by C. L. Bush
Clara decided to keep the picture, and it was now tucked in her backpack, along with the loot from the Smiths’ house.
She now lounged in the library she’d discovered just hours previously, going through the books and trying to distract her mind. Clara kept trying to calculate how much time had passed back home but the answer eluded her anxiety-ridden mind like a Eurydicean puzzle. She wondered if they had already had a funeral for her, what lies they had told about her disappearance to the townies. She wondered if Sam had given up on her, or her mother, or the rest of the coven.
Faced with many questions and no answers, Clara dug into the books. The doors creaked and Clara lifted her eyes from a terribly beautiful edition of Rudyard Kipling’s poetry. Her grandmother gracefully entered with a poise that signaled to Clara that playtime was over. She’d changed her clothes, Clara noticed, into lean, black trousers and a dark turtleneck. She was as graceful and as dark as a shadow.
“Where’s Christina?” Clara’s voice was empty and insincere. The day and the night were too long for her to care about the acquaintances on this side of the Arch.
“Out,” she answered, unwilling to give any additional information regarding the subject. “Reader, are you?” Helen Parker mused, approaching a specific shelf by the window. She picked up a heavy, ancient tome without even giving it a glance. “While you’re here, you might as well be properly educated.”
Clara accepted the book offered to her, placed it on her book of poetry, and opened it carefully. Ortum Amet the front, cracked page read, and Clara blankly looked at her host. The rest of the book was in what resembled Latin.
“It’s essential for any magical practitioner. ‘The birth of magic’ it’s called. You could use the decoding magnifier you have in your backpack but I’m not sure how much of its nature is perverted in the Arch,” Helen mentioned and Clara extended her hand over the armchair, leaving the book over her bag and choosing poetry for the moment.
Clara was aware it was crucial to share with Helen and Christina all that she had packed from her home, but it somehow made her feel vulnerable. Deciding not to search for anything in her bag in front of Helen or Christina gave her at least some sense of security.
“The name of the book depicts the content,” Helen added, her lips pressed together. “It was one of Ian’s favorites.”
A reluctant silence embraced the room and even Helen shuffled nervously.
“Can you tell me more about him?” Clara asked hesitantly, her voice almost a whisper.
“I can, and I will,” Helen responded. Something in the air told Clara today wouldn’t be the day she learned more. “I take it your mother hasn’t told you much about your Parker ancestry?”
Clara remained silent, but it was answer enough to Helen. She scoffed and walked toward an empty bookshelf. Her face became solemn and her words rolled out faster than before.
“If this were another time and another situation, I would have stories and stories for you to read. From the very first Parker on this soil, from generation to generation, to your-” Helen cleared her throat, placed her palm on the bookshelf and breathed in slowly. “However, that too was stolen from our dynasty. Did you know,” she continued quickly, “that the Parkers were the founders of Richmond?”
Clara blinked, unsure what to say but drawn to the subject.
“They were called upon here to protect the barrier between the worlds. To make sure the innocent people wouldn’t have to pay the blood price for monsters attracted to our world by magic. They also founded the Richmond coven and led it for centuries.”
“What happened, then?” Clara asked, shifting in the chair. “Christopher McDooley’s the coven leader.”
“He is. For now.” Helen’s eyes hardened. “There are always those too afraid to do what has to be done. Christopher McDooley has always been a little coward.”
“I don’t really know him, and I don’t care.” Clara slammed the book on her knee. “Whatever family feud you had with anyone is irrelevant now.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Clara.” Helen retorted, impatiently tapping her finger on the window. “The family feud, as you called it, reaches its roots deep enough to make it a matter of survival. You see, the reason why our family, your family, left the Richmond coven is because the coven had lost its way.”
“And what way is that? I thought it was because your antique ways of using magic.” Clara was vaguely aware of her lack of knowledge but hopeful her stance would provoke a further response.
“You’re speaking of blood magic? Hah. Antique. You mean, original. Source magic. The first magic. But yes, that’s where the conflict started, and here’s where it ended.” Helen pointed her palm at the window, gesturing toward the dying world, emphasizing each word.
“And what now?” Clara asked both herself and her eagle-eyed grandmother.
“Now, we solve the impending catastrophe.”
“How do we do that?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Helen snapped. “Christina and I have been working on several solutions. However, recent changes to the Arch stopped our plans. You see, Clara, our first plan was to simply close the passage that leads to Pandemonium. It’s impossible to do it from our world, of course. The weaving between worlds is too thin. Trying to influence it could cause irreparable damage. What your father tried to do is to create a buffer zone with the Arch, a zone that would expand in the area between worlds and be strong enough to allow magical use within.”
“It sounds like he succeeded.” Clara frowned and Helen impatiently tapped her finger.
“Only partially,” she continued, drawing two overlapping circles on the window glass with her pointer finger. “You see, what Ian planned to do next was to close the entrance from the Arch to Richmond. That way, nothing, or very few pandemonic occurrences could pass into our world.”
“Pandemonic? Is that where something went wrong?”
“That’s where everything went wrong,” Helen corrected her harshly. “Pandemonic is how we refer to the actions of things from Pandemonium, the world that is on the other side of the Arch. We don’t know exactly where the spell went wrong, but it was impossible to close our side of the Arch completely. It was impossible to influence the Arch’s entrance to Pandemonium from Richmond. So, the only solution we had was for someone to enter the Arch and work from in here.”
“Are you saying you and Christina entered the Arch willingly?” Clara gasped.
Helen toyed with her hair. The movement was very much like Sam, and Clara felt a pang of pain. “Did you not enter the Arch willingly?” Helen asked and Clara fought the urge to make a nasty retort about wanting to stay with the ones she loved. “The choice might have been drastic or reluctant, but it was made willingly because of what was at stake.”
“How do you even know what happened to me?”
“The Arch reacts when someone tries to enter. It’s impossible to not notice it,” Helen quickly explained. “Back to what went wrong.” She cleared her throat and Clara remained sitting at the edge of her chair, the book of poetry now closed and forgotten. “If you had proper training, you would know that the best way to counter a spell is by using the same ingredients, the same steps used to create it. In this case, the blood of Richmond magical families and the elements.”
“How come no one from town passed through the Arch throughout the years? How come they just die or...” Clara remembered JJ’s uncle and swallowed heavily.
“Only those with magic in them can survive in the Arch. It’s a magically-charged environment. A human body couldn’t withstand it.”
“But I’m human as well,” Clara responded.
Helen scoffed. “Besides, only those who have the blood of those who created the Arch can enter it or should be able to enter it. Gaskill made sure no one went in after us into the Arch. Whether it was out of fear or sentimentality, it was the right decision. Or it was until now.”
“What changed?”
Helen si
ghed deeply, and her battle-ready shoulders dropped just a bit before she answered. “I’m inclined to believe the creators of the Arch made the mistake of using a fire source to strengthen the force of their spell. Christina’s convinced they didn’t and in any other case, I would believe her since she was there at the spell casting. I would also like to believe my son was wiser than to use fire, but I see no other possibility, no sensible explanation.”
“I don’t understand,” Clara admitted and was surprised when there wasn’t any impatience in Helen’s voice.
“From all the elements, fire is the only one that needs to be fed. Air, water, earth; they all exist on their own. Fire requires a price to be paid, whether you feed the fire with oil, paper, blood or energy. Fire requires something in return for the use of it, in a volatile and forceful manner. It does help center the magic, and it gives more power to the spell, but it should be used carefully and only for minor spells or short-term spells.” Helen waved her hand and an orb appeared, showing the different elements at play. Clara was fascinated by this small use of magic.
“So, let me see if I understand,” Clara interrupted the older woman, and Helen didn’t object. “Fire needs to be fed. If you do a blood spell that needs to last forever - like the Arch - and use a fire source, it means you have to feed that spell with whatever you used to create it. In the Arch’s case - blood.”
“Exactly.” Helen nodded with approval and Clara continued. Blood? In an instant it clicked. Her blood. Terror slowly filling her as realization kicked in.
“But wait,” she said quietly. “Then why isn’t the Arch growing stronger instead of weaker?” Her brow creased in confusion at the large amount of twisted and confusing information she’d had to digest since waking up less than twenty-four hours before.
“Creating the Arch required a blood sacrifice of the creators, and undoing it requires their blood as well,” Helen concluded. “However, we have no way of knowing for sure. Christina and I have gone through the town top to bottom looking for Ian’s spell comprehensive and it’s nowhere to be found. Someone had to have hidden or destroyed it. We made our plans based on what Christina can remember from the spell casting and what I know from the books and experience.”
“You weren’t there when they cast the spell to create the Arch?”
“The Parkers haven’t been part of the Richmond coven for quite some time, and I wasn’t inclined to join any gatherings of theirs. I warned Ian. He wouldn’t listen. He believed it was a proper way to integrate back into the coven. Idealistic fool, your father was.”
“Why would you say that?” Clara frowned, a sudden urge to defend a figure she had never known surfacing. “From what I see, he tried to make lives better for magical families.”
“He tried, but he put his faith in the wrong people.” Helen decisive voice echoed through the room. “The demise of the Arch shows one thing. Your father was betrayed. He was too much of a perfectionist for a mistake like that to happen.”
“Who could’ve done it? Who was there?”
“That’s irrelevant now,” Helen said and slowly walked toward her granddaughter. Clara found it hard to resist her analytical stare, but she managed to stare back. “You being here speeds the plan up.”
“Which plan is that?”
“To burn the Arch from within,” her grandmother answered, unresponsive to Clara’s horror. “The plan is to destroy the tissue connecting Richmond and Pandemonium by cauterizing it.”
“You want to destroy the whole Arch? To burn it all to the ground?” Helen nodded and Clara blinked. “That means everything and everyone inside of it dies with it.”
Helen nodded once more and Clara jumped to her feet, letting the book fall onto the floor.
“No! There has to be a better way.”
“There probably is, but we don’t have enough time to find it, plan it or execute it,” Helen insisted. “We also don’t have enough magic for a large spell like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that magic comes from life,” she explained, a glint of sorrow gleaming in her eyes. “Neither Christina nor I have that amount of life or magic in us.”
“But- but you defeated the water monster in a blink of an eye!”
“A water wraith,” Helen corrected and Clara rolled her eyes. “That requires skills, not energy. Skills I have, knowledge as well. Energy? Magic? Life? Not as much as we need.”
Clara rubbed her forehead as realization struck. “That’s why you need me, isn’t it?” Her knees weakened. She nervously turned and twisted the glistening cuff around her wrist, fighting the need to flee as far away as possible. “You need my magic to blow us all up.”
“We need your magic to possibly save Richmond and the rest of the world from destruction,” Helen corrected. “That’s the responsibility you took upon yourself when you walked in.”
“I had no idea what I was walking into!” Clara defended but in vain.
“The responsibility for consequences is equal whether your actions were informed or not,” her grandmother said without a trace of compassion. Clara wondered if that faded with the sense of hunger and need for sleep, as well. “The situation is what it is, and we must do our best to stop what mustn’t be.”
“How am I here, paying for what a father and his gang of pesky friends I didn’t meet did?” Clara muttered sourly but Helen remained unamused by her dark humor.
“Ian didn’t cast this spell on his own,” she explained. “He had the support of the Richmond coven, both the senior and the emergent one.”
“Who thought this was a good idea?”
“Young people like your parents who grew up fighting monsters and forces that your generation is lucky enough not to know about!” Helen slammed her hand on the desk. “At seven, your father steadily held that dagger you keep dropping. He wanted a better life for his daughter, and she got it. Now it’s time to give back.”
“I didn’t choose any of this!” Clara yelled in frustration, pacing around the library now. “I didn’t choose to have magic or to have any responsibility in this matter!”
“None of us come to this world rootless,” Helen spat. “This is what family means.”
“Well then, it doesn’t mean much good.”
Helen backed away, hands on her hips. “It’s your decision, ultimately,” she unwillingly acknowledged. “Be wary, though. You don’t have much time to decide, and whichever decision you make will have tremendous consequences. I don’t claim to know what your values are, or even who you’re, but I hope you sure as hell do know.”
“Do you even know it would work?” Clara asked, defensively crossing her arms. “How do we know no monsters would cross then? Even now, the demons are in Richmond. Richard Gaskill told me there’s a water demon in the stream by the Arch.”
Helen nodded. “Yes, but due to the Arch, the demon’s trapped and tied to the stream. Instead, Richmond would probably already be flooded and most of its inhabitants dead,” Helen said. “And no, we can’t know for sure that our plan would succeed. What we do know is that the Arch is deteriorating, and it’ll collapse. Once it collapses, we’ll perish with it anyway.”
“How do you know?” Clara asked, desperation sharpening in her tone. “How do you know there’s no way to go back?”
“Because our bodies wouldn’t be able to sustain the rapid aging,” Helen answered with certainty. “No one can leave the Arch alive. I’m sorry, Clara. But there’s still a chance to do something meaningful here. You can still save your friends, and your mother, and Richmond.”
“And who’s going to save me?” Clara whispered, her voice breaking. “I haven’t even had a life yet.”
“I’m afraid that’ll be a solo endeavor,” her grandmother explained and Clara defiantly returned her gaze.
“That doesn’t sound like a very fair trade.”
“If you wanted fair, you should’ve stuck with high school.”
“You never went to a high school,
did you?” Clara brushed the dust off her pants. “If you’re asking me to do a suicide mission, you might as well tell me how it happened last time. How is Christina here?”
Helen pursed her lips, hesitant to speak.
“She decided to enter the Arch and save a life, much like you did. The papers called her the last found but first victim of the serial killer. It was a cover story.”
“Who did she sacrifice herself for?”
“A boy who participated in the creation of the Arch. Jared Jameson,” Helen said.
Clara’s limbs went numb with shock.
JJ’s uncle was one of the creators of the Arch? How did JJ not mention that? Did he even know?
“There were five pillars of the spell. Your father, Ian, was the creator of the spell. Old, stubborn McDooley was there as the leader of the Richmond coven. Theresa MacDonald, who was the head advisor of the senior Richmond coven, led the spell. Jonas Lawson participated in the casting, Xander’s great-uncle. Jared Jameson was one of the spell pillars, as well, since he insisted.”
“What happened then? Theresa MacDonald would be Samantha’s grandmother, but she died in her sleep.”
“As did your father,” Helen bitterly explained. “As did Jonas Lawson, although he had the misfortune of dying in his sleep behind the wheel.” She paced through the room, her eyes squinting at the distance. “The Arch claimed their lives, one by one. Theresa MacDonald died in her sleep. She was first to fall as the spell leader. The assumption was that her heart gave out under the weight of the spell. Jonas Lawson was next, and that’s where suspicion grew. Once we realized what was happening and McDooley’s death followed, it was too late to prevent it. Ian fell the same night. I buried my son and entered the Arch, hoping to stop it from the inside. In the meantime, Jared had decided to try and do what the Arch was made for. His intention was to enter the Arch and try to close Pandemonium from the inside, but he was too weak by that point. The gate almost rendered him completely mad, and Christina decided to enter instead. She didn’t know that by then the Arch had already taken enough of his spirit. With her entry and a good part of Jameson’s blood, the unraveling of the spell started.”
