"Yes. I am sure that she still lives, but for how long, I do not know."
Faustine pressed his palms together, frustrated.
"Where have they taken her? Where? We've scoured the woods. Every Vepar lair that we've ever heard of has been searched. Tobias has fled. All of his old lair's are abandoned. What does it mean?"
Elda stood and went to him. She held his hands and looked into his face.
"The cave of elders. They were of great service to us last time; we must go again."
****
Elda and Faustine returned from their astral travel to an expectant Helena. She sat in the dungeon, perched on the edge of the raised stone slab. Elda opened her eyes first and then Faustine.
"No elders," Elda told her, disappointed. "No fire in the cave. Just cold night air."
"Surprising," Faustine added. "I can count on one hand the number of times in my life I've gone to that cave and found it empty."
"I've only been to the caves once," Helena admitted. "Right after I discovered I was a witch, for the initiation. They took me into their arms. I've never felt so loved. It was like I was being hugged by my mother, my grandparents, my siblings, everyone who ever cared for me all at once."
"Yes, I remember it too," Elda agreed. "It was the one moment of light and ease during those turbulent years. After I met the elders, I knew that I would be okay."
"So why are they gone when we need them?" Helena asked, concerned.
"Are they punishing us, Faustine? For all that transpired at Ula?"
Faustine's face darkened, but he said nothing.
Chapter 13
"I have an appointment," Abby told the girl at the counter.
She had found Leona French in an online directory. A psychic, medium and tarot reader, the woman operated out of a second-story tearoom on Canal Street. Sebastian had agreed to check out shops while Abby went in for a reading.
The girl led Abby to a back room and then closed the door firmly behind her.
"Sit with me," the old woman said, patting the couch beside her. "Can't see ya with these old eyes, but my hands know better anyhow."
Abby glanced around the room, taking in the antique furniture, cluttered together, and the shelves jumbled with bones, feathers, stones and books.
The woman sat hunched on her sofa, a spread of tarot cards fanned on the table before her. Thinning black hair showed patches of her scalp, spotted with age. She wore a dark robe, the hood resting on her shoulders.
Abby looked into the woman's face and saw blue eyes veiled by a white film.
Leona took Abby's hands in her own and stiffened. She traced her soft, worn fingers along Abby's palm, over each finger, gently probing the joints and knuckles. She released Abby's hands and moved to her face. She softly brushed Abby's eyes and lips and then continued to her skull, cradling her head and pressing into the bones along Abby's jaw and spine.
Satisfied, she leaned back into the couch and folded her hands in her lap.
"A water witch," she concluded.
"How can you tell?" Abby asked, studying her hands for some clue.
"I can feel it moving through ya. Cool and slow and deep. I can hear it in your voice. Nothing to it, honey. When you lose your eyes, that's when you really learn to see."
"That's amazing."
"It just is," Leona told her. "Now tell me about your ghost."
Abby glanced at the cards on the table. She saw a moon suspended above two dogs and several cards with swords.
"Are you a witch?" Abby asked.
Leona cocked her head.
"Is it fear that's got ya tongue tied? This ghost is haunting you good, ain't she? I'm a witch and a non-witch. I'm a little bit of the whole world and I'm nothin' at all."
"Her name is Kanti."
Leona frowned and nodded. She reached for the table and shuffled through the cards. She turned over a card. Abby read "Justice" upside down.
"How do you read the cards?"
Leona only smiled and lifted the card close. She held it in her hand for a long time.
"Vengeful, this ghost of yours. Gonna get what's rightfully hers."
"Can you feel her? Kanti?"
Leona nodded and her whole body moved with the gesture.
"She's here and then she's gone. Comes and goes real quick and dark. Has other business in the world, I think, but she's after you real good. She's old. How did you find this ghost, child? Diggin' a grave where you shouldn't'a been?"
"No. She's connected to a blood curse. I was hoping you might be able to tell me more."
Leona chuckled.
"You young ones are always so hopeful. Lookin' outside yourself for the truth that lives right here." She tapped two fingers on Abby's chest.
"A man directed me to you. He said that you would know what to do."
Leona sighed and hung her head.
"Father Ralph. He's been dancin' with skeletons long as I'm knowin' him. Still thinks I've got the holy grail, but darlin', look around you. Is this a palace of gold?"
Abby stared at the floor and fought the sudden desire to cry. She wanted to be rid of the curse and Kanti. She wanted to welcome her child into a happy world where evil did not exist.
"Gotta be protectin' this one here," Leona said, placing her hand on Abby's stomach.
Abby shrunk away from her.
"It's this one your ghostie is after."
****
"You know what's been bugging me?" Julian said suddenly, breaking the dinner silence. "How did Alva get to France? He obviously didn't board an airplane to bring Dafne, Indra and the human woman home. So how did he get them back to Michigan?"
"Do we know that he brought them back to Michigan?" Bridget asked, reaching across the table for a cornbread muffin.
"That's been bothering me as well," Faustine agreed. "And yes, I think they were all brought back. We know that Sebastian saw Isabelle in the Vepar's lair."
"Is it possible that they had access to a magic mirror? That they somehow entered Sorciére through the coven's mirror?" Julian wondered aloud.
Elda shook her head.
"How could they? Only covens have access to those mirrors, and they are bewitched for only that night."
Faustine stared into his stew, frowning.
"What are you thinking?" Elda asked him.
"Indra. From the beginning she has been the outlier. Why was she involved? She betrayed her coven, and for what? Because Dafne believed that Sebastian and Abby were next in line for the curse. Look at the risk she took, the peril she put her coven in for a witch she had a casual friendship with."
"They were close, Dafne and Indra," Bridget objected. "Wouldn't you help your friend?"
"No," Julian said bluntly. "Not at the risk of losing my coven and damaging my relationship with the magical world. Indra didn't just offer Dafne advice, she conspired. She helped her manipulate the energy in the Pool of Truth, she broke magical laws."
"And now she is dead," Elda sighed. "I don't get the impression that she gained from her choices."
****
"We have a plan," Victor announced.
They had spent the day doing tourist things. They took Lydie to the zoo, visited a music museum and stuffed themselves on seafood and pecan pie. After an exhausting day of sightseeing, they had returned to their vacation house to nap and talk about how to approach the L'Obscurite a second time.
The witches huddled around a wide leather ottoman. A round silver tray sat in its center, on which were arranged several glass bottles. Two of the bottles held a muddy red liquid and the third a greenish-hued paste.
"I hope it involves dinner," Sebastian told them, eyeing the bottles dubiously. He and Abby had taken a long nap and despite the day of eating, he talked of food the instant they woke up.
"No worries, my man," Oliver assured him. "Pizza is on the way."
Satisfied with pizza, though Sebastian always preferred home cooking, he moved closer to the group.
Abby took a seat on the floor between
Lydie and Victor.
"A plan for the L'Obscurite?" she asked.
"Yep," Victor stated, pointing to a notebook revealing stick figures and little thought bubbles.
"Looks professional," she joked.
"Hey," Oliver chuckled, "I'll have you know that Lydie gave those stick figures an A+."
Lydie smiled, but subtly shook her head toward Abby.
"These witches are dangerous, right?" Sebastian broke in, scowling at the page. "It feels like you guys are making a joke out of this."
He glanced toward Abby and she scooted closer to him, rubbing his back. She felt his heart beating rapidly through his back ribs. She had not told him what Leona French had said earlier that day. She knew that he was nervous enough without any additional stress.
"Don't worry," Kendra told him, gesturing to the paper. "This is just a brainstorm. We have no intentions of approaching these witches again without a serious plan."
"We're just having a little fun," Oliver added. "Ever heard of it? Fun?"
Sebastian narrowed his eyes at Oliver, but before he could retort, Abby jumped in.
"Okay, tell us the plan."
Victor picked up one of the bottles.
"This is a truth serum. We can't risk approaching Ethel, she's clearly the mastermind, but Sabre is a newer witch and should be way easier to crack. Abby will wander into the store like any old tourist and lure him out for a coffee or a drink."
"No," Sebastian blurted. "No way. Abby is not bait."
"She's not bait, Sebastian. She's a witch, a powerful witch and..." Oliver cut in.
"No."
"Sebastian," Victor began, looking to Abby for help, "we need Abby. Kendra can't seduce him because he's already met her. It's Abby or Lydie, and I'm guessing he's not the type to go for twelve-year-old girls."
"Honey," Abby said gently, hugging Sebastian closer. "I'll be fine. I've never felt stronger than I do right now. And I'm doing the easy part."
"The easy part? Going into that store and trying to lure him out under the nose of what? Twenty other powerful dark witches who are sitting upstairs having a drink?"
Abby bit her lip and looked to Kendra. She needed another woman's voice.
"Look at the big picture here, Sebastian," Kendra started. "We're here, we need this information. If you have another plan, then we're all ears, but as it stands..."
"I'll go," he said simply. "I'll go and talk him into meeting me."
"You're not a witch," Victor interrupted.
"Exactly," Sebastian agreed. "That's exactly why it will work. That guy was an arrogant bastard. He'll jump at the chance to get me alone to work some spell on me that he can run back and share with his friends. They get off on it. You saw what they did to us."
The other witches looked thoughtful. Only Oliver seemed to want to argue.
"He may have a point," Victor agreed. "And you really pissed him off when you called him Mitchell. He'd probably like a go at you."
"I'm not buying it," Oliver protested. "If you called him out, isn't he going to wonder how you knew his name?"
"How did you know his name?" Abby asked, realizing she had not heard that part of the story.
"I don't know," Sebastian shrugged. "It just popped into my head."
Oliver frowned, but Victor and Kendra had clearly come to a conclusion.
"It's settled," Victor said. "Sebastian draws him out. It's ideal. We'll still use the potion to cloak Sebastian so that the other witches can't pick up his thoughts while he's in the store, but now we can spare Abby's virtue."
"Oh thank you." Abby laughed. "I truly was concerned." She rolled her eyes.
"Pizza," Lydie shouted when the doorbell rang. She jumped up and ran to the front door.
Lydie's scream pierced their conversation. Kendra dropped the bottle of truth serum and it smashed on the wood floor. Oliver was already gone, racing from the room in a blur. Sebastian lifted Abby up by her arms and shoved him behind her as Victor ran for the front door.
Chapter 14
"Oh gosh! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to scare you," a woman yelped from the front of the house.
Abby and Sebastian walked to the front door where the others stood staring at a dark-skinned woman with beautiful black braids. She hovered on the front stoop with a red rubber mask clenched in her fists.
"It's just a mask," she told Lydie, holding it out as proof. "I brought it just in case I saw one of the others."
"You thought a red devil mask was less conspicuous than your own face?" Victor asked suspiciously.
"In New Orleans? Pretty much. I'm Audra, by the way."
"Audra who knows nothing," Sebastian said over Abby's shoulder. "She worked in the store," he told her in explanation.
"I'm not stupid," she snapped. "Do you have any clue what Ethel would have done to me if I talked to you?"
"So why are you here now?" Kendra demanded, crowding into the entryway with Oliver, Victor and Lydie.
Audra glanced behind her and shifted uncomfortably.
"Can I come in? I feel exposed out here."
"No, you can't come in," Kendra began, but Lydie interrupted her.
"Let her in. She's scared. I can feel it. She came alone."
Oliver glanced toward Lydie in surprise, and the woman gave Lydie a grateful look.
The other witches stepped back and Audra walked into the house. Her eyes darted around the room as if already planning her means of escape.
"I came because I did meet your friend," Audra informed them, moving away from the windows to stand along a wall where she could not be seen. "Dafne."
"Why don't we move to the dining room," Victor suggested. "We can sit. The windows face the backyard," he reassured her.
After they found their seats, Audra reached into her pocket and pulled out several sheets of paper, torn from a book.
"Dafne wanted a book while she was here. I don't know the name of it. Only that it involved spirits that find a way to survive after their bodies are gone."
Oliver frowned and looked toward Lydie. She watched Audra with wide eyes.
"Why would she want to know that?" Victor asked, addressing his question to Oliver.
"Your guess is as good as mine."
"Did she get the book?" Abby asked.
"Most of it," the girl said, pushing the papers across the table. "There were other things she wanted to know as well. I missed some of it because Ethel took her out of the store. I overheard something about an invisible pond."
"The Pool of Truth," Oliver corrected her, looking at Sebastian.
Dafne had somehow manipulated the Pool of Truth to reveal Sebastian as dead when he was in fact very much alive.
"Your witches helped her with that?" Abby asked, enraged. "Why don't they just call themselves Vepars?"
Audra flinched at the word.
"They're not my witches," she exclaimed. "That store has been in my family for generations. I didn't make any agreement with those witches, but my great-grandmother did and I'm bound by her oath. It's as simple as that. I don't support their methods. My great-grandmother didn't either, but by the time she realized what they were, it was too late."
"So they told Dafne how to bewitch the Pool," Victor cut in. "What else?"
"Like I said, I missed a lot of it, but she came back a few days later and she mentioned a curse. She seemed to believe that she was under some kind of curse and that a spirit had created it. She wanted to figure out where the spirit was getting its power and how it continued to live after its body had died."
"Kanti," Abby breathed and Victor's face darkened.
"Ethel gave her a book?" Oliver asked.
"But she tore out these pages first." Audra pointed toward the torn pages.
Oliver pulled them from the table and read them quickly.
"They're about possession."
"Possession?' Lydie asked, looking scared. "Like when a spirit takes over someone else's body?"
Audra nodded.
"Why woul
d she tear those out?" Kendra asked.
"I don't know," Audra told them.
"So that Dafne wouldn't know what she was up against," Sebastian broke in. "So that she wouldn't be afraid of getting too close."
Oliver grimaced and continued to study the pages.
"Are we talking about this spirit possessing Dafne?" he asked, though he clearly did not expect an answer.
"Why are you giving us this information?" Kendra looked at Audra.
"Because someone should know what they are," Audra replied. "I tried to tell Dafne, to warn her away from them. Everything comes at a cost with them. A terrible cost."
****
Like dreams, but not dreams. Dafne saw snippets of life. She felt a burst of cold water rushing over her bare thighs and slippery pebbles beneath her feet. So cold that it shocked her. She danced on the edge of a cliff in the moonlight, hands outstretched with a brilliant ball of flame roiling at the tips of her fingers. She lay beneath Tobias as he devoured her with his sharp teeth and tongue and black hungry eyes, but when he called her name, he called her Kanti.
When she woke between these visions, her body throbbed and tingled. She felt bruises and aching muscles. Her head felt raw, as if someone had pulled her hair. She smelled the sooty remains of her own power, exercised without her knowing.
"What is happening?" she asked the room and silence, that endless agonizing silence, greeted her.
****
Kendra arrived back at the house just as Oliver finished creating the circle. They had moved all the furniture against the walls, and he had drawn a large circle in chalk on the floor. Lydie and Abby moved through the house collecting candles. Lydie directed her fingers at one of the candles and they all lit at once.
"It's a special magic," Kendra said, glancing through the window where the setting sun glowed purple on the horizon. "Something we've wanted to try, but we never had the water element." She inclined her head toward Abby.
"Dream Magic," Oliver said. "Julian once told me about it."
"Is it a good idea to be performing new magic on these witches?" Sebastian asked.
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