Born of Shadows- Complete Series

by J. R. Erickson

  Sebastian gripped her hand and she felt a jolt of terrified energy at his touch. She envisioned a languid stream and cast the calming energy into his palm. His shoulders relaxed. They both stepped into the mirror and then the world vanished.

  Chapter 6

  A suffocating darkness took hold and Abby started to resist, pulling back toward the room that they had left. Before she could cry out, her body landed sweetly on the other side. Her feet found solid ground and Sebastian's strong hand materialized in her own. Their eyes locked and she saw the fear in her own reflected there, but also relief and maybe even glee.

  Abby got lost in the throng of people pushing through the hall doors. Sebastian's fingers were in her own, light, barely grasping, and then they were gone and she held only emptiness. She did not immediately notice, caught instead by the dazzling foyer that she'd stumbled into on the heels of hundreds of other witches, whose costumes only added to the chaotic fervor of the moment.

  She stared, mouth agape, at the soaring ceilings that did not end, but continued into a vacuum of space punctured by glittering stars that pulsated in a rainbow of silver and gold.

  "Isn't it glorious?" Helena enthused, sweeping into Abby's path and steering her towards an enormous golden archway.

  "Wait." Abby remembered Sebastian and felt the first pinpricks of panic at her empty hand.

  But then he was there, white teeth gleaming from his face, sooty and red and colorful. His blue eyes were as enormous as hers felt and he laughed, squeezing her waist and leaning into her ear.

  "Thank you," he whispered.

  She clutched his hands and pulled him in for a quick hug before Helena dragged them off to another brilliant room. In the center of the space, streams of golden liquid fell from the sky. It spewed down and swirled onto the stone floor and disappeared. An orchestra stood on a star-shaped balcony twenty or more feet above the witches who danced and twirled below.

  "Now we dance," Helena cried, linking her arms through Sebastian's and Abby's and whirling them onto the floor. The three of them danced, and then a witch who Abby did not recognize, clutched Helena from behind and pulled her into him. She laughed and waved and off they went.

  Sebastian pulled her tight against him and reached a hand up, sinking his fingers into her glittery curls streaked with red and blonde and black.

  "You are so beautiful."

  She smiled and buried her face in his neck and allowed the ripples of gratitude to pour through her as he spun her again and again. Whatever had lain between them in the previous weeks vanished in an instant.

  They danced for an eternity and then fell into the hallway, flushed and laughing. The halls were dazzling with iridescent bubbles gently floating from the ceiling, their bodies alight with candle flame and the magnificent colors of costumes. Raised platforms, sheathed in burgundy velvet, held golden tents, slightly parted to reveal a witch inside. Some of the witches consulted sparkling globes, others shuffled tarot cards, and Abby wandered awestruck along the aisle staring in wonder. Sebastian was equally amazed, his grip loose in hers and, when they came to a tent with the words Diviner of Dreams in black script along the platform base, Abby stopped.

  "This one. Let's do this one." She stared at the tent with a sudden urgency that she did not understand. The witch at the table wore a long hooded, black robe and her eyes did not shift from the black lace tablecloth before her.

  "Yeah?" Sebastian asked quizzically, glancing along the row. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather have your tea leaves read?" He gestured to a tent, two platforms down, that smelled of chai spices. The witch inside threw her head back and laughed while pouring a cup of steaming tea for an older male witch whose enormous flowery cape barely fit in the tent.

  "You go there. I'm going to try this one," Abby insisted, letting go of his hand and stepping onto the platform. She gave Sebastian a quick wave and ducked inside, ignoring the look of uncertainty that had settled on his handsome features.

  The golden flaps closed behind her and she sat carefully into the chair across from the witch who did not look up. She started to clear her voice, but then the witched lifted a finger, slowly and held it to her lips.

  Abby studied her face—pale white, chalk white, but her lips were red as if bloody. She looked both very young and very old, skin soft and smooth, but milky saddened eyes and thin gnarled hands. Her head hung heavily on her shoulders and the bit of hair that Abby could see beneath her robe was a silvery gray.

  After minutes that resembled hours, during which Abby felt less like a witch and more like an adolescent waiting in the Principal's office for punishment, the witch looked up and settled her cloudy eyes on Abby's face. Her lips parted, as if dry, and she began to speak.

  ****

  After their readings, Sebastian gushed about his tea leaves. His reader saw a miraculous future for him, rich with love and family and magic. Most of all, Sebastian loved that the witch did not know him to be a 'mere mortal' - his words. When he asked about her own reading, Abby lied. She did not know why she lied, only that Sebastian's joy meant more to her than any desire to disclose the terrifying mystery that the witch had laid before her. That, and she feared speaking it aloud might make it real and in that moment, with the world more magical than she'd ever known it, she chose silence.

  She danced with Sebastian and then Oliver, and then witches she did not even know. Sebastian was stolen by Lydie and cut in by Bridget and when Abby finally stumbled into the hallway to refill her champagne, it had been nearly an hour since she'd even seen her dragon companion.

  "Food now," Oliver whispered, surprising her from behind and guiding her towards another space. They walked out into an open garden where witches lounged on wooden benches and sat at wrought iron tables heaped with small round cakes, each stamped with a cross. Every inch of stone-wall crawled with vines, heavy from the bloated purple and blue flowers that clung to their skinny bodies.

  "I'm starving," Abby told Oliver, reaching immediately for one of the cakes, already salivating at the smells of ginger and cinnamon emanating from it.

  "Nope, not those," he laughed, pulling her hand back. "Soul cakes. Those are for the dead."

  She momentarily recoiled.

  "Are you serious?" She shot a glance toward the night sky almost expecting to see swirls of ghostly faces watching from above.

  He grinned mischievously

  "It's All Hallows. Tonight everyone's invited to the party."

  He kept laughing as he steered her toward the long buffet tables draped in glittering pink linen.

  "Will spirits come tonight?" she asked. "Really?"

  He smiled and she could not tell whether he was laughing at her or not. Clearly they both knew that the subject of the dead returning was nothing to scoff at in the mystical realm. On the other hand, Oliver found few subjects that he couldn't joke about.

  "Yes, they come. But you don't always know it. They're usually tricksters and you're none the wiser until you're engaged in some deep conversation and they just disappear."

  "Honestly?" she asked, taking a bite of a baguette.

  "Swear. Scouts' honor." He held up two fingers and then three. "Never a scout."

  "I figured."

  They ate and watched the spectacle of witches dancing and drinking. Their costumes offered a promenade of fantasy and fright. There were witches on fire, witches with glowing, iridescent skin, and some who wore drab gray robes and kept mostly to the periphery, watching, but not engaging in the festivities. They were young and old and everything between. Their costumes masked their ages, but not nearly as well as their witch youth. If Elda was hundreds of years old, there might be witches at the Ball who were in the thousands. She smiled as she tried to imagine a young man dressed in the silvery robes of a sorcerer as having lived for centuries.

  "See anything you like?" Oliver teased, pinching her forearm.

  She rolled her eyes.

  "I already have a date, thank you," she told him. "Speaking of Sebastian, w
here is he?"

  She craned her neck and turned full in her seat, but had no real hope of spotting him in the crowds pulsating in and out of the castle doors.

  "Don't worry. He will appear at the perfect moment. Come dashing through in that fire breathing get-up that Helena's got him in, and sweep you off your feet."

  He downed a glass of champagne as he spoke and smirked at her, but she heard aching in his words. Was Oliver jealous of Sebastian?

  "Isn't it miraculous?" Elda appeared mysteriously from behind two witches and sat at their table with a flutter of emerald skirts. It was the first time that Abby had seen her since the party began.

  "It's unreal," Abby agreed, stretching back in her chair and breathing deeply the mingling scents of fruity desserts, night-blooming flowers and a thousand incense all wafting in some perfect symphony of sweet, sugary bliss.

  "I remember why I look forward to this all year," Oliver added, snatching another glass of champagne as a tall slim waiter passed them by. All of the waiters were skinny men dressed in black silken tuxedos. They wore little expression and Abby found she felt slightly unnerved by them.

  "They're not real people," Elda told her.

  Abby turned to her, wondering if she had read her thoughts.

  "Not real? How so?"

  "They're animals. Cats to be exact, though lord knows why Andromeda insists on using her cats. I've seen them get quite beastly at these things."

  "Wait, cats?" Abby stood to watch the back of the waiter who'd just passed them by. She looked at Oliver to see if they were playing a joke on her.

  "Andromeda," Oliver butted in, "is kind of like a crazy old cat lady in witch world. She has spent most of her one hundred and fifty years on earth creating spells to make her cats human. I'm convinced it's so that she doesn't have to pay to crate them when she flies...."

  "Oh, phooey," Elda laughed swatting at him. "She did it to protect her coven originally. Of course, that was well over fifty years ago."

  "Cats?" Abby asked again, watching as another waiter hunched to the ground and began gathering the shards of a broken plate.

  "Wait. Look at that one." Oliver elbowed her and she turned to the buffet table just in time to see one of the waiters scoop a finger-full of tuna pate into his mouth.

  "See," Elda sighed, smiling. "Cats."

  ****

  Abby wandered back into the castle in search of Sebastian. She had expected him to appear on the veranda, flushed and hungry, but then she realized that the castle boasted at least half-a-dozen banquet halls, indoors and out. She spun as she walked, eyeing the crowds for signs of his fiery garb and ran smack into a furry witch.

  "Victor," the black fox told her, thrusting his hand into Abby's and boring into her with intense dark eyes, brown, but almost black.

  "Abby, or Melusine tonight," she told him with a shallow curtsy. She was unnerved by his eyes.

  "Melusine, my favorite of all the water goddesses. Quite a frightful choice though. Will you be turning into the serpent tonight?"

  She pulled her dress up to reveal the scaly fins beneath and grinned. "Perhaps..." She started to add that her dragon half was around here somewhere, but he pushed a finger to her lips.

  "Shh. Do you hear that?"

  She listened. She heard everything and nothing. Her ears caught witches deep in conversation, laughter, falling water, clinking glasses, and on it went.

  He laughed, tilting his head back and let his laughter carry high in the sparkling room. The ceiling glittered with constellations and darting spirits. Not real spirits, but phantoms conjured by the coven of Sorciére who, according to Helena, was putting on the best All Hallow's Party to date.

  "Listen right here." He pressed two fingers against the space just above and between her eyebrows—her third eye or, as Elda called it, her pineal gland.

  When he did so, she felt a slight jolt and suddenly she did hear something. Laughter, low and haunted, echoed in her ears.

  "The laughter of the dead," he told her, leaning in so that his lips brushed her ear. She trembled and rubbed her arms against the goosebumps prickling.

  "Join me, Abby?" Victor asked, taking her elbow in his furred hand and steering her into an adjacent room, this one much smaller than the Grand Hall. The walls curved, closing the circular room at two french doors that were open to the night. The bowl-shaped ceiling was spun with silvery cobwebs.

  "Oh," Abby gasped, placing a hand to her mouth. The cobwebs were being spun by millions of tiny spiders.

  "Stunning, aren't they? On loan from The Sky Mothers in Australia. There is a witch there who speaks to them. She's brilliant."

  A breathtaking witch, costumed as a flamingo, with glowing violet plumage streaming behind her, disembarked from a round coffee table where several other witches had assembled on a jumble of comfortable silk couches, talking intimately. She came to Victor and kissed him softly on the lips.

  "What do we have here?" she asked, eying Abby mischievously. "A sea nymph? A bewitching Siren?"

  "Melusine," Victor whispered, squeezing Abby's elbow and cocking an eyebrow.

  The flamingo's eyes lit at the mention of Melusine and Abby felt she was missing an inside joke.

  "Join us?" The flamingo asked, pulling Abby toward their table.

  She glanced behind her, knowing that she should find Sebastian, but felt instead the urgent need to know these young witches that seemed so together, but also younger than the other witches she had met and, perhaps, more alive.

  She sank into one of the chairs and took the glass of rose wine thrust into her hand.

  "I'm Kendra," the flamingo told her. "This," she pointed to a young man on her left in a silver-sequined leotard with dazzling black wings and red, sparkling eyelids, "is Dante or Cupid's Shadow tonight."

  Dante arched his eyebrows and leaned toward her, kissing her outstretched hand gently.

  "Ezra," said the girl to Abby's left. Her voice was low, rough–hewn, and hardly matched the periwinkle fairy costume frothy with chiffon. Her brown eyes were big and kind and she did not shake Abby's hand, but placed her hands in prayer before her chest and gave her a slight bow. Abby could see tattoos creeping from her dress along her neck and down her arms.

  "And our final comrade," Victor told her with a nudge, "is Marcus, but as you can see he's currently unavailable."

  She followed the line of Victor's finger to the french doors and there, on the stone ledge, she saw a witch walking ever so casually on his hands. He gripped the beam beneath him and, monkey-like, moved along. His reddish waves brushed his biceps and he grinned, despite how difficult the maneuver must have been. Upside down, his legs were one, held stiff with toes pointing toward the sky.

  "Whoa," she breathed, leaning forward in her chair as if to somehow peer out over the ledge, which she knew dropped to water far below. Though Sorciére was not an island as Ula was, it was at the outermost speck of a peninsula that jutted into a rushing river, The Garonne according to Helena.

  Marcus, as if feeling her eyes, looked up and, for a moment, they stared across the room at one another. He winked and then powerfully shoved himself upward, flipped once and landed on the ledge with both feet. He dropped to the floor and strode into the room, bowing to Abby.

  "Is the circle complete then?" he asked, eying Victor and then moving his gaze to the other witches.

  "Shut up Marcus and sit," Kendra told him, flicking champagne from her fingers at his face. He licked it from the edge of his lip and leaned backward into his chair, nearly folding his body in half so that his legs dangled behind him

  "Marcus is our acrobat." Victor shrugged. "You can't believe how he comes in handy."

  "Yes I can," she said. "I've spent enough time avoiding death in trees that I would kill to be an acrobat."

  Victor nodded and Abby noticed the significant glances that they all seemed to exchange, somehow casually enough that she almost thought she imagined it...almost.

  "What? Is that off limits?" she asked,
when no one spoke.

  She suddenly wanted desperately to talk about some of the things that she had experienced since becoming a witch. For the first time since it all began, she felt like she sat with people who understood.

  "I totally get it," Ezra chimed in, "and there are no off limit topics—not with us. Now those old vultures out there," she gestured toward the lobby where two older witches in gray robes ambled by, "mum's almost always the word."

  Abby smiled and relaxed deeper into her chair.

  "I feel that," she admitted. "That silence. My coven is so quiet sometimes..." She trailed off because at the first mention of Ula, color had begun to climb up her throat and into her face. Was she betraying her coven by speaking about them to these witches?

  "Abby," Victor interrupted her thoughts. "We're a lot alike. You feel it, don't you?"

  She did, of course she did and, as a witch, she had begun to allow those feelings first priority. That was the whole foundation of intuition that Elda had taught her, an unexplainable knowing. She felt like she belonged with these five witches.

  "We're all new to this, Abby," Kendra told her, sweeping her long hair over her shoulder. Kendra looked young as did the other four witches.

  "How new?" Abby asked, regretting the question almost immediately. What if young turned out to be decades into the life rather than centuries?

  "Two years," Kendra stated simply.

  "Three," said Victor. And on they went—Dante two, Ezra four and Marcus one and a half.

  "Just months for me," Abby told them. "Not quite three."

  Marcus whistled and slowly rotated so that he sat upright.

  "Those are some hard months."

  "The hardest," Ezra added, reaching over to give Abby's hand a supportive squeeze.

  "Made harder when you go the traditional route," Victor said, staring at Abby sympathetically.

  "What do you mean the traditional route? Are there other options?"