"Knock, knock," she said, pushing the door in cautiously.
Elda spent a great deal of time in the space, poring over books of shadows, and Lydie didn't want to startle her. She also wanted the space to herself.
When no one answered, she opened the door wide and darted inside, closing it firmly behind her. She saw the trunk immediately and strode to it, undoing the clasp and flipping up the lid. The inside smelled musty and sour. Lydie wrinkled her nose and stared at the contents. Letters wrapped in twine sat on the top of the stack and she snatched them out and tucked them into her cloak. Lydie closed the trunk and retreated to her room. She knew that Faustine and Elda would be upset that she took the letters, but she was sick of feeling left out. Now she would be the one with information.
****
That evening, Ezra promised to take Oliver to the best sushi restaurant in the city. As they prepared to leave, Kendra walked in the door holding an unwieldy box that she carried effortlessly.
"Where are you guys off to?" she asked, sliding the box on the counter.
"Sushi Om," Ezra told her, buckling the high black boots that she wore over yellow fishnet tights. Above that, she had chosen a pair of paint-smeared terrycloth shorts and a tight black tank top. Oliver had decided that her fashion sense was truly one of a kind.
"Ooh, sounds good. Is Victor here?" Kendra looked around the loft, but the answer was written on her face. "Out again?"
Oliver could see that Kendra was disappointed and trying to hide it.
"Come with us," Oliver insisted. "Ezra said that Dante and Marcus might meet us too."
"Yeah, I think I will," Kendra replied, darting a last glance at Victor's empty bedroom.
She changed quickly and they left the loft on foot. The walk took a little less than fifteen minutes and they settled into a small booth at the back of the crowded restaurant.
When Ezra excused herself to the bathroom, Oliver took his chance with Kendra.
"Any idea what Victor has been working on? Ezra said he's been really busy with some secret project."
Kendra froze and her eyes shifted quickly toward the door. A human would never have noticed, but Oliver was not a human and he had been watching. Whatever Victor was up to, it had Kendra spooked.
She shrugged and ran her fingers through her long blond hair.
"Beats me. He likes to fly under the radar when he's working on something new."
Oliver nodded. He was not telepathic, but before he left Ula, Faustine had given him instructions and sent him with the Crystal of Sight. He slipped the crystal into his palm and leaned his head into his hand, resting the crystal near his third eye. He closed his eyes as if his head ached.
A blast of images cascaded through his mind and he tried to scan them.
He saw one, so briefly that he barely caught it. Victor stood at his dresser holding a black velvet box. He turned a guilty and then angry gaze on Kendra when she walked into his room uninvited, but then the image was gone.
"Headache?" Kendra asked.
Keeping the crystal concealed, Oliver slid his hand beneath the table.
"Yeah, getting better though."
"Here," she dug in her purse and pulled out a roll-on oil. "Rub a bit on your temples. Your headache will be a thing of the past."
He grinned and took the bottle, swiping his temples and holding it to his nose.
"Spearmint?"
"Among other things. So how are the wedding arrangements going?" Kendra asked. "I chatted with Abby to see if we could do anything, but apparently Bridget and Helena are quite the little wedding planners."
Oliver laughed.
"Yeah, don't dare take away their beloved wedding. They're like cackling hens right now, constantly changing the color of the candles and the arrangement of flowers."
"Sounds miserable." Ezra laughed, returning to the table. "Now I understand why you escaped to Chicago."
"Oh, come one." Kendra smiled, wistfully. "Weddings are beautiful. I've always loved them, the ceremonies especially. I'm not sure that two people are ever more committed to a higher love than on that day."
"Are you a hopeless romantic, Kendra?" Oliver teased.
"I prefer to think that I'm just a romantic, not a hopeless one."
"Hopeless if your partner is Victor," Ezra told her, winking.
Kendra smiled, but Oliver saw a sadness in her eyes at Ezra's words.
****
Elda moved in her astral body to the Cave of Elders. Though the cave was empty, she could send a message through the smoke in hopes of making contact with a coven that knew of the Serpent House. She did not have to build a fire. As she stood in the space and made her intention known, the fire sparked and grew.
"Earth, Air, Fire, and Water
Sisters and Brothers Hear My Call
It is Air that I Seek
Knowledge of a Time Now Passed
Souls of the Serpent House
Can You Hear My Call
Souls of the Serpent House
Can You Hear My Call
Souls of the Serpent House, reach out to me
Mote it be
Mote it be."
She could have returned to Ula. If a witch responded to her request, she would feel the tug in her astral body and return to the cave, but she chose instead to wait. The cave soothed her. She drifted in the smoke and firelight, the burden of her physical life slipped to the periphery of her consciousness. In her astral body, she touched the world of formlessness. It was a sweet, easy space, and sometimes it made her long for the end of life in her physical body.
Several hours passed before another witch joined her in the cave. The woman wore a flowing black cloak. Her white hair stood in stark contrast to the black hood.
Elda moved toward her and extended her hands. They did not touch, but their energies collided and then broke apart.
"You seek a soul of the Serpent House?" the witch asked, watching Elda with curious gray eyes.
"I do."
"She is not well. Astral travel is unavailable to her."
Elda nodded.
"I understand. She is of your coven?"
"Yes, though we are more a family than a coven. You can find us in Montana. Our farm is called the Winds of Change, near Butte."
"Can we come to you? And speak with this witch?"
"She would like that, yes. She is not long for this world and wants to be of service to you. She remembers the Serpent House in great detail. It was her first coven. She still harbors pain from its destruction."
"It was destroyed?" Elda asked.
"I am Ellen. The witch you seek is Nora. She will be expecting you."
When Elda returned to her physical body, she was alone in the dungeons. The stone slab in the underground room aided in astral travel, but Elda rarely went there. It reminded her too much of Max. As she sat in the velvet chair on the raised slab, she could hear his voice echoing through the chamber as he lectured Lydie in that gentle way of his. Max and Dafne, two integral members of Ula, had passed. She wondered how many more might die before the curse would be broken.
Chapter 22
Oliver volunteered to help Ezra at the medical clinic that the guerrilla witches ran in Chicago. In truth, he felt out of his element. Witches, like people, had specific skills and abilities. Oliver hunted Vepars. Healing had never come easily to him.
Ezra lifted a small girl onto an examination table.
"How ya doing sweetie? Eye still hurt?"
"Nope," the little girl told her. "See?"
The little girl held her eye open really wide and pushed her face close to Ezra's.
Ezra laughed.
"Looks like somebody gave you a whole new set of peepers," Ezra exclaimed. "But just to be safe, take this tincture home. Have your momma put one drop in every night for the next two weeks."
The little girl took the tiny blue bottle.
"Can I have a sucker?"
Ezra shook her head.
"You know I don't peda
l those drugs in here, but I can do one better." Ezra pulled a huge bowl of fruit from beneath the table. "Take as much as you want."
The little girl snatched two apples and an orange and hopped down from the table.
"Bye, Rachel," Ezra called as the girl ran for the door.
Oliver had been carefully unpacking boxes of sterile gloves and arranging them in a cupboard. He could have unpacked them in about two minutes, but the clinic was bustling with people, none of them witches, so he had to keep things conventional. Plus, he got to watch Ezra out of the corner of his eye while he worked, which he rather enjoyed. He found himself thinking of Ezra more and more. When he was at the loft, he looked up hopefully each time the door opened and felt a little sigh of disappointment if Dante or Marcus walked through instead.
"What happened to her eye?" Oliver asked when Ezra glanced at him.
"Pink eye, pretty common. She has five siblings, and a whole gaggle of neighbor kids who get dropped in her little apartment as a pseudo less-than-legal-daycare. I treat her for all manner of ailments, her whole family too." Ezra shrugged as if to say, "such is life."
The double glass doors at the front of the building flew open and a tall wiry man shoved a gurney into the room.
"It's an O.D.," a short Indian woman, with wild dark hair shouted.
She ran across the room and began to assemble an IV.
Ezra dropped the cloth she'd been using to wipe the bed in front of her and sprinted to the stretcher.
"Room One," she told the man pushing the gurney.
The clinic didn't have rooms, but a series of stalls separated by hanging white curtains. Each space held a hospital bed, a small table, and a swivel chair. Ezra kicked the chair and sent it wheeling across the room.
"He's in cardiac arrest," Ezra told the small Indian women who'd arrived with the IV. "We need to intubate. Where's Jules?"
Oliver had met Jules that morning. Dr. Andrea Jules, a tall, stick thin woman with ebony skin and giant cat eyes glasses, had given him a firm handshake and a quick once over before returning to setting a man's broken arm.
"I'm here," Jules yelled, running toward them and fumbling with a cup of coffee.
"Ouch, shit," she yelped as it scalded her hand.
Oliver flicked his fingers toward her and the cup steadied. He slipped across the room and took it quickly from her grasp.
Ezra pulled the sheet around the patient and Oliver watched the clinic, chaos a moment earlier, return to its pre-emergency calm.
After the doctor and nurses emerged from the room, Ezra stayed behind. Oliver slipped behind the curtain.
Ezra glanced at him.
A man with cropped black hair lay on the bed. Tattoos covered both his arms and most of his neck. Ezra leaned over him, pressing her hands against his torso.
"Just giving his lungs a little extra help," Ezra told him.
"Did you give him anything?" Oliver whispered, referring to a potion or tincture that contained a bit more than herbs.
Ezra shook her head. "I rarely need to. The staff here are miracle workers in their own right. If he starts to slip, I'll help out, but I prefer not to use magic unless necessary."
"Why?"
Ezra cocked her head as if she hadn't ever really thought about it.
"I guess I don't want to take it for granted. Before I became a witch, I watched a lot of people die. It's part of life after all, but now, I rarely have to watch anyone die. I can save most of them. It's such an amazing gift, but it also feels like a huge responsibility. There are days that I am not here. Usually, those are the days that we lose patients. I can't save everyone and it would be naive and arrogant of me to pretend that I can. Humans die, witches die. None of us are getting out of here alive. I treat magic with reverence and respect."
"I definitely see your point. Makes me feel like a jerk for using magic to wash my clothes."
Ezra grinned.
"Always the joker. Believe me, I use magic for all manner of trivial things, but when it comes to bringing magic to non-witches, I tread carefully."
****
Jack opened the door into his small, musty apartment. The air hung thick with cigarette smoke. Sebastian grimaced, but Julian waved a hand near Sebastian's face and the air cleared.
Sebastian had flown to Texas with Julian that morning, reluctant to leave Abby behind, but slightly reassured by her insistence that she intended to take naps for most of the day and catch up on laundry.
Jack leaned heavily on a walker. Two bright blue eyes shone from his tanned, wrinkled face. He smiled and gestured them inside.
"Don't mind the mess, boys. My daughter comes by on Sunday to clean up after her old man."
"No worries," Sebastian told him. Despite Jack's disclaimer, the apartment was neat and clean. A single ashtray contained a pile of cigarette butts, otherwise, the surfaces were empty of dishes and debris. Sebastian and Julian took a seat on a long brown couch, draped with a blue and red afghan.
"Thank you for meeting us," Julian told him, holding out a small package wrapped in brown paper.
Jack took it.
"What's this, then?"
"Cookies, courtesy of our dear friend Bridget," Julian shrugged. "Apparently it's not polite to make house calls without dessert of some kind."
"My kind of woman," Jack laughed, ripping off the paper. "Oatmeal, chocolate chip, and molasses. Well, your friend has outdone herself. You'll offer my kind regards."
"Of course," Julian agreed.
"I must tell you, after I dug up that amulet, I became a bit obsessed. Back in those days, I was a workin' man with money on my mind. Then I went on that little dig and came back different, haunted."
"Who was the man that organized the dig?" Julian asked.
"A man by the name of Ira. Course I didn't know Ira from any other Tom or Harry. My friend Troy called me up and said there was money to be had and off I went. I lived in Michigan in those days, Grand Rapids area. I packed up my shovels and drove north and met the boys out in the woods. Ira had a map, real clear-like. He knew exactly where to dig for those bones. Of course, I realized later he tricked us good. He knew darn well there was no treasure with those bones." He shook his head as if still amazed by the betrayal.
"What did he look like?" Sebastian asked, wanting to ensure they were talking about the same man.
"Tall, real skinny with short little arms. Weird looking, and weird acting, too. He was not a friendly fella, and Troy swore later that the man had smiled at him with sharp teeth like a vampire might have." Jack shuddered and picked up another cookie, taking a bite and chewing slowly. "Sugar helps, you know? Makes the memories a little easier to look at."
"You uncovered the bones, and then what?"
"I jumped in the hole, swearing like a sailor. 'Where's all the damn gold?' I said. But that man Ira just kept pointing to the amulet. He handed me a black cloth and asked me to wrap it up. Somethin' strange happened right about then, we all got a little fuzzy headed. You see, I'm not the kinda man that takes a beating lying down, but I took that cloth, folded the amulet inside, and handed it over. He told us we had to bury the bones in a different location, at the base of a big oak tree, and we did, with barely a grunt among us. I don't remember much after that, but when we woke in the morning, Ira was long gone. He muddled our brains. Don't know how, but he did."
"Yes, I'm sure he did," Julian agreed. "I still don't understand how Stephen found you, though. We were told that you recognized the name Kanti, but obviously Ira didn't give you that name."
Jack started to struggle up from his chair and Sebastian stopped him.
"What can I get you?"
Jack gestured to a small dining table stacked with books. "There's a folder there on the top, green one."
Sebastian went to the folder and glanced at the books. Many had subjects about Native American history while others appeared to cover the occult and the supernatural.
"I couldn't sleep for months after that dig. I began to dream
of a Native American girl, and I knew who she was, the owner of those bones. I started to do research and in those days we didn't have the interweb so I did a lot of travelin' and talking. You might say this was a strange thing to do, but I couldn't let it rest. Lost my wife fer it. She couldn't take the obsession no more. Took our two kids and found herself a dentist to marry. But that's neither here nor there. My big break came one day in Trager City. They was holdin' a Native American festival with dancing and singing and a pow wow. I got to askin' questions and a man said to me, 'You mean Kanti?' I didn't know that name, but let me tell you it struck me like a tuning fork finding home. I took that man for a beer that turned into about six beers."
Sebastian handed him the green folder and Jack picked up a pair of reading glasses, sliding them on as he flipped through pages. He pulled out a sheet of paper covered in tightly written, nearly illegible, words.
"I wrote it all down, had to. I wanted to mull it over when my belly wasn't full of beer. This man described Kanti as a 'gifted child in an Algonquian Tribe. Daughter of Nadie and Ahanu.' He said 'she had the sight.' She could see visions in the fire, speak to it, sing to it. The tribe would later come to believe that Kanti was taken for her specialness, but when she first disappeared, they believed an animal attacked her. A boy in the tribe saw her get abducted. He described a huge hairy beast. He believed it was a man, but he also called it an animal. They thought they were looking for a bear or perhaps a very large wolf. However, it made little sense that such an animal could take her so quietly. In the forest, they found the remains of a camp near their own. Remnants of a white man and a giant man remained. They began to search for her. It was a frustrating and fruitless search. They would hear tidbits about the girl. They would follow a trail of sightings only to discover that the white man, the girl, and his giant had left days earlier. Her tribe heard that she had escaped from the man and fled. But she did not merely run away. She turned the tables. She killed the giant in a brutal way. She and the white man vanished without a trace. They never received another sighting, another clue as to her whereabouts. They learned of a child, but they never found the child. Kanti's mother mourned her for the rest of her life. The entire tribe mourned her. She became a mythical figure. Kanti the Destroyer. The children told stories of the great woman, stolen from her tribe, who gave birth to a half-man half-bear that would someday rule the world through magic fire. Beware of Kanti if you play with fire, if you stray into the woods, if you disrespect your mother and father. She will punish you. The phantom of the great beast she killed will steal you from your bed at night, it will drag you into the forest where she waits to punish you for your crimes."
Sky Mothers (Born of Shadows Book 4) Page 18