The Coven Page 17

  more pages toward the end. Instead of being signed

  Bradhadair, these entries were signed M. R.

  Those were my initials. They also stood for Maeve

  Riordan. My mother.

  Stunned, feeling dizzy, I sank down into Selene's desk chair,

  which squeaked. I had tunnel vision, and my head felt too

  heavy for my neck. Remembering long-ago Girl Scout training,

  I scooted the desk chair back and put my head between my

  knees, trying to take deep, calming breaths.

  While I hung upside down in this graceless position, trying not

  to taint, my mind whirled with thoughts that bombarded me so

  fast, I couldn't make sense of them. Maeve Riordan. This was

  Maeve Riordan's Book of Shadows. This book before me, the

  one that had spoken to me even before I touched it, had

  belonged to my birth mother. The birth mother who had been

  burned to death only sixteen years ago, in a town two hours

  from here.

  Selene Belltower had her Book of Shadows. Why?

  I straightened up. Rapidly I read passages here and there,

  reading the entries as my mother changed from being a girlish

  fourteen-year-old, newly initiated, to a teenager experiencing

  love, to a woman who'd lived through hell by the age of

  twenty-two, as she found herself pregnant with an unplanned

  child. Me.

  My gaze blurred with hot tears, and I flipped back to the

  front of the book, where the entries were light, girlish, full of

  wonder and the joy of magick.

  Of course this book was mine. Of course I would take it

  with me tonight There was no doubt about that But how had

  Selene Belltower come to have it in her library? And why,

  knowing what she knew about me, had she never mentioned it

  or offered it to me? Was it possible that she'd forgotten she

  had it?

  I rubbed the tears out of my eyes and flipped through the

  pages, watching as my birth mother's spells became more

  ambitious and far-reaching, her love deeper and more

  compassionate.

  This was my history, my background, my origin. It was all

  here in these handwritten pages. In this book I would discover

  everything there was to know about who I was and where I

  had come from.

  I looked at my watch. It was 7:45. Oh, my God. I'd been

  in here for more than twenty minutes already. And now it was

  time to go. The others were surely looking for me.

  As hard as it was, I started to close the book. How was I

  going to get it out of the house?

  Then the secret study door opened. A shaft of light from

  the hall dropped into the room, and I looked up to see Cal and

  Selene standing there, staring at me sitting at Selene's desk, an

  open book before me.

  And I knew I had trespassed unforgivably.