"They've put a ton of new protection spells on Ula. Plus, it seems clear that the link between Dafne and Tobias is how the Vepars got in, so I'm sure they can spare Oliver."
Sebastian shrugged, but didn't argue.
Abby turned him to face her and pulled his head down to hers. His lips, hot, pushed hungrily against her. He felt her body start to respond to his touch. He slipped off his gloves and reached his hands inside her coat, pulling her hard into his body. He kissed her neck and collarbones, pulling at her layers.
Outside they heard the crunching of snow underfoot. Sebastian pulled away, breathing heavily and feeling a bit like a wild animal.
Abby giggled and kissed him again, lingering.
"We'll finish that later," she whispered.
He leaned his forehead against hers and sighed.
"Will Lydie and Oliver come today? I could make a big dinner tonight."
She laughed.
"You know, I'm the pregnant one and you think about food about five times more than I do. But yes, they're coming this afternoon, and I'm sure Lydie will be thrilled at the idea of a big dinner. I think her favorite part of the whole house was your cooking."
Sebastian grinned.
"Don't tell Bridget that."
"Our little secret."
"I'll run into town to stock up," he said. "We're low on cream and I'm thinking peanut butter curry for dinner."
Abby made a face.
"You'll love it, I swear."
"Do you want me to join you?" she asked. "If not, I'll probably go with Victor. He's dropping off Kendra at the library in Trager and then checking out the Ebony Woods."
Sebastian bit his tongue.
He didn't want her to go, but he also didn't want to treat her like a weakling because she was pregnant. He would have preferred she stay home by the fire and read, but Abby was a witch and their life would never be one of tranquil domesticity.
"No, go with Victor, it will be good for you."
****
Abby and Victor left Kendra at the library and continued out of town to the woods. The forest looked different in the winter. Bare branches, piled with snow, hung heavy over the white, padded ground. Abby directed him to Sydney's house, still vacant. Abby stared at it for a moment with longing. She wondered if there would ever come a day when she could look at the house and not see Sydney. A thousand memories pricked at the backs of her eyes and she shook them away.
Victor killed the engine and they walked to the woods by way of the beach. Both thick with coats, snow pants and winter boots, the walk was slow. Abby enjoyed the cold lake air filling her lungs and noticed how quickly her muscles grew warm and hard.
She squatted a few times.
"I feel like I could fly right now," she laughed, springing into the air.
"Well we are surrounded by your element."
Abby smiled; she hadn't made the connection.
She looked at a snow-laden branch overhead and flicked her fingers. The branch broke, but did not fall and a heap of snow landed on Victor's head.
"Hey," he laughed and shook his head back and forth like a dog. "Not fair play. The air in this cold feels impossible to manipulate."
"Okay, no more, I promise," she said, holding up her hands.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, pulling his scarf further up his chin.
"Really good, actually. I was gravely injured four weeks ago, I'm pregnant, the Vepars have become skin-walkers that can turn into flying monsters, the last time I saw my mother she was in the full throes of a nervous breakdown, and yet I feel, strangely, at peace with everything."
"Wow, just hearing all that made me anxious. Maybe it's part of the pregnancy? Happy hormones pumping through your witchy body?"
She directed a fluff of snow to float into the air and fall lightly over them.
"Possibly, though it's still so new. I'm barely five weeks along."
"Doesn't change the chemistry experiment currently underway in there." He gestured at her belly.
"Yeah, though I prefer to call her a divine experiment, thank you very much."
"Her?" he asked, cocking his head to the side.
Abby blushed and put a hand to her stomach.
"Her. Believe it or not, I know it's a girl."
"Believe it," he said.
"What do you think Kanti wants?" Abby asked, changing the subject with reluctance. She preferred to stay in the happy imaginings of her unborn child, but she and Victor rarely had time alone. They each had a special connection to the Native American girl's spirit. Abby felt she could talk to Victor about Kanti in a way that she could not discuss her with the others.
He stopped and kicked the snow, staring into the hard ground beneath. Not finding anything interesting, he moved on.
"I think she wants to tell her story. I keep hoping that she wants to help us, you know? But the curse makes that seem pretty unlikely."
Abby nodded.
"I know what you're saying. I have this mixed sense of her, like I'm afraid of her and yet connected to her in some magnificent way. Even though the dreams are disturbing, I want to have them. When I'm in her experience, I'm living an entirely different life in a different time. It's terrible, what happened to her feels impossibly painful, and yet I savor the moments. Afterward I can feel the huge love that she shared with her tribe. I feel her connection to the earth, the water, the sky, the air in a way that I have never known as Abby."
"And then she got stolen from it all," Victor said solemnly.
"Yes, stolen, raped and I don't even know what else. She was angry, she is angry. I'm just not sure where she's directing it."
"At everything, I think."
****
Sebastian surpassed Trager City and drove the winding forest roads that led to the more secluded spaces beyond the town. During his childhood summers in Northern Michigan, he and his father had made a point of regularly getting lost in the woods. They hiked in with their camping gear and spent days tracking deer, eating fish they caught in the river and forgetting about life in the city. Sebastian's dad worked as a mortgage broker, but his passion was the forests. Sebastian's mother joked that he should have been a forest ranger. He took Sebastian and his sister Claire along for most of his journeys. They camped beneath the stars, only climbing into their tents if it rained.
Sebastian turned down the ruddy dirt road that led him to the cabin where he had taken Abby less than five weeks before. It looked the same. Despite the remodel it had received in the years since he'd visited it with his father, he could still see it through his childhood mind. He remembered sitting on the porch, carefully assembling artificial flies with feathers they had found in the woods. His father was not much of a fly fisherman, or any kind of fisherman for that matter, but he loved it nevertheless. Anything that took him into nature, he delighted in. The weekends at the cabin were father-son trips only. Claire would stay home with their mother for girls' weekends.
Sebastian walked to the cabin steps and shuddered at the memory of the night the Vepar took him. The thing, Tobias or Alva, had bitten him and its venom had rendered him mostly unconscious. However, he still recalled the sensation of being hauled through the door into the darkness of the night. In his drugged state, he knew that death had come for him and it would not be a peaceful transition out of the world. Though the real terror had come later when he awoke in the Vepar's lair. He thought of the bodies hanging from the walls, something within them getting siphoned through tubes, and clenched his jaw to keep from howling his rage.
He sat down in an old rocking chair that squeaked and closed his eyes. He needed to return to a more peaceful place. His anger had led him for years and it had gotten him into trouble more than once. He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Opening his eyes, he scanned the snowy expanse before him. In the light of day, with drifts of snow sparkling, the cabin returned to the sanctuary that he remembered. He rubbed his hands together and blew a puff of warm air onto his fingers.
&
nbsp; Abby was pregnant. He wanted to jump for joy. He wanted to buy cigars for his friends and send out postcards with little storks on the front. He wanted to do all the foolish, conventional things that normal people did when they learned a baby was on the way.
Most of all, he wanted to tell his mom. He wanted to see the looks on his parents' faces when he broke the news. He wanted to hear Claire's squeal of delight and watch her race to her bedroom to retrieve her favorite stuffed animal Lambert the Lion to give to the baby as a welcome gift.
He coughed and tried to clear the sob that had started to form in his throat. He thought of them less and less. He obsessed over Claire's death less and less. Since Dafne had used his love for Claire and his desire for vengeance as an opening into his mind, he worked hard to block Claire from his thoughts. Not because he wanted to forget his baby sister. He loved her. He would never forget any of them. But he knew he lived in another world now, and the doorways that led to the deepest parts of him had to remain closed at all times. Only in solitude, and perhaps with Abby, could he safely venture there.
He stood and left the porch, walking to the edge of the forest. Tall pines, heavy with snow, scented the crisp air. He walked to a tree and pressed his palm against the grooves of bark.
He wondered how the Vepars had found them that night. When Sebastian came upon Abby near the stone cottages and he witnessed the creature that attacked her, his conscious mind seemed to shut down and something primal took over. He had snatched a large rock from the dirt and fell upon the beast, intent on killing it and making the monster pay for all of the pain that had been visited upon him. Most of all he wanted to kill it for trying to take away Abby, the only person he had left in the world. When it flew away, he lifted Abby into his arms and raced back to her car, but he watched and he listened. He felt sure that the thing had fled, that it couldn't possibly have followed them. He was wrong.
Sebastian snapped a branch off the tree and flung it into the woods. He searched the forest floor and found a larger branch and beat it against the ground. He needed to channel the anger, and more so the guilt, that flooded his brain. He wanted to grab the huge trunk of a tree and shake it until the roots tore free of the earth and he could fling it into the sky. He found a giant boulder and worked it free of the ground. He hefted it up and threw it. Rather than fumble heavily from his hands, it catapulted through the air like he'd merely thrown a pebble. It smashed into the earth with a spray of snow and dirt and rolled to a stop. He stared at it in wonder. He walked to it, lifted it again, threw it a second time. He hit another boulder, larger than the first, and it exploded.
He felt the burn of lactic acid as his muscles stretched and flexed. He turned to a pine tree, and wrapped his arms around the base, and pulled. For a moment it stayed rooted, held tight to the earth and then gradually the earth began to split as the roots tore away. He groaned with the tree as it pulled free. Awkwardly, he threw it into the forest. Branches and bark ruptured over the forest floor. He grasped another one and then another until he stood in a clearing that he had created with his bare hands.
He wanted to set fire to the trees. Instead of quelling his rage, the act of destruction had fueled it. He went to his car and found a lighter in the glove box. As he walked back toward the forest, he glanced at the cabin and stopped. For several minutes, he watched the cabin, blood pounding in his ears. He walked into the little cabin and gathered newspaper, logs and kindling. Carefully, he arranged every flammable item that he found throughout the cabin, and one by one he lit them on fire. It took time. He returned to the edge of the woods. He watched and waited. After an hour, he noticed the first snatches of fire catching the little white curtains. When the fire climbed to the roof, he got in his car and drove away.
Chapter 6
After dinner, Abby, Sebastian, Victor, Kendra and Oliver sat around the large square coffee table in the living room. Lydie, complaining of a headache, had gone to bed early. They looked through articles that Oliver had printed about the L'Obscurite.
"And they believe that Dafne found out how to manipulate the Pool of Truth from these witches?" Abby asked again.
"They didn't come right out and say that, but yes, I'm pretty sure Faustine believes that."
"Is a road trip totally out of the question?" Victor asked, looking at each of them separately.
Sebastian leaned closer to the printed picture before him, his expression dark.
"All of us?" Abby asked. "What about Lydie?"
"Shoot, Lydie would love it," Oliver said. "She's barely left Michigan. Not to mention, it's cold here and New Orleans is warmer. We'll call it a vacation."
"Keep her in the dark?" Victor asked.
"No," both Abby and Oliver spoke together.
"No, she has to know what we're up to. The secrets have gotten to her and I can sense she's finding it hard to trust the witches at Ula. I don't want that suspicion to include us," Oliver explained.
"So, what then? We drive to New Orleans and demand information?" Kendra asked, looking skeptical.
"Not demand," Victor appeased her. "We meet them, we tell them that we're curious–which we are–and then we sniff around. It's an adventure!"
Sebastian forced a smile, but Abby saw tension in his jaw.
"When will we go?" Oliver asked.
"We have to go back to Chicago in a couple of days. We do a lot of Christmas stuff that needs our attention," Victor explained.
"And you love it," Kendra teased, tickling him.
He batted her away.
"Yes, I do happen to enjoy playing Santa."
"Tell me you don't climb down people's chimneys?" Abby asked.
"Nope, a little magic and I'm in through the front door. I know, I know," he held up his hands defensively, "technically it is breaking and entering, but I'm giving, not taking."
"And no one freaks out?" Sebastian asked.
"We stick with the neighborhoods that are really in need," Kendra explained. "The truth is they tend to have a lot of faith, more so than the people with money. They want to believe in miracles so they do."
"That is awesome!" Oliver exclaimed.
"You're welcome to join us," Victor offered.
Oliver shook his head.
"Next year, I'll take you up on that. I think this Christmas needs to be nice and quiet for Lyds. We'll hang here with Abby and Sebastian and knit scarves and sing Christmas carols, that kind of thing."
"It's decided then? A road trip to New Orleans after Christmas?" Victor announced.
"I'm not sure that I've recovered from the last adventure," Sebastian said, taking Abby's fingers and tracing his thumb over her ring.
"None of us have," Oliver retorted. "But what's our alternative? Wait and see?"
"No," Abby declared, shaking her head furiously. "We're not going to wait for this thing to find us."
"What thing is that?" Kendra asked, brow furrowed.
"The curse."
****
Faustine stood and watched the flowing red weeping willow. Even in winter, its color smoldered amongst the stark white surrounding it. The branches continued to drip the sticky red pulp that they secreted onto the forest floor. Beneath the tree there was no snow. The red spongy earth lurked as ominously as the witch herself.
He walked to the base of the tree, careful to avoid the willow's branches and paused at the black hole that descended into the earth. He could feel the Lourdes beneath him and she too knew of his presence. In his jacket pocket, he had tucked the elixir that she so coveted. It lasted less than twenty-four hours and he was grateful. The witch's beauty, when under the spell, was mesmerizing, which made her a danger to anyone who stumbled into her path. Only with the potion's magic in her veins could she leave the sanctuary of her tree. He preferred to believe that she did not kill during her transformations, but he knew she had before.
Faustine descended into the hole. The Lourdes stood in the corner, her crooked body hunched over. She scraped her fingernails down the dirt wall
s. He saw blood and small pieces of flesh clinging to the wall. Her long hair looked dirty and unbrushed, hanging in knots down her back. Somehow she'd grown even more bony in the years since he last saw her. A mere skeleton wrapped in a leathery skin. She wore the same tattered pink dress she'd worn for decades, if not centuries, and it hung from her body in rags.
He knew that she sensed him, but she did not turn, merely continued her scraping.
"I have brought your potion, Lourdes, and I will need your help in return," he spoke matter-of-factly and without emotion. In his life, Faustine had experienced many horrors and, though the Lourdes repulsed him, he did not fear her.
She stopped scraping and tilted her head to the side like a cat following the sound of her prey.
Faustine took a step closer, taking the potion in his hand. He uncorked it knowing that the Lourdes would smell the contents. She breathed deeply and sighed, finally turning to face him.
"What good is it?" she hissed. "I'd rather you brought me death."
It took effort, but he did not cringe in the face of her ugliness. Her eyes had sunk further into her skull and through lips, too thin to distinguish from the skin around them, he could see her teeth. She smiled her sick, malevolent smile and let her gray tongue dart across her teeth.
"Have a seat, old friend, maybe a cup of tea." She cackled at the spread of decaying food on the table.
Faustine sat, setting the elixir on the threadbare cloth and willing away the smell of rancid food hanging in the air.
The Lourdes walked her hands down the wall and lay on the floor. She slithered and dragged herself to the table. Her wasted legs only worked properly when she drank her potion. She struggled back to her feet and swept the elixir into her yawning mouth. Faustine looked away, not interested in seeing any more than he must.
Bridget's concoction worked instantly, transforming the hideous monster into a beautiful young witch with glittering eyes and a throaty laugh that had lured many men to their deaths. Faustine could have made the potion himself, but he preferred not to bleed near the Lourdes. Her thirst for powerful blood and her hatred of men made him a temptation that might be hard to resist.
Kanti Page 6
