Abby remembered the Lourdes speaking of mothers and daughters.
“Abby, to cross to their side, to become entwined with their evil, is permanent, there is no coming back.”
Abby nodded, she did not understand, but wanted desperately to hear Delphia’s story.
“The Vepar did as promised. He caused the men to go insane, to kill their own families, to wreak havoc until their own village hanged them. Then he brought Delphia back, but it was not the same Delphia. Her soul, her very nature was gone, replaced by a blackness that permeated her to the core. I will spare you the details except to say that the Lourdes was forced to kill her own child to save herself, and worse yet, to save Ira. This affected the Lourdes as nothing before had. Her abilities disintegrated, they become haphazard, nearly useless. When Ira finally abandoned her, she banished herself to the woods. She used the powers still available to her to make the forest a magical place that constantly shifted between poisonous and enchanting. The Vepar, to whose service she had committed herself, cursed her for weakening. He told her the truth. That he had killed Delphia, that Ira had done his bidding, that the village men were innocent. He told her that, because she had allowed her power to spoil, her physical self would as well. He cast a spell that rendered her physically hideous and which caused everything around her to decay and die. Only in her hole can people be near her and live, but food, plants, even animals wither within minutes.”
When Elda finished, she closed her eyes for a moment, a brief silence for the horrors told.
“I…I don’t know what to say,” Abby said at last, battling a storm of emotions. She had hated the Lourdes, hated her, but now… how could she?
“I am not asking you to change what you have seen, but only to truly understand it. That is what absolute truth provides for you, Abby, a light to cast away the shadows of every story. The Lourdes of Warning, as she is now known, was once just Milda, the name her mother gave her after the Lithuanian Goddess of Love. The Lourdes was Milda, a witch and a mother, and that was all.”
Abby licked her lips and watched Elda cross the room to the large window that faced the lake. Her hand trembled as she pulled back the French pleated draperies, their caramel color shimmering with the morning sun. Elda looked older then, her face drawn and her body shrunken in her dress. Her smallness scared Abby, it stole the comfort that she sought in the older witch’s presence.
* * * *
Oliver placed the arrow against the string and pulled, watching it slice straight up into the sky and then dive back down, landing in a circle of sand he had drawn on the beach.
“Good aim,” Faustine said, surprising him from behind.
“Trying to confuse them.”
“Yes, I’d say it will work.”
“I can’t believe she killed Tony.”
Faustine nodded and drew a smaller circle inside of Oliver’s. He took the bow and an arrow, lined it up and pulled. The arrow drove skyward and then arched, landing directly in the center of his target.
“I learned from the best,” Oliver complimented him.
“Not best,” Faustine said. “I don’t believe in best, but good, now that is something. Abby is a good witch. We are lucky.”
“Yes.” Oliver looked at the earth, at his feet, anywhere but at Faustine.
“It’s easier to tell me now,” Faustine said.
Oliver cast his eyes around the lagoon, then up at the castle. They were the only two outside.
“Don’t worry, we’re alone,” Faustine reassured him.
“I killed Sydney,” Oliver said quietly.
“An accident?”
“Maybe.”
Chapter 32
Two weeks after her narrow escape from death, Abby stood at the top of the cliff that jutted above the lagoon furthest from the castle. Below her stretched the choppy Lake Superior waters, the gray black swells tossing like a baby seal in the mouth of a killer whale. Behind her, she could see the shell shaped greenhouse, and if she looked closely, Bridget's fiery red hair as she tottered back and forth among the plants.
Abby was alone, had asked to be alone, and everyone complied. In the weeks since the Vepar encounter, Sebastian had lapsed into himself. He had sat on the edge of her bed that first night, his mouth agape, his eyes a haunted well of sorrow as she told him the tale. When she had described killing Tony, he had squeezed her knee so hard that she'd actually gasped in pain. He frantically apologized, and Abby knew that it was more than shock that caused that squeeze. He wanted that blood on his hands, though Tobias was the Vepar that consumed him.
The warm September breeze blew Abby's hair back, and she faced into it, her hands shook as she pulled the small goddess from the back pocket of her jeans. It was smooth and warm and though Abby had fought the idea of ever touching it again, she had eventually come around. Devin's life had been stolen from her, her life as a woman and as a witch. And worse yet, her death had been stolen when Vesta plucked the lighter from the forest floor.
In a small glass bowl, sealed tight, was the elixir that the Lourdes had given her. When Abby had mixed it earlier that morning a pungent aroma had wafted out, followed by thick tendrils of red smoke. Lydie, enthralled by the strange smoke, had almost reached in to touch it, but shrank away when Max had bellowed from the hallway that it was time for another lesson. Now it was only Abby and the goddess, maybe even Abby and Devin, she did not know. Devin had not appeared to her since that day in the woods. Elda believed that Devin was afraid that she had angered Abby and did not want to risk eternity in the middle world by further tormenting her. In a way, Devin would have been right, but now Abby felt differently. Time, even a very short amount, could soften wounds that felt too deep to heal.
Abby set the bowl down and then dropped to her knees beside it. Before she pulled off the lid, she gave the lighter a final flick, a farewell flick perhaps. Before her, the tiny blue flame winked and erupted.
* * * *
Vesta. The Vepar was naked except for a dirt-smeared sheet draped over her emaciated body. Vesta had been thin before, but now she looked skeletal. Her hands, bloodied and bruised, were raised to her face; black tears streamed from her eyelids and stained the matted, white-blond hair hanging over each shoulder. She knelt on a dirt caked floor, one that Abby recognized nauseously. Vesta looked up and let out an animal wail. Before her, chained to the wall, was Tane. His head drooped onto his naked chest, so thin, the bones stuck through his translucent skin. His hair had fallen out and all of his limbs dangled. Several gashes on his chest and legs were caked with dried blood, red blood because Tane had not yet become a Vepar, and he never would. Tane was dead.
From a black doorway Tobias emerged. He looked healthy. His tall figure moved gracefully into the room. He looked down at Vesta, his black eyes narrowing in disgust at her wasted body. She looked up at him, a fresh surge of oily tears streaking over her face. She started to speak, but as her lips trembled apart, the vision dissipated and Abby was back on the cliff edge.
She rocked for a moment on her knees, unsteady and shocked by the sight of Vesta and worse yet, of Tane. No amount of hatred for their kind could have inhibited the pity she felt for them in that moment. Vesta's brother had been murdered, and she had been forced to watch and suffer with him.
"Abby," the whisper, thick with misery, caught her and she looked up.
Devin drifted, her faint image flickering, her eyes cast toward the water.
"Devin…" Abby murmured, unable to recite all of the things that she had planned to say were this moment ever to come. She wanted to tell Devin that it was okay, that she understood, that Tobias would pay, but nothing came out. Instead, she smiled and before she could speak, Devin vanished for the last time.
Abby pulled the lid from the glass bowl, recoiling at the scent of moldy meat and dirt that assaulted her. The liquid, a rusted orange color, swayed in the bowl, as if beckoning to the goddess that lay in Abby's palm. She dropped it in, watching the goddess’s face disappear. She did not k
now if anything would happen. After nearly three minutes, the elixir began to boil softly, a thin curdle of steam rose up and out, disappearing almost instantly in the breeze. After five minutes Abby turned the bowl on its side, dumping the remains into the grass, but the lighter had disintegrated, not even a fleck of metal remained.
Chapter 33
The funeral was lovely, if they ever could be called that. It took place on a sandy bluff that hung suspended over the choppy waters of Lake Michigan on a clear, blue day.
Abby attended alone, at least she appeared alone, but Oliver and Dafne crouched nearby, their bodies sensitive to every shift, every energy that beat on the air. Her parents had hugged her briefly; her mother sobbing into her hair and then breaking away. They stood now, arms linked near the dune edge. Her mother stared out at the white swells and remembered a whole lifetime of Sydney that Abby never knew.
Abby pulled her sleeves down over her hands, protecting her skin from the autumn breeze that blew down the lake shore. A man that Abby did not know read the words that Sydney had prepared years earlier. The woman couldn’t plan a weekend, but had somehow prepared her funeral. A simple ceremony at Old Baldy, a steep dune backed by miles of Sleeping Bear forests. Abby’s mother, Becky, read a poem about sisters and then she held a small wooden box to the breeze and let Sydney’s ashes rush away.
Abby bit back her grief, knowing that strong emotion often manifested in physical changes, and she didn’t want a rainstorm to begin with her tears.
The police had found Sydney’s body nearly three weeks after Abby and Sebastian had escaped to the castle. She had been badly decomposed, and without any leads, the Trager police decided that Rod could be the only culprit. Of course, no one had seen or heard from Rod since he and Sydney left for their vacation. He had vanished without a trace, and Abby did not allow herself to consider the possibilities of his demise.
“Sydney, we release you from this earth,” the man continued as Becky tilted the box and the last of Sydney’s ashes pulled from the corners and caught the wind.
Abby watched the ashes, so fine that she could not connect them to her once vivacious aunt.
“We begin as dust and end as dust,” the man continued.
Dust. Abby imagined Sydney’s bright blue eyes, their mischievous gleam, and a tidal wave of pain tried to rush over her. Her chest constricted and a sob caught in her throat. She swallowed it back and imagined neutral things: sailboats, upholstery, kitchen appliances. It was a work in progress and Abby had not mastered it, but Elda insisted on its importance, especially in the presence of regular people: i.e. Abby’s family. She stared at the horizon, and when the howl of pain that wanted free died away, her eyes drifted to Nick, who stood next to her dad, his hands shoved into his gray blazer.
She had suspected that he would attend the funeral, though she was surprised to learn that he rode north with her parents, which meant that he, too, would be spending the night at Sydney’s home. She dropped her gaze to the sand, which blew in sheets up over the dune and caught in the prickly grass.
Sebastian had stayed at the castle at Elda’s bidding. She insisted that it was not safe for Abby and Sebastian to both attend the funeral and cited far more important tasks for him at the coven. Sebastian had been distant since Abby’s harrowing Vepar encounter. He stalked the castle and complained about Tobias’s continued freedom. Twice he demanded that they allow him to return to the mainland to search for the Vepar’s lair, which Abby had mistakenly described to him in detail. Only after Abby begged him to stay did he agree, moodily, but with the promise that he would destroy Tobias whether the other witches assisted him or not.
Abby was relieved that Sebastian had been asked to stay at Ula. She was exhausted processing Sydney’s death and seeing her parents without the additional stress of Sebastian trying to hunt down Tobias. She had ridden to Trager with Dafne and Oliver in Oliver’s blue jeep. He didn’t drive the freeway, but seemed to understand an intricate trail of seasonal roads that snaked through the woods and allowed the three witches to travel the 200 miles with little detection. Excluding, of course, crossing the Mackinaw Bridge, which Abby examined excitedly after Oliver mentioned diving off of it.
“Hey, Abby pants,” her dad said, clutching her elbow and surprising her from her thoughts.
She looked up to see Sydney’s small group of friends and family breaking apart and picking their way through the woods back to their cars.
“Go apologize to your mom, honey,” her dad continued and nudged Abby towards her mother, who stood at the bluff edge as if she might like to drop over the side.
Abby went to her, knowing that the apology was not only inevitable, but invaluable at that moment.
“Mom, I am so very sorry,” Abby whispered into her mother’s ear, wrapping an arm around her back. “For everything.”
Becky sniffled and nodded, but she seemed unable to speak. She sank slowly to the sand and Abby sat with her, leaning her head on her mother’s shoulder, bony beneath her black cardigan.
* * * *
Abby did not immediately get out of the car when her dad pulled to a stop in Sydney’s driveway. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes against the flood of memories that the house ignited. In seconds, she flew over years of catching fireflies in Sydney’s yard and eating pancakes on the patio. She stumbled over meeting Sebastian, finding Devin, and landed finally, with a jolt, on Sydney’s bloated face in the pool of truth.
When she blinked the image away, she realized that Nick had taken her hand, and he was talking. Her parents had already gotten out and moved slowly, side by side, across the porch to the front door.
“I’m sorry, what?” Abby asked Nick dazedly.
“I was just saying that I’ve missed you. I mean that I do miss you, and if…”
“Stop.” She held up her hand. “This isn’t the right time, Nick. I can’t have this conversation right now.”
He seemed to take this as progress and nodded eagerly.
“I totally understand, you’re hurting, and I’m here for you, no matter what, okay?”
She smiled weakly and pushed the car door open before he could go on.
As she walked toward the door, she considered the will that Sydney had left - the will that left everything to Abby and her mother. An estate worth nearly two million dollars, not including the lakefront property, which Abby’s mother alone inherited.
Abby was now independently wealthy. The thought skidded across her thoughts, but could not find footing. She lived in the coven; money barely made an appearance and the quick thump that resounded in her chest at the figure – a million dollars – had more to do with fantasy than reality. A fantasy that dulled in comparison to the one that she was now living in a castle surrounded by witches. Additionally, Helena had already hinted that witches rarely wanted for anything, least of all money, and had a myriad ways of making it when in need.
Her dad held the door open, and Abby followed him in. The house smelled strongly of lemon disinfectant – a scent left over from the cleaning company that scrubbed the house after Sydney’s body was discovered. They had fixed the rampage of the Vepars; a mess that the police assumed was created by Rod in a passionate outburst when he murdered his wife. Of course, Rod’s body was never discovered, and Abby had not considered the possibility that he was still alive.
Chief Caplan had even called Abby to ask for her whereabouts when Sydney died, but he did not remember her as the girl who found Devin, nor did he bother checking her story that she’d spent only a couple of nights at Sydney’s home and then traveled into the Upper Peninsula to enroll at Lake Superior State for graduate school. It was an easy lie, one that Caplan and her mother both ate up readily. Abby didn’t mind telling it, but it did pain her that Rod was the scapegoat for her and the Vepars, not to mention Devin’s brother, Danny. Although Faustine had said the previous week that he intended to exonerate Danny soon; Abby made a mental note to ask him more when she returned to Ula.
L
ike Danny, Rod’s name had been in all of Trager’s newspapers along with a grainy mug shot taken when he was sixteen and caught with a bag of marijuana. In the image, he was young with a mischievous smile and wild blond hair. He didn’t look like a killer, but the small-town media of Trager was making an example out of Sydney. They seemed to be saying: This is what happens when you leave your husband (and gated community) for a younger man!
“Ugh, get this out of here,” Becky groaned and thrust a photo of Sydney and Rod groping each other on a beach towel into Abby’s dad’s hands.
Becky then dropped onto the couch, her frail body heavier somehow. She leaned her head back and struggled blindly through her purse, finally pulling out a wrinkled pack of menthol cigarettes.
“Are you smoking?” Abby asked, incredulous.
“I figure I’ve abstained for twenty years. I’ve earned a few.” She knocked one from the pack and lifted it trembling to her lips.
Nick, desperate to get good marks from Abby, scrambled to the fireplace and grabbed a box of matches. He lit one and dropped to a knee in front of Abby’s mother, who didn’t bother leaning forward, but gestured impatiently for him to come closer.
She drew deep and held the smoke.
Abby’s dad returned to the living room with a bottle of wine and four glasses. He cocked an eyebrow at Becky, but she ignored him, taking another drag.
“I’ll do it,” Nick said, snatching the cork and setting to work on the bottle of Cherry Wine. He seemed unnerved by Becky’s smoking. She was usually as square as he.
“So, what do we do now?” Becky asked suddenly, eyeing the room. “Do we sell this place?”
Abby bit her lip and tried to focus on the strap of her left sandal. Her throat constricted, but she refused the building tears.
Ula (Born of Shadows Book 1) Page 31