Witch Way

Chapter 5--Attitude Adjustment

Chapter 5

Shayla stalked into the living room with a purpose. Finding the living room empty, she headed to the kitchen and was greeted by the smell of pancakes and maple syrup. It took a lot for her to steel herself against this act of kindness, but she managed to scowl.

"What are you still doing here?" She shot at Dillan's back, glaring at him while he sat oblivious at the table.

He turned with a confused look on his face. "Eating."

That simple word filled her with an unreasonable fury. "Well get out."

"No."

"Excuse me? This is my-"

"No Shayla. I've put up with you being rude and showed back up to help you anyway. I tried being really nice, I tried to break down whatever screwed up wall you've built around yourself," He paused to take a bite with such nonchalance that Shayla ground her teeth together, "But dammit, I'm not just going to leave you alone, you're scared and have no one else."

"Wait just a-"

"Sit down and eat or go sulk somewhere else." He turned back to his plate and ignored her completely. Grinding her teeth together in frustration, she decided to boycott his cooking and sulk. Deep down she had to admit she respected a bit more though she'd never admit it out loud.

~*~

She sulked on the bed in her room for an hour before she decided to pull out the box and look through the rest of it. The Book had proven itself to be full of insight into her mother. She didn't seem paranoid in her journal-like entries. In some she seemed like a normal young woman. She even talked about some guy she had been dating for a while named Eric. Still finding it hard to believe this really belonged to her mother she grabbed a thin pile of pictures tied with a faded blue ribbon and began to flip through them.

They were pictures of her mother, or she was pretty sure they were. The smile on this beautiful young woman's face seemed foreign and out of place. Her mother didn't smile like this, not once in her life. Her mother's smiles were always tinged with some kind of sadness or pain. There was a photo of her running in a field, face turned over her shoulder with a serene smile. At the bottom of the pile were two pictures that made her blood run cold.

The first was a picture of her mother and her lookalike. The one she assumed was her mother from the other pictures had her arms around the doppelganger and she was obviously mid-laugh. Her twin looked like she was laughing and happy, that is until you saw her eyes. Those blue-green orbs were filled with a hatred so intense that even in portrait form they made Shayla shiver. That had to be Marcie.

The second was a photo of Darcie in a long black cloak looking up at an older woman in the same outfit. The look of adoration and devotion on her face made it clear that this was her mother. The other pictures were of her with some really handsome guy, and a few with a group of girls all in black cloaks. Despite the creepiness associated with those cloaks, they were all laughing and happy.

Shayla tossed the pictures aside and dug deeper into the box. She knew she shouldn't because the deeper she got the more confused and angry she was. With a relieved sigh, she found that all that was left were something she assumed were tarot cards, some kind of stones with those weird letters on them, and a few half burned candles. When her hand closed around some cold and hard, she lifted up this last item and gasped. It was the most beautiful necklace she had ever seen. It had those three moons on them, encrusted with diamonds and sapphires. On the back, her mother's name was engraved, along with the words 'Blessed Be'.

Against her better judgment, she slipped the necklace over her head and let it settle between her breasts. The cold of the metal brought her piece of mind for some reason. She figured it was probably that she finally had some things of her mothers. Sher crossed the room to her wall calender and noticed that her birthday was a mere two weeks away.