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

a chair in the waiting room with one hand and covered her heart with the other.

I rose from my seat and put an arm around her. “Are you okay?”

She forced a tight smile. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

After studying her a moment longer, I drew her in for a hug. Her breath came in short bursts, as if she was doing her best not to cry.

“You’ll have another opportunity,” I whispered in her hair.

Jeannine pulled away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Right. Because we weren’t really sisters. Merely cousins, and barely that.

“Why are you crying?” Jason asked.

“I’m happy for you,” she sobbed.

“Do you want to see him?” Jason asked.

“No.” She shot me a glance of pure misery. “I have to go.”

“But you just got here.”

“Everybody’s healthy?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

She nodded, turned on a heel and left.

Jason rounded on me. “What did you say to her?”

“I think the question is what didn’t she tell you.”

“If you know something I don’t...”

Not my place, even if I did want to tell him. He shot me one last threatening glare and held out his hand to Georgia. “Let’s go see Mommy and your new brother.”

Georgia circled my legs with her little arms. “Aunt Bwinn, too?”

“After Mommy comes home.” He looked over his shoulder at Sharon, said, “Thanks. I owe you one,” and walked away with Georgia.

“You don’t believe he’s going to leave his wife,” I said. “Especially with a new baby.”

“What he does or doesn’t do is none of your business,” she whispered.

“You still want to break up his family?” I met her gaze, looking for the telltale glimmer that would show me she was a witch. Nothing.

“I mean to fight for what’s mine,” she said. “When you grow up the way Narcy and I did, you learn to scratch and claw for everything you’ve got. He wouldn’t have married LeAnne if she hadn’t gotten pregnant to start with.”

Another new facet to my cousin I didn’t know before. Sharon had known Jason before he married LeAnne? Which meant at least three years, which was a long time to hold onto a romantic obsession, unless he was encouraging her, or acting on it. “Clearly he likes her well enough to get her pregnant again,” I pointed out.

“You don’t understand. His wife is a real witch.”

I laughed, assuming she meant to say bitch but was minding her manners. “The other woman always thinks that.”

Sharon scowled. “No, it’s true. He’s a different person when he’s around her.”

Yeah. In love with his wife. Ignoring the other woman. “Is that why you’re looking for magical perfume to try to lure him away from her?”

“Narcy said...”

“I wouldn’t trust anything Narcy said.”

“You don’t know her.” Sharon’s voice cracked. “Didn’t know her.”

Right. They’d been like sisters. I struggled to calm myself, fought against the rising memory of panic that came from being locked in a burning room while the face of evil looked on. “She tried to kill me,” I said through clenched teeth.

Sharon took a step back, her expression skeptical. “Listen. Narcy wasn’t the nicest person in the world, but she was all I had when I was twelve years old. Kids at school used to tease me and wait after class to trip me,” she said. “One day a gang of them even followed me and threatened to beat me up. When you don’t have any real family, you tend not to trust many people. Everyone’s always out to get you. Narcy, she rescued me from that gang of girls, and after that, when people saw me with her, they left me alone. I’m not sure I would have survived without her.” She shook her head. “I don’t believe she tried to kill you.”

Did I want to tell her what happened? Was she playing me for a fool? Hannah had told me to be on the alert, to keep my guard up. “Believe what you want. As for me, I believe if Jason wanted you, he wouldn’t have married LeAnne.”

“You have no idea...”

She was prevented from saying more when Georgia came running and flung herself at my legs once more.

“I want Aunt Bwinn,” she cried.

I crouched down to meet Georgia eye to eye. “I’m always here for you. You know that.”

Jason followed. “Aunt Brynn has to go now,” he said. “Say goodbye.”

Georgia pouted, big tears in her eyes. “Bye.”

He carried her away again.

As I turned to go, Sharon caught my arm. “You’re like her. Like Narcy. You have to help me. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

The woman she’d thought of as a sister was dead, and the man she loved married someone else. She’d grown up in the foster system, which meant she didn’t have family to turn to. Something inside tugged a chord of empathy. “I have to go,” I told her, “but we can talk another time.”

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“If that’s what you want.”

She let out a breath and lowered her arms. The relief that washed over her was obvious.

“I should warn you my fiancé wants to be there,” I added. “He doesn’t trust you.”

“He won’t understand. Not the way you do,” she argued.

“You’d be surprised.” I touched her arm and still didn’t get a sense she was hiding anything. She’d had ample time to strike out at me and hadn’t. “There’s a restaurant, the Hillendale Pub, across the street from my shop. Seven o’clock tomorrow night?”

Chapter 28

When I reached my car, my phone showed a missed call from Kyle. I redialed as I left the hospital.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“I had to make a run to Milwaukee,” I told him. “LeAnne had the baby.”

“Cassandra said Sharon called you. Why didn’t you let me know?”

“I tried to call. You didn’t answer.”

“You were supposed to wait for me to talk to her.”

“Life doesn’t always work out the way you plan,” I told him.

“Don’t,” he said curtly. “We’ve been over this. I don’t know what she might do to you.”

“Might being the key word.”

“Brynn...”

“I’m heading back now. I can fill you in on everything when I get home.” I