"She didn't say that, but I think so, yes. I think about the relic that had encased part of Devin's spirit."
"The lighter?"
"Exactly—why couldn't Kanti have created something similar?"
"Well it makes sense," Sebastian admitted. "Obviously the Vepars are getting more powerful through her, so they must have a link."
"I think so too."
Abby drank the last of the Tom Kha Gai soup from the bowl.
"So good," she sighed. "Did you do anything other than fix the furnace today?"
Sebastian shrugged and shook his head.
"Nope, pretty uneventful day. Found some recipes for juicing and smoothies online for you."
"For me?"
"Yeah, recipes to help support you and the baby. I talked with Helena about it and she agrees. We want to make sure you're getting super nutrient-dense food for that little powerhouse you're growing."
Abby smiled.
"That would be good. I have been exhausted lately. I'm taking the supplements from the vitamin store, but I'm starting to think this baby of ours is sucking me dry."
****
Abby laced up her boots. Waterproof and durable, they went above her knees. She put on her coat, zipped it high and then added a scarf and the red winter hat that Helena had knitted for her. She trudged along the frozen shoreline, savoring the cold air gusting off the lake.
When Abby had woken that morning, Sebastian had gone to town for "baby fodder," according to his note.
The snow had stopped after days of falling. The drifts were deep and soft and she moved slowly, trying not to sink so deep that the snow piled into her boots. As she traveled further away from the house, she noticed a crow following beside her in the trees. After several minutes, he was joined by a second crow and then a third until five of the birds trilled and warbled beside her.
"Well good morning to you too," she told them.
One of the crows flew from the tree, swooping close. She stopped and watched as the other birds did the same. One by one they flew down, circled around her, and returned to the tree.
She sensed a warmness in her belly and reached beneath her coat, pressing her hand on her stomach. She felt a tiny flutter. The birds swooped in unison, surrounding her. Though they dove and weaved close to her head, Abby felt no fear. Instead, she felt a connection with the birds.
She held her arms out to either side and two of the crows landed on her outstretched arms. They were heavy, but she held them easily. They clucked and talked, watching her with their beady black eyes. After several moments, they flew off. She continued her walk and the birds kept pace. Sometimes they merely flew from tree to tree and other times they sailed close, their oily black wings iridescent in the sun.
After a half hour of walking, Abby returned to the shed. She wanted a hammer and nails to hang Lydie's drawing. She fumbled through drawers and laughed at the array of tools that Sebastian had assembled. Not an organized man, he had put light bulbs with grass seed. She opened a drawer in his workbench and spotted a box of nails. She pulled it out, but a photo clung to the bottom of the box. Peeling it off, she looked at a young Sebastian pushing his sister Claire on a swing. The photo was taken from behind. Sebastian's black curls blew in a breeze, and beyond the swing set, a beach gave way to a glittering lake. Abby could see Claire's legs extended in the air as she swung forward, her pink-painted toenails showing above her head.
Abby's hand trembled as she reached into the drawer. More pictures lay scattered in the cavity and then her fingers brushed something larger. She pulled a shabby leather journal from the drawer and set it on the table. She stared at the threadbare cover. A faint symbol was sunken into it. The triple goddess, which revealed three moons representing the mother, the maiden and the crone, looked back at her. It was not an unusual symbol necessarily; however, Abby had first laid eyes on the symbol far in the forest, carved into a tree as she searched for a dark witch.
"The journal could have come from anywhere," she said out loud.
But she knew. She didn't want to touch it, but she had to. Flipping open the journal, she frowned at the tiny, cramped writing. Words jumped out from the pages—death, immortality...resurrection. She tried not to see the images, crude drawings of a figure, a girl, with symbols scrawled along her torso, legs and arms.
The sound of an engine pulled Abby from the pages. She clapped the journal closed and shoved it, and the pictures, back into the drawer. Through the window, she watched Sebastian park his car and climb out. He brushed a hand through his dark curls and then leaned down to grab the groceries. She started out of the shed, ready to confront him, but then another engine sounded and she looked down the long, wooded driveway.
Oliver's VW Bus pulled next to Sebastian's car. Oliver waved wildly from behind the wheel, grinning. The other witches of Ula sat in the back. Victor and Kendra arrived next, parking alongside Oliver.
"We're here to dig a grave," Victor announced triumphantly, as he stepped from his car.
****
Lydie and Julian, the fire elements, and Abby and Elda, water elements, stood facing one another through a large expanse of trees. Sebastian, with the aid of Julian, had meticulously sectioned off the area they believed the map portrayed. Lydie and Julian focused on melting the snow and thawing the earth. Elda and Abby directed the water toward the lake. As the snow disappeared and the ground softened, Oliver and Faustine sifted the mud. They worked with Kendra, Victor and Helena, air elements, to transfer the dirt into piles at the periphery of the space. Sebastian walked along the edge, patrolling the piles of dirt in case they missed a fragment of bone or some other clue as to Kanti's whereabouts.
The morning sun offered little warmth, but worked wonders on morale. Digging up the body of an angry spirit was unnerving enough without an overcast day to contend with. As they searched, Abby glanced at the faces around her. Everyone, save Oliver, held a look of grim determination. Even Lydie stared intensely toward the ground in fearful anticipation. Oliver, always clinging to the silver lining, occasionally plunked mud onto Lydie's head. She shot a fireball in his direction. It narrowly missed his right ear and he howled as if she had burned him.
Elda and Helena both smiled and Julian offered his past student a stern look, but Abby appreciated the lighter mood that Oliver brought to the gathering. Sebastian hardly seemed present at all. He moved along the perimeter of accumulating mud, at times disappearing into the trees. He held no expression at all, but when he caught her looking, he offered Abby a distracted smile.
The hole in the ground grew deeper and wider as the witches worked. Finally, eight feet in, Faustine called them to a stop.
"She's not here," he told them, wiping sweat from his brow.
"Maybe just a little further," Helena countered, though she looked completely exhausted.
"No," Julian agreed. "One of us would have sensed her by now. Faustine is right, she's not here."
"Hold on." Oliver jumped into the hole and placed his palms against the mud walls. "I do feel something here." He grabbed a handful of dirt and sifted it through his fingers. "Something decayed in this ground, and it's not animal."
"There could have been other bodies buried here," Victor cut in. "How do we know this whole area wasn't populated at some point?"
"They dug her up and moved her, right?" Helena said, sitting on the ground with a huff. "I feel her too—she was here."
Abby searched for the sensation that Helena described, but felt only the rapid beating of her heart. A wave of dizziness washed through and she too sat down on the soggy earth.
Sebastian looked thoughtful and then walked to a towering oak tree. He put his hands on the wide trunk.
Abby felt a tremble in the earth and scrambled to her feet. All of the witches looked alarmed, their gazes shifting to Sebastian. The tree that he touched began to quake. It split down the middle, groaning as its two halves ripped apart. The earth beneath it opened and revealed an intricate network of enormous roots. There, intertwined w
ithin the roots, Abby saw the dull gleam of a rib cage. Sebastian reached into the roots and pulled out a mud-caked skull.
Chapter 24
They excavated the bones slowly and methodically. Abby imagined that anthropologists on an archaeological dig might have been impressed with their technique. They carefully wrapped each bone in newspaper and bundled them in cardboard boxes. When they completed the task and Faustine sealed the final box, they loaded into several cars and Oliver's van to return to Ula.
Though Abby wanted to crawl into her own bed and sleep, Julian and Faustine insisted that all of the witches return to the island. The possibility that disturbing Kanti's bones had potentially upset the vengeful spirit spooked Sebastian, and he agreed that they should go to the coven.
"Do you think she led us there?" Abby asked Sebastian, when they retired for the night at the castle.
"I think something did. Was it her? Or some divine power that wants us to get rid of her, I don't know."
He slipped his T-shirt over his head and then shrugged off his jeans. She admired the smooth tapering of his chest down to his narrow waist.
He noticed her watching and pulled her to him, kissing her slowly. She reached her arms around his neck and held him tight against her body. She hungered for him. Perhaps a consequence of her pregnancy, she didn't know, but she thought about Sebastian naked more than she cared to admit.
He stripped off her sweater and kissed her shoulders and neck. With a gentle push, she fell back onto the bed. He unbuttoned her jeans and slid them down, kissing her calves and thighs. He moved up to her stomach and she cupped his head in her hands, crushing his soft black curls. He moved on top of her and she searched his eyes. She saw only light reflected back to her; no darkness lurked in the swirling prisms. She almost asked him about the journal and Victor's drawings. She wanted to, but as he kissed her and murmured into her neck, she wanted one more night to not think about what those things meant.
After Sebastian fell asleep, snoring quietly beside her, Abby slipped from the bed.
She left their room and went to the library. The fire crackled as it did all hours of the day and night at Ula. Victor sat alone, watching the flames. On the floor beside him, she noticed one of the boxes of bones.
She closed the door softly, but he didn't hear her. His dark eyes stared fixedly at some vision that she could not see. After several minutes, she moved closer and he stirred, turning to her with a glassy expression.
"Mesmerizing," he said, indicating the restless blaze.
"Did you sense anything amiss? With Sebastian?"
Victor stared at her bewildered for another moment and then his eyes began to clear. He climbed to his feet and took a chair closer to her.
"I think the stunt with the tree was pretty phenomenal. Who or what communicated where those bones were? And what kind of energy opened up that tree?"
"Elda thinks the trauma of several months has triggered a dormant energy in him. She thinks he's a witch, after all."
"Maybe," Victor said. "And then again maybe not. What if it's not his power at all that we're witnessing, but something acting through him?"
Abby grimaced. She had thought something similar, but feared speaking it out loud. She wanted to tell Victor about the journal, to confide her secret to just one other person, but she couldn't. She already felt that she betrayed Sebastian with her thoughts. She couldn't stand to cast any more suspicion on him until he had been given a chance to explain.
"Have you had any more dreams of him with Dafne?"
"No, but I've been pulling long hours. My sleep is pretty hard and fast, not much room for dreaming."
"Do you think I should tell Elda or Faustine?"
Victor shook his head.
"I don't think you should alarm them until we have a better idea of what's happening. You don't want to put him on the defense."
"No I don't, not at all, but I also don't want to wait until it's too late. What if they could help him? What if they could prevent something catastrophic?"
"Wait a little longer," Victor advised. "Let's see what we discover through Kanti's bones."
Abby returned to bed, but she slept fitfully. Nightmares plagued her. Again and again, she stood at the edge of a gaping hole and stared at the crumpled body of Sebastian clutching a maggot-riddled skull.
****
"Hello my future wife," Sebastian said, grinning.
He walked into Lydie's dream room. Sweat shone on his face and neck and spotted his gray T-shirt.
Abby sat on a fluffy mushroom and petted the fat cat Kissy, who glared at Sebastian when he stole Abby's attention.
Lydie swung from a swing suspended far above the floor. Oliver and Victor sat on the top of the indoor sand dune, where they argued about whether the Internet would ultimately destroy humanity.
"Connection," Victor said simply. "The Internet has liberated the world. I can talk to a mother of five in Pakistan about her hopes for her daughters' futures or play World of Warcraft with a kid from Russia."
"Or download plans to make a bomb or buy an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons or join a child porn ring."
"Or watch videos of kitties," Lydie called out.
"That sounds like a conversation I don't want to join," Sebastian told her, leaning down and kissing Abby.
"Agreed," she said. "Any progress?"
She referred to Sebastian's training with Faustine and Julian. Though isolating a specific element of power had thus far proved impossible, they had hoped to channel some of the amazing energy he'd exhibited the day before.
"Yeah, a bit. Mostly I moved some heavy rocks that should have been impossible to lift."
"Ooh, my Hercules," she teased, squeezing his bicep.
"I'm going to run up and take a shower, and Bridget wanted me to tell everyone that lunch is ready. Chicken Tikka Masala."
"Oh yum, that's my favorite."
"I know." He winked. "I told her you've been craving good Indian food."
****
"Why won't he come here?" Faustine asked, clearly irritated.
"There are a lot of reasons," Victor began, glancing at the faces of Elda, Abby and Sebastian like they might be nodding in agreement.
They sat in the dungeon room known as The Circle or the oratory. Books of Shadows lined a high shelf and Abby tried to study the names etched into the leather spines. Great swaths of color painted the stone floor as the noontime light shone through the intricate stained-glass windows that bordered the room.
"Dante is not comfortable with covens. And," he continued quickly, as Faustine started to interrupt him, "he's not sure that your protective enchantments won't hinder the spell."
"But you performed this magic at Sorciére," Faustine countered.
Victor frowned as if he hadn't thought of that.
"Look, Faustine, the bottom line is that he said he won't. He has his reasons and I respect that."
"How do we know this magic is safe?" Elda asked. She sat near a desk scattered with stones, crystals and notebooks.
"He's been working with the spell for over a year. I've done it ten times at least. It's safe."
"Safe from what?" Abby asked. "I mean we basically astral traveled, right?" She remembered the experience from the All Hallow's Ball. After taking a sip from Dante's glass, she opened her eyes to discover that she and the other witches had been transported to the ocean floor in the Atlantic. She remembered how real it felt. Unlike astral traveling, where most sensation was muted, she felt the water and the cold as if she genuinely sat on the ocean floor.
"Yes, basically. I believe it's a form of astral projection, but it transports several of us together and to a very particular place."
"Have you ever used other bones? Or only the fish?" Sebastian asked. Abby had told him in detail about the journey after they were reunited.
"He's tried with other bones," Victor admitted. "The fish with wings is special, obviously. Dante has tried to carbon date the bones, but they appear to excee
d the timeline that we can work with."
"So that makes them?" Sebastian asked.
"More than fifty thousand years old; how much more, I couldn't say."
"What's happened with other bones you've used?" Abby asked.
"Something similar. All of the witches participating project to a certain location. We used human bones that Dante snagged from a research center once. We traveled to a hillside in Ireland—at least we think it was Ireland."
"So you really don't know where the bones take you?" Faustine asked. "Or why?"
"They reveal secrets," Victor said simply. "In the Atlantic they took us to a shipwreck. In Ireland, there was a very intriguing circle of stones."
"I'm not sure why we are confident that this is the ideal magic to perform with Kanti's bones," Elda said, and Faustine nodded with her.
"Galla could not make a connection when she touched the bones. You've consulted with the other witches of Sorciére. You've considered your own library of information and you are no closer to understanding the significance of the bones. I am telling you that it will work. How do I know that? Because I'm a witch. As are you. This isn't a hair-brained scheme; I know that this is the next step." Victor spoke with conviction and a little bit of annoyance.
Abby knew that Victor preferred not to work with covens because elder witches, such as Faustine and Elda, rarely put their faith in younger generations. They had grown accustomed to believing that the old ways were right and that all new magic was suspect.
"It's decided then," Sebastian cut in. "Chicago, here we come."
****
"Home, I have missed you," Victor said, when the elevator opened into the spacious loft that he shared with his friends in Chicago.
"Espresso?" Kendra asked, immediately shuffling out of her coat and boots.
Oliver laughed.
"Bit of a caffeine junkie, eh?"
"That's putting it mildly," Kendra told him over her shoulder as she beelined for the kitchen.
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