Awakening: The Last Coven Series

by KT Webb

  “Sutton, we have to go. We have to find out how to get to the City of Witches.”

  “Slow down, what are you going on about?”

  Grace narrowed her eyes at the blonde on the couch, “I swear if I have to repeat myself again I’m going to scream.”

  “Whoa, what’s got your panties in a bunch, princess?” Dee appeared from down the hall.

  “I had a dream. Harper told me they’re coming to get her. She says once we find her we’ll figure everything out. Those goons are going to attack her now. Not at the Fall Equinox.”

  Grace looked at the girls in front of her. If they weren’t going to help, she was going to have to do it on her own. She had no idea how to make or use a portal, but she had to get to Harper. But where was the City of Witches? Wichita? No, that didn’t make sense. Grace glanced up as Lucy padded into the room, wrapped in the blanket from her bed. Once all three girls were staring at her from the musty couch, Grace decided it was time to hash out some of the details she was still missing.

  “Why did that guy call me a daughter of Sa-win?”

  “We honestly don’t know. He called me a daughter of Beltane,” Sutton replied.

  “And apparently I’m a daughter of Lughnasadh,” Lucy shared.

  Dee leaned forward, “You know, I’ve been thinking about that. What if you’re somehow linked to that holiday? We’ve found out that each of those are holidays in the Wiccan calendar, right? And they’re considered to be powerful days, like the solstices and equinoxes.”

  Grace had no idea what they were talking about, but Sutton and Lucy nodded, so she waited for further explanation.

  “So, what if you draw your power from certain parts of the year?”

  “Okay, but isn’t Beltane in May? I was born on December 21st. Those days are not even close to each other.”

  “And Lughnasadh is August 1st. I was born in March.”

  The wheels were turning in Grace’s head. Math and puzzles had always been her favorite things to work on. She was born June 21st, and they kept saying she was the daughter of Sa-win.

  “When is Sa-win?” Grace asked Dee.

  “Samhain is on Halloween,” Lucy replied. “What? I was raised in a Wiccan household!”

  “I was born early, I thought maybe Samhain was close to my birthday.”

  “Wait, I was born early too,” Lucy said, perking up.

  “Me, too.” Sutton’s voice was laced with excitement.

  “How early were you guys born?” Dee asked.

  “A month,” all three girls replied in unison.

  Dee grabbed her phone and started furiously swiping at the screen with a look of pure concentration. Her look quickly turned to shock before finally resting on slightly disturbed.

  “Well?”

  “Umm, I’m not sure if you’ll be that excited about this, but based on how they count the weeks of pregnancy, and your original due dates, you were all conceived on the Wiccan holiday these guys are associating you with.”

  Sutton made a gagging sound, Lucy turned bright red and tried not to laugh, but Grace smiled. Her parents were adorable, and she couldn’t help but picture them in their couples costumes every Halloween. . . and wonder what they had dressed up as the night she was conceived.

  “Great, now I can’t shake the visual of my parents getting freaky in socket and plug costumes,” Sutton groaned. “Not that they’d ever waste their time with anything as frivolous as Halloween.”

  “Alright, supposing that I buy this stuff, which I’m still really struggling with, what makes us so special?”

  Grace wasn’t surprised when she was met with silence. They were all just trying to avoid being killed, they didn’t know what was going on either. She sat on the coffee table and looked around at the run-down cabin. The room looked like it had been abandoned in the 1980’s. The couch and chairs had wood frames and a squishy foam padding covered in thick, brown fabric. It screamed cheap, but Grace had never been one to “rough it.” The walls were covered in wood paneling, interrupted by the particle board cupboards. She glanced back at the girls on the couch; they were giggling about something she’d missed. A slight movement caught her attention, and she looked up to find Harper leaning against the counter.

  “Harper?”

  The other girls whipped their heads in the direction she was looking.

  “There’s no one there,” Dee whispered.

  Grace ignored her. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just waiting for you guys. I mean, seriously, what’s taking so long?” Harper folded her arms.

  “I’m trying to convince them that we need to find you!”

  She put her hands on her hips and leaned forward. “Try harder. I’ll be waiting in the City of Witches.”

  Harper started to fade away before her eyes, but Grace managed to ask her one more question, “Where is the City of Witches?”

  She was gone before she could answer.

  “Salem.”

  Grace turned around to face Dee.

  “The City of Witches is a nickname for Salem, Massachusetts,” Dee said.

  “Okay, then what are we waiting for? You heard Harper! We need to get going.”

  Lucy’s eyebrows knit together. “Except, we didn’t hear or see anything. You really saw her here?”

  Grace nodded. She hugged herself around the middle; this whole thing was too much for her.

  Grace

  Chapter Twelve

  Information Overload

  The girls arrived in Salem just hours after Grace saw Harper in the kitchen at the cabin. The others looked to her to lead the way, but she had no idea where she was going. Nothing looked familiar, and it wasn’t like Harper was just standing on a street corner waiting for them.

  “Do you think Harper actually knows what’s going on?” Lucy asked.

  Grace shrugged. “I have no idea. I don’t know if what I saw was real.”

  Sutton and Dee followed them as they wandered along the historic streets in search of something that might jump out and scream, “Hey, Harper’s here!” Unfortunately, as much as she wanted her magic to work that way, it didn’t appear to be the case.

  “There!” Sutton cried out.

  The other girls whipped their heads in the direction Sutton pointed; across the street was an old wooden sign hanging in front of a stone building. Painted on the sign in Old English lettering was, “The City of Witches Museum.” Grace’s heart beat wildly in her chest as they crossed the street and climbed the stairs to enter the building.

  In the past twenty-four hours, she had gone from celebrating her birthday at home in South Carolina to searching for a stranger in an unfamiliar place. Grace had never been the adventurous type, so this was uncharted territory.

  The clang of a bell sounded when they opened the door and stepped inside. Grace looked around at the various exhibits that were visible from the door; it looked like part creepy wax museum, part torture chamber. She shuddered to think about what those people went through during the witch trials; what she would go through if it were to happen again.

  A flash of red hair caught her attention. Harper! The person turned around to reveal a similar feature set, but this was not Harper.

  “Hello girls, welcome to The City of Witches! Are you interested in” — she broke off in a gasp.

  Grace looked behind her expecting to find someone standing behind them, but there was no one there. The woman closed the distance between them in just a few strides.

  “How did you find us?”

  “We’re here for Harper,” Grace explained.

  “Over my dead body.”

  Whoa. Grace couldn’t believe how intensely the woman was radiating anger and fear. This had to be Harper’s mother.

  “I put up wards to protect her. You’ll never find her.”

  “Hey, mom! I just finished cleaning the Corey exhibit. I’ll never get over how gross it is that they literally squished him to death,” Harper shuddered when she arrived at her
mother’s side.

  “Found her!” Dee sang.

  The other girls couldn’t help but giggle at that. Harper looked confused and her mother looked defeated. Grace noticed the moment Harper recognized the likeness in their eye color. She wondered if she had worn a similar look of surprise and intrigue.

  “I don’t understand, I warded against evil. If you’re not evil, who are you?”

  “Long story short? We’re witches and so is Harper. There are some creepy dudes after us for an unknown reason, and Harper is their next target.”

  “You’re the Last Coven.”

  “We’re the what now?” Lucy asked.

  “Looks like we’re closing early today,” Harper’s mom said as she locked the deadbolt on the front door.

  They followed her through the museum and into what looked like a break room for employees. The creaky floorboards were like nails on a chalkboard to Grace; she hated the sound with a passion. Once they were seated, they began introductions.

  “I’m Abigail Landry. I’m a historian and museum curator. I’ve done extensive research into witches and their history. This is my daughter, Harper.”

  Each of the girls took turns sharing their stories while Abigail and Harper listened quietly.

  “My mother and grandmother had told me the stories just as theirs told them, but I never thought they were true. Do you know who those men are?”

  They shook their heads in unison. The only thing they really knew about the people pursuing them is that they wanted them dead.

  “They’re the sons of Carman; Dub, Dother, and Dian. Carman was an evil sorceress who cursed Ireland and tried to kill the Druids. To defeat her, the Druids had to create something new. They made four young women, the First Coven.”

  “Dub! That’s the name of one of the guys who kidnapped me,” Grace recalled.

  “They want to bring their mother back. They were banished across the sea when Carman was imprisoned in the Otherworld, they can’t return to Ireland without strong magic.”

  “So, the four girls they made, they were the first witches?”

  Abigail nodded. “They were the first true witches. As they had children, their eldest daughter carried on the bloodline.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Samhain, Lughnasadh, Beltane and Imbolc. Their births were cause for celebration among the Druids and became the major holidays recognized in the Wiccan tradition.”

  “Wait, they’re people? The holidays are people?” Lucy asked.

  “Sort of. The celebrations took place on the day the witches were born. People adopted them as holidays but the true meaning of those days was lost over the years.”

  Grace was on information overload. She didn’t know what any of those things were, or how they related to her life. She couldn’t help but notice that Harper seemed completely overwhelmed as well.

  “Harper, did you know any of this before today?”

  Red hair gently swayed in rhythm with a shaking head. Her wide green eyes were narrowed slightly as she looked between her mom and the newcomers at the table with them.

  “Mom, were you going to tell me any of this?”

  Abigail’s expression became remorseful. “I had hoped I wouldn’t have to. My dreams were showing me that something dark was coming, so I put up wards the way my grandmother showed me. I had no idea the others would be searching for you.”

  “Could we get back to your story? What does it have to do with us?” Grace asked, her voice slightly raised.

  “Isn’t it obvious? You are directly descended from the first witches. That’s what those guys meant when they called you daughters of Samhain, Lughnasadh and Beltane. You are literally daughters of their daughters.”

  All heads swiveled in Dee’s direction. There was something about the way she quickly came to the right conclusions that left Grace feeling a little off. No one else seemed to notice, so she filed it away in her mind.

  “Yes. You are the first generation to possess the power naturally. I’m afraid that means they’re closer than they’ve ever been. Something must have united them.”

  Lucy cleared her throat. “Have you ever heard of Odessa Dunlap?”

  “No, why do you ask?”

  “She showed up claiming to be my great aunt. Her eyes are weird though, she has one green like us but the other is black, no white to it at all,” Lucy explained.

  Grace shivered at the visual her mind conjured. She was glad she hadn’t come to face to face with that woman yet.

  “That’s odd. Per my research, the unique eye color only belongs to the true witches and since you’re the first true witches in who knows how long, it seems strange that she would possess even half the power you do.”

  The silence that followed was only interrupted by the ticking of the clock on the wall. As if it wasn’t enough that they had the triplets of doom after them, now they had no idea who this Odessa woman was or what she wanted.

  “I don’t even know what to think right now. Can’t you see how this is hard for me to believe? I mean, all this stuff in the museum has always just been the result of people getting whipped up into a frenzy. Now you’re telling me witches are real?” Harper stood abruptly from the table causing it to lift slightly off the floor.

  As she stormed out of the room, Abigail rose to follow her. She gave the girls an apologetic look before disappearing to talk to her daughter.

  “I don’t really blame her. I mean, if my parents had known about this and didn’t tell me I would probably lose my mind,” Sutton admitted.

  “I’ll never even know if my parents knew. They died when I was seven. Mallory had no idea, but I know she supports me.”

  Grace shrugged, “I had the most normal life ever before all this. There’s no way my parents had any idea.”

  “What if they knew and they had to keep it from you to protect you? Or they couldn’t tell you because someone forbade them?” Dee’s questions were barely audible.

  “What’s that supposed to mean Dee? Like there’s some big conspiracy or something?” Sutton demanded. “After everything I dealt with from my parents, I’d be livid if I found out it was all part of some secret plan.”

  Grace noticed Dee’s cheeks redden slightly. The other girl quickly excused herself from the table and left the room. Sutton didn’t seem to notice, neither did Lucy. But Grace could have sworn she saw a glittering pink trail of light follow Dee from the room.

  Harper

  Chapter Thirteen

  Out of Left Field

  “Harper! Come back here. At least let me explain,” her mother called, from out in the museum.

  She didn’t want to hear any explanations. She wanted to be left alone. Harper climbed into the secret hiding spot she’d used when she was younger. The museum had all kinds of nooks to hide in if you knew where to look, and as a curious little girl she’d found them all. To hide from her mother now, she stuffed herself into the recreated shell of a judicial bench.

  “Harper, I know you’re here somewhere. Would you please just come out? There’s a perfectly good reason why I didn’t tell you this stuff.”

  Harper sighed. She wanted to tell her mom where she could stuff her perfectly good reason. Instead, she stayed perfectly still until she was certain her mother was gone.

  She shifted in her hiding spot; it had been much easier to hide in here when she was a little girl. Why hadn’t her mother told her any of this? Harper wasn’t exactly the most popular girl at school. The other kids teased her for her Star Wars lunch boxes, and Doctor Who t-shirts. They just didn’t get her; no one did, except her dad.

  Just as she was about to leave her hiding spot, she heard voices. One sounded like one of the girls sitting in the break room, the other was a deeper voice with a strange accent.

  “Look, I’m doing the best I can,” said the girl.

  “Dee, the longer it takes to get the girls here, the more we risk them falling into the wrong hands.”

  Dee? She was the girl who wa
sn’t a witch. Who was she talking to?

  “I know that! I’m trying. We just found Harper. Now that the girls are together it’ll be easier. But, we still have to wait until the Autumn Equinox; she won’t have her powers until then.”

  Harper did her best not to make any noise, but she was on high alert. Whoever Dee was, she wasn’t just some girl from Sutton’s school who happened to be in the right place at the right time.