Equinox (Augarten Book 1)

by Charlie Godwyne

  I made a mental note to do that.

  "Have you been having more of those nightmares? I know you say that dream interpretation could mean anything, and that's why you don't do it. I feel like I need to hand your words back to you on that."

  Although I spoke, it felt like my lips had moved not of my own volition. I-Gabriel was not speaking for Michi anymore. "Do you remember what I told you about the spells I've been doing recently? They feel like they've already been cast, and that I must have been the one casting them."

  Florian squeezed my hand, nervously this time, leaning anxiously over the table. It made me want to go to him, scoop him up and carry him away. What day was it? Was the terrorist attack about to happen? Was I to watch as Michi died, while I was still stuck inside him? Would I die too? Was this the last I would get to see of my beloved Florian, and of my sweet Solomon, too?

  He nodded obediently. "I remember. You still haven't told me what the spells are about."

  "I think my future selves cast them," Michi said definitively. "Do you have your amulet on you?"

  "Of course, Michel. I always carry it, as you told me to."

  Then a weighted thought like a dark cloud of unbreathable air settled on my consciousness, and I saw the images Michi was thinking in his head. I saw cards and knew from the growing anxiety inside Michi's mind that these were ominous card readings he had been receiving for weeks. The faces of them flashed through his mind's eye, most of them repeating. They warned him of something. Michi had exhausted all of his options trying to figure out what it was, or at least when. But I knew when. I-Gabriel knew when, because in 2025, Michi was dead.

  "Good," Michi said gently, weary and exhausted. "I'm sorry to scare you. I'm a little stressed out."

  Florian kissed the backs of Michi's knuckles. "I'm sure you'll figure it out, honey. Everything will work itself out."

  I ached at his reassurance, so familiar from my lover, the much more jaded man I knew in Vienna.

  The waiter arrived with our food. As soon as the waiter left, Michi prompted Florian for what he had been about to say. I stared in amazement, because Florian had not actually been halfway through a word or thought when the waiter had arrived. It was Michi that read Florian so well that he knew Florian had been about to say something.

  My lover spoke softly. "The card readings you've been worried about lately…do they say that we'll divorce someday?"

  "No," Michi squeezed his hand tightly. I heard those words again in his mind. "No, Florian. I will not leave you. As long as you will have me."

  Florian still looked worried, but he smiled. "I'll have you for the rest of my life, then."

  Please, keep me with you.

  I heard the words resonate in Michel's mind, and this time, I somehow understood his native language. I saw those same words, soaked in ashes and burned into Florian's arm with his tattoo…the older, broken Florian I knew, with all his secrets.

  Screams erupted down the lane. Everyone jumped up to see what the matter was. A car barreled down the narrow street, and I heard a sound I'd only ever heard in movies: automatic gun fire.

  "Flor!" I shoved the table aside and tackled him to the ground, shielding the back of his head with my arm. My forearm snapped upon impact on the patio, but that was just the beginning of the breaking of my body. The car flew by, gun fire deafening over the terrified screams around us. Glass shattered and fell, and I found I couldn't fully breathe.

  "Michel!" Florian shouted right in my ear.

  My lung is collapsed. I cannot say goodbye to you…

  "Michi, no! Say something!" Florian cried hysterically beneath me. "Please, honey, speak to me. Michi!"

  I tried to say something, anything, but only blood came out, spilling into Florian's hair.

  "Don't leave me," Florian begged.

  I don't want to leave you.

  "What am I supposed to do if you leave me alone?"

  I won't leave you! I won't!

  "Gabriel!"

  I snapped awake to find Florian shaking me, tears in his eyes.

  I touched his hand on my cheek. "Am I back? Is it 2025?"

  Florian blinked and the tears fell. "Yes, love, you're back. Oh bless the sky, you're here."

  Florian's blazing white energy was suppressed again, and indeed, the pale blue amulet hung around his neck. Not only that, but when I looked around his room, I saw pentagrams traced in faint etheric glitter on the walls. "I can see…"

  Florian brushed my bangs off my forehead, then kissed me between the eyes. "I went to Augarten with what was left of you, just a pile of pale blue ether and spirit. I bargained with her to ask her tree to regrow you, then last night I woke from a dream wherein a cauldron bubbling over with golden ether was waiting for me in the garden. I found a puddle of rain somehow congealed in one of the branches of your tree. It was shimmering gold, like an angel's tears, but it was tangible enough to let me carry it, so I brought it home, inside this room, and now here you are."

  I lurched from the bed. "Solomon. He's still in the catacombs. We have to get him out."

  Florian pulled me down and smiled softly. "Don't worry—Michael blew a hole in the catacombs. Solomon walked out. He's at your place, in case you showed up at Augarten. He's been searching all the trees, both there and at the canal. He can't see Augarten, and she doesn't talk to him…"

  I sat back, leaning against the wall. I could feel the glittery paint of the pentagram tickling my back, could see swirls of magic behind Florian's eyes.

  "Don't move a muscle," he said. "I'm going to call Solomon."

  I snuggled into the sheets and listened while Florian ran downstairs to the shop and called on his landline. Not ten minutes later—which meant he'd practically sprinted—Florian buzzed the downstairs door open, and I smiled at the footsteps bounding up the stairs.

  Solomon burst into the room, dark smudges beneath his frightened blue eyes. "Gabriel."

  I pushed to sit up, but he nearly tackled me to the bed, crying against my shoulder.

  Florian came back, and I pulled them both into my arms. We stayed that way a long moment, while music played softly in the shop downstairs.

  "I saw Ian in the astral plane," I said softly, keeping my eyes closed so the glittering pentagrams would not shine at me. "I think I know why the exorcists planted Solomon, why they used him to hunt us."

  Solomon tensed in my arms.

  Still hugging me, Florian grasped Solomon's shoulder and squeezed reassurance. "Why?"

  "Solomon was sent to track down the most powerful occultist in Vienna," I explained. "But that isn't you, Florian. That was Michi. The reason the exorcists did not simply confront you at the Schöner Himmel is because they were trying to find Michi's magic, not yours. And since Augarten used said magic to grow me with her trees, my regeneration triggered its activation and put the exorcists on our trail."

  A long quiet moment, and then Florian said "I'll call Maria and ask her to come over after I close the shop in the afternoon. Between the four of us, maybe we can figure out what happened."

  I regarded Solomon. "How do you know the Church won't come for you? Should you really be here?"

  He swallowed and exchanged a quick glance with Florian. "I don't know that they won't come for me, but I'm not going to live my life in hiding. My place is here, with you two."

  "Can Solomon and I stay over tonight?" I asked.

  Florian smiled. "Sure."

  I squeezed Florian's hand, remembering that the last time I had done this, I'd been inside Michi, in Paris. Then I summoned the courage to disclose the second thing I learned in the astral plane.

  "I don't have amnesia," I whispered.

  Florian cuddled closer, and Solomon leaned up to look at me. "What?"

  I swallowed down the emotions that tried to surface. I needed to keep cool enough that I could get these words out. "I think that's what Ian has been trying to get me to understand. Whenever I beg him for just a snippet of my past, he always tells me that I'm aski
ng the wrong questions. The first time he appeared to me, he said that I did not have a family, and that I should consider him as any family I might emotionally need. At the time, I'd taken that to mean I might have to wait months until the police found my family, or even that I had been a criminal before and my family was hiding from me. But now I think his words mean what he said: I don't have a family."

  "I am your family," said Florian with conviction, soundly and efficiently putting an end to that argument.

  Solomon twined his fingers through mine. "I don't see why Ian doesn't just tell you the truth about all this. He surely knows what it is."

  "I think Ian is protecting him," Florian answered softly.

  I thought about that. "Ian knows more details than I do, yes, but he too is unclear as to why this is happening to me. And, since he has been cut off from the support of his mentor, my situation is clearly stressing him out. I saw that as plain as day in the astral. He is able to hide things from me better when I am here in the material plane."

  "But still," Solomon insisted. "He should be telling you what he knows—"

  "Hope is a complicated thing," Florian interrupted. "The will to live is precarious. I don't know Ian, but if I were him, I would be wary of telling Gabriel things that might tempt him to give up, especially if that giving up is on a deep, spiritual level.

  "Augarten used my dead husband's ashes—soaked with his human magic—to grow Gabriel's body from a tree. Yet Gabriel is clearly human, not some mindless zombie. His soul is in this body. Any inhabiting of such a body by a human soul would be tenuous at best. If Gabriel falters in a moment of weakness, his soul might simply up and leave."

  "He might worry that I'll let go," I surmised. "He's always quick to distract me when I'm frustrated by not knowing anything, usually by drilling me on meditation exercises."

  Despair had always been a hair trigger for Ian's heavy involvement. Florian's logic had to hold some truth: something must be at risk with my human soul inside a tree-grown body. Otherwise, every human on earth would have angelic experiences in their darkest hour.

  Solomon lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. "You are Gabriel to me. You are someone. You are the man I love. Florian and I see you."

  Florian nodded against my chest, and I pulled Solomon down to join us. "Thank you. I love you too."

  The End

  About the Author

  Charlie Godwyne lives in Vienna and loves to walk at Augarten and shop at book binderies. A translator by trade, Charlie enjoys taking train trips around Europe and hopes to one day learn how to play the banjo.

  Sign up for Charlie's release-only newsletter and get a free short story that takes place during Equinox, in which Gabriel, Florian, and Solomon take a dip in the Danube. https://dl.bookfunnel.com/ampewoqilx