Faustine watched her, unaffected. He could see behind the shiny veneer to the dead thing that lived inside.
"You spoke with Dafne recently. I need to know why she came to you. I also need you to tell me about the curse of Trager City."
The Lourdes skittered to her vanity, the mirror cracked, and snatched up a black tube. She removed the cap and painted her now-blossoming lips a shade of crimson that Faustine recognized as Dafne's. The Lourdes watched him hungrily in the mirror.
He waited patiently. The longer he sat in the hole, the more time the Lourdes lost under her transformation. He had all the time in the world, while she had very little.
Finally, rolling her eyes like an insolent teenager, she spoke.
"Dafne has been a very bad witch and she had to be punished."
Faustine felt anger churn within him and he took a slow, careful breath, willing a sense of calm to return. He could not afford to get angry with the Lourdes. Once emotions took over, a witch's power was hard to direct.
"What did she do?" he asked.
"What didn't she do?" the Lourdes cackled, but she held no laughter in her eyes. "She lied to you, didn't she, Faustine? She lied to you and all of your superior witches. How did she do that, I wonder-are you really so easy to deceive?"
Faustine sighed and glanced at the watch he'd put on for the occasion.
"Already four minutes has elapsed, Lourdes. How much time until this magic," he waved his hand dismissively, "wears off?"
She sneered and he saw the dark chasm of her mouth. He sensed her restlessness.
"I'm flattered you think me so knowing," she flirted, moving closer to him and taking a chair. She sat on the edge like she might flee at any moment. "I last saw your deceptive witch at the half-moon. She cried and begged that I help her. How could I not?" The Lourdes cast her huge, shining eyes on Faustine. He saw the darker shadows twitching beneath their color.
"She had failed. The human's memories were returning and the young one, Abby, had fled Ula. Dafne knew her web grew tangled-there was another spider in the fray. I said go to the man, isolate him and begin the spells again. Stronger spells, the kind that wipe a memory forever, the kind that we don't come back from." The Lourdes held a faraway look, and Faustine wondered what tragic part of her past had resurfaced.
"So she went to France for Sebastian. And you told Tobias where she was going?" Faustine asked, the rage again bubbling at the thought that the Lourdes had betrayed Dafne.
The Lourdes laughed and touched her fingers to her dark lips.
"Tobias doesn't need me any more, you silly fool. He has Kanti."
****
Faustine slid behind the wheel of his car and cranked the heat high. He held his numb fingers in front of the vents. His head ached from the exertion of prying into the Lourdes's mind. Telepathy without his tower at Ula was never easy. He had brought a crystal and proximity helped, but even standing right next to the Lourdes, he struggled to sift through the jumbled contents of her mind.
It took all his energy to collect her memories while also staying present with her in the lair. Insane, yes, but a fool she was not. He believed that she had not detected his searching, but he could not know for sure.
He arrived back at Ula in time for supper. Bridget had prepared a quinoa casserole, but he left his plate mostly untouched. His brain pulsed and he longed to retreat to his private quarters to examine the Lourdes's thoughts.
"How did it go?" Elda asked as they left the dining room and moved toward the stairway that led to their rooms. They had begun to share a bed since the tragedies of the previous months, but Faustine still retired to the tower for work. He needed quietude and, as important, a space free of energetic entanglements.
He stopped at the base of the stairs.
"I think that I must go to the tower, my dear. These memories are important. I need to channel them appropriately."
"Of course," she agreed.
He kissed her good-night and held her for a long time, pressing her against him for comfort. He wanted to follow her to their room and allow the sound of her steady breaths to lull him to sleep. Instead, he turned and strode back down the hallway.
In the tower, he seated himself on the stone slab suspended far above the floor. Arranging his crystals in a semicircle, he lifted the mirror that would reflect the memories as he conjured them.
He watched the reflection as if a movie played out in the glass.
He saw the Lourdes as a child and then as a young woman. When he came to the memories of her lover, he slowed the reel in his mind and observed.
The Vepar, Alva, much younger and vibrant looking, courted the Lourdes. In those days, Alva was merely a man named Ira and the Lourdes was a witch named Milda. Faustine watched Milda's beautiful daughter Delphia swimming in Trager Bay. He watched as she rolled down sand dunes and chased after butterflies. He shuddered as the memory of her funeral crossed the glass. Milda threw herself upon the soft mound of earth. She screamed and thrashed and Ira, already plotting his betrayal, comforted her.
Then a moment that Faustine had not expected
Milda in the forest giving birth to a child, another daughter. She abandoned the child, left it beneath an enormous weeping willow tree. As Milda stumbled into the trees, falling and bleeding, the child wailed behind her.
"Of course," Faustine whispered. None of them had asked how the Lourdes could have been part of the curse. If her child had died, shouldn't the curse have ended with her? But no, there had been a second child, the daughter of Milda and Alva. Did she believe the child had died? So she banished herself to the forest? Turned the tree into a forever bleeding, forever weeping homage to the child she let die?
"But she didn't die," he said.
He wondered who had found the child. Clearly not the Lourdes herself, because the only memory of the second daughter included the birth.
Faustine skipped years of memories. He did not have the strength to watch the Lourdes in her full unraveling. He found the present day and when Dafne's face flashed through the memories, he honed his vision on that place. He watched Dafne move deftly through the forest to the Lourdes's burrow. He saw that she knew the way-she had been there before. He moved back in time and discovered Dafne, swollen with child, speaking to the Lourdes near the red weeping willow. The Lourdes stood above her, cackling in her diabolical way. She urged Dafne to birth the child in the woods and to kill it immediately.
"It is the only way to end the curse," the Lourdes screamed, and the murderous gleam in her eye caused Dafne to scramble to her feet and run. Through the Lourdes's eyes, Faustine watched Dafne's retreating form disappear into the trees.
Again he returned to the memories of the previous months. He watched as Dafne sought the Lourdes out. She begged for information. She took her potions, many of them, in exchange for tidbits about the curse. She confessed to the Lourdes that a young witch and her human lover had arrived at Ula, that they would surely sow the destruction of the coven that she so cherished.
Faustine felt something wet strike his hand. He blinked and looked away from the mirror. Tears fell in a steady stream from his eyes. He did not realize that he had been crying.
Chapter 7
Abby awoke on Christmas morning to find Sebastian hovering next to the bed.
"Did I wake you?" he asked, feigning concern, but grinning.
She yawned and stretched her arms overhead.
"No, were you trying to?"
He smiled mischievously and shook his shaggy curls from side to side.
"No, maybe, okay yes." He held out a shiny package wrapped in purple and silver. "Merry Christmas," he told her, leaning down and kissing her mouth.
He tasted like cinnamon and coffee.
"Mmmm, maybe I should give you your present first," she cooed, clutching at him as he pulled away.
"I have cinnamon rolls in the oven, but I'll be taking you up on that offer after breakfast." He started to back out of the room.
"After
I'm full and feeling like a pregnant hippo?" she growled, laughing.
"I've always thought hippos were the sexiest of the jungle creatures."
She scowled and pretended she might fling his present back at him.
He blew her a kiss and backed out the door.
She shifted to sitting and fluffed the pillows behind her. Her clock said 6:24 a.m. Early for Sebastian. He wasn't a late sleeper per say, but generally liked to stay tucked beneath the covers until eight a.m. at least. Apparently the holidays had him excited too.
Despite having a moody mother who used Christmas to punish her daughter for any perceived transgressions, Abby still had fond memories of the Christmas holidays. Her Aunt Sydney had often visited Lansing over Christmas. She and Harold, or later Rod, would rent a hotel room downtown. They would pile into Abby's small family home in the evening to drink wine and play cards with her parents. When Abby got older, she and Nick joined the card games.
Sydney would get tipsy and tell stories from her childhood while Becky frowned and complained that she preferred to change the subject. In the two Christmases that Rod joined the festivities, he showed up one year in black leather pants with a red turtleneck covered in jingle bells and the second year as a fully costumed Santa Claus. Sydney cracked endless jokes about going to bed with Kris Kringle, and Abby's mother made snide comments about exploiting a Christian holiday that was meant to be marked with reverence, not lust.
The holidays had never been easy with her mother. Nothing had ever been easy with her mother. Over the years, Abby had probed Sydney for reasons. She wanted to understand why her mother shifted from cold and cruel to warm and cuddly without batting an eye. Becky's only sister had provided few answers. Sydney mostly talked about Becky as quirky and moody, but Abby knew a much more sinister aspect to her mother.
She remembered walking down the stairs one Christmas morning when she was eight. There were presents under the tree, but they were crushed and misshapen. Her mother lay on the floor with a shovel, as if she had grown so exhausted destroying the beautifully wrapped gifts that she had just fallen down and gone to sleep. An hour later, Abby's father walked down the stairs. He saw Abby sitting on the floor quietly and her mother snoring nearby. He ushered her into a coat and shoes and took her to a pancake restaurant. When they returned home, the mess was gone and so were the presents. They had never spoken of it.
Abby wondered what her mother was doing in that moment and felt a crushing wave of guilt. Becky's parents and sister were now dead in the ground and her husband and daughter had abandoned her. Abby had no idea if her mother sat alone at that very instant, perhaps devastated by loneliness. She should know. She should have called her mother, checked on her. She should have taken the time to ensure that she was okay. Abby felt tears welling behind her eyes and she clenched them shut. She didn't want to think about her mother.
Sydney would have told her, "Don't should on yourself."
Abby smiled at the thought of her aunt and then felt the tears threatening a second time. Sydney would never hold Abby's baby. She wouldn't help teach her to swim or let her stay up late watching scary movies.
"I have to stop having these thoughts," Abby said out loud.
She shifted her attention back to Sebastian's present. No card accompanied the slim rectangular box. She carefully untied the silver bow and then slid her finger beneath the sharp edge of the paper. Nick used to call her a pack rat for her tendency to save beautiful wrapping paper. She pulled the paper off and folded it neatly on her bedside table. The box was cardboard and plain with no distinctive markings. She lifted the flaps and peered into a cloud of purple tissue paper. Gently, she pulled a framed picture out. She looked down at a charcoal drawing of herself, in profile, sitting in the floating garden at Ula. It looked very much like an image from the previous visit to the coven. Flowers and trees surrounded her. A sky marred with giant clouds drifted overhead. She looked at the signature on the bottom: Lydie Rose.
Tracing her finger along the polished black frame, she marveled at Lydie's talent. It was a magnificent drawing. Abby held the frame to her chest and smiled.
She would call her mother.
Abby slid out of bed and put on her robe and a pair of fuzzy slippers.
In the kitchen, Sebastian stood at the stove. Christmas music played from his laptop, which he had propped on the counter.
"Well look at that timing," he laughed as "I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" started to play.
He swept her into a twirl and she laughed as he spun her to a chair.
"I'm going to let that one slide because of this beautiful gift," she told him as he kissed the top of her head.
"Decaf or regular?" he asked.
"Regular," she said. "It is Christmas after all."
"Anything for my girl," he told her and handed her a huge mug of steaming coffee. She leaned down and inhaled the scent. "Oh how I love thee," she told it.
"Moi?" Sebastian asked.
"Well you too, of course."
"Are we the only ones awake?" Abby asked.
"Yep. I wanted to get a jump start on Christmas breakfast and Oliver and Lydie had a pretty heated Monopoly game going at all hours of the night, so who knows when they'll get up."
"Lydie drew this?" Abby held up the lovely picture.
"She did. I saw her sketching a few weeks ago, so I commissioned a piece as an extra-special gift."
"Wow, thank you, Sebastian. This really means a lot to me."
"I knew it would," he told her, leaning down and pecking her nose.
"I put your presents under the tree," she told him. "And not very stealthily, I'm afraid. They've been sitting there for a week."
"Oh, I know, my love, I've already unwrapped and re-wrapped them twice."
"You have not!"
"Okay, true enough, but I may have noticed them there. No peeking though, I promise."
Abby smiled and took a sip of her coffee, nice and dark. She liked Sebastian this way. He bounced around the kitchen like he didn't have a care in the world. He reminded her a bit of the Sebastian she had first met at Sydney's, seemingly carefree. After she'd discovered Devin's body, his other side emerged. She loved his melancholy too, oddly enough. The bottom line was that she loved him, all of him, the light and the dark.
"Well I want you to open one of them before Oliver and Lydie join us. We can save the second one for the group."
"I'm down with that. Let me just mix up this quiche and pop it in the oven and I'll be ready to go."
They moved into the sitting room, and Abby took a gift bag decorated with superheroes wearing Santa hats from beneath the tree. She sat on the floor next to Sebastian and handed it to him.
He took out the red tissue paper and reached into the bag.
He lifted out a tall white candle inscribed with gold symbols.
"It's a memory candle," Abby told him, gently touching the inscriptions. "Helena helped me make it."
"A memory candle," Sebastian said thoughtfully. "Is there a manual here somewhere?"
He peeked in the bag.
"When you burn it, you can revisit the past. Not truly, of course, but in your mind. You can sort of relive moments."
Abby watched his face closely, suddenly concerned that the candle had been a mistake.
"Really?" he asked, blinking at the candle with a growing look of amazement and perhaps fear.
"Yes, it was Helena's idea actually. I wanted to give you a magical gift, but I'm so new, I didn't know of much."
"It's perfect, Abby, really. I can't wait to try it."
****
Lydie woke up first.
"I smelled frosting," she told them groggily, stumbling into the kitchen. She walked to the counter and looked down at the huge pan of cinnamon rolls. "Oh thank God it wasn't just a dream."
She shuffled to the kitchen table and eyed the previous night's Monopoly game.
"Oliver better not have moved my piece." She looked at them suspiciously. "Has he
been down here?"
Abby laughed.
"Don't worry, if he'd been lurking around, we would be the first to snitch."
"Good," she grumbled and returned to staring at the cinnamon rolls.
Her stomach rumbled loudly.
"Better get those cut," Sebastian laughed. "I don't want your stomach to eat us all."
He scooped out three cinnamon rolls.
"Eating without me?" Oliver exclaimed, skipping into the room in adult-sized Yoda footie pajamas.
"There are no words," Abby said, trying to muffle her laughter.
"You like?" Oliver asked with a curtsy. "Lydie's present. She gave it to me early so that I could wear it on Christmas morning."
"It looks...cozy," Sebastian added, averting his eyes and winking at Lydie.
"I ordered it online," Lydie told them. "For witches with all kinds of crazy powers, it sure is a pain in the butt to use Amazon," she complained. "I had to row to the mainland where I had cell service and then get it shipped to the warehouse in Berkely and have Faustine make a special trip so that we could pick it up. You better love it," she told him.
"Love it, I do, my young Padawan."
"Lydie, this picture is amazing," Abby interrupted, holding up the framed charcoal drawing.
Lydie blushed and shrugged.
"I was happy to do it."
"Wow, Lyds, you are getting really good." Oliver picked up the frame and examined the picture. "This in the floating garden?"
"Yep, Sebastian hired me to be an artist and a spy that day."
Sebastian bent down to pull the quiche out.
"Hot, hot," he announced, sliding it onto the hot pad he'd set out on the counter. "I only hoped Abby wouldn't notice you," he explained. "It would have been okay if you'd been spotted."
Abby remembered back to that day. It made her feel a little funny that she had not sensed Lydie during her time in the floating garden. Of course, she had experienced a Kanti dream, which made noticing anything rather difficult. Not to mention the garden itself seemed to have a hypnotic effect on the senses.
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