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  “Well, don’t,” Margarete says abruptly. She reaches in her jeans pocket for a pack of cigarettes. She offers it to Shannon. “God, I’m dying for a smoke. You want one?”

  “No, thanks, I don’t smoke.” Shannon is beginning to be irritable. “What’s this all about and what is it to you if I am dating your brother?”

  “He hasn’t spoken about you to us, for sure.” Margarete lights up, blows a smoke ring into the air and doesn’t apologize for it.

  “He hasn’t spoken much about you either to me.”

  “So he intends to keep you a secret.”

  “We are not exactly secretive about going out. Anyone would have spotted us in a dozen places. He isn’t married, and we’re not exactly creeping about behind anyone’s backs.”

  “No. But you don’t know everything there is to know about him.”

  “I do know plenty, yes.” Shannon senses the challenge, and she refuses to back down from this bossy woman.

  “Then know this.” Margarete takes a long puff of her cigarette. “Since he was sixteen, he has been engaged to a girl named Flora Janssen. She lives in Seattle and she is due to visit him this weekend.”

  Shannon is taken aback. OK, that would be putting it too mildly. She is sucker punched in the gut. Shock impacts every sense she possesses.

  “Wh-what?” she says.

  “You heard me right. Since he was sixteen – ”

  “I heard that.” Shannon’s head is reeling, and the ground suddenly feels a lot closer than a second ago.

  How does anyone in this day and age in the Western world get engaged when they are sixteen unless they are royalty? Even royalty doesn’t do that anymore. But even as the thoughts tumble in her head, she thinks she knows why.

  Flora Janssen must be a witch. The witch clans must have gotten together and decided that a union between the eldest Walker son and the daughter of the Janssens would produce further lines of powerful witches.

  “Then which part of what I said didn’t you understand?” Margarete says.

  Shannon doesn’t think she said that to be cruel. Margarete is simply someone who has the E.Q. of a worm.

  Margarete continues, “My brother is taken. He has been spoken for. You have no future in his life, and I’ve come here to you today to ask you not to complicate things. Things are complicated enough for our family as it is already.”

  Shannon has to fight hard to keep her lower lip from trembling. “Then how come he doesn’t tell me about her himself? Does he even have a choice in who he is marrying?”

  Margarete clicks her tongue impatiently. “I don’t know what he does or does not tell you, though I suspect he is telling you more than he should be.”

  She pauses significantly at this. I know he told you we are a family of witches.

  “Lucien Walker isn’t like other people. He has a birthright. He comes from a very structured lineage, and he is expected to toe the line or lose his inheritance and standing in our family completely. My parents had an arranged marriage, as did my grandparents on both sides. I will have an arranged marriage. In fact, I have been engaged to man from Boston since we were both fourteen. We are both simply continuing the tradition passed to us by our parents and their parents before them.

  “You are a distraction to him. You are just another one in a long line of Lucien’s girlfriends – girls he has been seeing and having casual sex with to bide his time until he is married to Flora. He may have been seeing more of you than the others, true, but it still doesn’t change the fact that he will be married to Flora by the end of October.”

  The end of October. Shannon knows what that signifies.

  Samhain.

  Halloween.

  “Flora knows about Lucien’s girlfriends,” Margarete continues. “She tolerates his wanderings with understanding, dignity, and a worldly eye because she knows he has to sow his seeds before settling down. And that is exactly what he is doing with you. Sowing his seeds. Nothing more.”

  Shannon can’t help feeling like her world is sinking around her.

  “But he doesn’t love her,” she blurts out.

  “What do you know about their relationship? Does he love you?” Margarete says meaningfully.

  Lucien has never dropped the ‘L’ word with her. Shannon can feel the blood draining away from her face. Is that why he never gave her any hope regarding these matters? Is that why he never brought it up?

  “I can see you can’t answer these questions yourself,” Margarete says. “So you know, as much as you don’t want to admit it, that I’m right.”

  She finishes her cigarette and drops her butt on the ground. She stubs it out with her foot.

  “I just did you a favor,” she says. “I hope you will thank me one day.”

  With that, she strides to her car, a silver BMW, starts in and revs off without a second glance at Shannon.

  CONFRONTATION

  Shannon never realized how much she loves Lucien until she feels her heart breaking and her entire world crashing down.

  He lied to me.

  No, he didn’t really lie. He just never told you the truth.

  But how could he do this to her? Is everything Margarete told her the absolute truth then? Was Lucien simply using her for his sexual pleasures with no intention of making their union permanent?

  What a fool you are to hope for anything more. He is exactly what you told yourself he would be when you first met him – a wonderful sexual diversion. Nothing more.

  But she had allowed herself to hope.

  She had allowed herself – over the weeks they had dated and he had no other in his sights – that she would be the one to land him. She would be the one to tame him. She had even thought that the secrets he shared with her about his family meant that he trusted her enough to share his life with her. She had allowed herself to subconsciously want him to be the one for her.

  Her tears are streaming down her cheeks fast and furiously as she drives to the country club. She knows he will be there this evening. Client meeting, he said. So much of her wants him to tell her that everything is all right – that he has no intention of marrying Flora Janssen. That he had been coerced into getting engaged to a witch he hardly knew at the age of sixteen.

  Shannon drives up to the gates of the only country club in Dolphin’s Bay. They are wrought iron and ornate. The members of this club are moneyed, and to get in, you’d have to have three recommendations from existing members and a fat bank account. So it is not only what you have but who you know.

  The sentry guard at the gates stops her.

  “Are you a member, Miss?”

  Lucien has never taken her to the club before for obvious reasons. His father is a committee member there and this is where his family conducts most of their business. He never wanted her to comingle with his family members.

  “No, but my boyfriend is in there and I have something important to tell him.” She wants to do this face to face, not over the cellphone.

  “May I know his name, Miss?”

  “Lucien Walker.”

  “I can call the reception and he can meet you in the lobby. But he will have to confirm he knows you first.”

  “Oh, he knows who I am all right,” she says grimly.

  But still, the gates remain closed as the guard makes his call. After about a few minutes, he returns to the Toyota, which still has its driver window wound down.

  “Mr. Walker will meet with you in the lobby, Miss.”

  He smiles and presses a button in the sentry box console. The forbidding gates open.

  The country clubhouse is a sprawling place with several wings and a mixture of sloping and pointed green roofs. The gardens are resplendent, as always. Shannon would not be surprised if someone were to tell her that the Walkers had bought this place, refurbished it and sold it to a conglomerate to fashion a country club.

  She parks the Toyota in an empty parking lot next to a hyacinth plant. She gets out. Her legs are wobbly. Before she can go
to the entrance, Lucien is already at the door.

  “Shannon? What’s wrong? Why didn’t you call me on my cellphone?”

  How is she going to do this? She has no plan, really, other than to confront him.

  “You didn’t tell me you were engaged to be married.”

  He stops short. His face turns pale. That is when she knows, with her heart sinking, that everything Margarete told her was the truth.

  “Shannon – ”

  “You didn’t deny it.”

  An elderly couple carting golf clubs comes out of the double doors. They regard Lucien and Shannon with curiosity.

  Lucien takes Shannon’s arm and walks her to a more secluded spot behind a cluster of bushes.

  “I was going to tell you,” he says.

  “Really? When?”

  “I don’t know,” he confesses. “It never seemed like a good time.”

  “Now would be a good time.”

  “I had no choice in the matter,” he says in a low voice. “It’s a family tradition.”

  “To match witches of different lineages together? I thought you said you weren’t a practicing witch!”

  “Ssssh.” He tries to take her arm again but she wrenches it off. “Please, Shannon. Let’s go to your car. We can talk there more privately.”

  She fumes as she follows him back to her Toyota. They both get into their respective sides – she in the driver’s seat and he in the front passenger one.

  “I am not a practicing witch,” he says, “but my family believes in maintaining tradition. Witches intermarry between clans, and Flora Janssen is from a very old witch family that hails from Salem. Every one of us is betrothed in our teens. Our genealogies are mapped for us by matchmakers to determine which lineages would make the best matches.”

  Yes, she suspected that much.

  “And you’re going to go through with it?” Her voice is breaking, as is everything else inside her.

  God, I never knew he would affect me this much.

  “It was not a love match, Shannon.”

  “You’re not answering the question. Are you going to go through with it?” Tears are in her eyes again. “What did I mean to you, Lucien? Were you leading me on? Not so much in words, but in actions.” A sob chokes her throat. “Was I just a convenient fuck doll to you . . . to while away the time until your arranged marriage took place?”

  “You’re not a fuck doll.” He appears genuinely distressed. “You mean so much more to me than I ever thought possible. At first, I was attracted to your looks, yes. I wanted to have you . . . possess you. But I found myself thinking about you all the time when you weren’t with me. I found myself wanting to see you again and again. That is the truth, Shannon.”

  “But you’re still engaged to be married. It doesn’t change anything.” She turns away from him. It is too painful to gaze at him. “Your sister told me everything.”

  “My sister!” He is suddenly enraged. “What the hell did she tell you?”

  “She told me the truth, nothing more. A truth I expected from you. She told me . . . that if you didn’t go through with this marriage, you’d be cut off.”

  He takes all this in. He doesn’t deny it.

  “Is this true?” she demands.

  After a long while, he nods.

  “Then it’s clear what you’re going to do,” she says. “You’re going to go through with your planned wedding and your planned marriage and your planned consummation to produce a family of super-witches.”

  “I’d much rather be with you.” This comes out uncertainly.

  “Really, Lucien? It’s a lot of money to give up, and I think you have already decided that I am not worth it. Better to do what your father wants of you than to be destitute on account of me.”

  “That’s not true,” he says weakly.

  “It is true. I can see it in your face. You don’t think I’m worth giving up everything for. And you know what? I don’t blame you. I’m just glad I got to know the truth before it got too deep between us. Unless you never planned it to get deeper than what we have now.”

  She can see it all so clearly.

  And yet, she can’t blame him. He had never promised her anything.

  “No, Shannon,” he says, aghast. “It isn’t like that at all.” He pauses, not knowing what to say next. His hesitation tells her everything she needs to know.

  “Goodbye, Lucien,” she says simply. “Please get out of my car.”

  He blinks at her, uncomprehending.

  “It’s OK. I understand,” she says. “It isn’t as if you promised me anything more than what you gave me. It was I who led myself into false hopes and expectations, something I shouldn’t have done. I bear you no ill will, Lucien, but it is best we end it right here. I deserve better than to be the mistress of a man who must be married to his fate. So you have to get out of my car now, because I need to go home and have a good cry over you.”

  He sits there, unmoving. She waits. Part of her is still hoping he would say “I’m going to renounce my inheritance for you” or “I won’t go through with this sham marriage. I’ll tell my father that I want to be with you and to hell with what the coven says”.

  But he doesn’t.

  After a long while, he opens the car door. His limbs move with a heaviness that she has never seen before. His shoulders droop and he suddenly looks ten years older.

  Flashes of their happy times together run in succession through her mind. Meeting him for the first time in the rain. Him gazing at her throughout the arm-wrestling match with Jared. Making love to him in his bedroom at the Chatterly for the first time.

  He shuts the passenger door of the Toyota quietly.

  “Goodbye, Lucien,” she says to herself.

  FALLOUT

  Shannon cries, of course.

  She cries and cries on her bed. She is miserable and listless, and life seems to have lost all meaning. She can’t eat, and so she sleeps interminably. Her dreams are intermingled with Lucien’s face, Lucien’s hands, Lucien’s wonderful body merging with hers.

  Jared tries to come in – to comfort her. He sits by her bed and says words that she doesn’t understand and can’t fully comprehend. Words like:

  “It’s all right.”

  “It’ll get better.”

  “Want me to stay here with you?”

  He does not say: “I told you so”.

  Because he didn’t, really. He wasn’t exactly Lucien’s rival, and he never pursued their competitiveness because Lucien simply didn’t want to be competitive against Jared.

  After a long period of her non-responsiveness, Jared says:

  “I’ve got to go in to work. Call me if you need anything, OK? Will you be all right or should I take the day off and stay?”

  She thinks she shakes her head, though she can’t be sure.

  “It’s OK,” something with her voice says, “go ahead. I’ll be all right.”

  He worriedly leans down to kiss her on the cheek. Her cheek, now dried of salt tears. And then he is gone.

  She thinks he is not bad, really. They have been through a lot together.

  She doesn’t know how long she stays in her bed, staring at the ceiling. Shadows flit across the windows and the light from outside changes.

  Then she hears a knocking at the door in the lounge. The cottage isn’t that big and so sounds travel easily.

  “Shannon? Shannon?” A male voice.

  Not Lucien.

  She can’t get up. Her limbs are leaden. She has turned off her cellphone.

  The knocking persists, and she hopes that whoever it is will go away. Then after a while, it ceases. A pause. Footsteps padding closer to her window outside.

  “Shannon?”

  The window is closed, but a man is there, silhouetted by the light. She half-turns, her body like a marionette jerked by someone else’s strings.

  Her boss, Kirk Fitzpatrick, stands there, a worried crease on his handsome forehead. He taps at the glass of the
window.

  “Shannon. Are you all right?”

  No, I’m not, she wants to say. Go away. Please. I’m sorry I didn’t call in sick. It must be a workday.

  “Shannon? Your brother called me to tell me you weren’t coming to work. I just came here to make sure you’re OK. Are you OK?”

  Shifter.

  Go away.

  No, don’t go away.

  I don’t know what to do. I can’t get up. All the strength has left my body. I can’t breathe properly. I can’t sleep. I can’t close my eyes. I don’t know why this feeling won’t pass.

  “Shannon, please let me in. Just open the window. I’ll climb in.”

  Something in his beautiful green eyes makes her pause. Somehow, she finds the energy to render her semi-paralyzed limbs mobile and go to the window. She is still zombie-like. Glassy eyes. Wild-haired. Her hand unclasps the latch, and he does the rest by shoving the window up and creating a gap.

  She stands back as his lithe body climbs in. His sudden presence in the room makes it seem very small.

  “Shannon?” He stands two feet away, not wanting to scare her. She can tell he is trying to tread carefully here. “I’m worried about you. You shouldn’t be alone. Are you OK?”

  When she doesn’t say anything, he comes closer. A foot. Another. Then he gently touches her shoulder.

  “Go back to bed. I’ll sit with you here.”

  He shepherds her back to her mussed-up bed and helps her lie down again. He gently draws the covers over her. And then he pulls up the wicker chair by her dresser and sits beside her.

  He says, “I heard what happened. Jared told me about the breakup.”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  No, you’re not. You were the one who warned me not to mess with Lucien in the first place. You were right. Go ahead. Say it.

  I TOLD YOU SO.

  But like Jared, he doesn’t.

  Instead, he says: “It hurts like a bitch right now. But it will get better. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But you’ll feel better on the third day. It’s different with different people. Some people come out of it quicker, others take a longer while. But it will get better.”

  What do you know? she thinks. You have never been hurt like this. But what does she know about him anyway? He might have been hurt before. He is older than she is. More experienced.