"This is a dream," she reminded herself, but suddenly felt less sure. She paused and allowed her mind to connect with the other witches who sat around her body in New Orleans. She felt Victor, Lydie, Oliver and Abby. They could not see what she saw, but they surely felt her panic.
Kendra drew her attention back into the dream and to the doorway.
"She cannot hurt me," she whispered and strode into the darkness.
****
A huge stone foyer greeted her. Far away she could see a hearth as tall as a house. A massive fire blazed and she moved toward the flames. She searched for Ethel, but the flames seemed to stretch and fill every space. She could no longer see anything, except the flames. Inside the blaze, another scene materialized. Kendra moved closer, watching as a dark street slid into view. A beautiful house surrounded by a heavy black iron fence. Now she could see a window with white curtains billowing. Beyond the flickering candlelight, she saw her friends sitting in a circle, their eyes closed, their lips moving. In the center, Kendra saw herself. Above her hung the doll.
****
Sebastian paced around the witches. He stared at Abby's face, searching for any sign of distress. If something happened, he would rip her out of the circle. None of the witches moved, only Kendra shifted and moaned. Sometimes her fingers twitched and her eyes blinked open, but he knew that she did not see.
Outside the wind continued to rise. Leaves and branches pelted the roof and windows. The sound grew in intensity until it thundered through the entire house. The candles started to flicker and then all at once blew out.
Chapter 15
"Run!" Kendra screamed in her dream, and the scream traveled through dimensions until it exploded into the witches' minds. Abby felt the scream burst within her. Her eyes snapped open, but darkness met her searching gaze. She fumbled out of her chair and tripped over a soft form in the darkness. A person. Dead? She knelt down, trying to steady her breath, and felt the shape beneath her. Her hand trailed over long hair—Kendra. Pressing a hand on the woman's chest, she felt the rise and fall of her breath. She was alive.
"Abby?" Sebastian whispered, and she nearly cried out in relief.
"I'm here," she said and held out her hands, standing and moving toward his voice. When she finally felt his strong hands grasp hers, she pressed her face hard into his chest.
"Guys?" Lydie's voice now.
"We're here," Abby whispered. She moved away from Sebastian, but kept one of his hands clutched in her own.
"What happened to the light?" Oliver asked.
"Sshhhh," Lydie croaked.
They all listened. The wind continued to howl beyond the house, but they heard another sound too, a crackling.
"What is that?" Victor chimed in. His voice was high and alert.
"It's fire," Lydie shrieked. "I feel it everywhere."
The light from the fire began to pour into the room then as it grew in the trees surrounding the house. Through the windows, they saw the trees burning.
"I can't stop it," Lydie yelled, her fingers stretched toward the flames.
Abby moved toward the window at the front of the house. A woman stood in the street. Her silver hair flew wild around her head and a mad-looking grin stretched across her lips. She fixed her gaze on Abby and in the firelight, Abby saw her light eyes turn darker, black.
Abby felt a terrible pain shoot through her head. She stumbled and fell against the wall. Sebastian ran to her. He looked toward the window and saw the witch outside.
"It's Ethel," he yelled.
Abby braced her hands on the windowsill to keep from throwing up. She watched the witch lift her hands toward the sky. The fire from the tree snaked into her hands and up her arms. She conjured the fire into a massive roiling ball and turned back to the house. Abby knew the witch would throw the ball of flames at the house. She would burn them all alive.
And then a shape darted up behind the woman. Slim and dark with a long woven braid. Kanti.
Suddenly the fire dissolved in Ethel's hands. Her face screwed up in pain and she dropped to her knees on the pavement.
"She's fallen," Abby croaked, gesturing wildly at the window.
"Go get her," Kendra cried weakly from the floor.
Oliver, Victor and Sebastian ran into the street, but Ethel had already disappeared.
****
"Makes me feel like the techies are the real wizards," Helena told Julian as they watched the pile of papers queue up at the scanner and then zoom to one of the boxes on the floor.
"Agreed. I keep trying to read the files as they show up on the screen, but they disappear before I make it through ten words. I may be going blind at this point."
"Time to tackle that box then? According to Victor, the important stuff would get sorted into that one." She pointed to the box labeled "Important."
"Kind of obvious, huh? It's almost like he thought we're old geezers or something." Julian laughed.
Helena laughed too.
"Since that attack, I do feel like an old geezer."
"Maybe I could work on you?" Julian asked. "I spent a lot of years in study after I left Ula. A good portion of that time I devoted to energy healing. I might be able to help."
"I'd take a miracle cure from an infomercial if I thought I might feel better. Yes, please."
"It's settled then. How about we devote an hour to reading and then we'll spend some time in the healing room ."
Julian carried a stack of papers from the box to a table by the fireplace. They found seats and divided the paperwork between them.
"Mostly journal pages," Helena complained. "Not exactly easy reading."
Julian pressed his face close to a page.
"No they're not. I get the feeling penmanship wasn't a priority for a few of these folks. The Sydney journal pages are quite legible though." He held up a page with Sydney's initials, SBA, monogrammed across the top.
"I would have liked to have met her," Helena said. "Abby described her as larger than life."
"You know, I can feel that? It jumps off the page. Pretty strong energy if I can still feel it through these notes."
"Have you spoken with Oliver much?" Helena asked, wondering if Oliver had confided the details of Sydney's death.
Julian had trained Oliver when he first arrived at Ula. Helena traced Oliver's bloodline, but Julian became his mentor. Oliver took it hard when Julian left the coven. She knew that he took it a bit personally too.
"Very little. I get the feeling he's still sore with me."
Helena nodded.
"It was hard on all of us when you left, Julian."
He looked up, surprised.
"I was under the impression that most of the coven preferred that I leave."
"Not Oliver and not me. It hurt to see you go. It hurt even more when we didn't hear from you."
Julian's eyes softened and he looked at Helena with regret.
"I missed you too, Helena. I hated to leave, but I couldn't stay. I was haunted. Even now it's hard."
Helena looked at her hands. They trembled as they often did since the attack on Ula. She shoved them into the folds of her colorful patchwork skirt.
She gazed at him steadily, stared into his nearly transparent blue eyes and wished that she could read his mind. She had loved him when he'd left. She wondered if she loved him still.
"I am truly sorry, Helena, from the bottom of my heart. If I could have stayed, if I could have made it work, I would have."
"But you did stay, Julian. After Miranda—" She paused, her voice caught on the name. "After Miranda passed, you stayed for decades. And then suddenly you left."
"Murdered," Julian corrected her. "Miranda did not pass," he closed his eyes as he said the word, "peacefully in her sleep. She woke to chaos and violence. Tobias killed her without a thought, without a purpose."
Julian's eyes had grown distant with the memory. Helena could sense the dormant rage just beneath the surface of his pain.
She nodded stiffly and
returned to the journals. Her eyes grew tired after only a few pages. She closed them and leaned her head back in her chair.
"This is interesting," Julian said suddenly.
He held up an old journal entry. The paper looked yellow and stained.
"It's a map," he said.
Helena stood and went to his chair, balancing on the armrest.
The map, clearly drawn by a novice, showed a shoreline and scribbled trees. The blank space beyond the shore was labeled Lake Michigan. Within the trees a small x and the word "body" were crudely marked.
"Well that's useful. It could be anywhere," Helena said.
"No, look." Julian pointed at a single, tiny word in the upper right corner of the page. "Trager."
****
As Sebastian maneuvered the van down the long paved driveway that led to their home, Abby sighed and rested her head against the seat. The drive had taken them twenty hours. No one wanted to rent a hotel. All of the witches and Sebastian preferred to put as much distance between them and the L'Obscurite as possible.
"I'm beat," Oliver groaned, pulling open the back door and stepping out. He dropped into several squats and stretched his arms overhead.
"Me too," Lydie mumbled.
"Bed sounds good," Kendra agreed, rubbing her temples and blinking a few times. Since her journey into Ethel's dreams, she had complained of a constant headache.
Sebastian offered to make breakfast, but the witches opted for bed.
In their bedroom, Sebastian pulled the comforter over Abby and lit a fire.
"Come lie with me," she said when he finished.
He looked alert, despite the long drive, but nodded and climbed into bed. She pushed her back into him and he wrapped his arms and legs around her, breathing her in.
"You're experiencing powers, aren't you?" she asked. She had felt them during the ritual in New Orleans. Though he was not in the circle, his presence hovered around them like a shield.
"I think so," he admitted. "I haven't turned into a wolf at the full moon yet, so that's rather disappointing."
She laughed and wiggled her butt against him.
"Earth, I think. That's only a guess though. You just feel so solid lately. Sometimes I notice that around Oliver. Like he has roots growing out of his feet."
Sebastian stiffened slightly.
"He likes you," Sebastian said.
"We're friends."
"He likes you as more than a friend. I know that you know, so let's not act, okay? There's enough confusion in this life without the pretense."
"Okay," she sighed. "Yes, I'm sure that's true, but those aren't my feelings. He's not a threat to you, not ever. I love you, Sebastian. I love you in a way that I didn't even know existed. A thousand lifetimes kind of love."
He pulled her tighter and began to kiss the back of her neck. She felt her body grow warmer.
"I love you too," he murmured into the bare flesh of her back. "And I want you."
He stripped her clothes off slowly. She lay beneath him and watched as he took his own shirt off. She traced the muscles of his chest down to the v shape that tapered into his pants.
Abby longed to draw him into her completely, to somehow make a single person from their two bodies. Afterward, he wound his body around her and they slept.
****
"I thought we could stay here for a couple more days and then Lydie and I will make the trip back to Ula to fill them in on New Orleans," Oliver told Abby the following morning.
Kendra and Victor had woken early to return to Chicago.
"Of course. Are you okay with waiting?"
"Yeah. Lydie's worn out. I think she wants to read books and play with your cat and pretend she's not a witch for a little while."
Abby laughed.
"I think I'll join her."
"You and me both," he said. "But I figure two days max and then we need to leave. I want to get this information to Faustine, especially the book pages. If he could track down that book, maybe..."
"Maybe we'd have another five hundred pages of stuff to sift through," Abby sighed. "Seriously, how are we ever going to get through the journals and the information from the Asemaa?"
"Victor set up a pretty stellar system in the vault and everyone at Ula is reading. We have a lot of eyes on that stuff."
"A lot less eyes while we were road tripping south."
"Still, we needed to go," Oliver said. "I think this is important."
"It's scary is what it is. Possession? I don't even want to go to sleep at night."
"You have plenty of protective spells around this place, Abby. No spirits are coming in unless you invite them."
Abby nodded, but she thought back to the presence in the nursery two weeks before. She had only mentioned the experience to Victor, preferring not to alarm the others.
"We made an enemy out of that witch Ethel and didn't even get any useful information," Abby continued.
"I get the feeling she has a lot of enemies. I doubt we're at the top of the list, and we did get useful information. Kanti wanted us to live. She stopped Ethel from burning the house down."
"Yeah, but why?"
Oliver shrugged.
"I'm afraid that's where my vast knowledge comes to an end, but still, it's good to know, right?"
Abby bit her lip.
"I wish I knew."
"So, not to change the subject, and I don't want to step on toes, but is everything okay with Sebastian?"
Abby looked away, struggling to meet Oliver's questioning gaze.
"Yeah, of course," she lied. "He's just edgy. Who wouldn't be, right?"
"You can talk to me, Abby; you know that, don't you? About anything?"
She thought of the secrets that she currently harbored. The baby growing inside of her. Sebastian's burgeoning anger coupled with a darkness that came over him. As a human she might not have noticed it, but as a witch, she sensed energy in a wholly different way. When he lapsed into his moods, the light seemed to drain from the space around him.
"I do know, Oliver, and I appreciate it, truly. I think everyone is going to be a little off until..."
"Yeah exactly, until. From where I'm sitting, I don't see an end in sight. And this possession stuff that Ethel kept back, she did that for a reason."
The kitchen door swung open and Abby's black-and-white kitty Baboon strutted in with Lydie on his heels.
"I just gave him a good brush and rubdown ," she told them. "And now I want to bake cookies."
Oliver laughed and hopped off his stool. He squatted down to pet the cat, who purred and rubbed against him.
"Be careful, too much petting and he'll bite you," Lydie warned.
As if on cue, the cat turned his head and snapped at Oliver's outstretched fingers.
"Ouch, little fur devil."
"That's my angel you're insulting," Abby joked. "What kind of cookies do you want to make, Lydie? I can definitely get on board with cookies."
"Me too," Oliver said, pushing Baboon onto the floor and rubbing his belly. The cat playfully batted Oliver away.
"My mom used to make snowdrop cookies. I've been thinking about those lately," Lydie admitted, wistfully.
"Seems appropriate." Oliver tilted his head toward the window where snow had begun to fall.
"Any clue what the recipe is?" Abby asked.
"We're witches," Oliver said.
"We'll improvise," Lydie finished.
****
Oliver, Helena, Elda and Julian stood in the castle's oratory. Oliver and Lydie had returned to Ula that morning after two days of cookies, movies and pretending that they were not witches.
Sun shone through the stained-glass windows and cast rainbows of light on the scarred wooden desk they hunched over.
"I don't recognize the writing," Elda admitted, studying the torn pages that Oliver had brought from New Orleans.
"Nor do I," Julian agreed. "Although something in the tone is familiar."
"It's the content that is di
sturbing to me," Helena added, pulling over a chair and sinking into it. Weakness continued to plague her, and standing for more than a few minutes at a time fatigued her. "It speaks of spirit possession."
"Through bloodlines," Elda finished.
Oliver pointed to a passage.
"The writer says that possession is short-lived. Hours at most. So what would be the purpose?"
"To have a body," Julian said simply. "It's one thing to manipulate through the mind, through dreaming and visions. It's quite another to pick up a knife and stab somebody with it."
"You think she wants to kill someone?" Helena asked, trembling. She grasped the edge of the desk to steady her quaking hands.
"I think she's had several hundred years to build this rage. I don't believe that she even found the strength to communicate until recently. Look at the history. We find traces of the curse, but no evidence of her as an actual participatory entity until the last twenty years. Victor started receiving visions of her. Abby is having dreams. She's clearly working with the Vepars, but before that? Nothing."
"So what happened? Who opened the gate for her to come through?"
"That's the million-dollar question, I think," Julian replied.
"And she appeared in New Orleans and stopped this witch Ethel?" Elda asked, frowning.
Oliver knew Elda had been angry when he admitted that he and Lydie and the other witches had gone to New Orleans, but she was biting her tongue.
"Yes. Abby saw her. She described her as phantom-like, so she doesn't have a body yet."
"But Dafne is still missing," Helena murmured.
Chapter 16
"It's so good to see you." Gwen moved forward and gave Abby a fierce hug. "And to meet you officially, Sebastian."
Gwen hugged Sebastian and then gestured them toward a cozy booth in the back of the restaurant.
They passed a case of croissants and Abby's stomach growled. They had eaten breakfast, but Abby noticed that breakfast barely satisfied her these days.
"Which one do you want?" Sebastian asked, grabbing her hand.
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