"Are you up for this?" she asked, not for the first time.
He glanced at her. His blue eyes glittered. She hoped their baby inherited his eyes.
"Yes," he assured her. "I want to take you. It's time."
He got off the freeway and they drove through the meandering countryside. In January, it was hardly a sight to behold. Only a dusting of snow coated the frozen Ohio ground. The gray sky and barren trees made Abby shiver and snuggle closer to Sebastian.
They passed a small concrete sign perched on the roadside. It welcomed them to Grimville, Ohio.
"So you grew up here?" Abby asked, scanning the buildings as they passed through the little town. "It's pretty charming."
Shop windows still held Christmas displays with fake snow and strings of garland. Red and white striped light poles lined the sidewalk.
"Yep, had my first kiss in that movie theater."
Abby looked at the marquee, unlit in the day.
"They're showing a football game?"
Sebastian laughed.
"It's a unique place. They show sports games, political discussions and obviously movies."
"What movie were you watching during your first kiss?"
"Donnie Darko," he admitted.
"Kind of creepy for a first kiss," Abby teased.
He laughed.
"Yep. Lilly Hanes thought so too, so creepy that she kissed me rather than look at the screen."
"Oh my, sounds very romantic."
"Tell me about your first kiss."
Abby blushed, remembering.
"Jay Stine in my friend Kim's bathroom on her fourteenth birthday. It was a dare."
"A dare? Now that's really romantic!"
She laughed and returned her gaze to the window.
"Interesting shops," she noted. They drove past The Apothecary, Merlin's Metaphysical Wares and a bookstore called The Ember Goddess.
"Part of the reason my mom agreed to live here," Sebastian told her, smiling. "I was born in Detroit. My dad brokered mortgages and my mom was a social worker. After I came along, they stayed a couple more years. They wanted me to have a real life, not the rose-colored glasses of middle-class suburbia, but then a kid got shot down the street. So they packed up and moved to Grimville, Ohio."
"Detroit? I didn't know that."
"I barely remember. I was two when we moved here. All of my memories are here."
"Why Grimville?"
"My mom hated the name, but my dad found a great deal on a really unique house. It had an artist's studio. My mom loved to paint. If they moved here, she could work as an artist. They could live on his income. They wanted another baby so it made sense."
"How do you know all this?" Abby had little insider information on her parents' lives before she came along.
He looked at her curiously.
"Really? Didn't your parents ever tell you how they met? All the details of life before Abby?"
She shook her head.
"You met my mom—not exactly forthcoming."
"My parents loved to talk about their memories. My mom had stacks of scrapbooks. They took road trips, they backpacked around Europe, they lived a lifetime before Claire and I showed up. Honestly, I loved the stories. Instead of tucking me in with tales of the three bears, I heard about my dad proposing on the subway, in New York City, in a car so packed that when he tried to get on one knee, he ended up sitting on some old guy's lap."
"That's amazing," Abby laughed, "and terrible. Couldn't he wait until they got off?"
"That's what my mom always said, but my dad insisted that he just knew it had to be that moment and if he let it pass they were destined for tragedy. Seems ironic now."
Abby's smile fell and she reached her arms awkwardly around Sebastian for a hug.
"I'm sorry you lost them."
"Me too. I wish you could have met them."
They drove in silence and then Sebastian turned down a wooded driveway. They came upon a large brick house. A glass-walled building sat off to the right.
"Does anyone live here?"
"No. A friend of mine from high school is a real estate agent, and I asked him to let me know if it ever came back on the market. About a year after Claire died, the people who bought it moved to Florida. So here it sits."
They got out of the car and walked to the door. Turquoise pots holding browned flowers squatted on the front stoop. Sebastian punched a code into the lockbox and a key dropped out.
"My friend gave me the code. I told him that I was thinking about buying it again."
"Are you?" she asked, surprised.
He shook his head.
"There's nothing left for me here. My life is with you now." He wrapped his arms around her and she pressed closer to the warmth of his breath.
She felt him gathering courage to step across the threshold.
They walked into a bright foyer. Blond wood floors and white walls greeted them.
"It's different. My mom hated white walls. Too boring. The entryway used to be orange—creamsicle, she called it."
They moved through the house. Sebastian pointed out rooms and their previous colors. He showed her the jagged scratches on the bathroom wall where his dad marked his and Claire's growing height. He took her to his old room, empty of furniture and also painted white. Abby tried to imagine the New York skyline his mother had painted on the wall and the hammock that he had strung from the corners of the ceiling.
"One of my friends called our house the Twilight Zone. It was pretty eccentric."
"Why did you sell it?"
Sebastian stepped into the master bedroom and sighed, as though disappointed that no evidence of his parents remained.
"Because they were gone. We didn't need the money. They both had life insurance, but living here, we couldn't seem to move on. I really felt it with Claire. She'd walk in the door after school, all bubbly and excited, and the minute she stepped foot in the house, she lost something. It was like she deflated. Sometimes I would wake up at night and she would be wandering around touching the walls and the furniture. My mom created this place. You can't see it now, but before, she was everywhere."
Abby walked to the window that looked out over the backyard. She saw evidence of a garden. She pressed her hand on the window frame and felt the energy left behind. Love stolen at its peak.
They ended their tour in Claire's room.
"My mom called the paint color Lemon and my dad said it was Unmellow Yellow."
Abby laughed.
"You're inspiring me to paint when we get home."
"Claire added her own touches. She painted flowers on that wall over there. She loved comic books and pasted pictures of the X-Men all over her ceiling. Her room was like something out of Willa Wonka's Chocolate Factory meets Alice in Wonderland."
They left Sebastian's childhood home and drove to a little cemetery on the edge of town. A frozen stream cut through the hillside. He parked in front of three gravestones.
"They didn't leave instructions," he told her, as if apologizing. "My grandmother on my dad's side made the arrangements. Looking back, I wish I hadn't let her. My parents wouldn't want this." He gestured to the blocky stone structures. Jared Hull, Julia Hull and Claire Hull—all in a sad little row. No flowers adorned the frozen ground in front of their gravestones.
"Where is your grandmother?"
"Florida. We were never close. My dad's parents were pretty distant. They moved south when I was young and our contact included Christmas and birthday cards. I loved my mom's mom. She was friends with your Grandma Arlene, but she died when I was ten."
"My grandparents died when I was young too."
"Death seems to be the only thing we know for sure," Sebastian murmured. He opened the car door and stepped out.
He walked to the headstones and squatted in front of Claire's grave, pressing his hands against the stone face. Abby walked behind him, but gave him space. After several minutes he stood up.
"One more stop on this de
pressing tour," he told her.
"Hey." She put her hands on his shoulders. "I want to be here. There's nothing depressing about seeing where you come from."
He sighed and nodded.
"Maybe it's just depressing for me."
They drove to a storage unit. Abby waited in the car while Sebastian ran in and grabbed a plastic tote.
"What did you get?" Abby asked, when he returned.
"Mostly photo albums."
"And women's clothes?" Abby could see a red dress speckled with little yellow moons.
"I used it to wrap some frames so that the glass didn't break."
It was a logical explanation, but Abby studied Sebastian as he drove away. His tone implied another motive for taking the clothing. She didn't have a clue what that could be and didn't want to press the subject. When it came to Claire, Sebastian was touchy.
Chapter 17
"Anything related to the map?" Faustine asked. He used the mouse to click the file marked Important. He pulled up each document.
"Finally a way to read that doesn't cause an instant migraine," Helena said, scanning the enlarged script.
"Nothing in the box," Julian said. "But it's still scanning."
Faustine opened the map on the screen.
"That looks like Abby and Sebastian's property," Oliver said suddenly, walking closer. "I recognize the shape of the shoreline."
"I admit that was my first thought when Julian showed us the map," Faustine confessed.
"So a body was buried on their property?" Helena asked to no one in particular.
"It seems so," Faustine said. "Though perhaps we're looking at a planned dump site for a body."
"And it's possible that it was an animal's body," Julian cut in. "How do we know this isn't a hunter's map?"
"Why did it get sorted into the Important file?" Elda asked. "It doesn't have any of the keywords that Victor specified."
"That is strange," Julian agreed. "How do we contact him?"
"We have cell phones, but they never work here at Ula. I gave him a shell. We may be able to reach him through that."
"I'll try," Helena said. She left the library to retrieve a shell.
"I should go there," Oliver said. "Right now."
"Abby and Sebastian are gone, love," Helena told him kindly. "Remember they took a trip to Sebastian's hometown."
Oliver frowned, but didn't say more.
"He used magic," Julian continued. "So his intention must have been made known and the program is sorting according to that intention, beyond simply the words he specified."
"Which is even more valuable to us," Elda concluded. "Did you and Helena find anything else notable?"
"We hadn't made much progress when I found the map."
"It pertains," Faustine remarked. "There's no other explanation. This map is related to the curse and if it depicts Abby and Sebastian's house, then they found that location for a reason."
"Perhaps they were led there."
"Exactly."
****
Lydie sat in the floating garden. Despite the blistery cold of the day, the garden remained warm year-round . The temperature ranged between seventy-two and seventy-five degrees. Centuries ago, the witches of Ula had created the flower sanctuary, shielding it from the elements. The only caveat was walking to the garden from the castle. Fighting through drifts of snow that she couldn't melt fast enough with bursts of fire left her sodden and chilled when she finally reached the garden.
Though it was invisible to the eye, an energy dome surrounded the flowers and trees, blocking the garden from wind, rain and, of course, evil. As new witches arrived at Ula, they added their own special magic to the space. After Lydie's parents died, she planted a lemon tree in the garden. Fortunately, everything grew in the magic garden. Michigan was generally not an ideal place for lemon trees, but Lydie's mother had grown them at home as well. As an earth element, Lydie's mother had a special talent for coaxing the roots deeper and helping them to draw the nutrients they needed from the soil. Her father, a fire element like Lydie, enchanted the air around the trees to ensure they always had sunlight.
She pulled out her battered copy of The Thornbirds and folded her coat beneath her head. She had read the book before, several times in fact, and loved Meggie. She saw herself in Meggie, though her own family had died and she had no great love. Someday, though. Someday she wanted what Abby and Sebastian had. She wanted a love and a life separate from the coven, far away from the evil that pursued witches.
****
Sebastian woke in the shed. The darkness and cold startled him and he looked around desperately before he got his bearings. He stood and braced his hands on the workbench. Feeling along the wall, he found the light switch and flicked it on. The desk was scattered with pictures of Claire. When had he retrieved them from the tote he brought home?
He had tucked the tote into a downstairs closet, unopened. Abby insisted that she wanted to go through them with him so that they she could learn more about his sister.
He picked up a photo of Claire. She sat cross-legged in front of the scanty Charlie Brown Christmas tree they had chosen for their first Christmas after their parents' deaths. She wore a green sweatshirt, with a picture of a grinning reindeer, and black sweatpants. Sebastian knew that he wore a matching sweatshirt behind the camera lens. He bought them as a joke to cheer Claire up. She begrudgingly wore hers on Christmas morning. He remembered the catatonic way she opened her presents and ate the banana French toast that he cooked. He remembered thinking that he might not be able to handle it. He too grieved the loss of their parents, and he couldn't believe that Claire was his responsibility. He was terrified that he would fail her.
"And I did," he told the room.
He glanced at the other pictures, but did not sift through them.
"You could bring her back," he said out loud and then looked up, startled. His own reflection stared back at him in the shed window. Why had he said that? Of course, he couldn't bring her back.
A memory stirred in his mind. He stared at the scattering of pictures and willed it to come back.
Someone had told him that Claire could come back. That magic could return her to life.
"She's been in the ground more than two years. There's nothing left to bring back."
He spoke, but the memory continued to plague him. Elements and particles and cells. With enough power the body could just rematerialize. It wasn't easy, but it could be done. Who had told him that? One of the witches of Ula? Julian? No. It wasn't their kind of magic. There was a lot of magic in the world. Some called it dark, but those were just words. Once upon a time, the earth was flat and people were segregated by color. To a Catholic the pagans were heathens. To the pagans, the Catholics were out of touch with the natural world. Good magic versus bad magic. Who made the call? Who decided that one was right and the other wrong?
Even as the thoughts swirled in his mind, he struggled to separate his own ideas from those that seemed to belong to another. Had someone messed with his head? Several times now, he had woken in the shed with no memory of getting there. He needed to know what was happening, but dared not tell Abby.
He shuffled the pictures together and tucked them in a drawer in the workbench . He didn't want Abby worried that his obsession with Claire had returned. With the pregnancy and all of the other drama in their lives, she didn't need to worry about him as well.
****
Abby heard knocking, but it sounded far away. She lay curled on the living room floor, in a heap of blankets that she had been folding fresh from the dryer. Suddenly tired, she had crawled into the center and fallen asleep.
"Sebastian?" she called meekly, hoping he might answer the door. She remembered that he had left to buy steaks for dinner. He must not have come home yet.
She fumbled out of the blankets and walked, drowsy, to the door. Elda and Helena stood on the stoop. They both wore heavy wool cloaks.
"Hello, lovely girl," Helena said, pulling A
bby into a hug.
"Oh hi, wow, I didn't know you were coming," Abby stammered. "Come in."
She moved into the house and Helena and Elda followed. They took off their snow boots and cloaks and hung them on the coat rack before following Abby into the kitchen.
"Can I make you some tea or coffee?" Abby asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"No, no, you sit," Helena murmured, guiding Abby to a chair.
"Julian joined us as well. At Faustine's urging, he is going to work with Sebastian today."
Elda glanced around the room as if looking for Sebastian.
"He went into town for steaks," Abby told her. "He's a foodie. Everything has to be fresh. I swear he goes to the grocery store every day."
"He's finding his groove," Helena said, smiling. "That's wonderful for you both."
Elda watched Abby with interest.
"You know, don't you?" Abby asked, seeing the knowledge in Elda's face.
She nodded.
"We didn't want to invade your privacy, Abby," Elda assured her. "Galla sensed your pregnancy and she confided to me."
Abby looked down, suddenly embarrassed.
"I hadn't intended to hide it," she confessed. "But when I realized..."
"Have some tea, honey." Helena placed a mug of hot cinnamon tea in front of Abby and then prepared two more for Elda and herself.
"We're not upset," Elda continued. "It has been a big year for you. Probably the most transformative of your life."
"I'll say," she agreed.
"And a baby, oh, it's so exciting," Helena gushed. "But we understand why you wanted to keep it to yourself."
"Do you?" Abby asked. "Because I'm not sure that I do."
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