"And you think the lair you were in was on Lake Superior. You've been there, then?" Julian asked Ezra.
She nodded.
"I used to hike there and camp by myself. I liked the quiet. The cliffs are spectacular. I remember them well."
"So the Vepars have a lair on Lake Superior?" Abby worried.
"It would make sense," Oliver noted. He balled his hands in his lap. "It was so easy for them to attack us."
"But they didn't return to that lair with Lydie. Why not?" Abby asked. "If they had a cave on the mainland, why travel into the lower peninsula?"
"Because they were luring us into a trap," Julian reminded her. "They're protecting the lair on Lake Superior. That's why we don't know about it. If they're being hunted, they go somewhere else."
"What do you remember?" Ezra asked Victor, who continued to sip his tea with a look of utter disgust.
"Nothing." He shrugged. "I remember taking a drink of cider and then waking up in the kitchen."
Abby watched him carefully. She thought back to the sense that he'd tried to consume her in that astral space. Maybe it wasn't him at all, but Kanti who tried to absorb her light.
"I was in a cabin," Kendra recounted. "There was fire all around the cabin. Smoke was pouring through a crack around the door and into the windows, which were just holes, no glass. The room smelled like blood. There was bloody straw on the floor. When I looked at my own body, it wasn't my body, but another woman's hands and legs. They were streaked with blood."
A tremor moved through her and she wrapped her uninjured arm across her chest.
Victor sat next to her. He placed his cup on the coffee table and put an arm around her shoulders.
"I agree with Sebastian," Kendra continued. "I think I was in Kanti's body, in her memories."
"I don't think this was a mistake," Julian said finally after several minutes of silence. "I'm not sure what happened to all of us, but that lair on Lake Superior is new information. It narrows down our search."
"You think they took Dafne there?" Abby asked.
Julian nodded.
"I do. I think she may have even been the one I heard behind that door."
"That's a pretty big assumption," Sebastian interrupted. "Look, I don't want to be the naysayer here, but we've made a lot of mistakes going after Tobias. Kanti seems to have the power. How do we know she didn't just show us exactly what she wanted so that we'd walk right into another of her killing grounds?"
"That would mean your experience was in the present moment, not the past," Ezra pointed out to Julian.
"True, but that's my sense. Unfortunately, none of us have more to go on than that."
Abby noticed that Victor looked pointedly away when she glanced at him.
"He's awake," Marcus exclaimed from the other room. "Dante's awake!"
****
"Thank you," Dante whispered to Abby as she accompanied Julian into Victor's room. His voice sounded hoarse and the effort of speaking seemed to exhaust him.
"I'm just so happy I could help," she told him.
She sat in a chair near the end of the bed. Marcus sat on the bed next to Dante, holding his hand.
"Do you remember anything?" Julian asked, taking a chair near Abby.
Dante closed his eyes and nodded.
"I was in a hole and someone was shoveling dirt on top of me. I tried to climb out, but my body wouldn't obey my thoughts. I was getting buried alive. I was shoving it away, but it came in droves. It filled my mouth. I had to swallow it or suffocate."
Dante lifted a trembling hand to his throat.
"It was real, wasn't it?"
Julian sighed and looked away.
"Yes. There's no other explanation."
"Do you have any idea who was burying you?" Abby asked, glancing toward the sitting area where the other witches remained.
Victor had nearly accompanied them to speak with Dante, but Julian encouraged him to relax and focus on gathering his thoughts.
"I thought I heard a voice," Dante started. His gaze shifted to Abby, but he quickly stared at the floor when she met his eyes.
"Whose?" she asked, not sure that she wanted to hear the answer.
"Sebastian. I thought I heard Sebastian."
Chapter 27
"I think I saw Dafne in the lake," Lydie told Elda.
The witch stood in the healing room carefully stripping the linen from the beds. She stood and turned to Lydie, surprised.
"In the lagoon?" She started to walk out of the room, but Lydie stopped her.
"No, in the big lake. I took the rowboat out."
Elda put a hand to the pendant around her neck.
"Just now?"
"Yes. I didn't imagine it."
"She didn't try to speak with you?"
"No, she swam under my boat, but there was something different about her eyes. They didn't look like Dafne's eyes."
Elda frowned.
"I think that she's being possessed."
****
"Oliver and Ezra went for takeout," Victor told them.
Julian and Abby had left Dante to sleep and Marcus to continue his vigil.
"Salads okay with you guys?" Kendra asked.
"Sure," Abby said, though food was the furthest thing from her mind.
Julian held a similar expression of unease.
"Sebastian?" Abby asked, scanning the loft.
"Went to the roof," Kendra told her. "He said he needed some fresh air."
"Shall we?" Julian asked her.
Abby bit her lip and nodded. She preferred to talk to Sebastian alone. If he reacted defensively, Julian might misinterpret his behavior and assume that he had something to hide.
Their footsteps echoed in the cold stairwell as they walked to the upper floor. Abby had put on her jacket and gloves, but still shivered beneath her layers.
"Take a deep breath, Abby," Julian told her, pausing.
She tried, but the chilly air constricted her lungs.
Julian touched two fingers lightly to her chest.
"Keep pulling the air in. Envision it moving through a wall of fire as it passes across your lips."
She tried again, picturing the fire, and the inhalation came easier.
"Now imagine that each breath moves through your whole body, from the top of your head, out to your fingertips and down to your toes. Feel it warming every cell."
She breathed, and a warm glow spun through her body until she no longer felt cold at all.
"Better?" he asked.
"Much."
"Is there anything you want to tell me about Sebastian before we go up there?"
"I'm not sure what you mean."
He sighed.
"You young witches exasperate me. You're all so stubborn, so intent on keeping your secrets."
Abby stepped back, surprised by Julian's frustrated tone.
He watched her intently, but she held her silence.
"Everything comes out, you know? In time, the truth is revealed and the longer you hold it back, the more deception you weave into the fabric of your life. Deception is an energy like all other things. It lives and breathes inside of us. Is that what you want in your body?"
He was referring to her child, and Abby put a hand protectively over her stomach.
"Of course that's not what I want," she told him angrily. "But I also don't want to cast suspicion on the person I love when one of you old witches already tried to destroy him for that very thing."
Julian smiled and shook his head.
"Like a tempest, you are. Forgive me? I was not trying to create a rainstorm. Just so we're clear, I can sense that you're hiding something and it puts me on edge. I've had a lot of pain in this life. At this point, I've got nothing to lose, but all of you," he waved his hand toward her stomach, "you have everything."
Above them the door opened and they heard footsteps pounding on the stairs. Sebastian came into view. His black curls dripped and his face looked red and chapped.
; "It's pouring rain out there," he exclaimed.
****
"Brrr, it's cold," the woman moaned, wrapping her scarf further up her neck so that it covered her chin and mouth.
"It's a winter paradise," the man corrected her, awkwardly lifting a snowshoe and knocking it against a tree to remove some of the snow that had caked on and begun to slow him down.
"You said hot cocoa and roaring fires when you sold me on this vacation, Jeremy. So far it's mostly been icicles and mittens."
He laughed and flicked his snowshoe at her. A glob of snow hit her in the forehead. She wiped it away furiously and tried to hobble across the snowy cliffs toward him.
"Be careful," he reminded her.
They hiked along the craggy cliffs of the Lake Superior shoreline. In winter, the dark rock was mostly covered by snow and ice.
"I wouldn't have to be careful if you'd taken me somewhere civilized, like Florida or Hawaii."
"Oh, come on, girlie, what's life if we always live in the comfy spaces? This is an adventure." He held his arms out to either side and grinned.
The woman smiled, reminded of why she had fallen for Jeremy in the first place. If nothing else, he did remind her that she was alive.
She took a breath and savored the expansive view of Lake Superior that stretched out behind him. The dark waters tossed and churned. The sun lit the day, but brought no warmth.
She walked to Jeremy, laboriously, and hugged him.
"You feel like an abominable snowman," he told her, squeezing her tight.
The snow sparkled beneath the afternoon sun. As a shadow blotted out the shimmering snow, she looked up. Expecting a bird, she shoved Jeremy away and screamed as a wolfish creature with bat-like wings rose up from the cliff.
Jeremy twisted around.
"Run," he shouted, trying to do the same, but tripping over his snowshoes.
She ran. She wanted to stop and help him. She should have stopped to help him, but sheer terror drove her away.
She tripped and fell. Crying and swearing, she fumbled at the latches on her snowshoes and yanked them off. She stood in her hiking boots and dared a glance back. Hunched over Jeremy's body, the creature's head rose and fell as it consumed the man she had only just begun to love. She tried not to see the glittering snow streaked with red.
She turned and ran into the forest.
****
"It's concerning," Faustine agreed after Julian recounted the experience in Chicago with the bone magic.
"I feel like it implies our worst fears," Elda said. "That Sebastian is being seduced by this dark spirit. However, I don't sense that energy in him."
"Nor do I," Helena added.
Julian shook his head, but did not offer his opinion.
"It is true that I don't perceive it in him," Faustine murmured. "But do you think Dafne fell for a man whom she sensed desired great power? I don't believe that Tobias had it in him either. I think something put it there. I think one morning he was the Tobias he had always been and the next morning, he was something else."
"With no predisposition to evil? He killed all of her friends, Faustine, all of their friends," Helena argued. "He burned them alive. Is there any entity strong enough to strip someone of their very soul?"
"I tend to agree with Helena," Julian commented. "It seems to me that Tobias hungered for power as did Ira, or Alva, as we know him now."
"What makes you say that?" Faustine asked.
"Mostly the journals of the Asemaa. There are a handful of comments about Tobias—the man. He was a fisherman, but never satisfied with that life. Some of the Trager people spoke of him as a dreamer, a man who desired a better life than the one he'd been given. Perhaps in Dafne, he saw an opportunity. She was a witch, a talented, powerful witch, but then along comes Alva, with a better offer."
"So, Alva knew he was next in line? And groomed him?"
"Well, that I don't know," Julian admitted.
"Should we be worried about Abby?" Helena asked.
"Of course," Faustine said, incensed. "We should be worried about Abby, Sebastian, Lydie, Oliver and ourselves for that matter. Nothing we do seems to take us closer to the heart of this thing. Meanwhile this Kanti spirit grows stronger and continues to pursue her plan, whatever that may be."
"Dante said that Sebastian was burying him alive?" Elda asked for the third time.
"Not in those words, but yes. He said that he heard Sebastian. He thought Sebastian was shoveling the dirt on top of him."
"But Sebastian described being buried alive as well?" Helena asked though she knew the answer.
They had been discussing the experience in Chicago for more than an hour. Julian had confided what occurred as soon as he returned to Ula.
"Could Sebastian have been digging him out?" Helena asked.
"I doubt it," Julian admitted. "He felt trapped. He couldn't see, couldn't move, couldn't breathe."
"And another thing, Abby described Sebastian as thrashing and yelling. The only person who didn't appear to react with fear and panic was Victor."
****
Julian and Oliver picked along the rocky shoreline. They both wore black nylon suits that Helena had made for them. Thick enough that a Vepar's fangs or the skin-walker's claws would struggle to break through. They were also designed for intense cold. Though both witches could increase their body heat by focusing their element, if they were injured, they might not be conscious.
"Where was the couple attacked?" Oliver asked, reaching behind him for the second time to check his bow. His arrows were tipped with Julian's powder. In each pocket, he held a vial of venom antidote.
"About a mile further," Julian answered, cocking his head and nodding. "Faustine is sending me a map of the cliffs up there. He's found some sea caves that he finds promising."
"Why would they attack and risk exposing themselves?"
"I've been wondering that myself," Julian admitted. "I have a couple of theories. One, in the animal form, they have less control."
"They took Sebastian from a cabin at night, Lydie from Ula. They didn't kill either of them. That seems like an awful lot of control."
"Which makes sense in the beginning when it is new and they are careful, but what happens when you spend more and more time in the psyche of a creature? Not just a monster, as the Vepars already are, but an animal with a prehistoric brain and powerful instincts to kill and eat. At what point does the animal begin to take over the higher mind?"
Oliver nodded, remembering the wolfish thing that Tobias had become.
"Other theories?"
"That they're calling us to them. They know that we will respond. It's our duty as witches and, in this case, it's personal."
"That was my first thought."
"Unfortunately, we all tend to agree on that point. This Kanti has been far too premeditated to suddenly let her creatures wreak havoc and expose her. It's more likely that they have orchestrated this attack to call our attention to it."
"I'm suddenly feeling a bit unprepared," Oliver grumbled.
"There they are," Julian said, stopping.
He pointed to a black crevice in the cliffs ahead.
They took their time, pausing often to watch the cave, but nothing emerged.
As the sun sunk on the horizon, Oliver removed an arrow and cocked in in his bow. Julian wore a belt of steel stakes, and he drew two daggers from sheaths around his ankles.
They stayed close to the rock wall as they drew toward the opening. A screech from deep in the tunnel stopped them both.
"Skin-walker," Julian murmured.
"I remember the sound, vividly," Oliver agreed.
They ducked into the opening. As witches, they could see easily in the darkness, but it took a moment for their eyes to adjust. As they walked deeper into the cave, Oliver slowed his breath. Claustrophobia had never been a problem before, but after his last experience in a Vepar's lair, the underground world felt more oppressive. He shook away visions of the dead soldiers the Vep
ars had created, though calling them soldiers gave them too much credit. They were barely animated, dead things given a puff of breath that they exhausted quickly.
The screeching came again, but further now.
"It's moving away from us," Oliver whispered, stating the obvious.
"Shh."
The pathway sloped down. It grew narrower.
Oliver shifted, crouching lower as they moved. He returned the arrow to its sheaf and took out a knife.
Now the screeching grew louder, deafening. They were getting close, but the tunnel seemed to be shrinking more and more.
Ahead Oliver could see something dark wriggling in the black. It shrunk away from them, fixing them in its gaze with shining red eyes.
"Is it a skin-walker?" Oliver asked, unsure about the creature before them. Tobias had been larger, terrifying and more...human. This thing seemed like a giant angry bat, more scared than lethal.
"It's a decoy," Julian said suddenly. He turned and began to run out of the tunnel.
Chapter 28
"Now this is raspberry leaf tea," Helena announced, holding up a bowl of herbs. "It helps tone the uterus in preparation for birth and may even speed the birth along."
Abby and Sebastian sat at their kitchen counter, where Helena had arranged a menagerie of herbs, supplements and tinctures to aid in Abby's pregnancy.
"Is her uterus trying to get a date?" Sebastian joked. Abby rolled her eyes and Helena bent over laughing.
"You and Oliver could be brothers with those terrible jokes, you know?" Helena teased.
Sebastian grimaced and waved toward a bowl of sparkling ginger.
"Candy's on the menu?"
"Not candy, candied ginger. Helps with nausea. Though you can opt for straight ginger instead, or ginger tea."
"Did someone say candy?" Lydie asked, padding into the kitchen in her slippers. She held Baboon in her arms. "I thought we were watching movies and eating popcorn tonight?"
She eyed the contents on the counter.
"We're almost done, honey," Helena told her. "Go pick out a movie, we'll be there in ten minutes, tops."
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