“Yes,” she blurted. “Sydney died here. There are too many bad memories.”
And there were - but what was more - she didn’t want her parents in Sydney’s house. The Vepars knew of the house and they could return anytime.
“I agree with Abby,” her dad added. “This place has never been our style.”
“And what’s our style, Rich? Drab and boring?” Becky inhaled again, blowing the smoke through her nose and challenging him with her eyes.
Abby’s dad shrugged. He was not used to his wife’s flippant behavior and found silence to be the only safe response.
“Maybe you should buy something downstate. I hear property on Lake Lansing is hot right now,” Nick lied. Property on Lake Lansing was never hot, but he hated not speaking, the quiet embarrassed him.
Abby snorted. “Sorry,” she laughed. “But Lake Lansing? Come on, Nick, have you seen that water?”
“Sewage,” Abby’s mom drawled, downing the last of her wine and tapping her glass for a refill.
Rich frowned and looked at his watch. He had spent most of his life adhering to the motto that time was money. As a realtor, he didn’t vacation on holidays because that was when buyers vacationed. Now, he and Becky were rich, and he felt lost, as if his watch had tethered him to the earth and the strap had just broken.
“Maybe you and Nick should go into town and get takeout,” Abby suggested.
Her mother was sinking deeper into the couch and appeared to be on the verge of a complete meltdown. When Becky broke down, everyone was safer at a distance.
“Yes, great idea,” her dad enthused, immediately jumping from the couch.
Nick, happy to be included, sprang from his own seat, quickly wiping the crease from his slacks.
“Want me to run you a bath?” Abby asked her mother.
Becky lolled her head to the side, and Abby reached forward, quickly catching the ash hanging from the tip of her cigarette.
“Yes. Maybe I’ll drown and then your dad can worry about this house.”
* * * *
“Psst, hey, you guys here?” Abby whispered.
She walked further into the woods, glancing back at Sydney’s house, but confident that no one would see her. Her dad and Nick had gone for burgers, and her mother was drunkenly soaking in the tub. She had insisted on taking a second bottle of wine in with her.
“Gotcha!” Oliver cheered, landing on the pine-needled floor with a thud.
Surprised, Abby stumbled back, but Oliver caught her hand before she sprawled on the forest floor.
“Sorry, I’ve gotta get my thrills somehow,” he laughed.
“Right, as if your life is lacking thrills,” she said dryly, her eyes narrowing on the flesh of his hand, still raw and red from his former burns. His body had almost entirely healed since the night that Alva had doused him in gas and set him on fire. A story that Oliver had regaled to the witches by firelight one evening, forcing Lydie to play the part of the evil Vepar by standing on a chair with a navy blanket thrown over her head.
Oliver held his hand close to his face.
“Looks a lot better, though, if I do say so myself.” He grinned and jumped onto a low tree branch.
Abby hopped onto it behind him, and when he sprang to the next, she jumped higher, catching a branch in two hands and swinging herself up and over it. They raced up the tree, not easy with the tightly woven branches and stiff needles.
At the top, they each held the trunk, and Oliver parted the needles so that they could see the lake. It was barely eight pm and the sun had begun to set, leaving a flame-soaked horizon. Abby leaned into the light, already longing for the receding summer.
“I smell bonfires,” Oliver said softly.
In the fading light, Abby could see some of the scarring on his face. She reached up, unconsciously, and touched his jaw where the skin still puckered slightly. It was very smooth, and he leaned his face into her hand.
“That feels good,” he said.
Her fingers started to drift, she wanted to rub her thumb along his lower lip, but then her eyes saw a dark shape and she was instantly elsewhere, pulling back into the trees – spooked.
Oliver moved to her branch and peered out.
“It’s only Dafne,” he said quickly, letting the needles fall back into place.
Car headlights turned into Sydney’s driveway, and Abby realized that Nick and her dad had returned.
“Damn, I’ve gotta go,” Abby sighed. She started to climb down the tree, her face burning. She felt a little ashamed, touching Oliver in any way when Sebastian waited at the castle alone.
“Hey,” Oliver caught her arm in his hand, and she turned, looking back up at him.
“Don’t give it a thought, okay. This is a strange time for you, and I’ve found it’s best if you let things unfold organically.”
He was referring to her blush, of course, and she smiled, shaking her head.
“Stupid to feel guilty about something you didn’t do,” she said.
“Exactly,” he laughed and dived from the tree, somersaulting twice in the air before he hit the forest floor and tumbled forward, coming to rest at Dafne's feet.
“Wow, graceless as usual,” she said, lightly kicking leaves at his face.
He rolled and grabbed her legs, buckling her. When Abby reach the bottom of the tree, Dafne was laughing and snarling at Oliver to release her pant leg, which he held in his mouth.
“Say please,” he told her, but it sounded more like, “thay fleas.”
“Please,” she snapped, and he let the fabric fall from his mouth.
“How’s everything going, Abby?” Dafne asked her coolly, brushing pine needles from the seat of her pants.
“Good. I’m just heading back, actually.”
Dafne nodded.
“We’ll be patrolling the beach and the forest, but if you sense anything, anything at all, use your amulet.”
The amulet, given to Abby by Elda, held the symbol of the witch’s claw or woven triple moons. It was a powerful pendant, which Abby held on a chain around her neck, and was connected to two other identical amulets. When squeezed in her hand, the energetic heat traveled to its duplicates; one of each hung around the necks of Oliver and Dafne. They would feel the hot metal against their skin and know that Abby was in need.
Abby reached up to the amulet beneath her shirt and nodded.
“I will.”
She turned, but before she was out of the woods, Oliver caught up to her.
“Hey, I forgot to give you this.”
He placed a thick, cream envelope in her hand. In the upper right corner her name was stenciled in tiny, red calligraphy.
“Elda wanted me to give it to you here on the mainland. Away from prying eyes.”
“What is it?” she asked, holding the envelope up.
“You’ll see when you open it.” He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek and then jogged backward into the woods, giving her a final salute before disappearing into the trees.
* * * *
Abby snuggled under the covers in Sydney’s guest bedroom. She had hoped that the sheets would still smell of Sebastian, but the cleaning crew had apparently stripped even the beds and pillowcases. She was greeted with lavender detergent.
In her backpack she found the shell that Helena had given her. It was a large pink conch shell, the kind that you could hear the ocean in if you listened closely, but Abby knew that hers could do far more than that. She tapped it three times with her right pointer finger and then whispered 'Sebastian' twice. Nothing happened, and just as she started to feel foolish, she heard his voice.
“Abby,” he bellowed, and she shoved the shell beneath the comforter.
“Sshhh, you’re yelling,” she whispered.
It had sounded so clear, as if she might peer into the shell and see a tiny Sebastian lounging on the mother of pearl edge.
“Sorry. I’m not used to this yet,” he said, lowering his voice.
“You and me bot
h,” Abby giggled, resting her head against the shell and wishing Sebastian were lying in bed beside her.
At the castle, he often crept into her bedroom late when all of the witches had retired to their rooms. It wasn’t necessary, of course, both she and Sebastian were adults, but it added to their late night jaunts, and they both wanted to take it slow, not allow their identities to get lost in their desire for each other.
“I’m in your room,” Sebastian said. “Your pillow smells like you.”
She heard him taking a deep breath and groaned aloud.
“I miss you,” she whispered. “A lot.”
“Me, too,” he said. “This place is like a tomb without you.”
“Oh, come on.”
“No, really. Lydie barely comes up from the dungeon where Max has her on some deadline to astral travel. Elda and Faustine are busy. I had lunch and dinner alone with Helena today. So much for needing me here at the castle,” Sebastian said bitterly.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t come,” Abby told him, and she was sorry as she stared at the smooth, plastered ceiling. She wanted to feel his breath on her neck, snuggle into him and forget about the funeral.
“Me, too. I shouldn’t have listened to them,” he muttered.
She started to interrupt, but a knock sounded against her door.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I have to go,” she whispered and stuffed the shell back into her bag.
She hopped from the bed and trotted to the door. Her mother stood on the other side, a third bottle of wine clutched in one hand and two crystal glasses in the other. Her eyes were red rimmed again, and she had changed from her black cardigan and skirt into a pair of gray silk pajamas.
“Can I come in?” she asked, but she didn’t sound drunk anymore.
“Yeah, of course.” Abby opened the door further, and her mother walked in, perching on the edge of the bed.
She pulled the already loose cork out with her teeth and filled them each a glass.
“Are you okay?” Abby asked, gently touching her mother’s hand.
“Okay, am I okay?” her mother asked, tracing the rim of her glass with a finger. “I’m alive, and that counts for something. But I feel…alone now. My whole family is dead.”
“No, we’re still here, Dad and I,” Abby reminded her.
“I know, and I’m very grateful for that, but even so, my parents and now my sister are gone. They’re gone, and I am the only one left to remember…”
Abby thought of Sebastian then and understood a little more his loneliness.
“I’m sorry, mom. I’m so sorry about Sydney.”
Becky nodded, took another sip and then slipped a canvas bag off her shoulder. She reached inside and pulled out a large wooden box, setting it on the bed between her and Abby.
“This is for you, Abby. I don’t know if I ever told you, but my father, your grandfather, was a novice wood worker.”
Abby lifted the box; it was heavy.
“He carved this for your grandmother as a wedding gift. It’s a sewing box, and God only knows why he chose a sewing box because she never sewed a day in her life.” She laughed and waved her hand dismissively. “But that’s all dead and buried, no pun intended, and I believe that this box really belongs to you.”
Abby looked closer at the image carved into the surface.
“That’s her, your grandmother, sitting in that boat.”
As Abby drew the box closer to her face, she saw the woman who sat in the boat. In the wood, her features were blurry, but Abby could see a massive cliff in the background. At the top of the jutting cliff, a castle twisted and disappeared into the sky.
Abby gasped and nearly dropped the box, which her mother caught easily.
“I should have given this to you years ago. My mother told me to,” Becky continued, ignoring Abby’s eyes. “But I was afraid of my mother’s strange life, and when she requested that on your twelfth birthday I give you this box and then take you to her, I completely – well, I flipped out and I told her no. I told her not to come around anymore, that my family didn’t need her, and she died less than a year after we had that conversation.”
“I was five,” Abby said, tonelessly.
“Yes, you were five, and I hid the box in the basement, and I never looked at it again. Until about a month ago, the day that you left Lansing, this box somehow found its way onto the kitchen table.”
“What?” Abby asked, shocked.
“It was just there, and I don’t need to wonder how because I used to know that those things happened. Living with my mother, you just learned that. And I knew then that you were already gone. I just tried to deny it and I tried to make you come home, but I knew…”
“What do you know?” Abby asked, wondering just how much her mother understood about witches.
“Oh, not much,” Becky said quickly. “And please don’t judge me when I say that I don’t want to know any more than I already do. It’s not my life, it’s yours, and it was my mother's. Sydney wanted it, I always felt that, but it wasn’t hers either.”
Abby smiled and laid her palm against the face of the wooden box. It felt warm and vibrated subtly; Abby knew her mother could not feel the energy that the box housed.
“Open it,” her mother urged.
Abby flipped up the lid and looked at the jumble of contents inside. She saw a worn journal that said “Arlene’s Book of Shadows” in dull pencil on the cover. She touched a strand of blond hair, several small jars of dried herbs and sticks of broken incense.
“I know that Rod didn’t kill Sydney,” Becky went on. “But that’s not to say I want to know who did or even that I think that you know who did.”
Abby started to interrupt, but her mother waved her to silence.
“I just want you to know that I love you, and I support you, and I will not ask questions, and I will hear what you need me to hear, and that will be it.”
“I’m sorry for lying to you, mom,” Abby said, but she was suddenly very confused. Did her mother want the truth or not?
“No, don’t be sorry. That’s what I’m saying. I understand, and I don’t want to know more. Maybe that makes me a coward, but I just don’t.”
Abby nodded and set the box aside, moving closer to her mother and hugging her. She hugged back and then started to cry softly, finally tearing herself from Abby’s grasp.
“Goodnight, honey,” she whispered and left the room.
Abby stared at the box for a long time. She wanted to open it, to read her grandmother’s journals and sift through the contents, but something told her not to. Finally, she stuffed it into her bag beneath several t-shirts. Her hand brushed the envelope that Oliver had given her earlier that evening and she pulled it out.
Her fingernails had grown long in the past several weeks and she easily ripped along the envelope flap, pulling it open. Inside, she found an invitation.
All Hallows Eve
To: Abby Daniels
What: The Ritual Celebration of All Hallows Eve
Where: Bordeaux, France
Hosted by: The Coven of Sorciére
When: October 31st
When the Veil between the living and dead vanishes.
The End
Of this Book anyway - continue Abby’s adventure
in Sorciere: Born of Shadows Book 2
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Ula (Born of Shadows Book 1) Page 32