The Secret of the Sacred Four

by E J Elwin

  I walked over to the body of the masked man who had run at Sylvie from the trees, curious to see if my hunch was correct…

  I pulled off the black mask and there, lying dead with a gaping hole in his head, was the Patriarch. His eyes were squinched closed, and his rough features that looked carved out of wood were clenched in anger even in death. The man who had called off the attack on me and Connor so he could kill us himself from behind the safety of his bazooka, had taken shelter in the trees while his men were slaughtered in front of him. Of course he would take his shot at Sylvie when her back was turned.

  I stood up and looked down at him in disgust. He looked like an ugly discarded action figure, like one of those horrible GI Joe dolls my dad used to try to force on me when I was a child. I would’ve liked to have killed him myself, but I was proud of Lizzie for overcoming her fear and anxiety to rise to the occasion. I spat on the Patriarch and then looked up to see my sister witches standing beside me.

  “That’s him, isn’t it?” asked Sylvie, and I nodded. “Nicely done, Liz!” She patted Lizzie on the back. “So the leader of the Brotherhood and a good chunk of its murder squad are dead, along with the traitor witch who was helping them find us. Maybe something else will come in the future but isn’t this our victory for now?” She aimed the question at Hortensia, who was staring down at the Patriarch.

  “I guess…” she said, still lost in thought.

  “Well, congratulations,” said Jessica, as she, Harriet, and Jasper came to join us. “You’ve made us and witches everywhere very proud.”

  “Thank you for keeping us safe,” said Lizzie. She went to hug Jessica and then there were hugs all around, with Jasper pulling me into a bear hug, his eyes still shining blue lamps. It felt like we were at a family event, celebrating a birthday or wedding, which made the dead bodies scattered around us look so absurd as to be almost comical.

  “Now there’s the matter of disposing of all these corpses,” said Harriet.

  I looked down at the Patriarch and at the large brutish man who Sylvie had fought.

  “I could cremate them?” I offered, raising my right hand and sparking a burst of flames.

  “Oh, they’re not good enough for your fire, honey,” said Harriet warmly. “We’ll let the worms have them. Jessica, are you up to help?”

  “Of course!” said Jessica. “Just give me a minute…” She went to the wicker basket a few feet away from the cauldron, surprisingly unbattered by the battle, and pulled from it a set of tiny glass vials like the ones I had seen in the Concoction Cave. “Brotherhood blood could be handy. I’ll be quick…”

  We watched as she walked around the clearing, kneeling down briefly beside each body and taking samples of blood from the various open wounds using a small plastic dropper. Within a few minutes, she had circled back around to us to get her sample from the Patriarch.

  “Alrighty!” she said cheerfully, corking the last tiny vial closed. “Shall we then?”

  “We shall,” said Harriet. “Everyone gather your weapons and let’s clear the clearing.”

  Sylvie went to pick up her sword where she had dropped it, and I looked around for my axes. I spotted the first one that had missed the traitor witch still stuck in the tree trunk it had struck. I was pleased to see that it had stopped burning and the tree hadn’t gone up in flames. I wrenched it out of the wood and looked around for the second one, finding it lodged in the chest of the Brotherhood member it had accidentally hit. I knelt down and pulled it from the body, then went to join the others at the edge of the clearing.

  Jasper put out the fire beneath the cauldron with a few handfuls of dirt, then took the cauldron by its iron handles and tipped it over. The rainbow flames, which had burned merrily throughout the battle, were extinguished as soon as the first bit of Silver Solvent spilled onto the dirt. It shimmered for a brief moment before soaking into the earth and vanishing. Jasper then lugged the cauldron out of the clearing and took his place beside us.

  “Ready?” Harriet asked Jessica.

  They both raised their arms in front of them the way Harriet had done before snatching away the Brotherhood’s guns. I knew that Jessica didn’t share Harriet’s gift of telekinesis, but her own powers became very similar to it in a setting like this where she wielded such control over her surroundings.

  There was a low rumbling sound and the ground vibrated beneath our feet like the beginning of an earthquake. I had seen Harriet use her gift to dig a grave before, when she had brought the block of earth out of Connor’s grave. I expected something similar this time, maybe forty blocks of earth rising neatly out of the ground for the many corpses.

  What happened instead made my mouth fall open. The earth along the edge of the clearing rose up into the air, a thin haze of dust at first, before materializing into a solid circular wall of dirt that ran all around the clearing except for the spot where Harriet and Jessica stood. It got thicker and thicker, and taller and taller, and the ground in the middle of the clearing began to sink as the dirt was gradually scooped out of it to become part of the rising wall.

  The bodies of the forty or so members of the Brotherhood rolled over as the earth rose around them, flopping and tumbling into the increasingly deep crater at the center of the clearing. In seconds, the earth wall had risen nearly to the tops of the trees, and the clearing had become a giant circular hole in the ground at least six feet deep. It was neatly shaped in a half sphere, the inverse of our glittering force field which had sprouted above. It looked like a gigantic cereal bowl, only instead of a delicious breakfast, there were piles of Brotherhood bodies inside.

  The girls looked as impressed as I did, and I thought how unusual it was for people to be watching a burial— a mass burial, no less— with expressions of awe and wonder on their faces. Of all the emotions a person could feel at a time like this, these were surely far down on the list.

  Jessica and Harriet slowly lowered their arms and the towering wall of dirt began to shrink, sinking fluidly back down to the ground like melting chocolate ice cream. The crater was filled in, the earth flowing smoothly over the many members of the Brotherhood like a rushing tide, before they all vanished beneath it. I caught one last glimpse of a bloodied hand before it was consumed by the dirt, and the clearing returned to the way it had looked when we first arrived. Harriet and Jessica put their arms down and admired their work. I was amazed at how untouched it all looked. No one would ever guess that a magical ceremony and a bloody battle had taken place here, or that there were forty-odd witch hunter corpses moldering underneath.

  **

  Jasper’s eyes remained alight in bright blue all through our hike back to the Range Rover. He maintained that there could still be more Brotherhood members hiding in the woods, and that we shouldn’t let our guards down until we were safely back in the car. No one tried to dissuade him as he led the way forward, his eyes serving as an effective flashlight, his katana held out in front of him. Thankfully, the only thing he had to slice through were some stubborn branches in our path. It wasn’t until we were back in our seats and Jessica started the car, that he bowed his head and closed his eyes, and when he opened them a few seconds later, they were back to their regular non-glowing appearance.

  As soon as Jessica pulled away from the Tillamook Head woods and back out onto the dark road, Jasper leaned back in his seat and instantly began to snore, a loud rumbling snore that made us all look at one another in surprise.

  “That was fast!” said Sylvie, looking at the back of Jasper’s seat with an amused smile.

  “He’s worn out, poor thing,” said Jessica. “That Sight Heightening Spell requires a lot of energy. It puts a Seer’s powers into overdrive so that it’s possible to foresee different things all at once. It has saved many a witch’s life. No one wins in a fight against a Seer under a Sight Heightening Spell.”

  “I bet Ursula cast it once or twice,” I mused aloud.

  “Oh, definitely,” said Jessica. “The only real downside to i
t is that energy drain. A Seer can sleep for several days straight after the spell, which as you can imagine, is not very healthy. There’s at least one Seer on record who slept for several weeks and then died of starvation because no one was around to wake her up for meals and water.”

  “Shit,” said Sylvie.

  “Most Seers will have someone they trust watch over them to prevent that from happening,” said Jessica. “The last time Jasper cast the spell, I woke him up everyday for a week afterward so he could eat, drink, and also shower.”

  “He’s very brave,” said Lizzie admiringly from behind me.

  I thought of Jasper’s glowing eyes as he had cut his way through the pack of Brotherhood members around him. Aside from risking his life, he’d essentially put himself out of commission for at least the next few days, all in the name of protecting us and standing up for witches everywhere. I felt a rush of affection for him, and for Jessica and Harriet. Even though only the girls and I had been joined as a coven, I felt a new bond among all of us, a unique sense of kinship that could only be born from battle, from having entrusted our lives to one another. I looked out at the darkened road and smiled as Jasper’s rumbling snores filled the car.

  CHAPTER 20

  Harriet’s Heavenly Hanky-Panky

  The vine and rose gates clanged shut behind us as we glided up the long sloping driveway illuminated in small white lights. Jessica opened the garage door with a wave of her hand and parked the Range Rover in its spot next to the silver Mercedes and Jasper’s black and blue Harley Davidson.

  “Jasper, sweetie?” she said. “We’re home.” She put out a hand and gently shook him. His snores stopped abruptly and he awoke with a jerk.

  “S’matter?” he asked groggily. “More Brotherhoods? I’ll slice ‘em up!”

  Lizzie giggled behind me.

  “No, sweetie, no Brotherhoods,” said Jessica. “We already sliced them up good.”

  “We did, didn’t we?” he said slyly, grinning bleary-eyed at the rest of us.

  We climbed out of the car and went to unload our weapons from the trunk. I spotted another wicker basket similar to the one Jessica had taken to the Ceremony and peaked inside. It was filled with pink and white roses and sharp prickly pear plants. I remembered, as I examined the painful-looking thorns on the roses, Hortensia mentioning that Jessica used them for protection against attackers.

  “My Retaliation Roses and Potent Prickly Pear Plants,” said Jessica. “Best security system you’ll ever find. A man tried to carjack me once…” She gazed off into space as though remembering a very happy memory. “It wasn’t pretty. Well, actually, it kind of was,” she reconsidered. “Pink and white petals flying everywhere like at a wedding, but instead of a happy groom at the end, there was a violent car thief covered in blood with two missing eyeballs.”

  Sylvie and Hortensia snorted with laughter and I smiled with them, privately grateful that it hadn’t been a witch with manus terrae from whom Connor and I had stolen that mint green convertible in Wineville. Then again, we hadn’t attacked the driver, who had also been driving drunk…

  We walked into the thicket of trees in front of the house, Jasper stumbling slightly as he carried the cauldron engraved with the Symbol of the Sacred Four.

  “I can levitate that for you,” Harriet offered.

  “S’okay,” said Jasper, still groggy. “M’good.”

  The house was warmly lit and inviting, and it felt as if we’d just left a few minutes ago. I wondered if the many antique lamps had stayed on while we were gone or if they were enchanted to turn on with Jessica and Jasper’s return. Pre-set spells, remember?

  I glanced at the grandfather clock with its swinging silver pendulum, and saw that it was a quarter past two. I didn’t feel remotely sleepy and had the urge to ask Jessica if she could send me back to the Halfway Place right then and there so I could tell Connor about everything that had just happened. It was too late for such a request, though, and it was kind of her to continue sending me there at all. I would wait until the following evening like Connor and I had agreed.

  “Let’s put these weapons away, then meet back here for a nightcap?” Jessica suggested.

  Everyone, including Lizzie, who I didn’t take for much of a drinker, enthusiastically agreed to this. Jasper, who had started to nod off while standing and holding the cauldron, jerked himself awake and regretfully turned down the invitation. “M’about to drop or I would,” he said.

  Harriet cheerfully stayed behind to make the drinks while the rest of us headed up the winding staircase. I noticed Jessica resting a hand on Jasper’s back as if to protect him from falling backward down the stairs. His eyes were drooping closed and he kept making sudden motions as he snapped to awareness. He reminded me of when I would start to drift off in my notoriously boring early morning history class at Wineville High. His sleepiness was a lot more severe, however, and I understood just how dangerous it could be to leave a Seer unattended in the aftermath of a Sight Heightening Spell.

  We reached the third floor and Jasper finally relinquished the engraved cauldron to Jessica at his bedroom door. “‘Night errbody,” he slurred, looking around at us with an exhausted but affectionate expression. “M’so proud of you all. Showed those bitches what’s what.”

  “Goodnight, sweetie,” said Jessica, hugging him. There were tears in her eyes when she pulled back but I realized it was because she was holding back laughter. Jasper then gave me and the girls each a hug, and I nearly fell back as he stumbled during our embrace.

  “‘Night, Burned Witch,” he said, ruffling my hair with his heavy hand.

  We all watched in barely contained amusement as he stumbled into his room, his hands held out in front of him like a drunk trying to keep their balance. He kicked off his shoes and fell into bed, his rumbling snores starting back up again as soon as his face made contact with the pillow. It sounded like someone had turned on a lawn mower. Jessica gently closed the door.

  “He is out,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye.

  We followed her to the Concoction Cave, where she set the engraved cauldron down on one of the small wooden tables.

  “Take care of this cauldron,” she told us. “The cauldron a coven uses in its Bonding Ceremony takes on a special power. Use it to enhance your most important brews.”

  We all nodded, staring at the silver Symbol of the Sacred Four set into the iron, before following her back out into the hall. We walked into the Broom Room with its many broomsticks hanging neatly on the walls, then crossed to the Combat Cave to hang up our weapons.

  “Shouldn’t we clean them before—” Lizzie began, but broke off.

  As soon as she said the words, the blood spattered on her crossbow and arrows suddenly vanished, like the blood on my axes had evaporated in the heat of my magical fire. She gasped in amazement, then looked around at Sylvie’s sword and Hortensia’s quarterstaff as the bloodstains evaporated there too, like splashed water drying up on hot pavement. In seconds, the weapons went from grimy and bloodstained to polished and gleaming like when we first saw them.

  “That is so cool!” said Lizzie, sounding more like Sylvie.

  “Isn’t it?” said Jessica, grinning. “It was Jasper’s idea. He hates cleaning things. You probably haven’t noticed yet, but the rooms in this house start to straighten themselves out when they get messy.”

  “Really?!” asked Hortensia. “I haven’t seen it!”

  “It usually happens when the room is empty,” said Jessica. “It took Jasper years to get the magic just right. The dishes were especially complicated. I told him to just settle for a dishwasher but he kept at it, and thankfully for us all that he did because it’s a real timesaver and also very eco-friendly. He did the same thing to the bathrooms. If you forget to flush a toilet in this house, the, uh, contents will disappear all by itself without using any water.”

  “Where does it go?” asked Lizzie curiously.

  “To the sewers, where it would normally go,�
� said Jessica. “Same for dirty bathwater.”

  I thought of how I had bloodied up the bathtub downstairs, and said a silent thank you to Jasper. His magic meant that no one had had to clean that bathroom after Harriet and Jessica found me in there.

  “Is that where the blood on our weapons just went?” asked Sylvie. “To the sewers?”

  “Yup,” said Jessica. “Right where it belongs, wouldn’t you agree?”

  The four of us nodded. As we left the Broom Room, Hortensia stopped in front of a row of broomsticks. “So now that the Brotherhood and traitor witch are out of the way…” she said in a hushed voice, “does that mean we can go flying?”

  “I would say so,” said Jessica. “Maybe tomorrow night? Harriet and I can take you all out to a nice secluded area?”

  Hortensia squealed her approval of this plan. We then walked out into the hallway and headed for the stairs down to the second floor, when she stopped.

  “Don’t we have to put these back?” she asked, indicating her black cloak and conical hat.

  “You can if you want,” said Jessica. “I imagine they’ll be very hard to explain to your parents. But they’re yours now and you can keep them wherever you like.”

  Hortensia squealed again. I was warmed by her boundless enthusiasm for witch iconography. It was endearing to see someone handle this change in their life with such joy rather than the manic and tearful reluctance with which I had handled it.

  To be fair, I had been ripped apart by grief two times over. I remembered something I’d overheard my mom saying to my dad during one of their many conversations about me after Connor’s first death: Grief is a hell of a drug, she had said, defending my reclusive behavior.

  It was a hell of a drug, one that had nearly killed me and that I was still dealing with. I knew that being able to see Connor in the Halfway Place was stalling my grieving process, that sooner or later, he would have to move on from there. I wondered, as I walked down to the second floor with Jessica and the girls, if I was better equipped to handle the grief now that I was so empowered. Would being bonded with my sister witches and winning the battle against the Brotherhood be enough to help me survive? Or would I succumb to the drug of grief, that crushing agony which felt like it could only be cured by death, by escaping the world and being with Connor forever among the stars…