Karma's A Witch
'You have more magic badassness than her now.'
Chapter Twenty
11:12pm, Sunday
October 19th
"You stink of male dogs." Edward always knows how to make me feel pretty. Note sarcasm. I glared, my face heating from his words that he had to say out loud. Was it that bad? Did shifters smell extra bad to vampires? I needed to ask Emmett if Vampires smelled to him too. What was I supposed to do about it? Refuse to let Seth touch me? He's my brother!
"If I had acute smelling, what would you smell like to me?" I say back, hoping that he would understand I can hardly help what scents are left on me and that I'm not intentionally rolling around in male dog smells. Edward actually smelled amazing; I just wished I smelled as good as he smells to me. "It doesn't make me feel good, knowing you don't like how I smell. Besides, Seth is my brother. I'm going to smell like him when we're around one another. He's still a puppy." That might not make sense until he meets him. Seth just acted like an excited puppy sometimes, without the peeing.
He didn't answer as I lined up again, widening my stance and feeling around for my soul shard in Edward's body. What was I supposed to do here? I don't even know what my soul would feel like. The bonding... this is a natural mage experience and the one thing that comes with it is it cannot be undone. That is why you are supposed to choose carefully and the Volturi match pairs up by their requests and compatibilities. I may be able to stop magic but this was different, something that occurred at the very core of my being, my soul, and that's more than magic...
'You aren't concentrating.' Edward says in my head, exasperated. We were both getting touchy with one another. Ever since I offered him my blood he's refused to get within a few feet of me, spent his time with Carlisle 'because you said it would please you if I succumbed to his research needs'. I mocked him in my head. At the core of the issue... I was upset he didn't like me, that I felt so much for him and all he did was insult me (how I smelled) and pressured me (to get rid of our bond).
'You can't read my mind. You don't know for sure.' I spit back at him speaking to him in his head, and my arm tingles with maybe magic. Since Alice's vision, I have been hoping that I have something special. Doesn't everyone want to have something different about them that makes them amazing... but since I am bound to Edward, I had to have some magic. So my magic was just different from everyone else's. Right? Yeah, I was being hopeful and a bit delusional.
My eyes burned and I knew what was happening. I was going to cry. I didn't want to cry. Edward shouldn't see me get all worked up over his non-existent feelings for me. That didn't help me. I turned away from him, looking at the top of my boots, my hair cascading down to make a curtain around my face. What was I going to do? When in doubt, run. So I did, I made it about four rushed steps before my vampire stopped me, standing in front of me with both his hands on my upper arms.
"Your shifter purposefully covered you in his scent." Seth? I thought, confused as my eyes started to leak. I refused to look at him. "He comes here and watches you. It does not sit well with me when I hear his thoughts about you. If you give me permission I will end his life for you." Whoa. Seth did nothing! If he was watching me he meant no harm.
"Seth is my brother! Don't end anyone's life! How can you even think about hurting someone who doesn't mean any harm?" I try to pull away from him, while still hiding my face from Edward's view.
"Not Seth, Jacob. He does mean harm; he wants to tear us apart." He said it like it was the worst thing Jacob could do. Like the thought of us being apart hurt him as much as it has been hurting me. This time, I don't just struggle against him lightly, I tug free angry and let my tear-streaked face meet his.
"How is that different from what you want? You want to tear us apart!" I hiss, brushing past him, feeling shameful. I couldn't keep him, it was so selfish of me to want to keep him, but I did. I wanted him more than my own life. Jacob may have purposefully made me smell like him yesterday, I'll give Edward that but he couldn't be angry that Jake wanted us apart because Edward wanted us apart too.
Alice is sitting cross-legged on her bed when I enter her room. She pats the mattress beside her and I smile, not in the least freaked out by her all-knowing ways. Since she's been napping so often, she sees almost everything. They come in short bursts of visions though, a few seconds and she had to figure out what they mean.
Like Edward and Jasper on the back porch ready to fight, or in the stance as if they were going to fight, but not toward each other. They were a team, against something while the rest of us were in the back. Or, Rose and Emmett having a re-bonding ceremony. Which I think will happen after they start talking more openly to one another. Rose didn't like to feel vulnerable though and Emmett hadn't earned her trust.
Alice also had a vision about a baby again. She thinks it's just Mary Alice, that we will babysit her, but she said this baby was a boy, that he had an Iron Man stuffed toy. Samantha's baby is for sure a girl; they had the ultrasounds to prove it. I told her that Iron Man can be a girl's toy too, that he was a major ladies man as it was which made her laugh. Oh Tony Stark, I'll dream about you.
So I curled up beside her on her bed. I felt closer to her now. She'd cried with me on my bed, it was only fair I cried with her on her bed. Edward went on the roof again, always above me. I think he liked watching the road and seeing over the trees but I didn't want to think of what Edward liked... because he didn't like me.
'I must meet Jasper.' Edward thinks to me, not addressing the elephant in the room. 'He had some things to do, I will check on him and return tomorrow night. I apologize, Bella. If it helps, your scent calls to me like the burning of a thousand suns.' My cries halt in surprise. 'It hurts to travel away from you... even if for a few moments. The daylight is more my enemy now than it ever has been before. Am I drawn to you or the piece of my soul that you have claimed?' He didn't sound so sure at the end. He was questioning what he was drawn too! I didn't even know he was drawn to me.
I tell him, softly, 'It hurts when you are away from me too.' Did this mean he would stop trying to separate our souls? For the first time in a week I let myself hope Edward might feel the same thing I did through our bond.
It would seem Edward also has a romantic side. My scent calls to him like the burning of a thousand suns! To him, that might be painful, since sunlight would burn him alive, or dead, vampires were dead... but it was like poetry. Hopefully, my scent wasn't a source of pain for him. Is that why he refused so dramatically when I offered my blood? He had almost given in; he had run right after he tasted just a drop from my thigh... Oh. Ooooh. My blood called him, was that why he had pressed me against the library wall right after he killed those Were's. He wanted my blood because it smelled so good!
I didn't stink!
12:21am, Tuesday
October 21st
"Do you want to go as a blood donor? Maybe Edward could go as a vampire? It would be a cute couples costume!" Alice was abuzz with excitement ever since the flier about the school Halloween party/dance was placed on her desk Monday during History class. She's been going through costume ideas, decoration options and what should be served on the snack table ever since. Alice signed up immediately to help plan the whole thing. I kept telling her that I hadn't signed up to plan the Halloween party so I shouldn't be asked so many questions. Rose took the same stance I did.
You would think we'd bond over having similar party/dance views but no. Rose paid no attention to me. Alice seemed to think I was kidding, and kept asking me and reminding me about the stupid dance. I can't even dance! I don't even want to learn to dance so I have an excuse not to go to dances.
"Pay attention!" Rose hissed, an electricity orb flying our way. It wasn't meant to hurt, it was meant to warn and I caught it easily.
"Your reflexes are getting better," Emmett commented from behind me. He and Alice were there for me to protect. All of us were in the backyard, minus Carlisle and Esme since they were busy in the lab still. Rose had the idea that I might be more inclined to use my super-secret magical powers if I had to protect Alice and Emmett. Since in the greenhouse I had been protecting Alice when I stopped the orb without touching it.
So far, nothing super awesome has come out of me and Alice had a hole burned in her jeans.
"Thanks!" I beam at Emmett over my shoulder as an orb dissipates around my head. Rose is demanding for someone who isn't very nice. So I decide to mouth off to her. "I'd help you more if you were nicer!" I shout at her, her mouth pops open for a fraction of a second before she glares at the ground and starts throwing lazy electric bulbs at Emmett and Alice. I'm not supposed to touch them to get them to disappear (to practice what I did before) and the magic orbs are supposed to be slow enough for Alice and Emmett to dodge when I miss. I mean, if, if I miss.
I've been missing them all.
"Are you even trying?" Rose hissed at me. "Slow orbs are harder to control and this is to help you! Not to help me! I'm being nice right now!" Right. I guess this was to see what I could do and not to help her with her orb control. Although it did both. I shouldn't have said that being nice to her seemed to get her to rethink being mean... I think.
"I don't know how to do it! Magic doesn't just come to me! I have to touch them to stop it. Maybe I did touch that orb in the greenhouse. It was all so fast! I don't feel them anyways so it is possible." I had no confidence in myself. I can't stop magic from afar. I just knew it. Like I knew I couldn't remove the bond.
"Maybe you should try and-" Rose started but I started walking toward the house. "Hey!" She called out. "You need to keep practicing!" She had a point, if I never tried I'd never know but I didn't just doubt myself here, I felt it, somewhere inside that I couldn't stop them without touching them.
"I don't see her doing anything so just let her go." Alice said, actually a bit angrily. This made me feel guilty. They were all just trying to help and I shouldn't take my frustration out of them. Edward was somewhere in the South and that made me grouchy.
"Sorry. I'll keep trying." I didn't mean to be so upset. Having any magic is new to me and with all the talk about curses, my soul bond and this... I just wanted to lie down in the grass and lay in the earth like Angela and I used too. It was when I could relax. I haven't relaxed in a long while, being thrown in the Ocean yesterday didn't count.
After an hour, which Edward had been moving closer and closer during that time, Alice had three new holes in her clothes and Emmett was calling it quits. There wasn't much more I could do besides try and catch them.
"There was an element of surprise and danger in the greenhouse," Emmett calls. "Here, she's expecting them and knows they aren't going to hurt Alice or I." I should have realized that myself but I was so tired. I should be trying new approaches each orb but I didn't know what to do differently.
'Spread it like an extension of your arm.' Edward was still running but spoke to me in his head. So he could hear me from a distance, it wasn't even muffled! He was just ignoring me before when I tried to speak to him in his head from far away. I guess he could hear everyone else minds around me to know what I was doing right now and give me advice. 'Alice had a vision of you succeeding.' This made me pause and an orb coming toward us was dodged by Emmett. They were both getting a workout today.
So I did have to touch them, but in a different way?
'I missed you.' I think to Edward, smiling to myself as I try to stop the next orb that comes at us faster, toward Alice. She squeals, holds her hands up and gets burned on her upper arms as I fail again to stop the damn things. See! I can't stop them.
"Get my mom!" Alice says, gripping the red mark on her arm.
"Focus on me!" Rose howls, another orb released from her hand and I stepped in the way, blocking Alice's hurt little body with my own. Emmett runs off to the warehouse and I glare at Rose while she continues to try and get around my body and to Alice with her burning orbs. My vampire comes out to play though, dropping from the tree to stand beside me and guard Alice's body with me. Together we stop the orbs being hurled at us.
Only, when a massive fireball goes for Edward's heart I automatically think of my vampire hunting novel, that vampires were flammable, and their heart is their weakness. I'm too slow, but the same thing that happened with Alice in the greenhouse happens here, again, only I feel it this time. It's like a moldable second skin, silvery-blue in color that wisped outward where I wanted it to go, dissipating the fire orb before it got close to Edward or his cold heart.
Everything stopped. Rose and her onslaught of orbs, Alice and her screeching all ceased. Edward didn't look surprised, I stared at him in shock but his emotionless face just tilted to the side slightly. 'I missed you too.' He responded in my head before Rose 'hoorayed' loudly, jumping in the air and twirling around in a real show of joy. For me, she was happy for me. I knew Rose wasn't all bad.
"Did you see that?" I whispered. Alice laughed.
"Of course we saw it. The orb disappeared before you got close to touching it!" No, not that. The blue wispy thing that came out of my arm and then snaked back. It was a part of me! I had magic! I could do magic stuff! I grinned, unable to stop myself as I wrapped my arms around Edward's torso, laughing and overwhelmed with... something more than happy. Excitement? Astonishment? Joy? Disbelief? Is there a word for all that put together. That was me right now!
Emmett must not have been in on the same thing as Alice and Rose because he looked worried with Carlisle right beside him. Esme was panting when she finally arrived at the scene. Alice held up her burned arm for her mother to see and she tutted, scowling at the grass because her daughter had purposefully gotten hurt knowing she would heal her right up. I pulled away from Edward a bit embarrassed but shared my news excitedly.
"I can do something useful! I have a silver-blue wispy thing!" Carlisle's face paled, Emmett grinned having not noticed Carlisle's expression and started doing the same thing Rose had, jumping up, making hooray sounds and punching his fist in the air before straightening up. Esme gripped my shoulder with a smile on her face that didn't reach her eyes as she passed me to get to her wounded daughter.
Carlisle still didn't celebrate. I looked to Edward, somehow thinking that he would have the answer I was looking for. Edward wasn't looking at me, he was actually glaring, his jaw set, his eyes narrowed which was the most expression I've seen on his face for days all toward Carlisle. Was Edward angry with him about something?
I stepped between them, trying to get Edward to stop looking so terrifying at the man who helped me so much. 'What's going on?' I ask him in his head and he looks down at me, something possessive in his expression and I gulped, loudly.
"You are a mage, Bella." Carlisle said his voice distant in emotion but not pitch. It was strange as if the beginning of a ghost story and I turned to face him, wrapping my arms around myself. Okay? "I've never heard of a mage that could take away the magic. When it disappeared around you, that's a form of protection, easily categorized in the shield mage category but being able to do it from a distance, to destroy it, that's different. It didn't go back into the earth from where it came." How could they know that? Although... I felt nothing magically, but I could see my wisp! That's an improvement.
I finally felt like a mage! Not just a messed of human!
My excitement was short lived. Carlisle had more to say, I could see it on his face and my vampire moved to stand beside me, in my peripheral vision, which did comfort me. His closeness all on its own was a great comfort to me. Something bad was about to come out of Carlisle's mouth. He didn't disappoint.
"We've received news from Eleazar." Carlisle begins, Rose and Emmett moved closer to one another, standing side by side like Edward and I before Carlisle continued. "It seems the Volturi planned Bella's brush with the Werewolves the night of her birthday."
Occasionally I have moments where the message being expressed verbally doesn't process, like when Jake told me for the first time that he wanted to be my familiar. He'd been top of his class and I barely qualified as a mage, so I just... didn't believe him, but more than that, I kind of skipped over it in my mind. Here, the same thing happened. The first thought that came to mind was Mrs. Weber refusing to let Angela come to the library with me the night of my birthday. Angela brushed it off; making up an excuse about having other things to do knowing her mother wouldn't change her mind and Angela had wanted me to do what I wanted to on my birthday.
Second, Mrs. Weber actually hugging me just before I left. She wouldn't meet my eyes as I said my goodbyes. Then, when I showed up with so much blood on my clothes... she looked so scared and angry. Furious as she shouting about one thing and then the next, calling the Volturi about my vampire familiar and sending me off to them immediately, before I could even change my clothes...
The Volturi had made an attempt on my life and Mrs. Weber had been informed of it.
The trial was a formality, the mage audience told about my vampire to scare them, to get them on the Volturi side so anything they decided would go over well and smoothly. Esme interrupted that process; they expected me to pick them over the women I hadn't met only after they realized I might have some magic potential that Mrs. Weber hadn't unlocked in me.
Freaking A! My life was a series of dramatic events and they were planned?! My vampire saved me in more ways than one! Esme saved me! My imagination ran wild. The Volturi would have had needles shoved in my brain by now, testing on me and expecting me to die if a specific result hadn't shown itself. I gripped my vampires arm with both hands.
"Eleazar suspects the Volturi did something to you -and your mother- as an experiment of sorts while you were in the womb, they are looking into it to find out what they did." This did fit in with what Charlie said. My poor mother. Had they found out about my father being a shifter? Did that somehow make me easier to experiment on because I wasn't supposed to live long anyways? So many questions with no way of finding the answer.
"So she's a genetically created mage type, something that's never been around before," Emmett asked, looking at me with wide scared eyes. What did that mean? Was it better to be useless than something unexplored? "She can destroy magic... Then she can destroy curses." Do not go there again! I can't do something that complicated! I ripped my gaze away from Emmett, the emotions angry and scared battling it out in my stomach while I tried to come to grips with this. I had to call Charlie; my dad had to know about this. It would be best if the news came from me.
Esme hugged me, but I stayed attached to Edward's arm. He didn't force me to move away so I took that as an okay from him to keep on gripping him as long as I needed to. She thanked Edward and then Emmett and Rose, before going into the house and started baking. She was an angry baker. There was silence as the rest of us stood in the yard for a long couple moments.
"You can remove curses." Rose said in awe, her eyes wide and cheeks flushed. She must be afraid of me too now. One minute I'm a useless waste of mage space and now I'm something different or rather an anti-magic mage because the Volturi experimented on my vulnerable halfling fetus body way in the past... Oh goddess! "Oh thank the goddess!" Rose announced, which wasn't the reaction I expected and surprised me so much I dropped my grip on Edward. Emmett wrapped her in a bear hug NSwalked her slowly to the back porch, she couldn't seem to take the stairs on her own so he picked her up. I didn't notice she was crying until Emmett shifted her weight to open the door.
"What the heck?" I asked Alice, hoping she wasn't afraid of me. Or angry. I couldn't help what I am though. If it mattered at all, I didn't know how to do shit with the magic I have. No one should be afraid of me!
"I have no idea. Why would you being able to un-curse people make Rose cry?" Then she smiled. "Oh! I bet she realized she can't be mean to you anymore! You have more magic badassness than her now." Before I could smile back at Alice for being amazingly cool about this twisted revelation, Edward spoke.
"No." He said. "Rose isn't crying fROM that." Which just made me (and Alice probably) wonder why exactly Rose broke down in front of us. She was always so strong, in a mean way, but also in a steady way. It would take a lot for her to show any vulnerability. I sighed, back to square one, wondering what the hell the volturi did to me that made my mother run all those years ago.
"So about the Halloween dance," Alice asked, nudging me with her elbow and brushing off Edward's words. I groaned, seriously? But I soon realized that what mage I was mattered so little to Alice that she was back to worrying about a silly human party. I smiled.
Have I mentioned that my luck is seriously shitty?