by Jackie D
Morgan approached Sarah and gently stroked her cheek with the back of her fingers. “You’re a sweet, good soul, Sarah. But I still cannot allow you to stay.”
“I know it, Madame,” Sarah said solemnly. “I offer to protect you not for favor but because it is what is right, what God would want of me, if I would be so bold as to presume His will. After all, you represent His realm, the white realm.”
Raven’s vision blurred from pooling tears. She cleared them with her index fingers when she heard a whimper from Hazel. She threw her arm around Hazel and drew her closer.
After a moment, Morgan cleared her throat, sounding surprisingly choked up. “I never said this would be easy. We’re rescuing humanity from themselves, and that’s no mission for sissies.”
“I’m fine,” Hazel said. “I’m fine.” She plucked out a wad of tissues off her nightstand, and after blotting her face and blowing her nose, she assumed the composure of a war room strategist. “How’s it going to go down?”
Raven was momentarily speechless as she smiled at Hazel’s strength.
“Are you with us, Raven?” Morgan said.
“Oh yeah,” Raven said, shaking off her momentary trance. “Once we get there, you’re going to open the portal while Hazel and Sarah meet with Lucien to trade Ayotunde for Tammi Lee.”
“Just us two?” Hazel shot Sarah a concerned look. “Where will you be?”
“I’ll be standing near the portal,” Raven said. “Prepared to contend with the variables, like a hellhound attack or if Lucien and Tammi Lee somehow elude Morgan’s enchantment spell and try to escape. Tonight is literally our one and only chance to finish this.”
“She’s right,” Morgan said. “Blaise has nearly reached his full potency. The hate-speech rallies are happening more frequently, and the attendance at each is higher than the one before. Membership in Neo-Nazi and Confederate groups continues growing in numbers, and the indifference toward them only grows stronger. Blaise has this country exactly where he wants it.”
Raven nodded. “He’s already succeeded in his plot to chip away at women’s rights. With the onslaught of states outlawing abortion and the women who have them, the stage is set for another wave of females incarcerated in overcrowded prison cells like the one Sarah fled from. The hysteria has almost reached a fever pitch.”
Sarah placed her hand over heart and gasped. “’Tis unfathomable that such a wave would once again return. I thought it but a dark stain in our history long over by now.”
“Everyone thought that,” Raven said. “That’s how we ended up here again.”
Morgan stuck up her palm in disgust. “Please. In the early nineteenth century, when I inspired the philosopher Santayana to write, ‘When experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual,’ do you think you mortals took him seriously? Nope.”
Raven looked at Hazel and Sarah. “Those who don’t remember history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them.”
They nodded and said, “Oh,” in unison.
“Don’t get me started,” Morgan said. “I need to take a bubble before we save the world.” She headed out the bedroom door and turned toward the bathroom. “Hazel, a glass of Prosecco, please?” Her voice trailed off down the hall. “No, just bring the bottle and a glass.”
* * *
Hazel tapped on the spare bedroom door and waited for Sarah to answer. She looked at Raven after a moment of no response. “You don’t think she’s done something foolish, like running off?”
Raven’s lips pursed with concern, and then she knocked loudly. “Sarah?”
“Are you okay?” Hazel added.
“Aye.” Her soft voice floated from behind the door.
“May we come in?”
“Aye. ’Tis not locked.”
Hazel opened the door, and Raven followed her in. Sarah sat on Hazel’s cushioned reading nook, staring blankly out the window. With her rigid posture and frozen, lifeless expression, Hazel thought she was looking at an old portrait in a history book.
“Do you mind if we join you?” Hazel said.
Sarah turned, allowing for them to sit on either side of her.
Hazel sat for a moment, compiling her thoughts. “I just want you to know that you’re the strongest, most courageous woman I’ve ever met, and I’m proud to be your descendent.”
“And I’m proud as hell just to know you,” Raven said.
Sarah finally raised her head, offering each of them a smile as she clutched their hands.
Hazel peered over Sarah’s head at Raven and shot her a look of helplessness. Her heart was breaking for Sarah, and she wanted so badly to say something of significance, something that would relieve even a modicum of her pain. But when Raven returned a similar hopeless glance, she realized the only meaningful thing they could offer Sarah was their silent support.
After a lengthy silence and a deep sigh, Sarah finally spoke. “Do you know what the name Ayotunde means?”
“No,” Hazel said. Raven shook her head.
“It means ‘joy has returned’ in her mother’s native tongue of Yoruba.” Sarah placed her hand over her heart as she fought against a quivering lip. “Never hath a name befit a person so well.”
Hazel cursed her teary eyes, not wanting her sadness to affect to Sarah.
“When I see her again in our prison cell, though she be in such a wretched state, my heart soared at the sparkle of her essence that still flicker in her eye. Even in that dank, stench-ridden jail, when I held her hand and touched my hand to her cheek, indeed, my joy hath returned.”
Hazel sensed the authenticity and power of Sarah’s sentiments as she’d often been bowled over by a similar feeling every time Raven returned to her.
“Never have I known the happiness that fills my heart since we travel here and profess our love for each other. Surely, the light of Heaven proper could feel no better if it chose to shine on us.”
“I haven’t given up trying to figure out a way for you and Ayotunde to stay here,” Hazel said.
At that, Raven leaned back behind Sarah and shook her head as if telling her to stop making empty promises.
Sarah looked up at Hazel and smiled. “I be bound in a debt of gratitude to you for all eternity if were you able.” She got up and drifted pensively across the room toward the dresser on which Hazel kept a collection of amulets and sage. “But I beguile myself not to believe it were a hope that would come to fruition.”
Hazel got up and followed her. “Aunt Sarah, you can’t give up hope. This mission isn’t over yet. A lot can happen in the—”
“Hazel,” Raven said curtly. She approached them with a stern countenance. “She can’t stay. Look, I’ve already discussed this privately with Morgan. Do you know what will happen if Sarah doesn’t return to 1692?”
“Yeah, she won’t have to be tortured in a disease-ravaged prison until she’s exonerated after six months in hell.” Hazel felt herself getting flush with indignation. “And she won’t have to lose the love of her life again. What’s the big friggin’ deal if she stays? According to my family’s grimoire, she’s not that significant in the grand scheme of things. So what if it causes a little hiccup in time? Doesn’t her happiness matter to anyone around here?”
Raven scratched at the back of her head in apparent frustration and then blurted, “She has to go back, or you’ll never be born.”
Hazel and her aunt were stunned into silence as they glanced back and forth from each other to Raven. For a moment, Hazel wondered if Raven wasn’t just making that up to make Sarah’s sacrifice seem more valiant. But if it was true, then it momentously sucked to know that she was the real reason Sarah couldn’t stay.
“How comes that?” Sarah finally asked.
“The way Morgan explained it to me, your sister Mary will go into an early labor with her sixth child, a girl. You’ll be the only one at her home at the time and will assist her in a difficult birth. The child nearly dies as Mary drifts in and out of consciousness, but you,
Sarah, save her life.”
“And the baby girl lives to extend the line I’m born into,” Hazel said and collapsed onto the bed.
“If Sarah isn’t there when Mary goes into labor, the baby will die.”
“And Hazel shall cease to exist,” Sarah said quietly.
“I’m sorry,” Raven said. Her eyes gleamed with empathy for both of them.
“Then the course I must follow be plain,” Sarah said.
Hazel leapt up from the bed, her voice quivering as she spoke. “Aunt Sarah, how could I live with myself if I knew you lost Ayotunde again because of me?”
Sarah picked up her chin and smiled. “’Tis not because of you, my dearest niece. The workings of evil be set in motion long before your soul hath stepped upon the earth.”
“But it’s not fair,” Hazel said in a whimper and walked into Sarah’s open arms. Although they were about the same age, Hazel felt a deep nurturing in Sarah’s embrace, one that resonated with their centuries-old matrilineal bond.
Raven cleared her throat. “I hate to break this up, but if we don’t prepare for tonight, we all might as well dive through that portal.”
Hazel dried her cheeks with her palm and smiled when Raven gave her a comforting caress on her back as they walked out of the room.
Chapter Twenty-Five
That night, when they arrived at the staging area for Dirk’s vigil, the gathering was small compared with most of Dirk’s other insurrection ventures, maybe about a hundred or so people. With their somber faces illuminated by candles poked through circles of paper, they were quiet, as though waiting for someone to tell them what to do next, what to think or even feel.
Raven nodded toward Morgan. “This crowd is suspiciously small. Think Lucien has something extra up his sleeve?”
Morgan shook her head. “His power’s clearly waning without Dirk and Tammi Lee. I’m sure this was the best he could do on short notice and in a blue state. We definitely have home field advantage for this one.”
“It still feels weird to me. These people look like the walking dead. Why is it so quiet and peaceful?”
“Patience, my dear,” Morgan said. “You don’t think Lucien has some angry flunky standing by to get everyone fired up when he summons him? Goddess knows he’s not that bright, but he knows how to foment social upheaval. He’s making sure to press every emotional button on this herd before slapping the big fake outrage one.”
Raven nodded, satisfied with Morgan’s explanation. “So, let me ask you this…” She paused to select her phrasing. “Since Dirk is dead and we have Tammi Lee, can’t we just have Sarah and Hazel stuff her down the portal, and then I can take out Lucien with my blades?”
Morgan laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, Raven. You know better than that. Risking the integrity of a mission to take the easy way out is so not sexy, and it’s never been what you’re about.”
“I just figured that since Dirk’s been dead for a day now and I haven’t so much as noticed a change in temperature, let alone a major shift in the universe, it would be okay to expedite the matter.”
Morgan rolled her eyes. “That’s because Dirk Fowler was a waste of his mother’s amniotic fluid. To this day, how such a collection of genetic shit ever survived those colonial-era New England winters still baffles me. He’s one of the few mortals on this planet who truly has no purpose worth noting.”
“Oh.” Raven sighed and glanced over at Sarah and Hazel, who were huddled near the car chatting as they awaited the word to move.
“Hey.” Morgan tugged Raven’s arm and attention in her direction. “What’s this really about?”
Raven shrugged. “Just a shot in the dark.”
Morgan displayed an uncharacteristic expression of surprise. “You’re fishing for a way to keep Sarah and Ayotunde here, aren’t you?”
“No. I was just—”
“Holy merde ,” Morgan said. “Hazel has completely locked down your heart.”
“What?” Raven wrinkled her eyebrows, trying to dismiss the accusation. “What are you talking about? That’s ridiculous. I’ve been very clear. She knows we can never have anything.”
“I thought you knew that, too.”
“I do, Morgan. Believe me. Nobody knows it better than me.” She stepped away when she heard the sadness in her own voice. She needed to shield herself from Morgan before she gave anything else away.
“If this life displeases you so much, you can always pull the Dare Stone and be free of me once and for all.”
Unless Raven was hearing things, she detected a note of melancholy in Morgan’s voice. Rather than becoming enraged and forcing her into violent capitulation right there, she was calm, eerily calm.
“And what happens to my uncle?”
Morgan shrugged. “He’s an old man. He’s already beaten the clock on the actuary table. You and Hazel, on the other hand, are young and have a lot of living yet to do.”
Raven bit her lip at the response that was so typically Morgan. Everything had a catch to it; nothing would ever be a fifty-fifty split with her. It would always be eighty-twenty—if she was lucky.
“No matter how strongly I feel for Hazel, I’m also not about trading someone’s life for my happiness. The world is full of enough of those kinds of people.”
Morgan smirked. “You’re getting soft. In Hazel’s light, your heart is melting like an arctic glacier.”
“Whatever.” Raven shook her head in frustration.
“Raven,” Hazel said in a loud whisper. She waved them over to the car.
“She must’ve gotten the text from Lucien about the exchange,” Raven said. She and Morgan walked over.
“Did you notice the crowd?” Hazel asked. “It’s gotten twice as large since we got here. Lucien and company can’t have that many sycophants in this part of the country, can they?”
Raven shook her head as her stomach clenched in dread. “I’m certain they’re counterprotesters. The only question is, are they real ones or another fake group supposedly there to incite the grieving followers?”
“It’s more likely the latter,” Morgan said. “Have you heard from Lucien?” she said to Hazel.
“Yes. He said Ayotunde was being difficult, so he was going to be a little late for the exchange, around nine p.m.”
“That’s a ruse,” Morgan said. “We have to change our location.”
“We have to keep an eye on this crowd, too,” Raven said.
“Lucien wants Sarah and Hazel in this spot because he’s hatching a plan involving those counterprotesters.”
“He wants the vigil to turn into a riot,” Raven said, addressing Hazel and Sarah. “He must think that in all the chaos, he can grab Tammi and then execute the rest of the plan on the three of you.”
Morgan looked at Raven. “He can’t possibly be stupid enough to think you and I won’t be lurking in the shadows in anticipation of that exact move.”
“Maybe with what he has in mind, it doesn’t matter,” Raven said.
“We’re changing the location of the swap,” Morgan said. “We’ll move it up the hill closer to the portal.” She turned to Hazel. “Text Lucien back and tell him the police made you move for crowd control, and now you and Sarah will meet them a block from here.”
“What if he insists we keep it here?” Hazel said.
“Then we’ll know it’s a trap,” Raven said. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
The world buzzed inside Hazel’s head. She’d been able to feel the realms with greater power since she discovered she was a witch, but never with the fierceness she felt now. She always understood the severity of the situation they were heading into, but she didn’t feel the full weight of it until now. There would be no real winners. If they succeeded, her aunt would be forced back into a loveless life with nothing to look forward to but small, stolen moments with the person she truly loved. If they failed, dark magic would swallow the world entirely. And neither scenario ended with a future where Raven was he
rs.
Raven placed a hand on her back. “What’s wrong? You looked like you just saw a ghost.”
It wasn’t the right time, but it was the only time she had. If she didn’t kiss her now, there might never be another opportunity. She put her hands on Raven’s face and pulled her in. Raven seemed surprised at first but quickly gave into the kiss. Raven seemed to need this moment as much as her. Their mouths were hungry and the connection passionate. Hazel wasn’t sure how she’d ever be able to give Raven up, to know she’d never feel like this about anyone ever again. It was so final, and the rest of her life stretched out in front of her. She realized, then, her fate would be the same as Sarah’s. She’d never have the person her heart belonged to. She, too, would never get her happy ending. Raven wrapped her arms tighter around her, and Hazel wondered if she’d sent her thoughts into Raven’s mind on accident. Tears welled in her eyes, and she gently pushed Raven away.
“I want you to know, it doesn’t matter what you decide, I’ll always be yours.”
Raven kissed her forehead and then looked into her eyes. She seemed as if she was going to say something, but Lucien’s voice cut through their poignant moment.
“If this was all I had to do to get you all in one place, I would’ve done it weeks ago.” His hand was around Ayotunde’s arm, squeezing with so much force, his fingertips were turning white.
Morgan stepped in front of them. “Why don’t you just hand her over. I’ll give you back your evil spawn here, and then the adults can talk.”
Lucien shook his head. “It’s not going to be that easy.”
Morgan sighed heavily. “Listen, Lucy—”
“It’s Lucien.” He glared and jerked Ayotunde closer.
Morgan waved her hand, and then patted Tammi on the back. “Sure it is. Listen, give us back Ayotunde, and I will let you and Tammi here keep your powers.”
Lucien continued to look down the street, clearly waiting for something.