The Rose Witch - Chandelle LaVaun Page 0,60
Proctors, you are a daughter of the founding bloodline…and you are soulmates with an angel. I cannot be blind to the importance of either of those, or the side effects.”
“What’s going to come of me?” I heard myself ask.
His eyes darkened. “I do not know, nor would anyone tell me if I asked it of them. Things will play out the way they must. We have to have faith in that.”
I threw my hands up. “So we just sit and wait?”
“Well, first, we figure out how to get that damn locket off you before it gets you killed.”
“You think the answer is in this journal?”
“I know there’s something in that journal we need.”
Mum frowned and cocked her head to the side. “What journal?”
“Henry sent his journal with you two. He told me this himself.”
“No. No, it wasn’t there.” She shook her head wildly. “Trust me, I spent years staring at all our stuff. Mourning the death of my husband six hundred years later. His journal was not there. I know the one you speak of. Small, red leather, with a strap around it and a rose burned into the cover?”
“That’s it. It has to be here somewhere.”
“Why don’t we just ask Henry?” Granny said as she picked up a biscuit. “We spoke to him once. Speak to him again.”
“What do you mean you spoke to him? He’s dead…”
Granny waved her biscuit at me. “His spirit haunted that old Abbey. I’d heard rumor of this for years from other Lancasters…when you two came back, Millie Anne and I went there and spoke to him.”
Tears pooled in my mother’s eyes. “I saw him…”
Malachi sighed. “I know. I was there.”
She gasped. “You were?”
He shrugged. “I kept my eye on you two from a distance…as I promised him.”
Granny grinned. “See? Why don’t we go there and ask him? Maybe that’s why his spirit has not passed?”
“He’s gone.” Malachi’s face fell. “His spirit remained to help guide Jackson back to the sword.”
“Did you see him?” Mum whispered.
“Yesterday. I escorted him to the afterlife – I didn’t know the locket would not come off.” He groaned. “Or I would have asked him. So you see, we need that journal.”
Chapter Seventeen
Chloe
“What exactly are we looking for in here?” I asked as we walked into the small library connected to my mother’s room. “I mean, obviously the journal but…”
Malachi whistled. “This is quite the collection, Your Majesty.”
Mum blushed and bit her bottom lip. “Thank you. The transition has been difficult for me, so I relied on my books.”
“This reminds me of the library in the palace.”
Mum grinned and her eyes sparkled. “I tried to emulate it as best I could on a small scale.”
The palace. I remembered it. Vividly. I hadn’t thought about it at all but now that she mentioned it I saw it in my head. The library was like this. She did an amazing job recreating it. “I used to love to ride the ladders…”
“YES.” Mum grinned. But then she shook herself. “But memory lane later. Let’s find the journal. Come.”
We followed her all the way inside, or Malachi did. I was hanging on his back like a spider monkey. His little smoke trick worked but it was too exhausting to walk on my own the further we got inside the estate. I had my arms coiled around his neck and my legs around his hips. It was a sweet, sweet relief to be able to be with him like this. To be working together. If I didn’t have him, this would’ve been a nightmare to solve.
Mum crossed the room to the far corner where there was a bay window with a seat inside. She pulled the cushions and pillows away and tossed them to the floor. Then she slid the entire wooden top of the bench off and bent over to dig inside. When she stood straight, she had a massive chest in her hands that was probably half her size.
She tried to take a step but it was too heavy and she dropped it to the floor. “Sorry, bit out of practice. Only two more to go.”
Malachi flicked his wrist and the chest slid across the room to the coffee table in front of us. He flicked his wrist again and the two identical chests lifted out of the bench storage space and floated over to the table.
Mum spun toward us right as I kissed his neck. Her eyes widened and dropped to where my lips touched his skin and then she turned