Sorciére

by J. R. Erickson

  ****

  That evening the coven ate dinner on one of the many stone porches that jutted from the castle's foreboding exterior. Candles flickered and everyone's faces wore the grotesque orange shadows of Jack-O-Lanterns. The wrought iron table was littered with dried flowers, and incense wafted from two wooden gargoyles at the table's ends.

  Abby shifted in her chair, casting anxious glances at Sebastian who sat next to her, his eyes vacant. He wore the same rumpled t-shirt and sweats that he'd gone to bed in the night before.

  "Corn bread?" she asked him, holding up her uneaten bread and hoping desperately for some small recognition.

  He blinked, gazed toward it and shook his head.

  "I'm full."

  He had barely touched his chilli and a full glass of spiced cider sat at his elbow. Nothing gave Sebastian away like food. He ate more than a pack of wild dogs and Helena teased him for it incessantly.

  Abby caught Elda's eye and looked quickly away. She did not want to alert the witch to any curious behavior. Lydie let out a high-pitched giggle at some comment from Oliver who looked relaxed and happy as usual.

  Only Dafne seemed irritable and, when she caught Abby looking her way, she arched her eyebrows and glared back at her. Abby held her stare, growing angrier with each passing second, and then she flashed on a similar evening little more than a month earlier when her unkempt rage had destroyed a set of wine goblets. She returned her eyes to her food and picked absently at her napkin.

  A red moon had begun its ascent over the water and all of the witches turned to watch as it climbed the night sky.

  "The autumn moon," Helena cooed lovingly, stretching her fingers toward the rising orb. Everyone seemed to sigh in unison as the cosmos came alive with the night.

  Abby watched the stars and sipped her cider. She tried to block out the strained energy between her and Sebastian. Fireflies began to appear at the table's edge and their glowing bodies made Lydie hoot with glee as she dashed from her chair to scoop one up. She did not cage it, however, as Abby had done as a girl. She leaned her face close, whispered a secret and released it. Oliver joined her, and soon Abby could not sit any longer and followed them from the table, making ever widening circles, until they had left the porch and wandered into one of the many gardens.

  ****

  "Abby."

  The whisper barely registered. In her dreams, Abby stood in a dark forest where snow fell in huge gusts. She felt the ice biting into her legs and blinked rapidly against the freezing gale. She saw Sebastian, almost lost in the blizzard before her. She tried to call out to him, but her voice made no sound. From the darkness, a shadow emerged. A small woman deeply enveloped in furs took his hand. Abby screamed again, sensing danger, and tried to run through the thick snow to stop him. He followed the woman and, despite Abby's efforts, they disappeared into the storm.

  "Abby," the whisper came again, louder, and Abby felt a hand on her arm, cold fingers splayed over her bicep.

  She groaned and rolled away from the touch, needing to stay connected to the fleeting remnants of their footprints.

  "Hey, wake up." The voice grew familiar, Sebastian's voice, and Abby finally allowed the images to fade.

  She blinked the room into focus.

  "You were moaning," he told her, pulling the comforter gently from her clenched fists. She grabbed him and hugged him against her, burying her face in his shoulder.

  "Well, good morning to you too," he laughed, pulling away and looking into her face. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah, I'm just..." She closed her eyes and shook the dream away. "I guess I was having a nightmare."

  "Do you remember it?"

  She shook her head but, in fact, she did remember the dream. She remembered the feeling that if he disappeared into the woods, he would be lost forever.

  "It took a long time to get you up. I thought maybe you were traveling."

  Astral-traveling, he meant. Which Abby never did while sleeping. They were not the same thing, but Sebastian was not a witch and thus often confused many of the powers. He called high jumps flying and seemed to believe that her night vision equated to x-ray goggles. More than once he had asked her about his boxer choice, as if she could see through his pants.

  "Can't remember any of it?" He asked again and this time she detected a note of suspicion in his voice.

  "No," she sighed, rolling away from him. The night sky was a sickly green, storms approaching, and Abby knew that the next day she was supposed to work on her element at the second lagoon. The lagoon held a large stone slab that directed each of the witches' power in their given element--in Abby's case, water.

  "Do you want to talk?" Sebastian asked and Abby, tired, almost said, "No." But then Sebastian had been acting so strange, and she longed to rekindle the connection that had been so strong only a few days before when they'd said their final goodbyes to Sydney.

  "Of course." She rolled back to him and pulled him toward her by his t-shirt. He kissed her on the forehead and then slid back.

  She moaned and started to pull him again, but his t-shirt slid up and Abby could see the initials tattooed on his bicep--COH for Claire Olivia Hull, his dead sister. The tattoo looked fresh, the black calligraphy more pronounced than she remembered.

  "Did you get that touched up?" she asked, knowing that he couldn't have. He had not left the coven since their arrival nearly six weeks earlier.

  "I did it yesterday," he said simply, touching the skin near the tattoo, which Abby realized looked red and slightly puckered.

  "With a needle?" she asked, surprised.

  "Yeah, a needle and some ink that Helena gave me."

  "But why?"

  He looked at her strangely and pulled his sleeve down, covering the inflamed skin.

  "To remember. That's why I got it in the first place."

  Abby sucked her cheeks in and bit back the words on her tongue. It was not appropriate to be jealous of Sebastian's dead sister.

  "Why is it an issue?" he demanded, stepping from the bed and dropping to his hands and knees.

  "What are you doing?" she asked, peering over the side.

  "What does it look like? I'm getting my shoes so I can go back to my room."

  "Oh, come on, Sebastian. Just stay, I didn't mean anything..." But that was not true. She wanted him to stop obsessing over Claire. She wanted him to behave differently at the coven and stop talking about the Vepars, but she hadn't said any of that to him and felt as if she couldn't. More strange, she'd barely thought of Claire in weeks, but suddenly the dead witch seemed to be filling all of the chasms newly erected between her and Sebastian.

  "Just get some sleep," he told her, grabbing his sweatshirt off the floor and leaving the room. He didn't slam the door, but still she jumped when it clicked in the frame.

  Chapter Three

  For two days, Abby did not see Sebastian. The approaching All Hallow's Ball, combined with a seemingly endless list of distractions, left everyone at Ula surprisingly busy. Abby spent the day in the dungeon memorizing mantras to invoke the spirit. She sat on the stone floor and meditated, but the cold bit into the back of her legs and she wriggled uncomfortably. Elda sat on a stool nearby, her eyes closed and lips parted. She too was meditating, in addition to giving Abby directions.

  "Ommmmmmmn," Abby began again, making the sound deep in her belly and allowing it to continue long after breath had left her.

  Elda joined in the chant and Abby felt the vibrations that they each emitted traveling the length of her body. It took her away from her mind, but as soon as she returned to silence, her thoughts took hold again--mostly thoughts of Sebastian and her inability to accept his chilly behavior.

  "Concentrate, Abby--not on your mind, but on the stillness of this moment," Elda directed.

  Abby closed her eyes again.

  "This time, begin with the mantra HRIM. When you make the sound, lose yourself in it. The thoughts in your mind are not real, just let them go and be here now."

&nb
sp; Abby started again. "Hreeeeeemmmmm."

  As long as she held the chant, she felt energetically charged. Her body pulsed and goose-bumps prickled along her neck.

  "Now," Elda began. "Without stopping your mantra, bring rain into the dungeon."

  "Hreeeeeeemmmmm," Abby continued, though she did not imagine a dark cloud bursting with rain. Instead envisioned droplets on her face and the electrical current of the storm. She stayed there, but the more she felt those imaginary droplets, the more she thought of Sebastian. She remembered the night at Sydney's lake house, when they'd run along the beach during a spontaneous rainstorm. She knew now that the storm had been a manifestation of her growing power, but she was less concerned with that than Sebastian's hand in hers and the exhilaration at their decision to search for Devin's killer.

  "Abby? Abby, come back?" Elda demanded.

  Abby opened her eyes to Elda who looked mildly perturbed.

  "I'm sorry," she said, exasperated. "I have a lot on my mind."

  "Clearly. Let's finish here for today, but you must work at the lagoon. I have a ritual to prepare you for tomorrow's summoning that will probably take you until late tonight."

  Abby nodded, but hated the thought of spending the rest of the evening locked in her room chanting and waving incense. She wanted to have a conversation with Sebastian, but feared his response to the questions in her mind.

  ****

  Sebastian pushed the swinging door into the kitchen. Bridget sat on a high wooden table, both feet propped on a stool in front of her, an open cookbook resting in her lap.

  "Lured by the sweet scent?" Bridget asked, waving toward the enormous antique oven where several pots released tendrils of steam.

  He could smell ginger and garlic, maybe some cinnamon.

  "Mmmm, what's cooking?" he asked, lifting a lid and peering into a black gelatinous pool that smelled of vinegar.

  "Bad choice. That's a potion for Faustine," Bridget laughed. "He's suffering from an especially persistent foot fungus."

  Sebastian wrinkled his nose and pulled away.

  He had only been in the kitchen a couple of times, but found that he thought of it often. He missed cooking, a hobby that had also become a lifeline for him in the time before the coven. When he cooked, he turned off his thoughts and focused entirely on the meal. His mother had taken great pride in teaching her only son how to cook. Later, when his entire family lay dead beneath faceless tombs, he found solace in preparing food. Sometimes he made elaborate dinners that only he enjoyed. His masterpiece had been a Paella Valenciana, which he prepared during a two-month stay in Texas before he finally booked his flight to Panama in search of his sister's killer.

  He had cooked daily in Texas while renting a small efficiency that lacked everything except a functional stove and refrigerator. He gained twenty pounds during those two months, which he lost in three short weeks in Panama fighting constant diarrhea and nausea after being stricken with malaria. The malaria persisted throughout his stay and the staple food that he survived on during the trip--rice--now made his stomach churn at the thought. His trip had been a disaster. In addition to not finding a single clue as to Tobias's whereabouts, he spent most of his time occupying bathrooms until he finally flew home and spent three days in the hospital recovering. Sydney's home on the lake had symbolized a new hope.

  "Which sounds better? Red velvet cupcakes or black forest chocolate?" Bridget asked, holding up her copy of A Million Cupcakes to Make You Smile.

  "I like the one shaped like a spider," he said pointing to the cover.

  A strange look crossed her features, but then she flipped the book over and grinned.

  "Dark chocolate cake with chocolate ganache. It's rich, but I like it," she said, nodding her approval.

  "So do you need any help?" Sebastian asked hopefully, knowing that Bridget, a witch, did not need any help.

  She looked at him for another moment and then opened her hands wide.

  "Of course, the cook needs a vacation sometimes too. Why don't you whip up a couple of sides for dinner?"

  "Really?" he asked, not bothering to hide his relief. Finally, a space to feel useful.

  "Yep. We're looking at Minestrone for the main dish so whatever sounds good with that."

  "Awesome, yes, okay." He immediately started getting familiar with the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers. "This place is fully equipped," he said scanning a shelf lined with at least two hundred spices.

  "Then you should have all you need," Bridget chirped, hopping down from the table. "I will be off to the garden then to collect a few things for Faustine's potion."

  She patted Sebastian motherly as she left and he sighed happily, staring at the empty counter space before him.

  ****

  "So why haven't you told Sebastian about the party?" Oliver asked, burrowing his bare feet into the cold sand.

  They stood near the stone slab at the second lagoon where Abby had been trying to concentrate for the better part of an hour after Elda had finally released her from the dungeon. The new goal that Elda had given her was to turn the lagoon solid enough that she could walk across. It was not an easy feat.

  "Because..." She blew a puff of air out of her cheeks and dipped her hands again into the frigid lagoon waters. Ice cold at first, the water gradually grew hot. She stood again when she felt sufficiently revved up and returned to the slab. "I got the feeling from Elda that he shouldn't go."

  Oliver smoothed the sand around his feet and considered.

  "You wouldn't know it, but Elda plays a mean devil's advocate."

  Abby nodded, sitting on the edge of the slab and not bothering to even look at the water, let alone focus her power there. She was too distracted. On top of that, for days she had felt agitated and quick to anger.

  "Have you ever seen a human at an All Hallow's Ball?"

  He wrinkled his forehead and picked up a handful of sand.

  "If I have, I didn't know it."

  Abby bit her lip and thought again of the possibility of sneaking Sebastian into the party. Elda implied that it was possible, but she had not seemed enthused.

  "Would Dafne reveal him if we brought Sebastian and pretended that he was a witch?"

  Oliver laughed and looked at her sideways.

  "It's not that simple, Abby. He can't just wear a costume and hope nobody notices. These are witches, many of whom are clairvoyant. They're not easily deceived."

  "Well, Elda said..."

  "Oh, I'm not saying it's impossible," he interrupted. "Just that it will take work. You'll have to put a lot of energy into the spells and that means stating a clear intention. Don't try to cloak him when you're having all of these mixed emotions or you're liable to cast him as something worse than human, something dangerous."

  "Dangerous." Abby repeated.

  Rather than think more on it, she turned her eyes to the lagoon and pushed all of her power into solidifying the dark mass. Ripples broke across the water and then steadied.

  Abby walked to the water's edge and put a foot tentatively over the surface. It was solid, sort of, so she stepped onto it completely. Her feet sank down, but she was able to teeter out onto the lagoon. She felt like she walked on firm pudding and, though she expected Oliver to howl and break her focus, he remained quiet.

  She walked a few feet further, staring through the gelatinous water at the sandy floor as it sloped beneath her. A white crayfish crawled along the lagoon bed.

  "Hey," she yelled. "There's a crayfish right here."

  "Yeah?" Oliver called. "Think the water will hold both of us?"

  "Sure," Abby said, but didn't really know.

  Oliver walked carefully toward her, holding his arms out to both sides and intentionally swaying back and forth. When he reached her, he paused and stared down.

  "That fish looks cray," he joked.

  Abby laughed.

  "It's almost transparent."

  "Yeah, how would you like that? To be invisible?"

 
"I would love that," Abby told him, wishing that more than invisible, she could just disappear altogether. Then she wouldn't have to tell Sebastian anything.

  "There are spells you know--to make you invisible."

  "Really?" she asked turning to face him. "I think I've done it, accidentally."

  "I believe it."

  She smiled and returned her gaze to the crayfish that had begun a slow crawl deeper into the lagoon.

  "Let's lay on it," Oliver suggested. "Face down."

  "Okay," she said, excited by the prospect. In her shoes, she could not tell what the water would feel like. She dropped onto her knees and then placed her hands on the surface expecting something cold and wet. Instead, her palms met a sheet of cold, firm silk that sank a few centimeters when she put her weight on it.

  Oliver lay down next to her and they both rested their foreheads against the surface.

  "It feels like Jello," Oliver mumbled. "I wish I was a water element."

  "Yeah right. You can manipulate earth, that's amazing."

  "Nature's waterbed," he laughed and rolled back and forth letting his fingers trail over the undulating surface.

  "My opinion is that you don't invite Sebastian," he said. "Just make up some reason that he can't go and leave it at that. I can tell you've already wasted a lot of thought on this."

  Abby started to disagree, but she had devoted countless hours to whether Sebastian should go. It had been a constant distraction since Sydney's funeral and Sebastian's growing agitation only amplified her doubts.

  Above them, gray storm clouds drew closer. Abby turned onto her back feeling the water dip beneath her, but still the surface stayed firm. She looked up into the bulbous clouds and felt their magnetic energy, the very energy that she had tried to draw in the dungeon earlier that day. They were filled with water, vibrating with the intensity of it and she could almost see the filaments that connected her own energy to that of the rain.