Testimony of Children (Alice Gray Book 2)

1

When witches again hunt witches, and blood runs through the fingers of barnes, the heir to the betrayer and the betrayed will conclude the cycle.

The rocking chair in the corner of the room swung back and forth with unnatural violence. My eyes wanted to swivel to see, but I kept them glued on the brittle, stained paper.

That's what she wanted, my ancestor and namesake, Alice Gray, long dead leader of the Pendle coven. If she got my attention, she'd suck me in, drain my power.

Bitch.

The air heated and tiny particles of gold drifted into my field of vision. Tendrils formed, reaching out to me, beckoning, enticing me to accept what it offered.
Gray magic. My family's magic.

But it wasn't mine.

Whispered words, harsh and mean flew past my ears on the wind that whipped my hair off my shoulders.

Rape, murder, destitution.

Words of danger and destruction. Warnings of my fate if I didn't heed my ancestors.

I pushed them out of my head. Agitated by the proximity of Gray magic, the energy stirred inside me. I let it churn.

Two could play at this game.

The charge buzzed through my veins. A silver web knit together from the particles of my life-force. A net of magic to catch those golden tendrils and pull them in, changing their sequence, making them mine.

The wind caught up books, furniture, anything that wasn't nailed down and hurled it towards me. The web of my power caught it all, just as I knew it would. The rocking chair jerked back and forth, the frenzy of its speed scraping grooves in the earth floor. The house groaned its objection.

"You promised," Thomas said from the doorway, his deep voice laced with disappointment.

The rocking chair stilled. The wind halted. The furniture hovered for a second before crashing to the ground.

"Alice, look at me."

I ignored the tone of command, and concentrated on the slim volume. The paper felt like it might disintegrate between my fingers as I stared at the silver threads that ran through the binding to form the outline of a tree. They pulsed in a way that was suspiciously mocking.

F-you, book. You're nothing to do with me.

But that wasn't true, and there was no way that I could escape the damn thing. However much the ghosts wanted me to stop my research, that earnest missive was about me, and I needed to know what it meant.

Warmth spread through my body as I sensed Thomas approach. The air got dense with his anger.

My hyper-awareness of him was becoming more than distracting, since he rarely left my side these days.

Despite his many attempts, I wasn't going to give in to the attraction again. He was a beautiful man, but using Thomas for a booty call had been a mistake.

It wasn't me he loved, it was the original Alice Gray, my powerful witch ancestor, and the only Pendle Witch who had escaped a guilty verdict during the seventeenth-century trials.

Thomas grabbed my arm, yanking me up so that we were face-to-face. "You promised you wouldn't provoke them. Not until we know why they haunt you."

"It's taking too long. I can't sit on my ass all day while everyone around me takes control of my life."

Frustration sizzled into anger, awakening the magic again. Clamping down on my emotions, I shoved it back inside to be dealt with later. There was always a moment of panic when I wasn't sure if the power would do my bidding.

Who was I kidding?

It was exhilaration that I felt when the magic pushed at the limits of my control, straining for freedom. I refused to succumb to it. I would not relinquish control to the fierce woman that had emerged when the power last overcame me.

She was both me and not me. But one thing was for certain, that Alice was terrifying.

Thomas looked at me, feeling my struggle through our connection. He wasn't sympathetic. He was excited by my power, by my lack of control.
His dark eyes glowed with desire. Tense muscles stood out on his forearms, which were uncovered, his white shirt presenting a striking contrast to his deep tan skin. Unable to stop myself, I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. My breath hitched as the pressure of his scrutiny built.

Looking away, I broke the connection before it became too much and I had to close the distance between us.

"Alice? Oh, Thomas. Come on you guys, give it a break can't you?"
My cousin Anne huffed, and went back up to the kitchen. She'd made no secret of how intolerable these encounters were. The sexual tension was so oppressive that she had threatened to leave the house on more than one occasion.

Worse than that, our desire had evolved into a tangible force that influenced anybody in the vicinity. There were only so many times that Anne could apologise to the postman for answering the door in negligee and trying to entice him inside.

Thomas watched me now with a knowing smirk. He knew damn well what his beauty did to me and he was using it as a punishment because I wouldn't give in to the almost unbearable pull that his body had for me.

"You promised."

His tone was polite now, but his burning, angry eyes and taut muscles told a different story. The heavy thrum of power that travelled through our connection gave me everything that I needed to know about how he felt.
Angry, powerless, frustrated, scared.

"That was four weeks ago," I countered, looking away so that I couldn't be drawn into the bubble that always threatened to secrete us away into a hopeless cycle of lust and disappointment.

Since being plunged into the real world of witches and vampires a month ago, my life had been in stasis, held in suspension by a history that was always just out of reach.

Thanks to my ghostly ancestors.

And the coven.

They owed me answers, and I was going to collect.

Alice is back! Let me know what you think. And thanks for reading. ⭐️ if you like it.