"Coffee?" Elda asked, the disorientation from her travel through the mirror still lingering. The tea had helped, but something strong and dark seemed in order.
"Of course." Galla smiled and waved her hands over their mugs. She set a sugar bowl and pitcher of cream on the little round table.
"Why is there upset in your coven, Galla? Because you're helping us?" Elda asked, settling into a chair and adding a drop of cream to her cup.
"It is the whispers mostly. Word has spread about your human Sebastian and how he disappeared from our All Hallow's Ball. There are rumors of a meeting."
"A meeting?"
"Oh, it's the same old stories. The Ancients will come together and pass judgment. They will seek to restore the old ways."
Elda cocked an eyebrow at Galla, who smiled an apology.
"There are witches who still believe in The Ancients? This is not the fifteenth century. Even if we did have such a group, they surely wouldn't cast judgment on their own." Elda spoke, but a shiver ran down her spine.
The Ancients were a bit like a fundamentalist version of God to early witches. It was they who created the rules to harm none and they who served punishment to witches that disobeyed. However, Elda had never known a living witch who saw or spoke with an Ancient. They existed in much the same way that God existed for humans, an all-seeing eye who tallied one's sins and eventually balanced the scales.
"I know," Galla agreed, waving her hand in dismissal. "I've seen too much of the world to discount any story as total fiction, but I do not believe The Ancients, if they exist, are lurking in the shadows waiting to punish us for our misdeeds. Furthermore, there was no malice in the actions of Ula. You merely tried to help a new witch feel welcome by allowing her human lover to be a part of her life. It seems to me that our role as witches should be more about inclusivity than superiority."
"I agree completely. Alienating ourselves is exactly why the Vepar's attack was so shocking. We were unprepared. We lived like hermits in our castle on the cliff and assumed that we could go on doing so forever. I wonder why we never asked if we should continue that way."
Galla drank her coffee, appearing thoughtful.
"Looking back is always easier. We see the whole picture instead of fragments. Are we meant to stumble blindly along in this life? I don't know, but perhaps, yes. We get the glory of these bodies and this decadent earth, but we have to view the world through a pinhole. Everything comes in sips when we want to open wide and swallow the whole thing."
Elda nodded, remembering. She had abstained so often. She loved Faustine, but she had spent decades in a chaste, distant love with him. She rarely indulged. Even her magic was carefully moderated. Perhaps her reluctance to tap into her wild self arose from her pre-witch life. As a girl in Croatia, more than two hundred years before, she lived in poverty and destitution. Luxuries simply did not exist. It was not a matter of abstaining, but surviving. Long after she discovered her powers and moved to Ula, she continued to wake at night hearing her baby brother's hungry cries. He died at only ten months old. Their mother's milk had dried and the food that she could provide was not nutritious enough to sustain him. For decades, Elda devoted her work as a witch entirely to feeding the poor. She planted magic gardens, she filled empty pantries with food to last through famines, and she nursed the malnourished to a thriving health that they had never known. Somewhere through the years, her need to save others to make up for her brother's death had dwindled.
"Sometimes I feel very old," Elda sighed, inspecting a strand of her long silvery hair.
Galla smiled and shook her head.
"You are still a spring chicken, my dear," Galla reassured her. "It is I who am old."
Elda gave her a wry smile. "Well, older than me, anyway."
They laughed and then Galla set her coffee down, looking serious.
"Your Abby is with child," Galla revealed, watching Elda carefully. "I feel confident that your coven is not aware?"
Elda widened her eyes in surprise.
"Just now? We saw her only last week. Surely I would have..."
"She's hiding it," Galla interrupted.
"How do you know?"
"I still have her hair," she confessed. "I didn't take it intentionally. Thomas must have slipped it into my coat that day in the car when we found Abby injured. I discovered it when I returned here and tucked it into a drawer."
"Why didn't you throw it away?" Elda asked.
"I don't know. It just felt right to keep it, with everything that's happened. Hair is a direct link. It's a better conduit than material items. I hated to discard it only to discover a need."
Elda understood, but also found Galla opening that portal disturbing. Mostly because it hurt to think that Abby had withheld such important news from the Coven of Ula.
"Maybe she just wanted to wait until she felt sure. Many women miscarry and after Abby's injuries..."
"Perhaps," Galla agreed. "But there's another presence around Abby. I'm sure it's the spirit Kanti. I can feel her through Abby. I think that I can feel her through Abby's child."
Elda frowned.
"How could that be?"
"I don't know, Elda. This whole situation has confounded me on more levels than I care to admit, but we need to keep a close eye on her."
Chapter 11
Dafne tried to stand, but her left leg had been injured. Pain shot through her body and sent her crumpling back onto the bed. She groaned and bit down on a wad of blood-hardened blanket to keep from crying out. Dafne had felt pain. Sometimes her whole life felt like a series of monumental pains separated by years of listless monotony. Watching her friends die in the Ebony Woods fire, giving birth to the child she never knew, assisting Ula in its steady demise, remembering Tobias before he became a monster, and then knowing him after. At times, she thought all of the pain would take her swiftly in her sleep. When the nightmares became too much to bear, death would surely save her, but no, she lived on. Decades passed, but life never got sweeter; a little less bitter maybe, but then came the prophecy and with her growing awareness of the curse, a new pain consumed her life. She lived in terror for the witches of Ula. She owed them the shred of life she did claim and wanted only to protect them.
But what had all of her scheming brought her? A broken body, held captive in some dungeon that felt as dark as the center of the earth. She never heard a sound. Not a whisper. It nearly drove her mad. Sometimes she talked to herself out loud, sang even, but water did not come enough to allow for frequent speaking. The water only appeared after she had slept and she knew that they drugged it with their venom, but she had to drink. Drink or die.
Without light, she had no concept of night or day or how long she had been held prisoner. It might have been days or months. Where did they take Indra? Did she live? Or had they killed her and consumed her powerful blood?
Had the curse come to fruition and Sebastian risen as the next Vepar in Alva's clan? Perhaps her ignorance about what occurred, beyond her four walls, bothered her more than anything else. In the cell, she had no control. When she tried to call upon the fire of the earth, it did not heed her call. She wanted to believe they'd merely locked her in some chamber that blocked access to her element, but then she considered The Pool of Truth and wondered if the gods had stripped away her powers for good.
****
"Weird," Lydie murmured as they walked through an alley in the French Quarter, past a shop filled with tiny macabre heads hanging from strings.
"The shrunken heads of New Orleans," Oliver sang eerily.
"Hilarious," Abby quipped.
Even in daytime, the New Orleans streets throbbed with the sounds of jazz music. Intoxicating smells wafted from every store and restaurant.
Abby pointed out a two-story cafe called Silver Moons.
"Let's eat there, I see a sign for jambalaya."
"Do you think of anything other than food?" Oliver joked.
"Yes," Abby retorted, blushing and hoping that Oliver wouldn't notice. Sh
e might have been able to hide her pregnancy, but the symptoms not so much. Between hunger and fatigue and weird bursts of not-intentional magic, she felt pretty sure that her witch counterparts were starting to notice that something was up.
"I'm hungry too," Lydie said, in her defense. "And you ate half a bag of trail mix on the way here," she reminded Oliver. "No wonder you're not hungry."
"An acute observation, Lyds; food it is." He laughed. "You two get a table. I'm going to drop into this bookstore and have a look around."
Oliver wandered into a small, used bookshop that looked rather uninviting. Black ragged curtains covered the windows and a porcelain cat, who appeared somewhat hostile, guarded the door.
Though they all agreed that Lydie needed the road trip, they also decided not to involve her in seeking out the L'Obscurite. Oliver had explained to Lydie who they were, but then made it clear that she got to skip the witch interrogation. Abby thought she might insist on going along, but then Oliver promised to take her to the zoo and she gave in.
Victor, Kendra and Sebastian volunteered to search for the L'Obscurite while Oliver and Abby took Lydie sightseeing. Though Abby would have preferred to explore New Orleans with Sebastian, Victor insisted he go with them. He thought a human addition to their group might make the L'Obscurite less suspicious.
Abby picked a table on the balcony and she and Lydie ordered sweet tea.
Their waiter, a short gentleman dressed in black slacks and a black turtleneck, told them enthusiastically about the specials. When he learned that they were visiting, he launched into a verbal tour of New Orleans, recommending a dozen or more restaurants and shops that they had to see before the left.
"Thank you, Abby," Lydie said seriously, after their waiter left.
"For what, Lydie?" Abby asked, mystified. All she had done was pass Lydie a piece of bread.
"For bringing me here and for letting Oliver and me stay with you. I know it's probably not as fun with a kid along."
"That is absolutely not true," Abby assured her, squeezing Lydie's hand across the table.
Lydie, not entirely comfortable with any displays of affection, pulled it quickly away.
"We love having you. Honestly after you and Oliver stayed at Ula, Sebastian and I both felt a little lost. Our house is so big. It felt empty without you."
Lydie offered a shy smile and tore her napkin into bits. When she finished that, she started staring at the ice cubes in her glass, causing them to melt.
"See those candles over there?" Abby asked, giving Lydie a conspiratorial smile and tilting her head toward several tall candelabras along the balcony edge. "Think you could light them?"
Lydie looked at the candles and grinned.
"Easy as pie," she said, looking determined.
Abby knew they shouldn't play with magic, in public no less, but after months of being serious, she wanted to have a little fun.
Lydie gazed at the candles. Her fingers twitched on the table. One by one the candles lit. Another restaurant guest noticed as well. He looked at the floor as if searching for an electrical cord. A waiter stopped and loaded a tray with several empty glasses. When he stood, not realizing the candelabras had been lit, he stepped too close to the flame and his bowler hat caught on fire. Oblivious, the man continued cleaning. Abby stood quickly and flicked a surge of energy toward the half-empty pitcher of water on the table before him. The water spewed out and soaked the waiter and the couple at the next table, who both yelped in surprise. As if on cue, a cascade of red peony flowers showered the waiter and the couple from the sky. All three of them stared around in total astonishment, looking at one another with a mingling of awe and suspicion.
"Where did the flowers come from?" Lydie asked, giggling.
"I didn't want to miss all the fun," Oliver said from over her shoulder, startling Lydie and Abby both.
The waiter, finally noticing that his hat was smoking, held it to his face and gave it a distrustful sniff. Abby, Oliver and Lydie burst out laughing.
****
"This is the place," Victor agreed, looking at his smart phone.
Madame Lucinda's Wild Wares occupied a crumbling stucco house painted in vibrant greens and orange. The hand-drawn sign included skulls to dot the I's and little pitchforks pointing toward the open doorway. The smell of incense and cigarette smoke wafted into the already fragrant street.
Sebastian looked back the way they had come. He scanned the faces of people walking the sidewalks, but saw no one watching them. Still he couldn't shake the feeling of eyes. The hair on the nape of his neck prickled and he looked up into dark windows.
"Now or never," Kendra muttered, slipping her hands into the pockets of her jeans. Sebastian knew that she kept concealment stones in her pockets, as did Victor. They hoped to remain incognito while they got a feel for the place.
Kendra walked in first. Her long blonde hair hung in a thick braid down her back. She wore jeans and a plain red t-shirt. To Sebastian, she looked like any other human. Victor stood out a bit more. It was his eyes. They were dark, nearly black, and his dark hooded sweatshirt, paired with dark jeans, only added to his mysterious image. He wore his hair, also dark and long, tied at the base of his neck.
They had all tried for the casual look. Sebastian didn't own anything else so that simplified things. He also wore jeans and a well-worn Van Halen t-shirt that had belonged to his father. He had kept most of his dad's clothes, even the stuff he hated like pleated jeans and polo shirts. Not that his dad had often worn those things. Many of the clothes sat in a storage unit in Ohio. One day he would go back and clean it out, though the thought of it made his stomach knot.
Inside the shop, skeletons dangled. Colorful beads hung around their necks and funky hats were perched atop their gleaming skulls. Shelves, jammed with glass bottles, hand-sewn dolls and an assortment of magic supplies from tarot cards to leather-bound journals, lined the walls. Behind the glass counter, filled with elaborate looking jewelry and huge geodes, a tall, dark-skinned woman read from a book titled The Wild Woman's Guide to Potions and Poultices. The woman wore tiny dark sunglasses, despite the dim lighting, and had rows of braided hair woven with little orange beads. She did not look up from her book when they entered.
Kendra glanced at her and then wandered to a shelf of candles, picking each one up and holding them to her nose. Sebastian looked at a tattered book about shifter spells and mildly flipped through the pages, keeping an eye on Victor from the corner of his eye.
"Hi there," Victor said to the woman at the counter. "I'm looking for a friend of mine who may have stopped through here. She's been missing for a month now and we're pretty sure she came this way."
The woman set her book down and watched Victor with a bored expression.
He held out the photo of Dafne that Oliver had supplied them.
The woman took it and squinted at the image.
"Never seen her," she said, but even Sebastian could see the lie in her face. He knew that Victor and Kendra saw it as well. Subtle, well-practiced at deception, but still a flick of her eyes toward a dark beaded curtain and a tightening of her jaw.
"Is there anyone else here, who might have?" Victor asked, gesturing toward the curtain.
"Nope, just me," the woman lied again.
Sebastian walked over and smiled.
"We really don't mean to bother you," he said. "But this person is important to us and we need to find her. It's life and death here." Sebastian chose his tone carefully. The thinly veiled threat was not obvious, but it was there. He placed his hands on the counter.
Kendra shot him a questioning look and then joined the two of them in front of the woman.
Victor bored into her with dark eyes, imploring her to open up.
She frowned and glanced openly at the curtain now. She was human, but she had begun to sense that they were not.
"I told you, I've never seen her," she said again, and this time her voice shook.
As if the person behind the cu
rtain sensed her distress, a man swept in from the back room. He wore a long navy robe with buttons running high up his neck. His white blond hair, cropped close to his head, was streaked with silver and black. Intense blue eyes, catlike, stopped on the three of them.
"How can I help you?" he asked, not bothering to conceal his hostility.
"When was she here?" Sebastian barked, jabbing his finger at the picture.
He knew that both Victor and Kendra were taken aback by his forwardness, but something urged him on.
The man barely glanced at the picture.
"Never seen her," he said.
"Mitchell? It is Mitchell, right?" Sebastian could not say how he knew this man's name, only that it appeared in his mind like a block of black text on a white screen.
The man recoiled and his eyes turned to slits.
Sebastian leaned forward and seized the man's wrist.
"My name is Sabre," the witch said, through clenched teeth. He tried to jerk his arm away, but Sebastian held tight, daring him to react.
"Your chosen name, sure, but I'm talking about the name your parents gave you. You know, the people who brought you into the world?" Sebastian continued, unperturbed by the witch's growing anger.
Sebastian knew things about this witch. He could feel the energy snaking off him, crawling over Sebastian, inspecting. An air element, he thought.
The woman behind the counter stood and disappeared into the curtain.
"We're not looking for trouble," Victor chimed in, though his voice too held a note of warning. "But we've come a long way for this information and one way or another, we're going to get it."
Mitchell, Sabre, glanced between them and smiled an angry-looking grin. One of his front teeth was pierced with a small blue diamond.
"You're way out of your league if you think you're bringing trouble to my store."
Two more people emerged from the curtain. A man and a woman. The man was short, stocky and reminded Sebastian of a feisty jungle cat. The woman, also short, but slender and silver-haired, looked like a much older, much wiser witch. She cast her light eyes upon them, and the title of a book that Sebastian's father had kept in his study popped into his mind "Something wicked this way comes."
Kanti (Born of Shadows Book 3) Page 11
