Sorciére

by J. R. Erickson

  "A curse on the human lover of a new witch. It is tied to Trager City in some way. It appears to affect only one witch and her human counterpart. Of course, nothing truly happens only to one. We are intricately connected, what happens to one happens to all."

  "I still don't understand. What kind of curse? Is that why I lost my memory?"

  "No, I do not believe that the curse has begun. Adora and I have searched for dates, but they are inconsistent. The last witch who suffered this curse was Dafne and, in a span of only hours, her entire life fragmented. She lost her great love, her dearest friends and all that she had known in the world up to that point."

  "How is the curse on the lover then? Did he die?"

  "He was Tobias, Sebastian."

  Sebastian did not feel. First, numbness spread through him. The mere mention of Tobias's name brought such searingly painful memories that he felt unable to move or think. When his voice finally returned, he chose not to speak, fearing that he would scream.

  "It's true, Sebastian. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true."

  Sebastian picked up his mug and, before he could think, he slammed it back onto the counter and watched it shatter into tiny pieces. A shard cut deep into his hand, just below his thumb. The pain felt good and he glared at the blood gushing onto the white tiles.

  Julian said nothing, but handed him a clean rag and left the room. He returned with a brown leather bag and sifted through the contents, withdrawing a small glass bottle, similar to the tinctures at Ula.

  "Soak the rag in this and hold it on the wound," Julian told him.

  Sebastian did and the blood soon slowed and then stopped. The skin around the cut grew very hot and then it turned white and started to tingle.

  He stared at the puddle of blood that had pooled on the floor and let his thoughts run like wild dogs in his head. Their teeth gnashed and they howled in disbelief and he thought, if he were magic, he would throw Dafne in there and let her contend with the devils in his mind.

  "So what then? Is she a bad witch? They're in this together?"

  "No, not at all," Julian said quietly, ignoring the blood and taking a seat on one of the other stools. "One hundred years ago she and Tobias were in love and then in an instant he was pulled to the evil. He decimated her sister and brother witches, he burned them alive and he became the Tobias that we know today."

  Sebastian sat back down, the fight suddenly gone from him.

  "How is that possible? You're telling me that Tobias lived a normal life? That he wasn't always evil?"

  "Evil is not a natural state. It's like hate and greed and envy, we learn those realities. Evil gets a foothold here in the world of form because it's so dense and we're so confused by these bodies and brains. It can plant a seed and grow into this monstrous organism because there's a lot of fertile soil in the darkness of our hearts. Something reached out to Tobias because he loved a powerful witch. Love is energy like everything else. Transform that passion into hate and now it's powerful in a destructive way."

  "I need a drink," Sebastian muttered and started for the pantry door.

  "Scotch," Julian said. "To the right of the bread box. Make it two."

  Sebastian poured them each a small glass and threw in a few ice cubes.

  He savored the heat that flowed into his belly, grateful for anything to dull the information he'd just received.

  "The curse did not end with Dafne, though. Somehow she brought it with her to Ula and it nearly destroyed us as well."

  "You? That's when you lived at Ula, a hundred years ago?"

  Sebastian looked again at Julian. The man didn't look to be a day over sixty, but then again, Abby had told him that she suspected Faustine to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.

  "Yes, I lived there and many other witches as well. My wife Miranda..." he took a long drink at the mention of her name and his eyes briefly closed. "She died just five days after Faustine and Elda brought Dafne to our coven."

  "How? Did Dafne do something?"

  "No. At least, not that I'm aware of, but Dafne and Tobias were somehow linked. This is part of the story that I don't yet understand, but the coven of Ula knew great power then. We were fifteen witches strong and we thrived as a coven and in the world. Tobias penetrated our fortress. He used Dafne to get in and for one very long night, he..." Julian's voice shook and his hand trembled on his glass. "Another time for the recounting of all that. Tonight we talk about the present."

  Sebastian did not press him.

  "So why does she think I'm going to be part of this?"

  "Because Abby is a new witch and you are her epic love. It's not as simple as all that, but that's where it begins."

  "She thinks that I'm going to become evil and destroy the coven of Ula?"

  "I would never claim to know Dafne's thoughts. She is a complicated individual, but yes, I believe that she felt so strongly that you and Abby were going to be the next to fall to this curse that she created an elaborate plan to not simply get you away from Ula, but out of the picture for good."

  ****

  In the morning, Abby and Oliver shared coffee and pastries with the Guerilla witches before they each left for their various projects around the city. Only Victor remained.

  "Victor, I need a favor," Oliver told him, downing the last of his espresso and quickly washing his cup. "I dreamed of my coven last night and I have to go there today."

  "You need some wheels?" Victor asked.

  Abby nodded.

  "I have some investigating to do otherwise I would give him mine," she added. She hated to refuse Oliver the car--not that he'd asked for it--but she was desperate to speak to the woman at the stone cottage.

  "It's no problem at all," Victor offered. "We have five cars in the basement parking garage of this place and we never even drive them." He laughed. "The public transportation is just too good."

  "And one more thing," Abby told him.

  She walked to her jacket and pulled the photo of Victor sitting with Stephen Kramer from her pocket. She laid the picture on the table in front of Victor. He touched the photo and his face softened as if recalling a fond memory.

  "Time to come clean," he sighed. He propped his legs on the coffee table in front of him and considered where to begin. "I dreamed of you before the Ball, Abby. I didn't know where you would come from, but I knew to look for Melusine and then there you were..."

  "You dreamed of me," Abby crinkled her forehead and tried to make sense of Victor's explanation.

  "But long before I dreamed of you, I dreamed of her." He pulled a neat leather notebook from his satchel and flipped it open to the first page and then the second and the third.

  Abby studied the same face again and again. At first, the rudimentary drawing revealed only the shadow of a woman. Her dark hair hid the contours of her face. Then Victor's pictures grew more elaborate. Wide brown eyes bore from the face of a young Native American woman, barely older than a child really, with sensuous lips and smooth honey skin. She looked angry and afraid.

  Abby recognized the woman from Sorciére. She saw that Victor had even captured her in the same costume she'd worn that night. Deerskin robes and thick rabbits-fur boots. Her hair hung in a single heavy braid over one shoulder and she clutched a child to her breast.

  "She guided me to you. I never questioned her, Abby."

  "But who is she?" Abby asked, not liking the way the drawing's eyes seemed to hold her own in their steely gaze.

  "Okay, wait," Oliver interrupted. "Your dreams don't explain this picture. Why are you sitting on Sydney's dock?

  "Stephen Kramer invited me there. I met him at a paranormal seminar in Chicago when I was twelve years old. Crazy, right? You know, I think one of my favorite parts of being a witch is synchronicity." He started to hop up, excited, and then winced in pain at his leg, still healing from the Vepar's lair. "It seriously blows my mind. I didn't even know of Abby until I dreamed of her and then after we met and she told me about Trager, I re
alized that I had met her Aunt Sydney."

  "Why did you lie about it?" Oliver challenged.

  "I didn't lie," Victor said slowly. "I refrained from talking about it because I was shocked myself and I wanted to understand what it all meant."

  "Why didn't you say more at Sorciére, though? I mean, you sought me out, Victor, and even after I agreed to meet you, you didn't say that you had dreamed of me."

  Abby could not stop staring at the picture of the Native American girl.

  "I'm sorry for that, sincerely. I can't give you a satisfying explanation," he paused. "If it helps, I haven't even told Kendra that I knew your aunt or that we went into the lair that night..."

  "I don't get it," Oliver chimed in. "You're recruiting Abby like you want her in your coven."

  "We're not a coven," Victor interrupted.

  "Okay, your housemate," Oliver said exasperated. "Still, why would you pursue her and not be completely honest about why you're interested in her to begin with?"

  Victor pointed to the drawing of the woman.

  "Because Kanti didn't want me to."

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  "Rod. It's really good to see you, man," Sebastian told him when they finally had a few minutes alone.

  Their day had been a flurry of preparations to leave France and return to the United States. Now, as they sat waiting to board their flight, Sebastian gave Rod a hug and gestured to an empty seat.

  "You too, Sebastian. Really and truly, I'm so happy to have a friend around." Rod grinned and rolled his eyes toward Julian and Adora who stood talking quietly. "After they brought me to France, I started to think I might go flippin' crazy."

  "Yeah, I know the feeling. I've spent the last two weeks not having a clue what my own name was. You wanna talk crazy..."

  Rod patted him on the back and smiled, settling back into the stiff airport chair.

  "Sometimes I wish I could be so lucky," he murmured.

  "What happened?" Sebastian asked gently. "I mean, after you guys got back from the Cayman's? If it's sensitive, you don't have to talk about it."

  "Damn," Rod started, and then he pulled a pint of Jack Daniels from his carry-on bag and poured a hefty serving into his styrofoam cup of coffee. "Duty-free." He grinned. "Want some?"

  Sebastian held out his own cup and let Rod pour him a shot, more out of solidarity than any real desire to get drunk.

  "I need to talk about it, except that every time I say her name I feel like someone's squeezing me really hard. I'm beginning to wonder if my body is trying to let go, but my mind really wants to hang on."

  "As if there are hands on your throat and around your heart and reaching up inside of you and pulling out everything that ever mattered..." Sebastian trailed off. He knew that pain. He knew it almost as well as he'd known the love when his family was still alive.

  "Exactly," Rod sighed. "It's kind of blurry now and I guess that's because I didn't want to face it. For the first couple of weeks, I just got drunk a lot..."

  Through the wall of glass before them, an airplane taxied down the runway and took off into the cloudless sky.

  "We went back to Trager because Sydney had this horrible dream that Abby was dead. It was so vivid that she couldn't shake it and then she got online and looked at the Trager news and realized that a woman had been found murdered."

  "Devin."

  "Yeah, Devin, but her name hadn't been released and Sydney just panicked. She packed all of her bags and bailed. We couldn't get on the same flight because it was so last minute. She got back in the evening and I didn't get into town until the next morning. Of course, by the time I got there..."

  "She was already dead."

  Rod closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelief.

  "I still don't understand, Sebastian. Sydney knew things about witches. Maybe she even knew about Abby, but I never really questioned all of that. Part of me honestly felt like it was just a fantasy that her and these other people played at. Sometimes I wonder if this all happened because I didn't believe--like God cursed me for doubting."

  Sebastian hated how well he understood Rod's pain. He experienced similar thoughts after Claire's death and still wondered if he might have stopped it.

  "You couldn't have saved her, Rod, and no amount of belief could change that. How did she know though? I mean, who told her about witches?"

  Rod shrugged his shoulders and he looked exasperated. "Fuck if I know. She lived and breathed all of that when I first met her. I think she dove into the lore to escape her marriage with Harold. She tried to bring me in a few times, but I didn't really connect with it all. She claimed that these magical people existed, but I never saw any real proof. It was just her getting together with these other believers and stringing up all this evidence to make it true."

  "She was in a group?"

  "Yeah, I think they even referred to themselves as a secret society. I met most of them. They sat around and drank wine and wrote in journals by candlelight. I found it pretty sexy and mysterious, but that was about it. When I got home and went to the lake house, it was just a nightmare. Her pictures were smashed, half the yard was burned black and she...well, Adora got to her first and covered the body, but I know she went painfully. I just know it."

  Rod cried openly. He pulled a wad of toilet paper from his pocket and blew his nose.

  Sebastian smiled in spite of himself. As a child, he'd always imagined Sydney with a man like Rod--a tan, chiseled, marshmallow that would love her, no matter what. He never understood her marriage to Harold who seemed more interested in his tie collection than his beautiful eccentric wife.

  "She was lucky to have you, Rod. She loved you a lot."

  Rod smiled and shook his head. "Yeah, she was a real piece of work. I couldn't have loved her more though. I'm lucky that Adora beat me there. She practically threw me in her trunk and hauled me off to some safe house where they kept me pretty well drugged and boozed up for Lord knows how long. And then I met that old windbag, Julian." He laughed as he spoke and Sebastian appreciated his ability to bounce back.

  "So you've been in hiding ever since?"

  "Yeah, for a lot of reasons from what Adora has said. For one, the Trager police more or less pinned Sydney's murder on me, which had me about ready to go into the precinct with a shotgun and give them a piece of my mind, but then she started to fill me in on the history of Trager and those evil fucks that killed my wife. Vepars she calls them. Since then I've taken my medicine like a good boy."

  Sebastian detected a note of resentment.

  "They're right. I know it's miserable feeling helpless--I get it, I really do--but the Vepars are...sick. Sick in the head, sick in the heart. I've been researching them for the past couple of months. I never used to believe in the devil, but I do now."

  ****

  Sebastian stared at the skyline of New York City.

  They had arrived that morning and checked into a tall faceless hotel that mirrored every other building in the city. They shared two connecting rooms, each equipped with overly firm double beds and paintings of the Statue of Liberty.

  "Rod, it's for your own protection. If the authorities recognize you, you'll be arrested."

  "I should be able to show my face in my own damn town. That's my home. My wife grew up there, for Christ sakes."

  Adora looked to Sebastian for help as she tried to make Rod stand still.

  "It's not permanent, man, it's just to make things easier for right now. Cool?"

  Rod looked irritated that Sebastian had sided with Adora.

  "Fine," he said.

  Adora had already died his blond hair black and now she intended to change the color of his eyes and modify the structure of his face, softening his chin and making his nose larger.

  Sebastian was struck by the bizarre scene before him. Rod stood with his eyes clenched closed, his chin shrinking back into his face as Adora, resplendent in a long magenta robe, crunched handfuls of herbs into a plastic cup inches from Rod's nose. J
ulian sat on the bed, his back pressed against the headboard and his legs neatly crossed as he flipped through an outdated issue of Mother Earth News.

  "I suddenly feel so unprepared," Sebastian said to no one in particular. "I feel like I'm ten all over again getting ready to jump off my roof with a rain jacket because I couldn't find my mom's umbrella."

  Julian chuckled and flipped the page.

  "There's no such thing as prepared," he said calmly.

  Little more than forty-eight hours since Adora and Rod had plucked him off the streets of France, Sebastian could hardly believe that his life was being returned to him. He felt giddy and alarmed and disoriented. Though his memory had returned intact, he couldn't shake the impression that his whole world had been flipped upside down.

  He paced into the room and studied himself in the mirror, a habit he'd developed after recovering his memory. He studied his blue eyes and tan face. He touched the black curls that were so long he had to tuck them behind his ears to keep them out of his eyes. He wore a rather ugly Hawaiian shirt of Rod's on top of a long-sleeved white t-shirt and a pair of tapered jeans. Claire would have called them 'pancake butt jeans'. He looked foolish, but that didn't bother him. What concerned him was how he kept seeing something wicked in his face. No, that wasn't quite it either. He kept seeing Tobias in the mirrored face staring back at him.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  "I dreamed of Miranda last night," Elda told Faustine, her eyes tired and aching from her tormented sleep. "I fear that..."

  Faustine held up a hand to silence her and nodded his head toward the door. Beyond, Elda could see the shadows of two small feet--Lydie.

  She whispered a muting incantation to block Lydie from hearing them.

  When he knew that Lydie would not hear him, he spoke. "I too have dreamed of Miranda, and the others as well. I wanted to believe that something else was giving life to these phantoms in slumber."

  It's been more than a century," Elda responded.

  "Yes, and did we not wonder a hundred years ago if that horror would cycle through again? We all sensed it, didn't we?"