“I hope she’s here,” Mee-maw muttered, clenching her fists tight at her sides as she walked.
“I don’t,” Zoe said, shivering.
I rubbed my temples, forcing the image of a terrified Lizzie from my mind and focusing on the matter at hand.
“Better safe than sorry, so we need to look out for any traps that she may’ve set for us on the way. She knew we’d wind up here eventually, and those could’ve been set days ago. Zoe’s potion should protect us from being sensed magically, but we have no idea what kind of spells someone as powerful as her can use, not to mention any magical objects she might have. Zoe and I can try to feel for any magical traps but we should all keep our eyes peeled for anything physical, as well.”
It would be just my luck to avoid some crazy, paranormal booby-trap, only to be taken down by a stupid tripwire or tiger trap and wind up impaled on a bunch of wooden spikes.
A few minutes later, though, after inching our way over with bated breath, we all let out a sigh of relief as we arrived at the open patch where our ancestors’ gravestones once stood.
“All in one piece,” Zoe breathed. “Good job, team.”
There was no sign or indication of the mausoleums, even the grass having been replaced when I’d put them back in the ground on our last visit. My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of crinkling paper as Trudy pulled the tea-dyed sheets that contained the chant that we’d used to summon the mausoleums last time out of the pockets of her robe.
“Here you go,” she said solemnly, passing the first one in my direction.
I reached out to grab it, but, before I even touched it, realized that I didn’t need to as a familiar sensation came over me. The same sense of solemnity, of knowledge, of magic as last time we were here. Like an earthworm, my magic burrowed into the ground, embracing the long-buried tombs of our ancestors, and I called for them. Though I hadn’t known their names before, now, they felt as natural and familiar to me as my own.
Anna, Margaret, Joan.
The mausoleums surged through the ground, displacing the barren earth that should’ve marked their presence, with a low rumble. Coming back to my senses, I noticed that Patrick’s strong arms wrapped around me.
“Do you feel okay?” he asked.
I nodded. Whereas last time, I’d been left dizzy and disoriented, this time I was at peace, feeling nothing but an aching desire to go inside. I looked to each side and saw Mee-maw and Zoe walking slowly toward their respective mausoleums in a near trance.
“Wait,” I said, snapping them out of it. “You can go to your mausoleums afterward, but we need to go into mine first and put our items into the slots.”
I wasn’t sure how I knew it, but I knew it just the same, and they didn’t question it.
I pulled the backpack away from my shoulders and removed Maude from inside as I walked toward the gilded doors of the stony structure in front of me. This time, instead of being too put off by magic to even go inside, Patrick followed just next to me, his hand on the small of my back as we walked.
I reached my hand out as we approached and the door swung open, revealing the same, bland false-interior as last time. Patrick looked at me quizzically as the others piled inside, but I just smiled at him, watching for his reaction as the door swung closed.
The ceilings stretched high above where they’d been a moment earlier, and glorious tapestries and a variety of golden ornaments replaced the cold, gray stone.
“Amazing…” he said, marveling.
“It really is incredible,” Trudy agreed, beaming as she looked around the room, in awe, even though she’d joined me on my first trip inside.
I pushed down the faint discomfort at having so many other people in the mausoleum that’d belonged to my clairvoyant ancestor. Though I’d only been here once before, and the décor was far more garish than I would’ve chosen, it felt like my space.
“The slots I told you about are in the back,” I said, keeping my mind on our goal. I held Maude out in front of me and rushed toward the stone altar that lay on the far side of the room.
Zoe and Mee-maw nodded, pulling their items out and joining me. We stepped up as three and wordlessly placed our items into the slots, which lay just in front of the vase with the live, black rose. It felt comfortable and familiar, as if we’d done the exact same thing in a time long past.
A rush of adrenaline rolled through me as the items clicked into their places, and sudden and almost sublime connection pulsed between the three of us. I stared at the black rose in front of us, reflecting on how foolish I’d been to consider myself powerful before this. Maude and I were but one part of three that made up the whole. My vision darkened gradually, starting at the edges and continuing inward, ending with the black rose as the only thing I could see.
“Sister?”
My surroundings exploded with color as the air swirled and whooshed around me, transporting me to a place that seemed simultaneously impossibly far away and incredibly close. Rather than gold and stone, I was surrounded by grass and trees, though something about the strange place made it obvious that I was in some realm beyond the physical. I spun, looking in the direction the voice had come from. Standing in front of me, meeting my gaze, was the woman who’d come before me.
My coven-sister from days of old.
Her sable hair poured over a flowing red dress that complemented her hazel eyes perfectly, and she gave off an almost angelic impression.
“Anna Cromwell?” I asked, remembering the letter that Mee-maw had found on an online forum, which had been written by the coven’s clairvoyant and had been signed ‘A. Cromwell’.
“Cricket,” she said, nodding enthusiastically, as if relishing the word. “It’s a wonderful thing that you’ve made it this far. Tell me about your journey.” She crossed one leg over the other, taking a sitting posture, and the roots of a nearby tree came forth, writhing and curling into the shape of a chair in the blink of an eye.
“It’s been difficult,” I said, feeling overwhelmed as a million questions and thoughts came to mind. Where should I even begin? At the beginning, maybe? When Connie had given me the typewriter? I shook my head. Verbena had Lizzie and I had no time to waste. “My daughter has been taken,” I said, speaking quickly, “by a powerful witch who has sided with the Organization.”
Her face contorted into a look of horror and rage. “A witch is working alongside those bastards?! What of her coven?”
“At this point, she seems to be running the Organization, actually. Like they’re her own personal army, using them to collect magical items of dead witches for herself,” I said, “and her coven is long gone.” My mind flashed back to my conversation with Patrick’s mother and I hastily added a final part, “I don’t know how she’s managed to survive so long, but she’s apparently somewhat well-known in witch lore. Her name is Verbena. Do you know her?”
Anna practically leapt to her feet, the roots that made up the chair retracting into the ground. She stared at me for a long moment before speaking. “Verbena is said to be the most powerful witch to ever live,” she said, her voice breaking as she spoke. “A woman who single-handedly brought our shared enemy to their knees. How could she… Are you certain that it is truly her?”
“Her abilities certainly seem to fit the bill,” I said, “and our Conservator seems to think she’s one and the same.”
Anna nodded quickly. “If Constance says it’s her, then it must be so.” She rubbed her chin for a long moment, gaze shrewd as she chewed on this new piece of information.
“Can you give us any advice on how we might be able to beat her?” I asked, hopeful.
“Your abilities will be crucial in getting you to her in one piece but, in this battle, it’s unlikely that any of you will be able to compete. Because of this, you’ll likely have to rely on the descendent of my sister, Joan, whose magic is well-suited to combat.”
I nodded gravely, knowing that she meant Mee-maw and her pocket watch without having to ask. �
��She’s the oldest among us, and she’s struggled to--” I started, cutting off as Anna put a hand up.
“Your powers and the powers of all within the coven will grow substantially from this ritual, so don’t count yourself out just yet.” Her hand began to glow with a bright white light and she frowned as she looked down. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Cricket, but my time is short.” The whiteness began to spread, creeping up her arm even as she spoke. “Bring your coven together and show the traitorous one your power, our power. In the final moments, when you need us most, we’ll be with you.” She reached her remaining hand out, clasping mine with a smile that disappeared into misty white light a moment later.
“Thank you,” I said, feeling tears well up in my eyes as the light consumed the rest of her, dispersing into a million tiny particles that flew away in the gentle breeze.
I inhaled deeply, blinking repeatedly as I was thrown back into my body.
“Are you okay?” Patrick demanded, holding me upright, his gaze searching my face wildly.
I nodded. “Better than alright,” I said, putting my arms out to either side to wrap them around Zoe and Mee-maw, who were both experiencing the same drop back into reality as I had a moment earlier.
It had worked. There was no doubt. Something was different now. We were different. Both more powerful and more connected. A voice deep within told me that this moment marked the true return of the Crow’s Feet Coven.
Mee-maw’s head turned, looking toward Zoe and I. “Did you guys…?”
“Meet our coven ancestors?” I asked, nodding. “I did.”
Mee-maw grinned, stepping forward to pull her pocket watch from the altar. Magic whirled around us the moment she touched it, the world itself twisting and shifting to the way it’d been a few moments earlier. Mee-maw appeared a few steps behind where she’d been, yet was still holding the magical object. Rather than the frantic, uncontrolled time manipulation she’d managed in a fit of rage earlier, she seemed to have bent the power to her will, not to mention that it seemed to work over a longer timeframe.
“Woah,” Zoe said, walking over to pat Mee-maw on the back, “that was amazing.”
Tears came to Mee-maw’s eyes as she nodded. “I still wish it could go back farther and stop Lizzie from--” She broke off and stiffened her chin. “It’ll have to do… Now, let’s go see what Verbena has in store for us.”
I stepped up to the altar with Zoe, grabbing Maude and beginning to place her reverently back into my bag. The creative juices flowed as I touched the old typewriter, but something told me it was not yet time to use her. I turned to the side, looking for Zoe, but she was gone. I spun, narrowing my eyes as I searched the entire room for her, but she was nowhere to be found. “Zoe?”
A fit of chuckles came from behind me as Zoe reappeared, as if from thin air. “Boo,” she said, beaming.
“I didn’t know you’d brought any of your invisibility potion,” I said, cocking my head.
“I didn’t,” she replied. “I can’t explain it, but something tells me that, from now on, I’ll be able to use the effects of my potions for a short time without having to actually brew them.”
I nodded, a feeling of hope spreading through my chest. This was huge. In just a few minutes’ time, we had become something so much more powerful than we’d been.
Would we be powerful enough to defeat Verbena?
Only time would tell.
Chapter 16
We hadn’t even exited the mausoleum when a wash of almost unbearable heat rolled through me.
“She had ample reason to allow you in but that purpose has been served,” I said, stopping in my tracks. My voice was monotone and, though I was fully aware, it seemed to come from a source outside of myself. “Careful navigation is needed to traverse the maze of spells and, even then, survival is not assured.”
“Are you alright, Cricket? What are you even talking about?” Patrick said, shaking me gently by the shoulders.
“I’m fine,” I said, a distinct image of Maude in my head. “I don't know how I did that but I know that we need to treat what I just said as one of Maude’s predictions.”
“So that must mean that Verbena has traps set for us outside the mausoleum, right?” Trudy said, eyes wide. ”Dang. She wanted you to get in, but not get out.”
Clearly, Verbena had decided to accept the risk of losing to us as a coven, for the chance to get our items at full power.
I nodded, doing my best to access whatever part of my brain I’d been using to make that prediction and dig for further information. “That’s my guess. We might even have to face off with her here and now.”
Mee-maw nodded sternly, looking down at her pocket watch. “I’m ready. There’s no way she can stand up to all three of us as we are now.”
“I wouldn’t be so certain,” I said, shivering as I remembered the power she’d displayed, through Connie’s body, after Zoe had gotten her magical item. A storm of green lightning that colored the entire sky and a quantity of magic that seemed totally unreal. It was almost impossible to imagine what incredible things she might be capable of if she was here in the flesh. “But, we might have no other option but to fight her.”
“Let’s get moving, then,” Patrick said, leading the way toward the large doors at the other end of the mausoleum.
Things warped and shrunk as we walked through, the mausoleum shifting back into a bland room of stone in an instant. With no immediate threats visible, I turned to re-bury the structures, feeling a pang of regret as I looked at them a final time. I pushed down with my energy and it, along with the two that flanked it on either side, began to sink slowly into the ground, the earth shaking and rumbling beneath us.
“How are you doing on magic?” Patrick asked softly, for my ears only.
“I have plenty left,” I said, feeling the well deep inside me, which seemed to be overflowing with the stuff. The ritual obviously did more than just strengthen our connection to our items and one another.
As we walked slowly away from the graves of our ancestors, another wave of heat came over me and Maude made her presence known, a clear image of her appearing in my mind. “Third gravestone on the right, straight ahead, fire trap. Fifteenth on the left, exhaustion charm,” I said quickly, my mouth giving voice to Maude’s thoughts. So this was the true power of an awakened clairvoyant.
“Eek,” Trudy said, stopping quickly in her tracks, having been just a few steps from walking right past the third gravestone on the right. “If that’s another prediction, then we’ll need to go around.”
I nodded, following her a few dozen feet to the side, where there was another path to walk down. As I surveyed the gravestones down this path, several of them began to buzz with a soft red glow. “Let me lead,” I said, “I can tell which areas we need to stay away from.”
Crack!
A bolt of green lightning split the sky, thunder booming out a moment later. The sky itself had begun to glow a sickly green and raindrops started to fall. Suddenly, the clouds came together, knitting themselves into a vague representation of a young woman whose piercing red eyes stood in stark contrast to the background. “You’re quite gifted, young clairvoyant. Much more so than your mother ever was, rest her soul,” Verbena boomed, her voice piercing and otherworldly.
“What’d you just say?” I called back, blood rushing to my head as the implications of her words hit me like a train.
There was a sharp tug at my arm. “Are you okay, Cricket?” Zoe asked, yelling over the sound of the brewing storm. “Who’re you talking to?”
“Verbena,” I said, confused as I pointed to the sky.
She eyed me dubiously. “That green thunder cloud?”
“Don’t you hear her?” I shouted, baffled.
A second lightning bolt came crashing down, this time slamming into the ground a few feet to our right, destroying a patch of gravestones with a sickening thud. “Give up, little witch. You’re stronger now, but not strong enough,” Verbena s
aid, her voice so loud and violent that I could feel the vibrations in my very bones.
How could the others not hear that?
I dismissed the thought and exhaled sharply, my mind racing as I tried to come up with some countermeasure for the next lightning strike. This alone seemed like too much to handle, and it felt like I was facing off against Zeus himself rather than a mere human. Perhaps she wouldn’t risk striking us directly, out of fear that she’d kill us outright? Seemed optimistic to gamble on something like that but maybe we had no other option...
Zoe stepped back up to me, putting her hand out. “We need to lock hands,” she said, “I’ll use my new ability to make us invisible for a short while. Maybe we can use that to get out of here.”
I nodded, reaching back as I took note of which gravestones in front of us were trapped. “Once we’re invisible, we’ll make a break for it. I just need to--”
“Cricket!” Patrick shouted, and I turned just in time to see a bone-white figure heading straight toward me at alarming speed.
I leapt back but it was too late, the horde of skeletons climbing over me and crushing me down with their weight. I gasped for air, filling my lungs with the sickening scent of rotting flesh as I reached for the magic to cast some kind of spell. If I could just--
Bones rattled and splintered as Zoe’s magic slammed into them, sending the skeletons flying several feet away, turning them into little more than a macabre pile of kindling.
“The bolts of lightning,” Zoe panted, “they seem to be reanimating those skeletons from their graves.” She shook her head in horror as she added, “I can’t believe someone would treat the dead this way…”
The sky split open once again, two glimmering green flashes followed by an explosion of grass and earth on either side.
“Do you now see the difference between us?” Verbena asked as the skeletons began to climb out of the ground in front of my very eyes. “I’m not some garden variety witch. Your magic is like a koi pond compared to the raging sea of power that I command. Imagine if I were actually there? But my minions will have to do for now...”
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