"There's no time for such nonsense," he chastised himself, and hurried towards the tower, searching for Lydie's presence behind every closed door that he passed, but knowing in his heart that every room lay empty.
****
Abby and Gwen drove. They did not have a destination in mind. Gwen insisted movement was their safest choice so Abby filled her little car with gas and chose a long stretch of country road.
"My heart has been broken since Sydney's death," Gwen started, clasping her knees and leaning her head toward the dashboard. She shook it from side to side as if still in disbelief.
"Mine too."
Abby stared ahead and tried to forget the image of Sydney's dead, bloated face.
"Sydney started the group. I mean, technically it started long before her, but she restarted it, if you will. She was definitely the longest standing member and the most knowledgeable."
"The group?" Abby asked.
"Yeah, the Asemaa. I'm not exactly sure what it means--something to do with tobacco."
"A smoker's group? Really?"
Gwen laughed.
"No, a group that studies witches."
Abby turned and looked sharply at Gwen, but could see that the woman was entirely serious.
"What does that mean?"
"It means that I know that you are a witch, Abby. I know that Sydney's mother was a witch. I know about the coven of Ula, though not very much. Sydney devoted her life to compiling information about your...kind. Sorry, I just don't know what else to call you. Anyway, she wasn't the first and she didn't make up the name Asemaa. It came from a man who knew of witches and of their connection with Trager. She never told me much about him. She called him Gibbs, though that was his last name. Gibbs told Sydney that the men who founded the group were tobacco traders and they used their routes to meet and share information."
"Why would this man be interested in witches?"
"I don't really know. Sydney spent a lot of time trying to trace the group's beginnings, but never found any more than Gibbs had told her. She devoted a lot of time to her research, but you know Sydney, she didn't exactly savor sitting in a dark library reading all day."
"To tell you the truth, I can't believe I never knew about any of this. I spent time with Sydney every summer and I never got even a whiff of this group."
Gwen waved the comment away.
"Sydney took a lot of pains to hide it. Not from you per se, but from Harold especially. She intended to tell you. She wanted to wait until she felt that you were ready and, after she met Rod, she got pretty distracted for a while. For a couple of years the group cooled off and our meetings became a lot more sporadic. But she got really excited about it all again last year. She had a dream about your grandmother. Arlene demanded that she return to the witch studies and implied that something very important was going to happen."
Abby drew in a deep breath and watched silently as the bare trees whizzed by.
"She kept a lot of her information at the loft. In fact, she bought the loft for Rod because of that secret room. She thought it was perfect. Before that she kept it all in a storage unit, but that scared her because anyone could break in and take it. Rod didn't even know about the room. I think it was the only thing that she ever lied to him about..."
"Why would she need to protect it? I mean, other than the obvious reasons like who the Hell believes in witches to begin with and if they found out she was researching them they'd all think she was bat shit crazy."
Gwen smiled.
"Well, she was, but that's hardly the point. She knew that Vepars hunted witches and could trace bloodlines. It was the curse more than anything though. The curse on Trager that was valuable, and if that information got into the wrong hands then witches would die and humans would die and Vepars would have access to power greater than they'd ever known."
Abby realized that she'd begun to press hard on the gas and let up. She took a couple of slow breaths and cleared her running thoughts.
"After the dream, Sydney insisted we return to twice monthly meetings and hinted about a big 'tell all' with you. I think she decided that if you carried the witches' blood, then telling you might begin the process of discovery and, if you didn't, you could become part of the Asemaa."
"She planned to tell me?"
Abby wondered how differently things might have gone if Sydney had only told her. She clenched her teeth to keep from crying. Gwen reached over and rested a warm hand on her knee.
"I'm sorry, honey. You meant so much to Sydney, I hope you know that."
Abby nodded through her tears and then wiped them hard with her sleeve and continued.
"So you're saying that Sydney discovered a curse on Trager that has something to do with me?"
"I think so, yes. I think that the Asemaa originally discovered the curse, but I believe something bad happened to most of them." The woman shuddered.
"How long ago did Sydney form this group?"
"I knew her when we were little girls. We played in the woods between our houses. Even then Sydney knew stuff, weird stuff that I only half believed. When she came back later, I was the first she let in on her secret and then slowly we added four more. We had six in all. Two of them, Karl and Meghan, live in the cottages with me. Stephen lives in town and Lorna is further north. We met twice a month usually at the cottages and shared what we had uncovered in the previous weeks. In the beginning I didn't take it very seriously. You know, I thought that Sydney was probably embellishing some of it, but then she introduced me to Adora."
"Adora?" Abby asked, startled by the name of the witch who had helped Sebastian's sister Claire.
"Yes, she had come to Sydney, believe it or not, looking for information about the curse. Most of Sydney's documents came from her predecessor and, though she'd read all of it and taken a library of notes, she still didn't really understand it. In fact, we've spent most of the last five years trying to unearth the origin of the curse."
"So what happened with Adora then?"
"Well, Sydney brought her to the cottages and she performed some parade magic, she called it, to convince us of her legitimacy. She created a lightning storm and then she flew into one of the trees and made all the leaves turn purple. Nothing too brilliant according to her, but let me tell you, my whole life changed that night. I suddenly saw the world as it is really is, this insane mystery. All my doubts died in an instant. Of course that meant a whole new level of fear too, because now there was real evil in the world and I was a part of defending against it in my own little way, which scared me for Ebony and for the others."
"And where are the others now?"
Gwen closed her eyes.
"I don't know where Stephen and Lorna are. Their homes were abandoned and none of us have heard from them in weeks. Karl and Meghan took Ebony..."
"Why didn't you go?"
"Because of you."
Abby slowed and pulled off to the side of the road, turning to face Gwen.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Stephen found something important a few weeks ago and he wouldn't explain it over the phone, but he told me that you, Abby, are the next in line. That's it, that's all he said, but I knew what he meant. You're the next in line for the curse."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Oliver stood on the shore and looked into the choppy, gray waters of Lake Superior. The path he had swum to the castle a thousand times before lived in his muscle memory but, without Helena's pepper plants, he couldn't make the swim in the bitter November weather. He didn't feel cold, he rarely did. His body naturally ran hot and, even on the most frigid of nights, with snow piling around the castle, he'd often gone for barefoot walks and marveled at how the snow melted away from his feet. Small, seemingly irrelevant memories kept coming back to him. He remembered how Lydie used to demand to sit in his lap at breakfast while grumpily munching her cereal in the years after her parents' deaths. She rarely spoke then and when she did, her words held an accusatory edge for everyone
, but him.
The winter sun shone its pale light on the water and reflected the almost cloudless sky above. If he looked hard at the water, he could see Lydie in it. The look on her face terrified him--a look that had woken him in the dead of night and signaled that something felt terribly wrong and he had to return to Ula.
Now he fought the urge to dive into the icy waters and sprint to the island. It was faster, but not safe. So he searched the shore until he found the row boat discarded by Abby weeks before. As he cut through the rough waters, he felt the tiny shiver of the spells cast around Ula, but they barely registered. The spells never blocked him, nor did they appear to him as they did to strangers. He'd helped place them, after all. However, they usually jolted him. When he passed through the barrier, he normally felt a mild electric shock. Today he felt nothing.
He came into view of the castle, but still he did not feel Faustine. He moved through the tunnel into the island lagoon and sprang from the boat to the dock.
The emptiness surrounding the castle was palpable and Oliver's world rolled. He looked at the earth, still steady beneath him, and realized he felt the energy of what had moved in that space. Oliver bolted up the steps and met the castle door with a hard thud. Not only locked, the door had been sealed and when he struck it, a shock blasted him away and he sprawled on the stone terrace. He ran around the side of the castle, jumping onto one of the tiny stone ledges that barely left room for his toes. He scaled the castle wall, glancing down when the ground fell away and was replaced by jagged cliffs plummeting to the roiling water below. He moved slowly along the edge. He would likely survive a fall, but wasn't in the mood to find out. When he finally made it around to the dining room balcony, he bounded over the small stone railing and raced to the door where again he struck some kind of electric shield that tossed him away. He was ready for it this time and landed on his feet.
He started to yell and then to scream, waving his arms and hoping that someone within would see him. No faces appeared behind the dark windows. He kicked the stone railing until it began to break apart and started to fling the pieces. He grabbed the first chunk and threw it at the library window where it jerked away before touching the glass. Three more hunks of stone met the same resistance. Only when he threw a piece as high as he possibly could muster, at one of the tiny windows in Faustine's tower, did he connect. He heard the ping as the stone struck glass.
Carefully channeling the adrenaline that coursed through him, he started up the tower. The stones had few spaces between them and even fewer cracks in which to wedge his feet, so Oliver plastered his body flat against the wall using his palms to suction the face of it while squeezing with his arms and legs around the curve of the turret. Within minutes, his entire body ached from the exertion, and the sweat breaking out on his body, made the stone slippery and harder to hold. Halfway up the tower, he started to lose his grip. His inner thighs spasmed and he closed his eyes, clenching back the images of the rocks far below him. He could survive a lot, but a thousand foot fall onto pointed slabs of granite would likely kill him.
He started to yell again, hating to waste any bit of energy, but realizing with a cold certainty that he would never make the window. He clenched his eyes shut and instead started to move back down the tower. Every time he inched lower, his whole body started to lift away from the castle wall. He froze, clinging to the tower and trying desperately to find Faustine with his mind. When he could hold it no longer, he again started his descent but, as s he shifted down, his legs went slack and he began to fall. Despite his connection to the stone wall, his powers failed him. He flailed his arms and legs, screaming as the rocks rushed up to meet him, but an instant before impact, he felt something slow him down. His body began to float lazily upward. As he passed the terrace outside the dining area, he saw Elda, her face purple with strain. She reached out, took hold of his arms and pulled him to her and then she collapsed.
Oliver could not stand. He lay next to an unconscious Elda and then slowly moved onto his hands and knees. He vomited, feeling his stomach churning sourly, and then wiped his mouth on his sleeve, before standing and gently lifting Elda into his arms. The door to the dining area stood open and he walked through hesitantly, not entirely sure they wouldn't both be blasted away.
Inside the castle, an eerie silence greeted him. He did not call out, but laid Elda gently onto a rug and moved into the main hallway. Only some of the candles flickered, casting the hall in shadows, which taunted him as he searched for movement along the corridor. He tried to feel the presence of the other witches, but found only a great void.
He went first to the library and then to the kitchen. He raced up the tower in search of Faustine, but every room lay empty. He finally moved into the dungeons, and there he heard the first sounds of life. Voices rang out from the Healing Room.
He burst through the door and both Faustine and Max swung around to face him. Their hands and clothes were matted with blood and sweat ran down their faces in streams. Faustine looked wild-eyed and Max on the edge of defeat.
"Oh, you're okay. Thank the heavens that you're okay," Max said, wiping a bloody hand across his forehead.
Oliver began to ask who they were tending to and then he spotted Helena on the bed just beyond them.
She looked so pale that he recognized her only by her auburn hair streaked a coppery brown. She rested on her stomach, her face turned towards him and clenched with pain though she didn't appear to be conscious.
"What happened?" He moved to her side, grimacing at the open wounds that streaked across her back. Several of them continued to ooze blood while others emitted different colors. One especially deep gash, released a grayish puss.
"We were invaded," Faustine said grimly, gently mopping Helena's skin with a damp cloth. She moaned in her sleep and shifted, but did not wake up.
"Something got into the castle. It appears that she fell on some tinctures, poisonous tinctures," Max's voice broke as he talked. He returned to the long table of herbs, hurriedly mixing another in what appeared to be, twenty or thirty poultices that were already soaked in Helena's blood. He handed the satchel to Faustine who placed it on her wounds.
"Where's Lydie?" Oliver demanded. He swept around the room searching under the beds as if she might be hiding there, though he knew in his heart he would not find Lydie anywhere in the Healing Room or in the castle.
"We don't know." Faustine spoke so quietly that Oliver almost missed it. "We've searched the entire castle..." He placed his hands on the edge of Helena's bed and stared down at her. Oliver sensed how far he'd fallen and, though his guts screamed at him to be angry at Faustine, his heart could not.
"Elda saved me upstairs. I nearly died trying to scale the building. Now I, at least, understand why. If Lydie has been taken, who is out looking for her?"
"We arrived less than an hour ago, Oliver. Elda was resealing the castle while we..." He gestured at Helena.
"Where are Bridget and Dafne?"
"Bridget left more than a week ago to stay with her daughter in Florida and Dafne..." Faustine closed his eyes for a moment. "She's been missing for several days."
****
"I went to the loft earlier this week. I planned to tell you everything, but you weren't there," Gwen told Abby.
"I have all of the Asemaa's journals. You can read them. I'm not sure if there's much in there that might help. A lot of times it seemed like we chased pointless leads. One thing appeared important and then would just fizzle out. You see, we had information about that horrible fire in Ebony Woods. And you know what? If I'd known about that fire I never would have named my child Ebony. I feel foolish now because I love the name and, to tell you the truth, Sydney picked it, but later when Sydney showed me the newspaper clippings about Aubrey Blake and then we discovered all those other people died, I just felt like I'd cursed my own child."
"It is a beautiful name," Abby said, remembering her mother mentioning Sydney's hope to someday have a daughter and name her Eb
ony. "I'm sure that you blessed her with that choice and nothing else."
Gwen smiled thankfully and continued. "In the months before Sydney left for vacation, we met every single week. Stephen told us he found a lead and scheduled a trip to Houston to meet this person. I know he told Sydney more about it, but I missed the meeting with him before his trip. Sydney knew something, Abby. In fact, I'm not entirely sure that she didn't foresee her own death."
"What? How?"
"Again a dream. She had such vivid dreams and, a lot of times, they turned out to be true though you couldn't see it until later. About two weeks before she left, she told me she dreamed again of your grandmother, but this time, Arlene and your grandfather and all of these people from Sydney's life who had died were hugging her and saying Welcome."
For a moment, Abby felt all of it. She felt the deaths of Sydney and Sebastian, the strange undulating powers coursing through her like an electric current, the fear and awe of the woman beside her, the knowledge that Sydney was not alone and so neither would be Sebastian. For him on the other side, were Claire and his parents and untold other loves that she had never learned about in her short span of time with him. She felt fully how unfair it was and yet how, as Elda said, beautifully orchestrated.
"Tell me about the curse."
****
Oliver stood in the doorway of Lydie's room, unable to walk in. The room's enormous bay window let in a flood of sunlight that washed everything in color and made Lydie's room look too happy and sparkly to be real. His eyes scanned the books and stuffed animals tossed on the window seat and the yellow beanbag chair with the dents of her body still pressed into the surface. Her bed was unmade with the turquoise gem bedspread shoved halfway down and her fuzzy big foot slippers on her pillow as if she slept with her feet at the top of the bed.
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