paw to my exposed ankle.
Her power shot through my body and to my core, sparking an explosion that had my back arching and my head falling backward. I inhaled a breath that filled me entirely for the first time. With a jolt behind my navel, I fell out of the air and landed on my feet.
Asher dropped down next to me as power rippled through my body, but it was strange...some of it felt like it didn’t belong to me. Orbs of power, all with different sensations, floated through me, as if lost in a maze.
Hecate leapt up into my arms, and I held her as she pressed a paw to my neck. A vision flashed before my eyes, of my grandmother, much younger, sitting in the living room with me on her lap, merely a toddler. A lady I didn’t recognise sat next to her on the loveseat.
“Her ability will surpass any power your family has yet seen,” the stranger said. “Removing the powers of others and being able to utilise them as her own. Well...it’s almost unprecedented.”
“You’re sure that’s what you saw?” my grandmother asked. “Your visions aren’t always set in stone, you said so yourself.”
“Never has a vision of mine appeared so clearly.” The Seer, I realised now, looked upbeat, even happy about what she had revealed.
But my grandmother stared at me with the hard look I was so used to.
“Thank you for your insight into Beatrix’s future,” she said. “I’ll take it from here.”
The vision ended so suddenly that my head snapped forward, and Hecate nuzzled my face as I struggled to get my bearings.
So that was my power...and my grandmother had been so intimidated by the idea that I could take away her power that she had tried to ensure I would never receive it.
“You were really going to keep me here under false pretenses for the rest of my life?” I asked. “Pretending that I was just unlucky that I would never get my power?”
“And what if you went rogue with it?” Georgina asked. “Then we’d all be powerless and you would have control over the whole family.”
“Oh, it’s too late for that.” I transferred Hecate into my left arm and flexed the fingers of my right hand.
Their powers pulsed beneath my skin, encouraging me to free them. But I had no knowledge of how to use them.
“Beatrix.” Grandmother’s tone sounded calm, even tender, and it hit my ears wrong. Insincere...and all in another desperate attempt to control me. “Return our powers to us or-.”
“Or what?” I asked.
“Oh, enough of this,” Georgina snapped. “Restrain them and get rid of that damn cat. This isn’t anything more potions won’t fix.”
Her husband, Douglas, stepped toward us and Asher took a smart step back. Douglas was an easy 6’4" and lifted weights, although considering how lanky he used to be, I suspected there were some magical steroids involved in his build.
But my grandmother’s power surfaced first, and with a jolt of my hand, Douglas was thrown back, smacking against the wall. Cries and shouts echoed around the room as the power submitted to my will and parted a walkway through my family members. They tried to fight the telekinesis, but their limbs could only twitch.
Asher whistled. “I know you were in two minds before, but...fancy running away now?”
For the first time in my life, I had no doubts.
Without a second thought, I walked through the crowd of people who had once been my family, with Hecate in my arms, toward a world I knew nothing about.
