The Witch's Toy ✔

15: a ghost and its mistress

I just stood there for a while before my mother sighed, pushing past me as she shut the door behind her with a soft click. Shoving he rest of the toast down my throat, I scrambled after her, heart thumping and mind scrambled.

"Mother, I wasn't expecting you," I breathed, trying to match her pace. While I was somehow cursed with a short stature, she was blessed with long legs that went on for miles. I wondered if my father was the cause of my height, but in those fuzzy memories I had of him, he appeared to be well over a head taller than my mother.

"Yu Rui, I thought you'd be at school by now," she responded coolly, turning to look pointedly at me before stopping at her door. As per her request when she'd left me to live by myself at the start of high school, I'd never approached it or tried to open it, no matter how much my curiosity practically begged me to.

"I was running late," I explained.

Muttering something underneath her breath, she gripped the door handle, then released it as the door swung open by itself. The same yellow talismans for binding I'd seen at the haunted mansion had been strung across the inside. They now brushed against the vertical hardwood flooring, broken into tatters.

My eyes flickered up to my mother, questioning silently. She had told me never to enter her room, yet she hadn't trusted me in that I'd respect her wish. She had still used talismans to ward me away and block my access. The thought hurt more than it should've, but I ignored it, telling myself that personal feelings shouldn't be mixed in. The relationship we had between mother and daughter wasn't the same as most. We weren't close anymore.

"Then, you should be getting to school now, shouldn't you?"

The pain disappeared. My jaw tightened, and I barely managed to restrain myself from outright yelling at her. I wanted to know why she'd left me all alone just when the bond between us had become so strong. Why she'd decided on a whim that she would follow under my grandmother's footsteps after my father's death when she had never wanted anything to do with spells and ancient magic. I already knew our family situation was complicated; that Uriel was once an angel before she turned human and birthed my mother. That the relationship between my mother and my grandmother had been tense and cold as well. But I still wanted to know. I felt like I deserved to know her reason. A part of me still didn't even want to know, though. It wanted to stay ignorant to everything around it.

Breaking into a small smile, I raised my brows just slightly. I hoped my mask wouldn't crack. "I just wanted to be with you a little longer. I know you won't be coming back to stay, so I thought that running a little late to school wouldn't be that big of a deal."

She regarded me carefully, expression not changing. Her eyes searched mine, watching for a crack — perhaps something that told her there was something off about me. When I didn't waver, she broke off in a soft sigh. My heart jumped to my throat when she offered me a warm smile. "I didn't mean to express that I don't want to see you, Yu Rui. Ever since you left your grandmother's house, there has been a dark aura hanging about you. I didn't know what it was or how I could purify it, so I had no choice but to leave you on your own."

My eyes widened. I could barely take on this fact all at once. Did she mean to say that all these years, she'd left me because she was afraid of me?

I opened my mouth, but I couldn't speak.

"I thought it would go away, but it's only darker than what I remember," she continued. Her hand reached out, fingers curling just slightly into the air around me. "And I still don't know what to do about it."

"There's something dark around me?" I asked, voice coming out as a squeak. I lifted my hands up to my face, palms up, but saw nothing. My eyes ran down the length of my arm, across both legs, behind me. Unlike the times I'd seen Maalik's aura, I couldn't see mine at all.