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But who recommended me? I couldn’t help repeating this question to myself.
I moved to the mirror hanging over my side table and stared. “Okay, witchy girl, time to scan this letter for a clue.”
Here is the thing. I am not only a witch, but, as my aunt is fond of telling me, a very powerful and immortal witch. So I scanned it for magic and found none. Zip, nada.
I reread the letter again. Was this real? I stared at the salary being offered and shook my head. This was more than I ever hoped to earn in one year. Hell, it was enough to cover me for five years!
I looked into the mirror again, staring at the mass of red hair piled and clipped up high on my head. It was a jumble of waves that fell from the top of my head all the way down my back. I needed to give it some attention, maybe a trim?
Purple eyes stared back at me. Yes, my eyes are purple—yuck. I had always wished they were normal, like blue or brown, anything but purple.
Aunt Elle laughed at me whenever I told her that and insisted my eyes are not purple but violet and beautiful. Yeah, well, Aunt Elle has walls of green and orange in her bedroom, with beads for doors, and is given to wearing sparkling turbans. We have different ideas of what is beautiful. Thinking of Aunt Elle always makes me smile.
However, back on point. What were the odds of a Scottish firm reaching out to me? I mean, this was nuts, right? Right, I answered myself. Who did I know that would recommend me to them?
Thinking about Scotland made me dreamy. All I had ever wanted was to go to the Highlands and discover my roots. My grandmother was from Scotland…the Highlands to be exact, which made this offer more than appealing.
My grandmother had sent my mother off to New York twenty-two years ago. She met my dad and they were married almost immediately. I came along ten months after that.
I was orphaned at ten years old and my mom’s best friend, Aunt Elle, took me in.
Raised in NYC, I am every bit a New Yorker. So this job offer naturally tickled my suspicion bone into hyper-drive. On top of NYC instincts, I have trust issues as well.
Someone was playing a joke on me. I was getting excited for nothing?
Things like this didn’t happen to people like me. In the years after my parents’ death, I believed that luck would never be on my side ever again.
My parents were killed in a train wreck—our first vacation together. I was thrown clear and lived. Sure, I lived, but they were gone and I was just a kid. I would have gone into the system if Aunt Elle hadn’t arranged to keep me. She is also a witch, though a mortal one. I always suspected she magically tweaked the child services paperwork so that she had immediate guardianship of me. Easy enough, as Mom and Dad’s will named her as my guardian.
Here is the thing. My mom shouldn’t have died in that wreck. She was an immortal witch. It is hard, very hard to kill our kind. Or so, Aunt Elle told me and said Mom told her.
The ugly truth, and one that gives me nightmares, is what happened during the derailment. My mother was pinned and her head severed by a metal beam that came bolting through the windows and caught her dear and beautiful neck, taking it completely off. Thank the fates, I had not seen this when it happened.
My father had been human. I won’t say ‘only human’ because he had been my hero—there was ‘no only’ about him.
But being human, he had been crushed beneath heavy debris and died a slow death before they were able to free him.
As I said, I was flung from the train car and barely received a scratch, as I have that immortal thing going on.
Aunt Elle was there for me in every imaginable way. She was my savior, my go-to person, my font of wisdom and understanding. I would have floundered in the foster system without her. She was named my godmother, but was not written up as my legal guardian.
She saved me. She loved me like her own. The foster system, which is difficult enough for human children—would have been, for a young witch coming into her own, impossible.
The months after my parents’ deaths were difficult. Even with Aunt Elle hovering to comfort, the nightmares and sorrow tormented me.
Elle is a robust and finely tuned earth-bound witch who took control of my life. Tall and full bodied, with cocoa delicious skin, dark eyes, and an absolutely dazzling face and heart. Thank all the fates for my Aunt Elle.
When Mom died, I wasn’t fully in control of my powers. I had only just learned how to use some of my magical skills.
Aunt Elle’s magic comes from the earth and is light and basic. She taught me as much of her mortal witchery as she could, and she made a home for us. She showed me how to manage the might of my very different mana.
I needed the discipline she taught me to use because my magic was way off the charts strong.
Elle tried to research my ancestry because she said my magic wasn’t even diluted by my father’s human blood and that my mom’s magic had never been as strong as mine.
I will never forget her sacrifices, and there were many, because she chose to raise me. For one thing, Aunt Elle had only been thirty when she took me in. Now, I realize how young that really was.
She gave up a great deal in those first years. She hardly dated and only once nearly got married. I so liked him. He was human, big, strong, flirty, and Denzel Washington handsome. I thought the match would take, but in the end, she caught him cheating. I learned another lesson. A man has to be more than a pretty face.
