Page 29 of Tethered

Austin stands up straight and puts his hat back on, trying to get a handle on what he’s feeling. I get to my feet too, trying to imagine what it must be like to be in his shoes.

Twisted as it was, he thought he was doing me a favor. And then he had to live with the knowledge that he was the reason a young girl got raped and sent to prison. And now, if that wasn’t enough, I just slapped him with the knowledge that it was his younger brother who raped me. A man he’s probably spent countless hours with over the years. Before that, he was a boy whom he teased, one he played with, and raised once their parents passed. I wondered if, in the end, blaming him was necessary. It would never compete with the blame he was placing on himself.

“Austin.”

He lets out a tortured breath before he turns to look at me.

“Don’t drive like this.”

“Why? Why would you care if something happened to me after everything?”

“You were kind to me once. I’m just settling old scores.”

Something tells me to tread carefully here. There is still so much I don’t know about this man, and I’d be a fool to take anything at face value.

He doesn’t move for a minute, and I’m sure as shit not going to force him to stay if he really wants to leave. After a moment or two, he turns back and walks toward me. I wait for him to take the seat he vacated before returning to my own. Neither of us says anything for a minute. His mood is blackening, making me feel like a storm is rolling in, and all I can do is shelter from it.

“So the book is called a grimoire?” I ask in an attempt to distract him

He looks from the spot on the ground where he was zoned out and nods, happy for a reprieve. “Yeah. As far as I know, most witches have them. And as a general rule, they get passed down through the generations.”

“So how did you end up with it?”

“One of my ancestors likely took it. I remember seeing it as a kid.”

“Let me guess, you kept it in the basement, which was more of a weapons and artifacts room.”

He nods and grins. “Good guess. We kept it in a glass case, like you’d see in a fucking museum, along with a…”

“If you say a black-flamed candle that when lit by a virgin?—”

His roar of laughter cuts me off, and I snap my mouth shut in surprise. I haven’t seen this man laugh like that before. Granted, I don’t know him well, or at all really, but I’d seen him around. He always wore this stoic,back the fuck offexpression. Sure, I’d made him almost smile, but this was something very different. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me.

“No,” he answers when he gets himself under control. “No black-flamed candle. Maybe an athame or two.” His face turns serious for a moment, and I can sense the unease over whether he should share with me.

“Jokes aside, we did actually have a room like that. Looking back, most of what was down there now feels an awful lot like souvenirs.”

“Souvenirs?” I ask, confused, before the penny drops. “You mean like a serial killer might keep?”

He nods once before looking away. “My parents were hunters, my parents’ parents were hunters, and so on, and so on. Our family line can be traced back to the first settlers. I’ve never known anything different. We were raised with the knowledge that witches were bad, and it was our job to rid the planet of them. You don’t realize there is anything wrong with that mindset when you’re a part of it.”

“Like a cult.”

“Yeah, and in many ways it was.”

“But something changed.”

He nods but doesn’t offer anything more. I let his silence settle over us again, though it doesn’t feel quite as heavy as before.

“My family’s history books mainly focused on its own ancestors and the witches that lived in this area.”

“Okay.”

“That means I don’t know if it’s the same for all witches, though I suspect it is. But from what I can tell, witches live in a mostly matriarchal society because it’s the females of the bloodline that hold the power. Sons can be born, of course, but they weren’t given gifts like the females were, only immunity from them.”

“That doesn’t really seem fair.”

“No? Imagine if it were only men being granted the powers. Would one sit here beside me and say the same?”