T*Witches: Kindred Spirits Read Online Free Page B

worn into the stones. Her orange tabby cat, Boris, lay in the corner, watching her.
    Ileana’s once flawlessly shimmering hair was still a mass of knotted curls. She hadn’t rinsed the rust-coloredspots from the blue gown she’d worn for far too long. The blotches were bloodstains. Karsh’s.
    Her bare feet were rough and dusty. She had cleansed them in soothing herbal baths but had no desire to choose or don a pair of proper shoes. In addition to the loss of her ability to cast spells, transmutate, transport herself, and sense trouble, Ileana seemed to have forgotten how to take care of herself. She’d accomplished nothing since returning to the island with her guardian’s body.
    Back and forth before Karsh’s desk she strode, staring at the book
Forgiveness or Vengeance
. Carefully, she avoided glancing at the tall chair behind the desk. She could imagine the disappointed look the old warlock would be giving her if he were still here, if he were sitting in that carved wooden monstrosity, his bony fingers folded in a tent before him.
    He would have suggested in his commanding way that Ileana ought to have made time to show the twins around the island.
    Ordinarily, she would have.
    But nothing was ordinary anymore.
    Karsh, who’d been the only parent she’d ever known, was dead.
    The twins’ mother, Miranda, had returned to Coventry after an absence of fourteen years.
    And the sickening revelation about Thantos … she would not go to that place.
    From the desktop, the grieving witch again lifted the book in which Karsh’s journal was hidden. It took all her energy to carry it as far as his armchair, less than a foot away.
    On his deathbed, Karsh had spoken of a curse. Ileana had begun to wonder whether it might have something to do with a mysterious sleeping sickness. Every time the pale witch picked up
Forgiveness or Vengeance
, her arms felt leaden. When she tried to read his words, her eyelids grew unbearably heavy. Though she fought to stay awake, sleep always won. Thus she’d examined only two paragraphs of the story Karsh had urged her with his dying breath to read:
    Ileana, precious goddess, guardian of Apolla and Artemis, my future has been shown to me and time is short. Therefore, I write this in haste. But, be assured, I am driven by love and truth, not fear
.
    By now, of course, you know that Lord Thantos DuBaer is your father and that Aron and Miranda’s twins are your cousins. You and they share the greatness and danger of being DuBaers. What you do not know is that you carry, as well, the blood of another noble line, the Antayus clan
.
    * * *
    This was the passage that always confused and tired Ileana. How could she be an Antayus? Impossible.
    She knew that Karsh — respected mentor, mighty tracker, renowned and beloved warlock — was of the Antayus clan. But as Karsh himself confirmed in his journal, Ileana’s vile father was a DuBaer. Her mother’s maiden name was Beatrice Hazlitt.
    And Hazlitt, as everyone knew, was neither a noteworthy nor noble name. In fact, it was Beatrice’s lack of fine lineage that had turned Thantos’s mother, Leila, against her.
    If her father was a proud DuBaer and her mother a lowly Hazlitt, how then could Ileana carry the blood of the mighty Antayus clan?
    Ileana sank back into Karsh’s worn leather armchair. His sweet peppermint-and-thyme scent still clung to it. She longed to read more of the journal, to fulfill Karsh’s dying request. But again, her weary eyes began to shut.
    “Help me, Karsh,” Ileana whispered as her closed lids locked out the little daylight left in the room.
    Help me, Karsh
.
    She had whispered, spoken, even shouted those words for as long as she could remember. It was a habit not easily broken. Not even by Karsh’s death, it seemed.Against the black screen of her closed eyelids, colors began to swirl. Red, orange, purple. A sunset sky. Seen through strange black stripes … thick poles of wrought iron blackened by age … the bars of