Aubrey shook her head.
"No one has seen Celeste in days. I went by her cottage and not a soul in sight, the doors and windows closed up like the cold season had fully come."
Dafne considered this with a shudder. As a seer, Celeste saw visions of the future. However, she fell frequently into such overwhelming dread that she vanished for months at a time. Her last premonition had occurred just two weeks before the death of her young sister and she still had not fully recovered.
"She would not simply leave though. If she foresaw something bad, she would have told us..."
"Her visions are not helpful right now, anyway," Aubrey continued. "They're too unclear, there's no focus. I need a source for all this rage directed at us. Something is giving it life."
Aubrey had first complained of the community suspicion a week earlier, five days before Solomon died. She noticed strange looks from neighbors who'd been loyal customers at the weekly market. Henry also noticed fewer patients at their free health clinic.
The situation had grown much more sinister since Solomon's death. Jonas, Solomon's father, had accused Aubrey of creating his son's illness through witchcraft. He had even brought charges against her. This, of course, terrified Aubrey because witch hunts were not all that far in the past and she was, after all, a witch. But it was less the townsmen than the darkness that scared Aubrey. She had told Dafne that she sensed a much larger, much more sinister force at work in Trager and that the evil appeared to be flowing right towards her.
Dafne had been so lost in her reverie with Tobias, she had barely acknowledged Aubrey's stories. Now she realized that Aubrey was right, the issue was escalating.
"Something bad is coming," Aubrey said, pulling her shawl tighter against her body.
"No," Dafne disagreed, hopefully. "This feeling will blow over soon. It's a strange time, that's all."
Chapter Fifteen
"Tell me about Trager," Abby asked her mother. They sat at the same chipped Formica table that Abby had eaten cereal at every morning for the first eighteen or so years of her life.
It was strange returning to her childhood home. Strange, not merely because the train of her life had leaped off the tracks and was now careening across glacial mountains and thorn filled valleys without any tracks to speak of, but also because Sydney's inheritance had clearly left her mother confused. Gone were the spider-webbed dishes with their little blue pastel edges, replaced by heavy Asian themed bowls and plates in smoky blacks and vibrant reds. The dishes looked foreign against the faded sunflower shelving paper in the cupboards. The living room had transformed from a jumble of plaid and floral sofas and chairs to a chaotic menagerie of ultra-modern leather foot stools butted against antique chaise lounges with gilded legs and arms.
Abby had attempted to enter through the garage when she arrived, but nary a footpath existed among the boxes of old and new. There were sagging cardboard boxes, black marker neatly expressing their contents, while other perkier boxes stood upright and revealed new purchases such as the Kessler 89X2000 Super Sucker Vacuum Cleaner. It was unopened, but already collecting dust betrayed by the shafts of sunlight that streaked in through the single unblocked window.
The entire house reflected her mother's conflict over what to get rid of and what to bring in. Even Becky's attire revealed her jumbled state of mind. She wore shiny black leggings with peek-a-boo black heels beneath a heavy moth-eaten purple sweater that Abby had seen her in a thousand times before.
Becky sighed, lit a cigarette, and brushed a hand through her tangled hair. Tired would have been the compliment of the century. She appeared haggard and Abby tried hard to ignore the gnawing guilt that perhaps she had played some part in her mother's unraveling.
"We didn't live there for all that long..." Becky started, less unnerved by Abby's question than exhausted by the effort of answering it. She took a drag and blew the smoke straight up, watching it curl and fan out beneath a ceiling spotted with watermarks.
"Where's Dad?" Abby asked. She wanted to talk about Trager and get to the issue that had brought her back to Lansing, but she could feel his lack of presence and it didn't seem as though he'd run out for coffee creamer.
Becky looked up at her and her red-rimmed eyes held her gaze for only a moment before she broke away and stared distantly at the small kitchen window.
"He left a week or two ago. Said it wasn't working. Blah, blah, blah," Abby's mother waved her hand dismissively and snorted. "Says I need professional help."
Abby took a deep breath and forced her head to stay steady rather than nod an affirmation to her mother's comment. She had believed that her mother needed psychiatric help for most of her life. Extreme bouts of depression coupled with manic cleaning or buying frenzies had left both Abby and her father in the throes of an emotional tornado that never calmed for more than a few weeks before again gaining momentum and wreaking havoc on everything in its path. Abby's dad had gotten off easy in some regards. As a Realtor, he spent much of his time away. He offered a hundred excuses--showings, schmoozing clients, networking, late at the office. His evasions came so readily that Abby could rattle them off before he even called to say he was going to miss dinner or brunch or that school function that Abby insisted both her parents attend. He wasn't negligent exactly, just unable to face the life that he'd chosen. So he went through the motions, but opted for something else instead--work.
Many times Abby had wondered why he stayed or, more importantly, why he ever signed on to begin with, but hers was not a communicative family. Gleaning the tiniest shard of family history was like tapping a palm tree for maple syrup. Her mother's reactions had generally ranged from suspicion to outright dismissal when Abby probed about her life before her only child was born. Her father offered tidbits here and there, but rarely held a conversation beyond ten minutes and returned his gaze to a television show or newspaper article.
Abby bit her tongue and reached across the table to hold her mother's hand.
"I'm so sorry, Mom. Is there anything that I can do?"
Becky laughed, a dry painful sound, and jerked her head from side to side.
"I'm a big girl, Abby. I may not be superhuman..." she emphasized this last word, but did not look at Abby as she said it, "...but I'm capable of living my own life."
Abby nodded and fought the various suggestions that drifted to the forefront of her mind.
"People can only heal themselves," Elda had told Abby. "And that healing always starts right here." Elda had touched her heart and asked Abby to do the same. She had told Abby these things in response to Sebastian's anxieties over Claire and his desire to avenge her death. But Abby knew that Elda meant it for her as well, and also as a lesson that even witches could only bring help to those ready to receive it .
"Ugh," her mother sighed, heaving herself out of her chair as though her body had grown heavy with age, though Abby estimated her weight at well under one hundred pounds. She watched her mother zigzag through the boxes to the door.
"What are you doing?" Abby asked, wondering if her mother had simply decided to get up and leave in the middle of their conversation.
"What does it look like I'm doing," she snapped, opening the door. Abby heard something scurry inside and she caught a streak of black.
The cat practically dove into Abby's lap when he saw her, his purr loud and desperate as he pawed at her thighs .
"Baboon!" she stared at him, overjoyed and then dismayed. In less than four months, his plump body had become bony and his once sleek fur looked oily and matted.
"Mom? How did you get him?" She nudged her face against his and took her first breath of comfort since walking into her childhood home.
"I didn't get him. Nick dumped him off here. Said he couldn't handle the memories. Left a whole heap of stuff in your old room too." Her mother looked at the cat and grimaced. "I guess you'll be abandoning him along with everything else--another mess for me to clean up."
Abby cringed at her mother's bitterness,
but only shook her head and smiled into the sweetly sad eyes of her beloved pet.
"Nope, he is definitely coming with me. I'll look through my stuff too," she added. "And, Mom, if you want, I can get you some help in here, maybe somebody to clear some of this stuff out, donate it?"
"Humph, and have some stranger digging through my things. No thank you! As for your stuff, I don't care what you do with it, but you're gonna do it, not hire some criminal to come in here and sneak my new TV out the back door while he's at it."
Abby held fast to her cat and wished with all her heart that she could breathe love into the wasted body of the woman before her. Her mother had never been an especially kind woman, but the chill that emanated from her felt almost unbearable. Baboon licked her hand and then jumped down, padding across the floor to a mostly empty food dish.
"Trager..." Becky continued, flicking her ash into an expensive-looking marble ashtray and shooting a final scowl at the cat. "It was smaller then, before the tourists and all that--a hick town I guess people called it."
She stood and poured herself a cup of coffee and refilled Abby's half empty mug.
"My mother loved that town, Lord knows why. When my father got the job at the hospital in Lansing and we moved downstate, she just about called the fire department, she was so mad."
Becky didn't sit back down, but instead opened a drawer, one that used to hold kitchen rags, and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, pouring a hefty portion into her mug. Abby grimaced, but again remained silent. Her mother had never been more forthcoming and she wasn't going to ebb the flow with her judgments.
"I must have been about nine when we left Trager. Sydney was eleven or twelve, but she always really loved that place..." She trailed off and her eyes began to pool. She took a drink and wrapped both her hands around the mug. "She was a lot like my mom and I guess I was more like my dad, though even that I'm not so sure."
"Why did Grandma Arlene love Trager so much?"
"I never asked her that," Becky said. "I never asked her much of anything and even now I don't really know why she loved it. Sydney asked her, I'm sure. Sydney followed her around like a puppy when we were girls. She was as in love with our mom as she eventually became with herself." Becky's acrid tone was familiar to Abby. She had heard it most of her life whenever her mother spoke of Sydney or Arlene.
"I was always on the outside with those two. Never included in their little games, not that I wanted to be," she added stiffly, taking a drink and adding more whiskey to her mug.
Abby wondered just how often her mother was drinking, but again left the question unasked.
"For me, Trager was just like any other place. I went to school, swam in the lake, and had a few friends. But Sydney acted like Trager was this spectacular paradise. She barely even came in the house. Her and my mom used to sleep in our tree fort all the time. My dad pretended it drove him wild, but I think he liked it. He watched them from the window with binoculars. He could never understand why I didn't join them."
"Why didn't you?"
Becky cocked an eyebrow and stared at the swirling oils in her coffee.
"I was scared of the dark and I was scared of the woods. Our house was right on the edge of the forest, same forest Sydney's house is on, but on the other side of town, and it always felt off to me. Every time I went in there, I felt this darkness kind of surround me. I wasn't the only one," Becky added quickly as if Abby might doubt her. "A lot of the kids felt that way. The weird ones liked the woods. Sydney and her little friends were in there all the time."
"Were they called the Ebony Woods?" Abby asked.
Becky looked surprised, but removed the expression quickly.
"What's this all about, Abigail?"
It was the first time her mother had referred to her by her full name since she'd been home. Usually she always called her Abigail, but so much of her had changed. She appeared confused as to her place in her own daughter's life. Was she still the mother? Did she have any authority at all? Abby could feel the unasked questions lingering inside her mother's every word.
"You gave me the impression that you didn't want to know..." Abby trailed off, silently hoping that her mother would stick to that original desire and ask for nothing.
Becky pursed her lips and took another drink. For a moment, she looked more like the rigid woman that Abby had known most of her life, but then her face settled and the fine lines reappeared, pulling her small lips into a frown.
"I don't know what I want to know anymore or even what I do know, for that matter. Lately..." she waved a hand around the kitchen, "...nothing feels real. It's like I'm adrift in outer space, don't even have gravity to bring me back."
Abby nodded that she understood, largely because she did. Something about the onset of her powers kept her stable, sane perhaps, but she still had moments where she felt the most intense loneliness as if she existed in an ocean that was void of life. She might spend a hundred years swimming the dark blue depths and never encounter another living soul.
"I think it's best to not go too deeply into all of this right now," Abby started carefully, pulling apart pieces of the paper napkin beneath her mug. "I don't even really know what it all means yet..."
"Sure," Abby's mother laughed. "Don't patronize me."
"Mom, I'm not. I'm really not," she insisted trying to catch her mother's eye. "It would be the blind leading the blind and I don't want to bring any more confusion into your life."
"The Ebony Woods were what the mothers called the woods, only them though--my mom, Peggy Sue's, Lorna's and a couple other girls. They met once a month, it was always very clandestine, but sometimes we spied and a few times we overheard them say Ebony Woods. We never saw where they went. It was like they vanished...poof."
Becky lit another cigarette and blew a white puff into the air.
"Sydney always said that if she ever had a daughter, she would name her Ebony. So much for that plan." But now as she spoke, rather than bitter, Becky sounded unbelievably sad and Abby too felt a great sadness at the thought of Sydney having a child.
Sydney always claimed that she didn't want kids, but Abby had sensed otherwise and her mother had implied on more than one occasion that Sydney had been unable to conceive.
"Ebony because of the woods?" Abby asked.
"Yes. She was almost as obsessed with the woods as she was with our mother."
"How did Grandma Arlene die?" Abby asked. The question had been burning within her since her discovery that her grandmother had been a witch. After all, she lived with witches who were hundreds of years old. Why was her grandmother not among them?
"She died in a car accident. Her and Dad both, you know that."
"There wasn't anything more to it?"
Becky stared at her and Abby shrunk from the anger in her eyes.
"She might have thought she was immortal, but she wasn't. You get hit head on by a semi-truck and you're not coming back."
Abby shuddered, wishing she hadn't asked.
****
On his third day in her apartment, Isabelle had run out of clothing options for Sebastian. When she left for work, she handed him a credit card, much to his surprise, and directed him to a nearby clothing store. Dumbfounded, he attempted to return the card, unwilling to believe that anyone would so openly offer their credit card and their home to a stranger, but she insisted.
He left the apartment wearing shorts and a too small sweatshirt and walked the two blocks on unfamiliar streets to a small department store. By the time he pushed through the double glass doors his legs were rough with goosebumps and his face felt cold and raw. Rather than perusing the clothing racks, he walked to the counter where a tall thin woman absently flipped through a catalog
"Hi?" He asked, not sure if the woman spoke english..
"Hello," she told him, but it sounded like Hallo.
"English?"
"Oui, yes," she replied.
"Is there a thrift store nearby?"
She looked at
him quizzically.
"Thrift?"
"Ummm...second-hand, used clothes?"
She wrinkled her nose, but then nodded and smiled.
"Ahh Vintage. Oui, that way, by the café."
He smiled, offered his thanks and started off in the direction she had pointed. He could not stomach the idea of spending Isabelle's money on new clothes.
After nearly a mile, he passed a small bistro adorned with tiny glass tables and iron chairs. Despite the cold, several people, sufficiently bundled, sat outdoors sipping steaming beverages from small white cups. They all watched him with interest, the tall curly-haired man in shorts with chattering teeth.
He pushed into the store, assuming it must be the right place by the mannequins clad in yellowing wedding dresses and puffy-sleeved gowns in the front window. The narrow store smelled of mothballs and stale cigarette smoke.
"Bonjour," a tiny woman with enormous purple spectacles called to him, scurrying from behind a desk nearly as high as she stood. The piles of tattered books that lined it were stacked above her head.
She hurried between the tight racks. Her neck looked heavy with a dozen fake pearl necklaces in various colors.
"Puis-je vous aider," she said brightly, her glasses slipping down to the ends of her nose as she raked up her long silky sleeves and took his wrist in her tiny hand. She immediately started to lead him deeper into the store.
"Umm, Bonjour, sorry I don't speak French," he said to the back of her head where her dark hair was piled and heavily sprayed into place. Barely a strand shifted as she walked.
"English? Fantastic," she told him, glancing back with a grin. "Me too, though I've lived here so long I'm starting to forget."
She laughed, a raspy smoker's laugh, and he felt a sweet internal sigh, grateful for another person who spoke his language. Not only words though, it was the whole demeanor of American, a little less polite and sophisticated, a trait that, in his turmoil, he found enormously comforting.
"Where are you from, honey?" she asked. She turned around and eyed him. "I'm thinking California--you look like a surfer boy to me."
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