A Salem Witchess... a web novel

Chapter Two

2010-09-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

The book pages smelled as good as they felt. Kali would have sworn they were actually old parchment and not the very good replica that she assumed they were. The pages felt soft beneath her touch. They felt alive and electric and crinkled when she absently turned them. Scanning the book Kali lost herself in the detailed scrolled lettering on the pages. Admiring, but not yet reading. Even though she picked the book by weight alone the title, as she finally got down to reading it, made her sigh in anticipation.

It was at that moment it seemed that her mother, father and aunt seemed to notice that Kali was still in the room. " Don't sit there and pout young lady!" Her mother bellowed. " You are staying here at that is final." Lost, Kali shook herself from her daze and refocused on the foreign sounding words coming out of her mother's lips.
" Um... OK?" Kali finally spoke.
" Mother will really not be happy about this Abby." Orianna muttered. She gestured widely sweeping her arms around the house as if to encompass the whole room and those in it as a disappointing situation. Fire shot through Kali's mother's ice blue eyes and for a moment Kali thought they had actually looked a deep blood red. But in a blink that small spark of a reaction faded and the sharp whip of her tongue was back. " Tough. If mother wants to see her then she can come here herself. Kali is needed here." With that she rose from the sofa and stalked upstairs to her bedroom, leaving the sound of ice cubes clinging in her glass in her wake. Kali was sure this meant an afternoon of her mother being locked away with one of her headaches and her father moping in the basement for the rest of the day. To which Kali smiled, well she would have smiled if Orianna venom gaze was not, as of right now, directly staring right at the book in Kali's hand.
" What do you have there?" she asked. The dripping sweet sound of her voice did not quite make it to her eyes. A sudden desire to hide the book behind her back like a cheeky six year old occurred to Kali.
" Oh just some book I picked up from the bookstore today. You know one of those new sci-fi books the tweens are all abuzz about these days." Tweens? What on earth was she thinking? Anyone who knew Kali would know that she would never be caught dead with a tweenie bopper book. But Ori didn't know Kali that well and as Kali was practically hiding the book at this point, Orianna made no further motion toward it.
" Oh. Hummm..." Already seeming to move onto another thought Orianna sauntered toward the door. " Be ready tomorrow at 10am." She added with a last look over her shoulder as she reached out to pull the front door open.
" Why?"
" Silly girl. To see Mother of course." When the door closed Kali stood there with her mouth open for a minute. Of course she had assumed her mother had won the battle and she would not be seeing her Grandmother anytime soon. But apparently she had only won a cease fire.
It wasn't like Kali didn't like her grandmother or anything. She just really didn't know her. She'd seen her a handful of times. Her mother seemed to keep her mother at arm's length and rarely over her entire life did she recall seeing them in the same room more than once or twice. It was always with her father or her aunt that her visits with her grandmother, although rare, ever happened at all.

***

Lost in his own family drama Xavier infact did close the store early that day. Much to the dismay of the two giggling girls in his magazine rack. He did so without so much as a smile their direction. " Closing early." he announced. " If you'd like to buy that magazine you are reading I can ring you up now." With a shrug he headed for the register, but he heard the cling of the bell behind him, the giggling silenced. A quick scan back at the rack and the crinkled magazine was back in its place. He locked the door, turned the closed sign and headed for the backroom. " Closed up early. I'm going home." He announced to the clerk in the storeroom who was unloading their most recent shipment. " Lock the door when you leave Brice." He didn't wait for Brice's response and he and didn't hear the shocked sounding, "Ok." as he slammed out the door, the heavy oak clanging with a loud earthshaking thud as it banged shut.

As Xavier climbed into his black PT Cruiser he sighed. He rubbed the back of this hand and searched for the mark that must have been left by her touch. Ah her touch. He couldn't stop thinking about that brief touch. He knew he'd seen the light start to climb and he knew what that meant. When he could find no such mark he speed out of the parking lot and toward, well, toward somewhere he wasn't sure of yet.

Chapter One

2009-12-11T20:43:00.000-08:00

Chapter One
The bell on the door jingled as Kali entered the bookstore. The lights were dimmer than she’d expected and the twinkle lights that framed the bookshelves were a nice touch she thought. The smell of old and new paper permeated the air and the five people in the store looked up as she entered. All but one of them returned just as quickly to their respective books paying her no mind. But one sent shock waves through Kali. It wasn’t his good looks that shocked her; it was his obvious disgust. Self conscious she ran her fingers through her hair, yes it was a bit bushy right now, and her shorts and top were a bit wrinkled and clung a little to snuggly on her, and yes she was a bit sweaty from the walk, but damn it was 80% humidity today and 88 degrees outside.
She turned to look at a random book to escape his glare, but she could feel his eyes burning into her back. “What the heck was his problem?” She thought to herself. She continued down the aisle closest to her and randomly starting picking up books, mentally weighing each in her palm, then setting them back down rather surreptitiously, while moving on to the next. The thing about Kali was that she picked books not by title or by favorite author, or even by the excerpts in the back; Kali had always picked books by weight. Not how light they were or how heavy. But in another one of her odd quirks she’d always “feel” that she’d like to read a particular book based on how it weighed in her palm. She’d always thought it added to the quirky eccentricity she’d pretended to have. Of course it only meant to everyone else that she was weird. But she had not been wrong about liking one yet and rather liked the randomness of the titles that she’d found she’d enjoyed. Her topics could be from the popular fiction, to historical nonfiction, to the occult and even as of late she’d being finding travel books were the weight of choice.
She’d weighed a few before she heard the deep resonance of the throat clearing behind her.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked.
Maybe she’d looked like a shoplifter or something. She thought. “I am just looking.” Kali responded. Not looking up to meet his eyes. She was shy as a rule but she was more afraid of the greeting she’d get from him if she looked up. She did not want to see what she felt. Perhaps she was imagining it, but the vibe she was getting was nearly as oppressive as the New England heat.
“We are closing soon,” he said gruffly. “So…” he trailed. He wanted to tell her to get out and to never come back. Except he didn’t know why.
“Oh.” Kali shrugged a bit confused. “I thought the sign said you closed at five o’clock.” She looked at her watch and it clearly read two-thirty.
“Well we are.” He said abruptly and stomped off back toward the register. The other customers started to shuffle, having obviously heard his pronouncement, Kali noticed a few look at their watches. A portly bald man in a Martha’s Vineyard T-shirt put down the Stephan King novel he was looking at and shuffled out of the store, the bell tingling behind him. There were two, what could only be described as teeny-boppers, in short shorts and tank tops, loitering around the magazine rack, obliviously giggling at the latest Teen People, who made no attempt to finish. Kali set the book she was holding back onto its place on the shelf and turned to leave. Her eye caught something shiny and she turned to get a better look. It was a purple satin covered book with a small emerald colored stone set into a scroll of what looked like a dragon. Unconsciously she ran her hand over the dragon, a jolt of energy sent tingles through her finger tips, where they touched to cool metal. Absent mindedly she picked it up and stalked over to the cash register where Mr. Rude was standing.
“I’ll take this one.” She said handing over the $20 bill at the same time.
“Figures.” He smirked. Silently and without looking at her Xavier rang up the purchase, as he handed her the book in its bag something caught his eye. If he’d been a betting man he would have sworn he’d seen a blue streak start to snake from her palm as his nearly brushed hers, Convinced it was just the light and a reflection he shrugged as she turned in what can only be called a “huff” and stalked out the door, very contrarily to the way she had entered.
Kali didn’t realize that she had been holding her breath until her lungs started to scream for air as she rushed out of the store and out into the thick humid air. She took a gasping breath and slumped against a parked car near the curb. Her hands were a little shaky and for some reason she felt this over whelming anger. “What an ass!” She remarked rather irately, an older gentleman happened to walk by with his yapping poodle at just that moment and Kali couldn’t help but blush. She rushed away down the street embarrassed and cursing whoever that boy was as she walked. When she neared her house she groaned. “Oh great! Just what I need!” The little red Porsche in her driveway meant only one thing. One thing she really didn’t feel like dealing with at this very moment. As she contemplated heading back down the street to anywhere but here, her escape was interrupted by the very tan and blonde head that peaked out of the picture window of the living room quickly followed by her surgically enhanced double d breasts.
“Kali you are finally home! You’ve kept us all waiting so long!” she whined. Kali couldn’t help but think of Julia Child when she heard Orianna Campbell speak. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine the sherry chugging cook standing right in front of her. “Oh do come inside to the cool air, it is simply unfit for living today!” Orianna declared. She didn’t wait for an answer or for Kali to follow; she’d just assume that her command would be obeyed without doubt as usual.
If Kali were a five year old throwing a temper tantrum she couldn’t have dragged her feet more than she did at that very moment. The feelings that she mustered could only be those of dread. Orinna’s visits always put her mother in a bad mood, turned her father into a sputtering fool, and worse of all it turned Kali into a virtual punching bag for insults.
“By the Goddess herself Kaliope get in here and close the door already, you are letting in all that damnable sticky air!” her mother bellowed from, Kali could only assume would be her usual perch when Orianna visited, the liquor cabinet.
“What brings you here Auntie Ori?” Kali finally asked when she was reluctantly in the formal living room of the turn of the century colonial her parents had just moved them all into. As houses went Kali actually liked this one. It had history and good bones, she’d thought once. Now she thought perhaps it was too small for the forces that were assembled here.
“I was just about to tell your parents before you’d arrived.” Orianna began.
“Well get on with it.” Absentia protested. It was no secret that the two sisters did not get along well. Absentia couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Orianna for longer than a minute. The only secret was why her mother seemed to loathe Orianna, while Orianna always seemed to ooze sugar toward Absentia.
“Well Kali this is actually about you. So it’s a good thing that you are here.” Orianna began again. She seemed to not notice the scowl form on her sister’s face and with a smile as big as her man made breasts; it’s a wonder that her father even heard the next words that came out of Orianna’s mouth. “I’ve spoken with Mother and we’d like for you to come and spend the rest of the summer, until school starts, with us.”
“What for?” Kali asked shocked. Her parents had already uprooted them from Oregon and moved them all the way to Salem with little more than a week’s notice. She hadn’t even seen her Grandmother since they’d arrived. Of course all of that didn’t matter much when her Grandmother and Aunt only lived across town now.
“I don’t see the point in that!” her father spoke up first, “You only live 30 miles away now Anna.” He added using his nickname for her. She could hear her mother almost hiss at her father’s use of the name yet no one else seemed to care.
“Now Jackie, we talked about that.” Orianna insisted, “Mother and I both thought it best if Kali be here now. With us. “Kali noticed her mother pour another glass of her usual gin and gulp it down in one swallow. Yet she didn’t say anything.
“Anna she is fifteen. Isn’t it enough that we came here? She is my daughter and she stays here with us.” Jack insisted. Kali could have sworn that she heard her father curse under his breath. He had never said a bad word in all of her life in front of her. He’d always been the docile one. Of course anyone would seem like a marshmallow next to the ice cold stone of her mother.
They continued to argue and Kali thought they did not remember at one point that she was still in the room. She tried not to pay attention to the bickering between her father and least favorite Aunt. She heard her name a small number of times and hisses from her mother’s side of the room, a few pleadings and a lot of the word no. She sat down on the hard beige sofa and opened the forgotten book that she’d purchased. She’d almost forgotten about that experience at the book store, almost, but not quite.

A Salem Witchess ... Prolouge

2009-11-16T07:40:00.000-08:00

Prologue:

With all the vampire and witch drama going around in this town it wasn’t at all that amazing that Kali Steele had managed to get herself into such a grim state of affairs. The problematic element was that in doing so she’d be requiring the help of the one person she had pledged to stay away from. It wasn’t that she had a choice in the matter. She had just sworn an oath to stay away. Her problem was that everyone was making it so much harder for her, so much harder for them all. Did they not understand that her word was all she had left?

* * *

Kali Steele had turned fifteen the summer she moved to Salem. Born, Kaliope Maryweather Steele, she was the only daughter of the soft hearted Jack Steele and the beautiful Absentia Campbell-Steele, Kali, as she’d preferred to be called from the age of two, was the apple of her father’s eye and the disappointment of her mother’s. Yet it was that first summer in Salem that she learned the truth about her mother’s family and the reason she’d been destined to lose them all.

The July humidity had firmly settled into the town, oppressing everything and everyone in its path and turning her chestnut mop of hair into a puff ball of epic pom-pom proportions. Her clothes were thrift store salvaged and runway revamped. She wore black wire rimmed glasses that may have been the height of fashion, for the 20’s when they’d been made, but they did little to improve on her muted features. She had the tawny eyes of her grandmother and her grandmother's mother. She’d always felt that she’d been a disappointment to the beautiful Absentia Campbell-Steele because of her eyes, so cat like and exotic, so unlike her mother’s beautiful crystal blue. She was not as sleek and poised as her mother and had always erred on the side of awkward for the most part. Her voice was raspy, where her mother’s was silky. She’d stuttered as a child and only as recently has the fifth grade did she relinquish her morbid shyness and the stutter became less noticeable. She was an average student, was not athletic and tended to stay lost in the pages of a book. Books were her vise and her precious escape from a mundane life. Always labeled the shy, plain new girl that people hardly ever noticed.

Today Kali's internet search for bookstores revealed Tavaro Bookstore as the closest to their 3 story walk-up on the west side of Salem. A short mile and a half walk away. She had not been expecting the reaction she’d received upon entry however.

Xavier Tavaro and the Tavaro family in particular had been residents of Salem since the ill-famed days of the witch trials. Trials that were notoriously brutal tribunals where innocent women were burned at the stake in religious persecution by zealots, zealots who were for the most part all unfortunately ancestors of Xavier in some form or another. The Tavaro’s were all upstanding and prominent members of the City Council, leaders in all aspects of government and proprietors of many of the tourist traps and not so touristy shops in the district. They were a normal New England middle class multigenerational family, except for a few family secrets.

Xavier, like the rest of the Tavaro family had his share of secrets too. Yet at seventeen he was an ordinary guy, in an ordinary world with an extraordinary problem.
Xavier was handsome in that classic GQ kind of way. His dark hair made his amber eyes more unmistakable, or rather more unforgettable. His athletic build was lean and muscular, an illusion in his opinion. The body of a sleek cat and the grace of an elephant on ice as his father would say. Xavier was the youngest of three sons. His brother’s had gone off to Harvard in birth order succession and it was expected that he’d follow suit. But Xavier had talents that lie in other realms and Harvard was not in his grand plan. He hadn’t gotten around to telling his parents yet and as his Senior year and the inevitable acceptance letter threatened to arrive before long, he sorely did not need the distraction that was about to walk into his life. He would be eternally sorry that he had ever laid eyes on Kali Steele the moment she walked into the book store on that oppressive July night.