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Watching Boris knock Tessa around the next half hour made me want to pummel him. I concentrated on gauging his powers and looking for weaknesses. I didn’t find any.
* * * *
Tessa had warned me about Chait’s collection of weapons but I couldn’t imagine, even in my wildest dreams, anything like it.
“This…” Chait gingerly lifted a sword from its place on the wall. “Is a Scottish basket-hilted broadsword, circa seventeen hundred. The baskets were designed to protect your hands in battle. This particular sword belonged to my mentor.”
I ran a finger reverently along the blade. “I’m speechless.”
“Hey.” Tessa squeezed between Chait and me. “Enough with the foreplay. I want to see the modern technologically advanced stuff. Like those bullets. Let’s hurry though because it’s getting late and I want to make sure I have time to see your library.”
“Hey.” I held her hand a moment. “Guess you’re not getting much time with Bree, huh?”
She shook her head. “No. But in the long run, maybe I’ll have more. I can hope.”
“You know,” Chait began, “our records are meticulously updated. Well, every few years anyway. We’d have everything from ten years ago, for sure. We log everyone by their original name and whatever they used later. Everyone changes their name eventually and since your grandmother is older, she’d have to be there somewhere.”
“Your grandmother?” I asked. “Why would she be in their record books?”
“Oh, yeah. Uhm…” Tessa squeezed her eyes shut a moment. “She was a witch. With everything that’s been going on, I didn’t get a chance to tell you.”
“Your grandmother was a witch and you forgot to tell me?” I shook my head, remembering that she’d also forgotten to tell me she’d quit her job. “But you found time to tell him?”
“Hayden,” she said, resting a hand on my wrist. “Chait and I had lot of time to talk on the way to the cemetery last night.”
My mouth dropped open. “And all the rest of the time, you’ve been with me.” I held my hands up in surrender. “You know what? Forget it. I don’t want to get into it.”
“Can we have a minute, Chait?” she asked.
“Sure.”
The door closed and Tessa draped her arms around my neck. “It doesn’t have to do with anything, Hayden. You and I have been doing other things like playing with Bree and… kissing. I wasn’t trying to keep it from you. I swear. In this whole mess, you’re the one I trust most.”
I nodded. Of course, I believed her sincerity, but it still bothered me how Chait had been getting so much quality time with her lately.
“Okay.” It wasn’t okay, not really. But I knew she meant what she said. I buried my face in her hair and tried to forget how screwed I was. I’d never before worried about my relationship with a girl or been jealous. Because the other girls never truly mattered. “How do you know she was a witch?”
Tessa gri
“Hey.” Chait cracked the door open and peeked his head through. “All safe?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Why don’t you show me to the library, then you and Hayden can go crazy on each other?”
Chait came inside the rest of the way, then ducked his head back out. “The thing is,” he whispered, “you’re not supposed to be in the library. Not until you’re one of us. I’m going to get in trouble if I get caught. We have to be careful.”
“Let’s go,” Tessa said.
I kissed her goodbye, then returned to the wall of joy and fondled a thirteenth century poignard. Of course, I’d never have known what the dagger was called if not for the plaque below telling its history. Over six hundred years old, complete with a jeweled sheath. I sighed in longing for the dagger, then returned it to the display case on the wall.
“David would kill me if he knew I let you touch that stuff,” Chait told me, reappearing.
“Then why’d you let me?”
He laughed. “You would’ve done it anyway once I left. Same thing I did as a recruit.”
As much as I disliked Chait… oh, hell, I didn’t dislike him at all. If I were going to be honest, I’d admit — at least to myself — that Tessa wouldn’t be doing badly if she hooked up with a guy like him. She’d probably be better off with him than me.
Christ, I needed to beat the hell out of him. I was in the perfect place to do it, too.
It took me only five minutes to learn that I had a ways to go before kicking his ass. He gave me bruises to prove it.
Chapter Thirty-three
Tessa
I’d been through so many old, dusty books, I’d almost lost count. No record of my grandmother and nothing about sorcerers that I didn’t already know. I leaned forward and rested my chin in my palms. Where would I find the information? In all the centuries past, we couldn’t be the only family that had inherited powers.
Closing my eyes a moment, I listened to approaching steps beyond the door. In front of me sat a pile of books. Except for my legs, I was completely hidden from anyone standing at the door. The knob turned and I raised my feet then put up a shield around myself, blocking the intruder from sensing me. I didn’t know if it would work, but it was my best shot.
“See? No one’s here. Must have been your imagination,” a female said with a trace of a Spanish accent.
“Strange,” another woman said then the door shut.
It had worked. I could block. What else could I do?
I’d been about to resume my search when I spotted the bottom of a thick, ancient-looking volume lying flat at the very top of the bookshelf, the end partially obscured by another book.
With the utmost care, I retrieved it and laid it on the table. A Brief History of Vampires, Witches and Shifters. Brief. Yeah, right. The book weighed a ton.
I started at the begi
Divine sorcerers were a different breed with almost god-like powers that far surpassed those of other sorcerers. They preferred a quiet life, due to their propensity to reproduce girls and because of their love of family. Although the divine sorcerers were capable of giving birth to males, it was rare, and their children’s power remained pure whether the father was a sorcerer or human.
Dark forces feared divine sorcerers and sought their dominion. Legends told of divine sorcerers’ powers successfully transferred to other life forms. This gave the dark forces license to kill any sorcerer they encountered, in hopes of acquiring the powers of their victims. By the time that theory was proved false in the early nineteenth century, it was too late. They had been hunted to assumed extinction.
Propensity to reproduce, meaning they had children. I flipped the pages to see if the author had included any pictures or renditions. My eyes halted at a photograph of what looked like a very old painting. Two women stood side by side, both with blond hair. My family didn’t look exactly like them, but we were eerily similar — straight nose and narrow, high cheekbones, almond shaped eyes. The caption read, Mother and daughter share their blond hair, so common among these powerful sorcerers.
I flipped back to where I’d left off before hunting for pictures.
It is believed that many divine sorcerers migrated from Europe and settled in Salem, Massachusetts. Easily identified by their coloring and aristocratic features, many were captured and accused of being witches.