Abby shrugged and picked up the newspaper article from the first stack. Oliver scanned the title. "That's the first pile, so I think we need to track that guy down first."
"The reporter?" Abby asked skeptically. "He's offering a pretty funky story here. Do you really think he knows anything?"
"Were you not here for all of this?" He gestured toward the candles and the neat stacks of paper. "He knows something."
****
Isabelle hung up the phone and walked to the tiny french doors that opened to the balcony. Beyond, she watched Sebastian as he lit a cigarette and coughed uncomfortably with each inhale. He sat at a small bistro table in a cafe across the street, his eyes scanning stacks of newspapers that he discarded on the chair beside him. She regretted giving him a pack of her cigarettes the week before because he now smoked nearly a whole pack whenever he sat at the cafe across the street. She watched him ash into his empty cup of coffee, his brow furrowed as he read.
Before she even hung up the phone with Indra, she knew that she had to tell him. Isabelle wished to turn back the clock and refuse her great aunt's pleading that she participate in this debacle. Indra had insisted that she and this other witch, Dafne, knew of a great catastrophe that would befall their covens if Sebastian continued to live at the coven of Ula. However, Isabelle no longer trusted Indra's intuition, witch or not, and she felt unbelievably guilty at her role in his deception.
In the weeks since she had picked him up on the side of the road, Isabelle had begun to fall in love with Sebastian. Foolish she knew, but still the feelings did not go away. She had little knowledge of his lover in the States, only that she was a new witch, and Isabelle hated the thought of him returning. However, beyond her fear of losing him, she could not live with his hatred and if he learned the truth, he would surely hate her.
Indra had made it all sound so simple. Isabelle would greet Sebastian and, at the sound of her voice, he would lose all connection to his prior self. His life had been filled with pain and heartache, Indra told her. Isabelle would be saving him. He would stay with her for one month and then Isabelle would travel with him to New Zealand where Dafne would have created a new identity. Sebastian would be enchanted to retrieve memories that did not actually exist. Then he would return to his so-called previous life in New Zealand and the Great Curse, as Indra called it, would end once and for all. Unfortunately, Sebastian had already begun to chase the tendrils of his life that had supposedly been wiped clean.
Isabelle turned away from the window and went to the kitchen to start dinner. In the market, she had purchased duck and fresh herbs, and planned to make a final meal to celebrate her last night with him before he knew the truth. She would call into work sick the next day and spend the morning telling him all that she knew. Not a witch, Isabelle would be unable to reverse his memory loss but, when he reconnected with his love, she would reverse the spells and return him to his life before.
Isabelle sighed and wished, not for the first time, that she too had become a witch. Her Great-Aunt Indra, who looked no older than she, had hoped for such a miracle, but another generation passed without a new witch in the Chaput family. Isabelle's brother, Dominic, had one child, a son named Court, who Indra now hoped would claim the witch's blood. Dominic would not be pleased if his son were a witch. Unlike many of the other Chaput family, Dominic abhorred magic and followed a strict Catholic faith, denouncing the witch ancestry that ran in his blood. Isabelle, on the contrary, had dreamed her entire life of one day discovering her powers, only to face disappointment year after year when they did not manifest. She hoped now to someday have a child of her own who might be a witch.
She basted the duck and flipped through her recipe index searching for the perfect dessert, believing perhaps that food really was the way to a man's heart. She decided on lemon soufflés with blueberry sauce. Sebastian had been at the newspapers for nearly three hours, longer than usual, and she returned again to the window to see if he might be soon wrapping up.
Sebastian's seat sat empty and the newspapers, abandoned, rustled in the wind. On the sidewalk next to his chair, she could see the pack of cigarettes she had bought for him that morning.
Chapter 22
"Who did you say you were with?" the nervous intern behind the front desk asked when they entered the office for the Trager City Herald. She glanced anxiously back toward the cubicles as if she hoped someone might save her from the serious duties of answering the questions of total strangers.
"We're from the Lansing News," Abby told her again, this time standing taller and attempting to look professional. She might have thought of that before her and Oliver decided to leave the loft both dressed in ratty jeans and sweatshirts. Her hair was shoved loosely under a ball cap and they both wore dark sunglasses. Flimsy disguises surely, but better than nothing.
"We're on vacation," Oliver chimed in, locking his blue eyes on the girl's much beadier brown ones. He leaned into the desk and flashed her a smile. "Technically we're doing a bit of work and play, but we really hoped to meet with Stephen Kramer—he's highly esteemed in the news world."
The girl looked a bit mushy as she stared up at Oliver. She smiled shyly and started to fumble with the phone. "He's not here, but can I ask the editor?"
"We'd love that," Oliver told her. "Take your time." He reached forward and patted her hand. She softened even more, lavishing in his attention.
"Umm, hi, Ms. Cooper. Hi. Yeah, it's me, Regina at the front. Yeah. Oh sure, sorry, no problem. There's just two journalists here. No, not our journalists. No, not a story on the Thanksgiving parade. Actually, they're looking for Mr. Kramer. Oh. Oh, I see, and he's...oh, okay. ye."
Abby and Oliver did not need the girl to tell them that Mr. Kramer had taken an extended leave of absence with no return date set. Their excellent hearing, combined with the boisterous voice of Ms. Cooper, made the entire conversation audible to all the parties involved. To be polite, they waited for Regina to explain.
"Huh. Well, that is really unfortunate," Oliver told her after she finished. "You know there was talk of a prize in journalism, but if he's unavailable..."
Regina's eyes lit up at the mention of a prize.
"Well, he'd want to know that," she whispered, this time clacking at her computer keys and then jotting down a piece of information on a lime green sticky note. She glanced behind her again and, when she felt sure that no one watched, she slid the paper across the desk.
"This is where he lives. Please pretend you found the information somewhere else."
"Of course," both Abby and Oliver said in unison.
They left the building and returned to Abby's car, both knowing that Mr. Kramer's leave of absence did not bode well for the reporter or their search for information.
Abby found the house easily. He lived in town in a small, off-white bungalow with a neglected yard. They observed a pile of newspapers yellowing on his front porch.
"Should we go in?" she asked, passing the house and circling back around.
The dark windows looked ominous and the house clearly had not been occupied in weeks.
"Yeah, I think we have to."
Abby parked on the road several houses down. They walked to the house through the neighbor's backyard. The screen door that opened at the back of Kramer's house hung by its hinges.
Abby walked to a small rusted bird bath and stuck her hands into the icy water, absorbing the rush of energy that fled up her fingertips. Oliver tried the door handle and found it unlocked. He opened it slowly, standing back and wrinkling his nose in disgust at the rancid smell that drifted out.
"Something dead," he said.
Abby froze, not sure if she could face what lay inside.
"Not a human," Oliver reassured her. "At least, not that smell. More like rotting food, chicken maybe."
Abby nodded, but stayed close to Oliver. The faded kitchen linoleum creaked when they walked across. Clearly the house had been abandoned in a hurry. Cupboards were flung open and p
lastic bags littered the floor. The house did not reveal destruction like Sydney's house had after the Vepars trashed it, but instead the kind of panicky mess left by someone rushing to get out.
The living room lay dark and musty, smelling of cat pee and cigarettes. However, it was mostly undisturbed. They moved upstairs, pausing to train their senses to any possible danger. Abby knew that Oliver could sense Vepars and felt slightly more at ease knowing that his alarms were not sounding.
They continued to the upstairs hall. Both of the second story rooms held a disaster similar to the kitchen. In a small study, papers were strewn across a large work desk and a visible dust square showed the place where a computer had once been. Abby opened the desk drawers and found a small three-ring notebook. She flipped through it. There was writing on nearly every page. Most of it appeared to be outlines for various stories, but she stopped when her eyes passed over the name Dafne. She studied the page which held a series of comments without organization. The word 'curse' was written beneath Dafne's name. Several more names were listed below hers. Abby showed the page to Oliver and then tucked the notebook into his bag.
The bedroom across the hall revealed clothes pulled quickly from the closet, some items still dangling haphazardly from their hangers. The unmade bed held piles of bags and suitcases as if they'd been pulled out for packing and then abandoned in the process. The curtains were open wide and the blinds lifted to reveal the driveway below.
"I don't think something attacked him," Oliver said, walking the room and kicking at little piles of clothes. "I think he got scared and ran."
Abby glanced briefly at several pictures on the nightstand. In one, a much younger Kramer beamed from the deck of a cruise ship, his arm wrapped tightly around the waist of a slim brunette in a brightly colored sarong. In another, the journalist sat on his front steps, with a small dog resting in his lap A woman occupied a chair adjacent to him and Abby recognized her immediately.
"She's the one from the grocery store." Abby picked up the photo and looked closer. "I don't think this was taken that long ago."
Oliver peeked in the closet and then returned.
"Whoa, look at this one," he said. He'd plucked a photo from the back of the table. The journalist, again off duty, sat comfortably on the end of a boat dock. A familiar house rose up in the distance behind them—Sydney's house. Next to him sat a young man with narrow dark eyes. He held a lit sparkler in his hand, which created a wave of light flecks in front of his body.
"Victor," Abby whispered.
****
It happened so quickly that he barely had time to register it. One moment he was walking down the street with the man who claimed to know him and in the next, he was speeding across the city in the back of a van, getting tossed from side to side as the van careened around corners in the cramped French streets. He remembered one thing clearly. When the van door opened and strong hands reached out to pull him inside, the man he had been walking with ceased to be a man. His face transformed into something monstrous. Sebastian swore that he saw fangs in his mouth, but before he could decipher the changing face, the door slammed and the man was left behind.
"What is this, what's happening?" Sebastian scrambled to a low squat and stared at the person who'd hauled him into the moving vehicle. He expected to see an enormous meat-head, but a tiny and strangely familiar woman with striking green eyes looked back at him.
She studied his face and then sighed as if accepting some foregone conclusion.
"I know you?" he asked, feeling oddly hopeful at the sight of his captor.
She smiled, seemingly appeased, and nodded.
"Yes, you do. Unfortunately, your memory has been tampered with and now I'm going to have to retrieve it." She looked mildly irritated at this, but also determined.
He glanced at the door and thought that he should flee, tumble out onto the road and run, but he found that...he didn't want to.
"Hi, Sebastian," a man's voice called from the front of the van.
"Sebastian?" Sebastian asked, but again something familiar in that name. "Am I Sebastian?"
"Well, that's your name, anyway..." the woman told him, shooting a dirty look towards the man at the front, "...though I'd hoped to work into that a bit more gradually."
"Sorry, Adora," the man called."
"It's okay, Roderick," she replied curtly.
"Rod," he shot back, but she only rolled her eyes.
"So what the hell is going on here? Have I just been kidnapped?"
"Ha," Adora smirked. "No, you were just about to be kidnapped back there." She pointed out the back windows that were blacked out with paint. The man that you were having an afternoon stroll with did not have your best interests at heart."
"Why, what do you mean?"
Adora smiled and patted his knee.
"Trust me. You just avoided a truly horrible fate my friend, but for now let's get started with bringing you back to you. Take these." She held out two small greenish capsules.
He shrunk away and shook his head.
"No, I don't think so. I mean you may be someone that I know, but I'm not taking some pills so that I can wake up in a bathtub tomorrow without a liver."
Rod laughed, but Adora only looked concerned.
"Sebastian, I don't want to overwhelm you with your life right now because, frankly, it's probably going to scare you, a lot. Not only that, it will just be words. Until we start to clear out whatever is blocking you in there...," she pointed at his head, "...none of it will make any sense. These pills are not going to knock you out. They're not poison. They're herbs. They help to purify, and once you take them, whatever toxic energy that's in your body will begin to dissolve at least a little. There's no way that I can help you if you refuse my remedies."
Sebastian stared at her and then at the pills. Fear did not prevent him from taking the pills. Instead, he felt plagued by a sudden and strange desire to simply choose the blissful ignorance of previous weeks. If he took those pills, what would he discover?
"It's okay, man," Rod called from the front of the van. "I promise you, we're friends. You'll remember soon enough."
Sebastian took one more second to consider and then, before he could change his mind, he grabbed the pills and threw them to the back of his throat, swallowing without water. Adora handed him a thermos.
"Tea," she said. "Wash them down."
He did and they drove on in silence.
They arrived at a secluded sandy brick colonial-style house. Its gabled roof was dotted with moss that glowed in the setting sun.
Rod held open the door as Adora led Sebastian into the foyer, which smelled sweet and homey. A fire burned in a kitchen hearth and an older man stood at a block of wood, cutting vegetables and humming some barely audible tune. He glanced up as they walked in and then returned to his cutting.
"So you found him then? You are a clever sleuth." He did not direct his comment at anyone in particular, but Sebastian sensed that he spoke to Adora. "And you've given him the Anamnesis?"
"Yes on both accounts, though we arrived only in the nick of time," Adora added, opening a cupboard and pulling out a tea kettle, which she filled with water and set on the stove.
"I thought so," the man told her, still not addressing Sebastian at all, but concentrating on the garlic bulb beneath his fingers. "When Patty told me of a meeting in the afternoon, I suspected that we would be too late. And how about you, Roderick? Beginning to question your desire to know more?"
Rod only grinned and shook his head.
"Not for a minute. My Sydney didn't die in vain." He still smiled as he spoke, but a hard gleam had come into his eyes and something like sorrow crept into his voice.
Julian nodded and sighed.
"Well, you have something in common then." He nodded toward Sebastian as he spoke.
"I would love to join this conversation but, honestly, I don't know who the hell any of you are," Sebastian retorted, suddenly sick of the cat and mouse. "Did you drive m
e to this house in the middle of nowhere just for kicks, because at least back at Isabelle's I didn't feel like anyone was toying with me."
"No, man, it's not like that," Rod told him quickly. "I get where you're at though. They just can't tell you everything until your memory starts to come back."
Sebastian rolled his eyes. "And you think some pill is going to make that magically happen? I've been wandering around a foreign country for weeks and have yet to remember my own damn name, which you claim is Sebastian, and I don't have much choice other than to take it. Right? For all I know, you guys don't have a clue who I am and this whole weird ass thing is some kind of set-up."
Adora took the kettle off the stove as it started to whistle. She took four mugs out of the cupboard.
"Your name is Sebastian," she said sternly. "And to be truthful, I barely know you, and Julian doesn't know you at all." She pointed at the older man. "But Roderick does know you and, more importantly, we know of you. We know where you came from and we know that every minute you remain in this forgetful haze, you are in grave danger."
"It's Rod," Rod told her, before turning to Sebastian. "Those pills will work. Think of this guy as an alchemical genius okay?" He nudged an elbow toward Julian. "And her..." waving at Adora now, "...as something of a saint. Right? She saved me, now she's going to save you too."
Adora looked uncomfortable at this comparison, but remained silent.
"The pills are magic, Sebastian. That's why they work," Julian said, this time looking directly into Sebastian's eyes. Julian's eyes were such a light blue that they appeared white. "But they're not instantaneous. Prepare to have a very vivid night in the dreamscape. You will be encountering yourself."
Chapter 23
"He likes to call us Urban Guerilla Witches," Kendra told Abby as the three of them stepped off the elevator. She slid the metal grate closed behind them and gestured to a funky wooden coat rack.
"I like it," Oliver said, surveying the apartment.
Born of Shadows- Complete Series Page 50