The House of Bells: The Essences Saga - Book #1

The House of Bells: Chapter 1

The House of Bells by Heather McGhee

One

I gave Silas the chance to love me as I was. He rejected it. He left. And now I knew for sure we were never meant to be. Silas still loved me, but it was not enough.

Damn, blasted curse! I had lived for so long without finding love, and the one person in the entire world who I fall in love with doesn't want me. Not because he doesn't feel the same for me, although that word had never been uttered through his lips. No, he abandoned me because I was immortal. Because I frightened him. Because my power to manipulate his soul was just too much for a human to handle.

I was immortal. He was not.

I was not the woman he wanted to spend his life with. And there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do about it.

Where did I go wrong? Had I thought that love would encompass any obstacle? If two people truly loved each other? Was I that naïve? These past months in his presence rattled every idea I had about a relationship between a man and a woman. Even with Jennie's help and the extra information that the Essences were reluctant enough to disclose, surely I couldn't have been that far off.

My shoulder throbbed from the gunshot wound, and I had no choice but to lounge back in this hospital bed and let my mind wander. To the day when Silas and I first met. To the time before all my problems - well, not all my problems - stormed down on me. Somehow, I would figure out what I did wrong.

It all began on a blistering January day in Kingstown, Tennessee. It was the kind of cold that stretched goose bumps painfully across your skin and screamed at you to get your stupid butt back inside. The fiery ball in the sky smirked down in merciless irony of its presence, and every gust of wind slapped your face like you were a red-headed stepchild.

In this picturesque, storybook of a town, anything was possible, but unfortunately the winters sapped the energy out of those anythings. That January, I wasn't looking for just anything. I was here to start anew. How was I supposed to know that the new and the old would meet up like thunder clouds ricocheting in a stormy sky?

That night's dream should have cued me, but my weary state of mind brushed off the itchy feeling between my shoulder blades.

Damn you Harlan! Quit popping up in my head!

I sat looking out the windows of a three-star hotel, on a bed of stiff sheets, and blinking against the morning light. If any man was considered The One That Got Away, that was Harlan.

No, I'm not talking about Silas yet. I'll get to him later.

Harlan happened a long, long time ago. As a man, he had been a charming, irresistible bugger. As a memory, he was just irritating. But as I said, the old and the new, butting heads in my heart, when at one point, I desired nothing more than to bump both their skulls against a brick wall.

Immortality was a curse in itself. Add in a few centuries of hormones for good measure, and I found myself in quite a pickle. All because two men, who knew nothing about the other or even lived in the same time period, found a special place in my existence. My heart was a different story, altogether. One carved out a good-sized chunk, impossible as it was at the time, and the other wanted to wrestle that chunk away. Which man was which? Hell, I'm still confused about that one.

After finally pushing Harlan to the recesses of my mind, a quick glance at the clock showed that I had a few hours until my appointment. I dressed and prepared myself quickly, avoiding the mirror as much as possible. It was time to put on my "Happy Face." I needed this job. My only obstacle was getting past this Silas Blake, who on that morning was a man I had never met.