Spell Bound

Spell Bound Chapter 2

“No.” The woman waved her hand toward the door. “Dilby came to take him DownBelow. Said the band wanted him to sit in on percussion. He’s got a gift for music, your boy.”

Cold fear swamped her before she could prepare, stealing her breath and crushing her stomach in its grip. She nearly ran for the door before she stopped and took a deep breath.

“Hey, sweetie,” Vibia said, frowning at her. “He’s fine. You know Dilby won’t let anything happen to him.”

“Yeah.” She forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m sure he’s fine.”

Dilby had been the first person to befriend them after Shea had gotten the job here.  Shea hadn’t wanted to make friends, but Dilby had been relentless. In a good way. Always chatty but never nosy. The lead singer of DownBelow’s house band, Dilby had been the first person to put a musical instrument in Leo’s hands. She’d make sure nothing happened to him.

Still, these past few weeks, Shea had become terrified to let him out of her sight.

She refused to leave him alone in their apartment when she went to work. The kid was only six. But dragging him to a strip club nearly every night, even if he only sat in the dressing room, was no life for a kid. Hell, being on the run was no life for a kid.

He deserved more. He deserved to grow up in his own home with his parents, free from harm. Safe. Cocooned.

Suffocated.

Like she’d felt.

Oh, not at first. At first, it’d been heaven. Just her and her parents. A forest to play in. Books to read. Weapons to train with. Spells to learn. Not that she’d had much luck with that, but still…

Until she was twelve, she hadn’t known there were living beings in the world other than her parents and the animals who roamed a forest so thick it blotted out the sky in spots.

Then a lost hiker had stumbled through her parents’ strong perimeter wards and asked her to show him the way back to the road. Fear had frozen her vocal cords and she’d run home, barely able to for words to tell her dad about the hiker.

Until that moment, she’d never once questioned her parents about why they never left the forest surrounding their cozy log home.

 “There are people out there who would hurt you if they knew about you,” her mother had said. “It’s for your own good, Shea.”

As a stupid teenager, she’d believed her mom had wanted to control her life.

“You’re special, Shea,” her dad had claimed. “We can’t trust anyone else. This was the only way.”

Yeah, she was really special. A special kind of screw-up.

Well…shit. She shook those thoughts out of her head.

She hadn’t planned on going DownBelow tonight but no way would she make Leo leave. If he was going to sit in with the band, she didn’t want to miss it. The kid was a musical prodigy. Put an instrument in his hands and he could play it. And not just play it, but make it sing. Percussion, guitar, bass, violin. Anything he could hit or had a string. He had some trouble with wind instruments but she was pretty sure that had to do more with lung capacity than talent. Give him a few years and he’d master those, too.

If he had a few years.

No, none of that now.

If she was going DownBelow, she needed to change. The jeans and t-shirts she’d worn to work weren’t gonna cut it. Not if she didn’t want to stand out.