Jack stopped reading and slipped his glasses off.
"Man," Sebastian leaned back and let out a long sigh.
"Who was the person that gave you this information?"
"Called himself Grandfather, didn't give me another name. He carried the traditions, I believe, told stories to the young ones in the Native American culture."
"And the white man and Kanti both just vanished? She and this man? There was no story of one killing the other? Of a body? Anything?"
"Well," Jack paused. "I heard a handful of strange tales over the years. One man said that the white man had been a murderer and a thief. They called him the Snake Tamer. This man told me that the Snake Tamer could live forever, but he exchanged the lives of others for his immortality."
Sebastian frowned, thinking of the bit of history that he and Abby had read just the day before about Snake Island.
"I started having nightmares the night we dug up the body. Horrible dreams of being buried alive and trying to claw my way out, dreams of being burned. We woke that girl. And you know what? I started thinking those dreams were her memories."
Julian shot Sebastian a look out of the corner of his eye and he knew why - Abby was having very similar dreams.
"I heard another story too." Jack pulled out a faded napkin from his folder. "A woman told me this one, an old brittle thing with one glass eye and teeth full of gold. She looked like something out of one of my own Gramma's story-books. I was sittin' having a cup of coffee, mindin' my own, and she slid onto the stool right next to me. She said, 'listen stranger, I hear you're lookin' for a little Indian girl went missin' a few centuries back?' I turned and looked at her like an alien had just waltzed in and struck up a conversation with me. How on earth could she know what I was lookin' fer? Ya know? Anyway, she told me that the girl cursed her own child and if I wasn't careful, that poisoned blood would find a way into my family and it'd eat us all alive."
Jack slid the napkin back into his folder and glanced at a picture on his side table. It showed a young girl, around ten years old, practicing hula-hoop in the sprinklers.
"My granddaughter, Amy," he said proudly when he noticed them looking.
"You believe the white man that kidnapped her, murdered her, and buried her in the woods where you recovered her bones?" Julian asked.
"I believe he did far worse than that," Jack answered. "No justice in this sick world." He shook his head sadly.
"Oh, she's getting her justice all right," Sebastian muttered.
"How so?"
Julian gave him a warning look, but Jack had moved to the front of his chair and his eyes gleamed.
"There is a curse?" he prodded.
"Maybe you did wake her," Julian murmured, thinking. "Dafne did not know of her, nor did the Lourdes as far as we can tell. Only Abby has had contact with her."
"And Victor," Sebastian added.
"Yes, and why Victor?"
"Who's Victor and Abby?" Jack asked.
"It's a long story."
Jack sat back in his worn recliner and folded his hands in his lap.
"I've got nothing but time these days. Clear your heads, boys, tell me a story."
Julian looked reluctant, but Sebastian felt the old man deserved a story in exchange for the information he'd given them.
"Sure, why not."
They began to talk, each telling bits of what they knew and the other filling in the gaps, carefully omitting the word 'witches.'
"We believe the curse began with Kanti. We don't know how she did it, but the curse appears approximately every one hundred years, and we assume the time-frame triggers it," Julian explained.
"Or some other catalyst," Sebastian added. "Such as the woman," he nearly said witch and caught himself, "falling in love."
"Both the woman and her lover are effected. The lover is drawn to do terrible things in pursuit of power."
"Such as killing family and friends."
"The curse seems to have a timeframe. A few months of chaos and then the darkness subsides."
"And there's quiet for another hundred years."
"What does she gain? Kanti? What is the point of the curse?" Sebastian asked out loud. He had asked the question in his head a hundred times, but still had no answer.
"Maybe I have an answer for you," Jack said, looking thoughtful. "I worked for about ten years as a crisis counselor. Hard work, and if you do it long enough you grow bitter, jaded with life. Fortunately, I saw that happenin' and pursued my calling as a fly fisherman. I learned something in those years, though. Trauma has a life all its own. It needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Most people, when they get hurt or abused, get stuck in the middle. Their beginning was the abuse, their middle was the shock, the denial, the trying to understand. Their ending, for the ones that get it, is acceptance. The only people I met who were ever okay looked upon that trauma with wide-open eyes. They said, 'it happened, it was wrong, but now it's over.' They said it until they accepted that it was a part of their story and it was okay that it had happened. That was the ending, their acceptance, their willingness to look at it without spending their whole lives asking why. Why is a great jumping-off point, but you gotta land sometime. You gotta get two solid feet back on the ground and start walking into the future. A lot of people who get traumatized float and flail. They want an answer that this world will never give them. I think this Kanti might be flailing. She was a special kind of someone. Maybe special enough that she can hold onto a grudge so hard that it keeps her in the world. People who have been abused often become abusers. Kanti gets to relive her own suffering every time the curse swings back around. It keeps her tethered to her experience, it brings others into the experience with her so that she's not alone."
"You're telling me she created a centuries-long curse because she was traumatized and never got over it," Sebastian asked, unconvinced.
"Sure," Jack said mildly. "Do you know what trauma looks like in the normal world? A child gets abused, he abuses his children, they abuse theirs. Generations, centuries of pain, all paying it forward. They're stuck. They never get the closure they need so they have to revisit the experience again and again. Now take that trauma, which in a normal person can span centuries, and put it into the body of a magic child. A child who is forced to create another child. I believe in the power of our intentions. I've seen things with my own two eyes that don't abide by the laws of our world."
Julian took a big breath and let it out slowly.
"You know Jack, I think you may be right."
Chapter 23
"It's best if I go to Montana as well," Elda told Faustine.
They shared tea and biscuits in the breakfast room and discussed Elda's conversation with the witch Ellen.
"Yes, I agree. Julian is abrasive. We don't want to upset her. Julian and Sebastian are meeting with the man in Texas today. Shall we see if Julian wants to join you in Montana?"
"Yes, I think so. Helena and Bridget are busy with the wedding preparations, and I believe Helena is finally getting Lydie excited as well so this is an ideal time to slip away."
"Adora is improving. Bridget told me she took eggs and toast to her room this morning and that the sores in her mouth are all but gone."
Elda sighed and smiled.
"That warms my heart. I feared for her, Faustine. That perhaps we would lose her too."
"Not if I have any say in it," Faustine told her. "We've had too much death at Ula. A balance must be restored."
"I feel as if we're close, so close."
"As do I."
****
He wore her down. Oliver knew if he hung around long enough, Ezra would eventually open up to him.
One night as they walked along the Chicago River, he reached for her hand. At first she stiffened, and he knew she considered pulling her hand out of his, but in the end, she held on.
"I miss my brother most of all," he admitted.
They had been talking about what they most missed from their pr
e-witch lives.
"You don't see him at all?"
"No, he got married, had a set of twin boys. I hunt Vepars. I'm not interested in watching them die because of me. I learned really quickly at Ula that the life of a witch can be pretty perilous, especially for the human families of witches."
"Elda and Faustine don't seem like the doomsday types. What made you believe that?"
"Elda and Faustine weren't my teachers. Julian and Dafne were. They both lost the people they loved to Vepars. They had no reservations in stressing to me the realities of life as a witch. If a Vepar believes they can get to you through your family, they will. I cut ties with my family within two months of entering the coven. I pretended to join a religious cult. I told them I was moving to India and they would never see me again."
"And you stuck to that?" Ezra asked, surprised.
"Yeah, they've never seen me again. I've seen them, of course. I can't help it. I want to know my nephews. Sometimes I want to hug my brother so much it hurts. I miss my parents too. I watch my mom go to the country club to play tennis. My dad sits on the back deck and watches birds. I can imagine walking through the front door. I've come close a few times, but for their sakes, I don't."
Ezra gave his hand a long squeeze.
"What about you, what do you miss?"
Ezra ran a hand through her short spiky hair. He'd found her making coffee in the kitchen loft that morning with white hair streaked pink and yellow.
"I miss my dog Elanor."
Oliver snorted.
Ezra elbowed him and laughed. "I loved my dog, thank you very much."
"A dog named Elanor no less." he joked.
"My grandma's name was Elanor and my dad insisted on it. I could have vetoed him, but I loved Grandma too, so I figured, why not? My dad died before I became a witch. My evil step-monster kept Elanor."
"Where was your mom?"
Ezra rubbed her neck and shoulder.
"In rehab, on drugs, in rehab. I don't know. She was off and on with heroin before I even came into the world. My dad was pretty much a shell of grief until he met Mary. She hated me in the fashion of step-parents the world over. I had a brother who died of a heroin overdose when I was eight."
"I'm sorry," Oliver told her, stopping. "Here, let me."
He turned her to face the water and massaged her neck and shoulders. Earth elements had a special talent for massage, manipulating the physical. He felt Ezra lean into his touch.
"My dad died of a heart attack. The truth is that he had been a heroin user too. When my mom got pregnant with me, he checked into rehab, got clean, and never looked back, but once an addict, always an addict. He would be the first to tell you that. He stopped doing heroin, but took up whiskey, cigarettes, weed, gambling, TV, sugar. He picked up a million new addictions to kick the worst one of all."
"Damn," Oliver murmured, at a loss for words.
"You don't need to," Ezra told him, before he could go on. "Believe me, I get it. I'm surrounded by tragedy every day. Words of comfort don't actually exist. It's enough to have someone that listens, even better if they don't offer some false sentiment about how they're in a better place, which I believe, by the way. I'm a witch. I know that our souls transcend, that there is freedom after the bondage of this life, but the human still lives in me too, and she curses the gods that created love."
"Love? Rather than mortality?"
"Who would care that we live and die if it weren't for love? I don't see death as the issue, but our desperate love for the person slipping through our fingers. We want so much to keep them, hold on so tight, but still, they go."
Oliver felt in the earth around them with his energy. When he found the rock he searched for, he held out his hand, drawing it forth. The rock rose up, hovering in front of Ezra. She stopped an inch before it smacked into her face.
"Very suave." She laughed, reaching up to touch the crude heart-shaped rock.
"Best I could do on the fly."
Ezra smoothed her fingers along the rough edges.
"This is a much more appropriate depiction of love," she said. "Rough, gritty, a little ugly even. Those smooth glossy red hearts that I see everywhere around Valentine's Day make me want to gag."
"Mental note taken," Oliver told her, pulling on her hand until she stopped.
He brought her close.
She was short, the top of her head fit easily beneath his chin. Instead of looking up at him, she stared straight ahead at his chest. He gently pressed his fingers under her chin until her soft brown eyes stared into his.
"Oliver, we've had this conversation."
He kissed her anyway, knowing that she might reject him a second time. It would hurt a bit, but it was worth it, on the slim chance that she kissed him back.
At first, she didn't. She stood perfectly still as his lips pressed against hers and then slowly, reluctantly, she parted her lips and kissed him.
****
"We've got this place all to ourselves," Abby told Baboon, scratching his neck as he stretched out on the couch beside her. She had looked forward to the day alone, but suddenly felt overwhelmed. The wedding was fast approaching and the curse still hung over them like a dark stormy cloud, threatening to not only ruin their wedding day, but their entire lives.
She knew that Oliver had gone to Chicago to try and get a sense of whether Victor or Kendra had stolen the amulet. It made her uneasy and she fought the desire to call Oliver and get a progress update. She wanted to believe that Victor could not have stolen the amulet. However, she found it impossible to believe that Kendra would have taken the necklace. Kendra wasn't invested the way Victor was. He had a blood link to Kanti, as Abby herself did. Victor had also approached Abby at the All Hallow's Ball. He initiated their contact at the urging of Kanti, and had been dreaming of her for years. Could she have gotten to him, somehow?
"Bath time?" she asked Baboon, who responded in typical cat fashion with silence.
She stopped in the nursery and touched the mobile of white paper birds, watching them sway lazily in the morning sun. She and Sebastian had searched the house when they returned to Australia to make sure nothing was amiss. It was not vandals that Abby worried about, but the spirit of Kanti who'd come into their home previously.
Abby ran the bath scalding hot and poured bath salts and lavender oil into the water. She watched the oils swirl and dance. Holding her hand above the surface, she invited the water to her. A stream rose out of the bathtub and bathed her hands and wrists in steaming warmth. As she watched, the oils started to form a strange shape. She leaned closer and then quickly jerked upright as a face appeared in the water. Kanti's dark, pleading eyes stared back at her and her mouth opened in a huge, terrified scream. Abby stumbled back and her hips bumped the vanity. She started to flee, but the face had vanished. A ripple of water was the only evidence that the face had ever existed.
Abby watched the water for several minutes and then leaned over the tub and pulled the plug. Did she want Kanti to reappear? A part of her did. A part of her wanted the woman, the girl, to speak to her.
"Tell me what you want," she whispered, as the bath drained, leaving an oily sheen on the porcelain bottom.
Sun streamed through the window and lit their bedroom. Abby gazed at Lake Michigan, trying to puzzle together what the dreams and the visions meant. The latest Kanti dreams had left her feeling scared and hurt for the young Native American woman. She had been tortured and now she wanted, what? Justice? Revenge?
"I don't know," Abby whispered. She sat on the edge of the bed and then lay back. It was so soft. Indulgent, Sebastian called it. She closed her eyes and Kanti stole into her dreams.
Kanti lay on the floor of the cabin, her pregnant belly rose and fell in rapid bursts. She tried to slow her breath, conserve it, as the fire consumed the cabin. The flames rose up the wall, destroying everything in their path. Smoke had begun to fill the single room. Bound at hands and feet, she could not escape. Would he finally kill her this time?
Or was it merely another in his sick games where he brought her to the edge of death and then ripped her back, stealing even the hope of that release.
Abby gasped and sat up in bed. Her heart pounded and her mouth felt paper dry as if she'd been screaming. The sun had lowered in the sky and the light in the room had the orange glow of the impending sunset. Her bedside clock read 7:04 p.m. Sebastian would return anytime. His flight was supposed to arrive in Trager at six thirty pm.
Abby shuffled out of bed and glanced in the mirror. A pale, troubled face looked back at her. She pulled her hair into a messy bun and slipped on a clean t-shirt and linen pants, discarding her sweaty clothes in the hamper.
In the kitchen, she set about warming up leftover turkey chili for her and Sebastian. He would be hungry after his flight and she wanted something to busy her shaking hands.
She thought about the dream and recalled the sheer panic that Kanti felt as the cabin filled with fire. The dream reminded her of the experiences both Kendra and Julian had described during the bone magic in Chicago months earlier. In fact, the previous dreams of being buried alive and burned also mimicked sensations the witches recalled after Dante performed the magic.
"Whoa, she's a water goddess and she cooks? I better marry that girl!"
Abby dropped the metal spoon in her hand and it clattered against the tile floor.
"You scared me!" she declared, placing a hand over her heart.
Sky Mothers (Born of Shadows Book 4) Page 19