****
"So what does this mean for Sebastian?" Abby asked. She had cornered Elda in the scallop-shaped greenhouse that bordered the second lagoon.
Elda, a superior witch at the coven of Ula, and Abby's often mentor, pursed her lips and picked up the envelope that Abby had dropped on the table before her.
It contained an invitation given to Abby the previous week by Oliver, while she attended the funeral of her Aunt Sydney. She had tucked the invitation into her grandmother's wood box and not removed it until she had an opportunity to speak with Elda alone. It had been difficult not to bring it up with Sebastian the day before, but she didn't want to taint their day with a party that may or may not include him.
Elda picked up the envelope and lifted it to her nose, inhaling.
"Heliotrope," she whispered. "Every invitation is scented with the coven's themed flower. Sorciére uses heliotrope abundantly." Elda waved the envelope in the air sending wafts of the floral scent into the room. "We get this delightful smell for years and years. You know, Abby, I have All Hallow's invitations that are decades old, which still smell of their coven's signature flower."
"Sebastian?" Abby asked again, not allowing the change of subject.
"Sebastian is not a witch."
"So he can't go?"
"That's not what I said."
"Please, can we cut the cloak and dagger?" Abby's patience with the elder witch was running thin. She was tired and, honestly, a bit grumpy. Her night had been restless and plagued with nightmares and a tossing Sebastian beside her. She'd welcomed the dawn so that she could slip out of the bed that felt too small.
Elda avoided Abby's eyes, returning to the flowers that she meticulously trimmed. Her fingers were shock blue from the violet petals that she lovingly touched.
"If Sebastian were to go, we would have to conceal him very carefully. If anyone were to find out..."
"What?" Abby asked. "What would happen?"
Elda frowned, but did not shift her eyes from the flowers.
"Anything could happen. But, as you know, anything can always happen and we can't live our lives fearing the possibilities."
"Would the other witches be angry?"
"Perhaps. Dafne, for instance, is already angry, but she is part of our coven and won't act on those feelings. I cannot say the same for other witches."
"But what about the oath 'harm none'?"
"Well, there are witches who would flip that question back to us. We are bringing a human into a magical world, a world that he can barely fathom, let alone survive in. We are exposing other witches to his weakness when we bring him into their covens."
Elda wiped her blue fingers on a white rag, but no inky prints appeared.
"Vepars have very strong powers over regular people, Abby. I know that you believe Sebastian is immune, but has he ever really faced one alone? Does he truly know that they are unable to penetrate his mind? Is he sure that they could not seduce him with the promise of bringing his sister back from the dead?"
"That's absurd," Abby snapped. "He would never help them."
However, Abby did not know if she believed her words and neither did Elda who sighed, but said nothing.
"You don't know what Sebastian would do and neither does he, for that matter."
"So, what then? He shouldn't go?" Abby asked, brushing her index finger along the blue plant. It burned and she pulled her hand away quickly, but before she could stick the throbbing finger into her mouth, Elda jerked it back.
"That's poisonous."
She picked up a small glass bottle from the table and squirted Abby's finger twice.
"You always put a neutralizer on before touching the plants. I'm sure Bridget has told you that."
Abby nodded. Bridget had told her, but she'd forgotten.
"You seem distracted," Elda murmured.
Abby nodded.
"I'm just really tired and, honestly, worried about this party."
"He can go, if that's what you want. But think on it first. Our decisions do not merely affect us. On a separate note, Faustine went to Trager City and had Danny released from jail."
"Really, that's great. But how?" Abby asked, surprised. Danny was the adopted brother of Devin, the girl that Abby had found murdered several months before. The discovery of Devin's body had seemed to trigger the events that led to Abby uncovering her own powers. Danny had been framed for Devin's murder by the Vepars that killed her.
"He brought some potentially damning errors in the investigation to the new Chief of Police's attention. He said it was quite easy actually. He barely used any magic at all. The man is so concerned with his career, he would move mountains to keep the issues from coming to light."
"What issues?"
"Well that's where the magic came in. Suffice it to say that Danny is free."
Before Abby could ask more, Elda had turned and disappeared deeper into the greenhouse.
****
After leaving Elda, Abby circled the edge of the lagoon several times, considering Sebastian. She loved him deeply but, upon waking that morning, she felt strangeness between them. It did not make sense. They had spent the most wonderful day together and fallen into bed, drunk with their love. Still, that morning, she had watched him sleep, unable to shake the feeling that he was deceiving her in some way.
She knew that the other witches felt uneasy around Sebastian. Human emotions were volatile, and often fear based, as Oliver had told her a million times. Their emotions made them weak, which Abby found vaguely hilarious since, lately, emotions had been consuming her every moment. According to Oliver, the more emotional humans were, the more easily Vepars gained control of their minds.
She felt sure that Helena's suggestion of the grief ritual grew from the hope that releasing Sydney would help Sebastian find peace. Twenty-four hours earlier, Abby would have agreed, but in the light of a new day, she felt less secure. Had it been a dream or some sign in the night that triggered this anxiousness in the pit of her belly?
When she found no solace in the lapping water, she returned to the library, hoping that some book might hold the answer to her growing unrest.
She found Helena, seated next to the fire, staring intently into an unfamiliar mirror that was partially draped in a dark afghan. The mirror stood at least seven feet tall. The gilded edges were carved with tiny howling faces.
When Abby stepped before it, her image trembled in waves. Her body undulated a long sigh from her curled hair to her bare feet. Her shifting image reminded her dreamily of the county fair fun-house mirrors. In one mirror you were tall and skeletal, while another revealed a warped ghoul with a pinched face and squat body.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall" Helena murmured cheerfully, waving her hands so that her bracelets chimed.
The fall days cooled the castle considerably and made the library's enormous fireplace a frequent stop for the coven's inhabitants, even during the daytime. It was not unusual to see Helena warming by the fire.
Abby stood next to her, allowing the flames to bake her skin through her pant legs.
"Your hair looks lovely," Helena told her, not shifting her eyes from the mirror image.
Abby touched it absently, fingering a fat curl. Her cropped hair had grown much longer since arriving at the castle and, weeks earlier, it had suddenly begun to curl in thick waves. Her previously short hair, which she'd chopped off in a rage only a month and a half before, now fell to the center of her back.
"Thank you; it's strange though, isn't it?"
"Not so strange," Helena smiled, reaching back to her own thick, auburn ponytail and giving it a tug. "Mine was blonde, platinum blonde, when my powers first appeared. Then one morning I woke up and it was a little darker and each day after that until I got this."
"Platinum blonde?" Abby stood in front of the mirror examining her image.
"Yep, it's like puberty for a witch. But instead of getting acne and cramps, your hair has a midlife crisis and people start asking why y
ou're wearing wigs."
"Any other changes I should be aware of?"
"Oh, there are loads." Helena scooted along the floor and rested her back against an itchy purple loveseat. "My nails grew really long, toenails too," she rolled her eyes, "but there are spells to slow those down."
"Yuck, toenails too."
Abby looked at her hands. Her fingernails did look better—no more stubby, broken ends.
"So why do we have this magic mirror?" Abby asked. It took time adjusting to the idea that she was a witch and that she belonged at Ula. Saying things like 'we' and 'us' used to make her look around self-consciously and wait for someone to correct her. Each day the coven became more familiar and her space within it more a fixture and less a decoration.
"It's for All Hallows Eve," Helena told her. "We walk through it."
There it was again. All Hallow's Eve and the big party at the Coven of Sorciére in Bordeaux, France. The party that Sebastian had not been invited to and Abby had been keeping secret from him.
"We walk through it? How?"
"Well, whoever throws the All Hallows Party each year is under obligation to provide mirrors to all of the participating covens. They create a fold in space on the night of the event and we just walk right through."
Abby leaned into the mirror until her nose nearly touched it. She wanted to stick a hand forward and see if it slipped through the glass.
"What do you mean create a fold in space? How is that possible?"
"Anything is possible," Helena quipped, standing and walking to the mirror. "But space is especially malleable. You see, when we go to France we are simply moving energy through space. If we drop the illusion that we are here and they are there, we can jump right to them. Let me not reduce it though," Helena added quickly. "These are spells that take the energies and commitment of a dozen powerful witches and the gateway is opened over time. The thinning of the veil is like a decrease in tangible reality. It's the perfect night to enact such a spell."
Abby still didn't understand but, in the moment, she was too entranced by the mirror to ask for clarification.
"Can I touch it?" she asked.
"Absolutely, but you won't get much out of it today. The mirrors are bewitched on the day of the party."
Abby reached a finger forward. Solid, the glass felt cool and did not bend beneath the pressure of her touch.
"Can anyone walk through it?"
"Sure, though the experience is not for everyone."
****
Sebastian heard Abby's voice as he passed the library. He quickened his pace, but did not glance behind him. He needed to find Claire's journals. It had been gnawing at him for hours, this feeling that the answers lay hidden there.
He walked along the curving, stone staircase that led to the dungeons of Ula. He had visited the dungeons only once to help Max carry several boxes of crystals to the room that Elda called The Circle. It was here that Sebastian spied the journals. Prior to that, the lowest level that he had visited was the Healing Room when Abby had nearly died after traveling in her astral body, but that was two floors above The Circle and on the other side of the castle. The bowels of the castle seemed to be calling him. Invisible fingers guided his journey down.
He felt confident that Elda kept important information in the stone room and he was intent on finding it. He had relinquished The Astral Book of Shadows to her when he first arrived at the castle and now regretted it. She had also asked for Claire's journals with the promise that she would return them, but she had not mentioned them since.
He rarely wandered the castle and sneaking into the dungeons made him feel almost criminal. More so, he felt angry that he should have to seek out the journals in secret, but they would question his motives if he asked for them. Even Abby would scrutinize him. She wouldn't understand. She had lost Sydney, yes, but a sister? And she was one of them, a witch, a powerful being who now served the earth.
Even as these thoughts skidded through his mind, growing in strength, he felt incredulous that overnight he had undergone such a fierce transformation. The day before he had been ready to release his vengeance and devote his life to Abby and to uncovering her new world. Now he felt only a mad desperation to avenge his sister. Claire had come to him, she needed his help and no one would stand in his way.
The stairs wound down and narrowed until his shoulders nearly touched on either side. Fewer doorways lined the walls and the candle sconces appeared less and less. Soon he moved in almost total darkness, carefully planting each step and keeping his right hand pressed against the wall for guidance. The silence was almost unbearable and twice he stopped, turned around and nearly went back.
****
That evening the coven ate dinner on one of the many stone porches that jutted from the castle's foreboding exterior. Candles flickered and everyone's faces wore the grotesque orange shadows of Jack-O-Lanterns. The wrought iron table was littered with dried flowers, and incense wafted from two wooden gargoyles at the table's ends.
Abby shifted in her chair, casting anxious glances at Sebastian who sat next to her, his eyes vacant. He wore the same rumpled t-shirt and sweats that he'd gone to bed in the night before.
"Corn bread?" she asked him, holding up her uneaten bread and hoping desperately for some small recognition.
He blinked, gazed toward it and shook his head.
"I'm full."
He had barely touched his chilli and a full glass of spiced cider sat at his elbow. Nothing gave Sebastian away like food. He ate more than a pack of wild dogs and Helena teased him for it incessantly.
Abby caught Elda's eye and looked quickly away. She did not want to alert the witch to any curious behavior. Lydie let out a high-pitched giggle at some comment from Oliver who looked relaxed and happy as usual.
Only Dafne seemed irritable and, when she caught Abby looking her way, she arched her eyebrows and glared back at her. Abby held her stare, growing angrier with each passing second, and then she flashed on a similar evening little more than a month earlier when her unkempt rage had destroyed a set of wine goblets. She returned her eyes to her food and picked absently at her napkin.
A red moon had begun its ascent over the water and all of the witches turned to watch as it climbed the night sky.
"The autumn moon," Helena cooed lovingly, stretching her fingers toward the rising orb. Everyone seemed to sigh in unison as the cosmos came alive with the night.
Abby watched the stars and sipped her cider. She tried to block out the strained energy between her and Sebastian. Fireflies began to appear at the table's edge and their glowing bodies made Lydie hoot with glee as she dashed from her chair to scoop one up. She did not cage it, however, as Abby had done as a girl. She leaned her face close, whispered a secret and released it. Oliver joined her, and soon Abby could not sit any longer and followed them from the table, making ever widening circles, until they had left the porch and wandered into one of the many gardens.
****
"Abby."
The whisper barely registered. In her dreams, Abby stood in a dark forest where snow fell in huge gusts. She felt the ice biting into her legs and blinked rapidly against the freezing gale. She saw Sebastian, almost lost in the blizzard before her. She tried to call out to him, but her voice made no sound. From the darkness, a shadow emerged. A small woman deeply enveloped in furs took his hand. Abby screamed again, sensing danger, and tried to run through the thick snow to stop him. He followed the woman and, despite Abby's efforts, they disappeared into the storm.
"Abby," the whisper came again, louder, and Abby felt a hand on her arm, cold fingers splayed over her bicep.
She groaned and rolled away from the touch, needing to stay connected to the fleeting remnants of their footprints.
"Hey, wake up." The voice grew familiar, Sebastian's voice, and Abby finally allowed the images to fade.
She blinked the room into focus.
"You were moaning," he told her, pulling the comforter gently from h
er clenched fists. She grabbed him and hugged him against her, burying her face in his shoulder.
"Well, good morning to you too," he laughed, pulling away and looking into her face. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm just..." She closed her eyes and shook the dream away. "I guess I was having a nightmare."
"Do you remember it?"
She shook her head but, in fact, she did remember the dream. She remembered the feeling that if he disappeared into the woods, he would be lost forever.
"It took a long time to get you up. I thought maybe you were traveling."
Astral-traveling, he meant. Which Abby never did while sleeping. They were not the same thing, but Sebastian was not a witch and thus often confused many of the powers. He called high jumps flying and seemed to believe that her night vision equated to x-ray goggles. More than once he had asked her about his boxer choice, as if she could see through his pants.
"Can't remember any of it?" He asked again and this time she detected a note of suspicion in his voice.
"No," she sighed, rolling away from him. The night sky was a sickly green, storms approaching, and Abby knew that the next day she was supposed to work on her element at the second lagoon. The lagoon held a large stone slab that directed each of the witches' power in their given element—in Abby's case, water.
"Do you want to talk?" Sebastian asked and Abby, tired, almost said, "No." But then Sebastian had been acting so strange, and she longed to rekindle the connection that had been so strong only a few days before when they'd said their final goodbyes to Sydney.
"Of course." She rolled back to him and pulled him toward her by his t-shirt. He kissed her on the forehead and then slid back.
She moaned and started to pull him again, but his t-shirt slid up and Abby could see the initials tattooed on his bicep—COH for Claire Olivia Hull, his dead sister. The tattoo looked fresh, the black calligraphy more pronounced than she remembered.
"Did you get that touched up?" she asked, knowing that he couldn't have. He had not left the coven since their arrival nearly six weeks earlier.
Born of Shadows- Complete Series Page 33