The Box Of Souls (Family Relics Book 1) Read online

  The Box of Souls

  Family Relics Book One

  By Tanya Miranda

  Copyright © 2022 Tanya Miranda

  E-Book Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Published by Blue Dragonfly Publishing

  www.bluedragonflypublishing.com

  For Ryan & Roman,

  the joys of my life.

  ~ 1 ~

  AWARENESS

  Jasmyn is a deep sleeper. Loud commotions like fire alarms, thunderstorms, or even earthquakes rarely wake her, but tonight a gentle voice interrupts her dreams. A succession of soft whispers slowly crescendos until she awakens and sits upright in her bed with beads of sweat streaming down her neck. Who called my name? Her eyes dart about her bedroom, finding everything as it should be. There's no one here. After several breaths, Jasmyn moves to the edge of her bed and plants her bare feet flat on the floor. I must have been dreaming.

  A beam of moonlight shines diagonally across her room, charting a path to her window. The crisp evening breeze brushes against her cheeks as she pulls gold and silver starburst-patterned curtains aside. The moon shines so brightly that it enchants Jasmyn for a few seconds before she looks over to the digital alarm clock on her nightstand—it’s two in the morning.

  Someone whispers her name again, or at least Jasmyn thinks she hears a voice. It seems dreamlike, as if it wasn’t a voice at all but a whooshing current of air, coaxing her forward, leading her toward her bedroom door. She follows it eagerly, cautiously.

  After taking a quick peek down the hallway, she tiptoes to her sister’s room, creeping up to the white bedside table, almost knocking over the pink ceramic piggy bank. She gently pokes Katarina’s shoulder, but her little sister continues sleeping. She sneaks across the paisley-patterned hallway rug to her brother’s room and walks past his pig-like snoring. Two similar guttural sounds emanate from her parents’ bedroom the next door down. Everyone is asleep.

  The whisper, the pull, draws Jasmyn to her grandmother’s bedroom at the end of the hallway. Her grandmother’s window is wide open, allowing the brisk night air inside. The wind blows the sheer white curtain up and away so it falls fluidly down to a lifeless state, then rises back up again. The bottom half curves upwards into a slow-moving wave, like an index finger signaling her to come inside. The moonlight illumines a straight path along the hardwood floor, toward her grandmother’s bed, the source of the call. Jasmyn inches forward.

  The tall white bookshelf along her grandmother’s wall calls her attention. The small intricate boxes, the wrought iron miniature statues, the wooden figurines, all of her grandmother’s antique treasures seem to emanate mild pulses toward Jasmyn. She doesn’t know how to interpret the vibrations; she only knows the surge is there in the room, originating from the shelf, directed right at her, almost juddering against her skin. She presses on, sending the pulses to the back of her mind and focusing on the pull that now seems to tug her toward her grandmother.

  At the bedside, she gazes down upon her grandmother's peaceful expression and recalls when taking afternoon naps with her was a daily event. When she was younger, before her sister was born, when Jasmyn was the center of her grandmother's world, they would spend hours together telling stories, drawing, painting, and pretending to do magic. These days, she barely spends any time with her grandmother. Katarina is now, and has been for a long time, her grandmother’s favorite.

  Jasmyn presses her eyes shut. Stop that. Forget about that. That was a long time ago.

  She returns to studying her grandmother’s serene face. The deep creases of her grandmother’s years flow across her forehead and down the sides of her cheeks. Laugh lines border a slight smile. Her pearl-white wavy locks drape over the butterflies printed on her nightgown, each strand bending in perfect crescent shapes as if groomed by a professional stylist. Jasmyn’s eyes follow the curls down her arms and continue toward her hands folded over her stomach.

  Just as she is about to reach for her grandmother’s hand, the vibrations suddenly stop. An unnerving silence covers the room so all she hears is her own breath, her own heartbeat. She notices her grandmother’s eerily still form and places the back of her wrist just over her nose in search of some flow of air. There is none.

  Gasping, Jasmyn pulls her hand away from her grandmother’s face and presses it against her own chest before stepping backwards and rushing to her parents’ bedroom.

  ~ 2 ~

  COVENHOOD

  In a luxurious duplex apartment in New York City, overlooking the breadth of Central Park, Patricia awakens to a sickening sensation she hasn’t felt since the last witch of her coven died one hundred twenty-seven years ago. “Agatha,” she whispers into the night. Sitting up in her king size bed with arms wrapped around bent knees, she allows streams of tears to make their way down to her red satin bed sheets. The drowning feeling in the pit of her stomach and the spasms traveling through her body are bearable but temporarily crippling. She breathes deeply and waits for it to pass, as it has done so many times before. When a witch dies, a little bit of each surviving sister witch dies with her. It’s a natural part of the sisterhood bond; a part Patricia knows all too well.

  In an attempt to take her mind off the debilitating ailments, Patricia recalls the last time she saw Agatha—the day Agatha's son was born. As Agatha held her newborn son in her arms, him struggling to latch onto her nipple, her trying to figure out the best breastfeeding method, she accused Patricia of being careless about hiding her magic. It wasn't the first time they’d had this argument, but Agatha made sure it was the last.

  Patricia, as always, was defiant of any suggestion that she change her way of life. Her attitude was something Agatha had suffered through decades, centuries, across cities, countries, and continents. Patricia’s actions had required them to move from their homes time and time again, disappearing before authorities came to question them about ‘suspicious activity’ reported by the neighbors. She lacked Agatha’s subtlety and the desire to be part of a community, to live a normal life. Agatha wanted to plant roots. Patricia wanted to fly freely at will. Life changed for Agatha when she met Elliot and got married. She shed her immortality to give birth to a son. Moving and restarting her life was no longer an option. She had a family to think about. Roots were planted, without Patricia’s approval.

  “Patricia,” Agatha said, cradling her newborn, “if you won't hide your powers, if you won't live a normal life, you can't be a part of mine. Elliot and Kevin are my life now.”

  “And our life together, all these years...” Patricia swallowed hard as she tried to maintain a courageous face, “means nothing to you?”

  Gazing down at her son, with her index finger stuck in the squeeze of his tiny, full-handed grip, Agatha shook her head. “It's amazing how the birth of a child changes you, like a switch has been turned off in me in some ways and turned on in others. My life is no longer my own. It belongs to him now—to them.” Agatha raised her eyes toward Patricia as she hardened her tone. “If you wish to continue living the way you do, spewing magic without caution, flaunting your powers without caring how it will affect my family ... without considering how it will hurt my son... then our time together has come to an end.”

  Feeling abandoned by her lifelong friend, Patricia straightened her back and pressed her lips together in defiance. “Very well,” she said, her throat tightening as she swallowed. Before losing her composure, Patricia turned on her heel and walked out of the hospital room and out of Agatha's life.

  That was sixty-three years ago; sixty-three years since Patricia last saw her sister witch. The awful memory aches in Patricia’s heart as she lies back down in her bed. She never understood why a witch would give up immortality for a child and a limited lifespan, but she knows all witches eventually do. Finna was over four hundred years old when she gave birth to Agatha and lived another thirty years before old age took her. Agatha was three hundred years old when she gave birth to her son. Patricia is almost four hundred years old and has never felt the need. Although the natural desire to procreate is strong, and grows stronger as a witch's immortal years pass and generations of her relatives die of old age before her eyes, leaving her with no one to call family, it has yet to spark within Patricia. She's not ready to settle down and give up her freedom, her powers, her immortality, and is convinced that no one will ever be worthy of such a sacrifice.

  “We were immortal, you fool,” she whispers, wiping the tears from her chin as Agatha's last words echo in her head. Our time together has come to an end. “Your children better be worth it.”

  With nausea and a headache still lingering, Patricia jumps out of bed and paces back and forth across her living room floor, going through a mental list of the things she needs to do. The sun’s early morning light shines through the panoramic windows of her apartment and clarifies Patricia’s priorities. Her tasks are simple: Secure the Book of Whispers, gather Agatha’s relics, and find her successor.

  After spending a good hour searching for Agatha’s family online and finding only an address in San Francisco for Elliot McKeery, Agatha's husband, Patricia throws her
hands up and closes her laptop. Time for some good old-fashioned magic.

  With her hands shifting left and right over a crystal bowl full of water, Patricia tosses in a few ingredients, including sugar, salt, fresh codfish eyes, and a piece of cloth from a white lacy sweater she took from Agatha before she got married. She holds up a picture of Agatha and herself during their single days, a black-and-white photo from the ‘30s, and recites a spell to display Agatha’s children.

  In the crimping waves, she sees the grown-up face of Agatha’s son and gasps when the realization hits her. His day-old stubble, the gray peppered through his hair, and the laugh lines around the corners of his eyes embody the time passed between her and her sister witch. If Kevin is this old, what must Agatha look like? The thought of a wrinkly, weathered Agatha creates a shock that circulates throughout Patricia’s body.

  “No daughters,” Patricia whispers as the images in the water fade into clarity. She holds up a worn-out picture of Agatha and her newborn son—one Agatha had sent to try and reconcile with Patricia shortly after their disagreement. Patricia recites the spell again, this time aimed at Kevin’s children, hoping to find a granddaughter to which Agatha passed on the gift.

  In the water she sees a teenage girl with long, wavy, auburn hair and pronounced eyes, arguing with Kevin in a car. “Jasmyn,” Patricia whispers as the name comes to her, “eighteen years old.” In the vision, Jasmyn slams the car door shut and takes a deep breath to calm her face before casually walking into the house as if she wasn’t angry just moments earlier. “Tough kid,” Patricia says as the image weakens.

  She then sees Kevin at a soccer match with a son who scores the game-winning goal. “Logan... sixteen years old,” Patricia whispers. Through the swirling water, Patricia sees Kevin tickling a little girl with auburn hair tied in a ponytail and bangs hovering just over her glasses. The little girl’s grin reveals two big buckteeth that make Patricia smile. “Katarina, eight years old,” she says with a sigh.

  To conjure more scenes of the three children with their father, hoping to find one that includes one of them conducting some magic, Patricia dips her hand into the bowl and recites another spell. No such image appears.

  From her concoctions, Patricia cannot see which granddaughter Agatha chose as her successor, or if Agatha chose to let her magic die with her as she had always claimed she would. After an impatient sigh, Patricia realizes her next task—she is going to San Francisco to meet Agatha’s family.

  ~ ~ ~

  Regina doesn’t know what to think of the sudden bout of nausea forcing her into a tight fetal position in the middle of her bed. Nearly two centuries of immortal existence and never has Regina felt as sick as she does now, except for the day her mother died.

  But it isn’t just the nausea that concerns her, nor her muscles throbbing, nor her body trembling from a cold sweat; it’s the random images of Agatha spinning inside her head that are unsettling. After keeping her nausea at bay for just a few minutes longer, as she shuffles through unexpected memories of her sister witch, Regina heads straight to her bathroom to throw up.

  Hours after her cheek found a relatively comfortable position on the cool marble tiles on the bathroom floor, with tears and saliva dried on her chin and in the folds of her long red hair, the sound of her cell phone wakes her. Regina squints toward the dim rays of sunlight shining through the window blinds. Who would possibly call me this early in the morning? A cramp forms in her stomach when she pushes herself up to kneel over the toilet. Vertigo takes hold the instant she rises to her feet and sends her equilibrium into a spin. She grabs the bathroom’s doorframe to hold herself up and, a couple of clumsy footsteps later, finally makes it to her bed. She takes one last deep breath before shutting her eyes and surrendering to a long, deep sleep.

  ~ 3 ~

  MEMORABILIA

  After consoling Katarina most of the morning, Kevin and his wife Paula spend the afternoon making arrangements for Agatha’s wake tomorrow. Logan tries to watch television with his little sister, but after blankly staring at the screen, the two eventually fall asleep. Alone in her room, Jasmyn attempts to watch television, cries, sleeps, and writes in her journal.. Her door has been closed for most of the day.

  As twilight approaches, Logan stands up from the living room couch and stretches his arms out and upwards. He tugs on the purple and pink wool blanket wrapped around Katarina, the same blanket Agatha stitched before Katarina was born, and wakes her up. A sleepy Katarina pulls it back, bundling the worn edges up under a tight hug. Jinx, their mini golden retriever, growls up at Logan.

  “You won’t be able to go to sleep later tonight if you keep napping.” Logan attempts another tug, “Let’s do something together.”

  “I don't want to do anything.”

  “We’ve been sleeping and vegging all afternoon.”

  “But... I feel sad.”

  “I know, Kat, but maybe you’ll feel better if we do something. Keeping your mind busy will help you stop thinking about being sad. Come on.”

  “Like what?” Katarina asks, pouting.

  Her pitiful face squeezes Logan’s heart, and he sighs. “If Nana were alive right now, and everything were normal, and you could do anything in the world, what would it be?”

  “I’d sit with Nana so she could read me a story from her book,” Katarina says. Her pink, swollen eyes follow the blanket’s stitch pattern that switches between shades of pink and purple.

  Logan smiles softly. “Okay. Let’s go get her book.”

  He takes Katarina’s hand, pulls her up and out of the blanket’s hold, and heads up the stairs to their grandmother’s room. Just before opening the door, Katarina pulls back on Logan’s hand. “Wait. She’s not in there… is she?”

  “No Kat. She’s not in there anymore. It’s okay to go inside.”

  “But…” Katarina’s eyes begin to moisten.

  Logan kneels down in front of his little sister. “Kat, if you don’t want to go inside, it’s okay. Tell me what the book looks like, and I’ll find it for you.”

  “No, I’ll go in.” Katarina inhales deeply and blows a long burst of air through narrowed lips. “I can do it.”

  With her hand in his, Logan leads Katarina into their grandmother’s bedroom. Jinx immediately jumps up onto Agatha’s bed and lies on his side on the pillows.

  Along the dresser is their grandmother’s jewelry box displaying her many antique necklaces, pendants, and charms. Katarina is drawn to the sparkling gems. “I’ve always loved Nana’s jewelry.” She stares down at a ruby amulet. After fumbling through rings, bracelets, and brooches holding a variety of colored stones, Katarina sees a round, steel medallion with a black dragon etched on its face. The other pieces in her hands slide back into the jewelry box as Katarina lifts the pendant up to her eyes for a closer inspection. Although she found all of her grandmother’s trinkets pretty, this medallion is not like the others. It doesn’t glimmer. Rather, it’s made of steel, and its round edges are worn and dented. On the face is a dragon etching stained black; flames burst from the dragon’s snout, and its jagged tail curls down and then upwards in front of it, forming a round border along the medallion’s edge. She flips it to see more etchings on the other side that look like words from the Book of Whispers.

  Katarina's eyes focus on the black stain of the dragon's tail. I wonder why Nana never wore this. She loved wearing her necklaces. Maybe it’s special. Maybe she hid it for a reason. I should put it back. But it’s so pretty. Maybe someone gave it to her. Maybe she made it. Maybe—

  “Why don’t you put it on?” Logan asks, interrupting Katarina's thoughts.

  “Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “Mom and Dad wouldn’t mind.”

  Katarina looks at the medallion and then back at Logan. “What if Nana wanted Jaz to have it?”

  “Jaz will understand.”

  Katarina raises her eyebrows, questioning Logan’s claim.