Part of her was tempted to serve him the worst smelling dog food she could find just to be annoying. A thought crossed her mind. “Can you read minds like Jazz can?”
He gave a doggie grunt and said, “No, I wish.”
“Okay, can I read minds?”
Silence.
Becoming more frustrated by the minute, she jerked her arms upward in an I-give-up gesture then sank to the floor, holding her head in her hands. “What aren’t you telling me? I’m really done with this dance we’re doing. I heard Mother — someone — something in there telling me to ‘protect her,’ whatever the hell that means.”
“You heard Mother?”
She shrugged. “I can’t be sure. I’m not exactly the most reliable person at the moment.” Unspoken was that she was entertaining the notion that her brother was a dog and her sister saw and heard ghosts and read minds. “But I think I did, yeah. She said something about evil and she used my full name. Seraphina. Mother—”
“Was the only person who ever called you Seraphina.”
“Exactly. But if all this is my subconscious’s way of dealing with her death, wouldn’t I have Mother calling me Seraphina?”
He looked away.
“Well?”
“I can’t make you accept something you don’t want to. You either believe or you don’t.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You might as well be asking me to believe in Santa Claus. I believe in logic. Things I can see, feel, understand… this is all urban legends and fairy tales.”
“But what does your gut tell you?”
Her turn to be quiet.
“I’m guessing if you didn’t at least a little think all this was possible you wouldn’t be standing in the hallway talking to a dog.”
He had a point. But she wasn’t ready to give in just yet. “Fine. Let’s say a small part of me is ready to accept this as true, then why don’t I remember having abilities? Being a witch?”
Hank inched over and licked her cheek. “You’re not a witch.”
She scratched his head. “This would go a lot faster if you would just tell me what you are trying very, very hard not to say.”
He plopped down, resting his head on her lap. “You know the worst part about being a dog.”
Was he serious? “We’re talking about me right now, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m getting there. Scratch right behind my ear. Oh yeah, that’s the spot.”
“Hank!”
“Sorry. The worst part about being a dog is that you finally realize how short life really is. I’ve been a dog for almost six months now. That means three and a half years of my life have passed me by.”
She let out a loud sigh, praying he hurried this along.
“My biggest fear is that when my punishment is over in two years, I won’t be twenty-three but I’ll be thirty-five. I often wonder if that isn’t going to be my real punishment.”
Sympathy assailed her senses. How horrible. Could that happen to him? Could he honestly have his human self restored to find that he’d aged not two years but fourteen? Her brother was fun-loving, kind, generous, full of life. He didn’t deserve such a harsh punishment. “What did you do to be turned into a dog?”
“That’s a story for another day and time. Let’s just say I had to learn things the hard way. I’ll explain it to you all the minute I can make sense of it.”
She furrowed her brow. “But being turned into a dog is rather extreme.”
“No kidding. I figured by the time I was thirty I’d have a wife, couple of kids… now I’ll basically be starting all over. It sucks.” He sat up. “That’s the downside of this gift our family lives with. Every decision you make, everything you do has a dire consequence. I’m living proof.”
A sinking feeling settled in her stomach. Suddenly, she didn’t want to know why she didn’t remember having special abilities. “D-did I do something bad to get stripped of my abilities?”
Again with the licking. Ugh.
“No. Absolutely not. You don’t have any powers because you asked Mother to take them away from you. Begged her, actually.”
“What? Why would I do that?”
“With me, Mother explained our… abilities. She… showed me how to control them, how to use them, and most importantly, she instilled in me the need to keep our secret. It was a way of life for me, easy to live with, accept. Plus my abilities were nothing like yours. You had premonitions, saw dead people, talked to people with your mind, read minds… Trust me, playing hide and seek with you was no fun.”
She smiled. That much she remembered. Hank always accused her of cheating when they played games. She stiffened as realization dawned on her. No longer was she rejecting what he said as true. In the blink of an eye, it had all become a reality to her. As real as the nose on her face.
“It all came so naturally to you. Me, I could read thoughts sometimes if I concentrated really hard, at times influence people to get what I wanted. Saved myself a few bad grades that way. But I had to rely on the old standards like spells, candles, herbs, tarot cards, crystals if I wanted to truly tap into my powers. You, on the other hand, were a power in and of yourself. You had a real gift. But with that gift—” He paused. “With that gift came the darkness too. You saw not just the goodness in people but the evil, and it terrified you.”
Tears streamed down her face. She remembered being terrified of the police officer who patrolled their neighborhood. He’d come to her preschool and talked about how men in blue were their friends. She’d seen nothing but darkness around him, hadn’t been able to look at him. Frightened, she’d gone to the teacher and said he was a bad man. The teacher had scolded her, told her it wasn’t polite to say bad things about people, and made her stay in at recess. A few weeks later, the police officer had beaten a homeless man to death. During the investigation, it came out that the cop had been abusing his wife and son for years.
“I was six, maybe seven at the time. So you would have been four or five.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, took a deep breath. “Dad died.”
More dog kisses. Gross.
“You begged him not to go to work. He hugged you and told you everything would be fine. A few hours later—”
“He was dead just like I said he would be.” It was as if she’d lost him all over again, the grief was so fresh, the pain so raw. An aneurysm in his brain.
“You were inconsolable. Screamed that no one listened to you. Mother thought she’d have to have you sedated at the funeral. That night, you woke up screaming. You could see Dad and it terrified you. For the first time, you understood that the people you were seeing — had been seeing — were dead. You begged, pleaded with her to make it stop. To make them go away. So she did.”
Sera wiped the tears from her face. “That explains why she did what she did when I was a child. But what about later? Why didn’t she tell me when I was older? For that matter, why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“She swore me to secrecy, Ser. I think she always planned to tell you, but you were so happy. You loved not knowing, not seeing. Believe me, it was driving you insane. You didn’t know how to control it — and that was Mother’s fault. She never prepared you for it like she did me. I think it just came so naturally to you without her having to teach you anything, was such a part of you, that she didn’t realize she was hurting you by not explaining things to you.”
“My friend Jenny I played with as a child, was she…”
Even as a dog it wasn’t hard for Sera to read his body language before he said, “She was a ghost. She died in a house fire about seventy years before you were born.”
Sera was going to be sick. She remembered but didn’t, and that only made things more confusing. “When Jazz was born, why didn’t she tell me then? Why did she have to die before I found out the truth?”
“You were happy. A great burden comes with the abilities we possess. A burden she wanted to protect you from.”
“But it was o
kay for you to know?” Resentment laced her voice.
“Yeah, it’s worked out great for me. Believe me, when I showed up on her doorstep as a dog, she wished to God she’d have bound my powers too.”
“Which brings up another question: Why didn’t she bind Jazz’s?”
“Until Jazz was talking, Mother wasn’t even sure she’d have any abilities. You know… since she has a different father. By that time…”
Like a heavy fog, the silence hung between them. Cold and unyielding.
“You better just tell me.”
“I think you’ve heard enough for now. Trust me when I tell you, you’re about to get a crash course on the rest.”
Irritated, she struggled away from Hank and stood. “And we’re back to the riddles.” She massaged her temples. “This has all been fun, but if the crazy could leave now and let me get back to my grieving and learning to move on and raise my baby sister, that would be great.”
She started down the hall to her and Connor’s bedroom.
“Twelve. Twenty-two. Thirteen. Seven.”
Sera stopped and turned. “Excuse me?”
“That’s the combination for the safe in your husband’s office.” Hank scratched at the door to Jazz’s room.
She rolled her eyes and stomped back to let him in. “My husband doesn’t have a safe in his office.”
“Yeah, he does. And you’re gonna want to see what’s inside it.” He stepped into the bedroom and nudged the door shut with his nose.