He sighed and took a bite of the croissant on the tray, smiling apologetically as he chewed.
"No, eat it. I can't." She rubbed her hands on the side of her head as though it might relieve some of the pressure building there.
"Elda and Faustine are taking action. I know it feels like they're not right now, but they actually are."
"Why can't I act? What's the point of being a witch in a coven if I'm shoved aside when the person that I love is in danger? Am I just supposed to swallow this?"
"Hey." He set the tray on her bed and took a seat beside her, placing a hand in hers and gently rubbing her fingers. "I get it. I know that you're ready to explode right now, but you can only help Sebastian if you're calm. Irrational stuff will just put you in danger. You know that it's true."
She knew that he referred to her frantic middle-of-the-night rescue attempt, little more than six weeks before, a choice that sent her into the lair of an evil witch, at the bidding of the ghost Devin, all in an attempt to save her family who, it turned out, were not even in danger. He was right, but she could only get behind that on a logical level. Her heart, her soul and her body told her to move, to get off the couch, out of the castle and back to Sorciére while the last of Sebastian's trace still remained.
"Tell me this," she demanded, jerking her hand from Oliver's and turning to face him. "How would he even get back here? How?"
"You heard what Elda said. She enchanted the charm to send him here, to bring him back to the castle."
Abby shook her head in disbelief.
"She said that after he was gone. She never told us that before the party. I thought he would simply be outside the castle, in the city or something."
Oliver held up his hands in surrender.
"That was my impression also, but she has no reason to change her story. They would never leave Sebastian. Abby, we searched the grounds outside the castle. He wasn't there."
It was true, they had searched. After the Ball ended and Sorciére had cleared, they searched every inch of the castle and the grounds surrounding it. Faustine and Elda rallied the witches who they'd known for centuries, who they could trust with their secret, and together they hunted.
They did not merely look for him, though. Powerful witches could see with much more than their eyes. They consulted tools of divination. They had scraped beneath Abby's fingernails and removed things from her dress, but did not find enough of Sebastian to work with. Faustine had returned to Ula through the two-way mirror and retrieved articles of Sebastian's clothing, his hairbrush and pair of his sunglasses. In a room that felt oddly like a bubble, the witch Demetrius lit five cauldrons. In each, he dropped an article that belonged to Sebastian. Every cauldron revealed images of Sebastian at the Ball and then only darkness. Both the Ula and Sorciére witches were dumbfounded.
"I just feel trapped here. They insisted that I come back and now I'm sitting here biting my fingernails, which just grow back to spite me." She held up her fingernails, still long, but jagged in the spots that she'd just bitten.
As Abby watched the incoming storm slowly rolling toward them, she thought back to the previous night.
"We'll find him," Oliver had reassured her, for the seemingly hundredth time. They stalked the castle together, most of their costumes pulled off and left in a heap on one of the many hallway floors. She'd been peeling off layers for hours since the first inkling deep in her belly that something terrible had happened. She wore only the black dress that acted as a sheath beneath the dazzling Melusine costume. When she glanced down, she realized that it looked like a dress for mourning.
At first, she had merely believed that Claire's warning had struck a chord and the ominous tone continued to reverberate through her, but after nearly an hour looking in ballrooms and banquet halls, on verandas and in sitting areas, she started to recognize that her fear was for Sebastian. She could not feel him. Even when they fought and he grew very distant from her, she always sensed his presence. Now, as she combed the castle painstakingly, the emptiness chilled her to the core. Oliver visited bathrooms and when that too turned up no trace, they tracked down the witches of Ula and each individually began their own search. Twice they had reconvened, but not a fragment of him remained. They could not even find a witch who had seen him in the previous hours.
Abby and Oliver took the steps two a time, climbing one of the castle's several wings. The halls were dark, not meant for party goers, but most of the guests had departed and those that remained belonged to Sorciére and many of those witches too had begun to look for Sebastian. Only a few witches close to Elda and Faustine knew that they searched for a human. Elda believed it unwise to let the secret out to everyone.
Oliver waved his hand and a tall mahogany door, previously locked, popped open. Beyond, lay only a dark room stuffed with paintings and antiques. If Sebastian hid in that space, they'd never find him amid the towers of art and statuary. They encountered Helena in the next room, frantically ripping blankets and pillows from a linen closet in search of him. When she turned to them, she looked wild, but immediately pretended to be unruffled when her eyes fell upon Abby.
"You can't feel him either?" Abby asked, though she already knew the answer.
The night went on that way. Abby watched Demetrius with the cauldrons. Then she sat in one of the All Hallow's tents as Helena and then Bridget consulted a crystal ball. Max astral-travelled throughout Soricere and then back to Ula. Faustine used Sorciére's Crystal Tower to seek Sebastian with his mind.
Abby stood on the craggy rocks outside of Sorciére for an hour. She stared into the raging river and wondered if Sebastian had been pulled to a watery grave.
At daybreak, Elda insisted that they meet in the kitchen for coffee and regrouping. By then, the alarm was unmistakable and the best efforts of the empaths to calm the group failed. Faustine announced that they must leave Sorciére and return to Ula.
"Why?" Abby demanded, almost too exhausted to stand, but still ready to fight.
Galla, a Sorciére elder answered.
"Because Sebastian is not in our castle and, if he did somehow get displaced, Elda bewitched him back to Ula."
Abby started to argue, but Elda placed a hand on her arm.
"It's true, Abby. We must return."
When she refused, they forced her to drink a strong tea that Galla had prepared until she became too sleepy to stand. She vaguely remembered Oliver carrying her through the mirror.
****
Dafne moved quickly. She stole into the night at Ula and climbed to the furthest cliff from the castle. The slick rock wall threatened to send her into the icy lake as she carefully threaded her way down the cliff. She slipped into a tiny crevice that offered only enough space for her to lie fully on the earthen ground. She opened her bag, grasping the items tight in her hands, and then she closed her eyes, releasing her astral body.
Indra waited in the caves of the ancients, her purple hair tucked behind her eyes. Her face betrayed none of the fear that Dafne tasted bitterly at the back of her throat. Both Indra and Dafne had participated in the search for Sebastian that morning. In truth, they bumbled the search and misled the other witches at every opportunity. Dafne knew that she had set events in motion that would alter all of their destinies.
Indra gave Dafne a single nod of affirmation and moved forward. She stopped at the center tunnel. They could not enter the tunnel if it had nothing to tell them, but Indra had been studying The Pool of Truth for years and she had uncovered a spell that allowed them through. With her hands she began to draw designs in the stale energy before her. Like carefully aligning a Rubik's cube, she undid the charms that prevented their entrance. Dafne watched her in awe, knowing that each action took them deeper into the betrayal of their covens.
They moved together down the center tunnel, their shadowless astral bodies gliding effortlessly, but Dafne could not deny the trepidation that held her chest in its vice-like grip. It was not thought, for she had turned that off weeks ago
when she had embarked on this tumultuous path. However, her instincts, which she had relied on all her life, told her to turn back. She ignored them and continued.
They moved into the silvery light of the cave where water splashed down from the black sky above. The Pool of Truth shone in magnificent waves of starlight and moonlight—not perfectly calm, but slightly turbulent as if it sensed their treachery.
Indra stepped in first and Dafne followed. They stood ankle-deep and linked their arms, both of them tilting back, chests lifting as they began to chant. As their mouths moved in unison, the water swirled and crashed, becoming a stormy sea that bucked around them. Dafne could feel its energy, but dared not look into its depths. Legend told that spells cast against The Pool of Truth brought grave consequences to their creator. Witches knew that some magical spaces and objects were gifts of the divine and to manipulate them was to break sacred law.
"But it's for the greater good," Indra had insisted and Dafne had agreed, of course she had. What witch wouldn't leap to such measures if it meant avoiding the annihilation of her coven and more? Who wouldn't topple the evil before it took hold?
Their voices rose and the sky turned orange and then red until balls of fire rained into the cave and filled the water with bright, putrid light. It burned Dafne's eyes and, though her physical body was not there, she felt her skin begin to blister and cry out. Indra cried as if she too burned and their astral bodies bled together in the firelight.
Indra moved into her power now and water seethed up, forming a dozen cyclones filled with Dafne's fire. The water and fire spun until it broke away from the lagoon and formed a much larger orb above them. Indra looked up into the sphere, her green eyes reflecting the electric colors.
Dafne kneeled on the ground and conjured the clothes that she had clutched in her arms when moving into her astral body. Sebastian's jeans, worn in the knees, a gray Bob Marley t-shirt and even his underpants, blue boxer briefs, appeared before her on the ground. She breathed invisible fire into the clothes and slowly his body emerged. It was not Sebastian, merely an image of him imbued with his essence. The body rose to its feet and then off the ground, pulled by the velocity of the spinning energy above it.
The body lifted and then merged with the pulsing fire and water. Dafne watched the sphere consume the body and then, with a deafening crash, the orb slammed back into the Pool of Truth and sunk to the depths.
****
Candles flickered in the nearly black room. Elda, Faustine, Helena, Max and Bridget stood together in the Magic Circle chanting in unison. Their voices barely registered above a whisper and they had begun to sway gently from side to side. They wore their old cloaks which had grown faded and dusty from years without use. In the center of the circle, the X began to glow. The soft white light grew brighter as they focused their attention upon it, until the entire room was awash. They each closed their eyes, saving themselves from the blinding and mesmerizing light.
"I call upon the energies of the Universe, the spirits of the ancestors," Faustine bellowed. His voice echoed off the concave walls and reverberated around them.
They repeated his words. They called upon the Watch Towers of the north, south, east and west. They called upon their elements, their guides and the white light that infused all things. Their voices merged and flowed like an ellipsis sounding their cries into eternity. Helena began to cry and her tears made the X glow brighter still.
With invisible fingers, Faustine reached into their sphere of power. He searched for the thread, the single radiant filament that would cast out the darkness that had settled upon Ula. A single thread that might show them the path to Sebastian, whose lost soul haunted all of their waking and sleeping moments. Each witch felt Faustine as he probed the sphere of light and retreated, empty, again and again.
Their energies began to fade. They could not conjure the space for much longer. Max dropped to one knee, his mouth slackening as he tried to continue chanting. Bridget squeezed his hand, but she too barely held on. Her body grew hunched and her head lolled from side to side.
Faustine's search became more desperate and erratic, which weakened their circle and dispersed the energy further and further out, so that the concentrated light began to flicker off the walls and bounce away from them.
Finally, in a great flash, the light vanished, taking the meager candle flames with it. Max and Helena fell to the floor, exhausted and overcome by the defeat.
The thread had not been found.
****
Seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours since Abby had last seen Sebastian. Seventy-two hours since she'd last truly slept, eaten or felt whole. Only in the early morning hours did she leave her room and now, at three am, she walked the castle halls. She went to the dungeons and, zombie-like, slipped in and out of the rooms. She heard sounds behind Dafne's door, but merely walked by without a thought. She returned to the library and lay down on the thick carpet in front of the crackling fire. In the fetal position, she stared into the flames and cried.
When her eyes closed, she did not slip off to sleep, but instead fell into the familiar cave that beckoned to the witch's astral body. She had visited before, several times now and felt unafraid as she glided through the shadowy tunnel. She felt her grief in the cave as palpable as in the castle. Had some part of her thought that solace lay in the cave? No. She knew that only confusion, fear and anger—yes, anger—followed her now.
She neared the fork of the three tunnels, intending to go into the left tunnel where she had yet to travel, but an unseen force pulled her toward the center pathway. She knew what lay in the end of the passage—The Pool of Truth—a gossamer pond that revealed horrific truths to the witches who were called to it. Abby tried to stop, reaching out blindly, fighting to dig her heels into the dirt, but in her astral body, she had no physical form, only a presence less solid than the steam that rose from a tea kettle.
The tunnel had lost all its magic. She had discovered her Aunt Sydney in the Pool. She remembered Sydney's bloated face and the unending heartache of accepting that she would never hear Sydney's laughter again.
Abby could not meet the water a second time but, despite her efforts, she could not flee from her astral body. Usually, she had only to think of her physical form and she would snap, rubber-band like, back into the tangible realm. She tried every tip that Max had taught her. She imagined a pin poking into her flesh. She closed her eyes and pretended to awaken from a long sleep. She muttered the familiar phrase that connected her to mundane reality. "What's for breakfast?" She spoke it again and then she screamed it, but still her body floated forward.
She moved into the opening and the pool gazed back at her, reflecting nothing because she was not really there. She wondered then if any of it was really there—the cave, the Pool of Truth, the tunnels carved into rock. Water flowed from the chasm in the cave ceiling. It trickled and splashed and she bit back a scream as a force carried her over the rock ledge and into the water below.
She did not swim, but floated down as if cement boots were fastened to her legs. She gazed into the crystalline water beneath her, but saw no bottom to the pool. It was an endless watery grave and when she looked back up and saw the soft black curls wafting like a halo, she screamed and bucked, fighting the image of Sebastian, but still the cave did not disappear. As she watched, his body drifted, his gray t-shirt ballooning out and away, and she saw Claire's initials beneath his sleeve. She saw his coarse fingernails and the diamond-shaped mole on his left foot and then his eyes, beautiful, blue, but vacant. She had looked into those eyes and felt the most intense love and fear and desire, but now they were dark and empty, their light extinguished.
****
"Abby, Abby." Lydie screamed and shook Abby as she lay on the floor convulsing, her head snapping from side to side, her gaze fixed on some unseen horror.
Oliver shot through the door, his eyes wild and sleepy. He saw Abby sprawled by the fireplace and a sobbing Lydie over her. He ran to her, pulled Lydie
away and shifted her head so that it was in line with her spine. He looked into her eyes and knew that she was astrally-traveling, but to where he could not tell. He sensed danger and went to the fire, dipped one of the metal pokers into the flame and returned.
"I'm sorry, honey," he told the convulsing Abby as he touched the poker to the flesh on her right hand.
In the Pool of Truth, Abby started to reach for Sebastian, wanting intensely to grasp him around the waist and take him with her, but as her fingers took hold of his hand, the pool, Sebastian, and the cave vanished and she returned to her body.
She snapped back, her body rigid and her eyes, bulging with terror, locked on Oliver's before the screams, that she'd been trying to let out, made their way up her vocal chords and into the room. She wailed and rocked and turned on her side, clawing at the carpeting as though it held her hostage.
Elda raced into the room and then Faustine. They stood watching her as she curled into a ball and sobbed like a child. Elda went to her, knelt and rubbed her back. She felt the weight of Faustine's gaze. Elda knew that their call had failed. The energies of the universe granted them no reprieve and now she saw that only more horrors lay ahead.
When they finally calmed her, Helena force-fed her a trauma elixir and Abby told them about Sebastian in the Pool of Truth.
"Please, please," she begged Elda. "It made a mistake, it had to. He's not dead, I know he's not."
Elda sat on a stool across from Abby and patted her knee, shaking her head slowly.
"Oh, Abby, I want so badly to tell you that The Pool makes mistakes. I would give almost anything, but you know that I can't. You know that."
Tears ran down her face and salted her lips and she squeezed her hands together in a fist at her stomach. She felt sick and dizzy and she wanted to rip out her own heart and cast it into the fire if it meant no more pain.
Born of Shadows- Complete Series Page 40