"A superwitch who needs this?" Gage asked, pointing to the talisman.
"I think so. Astra and I found some other writings by the same witch and it mentions certain objects that the superwitch will need. This talisman is just one of them." I held it up, and the vibrating magic trickled over my forearm like invisible water. It felt strange, but not uncomfortable. However, it was definitely something I didn't want to experience for too long. I reached for the box Gage presented it in and pulled out the thick cloth wrap. Enveloping the talisman securely, I tucked it inside the box and replaced the lid. I wondered where I would put the thing. Last time it was in my possession, it briefly lived in my suitcase and still managed to give me a headache.
"This witch who foresaw the superwitch... she have something to do with the witch who made this?" he asked.
"I don't know. I don't think so."
"What else?" Gage pressed.
"What do you mean?"
"Is there anything else you're not telling me? I can't say I'm surprised that Étoile hasn't informed the High Council of this superwitch search, but I'm surprised you didn't tell me right away, especially when you gave this to me," he added, pointing at the box.
"I..." I faltered. What was I supposed to say? I'm sorry? I couldn't tell him? I shouldn't be telling him now? Or because we just weren't that close anymore? We were friends, but it was tentative and hesitant, bound in past hurt and a future that involved the dictates of his race that he wouldn't publicly defy. We both made our choices. A secret relationship that would never lead anywhere was not something I wanted. It may have been so in the past, but that along with other things now affected the future. "I didn't know what the talisman could be used for when I gave it to you," I told him. "It's only come to light recently."
"You used to tell me everything. Is it because of us?" Gage paused, waiting, knowing that I knew exactly what he meant. Had it been on his mind too? Had he thought about it while I was missing?
"Things have changed."
"You're telling me." Gage sighed. Crossing his arms, he leaned against the wall, looking down at me with eyes full of hurt. Perhaps he wasn't taking the end of our non-started relationship as well as I thought. He gave me the option to continue and I declined since it involved secrecy with no promise of a future. "I would give anything to change..."
"Don't!" I held up a hand. "Please, don't. I get it. Really, I do. It doesn't mean I have to like it, but I do understand. The werewolves want what they want, and you're their leader. I can't be part of that because of who I am."
"We could..."
"There's no we. We chose our paths and they can’t converge anymore than this. We can only be friends."
He pushed himself off the wall and was next to me in one quick bound. His palms landed softly on my cheeks and he brought his lips down to mine, kissing me, searching for something that was no longer there. We never even had a chance to explore what could have been. There was no point in reopening an old wound now. The attraction was laced in disappointment; and with that thought, something snapped inside me.
I broke it off, bringing my fingers to my lips where I felt his heat lingering. Hot tears pricked my eyelids. "No," I told him, "I can't do this."
"It's because of him, isn't it?" Gage didn't step away, but kept his lips inches from mine.
"Him?"
"You know who I mean."
"No, it’s because we have no future. There's no point in hurting either of us. We had what we had, which was amazing; and I could have..."
"Loved me?"
"I think I did, but..."
"Not like you love him," Gage finished, his voice dropping. Annoyance bubbled in me at him discreetly blaming another man. Couldn't Gage take responsibility for the situation as it was between us? "I love you, Stella. I'm not sorry for kissing you, but I am sorry for hurting you. I won't stop being your friend. I will always be there for you."
"I know," I said, sensing his sincerity and honesty, knowing I could believe him. What I couldn't acknowledge was what he said about "him." He could only mean one other and I still wasn't sure where I stood with him, or what my feelings were. Evan's words at the door drifted into my mind again. I didn't misinterpret him. Were we really meant to be together, like he said? Was it truly only a matter of time?
~
"So how does this thing work?" asked Chyler. We were sitting in the restaurant at a table by the window, and she looked a lot calmer than my last glimpse of her in the reception area. She sounded thrilled when I called her asking to meet, and she was still casting glances around, audibly sucking in the sights. It didn't escape me that she was more interested in who was in the building, rather than the views that lay outside.
I took a sip of my coffee before I answered. "I have no idea."
"I thought you'd done this before!"
"Nope."
"How many times have you bound a witch?"
"Including you? Once." I witnessed a coven binding a witch before, and it was simple enough for one witch to bind another, but I never had cause to. I only bound Chyler because she asked me to. I should have expected the time would come to unbind her.
"So you have no idea? I'm the only witch in a building full of witches with no magic? I'm a freak! I'm a bigger freak than in high school when I had magic, and no one else did."
I held back a smile as Chyler indulged her theatrical pity party. She might have looked older, and her style might have toned down a little bit, but she was still just as excitable as I remembered. "You're not a freak. You're just... stuck," I finished lamely.
"I thought you were going to help me."
"I am. Just as soon as I figure out how."
"I kind of hoped you would already know," Chyler said, rolling her eyes as she took a bite from her baguette. "At least, you paying for lunch takes the burn off." She winked as I tried to recall any offer I made to pay for lunch. What the hell? She deserved it after the morning she had. I had to somehow compensate her for a dead body traveling up on the next car after her.
"We could ask the book," I pointed out. The horologican lay between us. If I thought it could actually sleep, I would have sworn it was sleeping. The pages were still, and the covers closed. It hadn't uttered a single murmur since I placed it between us an hour ago, its cloth cover concealing it so it wouldn't attract any undesired attention.
"I think it got scared," she said. "That poor woman... I see her every time I close my eyes."
"It's the shock."
"Will it go away?"
"Yes, I think so."
Chyler shivered. "Good. I don't want to remember her. I don't mean it in a bad way. I mean... I don't want to remember a dead body. I'm truly sorry for her. Did they find out who did it? Or how they got in?"
"Not yet that I'm aware of."
"I feel sorry for her family. It's so hard to lose someone close to you, and know you will never see that person again."
"Me too." We both lost our mothers, a mutual lack I was quite sure we both wished we didn't share. I wondered if the dead witch were a mother, or a sister, or a wife, and my heart burned for the people she left behind. Without realising it, I reached out and stroked the book. Now with my hand resting on it, I was fully aware of how strange it was to instill humanistic properties to something with no right to bear them. It was even stranger that I could swear I felt a pulse coming from deep within the book. "How do I unbind Chyler?" I asked, changing back to the topic in hand.
The cover jumped, knocking off my hand as its pages fluttered, before falling open to an early page. A spell was inked across it along with illustrations of witches being unbound.
"I swear that wasn't in there this morning," said Chyler.
I believed her. Turning it towards me, I read the spell. It was incredibly simple, given the requirements. I always thought only the witch who bound another was the exclusive party who could unbind them, and this spell could have wreaked havoc for the bad witches who were permanently bound, and their binders long
gone. "We have to get a jasmine candle."
"I have a jasmine candle in my room."
"Perfect. We need a drop of my blood..."
"I've seen enough blood today."
"It's only a drop. Oh, and we need a drop of yours. We combine them and drop them into the flame; then I say the spell and you're unbound."
"Easy peasy, magic squeezy," said Chyler. "The first thing I plan to do when my magic returns is tame this frizz," she said, running a hand over her perfect hair. “Second thing is to learn how to kick Brotherhood ass."
"Glad your priorities are in order."
"They took Jemima, my friend, back when I was eight or nine. Her family, well..." Chyler swallowed the last of her baguette and brushed the crumbs from her top. "So when do we get started? I can go get the candle now."
"We can't practise magic here. It's off-limits in public areas."
"How come? Some werewolf get zapped by accident?" Chyler giggled.
"Everyone's just edgy around here. They have been for... well, as long as I can remember. We'll unbind you in your room, since that's where the jasmine candle is," I told her, raising my hand for the server.
With the bill paid, we headed to Chyler's room on the floor above mine. I expected her to be closer, since we knew each other, but she told me that her aunt arranged for her to have the room next to hers. She was anxious to teach her what she missed once her magic was unbound. I ignored a brief twinge of envy at having a family member looking out for her, and reminded myself that I had someone too. Daniel. I knew he was training with Astra and Seren at the moment, and I made a mental note to find him later. It had been a short time for me, and a long time for him since we last caught up properly — my kidnap occupying most of that lengthy time — and with an impending war, time was literally of the essence now. Besides, it would be nice to have the company of one of the few men in my life who didn't send my mind into a twist. Not that I could think about that now. I pushed aside the images of Evan and Gage. I needed to concentrate on the task in hand: my first unbinding and properly restoring Chyler to her full power.
Chyler let us into the room. It was a little smaller than mine, but furnished almost exactly the same with a neat double bed, a desk and chair and a linen tub chair. Her view was less spectacular, without the vistas of the skyline that mine offered.
"Here's the candle," she said, plucking a small glass votive from the desk. She placed the horologican on the desk in its place, levering it open to the unbinding spell. "I read in a magazine that if you brought a candle, a photo and some other things you liked from home, any hotel room would feel more... homey."
"Does it?" I asked, looking around.
"Nope. It feels like a hotel, but at least, it’s got a nicer smell."
I laughed. "It's fortuitous that you picked a jasmine candle."
"It was my mother's scent."
I paused, thinking of my own mother again. I had no idea what her scent was, since I knew so little about her at all. I wondered if it were better to lose someone before you knew them; or to have shared some time with them, and lose them after you knew how much they would be missed.
"Let's light the candle," I said, pushing those thoughts from my head as Chyler produced a lighter.
"I don't smoke," she told me as she lit the flame before placing it next to the horologican. "It's purely for candles."
"I wasn't asking or judging. Do you have a pin for the blood drops?"
"I saw a sewing kit in the desk drawer." Chyler opened it and extracted a small card kit with several needles and tiny spools of thread. "They really think of everything here, huh? Except, you know, how to stop the bad guys from putting corpses in the elevator with creepy messages. I saw your name on it, Stella. They wouldn't hand you over, would they? Or that other guy? I guess you pissed off Georgia when you helped me; but what did he do?" she asked, her words rushing out.
"He's my cousin and he didn't do anything. No, they won't hand us over," I assured her. "They already had a meeting about it."
"Good."
I took the sewing kit, extracting two needles, and handed one to Chyler. "Let's sterilise these in the open flame, then we'll each prick our fingers and let a drop of our blood fall into the flame."
"Hygienic and awesome," said Chyler.
"Ready? You're sure about this?"
"One hundred percent."
I passed my needle through the flame, waving it in the air until it cooled. While it was still warm, I pressed the sharp tip into my thumb, watching a bead of blood well up onto my skin. Chyler repeated my motion, wincing as she squeezed her thumb. Together, we let the droplets fall onto the flame, then wrapped tissue around our thumbs as I began the spell. We joined hands at the first word, and I sent my magic into her, seeking hers, which was hiding deep and dormant, but waiting. At every word, her magic pulsed from deep inside her. Chyler gasped, and her breathing grew laboured as my magic drew hers out. She allowed the magic to travel through her, and it recognised her before rushing in its eagerness to be free again.
White noise deafened me and a wind swept up the room, swirling around us. No, not wind. Magic. Magic surrounded us! "Chyler Anderson, I hereby unbind you," I called above the magic. "With my magic, I call yours. With my magic, I set you free. You are unbound. You are unbound. You are unbound!"
Chapter Eleven
The horologican and I were having a good time as I curled up with it on the loveseat in my room. I sipped a hot chocolate from the restaurant's hot drinks machine and the book seemed proud at having someone to show off its many pages. After it stopped flipping them, it began showing me various spells and ink drawings. Now it was content to lie still and just let me read.
I could see why the demons were so desperate to obtain a book like this. It was an invaluable source of information, far more than what it appeared to be to the unknowing eye. Given its anthropomorphic qualities, I suspected this particular tome was rare among horologicans, thus making it all the more priceless. Its value to me was simple: I needed it to find the superwitch, and thereafter, the mystery witch would use it to defeat our enemy. It wasn't so much to ask, I reasoned, a small smile playing on my lips as I tried not to laugh at the way my "much to ask" scale had changed over the years. No, I hardly wanted anything at all!
"What I really need to know is who the superwitch is. Can you tell me that, hmm, book?" I asked out loud, wondering if it actually listened, or merely read my intentions. Regardless, the book did nothing. "Okay," I began again, "how about this...?" I stopped when the pages began to ruffle before a section turned, opening to a page squarely in the middle of the book. I watched the page writing itself. Only it didn’t write, it was drawing. As the drawing progressed, I saw it had nothing to do with my next question, namely, to ask which vampire possessed their talisman, and what it was. Instead, it appeared to be sketching my house in Wilding.
"I don't understand," I said, as the inked house took shape. "Why are you showing me my house?"
The picture began to fade. As soon as the lines were barely visible, a new drawing began. This time, my living room first became apparent, then, as if it were animated, the drawings morphed into the hallway that connected the rooms then the kitchen and the bedrooms appeared. From each room came a small glow of flickering light.
"Is my house on fire?" I asked, fearing the worst. The Brotherhood could have easily torched it as retribution for my daunting escape. They already killed one person and dumped her in our secure elevator. Torching my empty house would have been a piece of cake.
The flickering lights began to meld together as my house receded. Just as I was about to reach for my cell phone to call Annalise and ask her to send the fire department there, a new drawing began. It was a very old book with a tooled leather cover, just like the one I now held. My illustrated hands reached for it, and I recognised my demon ring with the one smashed stone immediately.
"Another horologican?" I asked as realisation dawned on me: There was another book somew
here in my house!
Underneath the drawing of the book, calligraphy slowly swept across the page in large point. It revealed one word: ANSWERS.
I stared down at the page, waiting for something else to happen, but nothing did. The book told me all the knowledge it intended to impart and was finished.
Gathering the book, I stuck a pamphlet in the page so I wouldn't lose it — not that it was any guarantee the book wouldn't erase the drawing anyway — and loaded it into my backpack. I need to talk to someone about it. If there were a horologican hidden in my house that contained the answers I sought, I had to get there and retrieve it, fast.
My one small problem was: Étoile forbade me to leave the building. I had to wonder if she thought it was still safe here, after The Brotherhood's message. I would have to convince her that in order to solve the superwitch riddle, I needed to leave. I was pretty sure she wouldn't agree to that, unless I came up with a solid plan.
With the horologican securely tucked into my backpack, I searched for Étoile. First stop, her office. It was empty except for Clare, who was examining a stack of paperwork. She looked up at the sound of my knock and I entered.
"Hey," she said with a weary smile. "How're you doing?"
"You mean after finding..." I trailed off, failing to add "the body."
"Yeah." She nodded. "Rough morning."
"For everyone. I was just unlucky. Not as unlucky as... Were her family found?" I asked, realising how selfish I sounded. Sure, I was unlucky to be in the reception area at the moment the elevator dinged open, but not nearly as unlucky as the poor woman inside it. I still had my life.
"They're flying in tomorrow."
"That must be awful."
"I've never lost anyone I loved," said Clare, "I can't imagine how painful it must be. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."
I put a hand up, stopping her. Yes, I'd lost people I loved, but I had the benefit — if you could call it that — of not remembering them, nor the pain my child-self must have endured. I still remembered the pain of uncertainty when I did not know if Evan were alive or dead, and I had no desire to inflict that horrible feeling on anyone. That thought was intensified by the sight and brutality of the woman's death. "Don't be sorry for me," I told her. "I know what you mean. I was looking for Étoile. Is she coming back?"
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