Chapter Eight

 

             

            Manderly Blakeney stared at the television screen, but he wasn’t watching it. Instead, his sight was turned toward the couple kissing in the kitchen.

            Something about Jonathan Mauk bothered him. It wasn’t a feeling he often felt these days, but in the past he had been keenly aware of the same warning signal whenever he was around a certain kind of person. A person who was known as a disbeliever. A person who didn’t and wouldn’t accept the possibility that witches truly existed.

            A person who went out of their way to discredit any claims made by a person of the craft.

            Getting to his feet, he padded in his socks over to the front window and stared out at the falling snow. Already little piles were gathered on the lights threaded around the picket fence surrounding the front yard. The result was a line of little glowing balls of ice. It made for a very pretty effect. One Emily would have loved to see.

            Tight pain twisted in his heart, and Manderly grimaced. No matter how long ago she had died, he would never stop loving her. It was part of the curse of being a tempus witch. Once that lifelong mate was found, there would never be another. Emily was gone from him, and not even his great powers could raise her. Even if he could, he wouldn’t. Death was not to be toyed with because it always won out in the end.

            The faint sound of giggling caught his ear. The girls were gathered in Amy’s room, no doubt talking about Tam’s great fortune. Once Mauk left, his firstborn had come back into the den to let him know she would be going over to Jonathan’s trailer tomorrow night where he promised to fix her a sumptuous meal in honor of her birthday. Manderly knew that afterwards Tam would introduce the young man to the sex hex test. He already knew Jonathan would pass. It was predestined. Yet that uneasy feeling simply would not go away. Nor could it be ignored.

            However, if there was a glimmer of hope to be felt, it was the knowledge that Jonathan wasn’t a naysayer. That much Manderly could guarantee, because if he was, there would be no way the man would want to be around his daughter, much less lust for her the way he did tonight.

            “So why am I getting these little tingly alarms?” Manderly murmured. “Emily, how I wish you were here. How I wish you could share with me in the wonder and beauty of what is happening to our family. Our Tam has found her heart‘s call. Our Kim is carrying our first grandchild. Em… Em…”

            With the advent of Kimberly and Rick becoming a couple, Manderly knew the drought had been broken. It would only be a short matter of time before all of the girls would eventually find their prospective mates. Altogether, their search for a lifelong partner would end before next October rolled around. The close spacing was part of being tempus witches, even half witches. 

            A door slammed. The girls regrouped in Penny’s room. The celebration would continue throughout the holiday. Again, the time perspective would be initiated. The wedding would take place in January. It had to, before Sandy’s birthday arrived in February.

            First Kim, then Tam. Next would be Sandy, followed by Penny, and finally Amy. Not quite following the oldest-to-youngest, but he hadn’t expected it to. After all, luck and happenstance rarely ran a straight, predictable path. It was time that guided their lives and abilities. Time and only time.

            A commercial blared in the background. Manderly frowned, and the television automatically shut itself off.

            Somehow he knew he had to find out why Jonathan Mauk disturbed him, and he had to find out soon. The test was tomorrow night, and by Christmas day, Tamberly would introduce her new fiancé to the family. If Mauk’s secret wasn’t known by then, the chances were great that Manderly would never discover it, and that was a possibility that both frightened and angered him.

            If there was no other purpose to his life, now that Emily was gone, it was seeing to the safety and happiness of his precious daughters. They would remain his utmost priority. Following them, his grandchildren.

            He walked into the kitchen, lighting the two single candles sitting on the sideboard with a nod in their direction. Pulling down the large copper bowl from its resting place on the upper shelf of the open cupboard, he took it to the sink to fill it three-quarters of the way with water. From there he took the bowl to the table and sat it where the light of the moon could shine on it.

            The water sloshed inside the bowl. Manderly waited for it to settle. When he could finally see the moon’s reflection on the surface, he waved his hands over the image and murmured a few words. The water’s surface remained unblemished. The moon never wavered. Manderly stared in surprise at the calm.

            Jonathan Mauk was clean. There was nothing in the young man’s personal past that was disturbing or worrisome, but it was faint relief.

            Why did this persistent feeling of unease continue to bother him?

            “I’ll find out your secret, Mr. Mauk,” Manderly swore softly. “I just pray I will be able to accept it once I do.”

            He dumped the water into the sink and set the bowl back onto the shelf. With a simple wave of his hand, the lights inside the kitchen went dark, and Manderly Blakeney retired to his cold and lonely bed.