“I’m okay,” she said, righting herself. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” Aiden said sharply. “What could you have been thinking?”
Bailey rubbed her forehead where it still tingled, and looked away from Aiden as she did. “I was thinking I didn’t have time to think about it.”
“You could have at least conferred with me before committing yourself to... to...” he clearly tried to say it, but couldn’t.
Bailey said it for him. “To dying?” She offered.
Aiden smoldered at her.
“It’s probably symbolic,” Bailey said. “She was speaking in riddles.”
“What if that part was particularly important?” Avery asked. “What if ambiguity might have sent the wrong message, so she wanted to be clear about it?”
“You aren’t helping,” Bailey sighed, her smile weary.
“I’m not trying to help,” Avery muttered. “I don’t think you should have done it either.”
“Itaja,” Gideon said, changing the subject, “that’s a name I’ve only seen once. A mythical predecessor to Medea by several generations. Believed to be a demigoddess, in fact. She called you daughter. Do you believe she meant that figuratively? All witches being descended from the same spiritual origin? Or... did she mean it literally?”
“I don’t know,” Bailey lied. “I just acted on instinct.”
Aiden kicked something on the ground, possibly just the ground itself. “Rashly is the word you’re looking for,” he said, “in point of fact.”
Bailey looked around at the three of them, and then threw her hands up, exasperated and growing colder by the second. “Is that all? Because I don’t see how complaining about it any more is going to be helpful. Medea talked about a path—she didn’t say the Throne is here, in Stonehenge, she said that there was a journey. So how about, for now, we figure out where we’re supposed to be journeying to, and then after we’re on the way you can all take turns complaining about things that we can’t change now?”
“She is pragmatic,” Gideon chuckled.
Aiden shot his teacher a look. “You’re responsible for this.”
“No,” Bailey said quickly, stepping almost between them, “he’s not.” She gave Aiden a moment to run his fingers through his hair and calm himself a bit before she spoke again. “I made my choice. It’s done. Alright? Now are you going to help me, or not? Because the way I see it... at this point I have to go on with or without you.”
Avery’s hand touched her shoulder. “Bails,” he whispered, “of course we’re going with you.”
“Yes,” Aiden agreed, nodding quickly as he pulled her to him and put his arms around her, “I couldn’t possibly let you do this... whatever it is... alone.”
“And I’m happy to bankroll this endeavor,” Gideon said cheerfully. “I wouldn’t miss history like this for all the world.”
It was good enough, Bailey decided. She didn’t particularly like the odd way he seemed to look at her after the encounter with Medea’s spirit, but she had to admit that if she was going to have three allies at her side, she would be hard pressed to do better than two of her closest friends, who were powerful wizards, and her boyfriend’s very powerful teacher.
Though... she wasn’t entirely helpless anymore, she realized.
Bailey blinked with the realization, and reached out to her magic. It wasn’t all the way back; but it was somehow closer. Maybe it was simply equalizing; she’d have to keep an eye on it. But it was a momentary comfort when she didn’t have to strain quite as far to grasp it.
“Right,” she said finally, keeping that change to herself for the moment. “So... anyone care to help me figure out what happens next?”
The early dawn was just beginning to show by the time they found it. It shouldn’t have taken so long, really, but time and wind and rain had conspired to hide their clue from them right in front of their eyes. As Bailey ran her fingers over the face of the stone monolith for the fiftieth time, she finally realized that there was a kind of regularity to some of the indentations. Once, perhaps, it had been carved clearly; now she could just barely trace the lines of some kind of symbol.
It wasn’t precise and geometric the way a wizard’s spell graph might have been; instead it was simple but imprecise, the very rough shape of a hand with three lines drawn across it.
Rather than any kind of magic, Aiden and Gideon used the time honored method of graphite and paper to lift the symbol off and when they did, Bailey realized that it wasn’t just a symbol—there were letters.
“These marks here?” Gideon asked as he peered at the glyphs.
Bailey took the paper carefully from him, and turned it several times, until she decided that it had been drawn possibly upside-down. “Seek... south... courage... wisdom... sacrifice?”
“Do these mean anything to you?” Avery asked, pointing to the symbols. “I mean, you can tell what they say?”
“Sort of,” Bailey said. “I mean... ‘Seek’ is, I think, something more like... ‘a guided inward search’, but then ‘south’ is definitely directional because it’s a celestial reference.” She looked up, but the stars weren’t visible enough to point to the southern cross now that the sun was beginning to lighten the sky. “So I’m pretty sure we have to go south from here, I just don’t know exactly where.”
“I may,” Gideon said excitedly and drew his journal out.
“Bailey,” Avery said, “those symbols... I’m pretty sure that’s Linear A.”
Bailey shook her head, uncomprehending.
“Linear A,” he repeated, as if she possibly hadn’t heard him clearly.
“Are you certain?” Aiden asked, and took the paper from her.
“Not entirely,” Avery admitted, “but I studied it for a while out of curiosity—we have an old book about ancient language fragments at the library, it always fascinated me when I was in high school.”
“Okay,” Bailey said, “so is that what it says?”
Aiden snorted, “Neither of us could possibly know. Linear A is a complete mystery; there are no known translations.”
“Oh,” Bailey said, simply. She looked at them again. It wasn’t that they appeared in English—but they stood out as clearly to her as her native tongue would have. “Maybe that’s what Medea meant when she said she would give me Itaja’s letters?”
“It’s believed to be an early script of the Minoan people,” Aiden said. “I suppose it’s possible. How do you feel?”
Something in his tone made her suspicious of the question. “Fine. Why?”
He handed the paper back to her. “You were just uploaded with who knows how much information. That has to be stressful on your nervous system.”
She hadn’t considered that. But for the moment, at least, she felt fine and she said so again, insistently, and Aiden merely gave her a nod as Gideon paced back and forth, rummaging through the journal.
“Aha,” he snapped, and came to them with a page held triumphantly before them. “I’ve seen that symbol before. Or, something very like it. Look... this one here is in Brussels, of all places... found on an ancient stone that’s now at the base of the Town Hall there but was one part of a megalithic structure created around the same time as Stonehenge; there are several throughout Belgium. There’s another in Budapest, or part of it, at any rate, on one of the stones found at the Aquincum, the ruins of an ancient Roman city... and finally one in Knossos, on the island of Crete.”
All three stared at the two pages peering at the slightly different symbols.
“Notice anything about them?” Gideon asked.
“The lines,” Bailey said right away. “This one has three... that one has two, this one only one... and that one has... is that some kind of labyrinth?”
“It is,” Gideon said, “very good.”
“As though they’re counting down,” Aiden suggested.
“Brussels, Budapest, Crete...” Avery muttered. “That’s not quite a straight line, but it is heading
south from here.”
Bailey nodded, and rolled the paper up. “That settles it, then. Our next stop is Brussels.”
“If that is so,” Gideon said, “we’d better get going. It’s going to be quite a long drive.”
She would have liked to have spent more time at Stonehenge, feeling that odd, familiar magic again and just being in the presence of something so incredibly ancient. But there was little time to waste, so Bailey followed the others as they mustered to leave.
Something, though, caught her attention as she did. Some bit of movement. But when she opened her mind to search for thoughts, she found nothing. Probably just a small animal of some kind.
Still, as they crossed the field to the guard post and Gideon’s car Bailey couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was, somehow, just behind her, watching her; to the point that she glanced over her shoulder a dozen times before they got into the car and even then... someone was watching them. She knew it.
She’d hoped that as they made their way back to the hotel to pack up and leave, it would go away—but it never did.
Chapter 8
“There’s no one watching us,” Seamus Jackson assured his new partner as they observed Grovey Goodies from some distance away. Technically, this was their patrol route; they weren’t breaking any rules by parking for a little while—it had been less than an hour this time, so far—although if Seamus was being honest, the point of a patrol route was to be patrolled.
“Just think we should be careful is all,” Deputy Finn MacMurrin muttered. “If what they say is true about those ladies...well, I’d rather not get caught up in some kind of confrontation. No telling what they might do to us.”
Seamus sighed, but nodded his tacit agreement.
The things that he’d heard about ‘the incident’ at the Seven Caves beggared belief. People flying through the air? Living shadows moving around, going after people? The old Hope sisters showing up and doing... what, magic? Them and the sweet ladies of the bakery, whom Seamus had known since he was a toddler?
And Bailey? Bailey Robinson was all mixed up with these people, so the rumors went. Thing was, as many accounts as there were of the events the fact was everyone conveniently fell asleep and then woke up in their own beds. So, what? These women put some sort of a spell on them and then shuffled a hundred plus people around town putting them all safely in their beds?
It just didn’t add up.
And yet, there were over thirty different supposed eye witness accounts. That thirty people had the exact same dream was just as unbelievable, and the idea that they’d have made it all up as some kind of a hoax was just as silly an idea. This was Coven Grove—people didn’t make up stories like that, at least not the adults. A few kids maybe, but these reports had come in from all across the populace, including a few deputies.
“Whatever happened,” Seamus said, “I just don’t believe the bakery ladies, or Bailey, or her friend Avery for that matter, could possibly be bad people.”
“That Aiden Rivers fellow, though?” Finn asked. “And the Hope sisters?”
“Rivers hasn’t been in town long,” Seamus said. “And hell; Rita Hope is old as dirt and scares everybody in town to death. If she were genuinely a... you know... I might believe it.”
“A witch,” Finn provided.
Seamus only nodded. The word felt weird to say. Like it didn’t belong in the real world.
Some time ago, Piper Spencer, another of Bailey’s friends from way back, had gone into the bakery for the third day in a row. This time, she was without her two children so maybe Gavin had them for the day, or his mother. No one had mentioned her being at the Caves during the incident, so whether she was involved in all this Seamus didn’t know for sure. As far as he knew, though, she went into the bakery for hours at a time. Finn was pretty sure that she was in there doing witchcraft.
“There’s nothing on the books about that being illegal,” Seamus said. “Not that I believe it.”
“You’re really going to act like thirty eyewitnesses might be wrong?” Finn asked, skeptical of Seamus’ skepticism. “How many would it have to be?”
“If thirty people told me the moon or sun disappeared from the sky for five minutes,” Seamus said pointedly, “I wouldn’t believe that either because that’s impossible.”
“You gotta admit it’s weird,” Finn pushed. “Not just this but... I mean look at the trouble that these people seemed to be caught up in lately. All the time. Those kids a few weeks ago? Two murders? The break-in at the place where that Robinson girl works? Come on, Jackson. How long before you can admit that all can’t be coincidence?”
“You don’t know Bailey,” Seamus snapped quietly. No sense in raising his voice; this wasn’t a fight, just an argument. A long one. “She’s a good woman, always has been. No way is she responsible for any of that mess.”
“You ever think that maybe her father did it?” Finn asked, leaning forward a little to peer at the bakery. “That if she were a witch—I’m just saying—that she might have, you know... rigged it up to make that Olson lady look responsible? She never did confess, you know; even plead not guilty. Not that that helped her. Being where she is is just as bad as being in the pen, if you ask me.”
“I’m not asking you.” Seamus saw lights and shadows moving periodically behind the upstairs window, which was shuttered and curtained. That happened once in awhile. At first he’d thought that maybe it was just the ladies going up to get things out of storage; maybe they kept extra flour or whatever they needed up there. But a few times now the lights had come on when Piper arrived, and stayed on until just before she left. They were up there; he knew it. He just couldn’t bring himself to believe what Finn thought. That they were up there casting spells.
“Just imagine if it were true,” Finn muttered. “I mean... what are we supposed to do about witchcraft? There ain’t no laws about it. How would we even prove it if they did something illegal? They might could make a person kill theirself, or charm somebody into giving them their stuff, or put a straight up hex on somebody that did them wrong; or that they thought did them wrong. We’d never know! You can’t prosecute that kind of thing.”
“You should hear yourself,” Seamus sighed. He was uncomfortable staking out the bakery like this, and wished he’d never listened to Finn in the first place. Before he worked up the nerve to tell his partner they were done for the day, though, the radio saved them. “We got a twelve-sixteen up on Pearson street; Deputy Jackson, you near there?”
Finn sighed, and rolled his eyes. “Let somebody else get it, Jackson.”
“You wanna tell Darla that?” Seamus asked, and waved at the radio. “Be my guest.”
Though he glowered at the radio, Finn didn’t. So Seamus picked it up. “Ten-four, Darla. Headed that way now.”
“Should be a one man job,” Darla told him, “just a fender bender, no reported injuries.”
“Understood,” Seamus told her, and hung the radio back up. He cranked the car and put it into gear while Finn groaned in the passenger seat. “I don’t wanna hear it. We got a job to do, Finn.”
“Yeah,” Finn said, grumpy and showing it, “protecting the people of this town. We should come back.”
“I don’t want to,” Seamus said as he pulled away from the curb and headed up to Pearson, passing the bakery on his way. “There’s no point and if something happens on my watch that I missed because I was following your crazy advice, I’d never live it down.”
“Yeah,” Finn said, “okay. Well think about this for a second: when’s the last time you saw Bailey Robinson? Or Avery Lee? Or that Rivers guy?”
He had a point. It had been a few days now. Though, what point he had, Seamus wasn’t quite sure.
“No harm in keeping an eye out,” Finn said.
Seamus didn’t want to agree, but he did anyway, if for no other reason than to shut Finn up. He found the accident not a mile up Pearson from Main street. Like Darla had said, it was clearly just a fender
bender, no one seemed to be angry or even all that upset. “Grab the camera,” he told Finn. “You done one of these before?”
“No,” Finn said, “I haven’t. How about I watch you this time?”
“Fine,” Seamus sighed, and took the camera from the dashboard, and got out. It was an easy enough call, just a few snapshots of mostly cosmetic damage for the report, in case it got filed with someone’s insurance. Finn kept quiet and out of the way, and Steve Pent and Mildred Moony, two old timers from just outside town, seemed content to ignore him for it. It was a ten minute affair, and the two deputies tipped their hats to both parties after it was done and returned to the car.
And, after a short argument while Seamus finished the short form report, he pulled away from the side of the road and made a u-turn. Because in the end, Finn wasn’t wrong; it couldn’t hurt to keep an eye out.
Chapter 9
“Something changed.” Piper opened her eyes and put down the bundle of roots that hypothetically were meant to help her ground herself, whatever that meant. They hadn’t. At least, she didn’t think they had. Aria peered at her curiously, and Piper leaned her head in Bailey’s direction. “Just now, with Bailey. I don’t know what it means but... it’s like she got a little... I don’t know, louder? I can still tell she’s far away; I don’t think she’s on her way back. Her presence is just more intense. Does that make sense?”
Aria drummed her slender fingers on the table and eyed the root bundle. “Did it happen just after you had a kind of sinking sensation? Like you were being pulled toward the Earth?”
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