Kay felt as if the fabric of her entire world had been ripped to shreds, and everything she'd thought she'd known about her mother had been negated totally. Horrified, and yet unwilling to stop after she'd already uncovered so much dirt, Kay kept demanding to find out what happened next.
From the subsequent scenes she witnessed, Kay got a pretty clear picture of how the next couple years of her mother's life went. She was introduced to the group that Sebastian had spoken about, which resembled nothing more than covens of evil witches that Kay had seen in various schlocky B-movies, and continually taught more and more about her power, as she was gradually convinced to use darker and darker magicks, until eventually she came to revel in it and no longer needed to be coerced. She rose to near the top of the pecking order in the coven, second only to Sebastian. Kay's mother, it seemed, had just kept getting herself in deeper and deeper, with no end in sight.
At last, though, Kay was shown an episode in which a sobbing Grace and irritated Sebastian seemed to be engaged in a furious argument. If Kay hadn't known better, she would never have recognized the woman before her as her mother: with her long auburn hair streaked with black, heavy, dark eye-liner and lipstick, and getup that made her look like some weird cross between some medieval witch, a punk rocker, and an extra in a Marilyn Manson video, she was easily light years away from the conservative, pious Casserole Queen that Kay and her siblings had grown up with.
"Look, Grace," Sebastian said angrily, grabbing a hold of her by her shoulders. "I don't know what's gotten into you today. Where's this change of heart coming from? It's been ages since you've thrown a fit like this!"
"I know, Sebastian, but my mother and sister almost found me today! They must've been wandering around looking for me this whole time. I ended up having to use a glamour so that they wouldn't see me."
"Alright, so you had a close call. It happens sometimes. It's nothing to get all worked up about."
Grace shook her head furiously. "It isn't just that. At first, I tried hiding without using magic. There was a church on the corner right where I was, so I tried ducking into there and…," Grace lowered her head, her cheeks burning red with shame under all of her punk/goth make-up. "I couldn't," she said in a small voice. "A whole army of angels came down and barred me from entering. It just sort of hit me then how low I'd sunk, that God won't even allow me in one of His houses."
Sebastian tried to laugh it off. "Well, it's a little too late to be thinking about that now, isn't it, Grace? You're one of the most promising initiates that our side has had in a long time. Why, the only step left before you become a full-fledged witch is the Pledge next week."
Grace drew herself up to her full height and winced, as if bracing herself for some inevitable blow. "I'm not going to take it."
For a second, Kay thought that Sebastian was going to attack her, but he seemed to manage, with great difficulty, to control his temper. "Now come on, it was a shock, I understand, I had a few of my own when I first started out. But that's no reason to throw away the two years of hard work you went through to get to this point. Our Friends Down Below are extremely pleased with the work you've done, Grace. Why, nobody's better with a curse than you are, and your hexes… They're thinking of giving you your own region of influence, right after the Pledge! There's no telling how far you could go." He pressed closer, suggestively tracing her lips with his right pointer finger. "How far we could go."
Grace closed her eyes and began to sigh, but eventually shook herself and pushed him away, an action for which Kay was profoundly grateful. "That's not going to work anymore, Sebastian. Not this time, and not ever again."
Sebastian laughed cruelly, not looking nearly so handsome anymore. "And you really think it's that easy, that you can just walk away after everything you've been doing for the last two years?"
"I-I'll repent."
"And then you'll just be taken back because you said that you're sorry and you'll be able to rejoin the herds of the faithful like none of this ever happened. Not likely. And even if you can, what makes them think you'd be able to stand it? You've tasted power, Grace; do you think you'll be able to live without it now?"
"Well, I can try," she responded, refusing to let her determination slip. "This isn't real power, anyway. We're nothing but slaves to those Friends you always keep talking about. I didn't realize that when I got involved with you."
"You knew enough."
"You tricked me!"
Sebastian sneered. "Oh, come on, you may have been naïve, but deep down you knew exactly what you were getting yourself into. Deny it all you want, but you joined up simply because you wanted to, because you craved the power, the control; you wanted to prove that you were just as strong as that sister of yours, and you didn't care what price you had to pay to do it!"
Looking emotionlessly into his eyes, she replied, "Maybe you're right, but it's all over now. I'm leaving right now and renouncing this. It's the only shot I've got at forgiveness."
Dropping all pretenses, Sebastian lunged at her, murder clearly visible in his eyes, but Grace was prepared for him. Muttering something under her breath, she watched unblinkingly as he slammed into thin air just inches away from her, sort of invisible force field evidently standing between them. "You won't get away with this!" he ranted as she picked up that same battered old suitcase and headed out the door. "Nobody just walks away from our side and lives! We'll be coming after you so you'd better watch—" but he was cut off totally when a roll of masking tape appeared out of thin air and promptly taped his mouth shut.
On the edge of her seat, metaphorically speaking, Kay demanded to be shown what happened to Grace next, and what looked like a small apartment began to materialize. Grace, out of her former get-up and wearing clothes of more or less the same style as the ones she'd left home in, her hair back to its natural color, sat forlornly on a couch in the center of the room, one of the few pieces of furniture that seemed to be in the apartment. Grace looked as if—
"Kay!" Tabitha yelled crossly, ripping the girl forcefully out of her trance. What on earth have you been up to?"
Kay blinked groggily at her mentor, too disoriented to respond.
"Well?" The witch demanded. "I'm waiting for an explanation."
Wow, Kay thought to herself as soon as the world around her started making sense again. How'd she get back so fast? "There was this spell…my mother…I feel sick," she provided feebly, staring up intently at Tabitha and nodding her head determinedly, as if that explained everything.
Tabitha rolled her eyes. That's what happens when trainees with hardly any experience tackle spells they're simply not prepared for. Well, Kay was certainly not going to be any help at the moment, so Tabitha shuffled over to the counter, bracelets jingling all the while, and skimmed the page that the book was turned to. "Oh Kay, you didn't!" Tabitha groaned. "You went into your mother's mind and accessed her memories!"
A light seemed to turn on in Kay's brain. "I did do that!" she exclaimed, jumping up from the lotus position she had gotten into at some point over the course of the spell. She wobbled back and forth for a moment, and then scrambled over next to Tabitha and grabbed onto the counter for support. Her memory of all that she had witnessed now more or less restored, she looked purposefully at Tabitha. "And let me tell you, Tabitha, I want some answers."
Tabitha flinched, even though she knew it was coming. Her bosses were not going to be happy to learn that Kay had found out anything about her mother's past. "Very well, Kay, what do you want to know?"
"Is it true? Did she really work for the Dark Forces?"
Of course the brat was going to go and uncover that little nugget of information. "Yes," Tabitha admitted. "It was thought to be the coup of the century, in fact, getting a Standish to come over to the Dark Side."
"But she left, I saw that. That Sebastian guy, he said they were gonna go after her. Did they?"
"Of course, as I told you earlier, one can't just quit like she tried to do. She would've been dispatched without any trouble, but that pesky Angel Girl warned her after she repented, and she fled to an old apartment building. Our side tracked her down, though, and set fire to her apartment," Tabitha explained, tactfully omitting the extra little detail that she herself had set the fire, as it was at the moment very difficult for her to tell precisely how Kay, ever the loose cannon, was feeling about this revelation.
"The fire that my dad rescued her from!" Kay exclaimed, realization dawning. "And then she had amnesia…did evil make her lose her memory?"
Tabitha had hoped that the conversation would not take this turn, but she saw no use lying; Kay had gotten to be quite good at telling when she was not being totally truthful with her. Besides, she'd upset her bosses so many times in the past that she doubted very much that this incident would end up tipping the scales either way. "No, her mind wipe came courtesy of the forces of Good."
"Why'd they do that?"
"You know, for some reason, they never did tell me," Tabitha replied sarcastically. "If I had to guess, though, I'd say it was an act of mercy, not to have to live with the knowledge of everything she'd done, being given a chance to start fresh, with her sins washed away and all the rest of that "born again" tripe. Of course, there was probably the double motive of security playing a role in that decision too."
Kay wasn't quite following. "Security?"
"Well, Grace Standish had shown that she couldn't be trusted with her abilities, so they simply took away any and all knowledge of them. Removes the temptation, wouldn't you say?"
"Uh, yeah," Kay replied, working out what Tabitha had just told her. So, her mother had been at least as bad as she was, but, unlike herself, was given an easy, guilt-free out. And now, she was using it to self-righteously attack Kay for every little thing she ever did! The more she thought about it, the more incensed she became. It seemed only fair that Grace Bennett be given a taste of her own medicine. Suddenly blinded with anger, she resolved to see to it that her mother would soon wish that an extra husband was all that she had to deal with from her past!
Ignoring Tabitha's frenzied protests that in this case the pain and suffering just wasn't worth the possible consequences, Kay quickly memorized the incantation for memory restoration, picked her daughter up out of the cradle, and placed her gingerly into her stroller.
"Sit tight, Maria," Kay cooed pseudo-sweetly. "We're gonna go visit Grandma!"