It seemed all roads led to the Sylvans. Kennedy didn’t want to travel back into the city, but the only way to find out what was going on might be to confront the Elves of Boston Common. She had no other leads. All but one of her coven had gone missing in action, and that one had been locked into a cauldron. Kennedy had never felt so alone. Her only lead now was to enter the den of those who seemed to be after her.
She turned the Elven-crafted collar over in her hands once more. In her mind, she could think of no better way to implicate the Elves than use their magic to attack the witches. It reminded her of the video that showed Kennedy casting into the general population when she worked so hard not to show any display of magic. Perhaps she jumped to the conclusion someone wanted her to reach. As far as she could see, she had little choice. Marylynn told her to protect a man who disappeared. Chances were better than average the Elves had picked him up off the street, and now they held Tom, Trinity, and Dani. She stuffed the control collar into her pocket. It would be needed as evidence when and if she reached the court. Problem was the court was protected behind the veil that hid the Elves. Kennedy had little choice now.
The Sylvans started this war. Now it was time to take the fight to them and discover their end game… if they even had one. Elves were too hard to understand. The Seelie Court was even more inscrutable. Kennedy needed to try. She needed answers, and it seemed the only place she had a chance to find any was Boston Common and beyond the veil.
This time, she planned on walking to Boston Commons. With her enchanted high-tops she could take the high road and never be seen breaking the laws… of physics. With her shoes and taking the rooftops, she should be able to make the run in under thirty minutes.
The way the snow was coming down, it might take hours for a mundane car to reach downtown. Kennedy had yet to see a single piece of snow removal equipment pass by. Boston was never the most efficient city government around, but one thing they normally did a pretty good job of was removing the snow. Even if this storm came from nowhere, the city’s reaction seemed strangely lacking.
All things are connected. Marylynn’s words rattled around in her head. She could see how the snow and the other strange events of the night might be connected, but right now, she didn’t need to understand everything.
She needed to free Marylynn and find Trinity and Dani.
Chapter 8:
Traveling over the flat roofs of the three-story homes that had been divided into apartments made travel through the city of Somerville easier for Kennedy. The warm roofs made the snow thinner than on the streets, if icy in spots. Here, jumps over the cross streets would be hard to explain. Thankfully, she doubted anyone would be clearing the snow off the roofs anytime soon to find her footprints. If they did, she was sure the norms would think of some logical explanation for Kennedy’s trail.
She never slowed down, that is until she passed a pigeon coop and a voice called out to her, “Witch, stop.”
On a crowded street, she might have ignored the shout as some strange person yelling at another, but the circumstances of being on a roof in a near-blizzard with a child’s voice calling her witch was strange even in Kennedy’s world. She forced herself to skid to a stop before jumping to the next roof.
The blue flame leaped to her fingertips as she crept back to inspect the pigeon coop. “Who’s there?” she whispered. Since there was no ambush, Kennedy was uncertain. Her gut told her to attack first and ask questions later, but her training required her to keep the use of magic limited to emergencies, like being attacked by a Lycan in the woods.
It was so much easier to blast first and ask questions later. In that regards, she thought the Succubi had a better grip on the realities of life.
“I have a message for you.” The voice was strange. Definitely not an enchanted bird. This was something different.
Kennedy peeked under the tin roof of the abandoned coop. There, inside, she found something completely unexpected. The size of a child, in a tattered mildewed dress. Most of the hair had been pulled from the cracked head of the creepy porcelain doll.
“Why should I trust you?” She knew it was only an enchanted object, not unlike the mouth that spoke to them outside the Ogre bar, but the missing eye and the cracked face made her hair stand on end and palms damp.
The doll continued its program. “You need to find Tituba… In the alley.”
“You know she died over three hundred years ago?” Kennedy knew the original Tituba when she was very young.
“And no… not the original one… There is a child, a new one… You must find her.”
“Is there any more information?”
“You will find her among the human outcasts.” Kennedy realized why she was suffering from such an uneasy feeling while listening to the animated doll. She didn’t recognize the spell, nor could she catch a whiff of the magic being used to bring the doll to life. “Follow Spruce Street.”
Before Kennedy asked another question, the doll slumped to the floor in a heap.
“Creepy ass doll.” She nearly set it ablaze with the spell she used for light but instead decided to leave it. One day, it might prove useful, but she didn’t want to lug the thing over the roofs of the city. She pulled out her phone and dropped a pin on her map app. Being a witch was so much easier and harder with the advent of technology.
“Soon, the norms will be learning witchcraft.” She chuckled to herself as she bent down and inspected the creepy doll. She expected to find some animatronics making the doll come to life, like a possessed teddy bear. She only found an antique doll, porcelain head, and what seemed like a cloth body. She found no hidden electronics. The discovery made her stomach turn. This was something completely different from what she had learned in her three centuries of studying witchcraft.
As much as she wanted to reach the Boston Common Sylvans, she knew this needed to be investigated. Marylynn told her that all things might be connected. The Elves would need to wait.
She did a quick search of her map, and the app refreshed her memory: Spruce Street was tiny. She should be able to find this fake Tituba quick enough. The smell of magic should help.
The snow fell heavier than she’d seen for many years. The warming winters had made Boston warmer, just not warm enough for Kennedy.
She bounded off the roof, jumping over the two-lane street below, and picked her way to the Charles River damn and the Science Center. The cover provided by the buildings should make crossing the river safer than a stroll over the Longfellow Bridge.
Reaching the river, she stopped and scanned the surrounding sights. The cables of the Lenny Zakim Bridge were barely visible through the snow. If Kennedy wanted to lay a trap for someone sneaking into Boston, the river crossings would be the place she’d set watches.
She spotted nothing and smelled nothing but humans, and only a few of them. It looked safe. She started off slow, keeping her body low to offer as small of a target as possible. Unfortunately, out in the open like this, she not only needed to worry about magic, but mundane weapons could kill just as efficiently as a blast of fire. A bullet could kill her as quickly, perhaps quicker, than most spells. If she had a warning, she might throw up a shield that might slow or deflect a shot, but… nothing was ever certain when technology and magic interacted.
Kennedy was tired of passing through life trapped in a child’s body, but she was not so exhausted with living to want to die. She liked life and wanted to keep hers continuing, even if trapped in a prepubescent form.
The fates still traveled with her. No bullet or blast of magic took her out while she passed over the buildings that sat on top of the dam. She was officially in Boston, even if the city on both sides of the river looked pretty much the same.
The expensive brownstones lining the Charles would have made travel easier, their constantly repeated height made travel quicker. Like a hop, skip, and a jump between buildings. Unfortunately, she was nowhere near them. Instead, she needed to work her way over the chaotic
structures that made up the hospital complex just over the river. Kennedy didn’t slow to consider the magic that went on in those buildings every day.
She reached Spruce Street, and all she smelled was normal. “Shit,” she cursed under her breath.
She wanted to shout Tituba’s name, but rather than risk the overt style of searching, she went a different route. She pulled the ball of twine from her pocket and whispered, “Tituba.” The twine did something completely unexpected. Rather than turn into a bat, it created an arrow-shaped pointer.
Kennedy had never seen anything like that… ever. She turned to her right, and the pointer shifted by reshaping itself. “Stranger and stranger.”
She had little choice but to follow the arrow. If this Tituba had important information, Kennedy needed it before she confronted the Elves.
It only took a few steps down Spruce Street until the arrow shifted to point at a dark building. The doors and windows of the first floor were boarded up. This was becoming stranger by the second. She stood in a section of Boston known for expensive homes that lined the streets. A deserted building on fancy Beacon Hill was unheard of. Yet here she stood in front of a gothic monstrosity she had never noticed before.
There was no reason to find this building on a small dead-end cobbled lane off an out of the way cross street in the center of the city. The surrounding buildings dwarfed the three-story structure surrounded by leafless trees.
She used the magic of her shoes to reach the top landing of the fire escape in a single jump. From a quick inspection, she found the rooms beyond the window empty and dark. The arrow made of twine pointed inside the building.
With a snap of her fingers, the latch turned. It took some effort, but she forced the painted-closed double-hung window open and slipped inside the building.
The room she entered was empty, but a hall offered more to explore. Her head darted into the hall, expecting something to jump out of the dark at every turn. Spooky abandoned homes were the stuff of nightmares and scary stories for a reason.
All she found was the glow of candlelight coming from down the hall on the opposite side of the house.
Kennedy announced herself before entering the room. “I was sent by a doll…” A strange scent drifted past her nose. Someone was right around the corner. “I hope you expected me.”
“I had a friend send the message. I hope you don’t mind.” The voice was that of a child.
Kennedy stepped into the doorway, and she found the shape of a child under a black lace veil.
“Are you Tituba?” Kennedy asked, shocked to be summoned to this bizarre place by a normal child.
“Yes, I am told I am your opposite. I had to meet you to confirm the rumors.” She reached out a hand that was pale, old, and wrinkled, like an ancient woman’s.
“I must admit you have me at a disadvantage. I never heard of you until tonight.” Kennedy took the chance and touched the frail hand, shaking it slowly to not break anything.
“There is no reason for you to hear of me. I don’t have powers like you. Technically, I am powerless. My friends have all the power.” She took her hand back and pulled the veil from over her head.
Kennedy didn’t understand who, or what, sat in front of her on the floor. The body of a child with stringy hair, a wrinkled body like an old woman, and a head too large for the frame it sat on top of. “I don’t understand. You are a norm, and yet there is something about you.” This was a type of human the witch had never encountered.
“We are more alike than you think.”
“I believe we are nothing alike.”
“I disagree. We have both been kept from growing old.”
Kennedy watched as the old woman continued to speak.
“Like I said, I am your opposite. You are an old woman trapped in a child’s body. I am a child trapped in an old woman’s body. You can bend magic to your will. I can’t, but I have many friends that help me.”
“Then how did you send the message?” Kennedy asked.
The door slammed behind her, causing her to jump. “I have friends in dead places… They did it for me.”
“Necromancy?” Kennedy fought hard to not spit the words from her mouth.
“Not really… I call it more of a curse than your gift of magic. Not to sound too trite. I can see dead people, and they are my friends.”
Kennedy felt a sudden chill in the air like a hand passed through her chest. She knew spirits could be called upon to grant boons, even perform tasks, but that type of magic was frowned upon by Marylynn and her coven. They tended to focus on life-giving magic not dealing with death. “Your gift makes you look… old?” Kennedy felt a sudden urge to sit. “Are we alone?”
Tituba shook her head. “My friends surround us.” There was little the eyes could do to hide the sadness. “I’m not sure. I have been like this for my whole life. Odds are I will die long before they can cure me. I am alone in this world. If my friends didn’t help keep me alive, I would have died on the streets years ago.”
“Tituba… how old are you?”
“I am nearly old enough to drink. I will be twenty-one this summer.”
“And yet you look…”
“Eighty?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Tituba nodded. “Yeah, it sucks, doesn’t it? All kinds of bad luck.” Her body was wracked by a coughing fit. She placed a white kerchief over her mouth. The coughing subsided; she pulled the white cloth away to find a splattering of red on it. “Last I heard, fewer than two hundred people in the whole world have this sickness. How unlucky can one person be?”
Kennedy didn’t know… “I’m sorry to hear all of this. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m fairly pressed for time. Why did you call me here?”
“Fair enough, I know where to find sympathy. I had an important reason to call you here. I needed to deliver a message from Roger Toothaker.”
“No effing way… from what date?”
“I believe he would be a contemporary of your mother. He asked for you specifically by name. His manner of speech is from that period.”
Kennedy couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d been hit in the face with a bag full of cattle prods. “What was his message?”
Tituba closed her eyes and recited the words, “If ‘t be true, charm is to returneth, the hags wilt riseth to the nonce.” The young woman with the old face opened her eyes. “Do you know what it means?”
Fortunately, Kennedy knew what it meant and translated it for Tituba. “If magic is to return, the witches must rise to the occasion.” Kennedy hated getting a cryptic message from someone who died before she was born. And why her? “You have got to be kidding me. Is there more?”
“I am sorry, that is all.”
Kennedy forced herself to not grit her teeth. “That isn’t much of a message. Thin and vague.”
Tituba lowered her eyes, her voice thin as she spoke. “I can speak with the dead. Often, I don’t know what they are trying to say or even what language they speak.”
Kennedy moved closer and sat cross-legged in front of the girl. “That has to be hard.”
“Yeah, Google Translate doesn’t work with the dead. Who is the guy, and why is he dressed so old and talking so funny?”
“He was a man wrongly accused of witchcraft in the late 1600s. Back then, they talked funny…” Kennedy didn’t add that she felt the current population spoke even stranger, their words filled with acronyms and strange emojis. The only thing she was certain of was the changes she knew would happen all around her. “You say you are surrounded by ghosts… Do they know what is going on?”
“They haven’t said anything to me about it… Most spirits that remain on earth are like broken records, they simply replay the same thoughts over and over… like Mister Toothaker. A few I can control and have them do small things for me, like the doll on the roof. An even smaller few are more like my friends. They help me survive.”
Kennedy tilted her head. “
Think your friends can ask around and find out what is going on with the Sylvan races? Why they are on a rampage?” Tituba looked up from the floor. Dark circles had developed under her eyes. Kennedy thought she looked exhausted. “If it isn’t too hard for you.”
“I can try. I need to rest. I will send my friends out.” The young girl in an old woman’s body waved her hand, and a stiff wind blew through the room, nearly blowing out the single candle she used for light and warmth.
Kennedy stood and backstepped towards the door. She never cared for messing with the dead. “I hate to run, but I need to check on the safety of some friends… I will come back as soon as I can.”
“Don’t forget what Toothaker said. It must be important for him to make such a fuss about it over that long of a time.”
You have no idea. “I won’t forget.” Kennedy tried the knob and found the door opened with ease. No ghosts held her captive. It was easy to retrace her steps to the window and fire escape.
Outside, the snow still fell. The air smelled sweeter. Inside the room there had been the oppressive stench of death on everything. That building was a strange sort of purgatory. If the structure housed the dead, there was a good reason it sat abandoned. No sane living person would want to live there.
Kennedy didn’t know what to make of Tituba and the cryptic message from the past. It pained her heart greatly. The message seemed to lend credence to the theory that Roger Toothaker was responsible for the curse on the new world. Kennedy never wanted to believe the lack of action on the part of her forebears brought such great shame on the new world’s magical community. However, with this message from the past, it seemed to imply that was the case. The curse was all the witches’ fault.
The dead were just as bad as the living. Never saying what they thought or using direct logical language. Life would be so much easier if there weren’t so many secrets.
Kennedy Awakens Page 7