The Curse of Dark Root: Part Two (Daughters of Dark Root Book 4)

by Aasheim, April

  She shook her head. “I considered it. But he would have found me. Armand and I are linked.”

  “Twin Souls?”

  “No, but we’ve shared many incarnations together. I thought I could save him––turn him from the dark path he was on. But his love for power exceeded even his love for me. I was weak around him and Sasha knew that.”

  “You would never have turned me over!”

  “No, of course not. And my love for you was far greater than my love for him. You are the best of both of us.” She paused, her eyes resting on the butterfly balanced on the windowsill. “He would have sniffed us out like a hungry dog. He had his tunnels and other ways to find us. My best bet at hiding you was not to hide you.”

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I choked, thinking of all the people who must have known.

  “We were under a spell, Maggie. Another layer of Sasha’s protection. And a powerful one that lasted even after she crossed over.”

  “She was still that worried about me?”

  “Yes. And there was more than your personal safety on her mind. You were Armand’s daughter after all, and as strong-willed as he was. Sasha feared what you might become without her guidance.”

  Jillian continued. “As fate would have it, she had already decided, long before you were born, that she would reform the Council. Raise up daughters to continue her work. No warlocks, she insisted. She thought men were weak, and would eventually give in to power or sex or fortune.”

  “Some do,” I agreed.

  “And some women also,” Jillian said. “Look at Larinda.”

  “Yes.” I reached out, taking her hands. Taking my mother’s hands. We’d always shared a bond that was stronger than I could understand, and now I knew why. Still, somehow I felt guilty, like I was betraying the woman who’d raised me.

  Jillian shook her head. “Don’t feel bad. Sasha loved you all like daughters. She...”

  “All?” I interrupted. “Ruth Anne? Eve? Merry? Are they hers?”

  Jillian rolled her eyes upward, mouthing inaudible words, then nodded, satisfied. “Now that you know the truth, I believe the silence spell is lifted. Ruth Anne is Sasha’s only biological daughter, but Sasha was disappointed by the lack of ability she displayed and didn’t think she would help her cause. Merry was adopted. As was Eve.”

  “Adopted! From other Council members, like me?”

  “Sasha sought out girls born of powerful mothers. She convinced them that their daughters could save the world, if they came to Dark Root to live with her. She was a persuasive speaker. She even convinced me.” Jillian drew her knees into her chest, and I was reminded of the young woman I’d seen in the globes. I hadn’t known my true mother growing up, but thanks to the globes, I saw glimpses of her that most daughters were never privy to.

  “It hurts me more to know they aren’t my sisters, than it is knowing Sasha isn’t my mother.” I looked at Jillian, smiling weakly.

  “They are your sisters, Maggie. You girls grew up together, slept in the same room, shared your secrets and adventures. Sisterhood is a sacred bond. There is none tighter.”

  “Except for blood. None of us share the same mother or father,” I said sadly. “Although, Miss Sasha insisted we perform a Blood Circle last year and...”

  “Last year?”

  “Yes.” My mind recalled our ritual. Miss Sasha gathered us in her bedroom along with June Bug. We pricked our fingers, sharing blood through our circle.

  The circle is breaking.

  “We never closed the circle!” I exclaimed, jumping to my feet. “We went all the way around, but at the very end I never closed the circle with Miss Sasha!”

  Jillian rose up. “What do you mean?”

  I grabbed Jillian’s hands as I urgently explained. “Mother had us do a blood-sisters circle. Now I know why. She wanted to ensure that each of our blood flowed through the other. But the circle was never completed!”

  Jillian looked at me, confused. “Maggie, I can’t make sense of what you’re saying.”

  “I never touched my pricked finger to Mother’s to close it. We forgot that step! Jillian, I know why I’m cursed.”

  I RAN HOME so fast that Jillian could not keep up. Eventually, I lost her in the woods.

  Mother’s Spell Book.

  Miss Sasha laid protective spells on it, and also a hex––a hex we were all warned about.

  Anyone removing the spell book, who did not share Sasha’s blood, would suffer a terrible curse.

  Miss Sasha meant to protect us from this by insisting we hold the blood circle, but by that time her health and mind were so far gone that she didn’t notice we failed to finish the ritual.

  How could I have missed that? How could we all have missed that?

  Because we didn’t know we weren’t Sasha’s daughters.

  I dashed through Harvest Home, up the stairs and into the nursery. I looked at the offending spell book on my son’s shelf, now with revulsion. Part of me wanted to burn it.

  Clutching it to my chest, I shot down the stairs. I found Aunt Dora on the couch and thrust the book out towards her.

  “This is the reason I’m sick. I’m not a direct descendants of Miss Sasha, and I took the book from her shop! Why didn’t you warn me?”

  She sat up, grunting as she sought comfort. “Sasha said family could take it. I even did for a while, after the blood circle we performed decades ago. And ya did yers too, right?”

  I shook my head.

  Aunt Dora stood up, faster than I’d ever seen her move in my entire life, hammering the end of her cane into the floor. She pointed towards the door. “Get it outside! I’ll burn it!”

  “No,” I said, looking at Miss Sasha’s spell book. “It’s going home.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Hang on Sloopy

  “THIS HAD BETTER be good, Maggie,” Eve complained as she entered Miss Sasha’s Magick Shoppe. She wore a pair of cut off shorts, hiking boots and one of Paul’s rockabilly T-shirts. I directed her to a tight chalk circle drawn in the open space in the center of the store front. She wrinkled her nose as she sat down along the circle. “You know, my spells work much better powered by coffee.”

  Merry arrived next, rosy-cheeked and smiling. “Guess what!” she exclaimed as she burst through the door. “Frank’s bringing June Bug back next week! He was angry about something, not sure what. But he’s bringing her here! I’m so happy I could...” she stopped when she saw my face. “Honey, are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not,” I said simply, pointing to the chalk circle.

  She nodded in understanding, then took her position to the right of Eve.

  Finally, Ruth Anne shuffled in, still wearing pajama pants and a zipped hoodie. She yawned and took a seat beside Merry without comment or question.

  I tugged on the ends of my braid, wondering how to begin, then deciding it didn’t matter. There was no easy way to break this news. I picked up Mother’s spell book and placed it in the center of the circle.

  “Not another summoning ritual.” Eve rolled her eyes. “Who are we going to call this time? The Ghostbusters?”

  “It’s just Ghostbusters,” Ruth Anne corrected. “Too bad we don’t have a time travel circle.”

  I held out a hand. “Stop it, please,” I asked.

  The three looked up at me, their easy expressions vanishing. I sat down between Eve and Ruth Anne, then took a long cleansing breath. “You all know I’ve been sick. And Montana, too.”

  “Yes, the curse,” Ruth Anne said carefully.

  “The curse,” I agreed. “I know why it’s happening. I don’t really want to tell you, but I have no choice. It affects us all.”

  “For crying out loud, Maggie,” Eve said. “Spit it out!”

  I looked at my oldest sister. “Ruth Anne, you knew about this, right?”

  “Knew about what?”

  I waved my hand around. “About the three of us. Your sisters.”

  She swallowed hard, pulling her head i
nto her hood like a turtle. “Yes. I figured it out somewhere between you and Merry. Mother swore me to secrecy.” She flopped her hands into her lap, interlacing her fingers. “That was the main reason I left. It was too hard carrying that burden.”

  Eve put out a hand. “Whoa! What are you two talking about?”

  Merry leaned in. “Please tell us.”

  I looked from one to the other. “Ruth Anne is Mother’s only daughter. The rest of us were adopted.”

  “No way!” Merry exclaimed.

  “Thank God,” Eve announced.

  I told them the abbreviated version of the globe scenes, from beginning to end. I mentioned my father’s relationships with Sasha and Larinda and Jillian. And then, his deal with The Dark One. I finished with the discovery that Jillian was my mother.

  When I was done, I found that I was sobbing. “None of us share either a mother or a father. We’re not really sisters. It’s breaking my heart.”

  A new grief now filled me––the death of a family.

  Ruth Anne gently patted my back. “I’m sorry. I should have told you all, but it wouldn’t have been right when we were kids. And when I came home, everything was so good between us. I felt like I had family again. I... I didn’t want that feeling to end.”

  “I understand,” I said, wiping my eyes and looking into hers. “I didn’t want to tell you all either.”

  “That explains a lot of things,” Merry said and Eve nodded. “Like your instant bond with Jillian, and Mama’s coldness to us all. She did her parental duty, but there was never much affection.”

  “We lost our mom and our identities in one fell swoop,” I lamented. “Eve and Merry, I don’t know who your biological parents are, but if we did some digging...”

  “I, for one, am not doing any digging!” Merry said firmly. There was a resolve to the way she held her chin. “Sasha raised us and took care of us. She will always be my mother and you will always be my sisters. Fate and magick brought us together for a reason.”

  “Eve?” I looked to my unusually quiet little sister.

  She blinked once, as if giving it all the thought she needed. “I’m not about to run off and find a whole new family,” she said flatly. “I just painted my bedroom.”

  I smiled gratefully, then looked to Ruth Anne.

  She shrugged. “Hey, I knew what I was getting into when I came home. I’m still in.”

  We reached for each other and huddled together, crying.

  “Are we done?” Eve eventually asked, her face smeared with mascara.

  “Not yet,” I answered. “We never closed our blood-sister ceremony last Autumn. The curse was on Mother’s spell book. Only blood relatives can remove it from the shop. I took it almost a year ago, and I’m bringing it back today. We need to ensure our family will never be cursed by this book again.”

  I removed a needle from a silver case, then lit a lavender candle, placing it in the center of our chalk circle. I held the needle within the candle flame.

  Candle burning, candle bright

  Through the veil of morning light

  Silver needle, shining sun

  The old world wanes, a new begun

  By this pinprick we four shall be

  A family for all eternity

  I drew blood from my finger, then handed the needle to Eve. She did the same and we pressed our wounds together. One by one, we repeated the process. Only this time, we closed the circle. Our blood now coursed through each other’s veins. We were sisters––born apart, united by destiny, and forged through shared experiences, childhood secrets, and ultimately free will.

  Ruth Anne pressed her pricked finger upon the cover of the spell book. As a direct descendent of Sasha Shantay, the true granddaughter of Juliana Benbridge, she was safe from the book’s magick.

  Eve then set her hand over Ruth Anne’s, followed by Merry’s, then finally mine.

  I sensed the life force of my sisters enter me, strengthening me. It was funny the way things turned out––I never wanted siblings as a child, and now I couldn’t imagine life without these beautiful, amazing women. I lingered my hand over theirs much longer than necessary, savoring this moment.

  As I withdrew my hand, the book began to quiver. A spark of light launched up from the cover, like a shooting star, rising up through the ceiling. We looked to each other uncertainly, then worry turned to laughter.

  I picked up Mother’s spell book. It felt quiet and calm and cool. And so did I.

  Merry laid both her hands on it, smiling. “The curse is lifted Maggie! You’re free!”

  We stood and hugged, as if greeting each other again after separate travels.

  There was an urgent rapping on the glass door.

  Shane stood outside, cowboy hat in hand.

  “Hi,” I said, smiling brightly as I opened the door.

  His eyes beaded. “Maggie, I just got a call from Michael. We need to go home, now!”

  I RACED FROM the truck as Shane pulled up to Harvest Home, not even waiting for him to come to a complete stop. I leapt onto the porch and burst through the door. Jillian was as expressionless as a mannequin, her eyes unblinking as she gripped the stair banister. Aunt Dora was on the couch, wailing into a throw pillow. Paul stared straight ahead, stunned.

  Michael gripped the arm of the couch with one hand as he frantically pushed buttons on his cellphone with the other.

  “Maggie!” he said, dropping his phone and rushing towards me. “I’ve been trying to call.”

  “Where’s Montana?’ I looked around the room. Faces stared back, grim and expressionless.

  “Michael?” I swallowed.

  I pushed past him, to the carrier by the couch. My son’s bottle lay cold and half empty inside. “He’s not in his carrier. Michael, why isn’t he in his carrier?”

  Michael stammered unintelligibly. His hands shook as he pulled at his own hair.

  “When I left, you were taking him to the doctor! Where is he?!” I bared my teeth and screeched. “Where’s my son?!”

  He shook his head, his eyes swollen and red. “Gone, Maggie. He’s gone.”

  “What do you mean he’s gone?” I rifled through his carrier, tossing out blankets and flipping it over, as if somehow my son had crawled beneath it. “How can he be gone?”

  “My GPS screwed up. It took us down the wrong road into Linsburg. There was so much morning fog I could hardly see. When I got out of the mist and back on the right road, I looked in the rearview mirror and... our son was gone. Just gone. I never stopped, Maggie, not even once. There was no way someone could have taken him.”

  “No!” I flew at Michael, fists closed. Paul or Shane pulled me off as I pummeled his shoulders. “You lost my baby! You lost my baby!” I was unable to articulate anything more. My mind couldn’t even form a question.

  I broke free of whoever was holding me, ready to find Montana myself, when Mother’s crystal bracelet slipped from my wrist. It shattered into countless pieces as it hit the floor.

  I looked from the scattered shards to Michael and back again. My sisters were now beside me, swarming me, holding me up.

  “He’s out there,” I protested. “I’m going to find him. He’s out there.”

  “No, Maggie, he’s not,” Jillian said.

  Michael reached into his pocket. “This was inside the carrier.”

  In his palm was a black feather, long and sleek.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Stand by Me

  WE SPENT THE remainder of the day in a desperate search, attempting to retrace Michael’s route to Linsburg. But the foggy road had also vanished. Even as we searched, in my heart I knew we wouldn’t find him on this plane.

  “Larinda’s taken him to the Netherworld,” Jillian said, as we gathered together in the back yard.

  “The Netherworld?” Paul asked.

  “The shadow realm,” Jillian explained. “The world between worlds––where the half-dead roam, spirits traverse, and humans visit in their dreams.”

&n
bsp; “Tell me how to get there,” I demanded.

  “I can take you there, Maggie,” Shane stated. “We’ll get Montana back.”

  Michael slammed his hand on the table. “You’re not going to get my son! I am!”

  “You’re the one that lost him!”

  “Gentlemen, please,” Jillian intervened. “It’s not that easy. Even dream walkers can’t enter the Netherworld directly.”

  “Why not?” Shane said. “I do it all the time.”

  Jillian pressed her lips together. “You created those dreamscapes. You’ll be entering a collective world created by countless souls from countless dimensions. You’ll get lost without an anchor. Armand had one, but we do not.”

  I looked at Shane and we nodded to each other resolutely. “I have Juliana Benbridge’s ankh. She led me to it, in a secret attic above Dip Stix.”

  I ran to the truck and returned with the jewelry box. With the tip of a butter knife, I wedged open the tight mahogany lid. There were gasps as I snapped it open. A golden ankh glistened at us from its thick chain. A folded notecard in Sasha’s handwriting read: Property of My Mother, Dark Root’s Founding Witch.

  “It was in Joe’s apartment all this time,” Jillian said in wonder.

  “So I can go now?” I asked.

  Aunt Dora narrowed her eyes. “It’ll be very dangerous. There’s madness within.” She scratched at the lone hair growing out of her chin. “Ya may not come out at all, an’ if ya do, ya might not come out the same.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I have no choice.” I took the ankh out of the box, sensing its immense power––the same power that had ignited my father’s quest for immortality. I slipped it around my neck, feeling its archaic origins. “This will tether me, and Shane can help guide me. I saw my father take people with him in the globe dreams. We’ll stay close together.”

  “You’ll need a portal,” Jillian said.

  “We just closed one in the nursery of Sister House,” Merry chimed in. “I bet we can use it to get through.”