She nodded gravely and laid her hands on the table in front of them. Etched with symbols and words, the table was meant for spell casting, but even here in the coven's center, Elda felt the disrupted flow of energies.
"It has already begun," she sighed.
Elda closed her eyes tightly and when she exhaled, her shoulders slumped further. Faustine noticed, perhaps for the first time, how gaunt she had grown.
We are aging, he thought, not with sadness or fear, but a small reluctance. He understood that the passage of time allowed the coven to slip into complacency. They still functioned, but only on the defense. They hadn't actively brought their energy into the world beyond the island in years. He had felt both Oliver and Lydie's frustration with the seemingly dulled world of Ula.
The coven had once thrived. They moved in and out of the world like phantoms, or perhaps the term 'angels' was more appropriate. Helena and Elda were rarely found in the castle walls, too busy at the hospitals sneaking healing elixirs to the ill and remedying the faltering humanity of those who had lost hope. In those days, Faustine's long hours in the tower did not involve spying on his coven, but communicating danger, need and news to the witches who sometimes scattered across the whole of Gaia to do their bidding.
The ruin of their coven happened in nineteen hundred and eight and they never referred to it as such. They called it many things in the midst of their fall--primarily the dark times, but later they abandoned words and, with it, they slowly abandoned the memories. They agreed that they must do more than release the energy of that time. They must eradicate the memory as if it had not happened at all. Faustine presented it as a powerful tool to rewrite the past and thus change the future, but even he, an ancient and powerful witch, underestimated the influence of that violence in all their lives and, perhaps more, in their hearts. He foolishly believed himself immune to the lasting effects of the tragedy that befell his coven. He thought that his witches could simply will it away. Instead, they buried it, and it rose from the dead, reminding them that those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.
He communicated his pain to Elda with a gentle touch on her wrist and he felt her great sadness.
"We have already lost so much," she told him desperately, shaking her head from side to side. "Now we must face this evil again?"
"We never faced it," he told her. "We tucked away and hid. We cast Julian out and he may have been the only one of us running towards the face of this thing."
"Do you think that Julian lives?" Elda asked. The shadows at the door had disappeared.
Faustine sighed and scratched his head.
"I once believed that I would always know if one of my witches lived or died, that the threads between us would never fray, but now...now I cannot feel my own coven. You sit here next to me and I can barely feel you."
Elda put her hand in Faustine's.
"Should we go to the cave then?"
"I think that we must."
****
Sebastian closed the bathroom door and quickly shuffled through Rod's coat pockets. He found a money clip with nearly six hundred dollars in cash. Equipped with the fake passport and identification procured by Julian in France and Rod's money, Sebastian told Adora that he wanted to check out the pool and he left the hotel room.
In the hallway, he began to run. He had known that the moment he landed in the States, he would try to break away from the group and find Abby. Every time he thought of her, a terrifying sense of doom washed over him. The frustration at not having a phone number to reach her, or a damned e-mail address even, so disturbed him that he wanted to punch every single person he passed on his race to the airport. He boarded the first flight to Trager City, which cost him nearly all of the cash he'd stolen from Rod. He didn't care. He would rob someone to get to Abby if it came to that.
During his flight to Trager City, Sebastian furiously scribbled everything that Julian had told him about Dafne and the curse. He wanted to remember every detail and, after weeks of not even recalling his own name, he held a secret fear of somehow losing it all again.
****
"There's something out here," Lydie squeaked, and Helena tightened her hold on the little girl's hand.
When had she ever really thought of Lydie as a little girl? Not in a long time, but in that moment it rang true, as true as her tiny voice lost in the night wind and her fingers clenching Helena's so that her own grew sore.
"It's okay, Lydie," Helena assured her, battling her own unease as the wind whistled in the trees. Helena suggested the night stroll because the castle felt too cold and empty with the other witches far off in their astral travel or just gone altogether. She had planned to walk Lydie to the enchanted garden where they would inhale the flower scents and spell cast under the nearly full moon. But, distracted, she had instead steered her towards the far northern tip of the island where few of the Ula witches ever wandered. The barren woods in that area knew a dark history and Helena halted when they came upon them.
The full moon no longer cast them in its warm glow, but slid behind a gray cloud. The sky, clear when they departed the castle, now gave way to something marred with thick streams of cloud and an electric feel like rain.
"Can we go back?" Lydie whimpered, her eyes darting into the trees.
Helena inhaled and exhaled very slowly. She ground her feet into the earth and called silently to her power source, feeling it ignite briefly and then fizzle as if she did not stand in the open air, surrounded by her element.
"Lydie, draw strength from your element," Helena told her, immediately regretting her strained tone.
Lydie's fingers tightened in her hand.
Lydie closed her eyes and Helena felt her reaching out. She knew that Lydie's fear worked against her, but so did the lack of sunlight. Neither Helena nor Lydie had the hunter's instincts. They were healers by nature and, without the other witches, a crippling vulnerability began to descend.
A twig snapped nearby and Lydie spun around, crying out, and simultaneously sending a jagged bolt of flame across the dry earth below them. It lit the woods for an instant and, to Helena's horror, a shape loomed in the distance. The man wore a dark hood, but Helena caught the red glow of his eyes.
"Lydie, run," she commanded , pushing Lydie with the force of her power toward the castle. Lydie took flight, running so fast that her legs carried her into the air, but then she touched down and disappeared into the trees. Helena again called upon her element and then she whispered an incantation to the moon that it light the island, but darken her. She felt her own shape dim as the woods and water beyond lit up. Where the man stood, she now saw only a gnarled tree.
She felt nothing, no presence, but also no lack of presence. The transmitter that endlessly sent signals into her body had grown silent. She thought of the nothing and then she remembered Lydie and fled to the castle.
****
Lydie raced through the castle doors and slammed them behind her, running halfway down the hall before the darkness hit her. Every candle in the castle had been extinguished. She started to scream, but instead shoved her fist into her mouth and pressed her back against the wall, sliding towards the library where she might disappear into a secret passageway and hide from whomever or whatever had breached the coven's barriers.
In the familiar terrifying darkness, all the fear of her childhood rushed back at her.
She sat again in the tiny cubby the night her mother and father were murdered. She heard their cries and pleas as the Vepars dragged them from the cottage and ransacked the house in search of her. She smelled her parent's blood as it filled the air and mixed with scents of pine and the cinnamon cookies her mother had baked just that evening.
Like that night, when the fear became more than she could face, Lydie closed her eyes. The darkness, like an old friend, wrapped close around her.
****
"I will light the fire. Might you fan the smoke?" Faustine asked Elda who stood in the cave staring up at the stars
. She looked younger in the moonlight and he felt an old desire awakening in his body.
Once upon a time, they had loved each other with a passion that he believed would endure all things. They never chose to reveal their intimacy to others, but instead kept it as a beautiful treasure meant only for their two hearts. In those days, they both put Ula before themselves. They agreed that physical love could not interfere with their work as witches. He wondered now if they would have been better off marrying and wrapping the whole of their coven within their love instead.
"Yes, I will go up," she told him and began to float up toward the sky, perching on the rock ledge.
He blew fire into the cave floor and its flames danced up into the heavens, concealing Elda from his view. He knew that she would be calling out now to the other five witches, the smoke signals reaching to them at the far corners of the earth.
When Elda returned, they rocked together, their energies feeding the fire. It grew bigger and brighter and eventually witches began to traipse out of the tunnel behind them. All five arrived, their black cloaks billowing as they merged into a circle around the flames, their arms linked and their heads bowed. Faustine did not have to describe the unrest at his coven. The other witches had only to pick it out of the flames.
No one spoke. They communicated through the fire and both Elda and Faustine paid keen attention to the thoughts of the ancient witches who had come to offer their wisdom. The witch who spoke to the spirit of the Great Mother knew that the deception had come from within their coven, and Faustine felt tremendous pain as he accepted this truth. He realized that Elda had already suspected as much and, furthermore, she knew that it was Dafne who had deceived them
****
Helena felt along the castle walls, her bare feet sticking to the floor beneath her.. She wanted to call out to Lydie, but her body vibrated with a message of danger. She bit her tongue and moved slowly through the darkness. Never in all of her years at Ula had all the candles extinguished.
When she found the door to the tincture room, she slipped inside, closing it softly behind her. She whispered an incantation, sealing the door with darkness, so that when she created light within the room, it would not be seen from outside.
"Fire of sun, light of moon I call you
Light of moon, fire of sun I call you
Let this room illumine, let this room illumine"
She held fast to the stone about her neck as she spoke, willing the power of the air to send her call into the elements. Gradually the room lit until she could see the bottles of tinctures lining the walls.
She searched quickly, grabbing several, including the venom antidote, an invisibility potion and a poultice, which could be ripped and thrown into the face of an enemy to render them temporarily blind. She filled a small satchel with several poisonous tinctures and tied it about her waist. She grabbed a calming elixir and drank it quickly, welcoming the immediate sensation of peace that fell over her. Death came swiftly to those who panicked.
Lydie's scream pierced her thoughts and Helena darkened the room before running into the hallway and smacking into something large. She fell back and hit her head against the stone wall, crashing to the floor where several tinctures smashed as she landed upon them. The glass from the bottles cut into her back and, for a moment, she felt paralyzed as the liquids merged with her blood.
The dark figure paused and something wriggled in its arms. Helena sensed Lydie directly in front of her, thrashing in the arms of her captor. The young witch tried to scream, but her cries were muffled. Helena struggled to sit, her hands mashing into glass and blood, but her body had grown heavy. She heard Lydie's strangled screams grow further away and she felt the poison race towards her heart.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Abby knocked on the door of the stone cottage, noticing the darkened windows. All of the cottages looked vacant. No one answered.
She went to another cottage and then another. She knocked on doors and peeked in windows. In the cottage where she'd seen the woman with the child Ebony the week before, she saw darkened rooms.
Still, she sensed human life nearby, and something else--fear. Abby tried the door--locked. The door appeared old and heavy so Abby picked a lake-facing window near the rear of the cottage. She took off her sweater and wrapped it around her elbow, slamming it hard against the glass. It shattered easily and stung Abby's arm for only a moment before the pain subsided. She crawled through the window and into a child's bedroom painted with fairies and strung with garlands of pink and green lace.
"Is anyone home?" Abby called out. She moved cautiously, stopping to listen and feel what lay ahead. The cottage held another bedroom--the mother's--a tiny kitchen and living room combined, and one small bathroom. No attic. She continued to call out as she walked, but no one called back.
She started to leave, thinking that perhaps she had sensed the remnants of the people there instead of an actual person when she heard the tiniest sigh from below her. It barely registered and any human brain would have written it off as the sounds of the house or the wind outside, but Abby knew it to be breath. There was a basement beneath the cottage and someone was in it.
She moved back through the cottage lifting rugs and looking beneath furniture. She found the trap door in Ebony's bedroom concealed beneath a large wooden doll house. When she lifted the door, she heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps scurrying away. She also felt the woman's fear as she dropped into the space.
The woman from the grocery store cowered in the far corner of the crawl space, a single candle clutched in her white-knuckled hand. She opened her mouth as if to scream and Abby held up her hands.
"Please don't be afraid of me. I swear, I'm here to help. Let me help you."
The woman did not scream, but her gaze darted around the small space as if seeking an escape route.
"My name is Abby," Abby told her, extending a hand.
At the mention of her name, the woman's gray eyes grew larger and less afraid.
"Abigail Daniels?" the woman asked in a husky voice that sounded like she had been crying.
Abby cocked her head to the side and studied the woman.
"You know me?"
The woman nodded.
"Of you. I knew Sydney. Sydney was a very close friend."
Abby smiled and relaxed as the woman finally began to make her way, hunched, over to the floor opening.
"Let's get out of here," Abby said. "It's creepy."
The woman laughed quietly.
"That's exactly how Sydney described it."
Abby hoisted herself out of the space. The woman carefully replaced the door and slid the doll house over it.
"Why were you hiding?" Abby asked, walking back toward the kitchen with the woman behind her.
The woman looked around nervously and then stared out the window for a long time, watching the woods.
"I don't believe that we're safe here," she said at last.
"Has someone tried to hurt you? And I hope you don't mind my asking, but where is your child?"
Dismay colored the woman's features, but then she seemed to think better of it.
"I have not been attacked, but I'm sure that others have. My daughter was taken to a safe place where she will be protected."
"Protected from whom? And what others?"
"I don't think we should discuss it here. We're not safe."
Abby sighed, exasperated, and was tempted to tell the woman of her powers so that she might rest easy.
"I know you're not ordinary," the woman replied. "But your enemies are mine as well."
"Where is safe then?" Abby asked finally. "And what is your name?"
"Gwen," the woman said, running a hand nervously through her tousled blonde hair and glancing again toward the forest.
"I kept hearing things in there last night. Screams and then this strange crying, but not like a human cry--an animal cry."
Abby wondered if the woman might be losing her mind, but knew that
she only wanted to believe that.
"Do you think someone was hurt in there?"
"No," the woman whispered. "I think it was the cries of the dead."
****
Elda picked up the message first.
'There's something wrong at your coven,' the elder witch, Hatha, projected the thought to Elda and Faustine.
Faustine brushed over it. He already knew as much, but Elda recognized it for what it was--an urgent warning.
"Now?"
The witch nodded gravely and immediately the fire began to die as Elda and then Faustine allowed themselves to be pulled back to their astral bodies. They came to on the floor of the dungeon in complete darkness.
"Where is the light? The candles have all been extinguished," Faustine whispered, sitting up and immediately casting a glow in front of them. He allowed it to fill the room and they followed it into the hallway and up the dungeon stairs. The castle lay quiet, but the air felt chilled and disturbed. Something malevolent had been in the castle and its vestige remained.
Faustine reached out to the spell that lit the candles. Someone or something had tampered with the coven's protective barriers. He sought the missing pieces and began to pull the energy back together. A few of the candles lit and then went out.
"Forget the spell, Faustine. Just give them fire."
He did so and the hallway grew bright, the lights flickering and at times going out. Far down the hall, they both saw the pool of red spreading on the stone floor.
Elda ran to the spot where it trailed into the room of elixirs and pushed the door in, nearly falling over Helena who had crawled back to the door before slipping into unconsciousness. Elda could see the weak rise and fall of her chest.
"I will take her to the Healing Room. You must go to the tower and find Lydie." Elda's voice cracked on Lydie's name. She scooped Helena into her arms and rushed out of the room. Faustine stood paralyzed, his eyes taking in broken bottles and blood spatter, his brain trying to wrench him back one hundred years to a similar scene.
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