This time when Rule reaches for the ignition to start the car, I don’t stop him. “We’ll ask my grandmother about it when we get back.”
I don’t hold out much hope that Fiona will have miraculously remembered who my observer might be. I know, deep down, that the only way I’m going to find out is a direct confrontation. I flex my fingers, the tips of them growing warm with my power. Whoever is out there, I’ll find them. And they’re going to give me some answers, one way or another.
As I expect, Fiona still doesn’t have any explanation for the feeling I experienced at the old Pherson property. And we don’t find any during the next several days of examining the contents of the history texts.
After a week of work, I crawl into bed one night feeling defeated. I’ve learned a lot about the covens’ history through first-person accounts, all of it enlightening but ultimately not useful.
My eyes are already drooping by the time my head hits the pillow, and sleep drags me under like a hungry beast.
I stand in the middle of the forest clearing at Shiprock with Keller. He walks slowly toward me, and with each step I feel calmer, more like myself. It’s like his presence erases my darkness, leaving only the bright light of a white witch behind. I feel like Yvaine in Stardust, glowing so bright that the night lights up with my happiness.
When he reaches me and lifts his hand to my cheek, I smile with a pure, consuming joy. I know with absolute certainty that our love is more powerful than any darkness. I don’t know why I ever worried about the covens or their dark magic. We can defeat it.
But in the blink of an eye, we’re surrounded by not only my coven but all of them. Dark witches stretch out in waves as far as I can see, and potent fear slams into me. All those dark witches point their power at Keller, bringing my greatest fear to life. His body jerks in pain as they attack them. I scream like a wounded animal, and all my light turns pitch black as I focus all my power toward the covens and blast them.
I come awake with a violent jerk. It takes me a moment to realize Egan has tossed me from my bed and is beating out the flames licking at my sheets. All I can do is stare as the dream fades to be replaced with reality.
When Egan finishes extinguishing my bed, he spins toward me. “What is going on? You set your bed on fire.”
I shake my head, trying to make sense of what just happened. “I was dreaming about fighting the covens.” I lift my hands and look at my fingertips. They are still warm from my discharge of power. I start shaking. “What is happening to me?”
Egan sinks down beside me on the floor and does something he’s never done before, pulls me into his arms. It isn’t like when Keller did it, it’s more like a brother, but I find some comfort in the embrace.
Two days later, I look up from reading the pompous ramblings of some old blowhard who’d been determined to rid the earth of the scourge of witchcraft. Ironic since one of those pre-trial witches had used herbs to cure his rather nasty chest congestion. Ungrateful bastard.
I scan the room, not for the first time wondering if the missing page to the Beginning Book is somewhere in this stockpile of information. The more time that ticks away, the more desperate I feel. Eventually, the covens will figure out where Egan and I are and return to Salem. Won’t they? Or is it more than bad memories that keep the covens away? It can’t be anything too dangerous because Egan and I are still upright and functioning.
Egan’s phone pings as he stands, and he slides it out of his jean pocket. He stops walking, and I detect a spike in his anxiety level.
“What is it?” I ask.
It takes him a moment to respond, as if he didn’t hear me. When he meets my eyes, his are pained. “It’s Keller and Toni. They’re missing.”
Chapter Five
My heart drops like a stone. “What do you mean they’re missing?”
Egan holds up his phone. “I set up alerts for their names in case anything showed up on any of my sources. They didn’t show up for school two days ago, and no one has seen them since.”
Fear and anger propel me out of my chair and wake the darkness within me. I grip the edge of the table so hard that I wouldn’t be surprised if it disintegrated between my fingers. I sense Egan’s anger escalating, too.
Rule stands and walks slowly toward me. Adele grabs his arm, but he shakes her off.
“Fight it,” he says, and I know instantly what he means. Rule may not have the same sensory abilities as Egan and me, but anyone would be able to see that I want to lash out.
And who could blame me? If my coven has taken Keller and Toni, I don’t want to fight my new levels of power. I want to use everything I have to get them back and punish their abductors.
Rule takes another step toward me. “You know the light is more powerful than the dark,” he says, his voice soothing and even. “You said so yourself.”
His presence doesn’t have the same instant effect that Keller’s had in my dream, but his words are enough to clear my thoughts a bit. I shove the darkness down and loosen my grip on the table. I push past Rule toward Egan.
When he looks at me, he’s poised to fight. His eyes are darker than any human’s should ever be, but that’s normal for a coven witch on the verge of calling up his magic.
“We have to hold it together and find them,” I say.
For a moment, it’s like he can’t even hear me past his anger and visceral need to protect Toni. But then he blinks, and the darkness begins to fade from his eyes.
Fiona steps toward us but keeps her eyes focused on Egan. “Did you draw power from the fissure, too?”
He looks up. “No.”
“I’m the only one who did,” I say. “But we do seem to be somehow connected now. We’re more aware of each other’s emotions, particularly when it stirs our power.”
“Interesting.” Fiona looks at me. “Is there anything else you’d like to share? Anything that might lead us in the right direction to figure out what’s going on with you two?”
I consider the last bit of information Egan and I hold. He knows what I’m thinking because he nods when I look at him. He loves Toni, and she’s in danger. He’ll do whatever is necessary to get her safely back, even if he ends up walking away again.
“Have you ever heard of the Beginning Book?”
“The book that supposedly was forged at the time of the covens’ formation?” Fiona asks.
“Yes.”
“It’s a myth.”
“It’s not. We know that because we have it.”
For the first time since I met her, Fiona looks shocked. “I never thought it was real.”
“We didn’t either until Egan found it for sale in a little bookstore in West Texas that was going out of business. The covens believe it was lost, but someone evidently hid it.”
“Why?” Rule asks.
“We’re not sure. Most of what is in it are things we already knew, but there is a page missing. My gut tells me there is information on that page that the covens don’t want known. Either the page was destroyed, or it was taken for safekeeping by someone who was at odds with the covens.”
“Can I see it?” Fiona asks.
I hesitate for a moment then walk toward my chair. I open my bag and pull out the Beginning Book. I take it everywhere with me, unwilling to leave it vulnerable. I hate to think what might have happened if it had been in the cottage when our intruder started snooping around.
I place the plain black book on the table. Fiona hesitates as if she’s afraid to approach it.
It’s Rule who steps forward and runs his hand over the cover. “I’ve seen this before.”
“That’s impossible,” Egan says.
“Not this book but one that looks like it.” He walks to the back of the room, to an area we’ve not reached yet in our examinations. After some searching, he pulls a black book from the shelf and carries it back to the table. When he places it beside the Beginning Book, my breath catches.
They are exactly the same with the exception of
the faint, indented initials in the corner of the cover. I step closer and turn both books to face me. Where the Beginning Book has a small “BB” in the corner, its twin has an “EB”. It’s not until I open the cover and read the words on the first page that I know why.
“The Ending Book,” I say.
No one responds. When I look up they’re giving me various looks of surprise and confusion. “What?”
“How did you know what that said?” Rule asks.
“Um, because it says it right here on the page.”
“Jax, none of us can read that,” he says. “We can’t even identify the language.”
“That’s crazy.” I shift my gaze to Egan, but he shakes his head.
“I can’t read it either,” he says.
My legs suddenly go wobbly, and I sink into my chair.
Adele is the one to step forward and speak. “If you can read this, then you have to tell us what it says. You said it was the Ending Book. I can’t be the only one thinking this could be the thing we’ve been searching for all these years.”
“And it was right here under our noses the entire time,” Rule says as he stares at the Ending Book with a mixture of awe and caution.
“We just weren’t the ones meant to understand it.” Fiona sits across from me and places her weathered hands atop mine. “You are, dear. This is something very big, and you are at the center of it.”
I don’t know whether to be excited, nauseated or a bit of both. But if this book holds the answers to making sure Keller and Toni are safe, I’ll do whatever it says.
Fiona refuses to let the Ending Book leave the basement. I sit and read with the full awareness that everyone else is watching me. Oh, they do their own research, but every few moments their attention wanders to me. It makes it hard to concentrate.
Even when everyone gets tired, I keep reading. Adele orders pizzas and brings them downstairs so we can keep going. She’s every bit as interested in what the book says as everyone else. Several times I’m tempted to share something I read, but I decide to wait until I finish. I need to absorb everything and see how it all fits together.
At some point, I must fall asleep because I wake up to the smell of coffee and a hand placed gently on my back. I lift my head from the table aware I likely have crease marks on my cheek. As I blink away sleep, I see Rule slip into the chair next to me. A scan of the room shows that Fiona and Adele must have gone to bed. Egan is sacked out on an old couch in the corner, a thin ledger open on his chest.
“How long have I been asleep?” I ask.
Rule finally lets his hand slip away from my back, and for a moment I’m sorry to lose the warmth. But then I remember Keller, and my heart squeezes painfully. Where is he? Is he okay? Will I ever see him again? I feel so useless, but I know the best way to help him is to find a way to defeat the covens.
“About six hours. I figured you’d want to get back to work,” Rule says.
I watch him for several seconds. “You are really good at this observation thing.”
He smiles, but it dims when he shifts his gaze away. “I’m sorry about your friends. Keller, he’s the one you care about?”
I swallow hard. “Yes. But I can’t be with him.”
“Because of your coven?”
I nod. “And, honestly, I’m too much of a danger to him in my current state. To you, too. To anyone until I learn to control whatever power is inside me now.”
He shrugs. “I can handle it.”
I sigh. “You sound like him, thinking he can handle more than he can.”
“Maybe you underestimate us,” Rule says as he wraps my hand in his.
“Maybe you all underestimate how much glee a coven would take in ripping you to shreds. Trust me when I say they’re not into killing people quickly.”
“She’s right about that,” Egan says.
I jump and slide my hand away from Rule’s. I don’t meet either his or Egan’s gazes, not wanting to see the possible hurt in Rule’s or the accusation in Egan’s.
But you haven’t done anything. You deserve a friend, don’t you?
It isn’t that ugly, selfish something speaking to me this time but rather my heart. Despite being around people every day, loneliness plagues me. Keller is the only person who can fill that empty spot, so it’s possible I might feel this way for the rest of my life. I blink several times to keep tears from falling at that thought.
“We appreciate the help,” Egan continues as he strides toward the table. “This is something Jax and I will have to handle ourselves.” His voice sounds raw. I’m not sure if that is from sleep or his worry over Toni. I know it’s killing him to not take more action, but he has enough sense to know it’d be a suicide run if he went after any of the covens alone.
“Maybe not.” I run my hand over the Ending Book. “I’m not finished yet, but there’s something in here that gives me hope that we might not be alone in this.” I flip back several pages and reread a passage that made my heart beat wildly the night before. “It seems that there were some witches who took in the dark power but immediately regretted it and advocated for finding a way to put it back. Some of them were killed by the newly formed dark witches. Others fled.” I glance at Rule.
“This is all new information to me,” he says.
“You remember when we were reading about Penelope Davenport and her friends disappearing, and her father calling them the bane of his existence?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“There are references to something called the Bane in here. I think it’s the group of witches who wanted to change back.” I look at Egan. “What if they still exist, the Bane, the descendants of those original witches? Maybe we could persuade them to help us.”
“Nice thought, but how do we find them even if they are still around? They’ve obviously kept themselves well hidden if even the observers don’t know about them.”
“I don’t know. I still have some to read.”
Egan motions toward the book. “Then get to it. We have people to find, and the better armed we are when we do it, the more likely none of us end up barbecued.”
My muscles tense at the thought of fighting my coven again, of possibly having to fight even more covens. There’s a very real possibility Egan and I won’t survive another encounter, but I’m not going to give up, not when Keller and Toni may be in danger. I open the book and start to read. If I can find these Bane witches, maybe they can help us learn to control our powers better. Maybe they will know something about white witches, if I am one and what that means.
The boys disappear upstairs for more coffee and some breakfast, but I remain in the basement reading. With only a few pages left, I hit information that elevates my heart rate. I can’t turn the pages fast enough. I leap to my feet to run upstairs just as the guys and Fiona start back down.
“What?” Egan says when he sees the expression on my face.
“It’s true,” I say, holding the Ending Book to my chest. “There is such a thing as a white witch. Only a white witch has the power to stop the covens.”
Egan takes another step down toward me. “How?”
My excitement deflates some. “That I don’t know. The book says it’s too dangerous to have all the information in one place, that the final piece of the puzzle is somewhere that is alike but not the same.”
“The missing page of the Beginning Book,” Egan says.
I nod. “I think so.”
Egan growls in frustration and stalks across the room, running his fingers through his hair. “That gets us back to square one.”
I sense his anger mixed with helplessness and fear a moment before he punches the wall. I wince but don’t tell him to calm down. I know exactly how he feels. Like we’re wading through information in slow motion while also vibrating with the need to do something to find Toni and Keller. Everyone stands still, silent as Egan braces his palms against the wall and hangs his head.
“Are you okay?” Fiona asks him when he seems to
calm.
I sense a flicker of appreciation in him for Fiona’s concern. Unlike me, he’s never had a parent who has shown him love. His mother is one of the coldest witches I’ve ever met. She makes Cruella DeVille look like a saint.
He takes a moment but finally nods, pushes himself away from the wall and faces us. “What do we do now? Much as I’d like to storm the castle, so to speak, I don’t like the idea of ending up dead.”
I look over the tons of history we’ve sifted through in the past several days and consider how much more we know now than when we arrived in Salem. “We need to figure out if the Bane are still around. If they’ll help us.”
“And how do we do that?”
I gesture toward the extensive library around us. “We need to figure out the names of those other girls who disappeared, then find everyone in this area that has those family names, as well as Davenport.”
“Easy enough with Google. But then what? We just go up and ask, ‘Hey, are you a Bane witch?’” Egan asks.
“No, smartass. But we can watch them, see where they go and what they do. Maybe even test them to see if they have any powers.” I place the Ending Book on the table. “Some of us need to stay here to research. But I’ve been down here so long I’m beginning to feel like a mole. We know Penelope Davenport’s name. I’m going to visit some of the area cemeteries and see if I can find her.”
“Hold that thought,” Egan says as he slides into a chair and pulls out his laptop. “I’ll do a cemetery search.”
“But there’s nothing in anything we’ve read that says Penelope was ever found,” Rule says. “What makes you think she’s buried somewhere nearby?”
“The covens left Salem soon after they were formed. The pre-trial witches stayed, so maybe the Bane did, too. And if they did, they have to be buried somewhere.”
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