Accepting Fate - (Slums to Riches, Book one)

Chapter 31

The little girl's white curls blew behind her as waddled ahead of a line of ducklings and chicks. When she raised an arm, they raised their tiny wings; when she turned, they turned with her. Wherever she went, they followed.

The blue frills on her dress turned brown as she sat beside a sow, playing with the piglets, until her father took them away and rushed her back into the house. The familiar lemon scent filled her as she hid her face against his dark brown hair. Those hazel eyes could cut through any person, but they always softened when he looked at her.

Like those events, her life played out behind her closed eyelids; the good and the bad, the happy and the sad.

Her mother seemed content to allow her to play as long as Angelique practiced each spell she taught her, before teaching her the next. At first, she struggled pronouncing the words, but when Meredith explained the meaning of the words, she merely thought the spell and mastered it much faster. However, her mother never sped up her training, nor did she ever congratulate or encourage her to improve.

She relived the day Patricia and Thomas shoved her into the storage space under the stairs. They told her the demons would get her. The stench of mothballs hung thick in the air and boxes and old clothes littered the confined space. Red eyes glowed in the dark. Occasionally, a claw would nick her arm or leg if she moved too close to the back of the cupboard. She gripped the tiny wooden wolf and Logan's love surrounded her in a bright light keeping the demons away. Once or twice a clawed hand would risk the light and grab hold of her arm. They tried to pull her into their dimension, but the light burned them and the hands turned to dust. Her screams drew her family to her. Logan never let her cousins near her again.

The tree she saw in both her vision of the dying girl, and when they went to collect her family, did not have a broken branch in her next memory. A rope-swing was attached to it. The very first time she tried to get onto it, the rope cut into her knee. Logan rushed her to Meredith, who cried so much she could not remove the sliver of silver from her skin. Stephan grabbed hold of it and pulled it out, scorching his fingers in the process. She healed her own leg, a little at a time, because Logan would carry her around. She wanted it to last as long as possible, since her daddy no longer kept them apart. Logan broke the branch when he went after that rope. They found slivers of silver entwined in the fibers. She often caught herself touching her knee where the scar remained as a reminder.

During the week Logan carried her around, her father had some men digging enormous holes all over the land. She counted seven, and the largest could fit her parents' king-sized bed. In all her innocence, she asked Logan if her father meant to turn it into a swimming pool since he dug the hole between the fire-pits and the house. They had just completed the west wing at that time. She cried for an entire hour when they closed all the holes, including the one she hoped would become her pool.

The day they took her from her home, she cried again. She kicked and screamed, and tried to cling to Logan, who did not hold back his own tears. Her father pulled her away and pushed her into the back of their SUV. Her screams shattered the windows, and lightning struck around the car, but her father continued to drive further and further away from the man who kept the nightmares away.

Meredith didn't teach her another spell after they arrived at Velunieve. She used her pent-up energy to heal wounded and ill animals, and grow the flowers her mother planted in their little garden. The overly sweet scent of the honeysuckles turned her stomach, but she hoped if she helped her mother grow them, she would allow Logan to visit. He never came.

One morning as she helped her mother repot some herbs in the garden, Meredith ran her fingers over her unruly curls and mumbled a few words. A shiver ran down her spine and she quickly moved away. Her mother's smile never reached her eyes as she stood and walked back inside. That was the first spell she cast on Angelique without her permission.