"She's not here," he told them, wiping sweat from his brow.
"Maybe just a little further," Helena countered, though she looked completely exhausted.
"No," Julian agreed. "One of us would have sensed her by now. Faustine is right, she's not here."
"Hold on." Oliver jumped into the hole and placed his palms against the mud walls. "I do feel something here." He grabbed a handful of dirt and sifted it through his fingers. "Something decayed in this ground, and it's not animal."
"There could have been other bodies buried here," Victor cut in. "How do we know this whole area wasn't populated at some point?"
"They dug her up and moved her, right?" Helena said, sitting on the ground with a huff. "I feel her too—she was here."
Abby searched for the sensation that Helena described, but felt only the rapid beating of her heart. A wave of dizziness washed through and she too sat down on the soggy earth.
Sebastian looked thoughtful and then walked to a towering oak tree. He put his hands on the wide trunk.
Abby felt a tremble in the earth and scrambled to her feet. All of the witches looked alarmed, their gazes shifting to Sebastian. The tree that he touched began to quake. It split down the middle, groaning as its two halves ripped apart. The earth beneath it opened and revealed an intricate network of enormous roots. There, intertwined within the roots, Abby saw the dull gleam of a rib cage. Sebastian reached into the roots and pulled out a mud-caked skull.
Chapter 24
They excavated the bones slowly and methodically. Abby imagined that anthropologists on an archaeological dig might have been impressed with their technique. They carefully wrapped each bone in newspaper and bundled them in cardboard boxes. When they completed the task and Faustine sealed the final box, they loaded into several cars and Oliver's van to return to Ula.
Though Abby wanted to crawl into her own bed and sleep, Julian and Faustine insisted that all of the witches return to the island. The possibility that disturbing Kanti's bones had potentially upset the vengeful spirit spooked Sebastian, and he agreed that they should go to the coven.
"Do you think she led us there?" Abby asked Sebastian, when they retired for the night at the castle.
"I think something did. Was it her? Or some divine power that wants us to get rid of her, I don't know."
He slipped his T-shirt over his head and then shrugged off his jeans. She admired the smooth tapering of his chest down to his narrow waist.
He noticed her watching and pulled her to him, kissing her slowly. She reached her arms around his neck and held him tight against her body. She hungered for him. Perhaps a consequence of her pregnancy, she didn't know, but she thought about Sebastian naked more than she cared to admit.
He stripped off her sweater and kissed her shoulders and neck. With a gentle push, she fell back onto the bed. He unbuttoned her jeans and slid them down, kissing her calves and thighs. He moved up to her stomach and she cupped his head in her hands, crushing his soft black curls. He moved on top of her and she searched his eyes. She saw only light reflected back to her; no darkness lurked in the swirling prisms. She almost asked him about the journal and Victor's drawings. She wanted to, but as he kissed her and murmured into her neck, she wanted one more night to not think about what those things meant.
After Sebastian fell asleep, snoring quietly beside her, Abby slipped from the bed.
She left their room and went to the library. The fire crackled as it did all hours of the day and night at Ula. Victor sat alone, watching the flames. On the floor beside him, she noticed one of the boxes of bones.
She closed the door softly, but he didn't hear her. His dark eyes stared fixedly at some vision that she could not see. After several minutes, she moved closer and he stirred, turning to her with a glassy expression.
"Mesmerizing," he said, indicating the restless blaze.
"Did you sense anything amiss? With Sebastian?"
Victor stared at her bewildered for another moment and then his eyes began to clear. He climbed to his feet and took a chair closer to her.
"I think the stunt with the tree was pretty phenomenal. Who or what communicated where those bones were? And what kind of energy opened up that tree?"
"Elda thinks the trauma of several months has triggered a dormant energy in him. She thinks he's a witch, after all."
"Maybe," Victor said. "And then again maybe not. What if it's not his power at all that we're witnessing, but something acting through him?"
Abby grimaced. She had thought something similar, but feared speaking it out loud. She wanted to tell Victor about the journal, to confide her secret to just one other person, but she couldn't. She already felt that she betrayed Sebastian with her thoughts. She couldn't stand to cast any more suspicion on him until he had been given a chance to explain.
"Have you had any more dreams of him with Dafne?"
"No, but I've been pulling long hours. My sleep is pretty hard and fast, not much room for dreaming."
"Do you think I should tell Elda or Faustine?"
Victor shook his head.
"I don't think you should alarm them until we have a better idea of what's happening. You don't want to put him on the defense."
"No I don't, not at all, but I also don't want to wait until it's too late. What if they could help him? What if they could prevent something catastrophic?"
"Wait a little longer," Victor advised. "Let's see what we discover through Kanti's bones."
Abby returned to bed, but she slept fitfully. Nightmares plagued her. Again and again, she stood at the edge of a gaping hole and stared at the crumpled body of Sebastian clutching a maggot-riddled skull.
****
"Hello my future wife," Sebastian said, grinning.
He walked into Lydie's dream room. Sweat shone on his face and neck and spotted his gray T-shirt.
Abby sat on a fluffy mushroom and petted the fat cat Kissy, who glared at Sebastian when he stole Abby's attention.
Lydie swung from a swing suspended far above the floor. Oliver and Victor sat on the top of the indoor sand dune, where they argued about whether the Internet would ultimately destroy humanity.
"Connection," Victor said simply. "The Internet has liberated the world. I can talk to a mother of five in Pakistan about her hopes for her daughters' futures or play World of Warcraft with a kid from Russia."
"Or download plans to make a bomb or buy an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons or join a child porn ring."
"Or watch videos of kitties," Lydie called out.
"That sounds like a conversation I don't want to join," Sebastian told her, leaning down and kissing Abby.
"Agreed," she said. "Any progress?"
She referred to Sebastian's training with Faustine and Julian. Though isolating a specific element of power had thus far proved impossible, they had hoped to channel some of the amazing energy he'd exhibited the day before.
"Yeah, a bit. Mostly I moved some heavy rocks that should have been impossible to lift."
"Ooh, my Hercules," she teased, squeezing his bicep.
"I'm going to run up and take a shower, and Bridget wanted me to tell everyone that lunch is ready. Chicken Tikka Masala."
"Oh yum, that's my favorite."
"I know." He winked. "I told her you've been craving good Indian food."
****
"Why won't he come here?" Faustine asked, clearly irritated.
"There are a lot of reasons," Victor began, glancing at the faces of Elda, Abby and Sebastian like they might be nodding in agreement.
They sat in the dungeon room known as The Circle or the oratory. Books of Shadows lined a high shelf and Abby tried to study the names etched into the leather spines. Great swaths of color painted the stone floor as the noontime light shone through the intricate stained-glass windows that bordered the room.
"Dante is not comfortable with covens. And," he continued quickly, as Faustine started to interrupt him, "he's not sure that your protective ench
antments won't hinder the spell."
"But you performed this magic at Sorciére," Faustine countered.
Victor frowned as if he hadn't thought of that.
"Look, Faustine, the bottom line is that he said he won't. He has his reasons and I respect that."
"How do we know this magic is safe?" Elda asked. She sat near a desk scattered with stones, crystals and notebooks.
"He's been working with the spell for over a year. I've done it ten times at least. It's safe."
"Safe from what?" Abby asked. "I mean we basically astral traveled, right?" She remembered the experience from the All Hallow's Ball. After taking a sip from Dante's glass, she opened her eyes to discover that she and the other witches had been transported to the ocean floor in the Atlantic. She remembered how real it felt. Unlike astral traveling, where most sensation was muted, she felt the water and the cold as if she genuinely sat on the ocean floor.
"Yes, basically. I believe it's a form of astral projection, but it transports several of us together and to a very particular place."
"Have you ever used other bones? Or only the fish?" Sebastian asked. Abby had told him in detail about the journey after they were reunited.
"He's tried with other bones," Victor admitted. "The fish with wings is special, obviously. Dante has tried to carbon date the bones, but they appear to exceed the timeline that we can work with."
"So that makes them?" Sebastian asked.
"More than fifty thousand years old; how much more, I couldn't say."
"What's happened with other bones you've used?" Abby asked.
"Something similar. All of the witches participating project to a certain location. We used human bones that Dante snagged from a research center once. We traveled to a hillside in Ireland—at least we think it was Ireland."
"So you really don't know where the bones take you?" Faustine asked. "Or why?"
"They reveal secrets," Victor said simply. "In the Atlantic they took us to a shipwreck. In Ireland, there was a very intriguing circle of stones."
"I'm not sure why we are confident that this is the ideal magic to perform with Kanti's bones," Elda said, and Faustine nodded with her.
"Galla could not make a connection when she touched the bones. You've consulted with the other witches of Sorciére. You've considered your own library of information and you are no closer to understanding the significance of the bones. I am telling you that it will work. How do I know that? Because I'm a witch. As are you. This isn't a hair-brained scheme; I know that this is the next step." Victor spoke with conviction and a little bit of annoyance.
Abby knew that Victor preferred not to work with covens because elder witches, such as Faustine and Elda, rarely put their faith in younger generations. They had grown accustomed to believing that the old ways were right and that all new magic was suspect.
"It's decided then," Sebastian cut in. "Chicago, here we come."
****
"Home, I have missed you," Victor said, when the elevator opened into the spacious loft that he shared with his friends in Chicago.
"Espresso?" Kendra asked, immediately shuffling out of her coat and boots.
Oliver laughed.
"Bit of a caffeine junkie, eh?"
"That's putting it mildly," Kendra told him over her shoulder as she beelined for the kitchen.
Oliver, Abby, Sebastian and Julian had accompanied Victor and Kendra to Chicago. Though Elda encouraged Faustine to go, he wanted to continue sifting through the documents of the Asemaa and believed that Julian would be a better choice for the journey. Abby wondered if he secretly wanted to search for other spells to use on Kanti's bones.
"Greetings, friends in the north," Ezra told them. She wore black yoga pants and a red Chicago Bulls sweatshirt. At barely five feet tall, she should have seemed diminutive, but she exuded a toughness that reminded Abby of a guard dog. Her short hair, dyed turquoise, hung lopsided across her forehead.
"Julian," the older witch told her, extending his hand.
"Ezra," she offered her own.
Julian tilted her arm, looking at a tattoo on her wrist.
"Ganesh," he commented.
"Remover of obstacles," she replied. "Tattoos are to me what espresso is to Kendra."
Abby glanced at the tattoo of the decorated elephant's head.
"Who's Ganesh?" Oliver asked, leaning over to see the tattoo.
"The Hindu god with an elephant's head," Sebastian said, surprising them all. "Why does everyone look at me like that?" he asked, irritated. "I haven't lived my entire life in a cardboard box."
"Nice to see you again, Sebastian," Ezra told him, winking.
"I was into Hindu mythology for a while in my younger years. My mom loved spiritual icons. She had three figures of Ganesh on our fireplace mantel."
Abby grabbed his hand and squeezed. She loved learning new things about Sebastian. In those moments, she knew they had decades of discovering each other ahead, and it made her excited for the rest of their lives.
He grinned at her and shrugged.
"How's your mom, Abby?" Ezra asked.
"No news is good news, I guess. I've been so busy, I haven't had a chance to check in, but Helena has been reaching out to her telepathically and says she seems well."
Dante and Marcus sat on barstools at the kitchen counter. They introduced themselves to Julian and Sebastian. They had already met Abby and Oliver.
"You look familiar," Sebastian told Marcus, trying to place him.
The witch tucked a strand of wavy copper hair behind his ear and nodded.
"I'm amazed that you remember. It was the All Hallow's Ball. I met you by the wishing fountain, but figured after everything that happened..." Marcus trailed off. His silence referred to Sebastian's memory loss at the hands of the witch Dafne. Had it been up to her, he never would have retrieved his memories.
"Okay, yeah," Sebastian agreed. "I think you were doing back handsprings around the room."
"Show-off ," Dante teased, kissing his ear.
Marcus swatted him away playfully.
"The world looks more right when I'm upside down."
Sebastian grinned.
"That makes perfect sense to me."
"Anyway, we've set up the meditation room," Ezra told Victor. "Is everyone participating?"
"I'm not a witch," Sebastian confessed, as if that excluded him.
"You're something," Dante said, eyeing him with interest.
"He's in," Julian added. "It's worth trying," he told Sebastian. "Abby is going to sit out so that she can be present with our bodies."
"Any other reason?" Dante asked, his eyes twinkling.
Abby saw his gaze flick toward her stomach, but he didn't say more. She vaguely remembered Victor mentioning that Dante could read minds. She wondered if he was reading hers or the baby's.
"Actually, there is," she confessed. "I'm pregnant."
"Wow, that's wonderful!" Marcus stood and gave her a long hug.
They retreated to the meditation room, a large square space, enclosed with long colorful tapestries that hung from beams beneath the ceiling. The windows were covered by sheer linen drapes. Round, brightly patterned meditation cushions were arranged in a circle around an altar of flickering candles.
Dante took out a small silver pouch and set it on the floor.
Kendra handed out empty wineglasses. Dante picked up his own glass and filled it with amber liquid from a carafe.
"What is it?" Julian asked.
"Apple cider," Dante told him. "We just need a carrier. Feels like a cider time of year."
Dante took the canvas bag that Julian had brought from Ula. He did not look in the bag, but closed his eyes and felt among the bones with both of his hands. Finally, he removed two shards of bone the size of silver dollars. Holding the bones in his palm, he brought them close to his face and whispered into his hand. Dropping the bones in his glass, he opened the silver pouch and poured a sprinkling of green powder into his goblet.
Abby took a cushion and settled outside of the group, but close to Sebastian. He held his glass up to her and then tilted his head back and drank.
Chapter 25
Sebastian felt an immediate buzz throughout his body. His skin prickled and he started to turn to Abby, but already his consciousness had been ripped from the meditation room.
He felt blindly with his hands. Darkness encased him. A black wall of dirt pressed against his face and his back. It surrounded his legs and arms. He couldn't breathe. He clawed at the dirt and tried to kick his legs. The wall of earth pressed in on him from every direction. Dirt pushed into his eyes and his nose. He started to scream and the dirt moved into his mouth.
****
Abby watched the witches drink and tried to remember the sensation as the potion took hold, but she only recalled spinning very fast. She watched their slack faces and wondered where Kanti's bones had taken them.
Sebastian was the first to move. He began to moan and suddenly tumbled from his cushion. He kicked and tore at the air. His screams echoed through the vacuous room. Abby ran to him and shook his shoulders.
"Sebastian, wake up," she shrieked, panicked. His eyes did not open. She slapped his face, but her touch did not register. He continued to cry out and writhe on the floor.
Abby ran to the kitchen and got a glass of cold water. She hurried back and threw it in Sebastian's face. It did not rouse him.
The others had begun to move as well, though no one had awoken. Kendra lay on her side, whimpering, in the fetal position. Her eyes clenched tight. Julian shook his head from left to right. He struck out at the air and mumbled incoherently. Dante did not struggle, but a stream of white foam had formed on his lips and began to ooze from his mouth.
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