The Hidden Grimoire by Karla Brandenburg (pride and prejudice read TXT) 📕

I set down the phone and flipped the lights off once more. Hands shaking, I relit the candle and turned the brittle pages to the first page. Reciting the incantation one more time, I moved the candle through the air.  Wisps of gray smoke remained in the shape of a cross. I heaved a sigh of relief, and blew out the candle.

Somewhere in the house, a door slammed shut.

Chapter 11

Startled, I dropped the jar candle and went for the lights.

“Brynn?” Kyle’s voice was tentative, as if he was afraid to ask what I’d been doing in the dark.

“In here,” I turned to the worktable to hide the grimoire, but it was gone.

“You blow a fuse again?” he asked, setting a hand on either side of the door and leaning into the workshop.

I picked up the candle, a hairline crack running along one side of the jar. “Working by candlelight.”

“Almost done?”

I glanced at the cupboard in the corner, which remained shut. No special orders to make tonight, apparently. Was I done, though? The hidden grimoire had asked me to guide Georgia’s dreams, and I wasn’t sure how to do that. “Ummm.”

Kyle straightened. “I was going to clean things up at home before I came over, but when I saw the lights going on and off, I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

No need to subject him to my freakishness. He might think he understood I was different, but to see it and acknowledge it might be fortitude he didn’t possess. “Candlelight wasn’t bright enough for what I was looking for.”

He studied me a moment, then nodded. “Give me ten minutes to put my tools away.”

“Sounds good.”

He surveyed the room one more time, I suppose to reassure himself everything was copacetic, and left.

Peering through the blinds, I watched him disappear into his house a few minutes later. Was ten minutes enough to do what the grimoire asked of me? I summoned the book.

The grimoire floated to the worktable and opened to the page.

Guide her dreams.

I traced the words with my finger, reading aloud. Clouds surrounded me. The sock puppet I’d given to Georgia danced in the hands of a little girl. Angry words echoed from somewhere else and the puppet stilled. A warm blanket pulled over my head—Georgia’s head.

“Are you afraid?” I asked.

“Daddy mad.”

As angry as Jason had been, I couldn’t imagine him harming his daughter. “He won’t hurt you,” I told Georgia, hoping I was right.

Georgia opened her big blue eyes. “Aunt Bwinn.”

“That’s right.”

She stuck a thumb into her mouth against the raised voices muffled by the blanket.

I sought to comfort her the only way I knew and sang the lullaby my mother had sung to me, Blackbird.

Georgia’s eyes drifted closed and her thumb fell out of her mouth. I smoothed her forehead. “Sleep well, little one.”

More clouds surrounded me, and when they cleared, I was in my workroom once more.

Jason and his wife had been arguing. Should I be concerned for Georgia’s welfare?

People argued all the time. I stood by my conviction that Jason wasn’t a violent man, at least not from what little I knew of him. Even if I wanted to help, Jason had made his feelings known. He wasn’t interested in family ties. I suspected that aside from his wife and daughter, his sister Jeannine was the only family he trusted. How could I convince him I wouldn’t hurt him or his family? His daughter would need guidance when she got older, which would be much easier for me to do if Jason and I could be on friendlier terms. I’d made headway with Jeannine, but asking her to intervene might be one step too far.

I looked for the book on the table, but the grimoire had disappeared.

“Watcha doin?” Kyle asked, once more leaning through the doorway.

I jumped. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “I wasn’t exactly quiet.”

The door hadn’t slammed behind him this time. I turned off the workroom lights and joined him in the living room.  “I guess I was lost in thought, thinking about my cousin.”

“There are better things to be thinking about.”

I laughed. “Right?”

He wagged his eyebrows. “How about we head upstairs?”

“Right behind you.”

A few hours later, I jerked to wakefulness after reliving the night of the fire yet again. Ash pawed at my face and nuzzled me, bringing me back from the nightmare. The lacy bedroom curtains gave the moon a fuzzy glow. I propped myself up on my elbows and surveyed the room, checking for what had woken me, and found nothing out of the ordinary. Beside me, Kyle’s breathing remained steady, the rhythmic cadence of sleep. I slid from beneath the covers.

“Why are you awake?” Kyle croaked.

“Had a dream,” I whispered. “I’m going to go fix a cup of tea.”

He yawned loudly, mumbled something, and rolled over.

Ash followed me downstairs to the kitchen, checking her food bowls for leftovers. I made a cup of chamomile and gazed out the window toward the woods, cradling the cup between my hands.

What was I going to do about Georgia? Jason had made his feelings clear, and yet I had a responsibility to her. My mother and my uncle might have preferred to keep my generation away from Aunt Nora, but my mother would have brought me to her with time, if she’d survived. I liked to think even Uncle Jerome might have if he hadn’t married Aunt Theresa.

Georgia was only three, but already her gifts were manifesting themselves. Was that why Jason was so afraid? She would come into her legacy with or without me. I considered whether I should reach out to him, try to reason with him.

And what about Narcy’s sister—was she a sister-witch? While I didn’t sense evil lurking nearby the way I had when Narcy had arrived in Hillendale, I was wary. If I attempted to smooth things over with my cousin and his family, would the sister pursuing me put them