Witch Way

Chapter 22-- Souls Collide

Chapter 22

It was several days before an awakened Soren could talk Shayla into speaking to him. She had refused to answer the phone or the door and placed a spell at every entrance to keep anyone from entering without permission. Soren himself had spent hours trying to get her to answer him through the door and sent countless dreams to her every night, all of which she forced herself to awaken from.

"Now tell me again what happened." Soren spoke into the cell phone pressed to his ear. Everyone had refused to give him any details about the fight with her father, they all thought she needed to tell him herself. However, after days passed with no word from her, it was finally agreed that he needed to know.

Julia's saddened voice came through the line. "She killed her father, Soren. She thought he was evil so she killed him to save us all. When she went to bury him, the demon that had possessed him for who knows how long came out and taunted her with what she had unknowingly done."

Soren pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead. "She likes to hold onto things. She won't let it go easily."

"I know she won't. But you're the only one she's agreed to see. So, for now, it's all on you." The weight felt heavy on his shoulders.

He looked over his shoulder at Shayla's house from where he stood at the end of her driveway. "Alright, I'll do what I can." The snap of his phone seemed so final as he turned to make his way into the hardest conversation he'd ever had.

)O(

"Tea?" Shayla asked quietly. It was the first time she'd spoken since he'd arrived. Half an hour of silence was grating on Soren's nerves.

"That's okay. I just wanted to talk to you." Shayla seemed wary at his words. She'd purposely waited until he sat so that she could take the furthest seat from him.

"How are you feeling? The coma couldn't have been restful." She asked. He could tell she didn't want to discuss anything personal and he had already discovered that she'd erected a barrier around her thoughts. She made it so that he could only hear what she chose to let him hear when she spoke.

"I'm fine. Before Ame and Dillon left they helped healed the psychic wounds Lawrence left." He realized his mistake the second he stopped speaking. Shayla had gone utterly still, her breath barely lifting her chest.

He jumped up quickly and moved over to the sofa where she was perched. His arm snaked around her suddenly shaking shoulders as he pulled her to his chest. "I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking."

Her warm tears began to soak through his shirt. When she spoke her voice was broken. "You know then? About- About what I've done?"

Thinking carefully about his words before he spoke, he tilted her chin up until she met his gaze. "You didn't do anything, Shayla. None of us knew. And I've known him since I was a child."

"But I share, shared his blood. He was part of me. I should have felt it, I should have-" She trailed off and guilt filled her eyes.

"You can't blame yourself. If anything, we all share the guilt. You don't have to bear it alone."

She shook her head rapidly and tried to pull away. "No. But I don't need any of you to make me feel better. I'm used to being alone."

"Not anymore. Open your mind and look. I'm here to stay, Shayla." Soren gestured at the air around them, where there auras were to the magically trained eye.

He knew when she stiffened and a deafening mental cry of 'NO' shrieked through his mind that she'd seen their auras. "We're soul mates. And more than that, our souls are linked. The ritual to link our minds did something strange when it went wrong and tied us to one another."