Harvest E-Book

Rachel Wehrli

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Now that Ellie is back in San Catalin, her number one priority is to break the curse her boyfriend, Warren, her brother, Kane, and her friends, Sam, Jo, and Jesse suffer from. This leads her to Kateri's descendent, Rosario Pico. While the witches work together to find a solution, sisters Nora and Blair also investigate the possibility of a witch hunter in town.

Leseprobe

Rachel Wehrli

Harvest

A Bloodlines Novel

Copyright © 2024 by Rachel Wehrli

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Rachel Wehrli asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Rachel Wehrli has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

First edition

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To all young witches.

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

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

Glossary

About the Author

Also by Rachel Wehrli

CHAPTER ONE

The absence of light and sound robbed Ellie of any sense of self or safety. It was a vision. She could tell by the light feeling in her body. The distant sound of rain pounding dirt filtered through first. A door slammed. The scene came into focus. She was inside a cabin style house.

She saw Alexander Hemmings. The direct ancestor of Ellie’s friends Samuel and Johanna Hemmings. He burst into the house shouting at the top of his lungs, “Abigail! Abigail!”

Both Alexander and Ellie heard shrill screams erupt from the bedroom he shared with his wife. Ellie covered her ears. A woman with dark curls hurried out of the room with his son’s shoulders in her hands. The cries continued.

“What of Abigail? What of the baby?” Alexander demanded.

“Alexander,” the woman said with solemn resignation. “It’s not good—take Wesley so I can tend to her.”

Alexander accepted his son in his arms but kept his worried and frantic eyes on the dark-haired woman. “What ails my wife?”

“When the storm hit, she began to bleed. And she started to feel pain in her womb. Alexander.” Her voice grew somber. “She is losing the baby.”

“What? That can’t be…”

The last words of Kateri echoed in his head.

“You will only have your son, and he will only have a son, and so on your name will continue in one bloodline, never to grow and prosper as you desire it to.”

Alexander collapsed in a chair, hanging his head low in shame at the doom he had saddled his family and his entire circle with. The memory of the first dream she’d had of Hemmings and Kateri and the origin of the curse her friends and boyfriend were still plagued with echoed like a distant memory trying to replay on the surface.

“Only the name of Hemmings—the name of Towers—the name of Everton; the name of Procter. This curse, this lesson, I give my life for.”

“What have I done?” Alexander whispered in fear.

“Ellie!”

The cry of her name came from the waking world. It jolted Ellie out of her dozing at her boyfriend, Warren’s, desk in his room, her cheek sticking to her math papers. She pried the homework from her face, swiveling to face Warren sitting under his laptop on his bed. “Sorry—dozed off for a minute.”

“For a minute?” Warren asked. “You were out for at least ten minutes. And moving. What did you see?”

“Just more of the jumbled mess that was Sam and Jo’s great-great-very great grandfather’s life,” Ellie quipped, standing from her seat, and crawling next to Warren’s legs on the bed, stretching her limbs out in all directions like a tired feline. “That dude dealt with a lot of grief.”

“Didn’t you say it was his fault?” Warren questioned, abandoning his essay for now, laying the laptop on his large side table.

Both Ellie and Warren were supernatural beings with unique powers and different consequences to those powers. Warren could move things with his mind, but every time he did, it spread disease through his body, moving him closer to the premature death that killed one of his best friend’s fathers. This fate also affected his friends—Jesse, Samuel, Johanna—as well as Ellie’s adopted brother, Kane. Ellie was a clairvoyant, but her gift wouldn’t kill her. She and Kane had come to San Catalin, searching for Warren and the others to try to defeat Kane’s curse. Ellie had premonitions in her sleep about the origins of the curse, their ancestors who created San Catalin.

“Yeah, he and the others committed mass genocide. But the curse has been passed from generation to generation for years now. What lesson are you all supposed to learn that you haven’t learned by now?”

“Maybe how to control the addiction,” Warren suggested. “How to beat the curse.”

Ellie laid her head in the crook of her elbow. “You’re doing just fine with it. So are Sam and Jo. Even Jesse has calmed down—despite the breakup. Why hasn’t the curse broken itself for you guys?”

“Maybe because Kane didn’t beat it.” Warren’s thoughts returned to her lost brother, still lying comatose in the colony house basement. They couldn’t trust him not to use his powers to hurt any of them or anyone else. So Blair, another friend and witch, had concocted a potion out of belladonna to put him into a coma-like state until they found a way to remove the curse. “Maybe it’s an all-or-nothing thing.”

“Or maybe I just have to track down the witch to break the curse for us.” She’d had a vision of a Native American witch named Kateri cursing the Towers, Hemmings, Everton, and Procter lines after the men tried to take advantage of young Native American girls in the woods. The only certain way to break the curse was to get her descendent to remove it.

“I’m still trying to find a powerful enough blood ritual to track down Kateri’s descendent, since her children were actually Hemmings. But it’s been so long, the relation is pretty weak by now. I don’t know if it’ll work.”

“You’ll figure it out.” Warren said. “You’re brilliant.”

“Not brilliant enough for AP Calculus,” Ellie said with a pout. “I don’t get any of this new stuff you guys have been doing.”

“At least you don’t have to repeat senior year all over again.”

“Thanks to some pretty clever spell binding on Nora’s part. Not my hard work.”

“You’re smart enough to catch up anyway,” Warren told her.

Ellie fought a pink blush on her cheeks, keeping her flustered exterior as she flipped herself off the bed to snatch her math papers off the desk and hold them out for him, sitting on the bed in front of his legs with her legs crossed pretzel-style. “Look at this—look at this alien hoodoo! It’s impossible.”

He chuckled. “It’s not as difficult as you’re making it. It’s just math.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Ellie grumbled and tossed the papers on the comforter. “You’ve been there to learn all this stuff. I’m at a slight disadvantage—you know, with the whole being dead for months thing.”

When Ellie and Kane came to San Catalin, Kane had been driven mad by the curse and tried to steal Warren’s powers to overcome the effects. It had led to a fight between the two supernaturals, and Ellie got caught in the crossfire. She’d died from a blow meant for Warren. Warren had been beside himself with grief for months. It was miraculous that she had been brought back to life by a special kind of healer, called a Sachmis.

Warren frowned, not amused in the slightest as she tried to make light of a sore situation. “Still not funny.”

Ellie tried not to crack a smile as she took in her boyfriend’s frown, reaching forward to take his hands. “Come on—it’s all in the past now. If we can’t joke about it now, when can we?”

Warren half-heartedly glared at his girlfriend. “It’s only been two months since you came back, Ellie.”

“We’re almost out of High School, Warren,” Ellie pointed out. “Two weeks from now we’ll be graduates and on our way to college. Why don’t we take a vacation when things calm down?”

“What do you mean?” Warren asked her, wrapping an arm around her waist and dragging her to his side.

Ellie burrowed into his chest. “After graduation, before college. After the curse is broken. Let’s go somewhere. Anywhere. We can both afford it. Let’s travel a little before college.”

“How do you know we’ll have time?” Warren asked her.

“You said yourself that I’ll figure this Kateri thing out,” Ellie told him. “I’ll find her descendant and get him or her to take off the curse soon enough. After that, Kane will be back to normal… well, I’ll probably get him to go to therapy—find a supernatural therapist, of course. Maybe Blair or Nora know someone. Lord knows those two have probably needed some professional help—”

“Baby,” Warren cut her off. “You’re rambling.”

Ellie blushed, laying her head on his shoulder. “Sorry—my point is… when all this is over with, and we finally get the chance to relax—I’d like to get out of San Catalin for a while.”

Warren hugged her to his body. “I think that’s a great idea.”

CHAPTER TWO

Ellie had been relentless in her pursuit of Kateri’s descendant from the moment she had come back from the dead. After recovering from the grief of being dead and resurrected, she scrutinized every available census, history book, financial statement, or official document. As well as every magical text she could get her hands on. She had only allowed herself some reprieve to get back into the groove at Ashby. And even that required Warren and Nora’s pressure. Now that graduation loomed, her self-imposed deadline hung over her head. The anxious feeling of running out of time to find the witch they desperately needed had been pervasive for weeks.

“Anything new come up?” Nora greeted Ellie at their lockers. Nora Ruiz and her older sister Blair had moved to San Catalin around the same time Ellie and Kane had. They’d been beckoned because of the beacon Ellie created when she’d had her first vision of Warren and his friends. Nora could move things with her mind, like Warren. But she could also project a duplicate of herself to other locations. Blair could deflect supernatural attacks and create force fields.

“It’s been easy enough to track the official Hemmings ancestry and all, but not so easy to find a record of Kateri’s kids. I even tried searching through any Native American Katherines, as well as her children’s names and the names Alexander referred to them as. There is brief mention of him quote unquote ‘rescuing’ two children from the ‘savages’, but he didn’t take them into his home.”

Nora’s boyfriend, Sam, who was also a Hemmings descendant, frowned at her words. “And what about this blood ritual? To use my and Jo’s blood to find a relative.”

“There are so many, but I can’t be sure that any of them will be strong enough to find a relative other than your parents or something,” Ellie explained. “This branch off happened at the literal creation of this city. It’s a weak link and I need to find a way to strengthen it.”

“You will,” Nora said. “Blair and I will help with research. Maybe there’s something we can do to prompt more visions.”

“Yeah, like maybe we could use a ritual to focus your visions more on the present lost Hemmings witch,” Sam said.

“It could work,” Ellie said, unsure. “I’m relatively new to this world compared to you guys.”

“Luckily, you have us guys to help you,” Nora said.

At lunch, their little group lived inside their bubble, surrounded by all the other teenagers discussing their own inane problems. Each couple was inside their own mini bubble. Ellie worked through her pile of homework while Warren encouraged and assisted her. Nora and Sam shared shy smiles over their opposing lunch options. Jo and Blair discussed local politics. Jesse was the only one left to his own devices, recently back on the market after he and Kalila Appleby broke up. Her mother had been the Sachmis to bring Ellie back to life and had died. One of the first things Kalila had said after losing her mother was, “Magic breaks everything it touches.” It had ended their relationship, and Jesse had no choice but to accept it and walk away.

“Let’s head out to Prep House today,” Jo suggested, breaking into the roar of voices around their bubble.

Everyone dropped their conversations and their forks to look at her, tension thick in the air. Prep House was a local bar and grill that catered to the teenage population of San Catalin. It was the go-to place when any young person in San Catalin wanted to relax, have some fun, take a break. They had frequently hung out there until they had to restrain a still-crazed Kane and prepare for Ellie’s re-entrance to the land of the living. And they’d been more preoccupied with finding a way to break the curse and graduating from High School.

“What?” Jo asked, raising her hands when she saw the vast array of awkward reactions from her friends. “This school year hasn’t been all rainbows and sunshine—I just think we could use a night of fun to take our minds off of things.”

“Jo, I have to find the curser,” Ellie pointed out, “so that I can get them to break the curse. I can’t afford to take breaks except for schoolwork.”

“You can afford one night, Ellie,” Jo argued. “You’re going to working yourself to death—again.”

“Still not funny,” Warren growled to his friend.

Ellie rolled her eyes and kissed her boyfriend’s cheek. “Calm down, babe. And Jo, I have to find this witch, and break the curse, and save my brother.”

“She does have a point, Ellie,” Nora agreed. “I mean, you just kind of instantly went back to work when you ‘woke up.’ You deserve a break. We all kind of do.”

“What she needs is a good night’s sleep,” Warren said.

“She can have fun,” Jesse said. “Just for a little while. And then go home and sleep—and pick up from there.” Growing up, Jesse had always been the first to advocate for fun over hard work. But he had done a lot of maturing since Ellie’s untimely death. His relationship with Kalila had contributed to his journey to maturity. After their breakup, it was a concern that he would slip back into a flight risk. But he hadn’t.

“I could lose my momentum if I stop,” Ellie told them with an air of desperation. She was intensely concentrated on her goal. “I can’t afford to lose the trail now that I’m finally getting somewhere.”

“You won’t lose it in one night,” Nora said. “C’mon, Ellie, just one night. To unwind—be normal.”

“I’ve never been normal before,” Ellie said. “Why try now?”

“Because you want to be,” Blair spoke for the first time.

She was right. Ellie had been having vivid and disturbing visions since she was a little girl. She didn’t have a real childhood because the other kids would avoid her after predicting three injuries, two extramarital affairs within her classmates’ parents, and a vicious murder. So, she had learned to keep these things to herself, but the damage had been done. Her only friends became her older brother and her own parents. It was one reason she was so eager to leave Ann Arbor after their parents died. It was a chance for a fresh start.

“Fine. Three hours—tops. And no beer.”

CHAPTER THREE

‘Rowdy’ was a gross understatement for the night. After three contraband beers, Jesse got into a shoving match with Guy Elliot over a game of pool. Jo, Sam, and Warren had to pull him away. Jo sat outside with him so that Ellie could enjoy the rest of her night off with the others.

“Are you sure he’ll be okay?” Ellie asked, looking back at the exit from her seat at a booth with her friends.

“For the last time, he’s fine.” Nora said with a huff.

“Maybe someone should go out there and check on him,” Ellie suggested.

“Jo’s out there with him,” Sam told her. “Relax. This night was supposed to be a break for you.”

“It’s been two hours and already there’s been drama,” Ellie said. “The concept of ‘taking a break’ went right out the window.”

“Well, then try to have some fun,” Nora told her. “We could check out the juke box, or play pool, or—”

“No offense, Nora,” Ellie cut in, “but other than Jesse’s fight, my mind’s been with which ritual mixed with which potion might be our best bet on finding the curser.”

“Can’t you just turn your mind off for one second?” Nora said, her voice dripping with exasperation at Ellie’s stubbornness.

Ellie shook her head. “No.”

Nora pouted, leaning back and flapping her hands at Warren. “Your turn!”

Warren smiled at their antics and leaned to whisper into Ellie’s ear. “Wanna dance?”

Ellie gave him a non-impressed look. “This isn’t Footloose. Dancing the night away isn’t going to fix everything and distract me.”

“Try,” Warren goaded, pushing her off the bench and taking her hand in his, pulling her off to the dance floor.

Ellie groaned, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I still don’t dance.”

“Sure, you don’t,” Warren said, chastely kissing her lips. “Tell me something—”

“I don’t remember being dead,” Ellie answered before Warren could ask his question. “I still don’t even remember dying.”

“How’d you know that’s what I was going to ask?” Warren asked her, perturbed.

Ellie narrowed her eyes at him, as if he should have known. “You’re dating a clairvoyant—did you really think you’d be able to keep anything from me?”

“I haven’t been keeping anything from you,” Warren denied. But even as the words left his mouth, he knew they were lies.

Warren had wanted the best for Ellie, to protect her after she got back the way he failed to protect her when she died. So, when she woke, and he took her to his home to clean up, he had taken the time to speak to the others downstairs in the sitting room. Warren had been thanking Nora for bringing Ellie a change of clothes when Jo cut into the conversation.

Once they realized Ellie had no memory of how she’d died and that Kane had caused her death, they argued over whether to tell her. Warren was adamantly against it, wanting to protect her relationship with her brother and her mental state. Jo was against deceiving her. Eventually, the group decided there was no use in opening that wound.

That was two months ago when Ellie ‘woke up.’ None of them had said a word. But had she seen something?

Warren’s internal panic twisted as Ellie gave him the skeptical expression that told him she was not buying what he was trying to sell. “Please. It’s only too obvious that you’ve all been dying to ask me if I’ve remembered anything. You’re not subtle at all.”

Relaxing, he said, “It’s just that…”

“You worry—and you’re curious,” Ellie finished for him, understanding in her tone. “I know, I do. But I don’t think I’m ever going to remember being dead because I don’t think I actually got to experience death.”

Warren leaned his forehead against hers. “Still not easy to hear about you being dead.”

“Does it make you feel better to know that I didn’t feel it?” Ellie asked him, looking into his eyes. “It wasn’t endless months of darkness for me, Warren. One second, I was at school with you and Kane and the next, I was waking up in your arms. No time passed for me. No pain.”

Warren’s lips quirked to the sides before he pressed his lips to her forehead. “Only a little, I guess. I just wish none of it had to happen at all.”

“I know it must have been hard for you,” Ellie whispered. “I know you, Warren. I know you spent those months I was dead just blaming yourself for it all. But you have to know that it wasn’t your fault. I may not remember what happened, but I know it’s not like you or Kane killed me. It was just an accident, I guess. And it’s fixed now, right? I’m alive and well.”

“Right,” Warren agreed, ignoring the small voice in his head that corrected her statement. Kane did kill you. It was his power that violently ended your life. Your own brother. “You’re here now, I know that. And I know that I should just be happy that you’re back, but—”

“But it’s something you have to get used to,” Ellie guessed. “You were dealing with my death, learning to accept it and move on, and then suddenly there’s a way to bring me back, and now I’m back. And you have to get used to it again.”

“The last part I’m okay with getting used to,” Warren answered just as the song ended. They weren’t dancing anymore anyway, swaying back and forth with their arms wrapped around each other. But standing in the middle of a throng of people was getting crowded and exposed. So, the couple made their way to the bar, taking seats on the stools and keeping their hands intertwined together as Warren ordered two sodas for them. When the bartender dropped them off, Warren tipped him. “Don’t think I’m anything but happy that you’re back.”

“I know you are,” she said. “I’m happy to be back and be with you. But it still doesn’t feel like it’s over yet.”

“Right. We still need to find the curser and end the curse.”

“And then it’ll be done,” Ellie said with a smile. “And then we can try to lead normal lives together.”

“I can’t wait for that part. A life with you—a normal one—sounds pretty damn good.”

“It does.” Ellie smiled. “Have you committed to UCLA yet?”

“Officially yes, mentally—no,” Warren told her with a bashful grin. “Have you charmed your way into a college acceptance letter?”

“I’ve actually wanted to talk to you about that…” Ellie trailed off. “Nora helped me pull some strings to get through all the red tape that is the college admission process… and I got into USC and Irvine for journalism!”

Warren smiled widely. “That’s great, babe—why were you nervous to tell me?”

Ellie blushed. “We’ve never talked about what we were going to do once we got to college. I mean—both schools will be close to UCLA, so there’s no distance thing, but we’ll both be busy with classes and stuff. I didn’t want to wrap a ball and chain on your ankle prematurely and just kinda assume—”

“You’re rambling, baby.” Warren kissed her, just to stop her word vomit. “Do you think I’d go through all of this to bring you back just to break up once college started? I’m committed to you.”

Happiness radiated off her. “Really?”

“Really.” He couldn’t help but kiss her again.

The contact spurred something within Ellie, a flash going off underneath her eyelids and the world of Prep House faded away. She was somewhere else. A quaint house, painted with bright colors and evenly lit with the morning sun beaming in through all the open windows.

Ellie saw a young woman with deeply tan skin and thick stick straight black hair. She was dancing around her kitchen, lifting on her toes and plucking a leaf from a plant with vines hanging out the window above the sink. She licked the v-tip of the leaf and paused before she turned to toss the leaf into a bubbling pot over the stove. As the leaf dissolved, she peered into a worn-out book of parchment next to the stove. Her fingernail ran along the dark letters of what looked like a recipe. The title was clear as day—Plant Medicine.

Ellie’s body seized as she was pulled out of the vision. Warren’s worried eyes were on her as he cupped her face and said her name. “Ellie? Where’d you go just now?”

“I…” she paused, swallowing, “I just had a vision.”

“What?” Warren asked, more than confused. “You only have those in your sleep.”

“I’ve only ever had visions in dreams before,” Ellie said. “I’ve never had one while awake.”

“What does this mean, then?”

“I have no idea.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“So… say that again?”

Ellie stared at Jesse. They were all congregated in Warren’s living room now. And Jesse just couldn’t wrap his brain around this.

“I saw her, the witch we’re looking for,” Ellie told him. “While awake, which is weird enough alone. But I saw her. I know it was her. She was mixing some kind of brew. Seemed like a natural at it, too. She barely consulted her recipe book. But it wasn’t a grimoire.”

“What’s a grim-ma-ware?” Sam asked.

Nora looked at him from her spot in front of him on the couch. “A grimoire. It’s a witch’s spell and potion book.”

“Oh,” he said. “Do you have one?”

“Of course.”

“So, what now?” Jesse interrupted. “How do we find her?”

Ellie didn’t have a definitive answer. “I know it’s a she now. I know roughly how old she is. She didn’t look much older than us. But I didn’t get a name or address. Hopefully, I’ll have another vision. But I’m still going to work on finding a blood ritual.”

“Why are you having such specific visions?” Blair asked. “Aren’t they usually to find supernaturals?”

“Then it makes sense that she’d see this girl. She’s a witch, or a curser, or whatever,” Jo said.

“But she also sighted your ancestors,” Blair pointed out. “Sighting them doesn’t really help with the basic use of a Seer to build a covenant if they’re already dead.”

“Maybe my mind knows what I need to know, and it triggers my visions to give me clues,” Ellie said. “I’ve had non-supernatural visions, too. It’s usually just… revealing something to me.”

“So, what’s the next step?” Jesse asked.

“Keep looking.”

When Ellie opened her eyes, she found herself in a dark shop. She noticed herbs, charms, and books, and recognized that this must be some kind of Wiccan shop. It was dark outside and a glance at a clock on the wall told her it was 1:34 AM.

“There you are.”

Ellie turned around to see a woman standing behind the counter at the back. She had gray-streaked dark hair and tan skin. She looked to be somewhere in her forties, but still youthful. Her eyes looked towards Ellie but not right at her. It gave her the sense that the woman couldn’t see her, but knew she was there.

“I’ve been calling for a few hours now,” the woman said. “Before you try to talk to me, I can’t hear you. But I know when spells start working, so I know you’re here. My name is Amethyst Shaw. I was a friend of your mother’s.”

Ellie could feel her heart about to beat out of her chest at the mention of her mother. This woman had answers for her. Some she desperately wanted to know but had pushed to the back burner.