Of Stars and Spells

by Nyx Halliwell

  He stops, the rest of the sentence hanging heavy in the air. Before Charlie disappeared.

  I think back to Winter claiming Charlie’s not dead. I reach over and pick up the globe, and instantly feel a connection to Quinn’s brother. Its faint, but there.

  I turn it over in my hands, scanning with my magick to see if I can feel anything else. Perhaps Charlie was thinking about whatever he’d uncovered when he was getting the globe ready to ship. There’s definitely an echo of something, I just can’t catch what it is.

  “Do you mind if I take this downstairs for a minute?” I ask. “I left my phone on the table and I’d like to take a picture of it. I think my dad might like one of these as well.”

  Mr. Harrington looks at it longingly. I feel the emotions he’s trying to suppress about Charlie. “Of course, dear. Just handle it with care.”

  Everything in me wants to tell him his son is alive, according to my sister, but I know he’ll need proof.

  I rise, wish Mr. Harrington a speedy recovery, and exit with Quinn.

  Downstairs, he pulls me into the alcove under the steps. His mom’s already handing out candy to kids. Sirius stands guard nearby. “What is it?” he asks me.

  I hand him the globe. “Your dad remembers exactly what happened that day, he’s just afraid to tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “He wasn’t on a ladder and he didn’t fall. He was pushed off the porch and hit his head on the step. He was arguing with someone, and you’re not going to like who.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I think it was Kirk.”

  The muscles in Quinn’s jaws are moving, teeth grinding together. “What were they arguing about?”

  “I couldn’t really get the conversation, but I think it had to do with you. I think Kirk is wanting more control over the farm.”

  Quinn’s hand tightens on the globe. “Your saying that Kirk hurt my dad?”

  “Afraid so. I think it might be time for you to have a chat with him.”

  He holds up the globe. The way he’s gripping it, I know he’d like to hurl it at Kirk’s face. “What’s up with this?”

  “There’s an imprint of Charlie on it, something he was thinking about or feeling before he sent it to your father. I sense there’s another layer underneath the metal. There’s an echo inside it.”

  He holds it up and moves it around to examine all sides. “So I need to break this open?”

  “Have you already tried?”

  He shakes his head. “I’ve never paid any attention to it.”

  “Could there be a hidden chamber inside? If Watson and her group are looking for something your brother had…”

  His gaze comes up to mine. “It’s inside this. That would explain why I couldn’t find anything in Charlie’s possessions.”

  He taps the globe, and tries twisting the two halves apart. Nothing happens. He squeezes. He knocks it on the corner of a small end table nearby. Nada.

  “I’ll find a hammer, bust it open.”

  I hate the idea of taking the last gift that Charlie gave Mr. Harrington and destroying it, but it’s important.

  “What if I’m wrong?” I ask Quinn. “How will we explain this to your dad?”

  He gives me a reassuring look. “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”

  “It would have to be something very tiny, right?” I ask him.

  “Yes.” Quinn is starring at the globe as if he can mind-meld it to make it open. “A USB or…” His eyes fly up to meet mine. “That’s it! What if it’s a tiny USB?”

  “Here, give it to me,” I hold out my hand. “Let me try before you destroy the thing.”

  I fish in my pocket for the sesame seeds I carry all the time. Placing the seeds in my palm, I press them against the globe and say the spell I use on jars I can’t open. “Open sesame.”

  The globe vibrates in my hands, trying to do what the magick asks.

  “Wait, that’s a real magickal spell?” Quinn looks shocked.

  “Open sesame, used with the seeds, has the power to open locks, reveal hidden passages, and find lost treasures. Trust me. Mom used it all the time, always had some in her pockets. I started carrying them, too, after…” I can’t say it for some reason. I clear my throat and spit it out. “At first, in the hopes I might find her. Silly, right? She’s dead, but it made me feel close to her.”

  “Not silly at all.”

  The globe settles, unmoving. I try not to let my disappointment show. “I guess it’s not the right spell or there isn’t a way to open it without breaking it.”

  We both stare at it for a tense moment. Sirius stands and does the same.

  Just as Quinn reaches to take it, ready to break it open if necessary, it does the unexpected…

  It unfolds in my hands.

  19

  Inside, centered in a square blue holder, is exactly what Quinn suspected.

  A USB.

  He takes the globe. “I need to see what’s on this asap.”

  “Of course. Before you dive in, can you find me a hand-sized mirror and some water?”

  “You’re amazing. Thank you.” He leans forward and kisses me right on the lips. “You can have anything you want.”

  I’m slightly startled, but grin. “Well, if you like that trick, wait until you see what else I can do.” Heck, I can raise zombies, apparently!

  On the way to the kitchen he grabs a rectangular mirror off the wall that’s about the size of a hardback novel and brings it to the table. I grab a glass of water.

  “What are you going to do?” he asks.

  “Just find out what’s on that thing, and leave this to me.”

  He kisses me again and opens his laptop. I sit at the other end, pour a bit of water on the mirror, and begin to scry for Charlie.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” he says after several moments. His voice low and dangerous.

  The tone sends shivers down my back, but I’m deep into the scrying, feeling Charlie’s energy tickling at me. I try to hold it, but it’s like threads floating under the water. Every time I go to grab one, it dissolves. “Give me a minute,” I tell him, trying to keep my focus.

  The personal fingerprint of energy and emotion that belongs only to Charlie is too elusive. It’s connected to his spirit, his soul, and I fine-tune the frequency as much as I can. It slips and dances out of reach.

  I have an idea.

  Quinn’s energy is its own special frequency. His emotions. While he and Charlie are different people, because they are brothers, they have a similar vibration.

  Everything blurs. I grasp a thread. “Come on, Charlie,” I whisper. “Come to me.”

  In the water, a wavering reflection emerges. Too blurry to make out, but human. My ears become vacuums; the dull tap, tap, tap of Quinn typing nothing but background noise.

  The doorbell rings, Mrs. Harrington’s voice echoes. I sense Kirk in the doorway, and then other people entering the house. They’re not trick-or-treaters.

  Just as I realize who’s barged in and scared Mrs. Harrington, I feel Charlie’s energy grasp onto my probing quest. Before I can pull back, my astral self falls into the mirror.

  Down, down, down, I spiral into the abyss, darkness all around. I clamber to keep hold of Charlie’s teasing spark of life, feeling if I don’t, I’ll be lost in this abyss forever.

  My body glows. Beyond that, I can sense nothing except vast expanse. No emotions, no energy of any kind.

  Fear grips me. I’ve never had an experience like this when astral traveling. I’ve never been pulled out of my body without my consent. I wonder how it happened, but the answer comes when I finally land.

  A thin layer of water sprays up as I crash onto hands and knees. It’s bitterly cold, covering my hands and soaking into my skirt.

  “Hello?” I hear off to my right.

  The absolute darkness outside my aura makes me dizzy. Fighting the lightheadedness, I force myself to stand.

  A glowing form comes into vie
w. “By the goddess,” I say. “Charlie? Is that you?”

  Similar to me, his body glows, even though he’s not in astral form. Water splashes as he walks through it toward me. “Autumn Whitethorne?”

  He looks exactly the way he did the last time I saw him, maybe slightly paler. He’s wearing a uniform.

  “Yes!” I’m so relieved to have found him, I throw my arms around his neck.

  His return hug is strong. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. How did you get here? How did you find me?”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  He steps back. “We’re nowhere. There’s absolutely nothing here.”

  I glance around at the endless darkness, before coming back to him. “How I found you is a long story. Right now, we have get back to our own time and dimension.”

  “I’ve tried everything,” he says. “There’s no way out.”

  I refuse to give in to the fear rolling around in my solar plexus like a tsunami. “There’s always a way out,” I insist, infusing my voice with as much confidence as possible. “I just have to find it.”

  “We’re stuck in a place that doesn’t exist in the 3D world,” he tells me. “Outside time and space.”

  “Oh,” is all I can say. That might be a problem.

  Charlie studied some kind of physics, combined with engineering. It’s one of the reasons the Air Force desperately wanted him and paid for his college tuition.

  “Explain it to me. All of it.” I’m not sure I’ll understand the science, or that it’ll help, but if I can get him talking, it might keep both of us calm.

  “You understand frequency and vibration?” At my nod, he continues. “If you think of a soundwave, it looks linear, a solid line waving up and down, but in reality, it’s made of a series of small dots. If you had the right kind of vision, or a super microscope, you’d see there is actually space between them. They only appear to us, with our limited human vision, as lines.”

  I’m not sure what he’s getting at, but I nod again, reaching deep for my magick and sending out feelers in all directions. There has to be something out there.

  “We’re in one of those spaces, between the dots.”

  He seems completely sincere, and I have no doubt he’s worked this out being stuck here in this nothingness since he disappeared. For several heartbeats, I reason out how we escape.

  “So, the question is how do we jump out of this space back onto a dot?” I ask.

  “Exactly.”

  “Is there a way to change our frequency so we can attach ourselves like a magnet to one of those dots?”

  “I’ve tried.” He shakes his head. “Believe me, I’ve tried everything.”

  “Okay then,” I say, feeling my already tumultuous stomach drop another notch. “Tell me how you got here. Maybe that’ll help me work out a way to magickally reverse what happened and get you back.”

  Charlie isn’t a believer. Luckily, he’s so desperate right now, he’s open to anything. “I was flying close to one of the towers I was manning during my mission.”

  “Where? Alaska?” The towers—they have to be what he’s talking about. “You were in a special group, funded by the Air Force, working on ionosphere studies.”

  He gives me a surprised look. “How do you know about that? That’s classified.”

  “On the physical plane, you’ve been missing five years. Quinn and your parents believe you’re dead—the Air Force told them you were shot down behind enemy lines. Quinn knows better. He’s been trying to figure out what happened since you disappeared. He only learned tonight that you didn’t die.”

  Charlie runs a hand through his hair, the action reminding me of Quinn. “You’ve got to be kidding. That’s crazy.”

  What’s equally so is the fact he’s still alive. This…nothingness…must form a sort of stasis environment. How long, I wonder, could one survive here with food, water, the sun?

  “What happened when you were flying over that tower?”

  He frowns and looks at a spot to his left, recalling that day. “The northern lights were on my right and the tower my left. There was a burst of EMF that hit the plane, or maybe it was some other kind of radio wave, I’m not sure. All of a sudden, my dashboard was disabled, and I started to fall out of the sky.”

  He’s lost in the memory, and I gently coax him to finish. “Then what? Did you go down with the plane?”

  He shakes his head. “Everything went black. I woke up here in this hole of…” A glance around. “Nothing.”

  My magick isn’t finding anything. “The people leading the ionosphere studies, did you discover what they were doing with the radio waves?”

  He gives a solemn nod. “I came across incriminating information and was trying to figure out what to do with it.”

  “You saved it to a USB and sent it home in the globe for your dad, didn’t you?”

  He cocks his head, giving me that surprised look again. “You figured it out.”

  “Yes, along with the fact you’re not dead.”

  “Five years.” Another shake of his head, this one sad. “Come to think of it, you do look older than the last time I saw you.” He gives me a lopsided grin.

  “Never tell a woman that,” I chide. “We have to figure out how to get back, and we need to do it now. Your parents and Quinn are in trouble. You know I’m a witch, right?”

  “And you know I don’t believe in that stuff,” he counters.

  We exchange grins again. “We need to tap into Quinn’s energy.”

  I’m amazed when my astral self can feel his hand when I reach for it. It’s something about this black hole that actually allows my spirit and aura to feel as though my physical body is corporeal.

  Charlie grips it like a lifeline. “He’s been in love with you since he was five. Are you two married now? Do you have kids?”

  “He spent all this time looking for you and left me behind.”

  “Stupid idiot. Sorry about that.”

  “You’re probably the only person he loves more than me,” I tell him. “And your parents, of course. Unfortunately, I’ve only realized that in the last few minutes.”

  “Then, I need to get you back, so you two can have your happily ever after.”

  My heart races at that thought. “Close your eyes and search for his energy. Feel it in your chest, your heart chakra area. Let that love fill you up. See his face. Hear his voice. Lock onto how much you need to see him again. I’ll do the rest.”

  I follow my own instructions, feeling my emotions latching onto Quinn’s love. If this doesn’t work…

  Breathe, I tell myself. It will.

  One heartbeat. Two. Five more.

  Please, I pray.

  If I fail at this, neither of us is leaving.

  I see my sisters’ faces. My dad.

  “Autumn,” someone calls. “Autumn!”

  Quinn.

  Another jump of my heart. I tap into his voice, reaching out to grasp him. I sense the desperation, the love he’s always had for me, not just in this lifetime, but the others as well.

  Beside me, Charlie reaches for it, too, that essential part of Quinn that loves us both.

  I reach out for Coventina, for Sirius, and chant:

  “With my magick

  I bind this spell

  Return us to them

  And all is well.

  I command the stars

  to lead us home

  Weave this magick

  Through the gloam.

  As I will it,

  So mote it be.”

  I plunge deep for more, my sisters, using them as beacons to guide me. I feel the ripple of their love, their magick. I feel my father’s as well.

  A sea of love draws me like a magnet to steel. I imagine a wave of Coventina’s magick waters sweeping around Charlie and I, lifting us up and out of the abyss, connecting us to one of those dots of frequency.

  In my mind, I see his mom and dad’s kitchen, Quinn, the generations of family that h
ave lived there and left their mark.

  I listen for the echo of my ancestors, some of whom have been buried on Harrington ground.

  I hear Sirius bark, the frequency vibrating with my magick and pulling me to him. Along with that, the familiar sisterly bond rises inside me. Spring, Summer, Winter, and their familiars form a silvery thread tugging me home.

  All the while, I ask my magick to remember this place. This container.

  Nothingness outside time and space.

  The perfect spot to place something like a demon and disable it from ever harming anyone again.

  20

  My astral self lands with a gasp into my physical body in the dining room.

  I’m slumped on the floor, the room packed with Quinn, Kirk, Mrs. Harrington, the Watson woman, and four men in black uniforms with very large guns in their hands.

  Sirius is guarding my body and licks my face when he realizes I’m back. He whines, asking if I’m okay.

  I ruffle his fur, hearing Mrs. Harrington’s shock of surprise when Charlie emerges next to me. Not even the men with guns can stop her from flying across the kitchen and wrapping her arms around her eldest son.

  Quinn bounds over, too, helping me up. Then he grabs his brother and embraces him. “She found you,” he says to me. “Thank God.”

  “What just happened here?” Watson asks from behind us.

  I face her, shielding the family as best I can. Sirius stands at his full height beside me. “I know what your company’s doing—not just messing with natural disasters or mind control. Your tower experiments are disturbing time and space. Are you trying to change history?”

  She rears back slightly, shocked. “How did you… Oh, right. Of course you found out. You’re a powerful witch.”

  Sarcasm drips from the words. The smile she gives me is still all Mrs. Weasley—kind and encouraging. “I’ve been searching for you for a long time, dear. We have a lot in common, you and I. The towers are part of national security, and with your help—your sisters, too—we can protect the country in extraordinary ways.”

  “Wait.” I frown. “You’re part of the Paranormal Research Labs?”