"Everyone has missed you so much," the man said, suddenly leaning forward. His face changed from fascination to kindness and Sebastian forced a smile. This person truly did know him.
The man cocked his head to the side as if picking up a sound from far away.
"We should go," the man told him, standing abruptly and stubbing his cigarette on the table's edge. He dropped the butt on the ground and Sebastian started to pick it up, but the man stopped him.
"Like this." He waved his hand over the butt and it vanished.
Sebastian's jaw dropped and he started to look for it, but the man laughed and took Sebastian's shoulders in his hands, guiding him down the street.
"I should tell Isabelle," Sebastian said, but the man encouraged him forward and Sebastian no longer felt like resisting. He followed the man to his car.
****
"So you think the people in those cottages are involved in this?" he asked Abby, opening a large envelope stuffed with old yellowing pictures. "Why would they be keeping this stuff in Sydney's loft?"
"That's what I don't understand. Unless they put it here so that I would find it? Something drew me here, Oliver. When I walked into this room, I felt a message waiting to be discovered."
"How can Dafne possibly be a part of all this?" He looked again at the photo that Abby had shown him that included Dafne in the throng of witches standing in the night-time field. Though she looked much younger, and far happier than he'd ever seen her, she was unmistakable. "I just can't believe that she's intentionally deceiving us, Abby. There must be some other explanation." But his tone betrayed his suspicions. Dafne had been acting strangely ever since Abby and Sebastian arrived at Ula.
"Do you think she had something to do with Sebastian's death?" Abby asked, her voice much smaller as she spoke his name. Baboon purred from a nest in the center of the bed and Abby stroked his ears lovingly.
Oliver wanted to say no, but his heart knew better.
"I hope not, Abby, I really do." He took her hands in his own and kissed them, surprising them both. A tear slid down her face and she turned her head so that he could not see her eyes.
He wanted to draw her to him, bury his face in her hair and pull the pain from her heart, but her body warned him to stay away . He returned to the stack of papers and wondered why Dafne had loathed Sebastian so completely.
"I've been asking the wrong questions all along," Abby said, lifting the box that her grandmother had left for her and holding it in her lap. "I just got lost in this idea that I was a witch and, I needed to know something, I would just know it. I went on that wild goose chase and almost got killed, and all along it's been right here. This history, it's buried here. When I first started searching for Devin's killer, I found this picture on the internet. Something led me to that and I totally disregarded it. I should have tried to understand why Dafne hated Sebastian. I should have questioned how all of this past played into what was happening."
"You can't know until you know," Oliver told her, smiling wryly. "It's one of those things you learn to accept. The world is unfolding exactly as it has to, regret is wasted. The point now is to ask those questions and to follow them all the way in, find out what's hiding in the shadows."
"I want to, but I still feel lost in this. Like it's right in front of my face, but I'm just not seeing it."
"Well, we are witches." He smiled at her and winked. "Let's see what the universe is willing to tell us." He gathered up a bunch of the papers and set them on the bed. Then he proceeded to light candles, each from the flame of the last, and walked the room in a circle counter-clockwise, placing candles along the floor.
He left the room and returned carrying two small crystal paperweights. He set them on the floor in the center of the circle.
"Let's raise the vibration in here, huh?"
He held out his hand and they settled on either side of the circle.
"No mantras, no chanting. I'm thinking just a simple intention of guidance, yeah?"
Abby opened her palms on her knees. Elda had taught her about meditation and lightening the self to connect with the less dense aspects of reality. Until that moment, she had almost forgotten that she was even a witch and that she and Oliver were not merely helpless pawns in the game of some faceless evil.
They each closed their eyes. Abby felt pulled by her thoughts, but focused on a single white light at her third eye. She imagined the word guidance, spoke it in her mind, and visualized it before her. Eventually the meditation lost sight of its intention and she drifted, feeling her body sway from side to side. Somewhere far away a clock tower chimed and pulled them both back to the room.
"Our closing gong," Oliver said, standing and stretching for a moment. "Now for our answer."
He picked up the pile of papers from the bed, as many as he could hold, and briefly closed his eyes. Then he threw the papers out before him over the circle. They flew in all directions, floating toward the floor and Abby almost reached out, fearing that some of them might catch fire. Then, incredibly, their flight slowed and they began to organize themselves in midair until they had layered into several distinct piles.
"Wow," Abby said.
"Yeah, it takes a while in the beginning to remember that we have the whole universe to call on when we're confused."
Abby grabbed the first stack of papers.
"Look at the cover of all three first," Oliver told her. "Those are the places to start. If they're on the top, they need our immediate attention."
On the top of the first stack, Abby saw a news article published just five weeks earlier claiming that the Trager City deaths were the work of a vampire cult. The next stack held the picture of all of the witches grouped together, Dafne and Aubrey nestled amongst them. The final sheet held an advertisement ripped from a magazine.
"American Spirits?" Oliver held up the advertisement, which portrayed the black and white image of a Native American man smoking a peace pipe.
Abby shrugged and picked up the newspaper article from the first stack. Oliver scanned the title. "That's the first pile, so I think we need to track that guy down first."
"The reporter?" Abby asked skeptically. "He's offering a pretty funky story here. Do you really think he knows anything?"
"Were you not here for all of this?" He gestured toward the candles and the neat stacks of paper. "He knows something."
****
Isabelle hung up the phone and walked to the tiny french doors that opened to the balcony. Beyond, she watched Sebastian as he lit a cigarette and coughed uncomfortably with each inhale. He sat at a small bistro table in a cafe across the street, his eyes scanning stacks of newspapers that he discarded on the chair beside him. She regretted giving him a pack of her cigarettes the week before because he now smoked nearly a whole pack whenever he sat at the cafe across the street. She watched him ash into his empty cup of coffee, his brow furrowed as he read.
Before she even hung up the phone with Indra, she knew that she had to tell him. Isabelle wished to turn back the clock and refuse her great aunt's pleading that she participate in this debacle. Indra had insisted that she and this other witch, Dafne, knew of a great catastrophe that would befall their covens if Sebastian continued to live at the coven of Ula. However, Isabelle no longer trusted Indra's intuition, witch or not, and she felt unbelievably guilty at her role in his deception.
In the weeks since she had picked him up on the side of the road, Isabelle had begun to fall in love with Sebastian. Foolish she knew, but still the feelings did not go away. She had little knowledge of his lover in the States, only that she was a new witch, and Isabelle hated the thought of him returning. However, beyond her fear of losing him, she could not live with his hatred and if he learned the truth, he would surely hate her.
Indra had made it all sound so simple. Isabelle would greet Sebastian and, at the sound of her voice, he would lose all connection to his prior self. His life had been filled with pain and heartache, Indra told her. Isabelle would be sa
ving him. He would stay with her for one month and then Isabelle would travel with him to New Zealand where Dafne would have created a new identity. Sebastian would be enchanted to retrieve memories that did not actually exist. Then he would return to his so-called previous life in New Zealand and the Great Curse, as Indra called it, would end once and for all. Unfortunately, Sebastian had already begun to chase the tendrils of his life that had supposedly been wiped clean.
Isabelle turned away from the window and went to the kitchen to start dinner. In the market, she had purchased duck and fresh herbs, and planned to make a final meal to celebrate her last night with him before he knew the truth. She would call into work sick the next day and spend the morning telling him all that she knew. Not a witch, Isabelle would be unable to reverse his memory loss but, when he reconnected with his love, she would reverse the spells and return him to his life before.
Isabelle sighed and wished, not for the first time, that she too had become a witch. Her Great-Aunt Indra, who looked no older than she, had hoped for such a miracle, but another generation passed without a new witch in the Chaput family. Isabelle's brother, Dominic, had one child, a son named Court, who Indra now hoped would claim the witch's blood. Dominic would not be pleased if his son were a witch. Unlike many of the other Chaput family, Dominic abhorred magic and followed a strict Catholic faith, denouncing the witch ancestry that ran in his blood. Isabelle, on the contrary, had dreamed her entire life of one day discovering her powers, only to face disappointment year after year when they did not manifest. She hoped now to someday have a child of her own who might be a witch.
She basted the duck and flipped through her recipe index searching for the perfect dessert, believing perhaps that food really was the way to a man's heart. She decided on lemon soufflés with blueberry sauce. Sebastian had been at the newspapers for nearly three hours, longer than usual, and she returned again to the window to see if he might be soon wrapping up.
Sebastian's seat sat empty and the newspapers, abandoned, rustled in the wind. On the sidewalk next to his chair, she could see the pack of cigarettes she had bought for him that morning.
Chapter Twenty-Two
"Who did you say you were with?" the nervous intern behind the front desk asked when they entered the office for the Trager City Herald. She glanced anxiously back toward the cubicles as if she hoped someone might save her from the serious duties of answering the questions of total strangers.
"We're from the Lansing News," Abby told her again, this time standing taller and attempting to look professional. She might have thought of that before her and Oliver decided to leave the loft both dressed in ratty jeans and sweatshirts. Her hair was shoved loosely under a ball cap and they both wore dark sunglasses. Flimsy disguises surely, but better than nothing.
"We're on vacation," Oliver chimed in, locking his blue eyes on the girl's much beadier brown ones. He leaned into the desk and flashed her a smile. "Technically we're doing a bit of work and play, but we really hoped to meet with Stephen Kramer--he's highly esteemed in the news world."
The girl looked a bit mushy as she stared up at Oliver. She smiled shyly and started to fumble with the phone. "He's not here, but can I ask the editor?"
"We'd love that," Oliver told her. "Take your time." He reached forward and patted her hand. She softened even more, lavishing in his attention.
"Umm, hi, Ms. Cooper. Hi. Yeah, it's me, Regina at the front. Yeah. Oh sure, sorry, no problem. There's just two journalists here. No, not our journalists. No, not a story on the Thanksgiving parade. Actually, they're looking for Mr. Kramer. Oh. Oh, I see, and he's...oh, okay. ye."
Abby and Oliver did not need the girl to tell them that Mr. Kramer had taken an extended leave of absence with no return date set. Their excellent hearing, combined with the boisterous voice of Ms. Cooper, made the entire conversation audible to all the parties involved. To be polite, they waited for Regina to explain.
"Huh. Well, that is really unfortunate," Oliver told her after she finished. "You know there was talk of a prize in journalism, but if he's unavailable..."
Regina's eyes lit up at the mention of a prize.
"Well, he'd want to know that," she whispered, this time clacking at her computer keys and then jotting down a piece of information on a lime green sticky note. She glanced behind her again and, when she felt sure that no one watched, she slid the paper across the desk.
"This is where he lives. Please pretend you found the information somewhere else."
"Of course," both Abby and Oliver said in unison.
They left the building and returned to Abby's car, both knowing that Mr. Kramer's leave of absence did not bode well for the reporter or their search for information.
Abby found the house easily. He lived in town in a small, off-white bungalow with a neglected yard. They observed a pile of newspapers yellowing on his front porch.
"Should we go in?" she asked, passing the house and circling back around.
The dark windows looked ominous and the house clearly had not been occupied in weeks.
"Yeah, I think we have to."
Abby parked on the road several houses down. They walked to the house through the neighbor's backyard. The screen door that opened at the back of Kramer's house hung by its hinges.
Abby walked to a small rusted bird bath and stuck her hands into the icy water, absorbing the rush of energy that fled up her fingertips. Oliver tried the door handle and found it unlocked. He opened it slowly, standing back and wrinkling his nose in disgust at the rancid smell that drifted out.
"Something dead," he said.
Abby froze, not sure if she could face what lay inside.
"Not a human," Oliver reassured her. "At least, not that smell. More like rotting food, chicken maybe."
Abby nodded, but stayed close to Oliver. The faded kitchen linoleum creaked when they walked across. Clearly the house had been abandoned in a hurry. Cupboards were flung open and plastic bags littered the floor. The house did not reveal destruction like Sydney's house had after the Vepars trashed it, but instead the kind of panicky mess left by someone rushing to get out.
The living room lay dark and musty, smelling of cat pee and cigarettes. However, it was mostly undisturbed. They moved upstairs, pausing to train their senses to any possible danger. Abby knew that Oliver could sense Vepars and felt slightly more at ease knowing that his alarms were not sounding.
They continued to the upstairs hall. Both of the second story rooms held a disaster similar to the kitchen. In a small study, papers were strewn across a large work desk and a visible dust square showed the place where a computer had once been. Abby opened the desk drawers and found a small three-ring notebook. She flipped through it. There was writing on nearly every page. Most of it appeared to be outlines for various stories, but she stopped when her eyes passed over the name Dafne. She studied the page which held a series of comments without organization. The word 'curse' was written beneath Dafne's name. Several more names were listed below hers. Abby showed the page to Oliver and then tucked the notebook into his bag.
The bedroom across the hall revealed clothes pulled quickly from the closet, some items still dangling haphazardly from their hangers. The unmade bed held piles of bags and suitcases as if they'd been pulled out for packing and then abandoned in the process. The curtains were open wide and the blinds lifted to reveal the driveway below.
"I don't think something attacked him," Oliver said, walking the room and kicking at little piles of clothes. "I think he got scared and ran."
Abby glanced briefly at several pictures on the nightstand. In one, a much younger Kramer beamed from the deck of a cruise ship, his arm wrapped tightly around the waist of a slim brunette in a brightly colored sarong. In another, the journalist sat on his front steps, with a small dog resting in his lap A woman occupied a chair adjacent to him and Abby recognized her immediately.
"She's the one from the grocery store." Abby picked up the photo and looked closer. "I don'
t think this was taken that long ago."
Oliver peeked in the closet and then returned.
"Whoa, look at this one," he said. He'd plucked a photo from the back of the table. The journalist, again off duty, sat comfortably on the end of a boat dock. A familiar house rose up in the distance behind them--Sydney's house. Next to him sat a young man with narrow dark eyes. He held a lit sparkler in his hand, which created a wave of light flecks in front of his body.
"Victor," Abby whispered.
****
It happened so quickly that he barely had time to register it. One moment he was walking down the street with the man who claimed to know him and in the next, he was speeding across the city in the back of a van, getting tossed from side to side as the van careened around corners in the cramped French streets. He remembered one thing clearly. When the van door opened and strong hands reached out to pull him inside, the man he had been walking with ceased to be a man. His face transformed into something monstrous. Sebastian swore that he saw fangs in his mouth, but before he could decipher the changing face, the door slammed and the man was left behind.
"What is this, what's happening?" Sebastian scrambled to a low squat and stared at the person who'd hauled him into the moving vehicle. He expected to see an enormous meat-head, but a tiny and strangely familiar woman with striking green eyes looked back at him.
She studied his face and then sighed as if accepting some foregone conclusion.
"I know you?" he asked, feeling oddly hopeful at the sight of his captor.
She smiled, seemingly appeased, and nodded.
"Yes, you do. Unfortunately, your memory has been tampered with and now I'm going to have to retrieve it." She looked mildly irritated at this, but also determined.
He glanced at the door and thought that he should flee, tumble out onto the road and run, but he found that...he didn't want to.
"Hi, Sebastian," a man's voice called from the front of the van.
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