by Lenore Wolfe
EIGHT
CLAIRE
Claire stood in front of the attic door, staring at the ornate, metal frame of the beautiful, inlaid wood. They’d been back for over a week, and each night she found herself standing in front of this door, feeling uneasy like she stood on the edge of something she didn’t quite understand. Not just stood in front of an altar room.
The truth of it, she was.
She shook her head. She didn’t know what her problem was. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been here a thousand times before.
She took the skeleton key out of her pocket. A crocheted, string tassel hung off it. She looked down now at the metal so cool in her hand, hesitating to place it in the lock of the door. Taking a deep breath, trying to calm the heavy beating of her heart, she moved forward. Her hand trembled as she extended her arm to put the key into the lock.
Oh, please. It wasn’t like this was the first time she’d snuck up here. She’d been doing so ever since she got back.
She winced at the click of the cylinders as she unlocked the door, and winced again when the hinges squeaked, loud in the still night air. Amazed it didn’t wake the whole house.
It’s not like this is a small place, she reminded herself. It’s not likely anyone would hear a lock in a place this size. None of the bedrooms were close to where the stairs ascended to the attic, except Tara’s—and Tara snuck up here with her. She laughed quietly in the shadows, thinking that she would soon see Tara—the moment she heard her walking around up here. Here sister-friend had been sneaking up here after her nearly every night.
The door squeaked loudly as she pushed it open, and she almost rolled her eyes. Please, she sneered her lip, like she’d been caught up in a bad mystery movie. Why was she acting like she was about to be caught red-handed, doing something wrong?
Besides, wasn’t her fear more for her sister? She shook her head. She just didn’t want to explain all of this to Morgan just yet. She didn’t know if Morgan could handle this much reality—even though Claire had heard Alex talking to her sister about this attic—and the Book of Shadows that lay within. Still, it was one thing to know a thing—quite another to see it firsthand. Morgan would be bound to have a lot of questions—and Claire just wanted to slow things down a bit. She wasn’t willing for Morgan to know too much, just yet, about magick. Not yet. She wasn’t sure that Morgan was ready to know everything.
She reached in with her right hand and flipped on the light, relieved, as usual, when the place lit up like a Christmas tree. Their grandmother loved the old delicate, hanging lights with the teeny-tiny bulbs on each end. So, did she, for that matter. Years before, she’d placed several around the altar room. Then, she put several more that she’d made in the shape of trees, with all their leaves missing.
Still trying to be quiet, she looked around. Deep in thought, she jumped when a branch slapped against the window from outside. Realizing, she let out a relieved breath, hand over her heart. Even the trees were in bad need of a trimming, brushing against the windows in spine-tingling scratching sounds, as the wind buffeted them back and forth.
Even though Grams got pretty upset, the first time Claire found her in this fantastic place, she’d seemed content to spend time together doing magick here whenever they could.
Claire spent a lot of time in this room, after that. She shook her head. Enough so that she should know all the sounds the house made, by now. She’d spent most of that time with her Grams. On top of which, she snuck up here late at night, often enough, each of those summers she’d spent with her.
Now, here she was sneaking up here, again, after everyone else went to bed, all this past week. The first night, she’d wanted to check that their family Book of Shadows remained safely tucked away in that beautiful metal chest, her Grams kept it in.
That was before she’d discovered what her grandmother had done.
After Morgan and Alex told her about the apparition they’d seen, Claire decided she needed to find out what her Grams knew about it. She’d started searching for more information—and why it might have caused her parents to hide the fact their daughters were witches. As it turned out—it wasn’t her mother who hid it from them. The entire coven had done so. Claire wasn’t any closer to figuring out why, then she’d been the first time she’d broached the subject with Grams when she’d still been a teen.
This mystery plagued her—made worse by the fact it caused Morgan to be stolen away.
Each direction she turned, shelves and shelves of supplies stood, along with a large, round, oak table with claw feet. Two large mortars, with pestles, sat on a marble counter top, against one wall. Labeled crock containers, with every herb and old medicine, needed, lined the shelves above. It looked like an old apothecary store.
Graduating sizes of iron cauldrons sat on one large bookshelf. Bottles and corks, for spell bottles, and cords of various colors and sizes, for knotting spell-work, sat on another shelf, with candles of all shapes and sizes for candle magicks.
The attic always brought a smile to Claire’s face. This place could be considered a witch’s dream attic. Claire glanced around at all the shelves holding the herbs and spices. She remembered the first night she’d snuck here when she’d been a teen, after Grams went to bed, and she grinned. She’d been more than a little unnerved back then, too.
She shook her head. More like terrified. After all—an altar room? She couldn’t believe the magickal things this room held.
She touched the beautiful, round oak table with the crystal balls, which were held in sculpted hawk’s talons decorating the feet, then gazed up at the shelves lining the marble counter, with shelves filled with supplies of herbs and spices, crystals and stones, bottles, and cords. Claire studied the altar itself, laden with candles lining the walls, with the array of Goddess statues that sat around the altar.
Before long, Claire found the attic comforting, the same as when she came to this place with her Grams as a teen, and her grandmother first allowed her to be part of the magick she loved. Claire glanced around. The attic felt warm and inviting, now, too—though she still respected the power she sensed here.
She went to the Book of Shadows, where she’d left it on the table. She took it to the overstuffed couch, against one wall and sat down, covering up her legs with one of the throw blankets piled in a chest serving as an ottoman.
She put the overly-large book onto her lap, flipping it open to the page she’d left off the night before. She’d been reading through it, trying to find all she could on what her parents, and grandparents, for that matter, had written about this warlock—the book so large, and thick, that even though she’d been reading all week, it was taking her forever to get through it.
So far, she hadn’t found much. Just a small passage, which talked about how they’d come up against the coven’s greatest enemy with some potions—and failed to take him down.
She eyed the bookmark she’d placed the previous night, sighing. She still had a long way to go. She took it out now and reread the passage. Apparently, her mother’s cousin died that day. She flipped through a few more pages until she found a chapter on potions. This part talked about Dante, but the bottom annotation pointed to a different passage in the book. Maybe they’d have a potion.
Claire sighed as she went to the page it directed, but her hopes were quickly dashed when she read what they’d written there.
They’d put down a whole section on Dante, but in page after page of potions, they’d written only about their failures in bringing him down—though someone had carefully documented a list of those killed by his hand. Claire felt a chill sweep up her spine. He’d taken down at least six or seven members of her family alone—including their mother.
How could they not have prepared her and Morgan, and the rest of them for that matter, for such a powerful enemy? How could they have thought that their ignorance could ever be their bliss? Did they think they couldn’t beat him? Did that mean that they’d tried to give their children a few years of living—with
out fear—because they’d found no way to take him down?
Claire scanned page after page for answers. If that were the case, then what kept him from killing every living member of their family and wiping out their entire line?
But as Claire searched, she soon learned that he didn’t find it so easy to kill the members of her family. They might not have taken him down—but they weren’t powerless either. He’d had his work cut out for him. Worked hard to get the ones he managed to kill. Apparently, her family proved much more powerful than she’d been led to believe. Even Grams hadn’t told her the truth.
Why? Why did she keep something like this from her?
Claire shook her head. The more she learned—the more questions she had. No one remained to give her the answers.
Her head jerked up. Her aunt…. Her aunt still lived.
Claire set the book down. Taking her cell phone out of her robe pocket, Claire texted her aunt. It was late. She wouldn’t get her message until morning, but Claire wanted her to get it as soon as she woke. Because in it, she’d asked her aunt to please let them know she still headed their way this week.
She’d have asked her to fly but saw no point. Only one airport came close to them. Denver. Her aunt didn’t live far enough away to warrant driving to the airport closest to her when that airport only sat one city over from them, and when she could drive straight up to their little town, nestled in the mountains north of Denver.
After she’d left the text for her aunt, Claire took the book to the table and sat down to take notes. There remained only one potion at the end of the book that they hadn’t tried on Dante…. Well, one potion was better than nothing. Maybe, this one would have worked, but they never got the chance to use it. Maybe….
It was a slim chance. But it gave her hope.
As soon as she knew Morgan could handle it, they’d put their heads together to draw up all they knew. After that, maybe their aunt would talk to them. Claire frowned. That would mean telling Morgan about this attic—and soon. Maybe sooner than she expected.
She looked around, then getting up, she turned to glance around once more. Time for their aunt to give them some answers. She’d simply have to convince her that more danger lay in fighting him blind. She picked up the book and made her way to the door, carefully locking it behind her.
She snuck down to her bed, but she’d barely climbed in, book in hand, when she heard a light tapping on her door.