The Forever Girl Read online

  THE FOREVER GIRL

  A Novel by Rebecca Hamilton

  www.theforevergirl.com

  The Forever Girl Series | Volume One

  Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca Hamilton

  All rights reserved.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  The book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without the permission of the publisher. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  An Immortal Ink Publishing Book, published by arrangement with the author.

  Immortal Ink Publishing, LLC Registered Offices

  13302 Winding Oak Court, Suite A

  Tampa, FL 33612

  www.immortalinkpublishing.com

  REVIEWS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  Harper Collins wrote:

  “The voice is clear and easy-to-read; it’s rare to see such natural flow and tempo from a debut author. Also, in Sophia I believe we have a really strong—albeit misunderstood!—heroine. The relationships that Rebecca creates between Sophia and her parents and friends are compelling, and you want to find out more about this girl with such a mysterious life.”

  Gold Medal Book | Authonomy November 2010

  Community Favorite in Contemporary Fantasy | Book Country 2011

  Buzz Book in Contemporary Fantasy | Book Country 2011

  Community Favorite Writer | Book Country 2011

  SciFi-Fantasy Final Round Elevation | WeBook 2011

  Top 20 Across All Genres | You Write On 2011

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Sophia’s journey is representative of one fictional Wiccan, not all real life Wiccans. No character’s actions are intended to represent any religious group or sect they claim association with. This novel is for entertainment purposes only and not intended as social commentary on any religion. I do not subscribe to or condemn any religion.

  DEDICATIONS

  For my husband, David: It took three laptops, countless hours, and all your patience, but we’re here, and you’re mostly still in one piece.

  For my business and writing partner, Rudy: May we forever evade unfollowing, email-blocking, pineapples, and all other phobias.

  And, most importantly, for my children: I love you for who you are and who you’ve made me. Thank you for being my heart and inspiration.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  {chapter one}

  AN EVER-PRESENT STATIC had moved into my head like a squatter I couldn’t evict, and I thought getting rid of it would be my best shot at survival. Like all I needed was silence, even if only within myself, to feel at home.

  I was wrong.

  My decision to rid myself of the white noise started with Mrs. Franklin staring at me from across the diner as though I was possessed by some demon spirit.

  She always looked at me that way, and it wasn’t just because I sometimes spaced out and screwed up simple pancake orders.

  I crossed the black-and-white tiled floor to the jukebox, hoping Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ would drown out the wasping in my mind.

  “Sophia!” Mrs. Franklin’s high-pitched, singsong voice cut into my thoughts.

  I gripped the sides of the jukebox and turned my head toward her. “Yes?”

  She smoothed invisible wrinkles from her paisley, ankle-length dress. “Check, please. I’d prefer to leave before any secular music touches my ears.”

  I walked to the register, printed her check, and headed over to the red vinyl booth where she sat. “Anything else, Mrs. Franklin?”

  “I was hoping you’d reconsidered my offer on your house.”

  Of course I hadn’t. Why would I sell my inheritance unless I’d make enough to leave this rotten town? “I’m not interes—”

  She grabbed my arm, and I forced my glare from her whitening knuckles to her scowling face. I considered pulling free, but if we caused a scene, I would be the one to go down. The customer’s always right, after all.

  She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “You either get out of that house, or we’ll take you out of it.”

  Great. Why couldn’t she put that in one of those notes she was always plastering all over my property? I stared back, uncertain what to say. But I didn’t need to say anything. She gave me a long, warning glare, then released my arm, gathered her purse, and hurried to the checkout counter.

  I blew a stray hair from my eyes and gazed past the booths, out the window to the Rocky Mountains on the horizon. Belle Meadow was thirty minutes from Denver but ages from the modern day. This town was a trap, a collection of crazies. Including myself. If Colorado was the heart of the southwest, Belle Meadow was a clogged artery.

  On my way back to the kitchen, one of the two boys sitting at table four flagged me down to request a milkshake. I tried focusing on the order as I ran the blender, but I couldn’t tell where the sounds in my head ended and the sounds of the real world began. A swarm of bees, a blender running, the warning of a rattlesnake—they were all one with the hissing curse.

  “I heard she’s a witch,” the older boy whispered loudly.

  His friend grinned. “She’s blonder than your sister, even … and probably twice as dumb.”

  Right. Sophia Parsons, town idiot. Pale, blonde, and brown-eyed. As bland as oatmeal, yet somehow I’d become the rumor mill’s hot sauce.

  I wanted to dump the boy’s shake over his greasy little head, but instead, I recalled the Wiccan Rede that had so long guided me: An it harm none, do what ye will.

  Did they think harassing me would inspire me to leave town? It wasn’t as though I wanted to stay. I was only stuck here because Mother would have an aneurism if I moved away, and Dad would be heartbroken.

  That, and I couldn’t afford the higher utility bills in the city, and my job search since returning from Colorado State University was proving fruitless. Apparently, no one wanted to hire a twenty-two-year-old fresh out of college to teach history.

  The greasy-haired boy nodded toward the diner’s front door. “Let’s get out of here. She’s giving me the creeps.”

  Though they left, the itchy feeling of their judgments did not. Maybe if Mother hadn’t seen the altar in my room during one of her unannounced visits, she wouldn’t have announced my Wiccan faith to Mrs. Franklin. Then, perhaps, the town wouldn’t be concerning the
mselves with my personal life.

  The ding of the diner’s front door opening brought me back to reality: burnt grease and coffee on the air, along with my duty to serve whoever strolled in. It just so happened that ‘whoever’ was Sheriff Locumb. He entered the diner with a purposeful gait, scanning the room before heading my way.

  “Hey, Sheriff.” I righted an upside-down coffee mug and began to pour. “Anything besides the usual?”

  His mustache twitched. He brushed some crumbs away from where his stomach bulged against his brown police uniform, then lifted his gaze. “Miss Sophia Parsons?”

  I stopped pouring mid-cup. Hello? I serve your coffee every day. Obviously it’s me. “Yeah?”

  Jack came up beside me, drying his hands on a towel. “Hey, Sheriff. What’s going on?”

  Locumb cleared his throat. “I’m, uh, afraid I need to ask Miss Parsons to come with me.”

  Jack and I stared at each other and then back at the sheriff.

  “Is this a joke?” I asked.

  I didn’t really think he was joking. Sheriff Locumb wasn’t the joking kind. Everyone in the diner watched. Even the jukebox went silent.

  Jack leaned closer to the sheriff, lowering his voice. “What’s this about, Jerry?”

  Locumb sniffled. “Can’t discuss it, Jack. We just need to ask Sophia some questions.”

  My heartbeat picked up. Sheriff Locumb could be a nice guy … in a diner. But I didn’t want to be on the other end of his questioning. Not again. Not ever.

  Jack offered nothing more than a shrug. Trying to appear calm, I removed my apron and gently placed it on the counter.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me get my stuff.”

  After promising Jack I’d make up my shift over the weekend, I headed to my Jeep and pulled up behind Sheriff Locumb’s cruiser.

  I spent the drive to the sheriff’s office in a cold sweat, trying to stop myself from shaking. No handcuffs, no reading of my rights. I wasn’t under arrest. He was even allowing me to follow him to the station.

  That whole thing with Mr. Petrenko—that was long over with, right? I’d only found his body.

  I hadn’t killed the man. No matter what anyone thought.

  * * *

  SHERIFF LOCUMB AND I sat in a small room with a table and two chairs and a cheap light embedded into the suspended ceiling overhead. I wiped my palms on my pants, but the sweat kept coming.

  He pulled a picture up on his cell phone. “Look familiar?”

  Maybe he should’ve gotten an eight-by-twelve print. What was the picture of? Wood? A reddish-orange figure eight and a cross? I frowned and shook my head. “Should this look familiar?”

  “Someone spray-painted this on the abandoned grain elevator,” he said coolly. “Why don’t you tell me what you know?”

  “What I know about spray-paint?”

  “Look.” He leveled his gaze at me. “Mrs. Franklin said one of the women in her congregation—well, her daughter got sick. They think you had something to do with this.”

  “Mrs. Franklin thinks I have something to do with everything.”

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Well, what? I didn’t get anyone sick.”

  He puffed his cheeks and blew out a breath. “I’m not saying you got anyone sick, Sophia. They think you hexed their child by spray-painting this satanic symbol.”

  “I’m in trouble because you think I put a hex on someone? You’re kidding.”

  Belle Meadow might be a small town, but surely it wasn’t so dull that they needed to call me down to the station for this.

  “You’re here because Mrs. Franklin suggested you might be the one who vandalized the abandoned grain elevator, not because you ‘cursed’ someone.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “Well, did you?”

  “I’m Wiccan.”

  He stared blankly. Blinked. “What’s that have to do with the case?”

  “Wiccans don’t believe in Satan.”

  “Listen, lady. I don’t care what you believe in. Why don’t you just tell me where you were when the offense took place?”

  “When would that be?”

  “May tenth.”

  “Three hours from here, at Colorado State, taking my senior year finals.” Something a few minutes of research would have told him without dragging me down here. Besides, how did Mrs. Franklin know the date? Did she take daily drives around town with her calendar and journal, looking for signs of demonic worship?

  Sheriff Locumb leaned back in his chair, slapping his hands against his knees before standing. “I’m sure you wouldn’t mind waiting here while I check with the school?”

  I gestured toward the door. “Go ahead.”

  Sheriff Locumb returned with a cup of coffee and an apology. I didn’t drink the coffee, but I did ask him about the sick kid, and he told me it’d just been a case of chicken pox. Not a demonic plague or anything like that.

  After squaring everything away, I returned outside to my Jeep and gripped the steering wheel. I was finding it very hard to respect Mrs. Franklin’s version of ‘Christianity’ right now, though most other Christians I knew would probably struggle with it, too.

  Either way, I couldn’t deal with her crazy accusations and the damn hissing. Something had to go.

  Taking three deep breaths, I pushed the hissing as far into the back of my skull as possible. I wasn’t about to go back to work. Someone was bound to interrupt my relaxation efforts with a request for a drink refill or a complaint that their jalapeno loaf was too spicy or their ginger-lime chicken wasn’t chickeny enough.

  As I drove home, I concentrated on the road—on one mailbox after another, on the way tree branches laced overhead, even on the glare of traffic lights, counting the seconds until they turned green. Anything to distract me from the noise.

  My Jeep shushed along the pavement, but the roll of the road didn’t do me any good. The quieter the world around me, the louder the buzzing in my brain. Coping was no longer a viable option.

  At the last major cross street before my neighborhood, the noise in my head roared. I slammed my palm against the steering wheel, gritting my teeth.

  Enough was enough. I flicked my turn signal in the other direction and veered onto the highway before my courage fled. It was time to turn away from caution and toward Sparrow’s Grotto. Toward something that might silence the hissing forever.

  {chapter two}

  THE FORTY-MINUTE DRIVE to Cripple Creek, home of Sparrow’s Grotto, was worth spending the bit of cash I made at the diner. A Wiccan shop would not fare well in Belle Meadow, but, thankfully, the surrounding towns had pulled themselves into modern America.

  I shrugged off my seatbelt and grabbed my list from the glove compartment before stepping out of my Jeep. A wad of fingerprinted gum blocked the parking meter slot. No way was I hunting down another space. I dug the gum out with the blade of my car key and forced a quarter past the sticky residue.

  Take that, gummy parking meter!

  I stared at the shop I’d first set foot in when I was sixteen—the place that always provided answers. Doctors hadn’t been able to help with the noise. Tinnitus, they’d said, as if this were only a ringing in my ears.

  Tinnitus, my ass.

  But I’d gone to them first because magic was something I turned to only when necessary. After today, I was convinced this was one of those times. Besides, if I cured the hissing in my head, it might help others around me, too. Heck, I might even become a competent waitress.

  I shoved my thoughts aside and headed into Sparrow’s Grotto, where coyote figurines prowled the shelves, patchouli and sandalwood infused the air, and notes of Celtic music relaxed my nerves. The wall opposite the checkout counter was stacked with books, and the center aisles were filled with herbs, oils, candles, chalk and salts, small dishes, and other ritual implements. Athames, bolines, and other sharp objects were kept locked in the back.

  Paloma, the shop owner and my long-time mentor, burst through a be
aded curtain, her out-swung arms breaking the image of bamboo shoots. Her long hair, brown as coconut husks, tangled in her large, gold hoop earrings.

  “Oi, Sophia!” she said. “It’s been far too long!”

  “You’re telling me. How’ve you been?”

  After a quick bout of chitchat, she reviewed my list, her gaze only interrupted for a moment as she wiped a stray hair from the sun-weathered skin of her forehead. “What sort of ritual do you have in mind?”

  “Something for positive energy.” A request for positive energy wasn’t as demanding as a ritual for silence, and I never felt right making demands while using magic.

  “Ah,” she said, tapping a finger against her lips. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She disappeared behind her beaded curtain while I admired a few antiques on a shelf near the counter. A small violin charm made me smile.

  Let me play my tiny violin. That had been Dad’s favorite saying when I was in a rotten mood. Though he wasn’t one to coddle, he’d always been warmer in his love than Mother. I set the charm beside the cash register. It would be a perfect addition to the bracelet Grandfather Dunne had given me shortly before he died. He’d even removed several links so it wouldn’t slip from my wrist.

  Paloma returned with four plum-colored herbal pouches stringed shut with thin black cords. “I hope you don’t mind, but we’re out of agrimony. I’ve substituted with eyebright.”

  “I thought agrimony was best for banishing negative energy?”

  “The eyebright will bring balance. My mother used this for a similar ritual in Belém when I was young. In Brazil, we grew agrimony in our garden. The sweet apricot scent is lovely.”

  I bit my lip. Eyebright was not part of the plan, and I hadn’t come all this way for air freshener. Mental clarity might help, but it generally wasn’t suggested to rush into a ritual, and that included changing details at the last minute. One herb could change everything, and I didn’t have time to redo all my research.