The Second Coming Read Online Free Page A

gave you?”
    Paine shuffled
over to the wall where he left it stabbed into the wood, thrust
there in anger when he learned that Billy had succumbed to Lya’s
charms. What rankled him was not that she had beguiled him. Billy
Chapman was merely a lustful proclivity; nothing more. What got
under his skin was that Paine had to use a potion to have his way
with Billy where Lya could seduce the boy with a few choice words;
an enchantment. And she did it for no other reason than to see if
she could.
    Paine had
tried to learn that talent when he was alone with the chickens or
out in the field with the goats, but failed. He would have to ask
Lya to teach him.
    He yanked the
knife from the wall. He hated asking.
    “ He’s hardly the object of my affection,” he said.
    “ I know, but it’s the knife that matters. It once belonged to
him.”
    He offered a
smirk. “Maybe we can send the knife sailing at the Reverend.”
    “ No, but maybe at Billy with the right summoning,” she said.
Her lips did not curve, but the smile still lay within her eyes.
“You should have let me put a curse on him.”
    He shook his
head. He might still have need for Billy. Some nights could be
lonely, and Billy could be coerced into some otherwise unthinkable
acts.
    Paine licked
his lips. “So by spying on him, you think you’ll learn what the
Reverend is up to?”
    “ Billy’s his son, isn’t he?” Her black hair spilled over her
face as she focused on the page in front of her. She drew the
strands back like a curtain. “Gwen said he’s been seen with some
strange men in town — from the Confederation.”
    “ Then let’s get on with it. What do we need?”
    “ It’s an elemental — earth, air, fire, and water. And we need
the knife and the eye of something living.”
    Paine groaned.
“I’m not killing anything for this.” The last time he killed a frog
for one of Lya’s summons, the spirit she called upon slipped
straight into his body. It took a stab to his leg with a
powder-covered knife to release him. He blanched thinking about it.
Sometimes she overreached her grasp.
    Lya rolled her
eyes. “It’s a divination. It doesn’t need to be dead. But it should
be big because we need to look in its eyes.”
    The biggest
thing in the barn was old Gertrude, and he knew how the cow felt
about his sister. Even now the Holstein was as far back in her
stall as she could stand, silently watching Lya. She wasn’t even
chewing.
    He sighed.
This was going to take more work than he cared for.
    “ Just get the stupid cow,” she said. “I’ll get the other items
and draw the circle.”
    Paine
instructed Lya to leave the barn before he even bothered to move
the cow. He knew from past experience and a bruised ribcage when
they had tried something similar.
    Once he
secured Gertrude in the center of the barn, he called Lya back. He
did not ask how she came by the lit torch. She wouldn’t have
ventured close to the house as it would have attracted their
parents’ attention. And she came from the other side of the
barn.
    That was what
most of their trouble was about. Three months previous Jake Notman
caught her lighting a fire with just her hands and that rumor had
been almost impossible for Gwen and Charles to quell. It was absurd
they would raise a daughter who practiced witchcraft.
    Despite those
public protests, a beating followed, and it wasn’t Lya’s to
receive. Paine suspected she had enchanted the old woman into
letting him take the brunt of their anger, but again, he kept those
notions to himself.
    To make
matters worse, the recent night they had shared with Billy Chapman
rekindled those rumors. He shook his head at his own foolishness.
Obviously the boy had talked. So not only were they casting spells
and summons, but Lya was now hailed as a succubus and she was in an
incestuous relationship with her brother. It was no wonder Gwen and
Charles were encouraging them to leave.
    Lya glided
around the cow, drawing the circle with precise