The Phantom King (The Kings) Read Free Page B

and lowered herself into the glider before resting her head back on the head rest and closing her eyes. She’d sent the police detail away earlier that afternoon. It had been ten days since Steven ’s death and she felt conspicuous and strange having cops watching her twenty-four-seven. She also felt guilty. Salem was right next door to Boston as the crow flies. Boston was a big city, often a dangerous city, and there were certainly more useful places for a pair of police officers to be than parked in a car across the street from her new worn-down, still empty home.
    So she was stuck lugging the furniture in on her own, and after four hours of hauling heavy things straight, she was nearly done – and nearly done for .
    She could feel Steven ’s ghost hovering beside her to her left.
    Steven ’s ghost.
    She’d come home on Monday night a week and a half ago to find her street blocked off by fire trucks and ambulances – and her house on fire. The entire block had smelled like evil.
    Siobhan was a warlock. If anyone in the world understood the power and pull of evil, it was her. She fought it every day.
    Twenty-eight years ago, s he’d been born with a penchant for magic . Of course, the skills didn’t make themselves apparent until a number of years later, when at the age of eight, she unwittingly and telekinetically slammed her mother’s fingers in the kitchen drawer because she couldn’t get a word in edge-wise around her numerous brothers and sisters. That got her mother’s attention.
    It also got Siobhan’s. And it felt terrible.
    That was the first time her magic had reared its head and caused harm. Since that moment, Siobhan made great effort to retain control over her emotions. Because when she didn’t, bad things happened.
    Several years later, a friend was hosting an Oldies but Goodies movie night and Siobhan watched a very young Drew Barrymore kill peo ple with massive fire balls. She stared at the child on the screen, and felt like an imposter amongst humans. There before her was someone with dangerous magic, magic she could barely control, and it was so fantastical , so unbelievable, it was the basis for a science fiction horror.
    And Siobhan was reminded of herself – and of the secret she’d kept hidden for the duration of her childhood.
    Every now and then, she considered going to a Wiccan coven or something similar and trying to get help. Talking to someone. Trying to figure things out.
    But these witches were so vastly different from Siobhan, the gap between them felt un-breachable . They stressed a philosophy of “harming none,” and all the while, the magic inside of Siobhan begged her to do just the opposite. It was a nasty , volatile kind of magic.
    Siobhan’s power was not a modern day witch’s power. It had nothing to do with cauldrons or herbs or crystals. It was about anger and hatred and revenge…. And…. It was real .
    Day after day, night after night, year after year, Siobhan struggled to get a firm grip on what she was and how to deal with it , and she did so alone . Being the youngest child in a family of four daughters and three sons made her task both more difficult and more simple. Hiding was a constant necessity , but it was like hiding in New York; there was always someone else around to take the attention off of her.
    In high school , she was the attractive but unpopular kid that young adult romance writers loved to pen about now, only at the time, there had been no gorgeous vampire to save her and no strapping werewolf to protect her. It was just her, in a non-stop battle with her own flaring temper and the magic that thrummed through her veins, begging for release.
    The effort was taxing, to say the least. As time went by, the tiring effects of her constant war with herself took different forms, lending her OCD tendencies, a touch of insomnia, and a firm, undying need for at least five cups of strong Irish tea a day.
    Other things happened as well. Little by little,