Free Spellbound by Samantha Combs

wouldn’t talk in front of me. She took her upstairs to her bedroom and they’ve been up there forever!” Tabitha had a great flair for the dramatic, but I had to agree with her here; this had its share of drama. Luckily, my bedroom shared a wall with Elizabeth’s and I was willing to bet that I’d be able to overhear something if I went to my room right now. I didn’t dare try and jump into Elizabeth’s head…she would skin me alive for that. Quickly, I headed upstairs; confident I’d hatched a brilliant plan. True to my life it wasn’t.
    Just as I reached the top stair, my sister’s bedroom door opened (of course she would know my plans) and she beckoned to me.
    “Serena, I’m glad you’re home. We’ve been waiting for you.
    Come on in here.” Elizabeth had been poking her head out of her bedroom door. Now, as I reached it she opened it wider and ushered me into her room.
    “Serena, I’d like to introduce you to someone. This is Eden, a friend of mine from Salem.” She stepped aside and motioned to the sitting area in the back corner of her bedroom where a tall willowy brunette sat in the lounge area, balancing a cup of tea on her knee.
    I knew my manners. “Hello,” I said, and stepped forward, offering my hand. My sister’s guest placed her teacup on a small table and rose to meet me. Tall, with her hair in a loose, messy braid that hung down the right front of her almost to her waist, she took my hand in both of hers in an easy, motherly gesture. I noticed she could be our mother’s age, if our mother was alive.
    “Hello Serena. It’s so nice to meet you. Your sister has shared so much about you, I feel as though I know you already.
    And your sister Tabitha.” She had a smooth, gentle voice and even though I didn’t know this person, I found myself already liking her.
    Her face broke into a warm smile and she said, “You have grown into such a beautiful girl.”
    Immediately my head snapped back to Elizabeth. Grown into a beautiful girl? Did this person know me from before? From somewhere else? A million questions swam around in my head and spilled into Elizabeth’s, but one well-‐-delivered evil eye from her shut me right up. Clearly, now was not the time. I eyed her right back, but she just motioned for me to sit down. I took a chair opposite our guest and Elizabeth sat down at the other end of the sitting area.
    “Serena,” she began, “Eden has known us since we were children. In fact, Eden was our mother’s best friend.” I shot a look at our guest, who didn’t look like anyone I remembered from my childhood.
    “Lucinda, your mother, was my dear, best friend for many years. We were young twitches together and received our Council approval for witchhood at the same time. I thought we’d practice together our whole lives. Ah, but then your mother fell in love.”
    Our guest, Eden, gazed heavenward and winced, as if remembering a painful, yet precious memory.
    “She was so young and beautiful, so full of life and love, who could have blamed him.” My father! We never talk about my father! I knew little of him. He and my mother had been taken from us when I was so young; I hardly remembered anything about them. I had some small memories, some so fleeting they seemed more like stop action movies I played in my head or possibly I even made them up. Tabitha wasn’t even born yet in most of my memories, so I had faded, blurry photos of a happy, smiling family, a loving mom and dad, and two pretty little girls everyone’s arms all wrapped around one another, hugging, laughing, and loving one another. So perfect it couldn’t be true. If this stranger from my past had memories of my parents, I wanted to see them. Desperate to get inside her head, I knew I better not. And something told me I wouldn’t even be able to. I just knew our guest was one powerful witch. But what else did she know about my life that I didn’t?
    “It didn’t matter what anyone told her,” the stranger’s