Abby rotated and took Foster’s hand between hers. The strangest sensation traveled up her arm, almost like a low voltage electrical current. But it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t unpleasant, in fact, the almost imperceptible vibration was soothing.
Foster looked down at their joined hands and then back at Abby’s face. Foster looked spooked, as if she’d just seen a ghost. Abby glanced up as the overhead light came back to life.
“Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” Foster didn’t sound angry, maybe just a little on edge.
“Not now.” Evan started toward the door. “I will try to explain later. At the moment, I need to drive into town.”
“Right now? After what just happened?”
“Yes, right now.” Evan was halfway to the door but turned back, invading Foster’s personal space. “You…You do not leave Abby’s side for one minute. Not one. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you. But—”
“Do not leave her alone.”
“Okay, okay. Calm down.” Foster held up her palms in surrender.
“If you knew what I know, you would not be calm either.”
That sounded ominous. Abby hugged herself as Evan strode to the door and was gone. She and Foster stood around for a moment as if neither one of them was sure what to do next. Out of nowhere, Abby realized she was starving. She’d had hardly any appetite for days, and right now, all she wanted to do was raid the kitchen.
“Have you had dinner?” That seemed like a ridiculously mundane question, given the circumstances.
“No, and I’m kinda hungry.” Foster rested her hand over her stomach. “It seems weird to say that, but it’s true.”
“Me too. Let’s find something to eat.” Abby took Foster’s hand and tugged her along toward the kitchen.
She’d taken Foster’s hand so casually, as if she held hands with people all the time. This was all new territory for Abby, and she felt oddly liberated, from what, or for what purpose, she had no idea.
Chapter Eleven
Main Street was deserted when Evan parked and crossed the street to the pay phone.
“Report,” the same woman as before whispered on the other end of the phone.
Evan wasn’t sure how the protectorates who worked in the field dealt with this cloak-and-dagger crap. It felt like being strung along. She was doing her part, calling in, but she wasn’t getting any satisfactory information from the other end of the line. Was this how it usually worked? Was this her life now, to be forever in the dark?
“There’s been an event.”
“Conclusive?”
Evan hesitated for a few seconds. The tiny hairs at the back of her neck were on alert. What was she sensing? She couldn’t be sure.
“Well?” An insistent, impatient, whisper.
“Yes, conclusive.”
The line went dead and Evan immediately regretted sharing her conclusion.
Fuck this.
Evan dialed the number again. No one answered.
Was the Council going to dispatch a retrieval team for Abby? And if so, when? She’d expected some sort of ETA once she gave them a positive ID. The fucking clock was ticking, and something about this didn’t feel right. No, it didn’t feel right at all.
Evan had an eerie sense of déjà vu. She’d suffered a similar sense of unease the night of the ritual for Jacqueline, but Jacqueline had dismissed Evan’s concerns. In the end, Evan had been right to raise warning flags. She should have been more insistent. Jacqueline wasn’t well. If only Evan had been more forceful about postponing the ceremony. If, if, if. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the platform give way; she saw Jacqueline fall to her death. Like some brutal loop inside her head, she’d walk through every step leading up to the accident. What had she missed? That question haunted her.
She’d been sidelined for her failure, but at the same time, this was a second chance to do things right. She fished in her pocket for a handful of change and dialed a different number.
“Hello?” Lisel sounded sleepy. It was three hours later on the East Coast.
“Sorry if I woke you.”
“Evan?” There was a rustling sound. “What time is it? What’s wrong?”
Lisel had been part of her security team the night everything went to hell. Lisel was the closest thing to a sister Evan had and she’d trust Lisel with her life.
“I think I’m in trouble.” Evan wasn’t known for her willingness to ask for help, but she was in the dark, literally and figuratively. She didn’t want Abby to suffer because she was too arrogant to call and ask for assistance.
“What do you need?” Just like that, Lisel had her back, without hesitation, without reservation.
“Is there anyone we can trust on the West Coast? Someone local?”
“Is the candidate a positive?”
Evan hesitated, unsure of how much to share. She didn’t want to put Lisel in danger by breaking protocol and divulging information meant only for the Council of Elders.
“Something is happening that I’ve never before… And after what happened to Jaqueline…”
“That wasn’t your fault. Evan, listen to me—”
“It was my fault.” Evan swallowed the lump in her throat. She coughed, but she was sure she hadn’t fooled Lisel.
“Don’t take any chances. I’m going to reach out to someone I know in LA. What’s the number where you are? Give me a few hours.”
“Do you have a pen?”
Evan gave Lisel the number for the pay phone. She didn’t know what was going on with the Council, but she’d failed to trust her gut the night of Jaqueline’s death, and she wasn’t taking chances this time. If she was wrong she was wrong and she’d deal with the fallout from her breach in protocol later, when she knew Abby was no longer in danger.
Evan crossed the street to her pickup promising herself that this time everything would be different.
***
Abby was feeling great appreciation for Cora’s thoughtfulness. Cora had the night off but left dinner in a casserole dish on the stove. It was still warm to the touch when they arrived in the kitchen. She reached for dishes and served Foster and then herself. It was some sort of chicken and rice casserole with carrots and mushrooms. Was this dish exceptionally good, or was she simply famished? It was hard to know. Abby finished the first serving and went back for seconds.
“Would you like more?” She glanced over her shoulder from the stove.
“No, I’m good.” Foster had barely eaten half of what Abby had heaped onto her plate.
“Why am I so hungry?” Abby didn’t really expect an answer. She was musing out loud, to no one in particular. She felt so strange. Was she having some sort of out-of-body experience?
“You seem…different.” Foster looked a little pale.
“Are you okay?” Abby stopped eating, fork midair.
“I’m okay, but are you okay?” Foster swept her fingers through her hair. “I mean, that thing in the graveyard…and right now there’s a pentagram drawn in salt on the floor in your bedroom…and…Evan bullied me into doing some chanting thing, for God only knows what purpose…and…” The words tumbled out. “…and, no, I’m not okay.”
Abby settled her fork at the edge of her plate. She was just about to offer some reassurance but stopped herself. Someone was coming. How did she know that?
The back door near the kitchen opened and closed. A moment later, Evan presented herself at the end of the table. No one spoke.
“Would you like something to eat?” Abby finally broke the awkward silence.
“Yeah, food isn’t a bad idea.” Evan shrugged out of her jacket. Abby handed her a serving of Cora’s casserole.
“Where did you go?” Foster had pushed her plate aside without finishing it.
“I had to make a phone call.” Evan took three huge forkfuls.
“We have phones in the house.” Abby was confused.
“I had to make the call from a public phone, in town, so
that it couldn’t be traced back here.”
“Well, if someone did trace a call to Spencer’s Cove it wouldn’t take much detective work to end up here—”
“Thank you for that newsflash.” Evan glared at Foster.
“Listen, I don’t know who you really are, but you need to start sharing…and I mean, right now.” Foster turned in her chair and jabbed a finger in the air in Evan’s direction. “Who are you?”
“Evan is the groundskeeper.” Abby felt as if she’d missed the first act of a play.
“If she’s a gardener then I’m the Pope.” Foster snorted.
The muscle in Evan’s jaw tightened.
“The all-American jock here just happens to show up two weeks ago. And did you notice how she didn’t seem surprised by the lightshow in the cemetery?” Foster paused. “And, oh yeah, there was that whole protection spell thing upstairs. So, as someone who is concerned for Abby’s safety, I’m asking again…who the hell are you?”
Evan scowled at Foster. She’d inhaled half the serving on her plate while hardly looking up, but now she’d stopped eating and frowned at Foster. Evan slowly, deliberately, wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin. She pushed aside her half-eaten food and leaned forward on her elbows at the edge of the table.
“I’m a lieutenant. A member of the protectorate.”
“What’s the protectorate?” Foster pressed Evan for more.
Abby sat in shocked silence, looking back and forth between Foster and Evan.
“We provide security and protection for the Council of Elders.” Evan was so calm, as if she was completely unaware that what she was saying sounded insane. She rolled up the sleeves of her shirt to reveal tattoos on her forearms. When she pressed her forearms together the two halves combined to create a single image.
“Is that a triquetra?” Abby recognized the design, a trinity knot. It was a symbol used in ancient times by the Celts.
“You know your pagan symbols.” Evan quirked an eyebrow as if she hadn’t expected her to know a trinity symbol from an Eastern Orthodox cross. “Anyway, the elders used to go by Coven of Elders, but coven is such a loaded word these days. So they abandoned that nomenclature a couple hundred years ago.”
“Wait a minute.” Abby’s pulse increased. “Are you saying coven, as in, witches?”
Evan didn’t answer her, but the look on her face told Abby yes.
“I feel like I just stumbled into a bad episode of Charmed.” Foster folded her arms across her chest. “There’s more to this story, and I need to hear it.” She sounded like she was cross-examining a witness in a capital case.
“I came here to verify a candidate.”
“Verify a candidate for whom?” Foster’s interrogation continued.
“I already told you, the Council of Elders.”
“And once you verify the candidate, who I assume is Abby…” Foster swung her arm in Abby’s direction. “Then what?”
“Should that candidate turn out to be a true positive, then I was to alert the Council of the need for an extraction.”
“You’d take Abby somewhere against her will?”
“No, it’s not like that…I’d planned to inform her about the ritual.” Evan was becoming agitated. “Listen, it’s not safe for a candidate to transition without the support and oversight of an elder witch, preferably more than one.”
“I’ll bet.” Foster leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I don’t like it.”
“There’s nothing for you to like or not like. This isn’t open for negotiation.”
“Who are you to tell us—”
“Hey, there is no us.” Evan was definitely getting angry. “You just got here, Jethro. You have no idea what’s really going on.”
“I’m a candidate?” They’d been talking over Abby as if she wasn’t even in the room. She swallowed a lump rising in her throat from the anxiety that had been oddly missing until about three minutes ago.
“Not any longer.” Evan’s tone softened as she turned to Abby. “I’ve never seen anything like what I saw today. The transmutation has already begun. You’re no longer a candidate, you’re the real thing.”
“You’re saying…you’re saying Abby is a witch?” Foster took a deep breath to calm down.
“And you’re a keeper…I think.” Evan looked at Foster. “Unfortunately.” She murmured the last comment so that Abby wasn’t sure Foster heard it.
“A keeper… Yeah, that’s what my Mama used to say.” Foster laughed at her own joke. “Wait…what?”
“There are certain people, through history, that are bound to witches. They are called soul keepers, because they are…well…the keeper of souls. Specifically, the soul of the witch they are bound to. They become their bonded witch’s tether to this world.” Evan took a sip of water, never breaking eye contact with Foster.
“As opposed to what? Now you’re telling me there’s another world?” Foster scowled at Evan.
“More of an alternative reality…it’s difficult to explain…”
“Okay, we’ll come back to that.” Foster pinched the bridge of her nose, pushing her glasses up on her forehead. “About the other part. You’re saying I’m Abby’s keeper? We just met…I only just arrived like a day ago.”
“It has nothing to do with time. That event in the graveyard…”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t be completely certain, because I’ve never witnessed one in person, but I believe that was a binding.”
“Stop talking, both of you.” Abby covered her face, then dropped her hands, and shook her head. “You can’t be serious.” She looked at Evan.
“I’m deadly serious.”
Abby couldn’t listen any longer. The anxiety was becoming tension, and the tension was climbing the back of her neck. Her head was beginning to throb.
“I can’t talk about this any longer.” She gave each of them a fleeting glance before she left the room.
She climbed the stairs and collapsed on her bed just as the raging noise of the storm inside her head began to crescendo.
Chapter Twelve
Foster drank several gulps of water, never taking her eyes off Evan. They sat staring at each other across the table.
“You should stay with her tonight.” Evan’s words sounded like a command.
“I’m in the house—”
“In her room.” Evan shifted, leaning back in her chair.
“Look, I don’t take kindly to getting bullied and bossed around by some jock gardener I’m not even sure I trust.”
Evan ignored the jab.
“If you are her keeper, and I’m pretty sure you are, then you can’t leave her alone. Especially not right now.”
“Why? What’s happening to her? What did you call it…a transmutation?”
“Abby is experiencing an alchemical transmutation. Basically, the energy she is about to inherit is transforming her from a raw state to a higher state of being.”
“I still don’t know what that means.”
“Abby turns thirty in two days. At nine o’clock p.m., on her birthday, she will inherit the powers that will make her a witch. Think of it as an ascension. She’s been having symptoms for weeks, probably months…headaches, dreams, visions, paranormal episodes, and now, big electrical surges.”
“Wait, why such a specific time?”
“Because according to birth records, Abby was born at nine p.m.”
“I just don’t know if I believe all of this.” Foster couldn’t explain what happened in the cemetery, but even still, that didn’t equate to Abby being a witch.
“The truth is the truth whether you believe it or not.” Evan scraped remnants of food into the compost bin on the counter and put her dish in the sink. She turned and leaned against the edge of the counter, facing Foster. “You either work with me on this or you don’t. But you can’t stop what’s happening, and I’m not going to allow your disbelief to put Abby in harm’s way.”
“Who did you call? When you
left earlier, who did you call?”
“I told you. I’ve been making regular reports to the Council on the East Coast.”
“So, now they’re going to come out here and help Abby through this?”
Evan hesitated.
The hesitation bothered Foster. What was Evan not saying?
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.” Evan sank her hands in her pockets. “Yes, the Council will be here to help.”
Evan’s response didn’t instill confidence. Something nagged at Foster.
“But you’re not confident about that.” It wasn’t a question. She could read the doubt in Evan’s expression.
“I’m not usually in the field, so what do I know?”
Evan was obviously holding something back.
“Look, if we’re in this…if I’m in this with you…and you care at all about Abby, then you owe it to both of us to be honest.” Foster tempered her frustration. A confrontational tactic was just going to make Evan angry again.
“Something doesn’t feel right.” Evan exhaled and studied the floor before looking back up. “I did call the Council tonight, but I also called a friend for some backup. I want us to be prepared for whatever is coming.”
Foster covered her face with her hands for a minute and then swept her fingers briskly through her hair a couple of times. This was a lot of information and she needed time to thread it all together. Evan was being honest so it was her turn to share.
“I did uncover a connection between Abby and Mercy Howe, who was hanged for witchcraft in Salem in the 1600s.” Foster ran her fingertip across a divot in the wooden tabletop, not making eye contact with Evan. “And Abby’s great-great-grandmother was also named Mercy. That seemed like an odd coincidence.”
“And every heir since Mercy has been male, until now.”
Foster looked up, meeting Evan’s intense gaze. She felt as if they were coming to some sort of understanding, some sort of truce. Maybe they were, for Abby’s sake.
“Mercy’s line was missing, dormant, until now. The bloodline branches off in multiple directions. There are others in the field, like me, investigating candidates. Looking for signs, looking for positives… But clearly, Abby is the one.” Evan looked at the clock near the stove. “It’s getting late, and you really shouldn’t leave her alone. I’ll stay in the house tonight too. I think the room next to hers has a bed.”
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