WITCHCRAFT

CHAPTER 10

"You must always stay out of the public's eye, Lucille", a dark haired young woman told her, looking down at the child, "You cannot share this with the others, with humans."

"Why not?", looking down at the writings in front of her Lucy heard herself talking but it didn't sound like her, "The humans need our gifts much more than we do."

"Lucille, humans aren't good", the woman was crouching next to her now, "They'll take and take and take, and they'll never say thank you. They fear what they don't understand."

"We'll help them", she insisted, "You're helping me. I don't understand most of it yet. If I understand so will they."

The woman smiled sadly at her, tucking hair behind her ear. Their heads both turned towards the door when they felt the breeze as it opened. Lucy felt the joy that the child was feeling when she spotted the pair that had come in but she never saw them.

-

"You cannot take them", she was now older, recognising her own voice almost as she suddenly felt fear worse than she'd ever felt, "They're only children."

"The devil's bastards. Have you had affairs with him to get these witches?", the man in front of her scowled.

Lucy managed to look down at the pre-teens she was hugging to herself, "No! I shan't! I haven't-"

The woman whose memories Lucy seemed to be seeing didn't dare to finish this in front of her children but she knew exactly what she was going to say. Was it by her feelings, thoughts or simply her own intuition, Lucy knew exactly how this woman had been hurt.

As they watched the flames from afar, hearing the children scream, the mother sobbed, quickly pulled into a hug by the same woman who had taught her, "Do you understand, Lucille?"

"It's not- This isn't fair!", she was in utter agony.

The woman glared at someone behind the mother, "You've done what you were tasked with. Leave us now."

The door fell open and shut again and the woman returned her attention to the sobbing mother in her arms.

Lucy awoke with a start as her alarm rang on her nightstand. She didn't feel rested and felt the tears on her pillow.

Yesterday, Carlisle had admitted to her that he was a vampire, and three hundred years earlier, as a human, he had caused great suffering to a woman she reminded him of.

She needed a cold shower. She wasn't a morning-shower typed of person but she felt and looked like she needed the cold water. Breakfast was quiet and Angela felt uncomfortable at the sight of her sister, unsure what to say. She shouldn't have pried into her dating life.

School went by on autopilot. The Cullens noticed Ms Swan's tired sadness. Most of them assumed she was this upset over Carlisle in particular, seeing as Carlisle had yet to leave his study since she had gone.

But Edward knew better. And approached her after class, "Ms Swan?"

"Edward", she looked up with hidden disdain and tired eyes, "Unless it's directly related to this particular class, can it wait?"

"No", the corner of his mouth twitched up into a pitying smile, "I don't know how much Carlisle has told you but I assume you know about my gift."

"Stay out of my head, please, Edward. We could both get into trouble if someone finds out you've been sneaking exam solutions from me", she tried to play it off as a joke, not in a mood to talk to him about what he had actually seen.