A soft mewling came from Lydie's closet. He strode across the room and got down on his knees, pushing aside clothes and old discarded books. In the back of the closet, Lydie's new kitten, Garfield, peeked out from Lydie's old doll house, a toy that Max had laboriously carved for Lydie's seventh birthday. Though she never admitted to playing with the house, everyone in the coven knew that she loved it and now, years later, Oliver could see where her toys had scraped the perfectly sanded wooden floors and her play dough had gotten stuck in the tiny furniture.
"Hi, Garfield," Oliver cooed, pulling the kitten out gently and holding it against his chest.
Faustine entered the room behind him and stood silently.
"I have thrown the Ink of Revealing into the sky and there is a clear path away from here. It is going south and likely fading every minute," he said finally.
Oliver set the kitten down and stood abruptly.
"We should leave at once," Faustine told him.
"I think that I should go alone. Elda and Max are not safe here with Helena in such bad shape. I can find her and bring her back."
Faustine shook his head no, but then Elda came in behind them, her face revealing that Helena had turned for the worse.
"She's slipping away. I can't seem to bring her back." Her face was pinched with worry and Faustine seemed to come to a decision.
"Fine then, go now, but you must keep contact. There are fresh medallions in the library--take two of them. Place one around your neck, close to your heart. I should be able to feel you that way."
Oliver left quickly, grabbing the medallions and racing out to the dock where Faustine's small Boston Whaler sat ready. Overhead he could see streaks of silver in the sky. The silver illuminated the dark energy that had entered the castle and then escaped back across the water.
****
"The curse began more than two hundred years ago, maybe longer. We know of only two hundred years and not all that much about those. What we think is that approximately every one hundred years a new witch somehow triggers this curse. What we know about the last time is only that there was a loose coven of young witches in Trager in nineteen hundred and eight. Aubrey was one of them and there were probably five or more others. We've struggled to track them all. One witch, her name was Dafne, drew the curse. She had a human lover called Tobias and you may have heard of him because he is now a Vepar."
"What did you just say?" Abby asked stunned. "Tobias was Dafne's lover?"
"You know him then? And her too? We thought she may have died in the fire..."
Abby placed her palms together, as if in prayer, and held them to her lips. She suddenly feared for Oliver and the others at Ula.
"She did not die. But please tell me all of it. I need to know everything that you know."
"I'm not sure where the curse came from or even how we know about it exactly. Dafne and this Tobias meant to run away together, but instead he used his connection with Dafne to become a very powerful Vepar. In order to make this transition, he had to harness the power of many witches, which meant they had to die. We all thought Dafne probably had to die too, but now you're saying she's alive so I guess we didn't understand that part. Somehow Tobias burned all of them in the Ebony Woods. What we know is that this also happened in eighteen hundred and eight in Trager to a witch named Milda."
Milda? The name rang familiar and Abby frowned trying to remember. Had she met a Milda at All Hallow's? No - where then? It came to her slowly and with horror. Elda had been sitting in the library describing the sad tale of a witch seduced by black magic only after being deceived by her human lover, The Lourdes of Warning.
"You know of her too?" Gwen asked.
"Worse," Abby mumbled, trembling at the memory of the wasted body in her self-made prison beneath the earth.
"This doesn't apply to me," Abby said suddenly. "My...person, my lover--he died."
The color drained from Gwen's face.
"Not Sebastian? Sebastian died?"
Abby closed her eyes at the sound of his name and nodded.
"Yes."
Gwen hung her head.
"I can't believe it. I don't want to."
"You knew him?" Abby asked.
"Only through Sydney." She looked far away suddenly, remembering. "I spent a lifetime hearing stories about him and his sister from Sydney, looking at pictures. The way his family died and then Claire. Oh, it's wrong how much heartache can be visited upon one life."
A horn startled them and Abby looked up as a large hay truck passed dangerously close to the car. The driver's face glowered at them and then he disappeared in a puff of exhaust. Gwen jumped and then laughed, embarrassed.
"I get spooked pretty easy these days," she said.
"Yeah, me too," Abby replied, turning the car back on and pulling onto the road.
"So who knows about this curse? The Vepars? Do they know? Does Tobias know?"
Gwen glanced nervously out the window and shook her head.
"I don't know. I wish Stephen were here. He was better at this. He took it really seriously like Sydney. I'm just...I'm just a part of it. I never really meant to be, but I am, and Stephen's been investigating disappearances for the last three months. At least ten, but maybe more people who have just vanished. Some of them were wanderers, vagrants, and so they mostly went unnoticed, but a few had families, husbands, wives, kids. Stephen was onto a lot that I didn't know about."
"We went to Stephen's, my friend and I, and it looked like he left. It didn't look like someone took him," Abby said, trying to soothe Gwen.
"Did Stephen say he thought the Vepars were behind the missing people?"
"Yes. I mean he didn't say that, but yes. He wouldn't have made a point of calling to tell me about it otherwise. He also thought that someone was following him. This all happened within weeks of Devin's murder. Everything got really bizarre and scary."
"Had it ever been scary before? Did you ever suspect that the Vepars knew of the Asemaa?"
"No. Even after I met Adora and knew that all of the stories were true, I still felt removed from it. If I'd have thought that we were in real danger, I would have stepped away from it for my child's sake. I would never knowingly put Ebony at risk and now..." Gwen stammered and reached unconsciously for the small gold rose around her neck, "...now I'm afraid I've done exactly that."
"But she's safe right now?"
"Yes, no, I think so. I'm scared Abby. I'm so scared that I haven't even really thought about how scared I am. When you found me in that crawl-space today, I'd been down there since last night. I slept down there. I just felt sure something would take me in the night."
Abby took Gwen's hand and allowed a rush of gratitude to flow into her.
"You're not alone, okay? I'm a witch and I have friends and we won't let anything happen to you or to Ebony." Abby grew stronger from her own words and, deep down, she believed them. She would get the others from the coven and she would stop blaming them for Sebastian and for Sydney and they would end this thing. Tobias would not steal anyone else that she loved and as for Dafne--Elda and Faustine would know how to deal with her.
"I want to see your journals," Abby said. "All of it, everything you've got. And I've pored over Sydney's stuff and only found a little bit about the curse. Is there more?"
"Yes, it's in the cottage–the one nearest the woods with the little iron rooster on top? We have a bookshelf in there with a secret compartment behind it. I stashed all of the material in there."
"Clever."
"Not really. I mean, considering secret bookshelves are basically the hiding place in every movie and book nowadays, but the guy who originally built the cottages created a bunch of funny little spots like that."
"I'll find them," Abby reassured her.
"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. I'll show you right where they are."
Abby shook her head no.
"I'm going to take you to a bus station and get you out of town. You're right that it's not safe h
ere. I have to return to Ula, but first I need those journals."
Gwen looked like she might argue and then nodded slowly.
"Okay, but please stay in contact with me? I have to know what's happening and my friends are missing, Abby. I can't just let that go. For Ebony's sake I'll leave right now, but I'm not abandoning this. The Asemaa began with Sydney and it won't die with her, you understand? I won't let it die."
Abby did understand and she knew in her heart that Sydney would want her to keep the group alive. It had apparently been her life's work and Abby had never known it existed.
****
After the lake, the trail moved south in a nearly straight line. The Vepar must have carried Lydie through the woods rather than driving, which hardly made sense. Vepars could move quickly, but not nearly as fast as a car, and surely he would have tired at some point.
This forced Oliver to abandon his car fifty miles into the trip and travel on foot so as not to lose sight of the trail. He ran as fast as his body allowed, but still he could see the stream beginning to fade. He had run for nearly two hours when the last remnants disappeared from the sky.
He approached a tree and laid his hands on the bark. He pressed his face close trying to catch the Vepar's scent, but found barely a trace. At the base of a very tall birch, he caught the first very subtle smell of something dark. He crawled up the tree and, strangely, found that the scent grew much stronger near the top. It was as if the Vepar had traveled through the trees or, he suddenly realized, above the trees. Somehow it had flown.
He jumped from tree to tree, painstakingly pausing in each one to see which way the scent moved. Twice he jumped to the wrong tree and had to backtrack when he lost the smell. Finally, it moved downward and he followed it to the forest floor. He stood only a few miles outside of Trager City. Somewhere along the way, he heard Faustine speaking to him. His thoughts were muffled, but Oliver understood that Helena had stabilized.
As he followed the Vepar's path, he perceived danger. He knew that he was close and sprang back into the trees to avoid detection while he searched the earth below. He nearly missed the cellar door, so concealed by leaves that it looked merely like another mound, but a small flash of silver caught his eye and he recognized a handle.
He watched it for several minutes, waiting to see if any of the vile things emerged, but the door stayed closed. Finally he crawled down and, treading softly, walked toward the door. He pressed his ear to the earth and listened.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sebastian went to the bus terminal near the airport with his last twenty-five dollars. The next bus wouldn't arrive for seventeen minutes. He sat down to wait, munching a bag of pretzels he'd bought from the vending machine.
He watched the terminal doors and studied the faces of every person who walked through them. He wore a hooded sweatshirt that he had dug out of an airport 'lost and found' to conceal his hair and face. He knew that Abby was in Trager. He felt her more strongly with each passing second, but he didn't know where.
The doors opened and, with a gust of cold air, a petite woman with short golden hair blew into the terminal. She looked frazzled and upset, clutching only a handful of cash in her hand as she made her way to the ticket counter. She paid, took her ticket and then turned to the row of seats, her eyes lighting for a moment on Sebastian before she turned away, but then slowly she turned back and stared.
Sebastian broke the stare, tucked his hood lower over his face and started to get up, but already the woman began to approach him. Before he could escape through the door, she grabbed his sleeve and turned him towards her.
"Sebastian?" she asked, and he wondered suddenly if maybe all of his memory had not returned because he did not recognize this woman who spoke to him.
He started to shake his head no, but as he looked into her eyes, he felt her pain and also a deep need to know that yes, he was Sebastian.
He nodded.
"Oh, my God, you're alive! Abby told me you died, she thinks that you are dead," the words poured out of her and she looked like she might begin to cry.
"You've seen Abby? Where is she?" he asked her urgently.
The woman looked around anxiously and then she looked back into his eyes and stared at him for a long time.
Seemingly satisfied, she said "Abby has gone to the stone cottages by the lake. I should have gone with her, I'm sorry."
"Wait, what cottages?"
"The circle of stone cottages past the woods north of Sydney's house."
Sebastian vaguely recalled them. He immediately turned to leave and then remembered his bus ticket.
"I'm sorry to ask this, but I have to get to Abby and I'm out of money. I need you to help me."
"Here," the woman thrust most of her money into his hands. "Yes, go now," she said anxiously , and threw her arms around him, hugging him tight. "I'm so happy that you're alive."
He didn't wait to hear more. He rushed from the bus station and ran across the parking lot to a grubby little car rental agency that boasted rentals as low as ten dollars a day. Without a credit card, Sebastian had to pay the kid at the desk nearly two-hundred dollars to take the rustiest car on the lot. He squealed out of the parking lot, trying to outrun the sense of doom growing within him.
****
Oliver opened the door easily, knowing that leaving it unlatched may not have been an accident, and stared into the black hole below him. Vepars lived in squalor. They played at a certain sleek humanness in the above-ground world, but in their lairs they resided in filth. The walls on either side of the tunnel were dirt, but wet-looking and slimy to the touch. Before entering, he'd sprayed one of Helena's scent neutralizers over his entire body. Vepars did not always smell witches, but the more powerful ones had the capacity and, in their dungeons, they were much more likely to catch the scent.
The floor moved downward steeply and then leveled off. The walls became smooth and small oil lamps lit the tunnel. The silence grew thick and unease began to set in. Oliver did not spook easily and, beneath the earth, literally embedded in his element, he could not have been stronger, but still he knew a trap and he was walking right into one.
****
Abby used Gwen's key to open the door to the cottage with the rooster on top. The musty odor of mothballs greeted her and she saw a light film of dust on nearly every surface. She maneuvered around piles of furniture and boxes stacked with tattered books and ancient-looking picture frames.
Gwen had told her that they used the cottage for storage, which was why she had chosen to hide the journals there. In the sea of stuff, most people would quickly give up and look elsewhere. Abby found the built-in book shelf. She knelt on the floor and sought the small lever Gwen had described. The simple metal hook jutted from beneath a rug and Abby pulled up on it hard, jumping out of the way as the shelf swung out. The bookshelf lurched into a stack of lawn chairs and they crashed to the ground, startling Abby and dislodging several books.
"Relax," she whispered and took a couple of deep breaths. The space behind the door was roughly the size of a broom closet and, stacked within it, from floor to ceiling, were journals, binders and accordion files. She grabbed a stack and walked them to the trunk of her car, carefully closing it between each trip and returning the key to her pocket.
Halfway through the pile, she caught a shift in the air around her. Her senses sharpened. Every sound and movement grew distinct and separate. The water lapped the shore, washing over each tiny grain of sand, and she heard it all with acute clarity. In the woods, not far away, something rustled. She breathed deeply and tried to get a sense of the thing. An animal? Not exactly, but not human either.
All at once her skin began to crawl and her pulse quickened. She wanted to run to the water, but even as she thought it, she detected something beneath the surface, some darkness that lay in wait for her.
She slammed her trunk and ran to the woods, hoping to escape into a tree, but found the trees bare of their leaves and hardly a good hiding
place. In her terror, she discovered that, despite her sharpened faculties, the world seemed distant as though she watched the scene unfold on a movie screen instead of in real time. Her eyes scanned gnarly branches and heavy stones, searching for a suitable weapon.
Abby started to run and in her mind's eye she saw the thing sense her movement and begin to follow. She fled, moving fast, faster than ever before, but still it gained on her. She could not see it or hear it. It seemed to come from everywhere. She ran into a bush and screamed, pushing the branches away, hurling her body through and into another space only to again run full-faced into a sharp bush of thorns. They caught and held her and she fought them, furious and terrified and crying now. She ripped out of her jacket and the thorns released her. She ran into a field. It lay empty and enormous and she hated to run across it and expose herself, but the thing behind her still bore down. Halfway across, she struck a log hidden in the high dead grass and toppled over it. She swore and struggled to her feet.
It seemed to fall from the sky, the black oily monster with fangs barred. It landed on Abby's back and, before she could fling her body to the side, its long fingernails sank deep into her shoulder, warm blood spurting from the wounds as its teeth sought her neck. She reached back and found its hair and, with all her strength, tried to rip the creature from her, but already her power had begun to drain as the teeth broke through the skin and the venom found her blood, racing like wildfire to her heart and her brain. She started to collapse beneath the weight of it and then the heaviness vanished, lifted from her by some unseen force.
She fell, first to her knees as her legs buckled beneath her. She made a feeble attempt at throwing her hands out to break her fall, but none of her limbs obeyed and she hit the cold ground with a thud and felt her head snap to the side.
When she saw him, she knew that she dreamed or had died because Sebastian could not be beating the evil thing that had fallen upon her. In the pale light of the moon, she watched him lower blow after blow upon the black figure at his feet. The creature suddenly reared back and Abby thought it would envelop Sebastian in its huge hair wings. Instead it took to the sky, rising up and away before Sebastian strike it again.
Sorciére Page 25
