by Jaci Miller
She paced back and forth, her head exploding with confusion. How had the witch gotten inside her head? The things she had been able to see. Her secrets, memories she kept locked up deep inside were suddenly exposed by that witch. But how?! Had she misjudged her power?
Her mind was reeling as she went over the events of the night in her head, trying to find an answer. Suddenly, she realized something, the witch was different, her stench had changed slightly. She now possessed another layer to her already complicated aura. It wasn’t noticeable at first, but the witch seemed more powerful, her energy balanced, and there had been something unseen sizzling in the surrounding air.
It had been unsettling, and it had distracted her, and for a moment she felt helpless, like the little girl she had left in the past, paralyzed by an overwhelming fear.
Her pacing decreased as she thought about the witch. This was not a power that she had considered. It was not one that she could easily outmaneuver, but it was one that could derail her plans. She would need to figure out quickly, what had changed and why, so she would not fall prey to the witch the next time.
She could not afford to underestimate her, for she had been cultivating her plans for years, waiting for the exact moment when she would make that witch pay for what her ancestors had done.
Chapter 12
The smell of coffee greeted Dane as she walked into her kitchen the following morning. Her mother and father sat at the breakfast bar, mugs of fresh hot brew in their hands. They smiled uncomfortably as she entered. Tyson, happy to see them, wiggled over pushing his head into their legs for attention.
She avoided their concerned stares until she had made herself a cup of tea, turning she scowled at her parents. “Would one of you like to tell me what is going on?”
They looked at one another, fidgeting, as she waited impatiently for either of them to answer.
Her father spoke first. “I asked you those questions last night because I know what happened. We already suspected after you told your mother everything about your encounter with the tree and the visions, but last night confirmed it.”
“Confirmed what?”
Her mother’s voice was soft, her eyes gentle as they looked deep into hers. “Dane, you did have a second awakening. It now seems you possess at least some of your father’s powers.”
She gaped at them, unsure of what she heard. She thought back to the strange vision she experienced when her hand had touched Lilith’s arm. It was not like the visions or dreams she had experienced in the past few days, it was as if she were in Lilith’s head, seeing things only Lilith could know.
“How can you be sure?” She managed to choke out, the blood roaring in her ears.
“Because I was in her head as well.” Her father was calm as he answered. “I felt your presence immediately. I saw the same things—the child being abused, the bullied teen, the old mill shrouded in an eerie red glow. Those weren’t visions Dane, they were her memories, every single one of them tainted by dark magic. You connected with her mind when you touched her. A link that severed when you released her arm.”
He hesitated for a moment, allowing her to process the things he was saying. “Your mother sensed the dark witch just as you did, so I entered her mind, which wasn’t easy, she is definitely cloaking her aura. But the memories, you found those and brought them forward, she had hidden them well, and you surprised her at how easily they became unhidden.”
She stared at her father, barely able to comprehend the words that were flowing from his lips. A second awakening, it couldn’t be true, she felt the exact same.
“Dane, you do have the power of telepathy but whether you have gained my ability to manipulate time and space is yet to be seen.”
She shook her head in disbelief, so much had happened in the past twenty-four hours and she suddenly felt overwhelmed. Her grandfather’s chest, stuffed with papers she had yet to review, a mythological prophecy that may or may not be true, strange dreams she couldn’t control, a dark witch who apparently hated her, and a second awakening giving her telepathic powers.
What was going on?
The knot of apprehension in her stomach began to tighten—there was something wrong in Brighton Hill and she now had no doubt that she was part of it.
“Honey, are you ok?” Her mother asked, looking at her daughter with concern. She nodded softly, her mind churning as her heart fell, the ever-present feeling of loneliness rearing up its ugly head as her life as a witch just pushed her further away from her mortal friends.
She sighed and looked at her father. “The feeling I experienced after the vision, like I was hungover, exhausted mentally and physically, does that happen to you?”
“It used to, in the beginning, but you will learn to absorb the after effects so that they become minimally invasive. I am confident that you will be able to separate them as you do with the emotions you pick up using your empathic abilities.”
Her father was referring to her innate ability to easily feel and identify specific individual energies and emotions without experiencing the overwhelming loss of her own emotional identity. Many high-level empaths suffer when connected to an emotional spectrum not their own, but she did not experience this turmoil. Her mother called it segmenting—the ability to recognize and separate your own emotions from others and digest or channel them without experiencing physical consequences.
He reached over and touched her hand. “The new power caught you off guard Dane, so your body reacted like a foreign antigen had invaded, making you feel sick as it attempted to neutralize its presence. When you understand and learn how to control your new power, your body will accept the side-effects more easily and the symptoms will begin to cease.”
She smiled slightly at her father’s clinical explanation. Even the warlock talks like a doctor, she thought.
“I think you really need to look at what your grandfather left you in that chest,” he continued. “A second awakening is extremely rare and does not happen without reason. As history has dictated, the rare few of our kind who experienced one have found themselves entrenched in our magical history, for good and bad. Your second awakening will come with its own destiny Dane and possibly a great price. You must be respectful of the gift magic has given you but wary of what it requires in return.”
She took a deep breath, pushed back her shoulders and smiled at her parents, watching as their worried faces seemed to soften slightly. She had been a witch most of her life and had successfully intermingled her magical life with a mortal one. Nothing was going to change, she would learn how to control this power as well and use it to the best of her abilities. Whatever was happening, whatever her new destiny, she would find a way to make it work within the mortal spectrum. She had no choice.
“Your father and I really want to stay but he is working third shift tonight. They are short staffed in trauma.” Ella Watts gazed at her daughter with an apologetic look on her face.
“Mom I will be fine, really you don’t need to worry.”
Her mother gave her a tense smile. “It’s my job.”
She smiled weakly, her mind racing as she tried to make sense of it all.
“Your father will go through the rest of your grandfather’s things, see if there is anything else that can shed light on what’s going on. I will speak to both sides of the family, maybe someone knows something or there is talk within the magical community. We will figure this out,” she said squeezing her daughter’s hand affectionately.
“Thanks, mom, dad, I appreciate it.”
She had an overwhelming desire to be alone right now, to collect her thoughts and think through all that had happened. It was difficult to think clearly when her mother was hovering over her. Silently, and with a little guilt, she thanked the goddess that her parents were leaving soon.
After breakfast, she helped lo
ad the car, hugging them both before they got in to start the long drive home. Although she was glad to be alone with her thoughts an aching emptiness blossomed in her chest as she watched their car drive out of sight. Her eyes pricked with tears as the anxious energy that squeezed her heart reminded her of how much lonelier it was going to get.
As she turned to walk back into the house, she felt an uneasiness spread through her. Quickly, she scanned the area but only the normal neighborhood activity greeted her.
Tyson had gone to greet Mr. Avery, her next-door neighbor, who was out walking his dog. She waved as he gave Tyson a treat.
The uneasiness began to fade. Pulling her phone from her pocket, she checked the text messages that had come in this morning, one from Kai and one from Elyse. Ignoring them she turned her phone off and glanced again around the neighborhood unable to shake the stubborn feeling that someone was watching.
Whistling for Tyson she walked back into the house determined to spend the rest of the day trying to get some answers.
There was something different about the witch. The surrounding air sizzled with an unusual energy. Unlike before when all she felt was contempt toward her, there was now a strange sensation of uneasiness and distress that reared up inside her. It was an uncomfortable feeling and very worrisome. She could not afford to be dealing with this type of chaos when so much was a stake.
She pushed her red hair off her face as the cold biting wind blew the long strands aimlessly about. Peeking out from the corner of the bus stop shelter, she watched as they walked to the car.
The parents, she thought, as they got in and drove away. They were more than she had expected.
After calming down last night she had realized that the witch was not the only one with the power to see inside her mind. She had felt another presence, although it was harder to detect, for unlike the witch it was calm, in control, and almost invisible. There had been a hint of Celtic magic left behind, the old-world kind, rare in modern times. A shadow of a past that had faded when magic became feared.
She knew it wasn’t the mother, for she could see in her aura the calming white energy tinged with faint blue and yellow, an indication of an extremely old lineage of British healers. If the witch’s parents were from the bloodlines of two of the oldest magical families remaining in the modern world, then they would both be extremely powerful and knowledgeable, a possibility she had not considered.
She shifted her position when the witch’s eyes began to search the neighborhood, her gaze almost on her before she pulled herself back in behind the shelter. She could feel the witch’s energy as it reached out probing. It was strong, confident, and much more powerful than it was at the gas station and then again on the street downtown, days earlier. It was now tinged with something older and darker, an invisible essence entwined in the witch’s magical aura, pulsating erratically around her.
Peeking around the bus-stop again she watched as the witch went back inside. Taking a deep breath of the cold winter air, she turned and walked back to her car, fighting to control both the vitriol that raged inside her and the panicked voice in her head that told her to run.
Chapter 13
Her grandfather’s wooden chest sat waiting in her office, its subtle pine scent drifting through the small room. Striding to her desk, Dane opened the small metal box containing the ancient medallion and its corresponding note, feeling a sudden rush of sadness as her grandfather’s handwriting came into view.
This would be so much easier if he were still here to guide her, to explain what all this meant, and to tell her what to do. She cursed under her breath, hating the drunk driver who had stolen away the man she admired. That fateful day had taken more from her than she had known at the time, for now, it seemed that her grandfather may have had vital information of an ancient past that could very well affect her future.
She looked at the framed picture on her desk. Her grandfather was such a regal looking man, his bright green eyes highlighted by dark lashes, his salt and pepper hair cropped short, his beard trimmed neatly. He had been her rock always there to provide guidance and wisdom during her younger years. His constant presence always managed to keep her grounded even through the tumultuous times.
She had not always been an easy child, especially after her awakening when the burden of her legacy threatened to expose her at every turn. She had become withdrawn and distant with her parents but her relationship with her grandfather flourished as he always seemed to understand her differently than the rest of the family. Her parents expected her to accept her gifts as part of her birthright, but her grandfather understood how difficult it was for someone like Dane, so entangled in the mortal world, to accept that she was different.
Her grandfather had guided her through those years, taught her the ways of her new reality, and allowed her to feel what she needed to without judgment. Because of him, she had grown into a powerful and resourceful witch. Then suddenly he was gone, and everything changed.
After her grandfather died, she abandoned being guarded about her secrets and closed herself off completely to mortals, concentrating only on her work, her magic, and ensuring that those closest to her were kept emotionally at arm’s length. She was still everyone’s rock—loyal and reliable, but she no longer let anyone in and because of that her romantic relationships suffered, and her circle of friends diminished. Her parents and her five best friends remained the only ones she stayed close with, but even they were unable to gain access to the innermost sanctum of her heart. Her self-imposed solitude was her way of ensuring her own emotional survival. She had gotten very good at keeping everyone at a distance and they had all finally accepted her lack of emotional availability.
She shook off the painful memories of his death concentrating instead on the old chest that sat on the floor at her feet. Turning the brass key, she heard the lock click. Slowly, she opened the lid revealing a mess of papers, clippings, and notebooks all jammed haphazardly into the chest.
She spent the next hour taking everything out and sorting through it, piling the items into some type of organized system. Making a stack for spells and incantations, another containing anything to do with the Callan lineage, and a third pile for antidotes and family recipes. Piled neatly to her left was a stack of small notebooks; all of which seemed to contain her grandfather’s journal entries.
As she slowly emptied the chest placing its contents into corresponding piles, she realized how much her grandfather had crammed into the small wooden box. Most of it was family history, interesting but not of any value to the task at hand. The spells and incantations were curious; some dated back thousands of years and exposed a different type of magic than what existed today. She smiled when she read the variety of ingredients and oddities witches used to perform magic in the past.
As she pulled out the last of the papers, she noticed a black velvet cloth wrapped around something at the very bottom of the chest. Carefully, she picked it up from where it lay, surprised by the weight of the unseen item. Removing the black cloth, she saw a long, narrow, leather-bound folder tied tightly by a thin leather string, its length wound around the folder multiple times, secured with a double knot. To her delight in was emblazoned with the same glyph as the chest.
“The real Callan legacy, perhaps?” She whispered, gently tugging at the knot and unwinding the leather string.
Opening the leather flap, she carefully pulled out the contents spreading them out randomly on the floor. The pages contained in the leather folder were not like any of the other papers founded in the chest. The paper was thin, a delicate parchment that threatened to crumble if touched too harshly. Many of the pages had discolored and bore the yellowish tinge of age. The writing was in old script, the black ink faded and bleeding slightly. Some corners of the parchments were torn and dog-eared, but all were thankfully legible. Judging by the age of the parchments she assumed they were
passed down through the Callan family. She also assumed that her grandfather had intended to pass them down to her father until she was born and his suspicions about the ancient prophecy were confirmed.
Carefully, she looked at each page, most of the information on them made no sense. There were vague descriptions of other worlds, realms governed by the elements where magic flourished. There were no specifics, no names or dates, so she had no idea when in her family’s history they were recorded. Some entries seemed older than others and depicted different scripts indicating the possibility that a multitude of generations had contributed their knowledge and ideas to these pages.
She continued to shuffle through the parchments, finding references to the Warlician legend, but nothing that she had not already learned as a child.
Picking up the last few pages, she immediately noticed a difference in the weight, color, and thickness of the parchment. Studying it closer she realized that it was not as old as the others, it was a modern stock that had been manipulated to look antique. She recognized the handwriting that filled the pages as her grandfathers. He had sketched some small diagrams impeccably in the body of the writing and others he had scribbled hastily into the margins.
Flipping through them quickly she stopped as something familiar caught her eye. Holding up the page she studied the pencil drawing, its shape, contours, and identifying marks all exact—it was a sketch of the old distorted tree in Braemore Woods. Beneath the diagram, her grandfather had written one word followed by a question mark—portal?
The other pages contained much of the same, diagrams with one-word questions, or thoughts that her grandfather must have wanted to remember. At the back, there was a small parchment attached with a paper clip to the one in front. It was no bigger than a greeting card and its delicate thin surface was mottled with ink splats. Written across its center, in a perfect ancient script, was one sentence—One world born from another will share an equal fate.