I ran my hands over my eyes and sighed. “Okay, on to the next thing.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Merick raised a brow. “Your emotions are high, and remember what happened last time.”
Last time I performed this spell was the night Nick supposedly died. I’d taken over Merick’s circle by force and widened the magic without a guide. The spell drained me of energy and left me cold and weak. It was a frightening experience.
I nodded. “I’m not looking at their death, I know that would throw things into a spiral. I’m just looking for one piece of information.”
“If you lose control, I’m taking over and shutting it down.”
“Understandable.”
“Abby, what are you planning on doing? I don’t like the sound of it.” Simon said.
“We’re going to do a trace spell. Ira told me something about Levi, and I want to see if it’s true or not. No one is going to tell me the truth, so I’m going to look into the past.”
He hesitated. “And you’re not going to look at your parents’ murder?”
I shook my head. “This spell can be screwed up with strong emotions. If I try, I could get Merick and I trapped in a limbo land of memories. We don’t want that.”
“No, we don’t.” He sighed. “Just be careful.”
I’d gathered everything we needed and put my big book of everything in the middle of the floor where Merick had drawn the circle. We were working in the back room where I worked most of my magic. It had a physical circle carved into the floor when I moved in, so I assumed it was where my mother did all her magic.
He looked at the book and then to me. “I thought you’d memorized the spell.”
“I have, this is to take us to the past. This has the names written in it, the family tree that I’m trying to prove or disprove.”
He nodded. “Okay, ready?”
I took a deep breath and started to doubt for a moment, but I pushed it away. “Let’s do this.”
We both raised the circle, and the magic crashed over me. I welcomed it instead of fightinh against it. Merick held up the knife and pricked our fingers, the blood dripped to the ground. The blood would ground us to the present while the book would take us to the past.
The magic pulses caused me to shudder as the blood hit the ground.
“I’m going to let you lead.” Merick held his hand out. I grabbed it and led the spell, saying the words with confidence. As the last syllable dripped from my lips, the world around us started to shift and change back in time. We watched as the house went back to its early eighties setting, but the desk in the room never changed. I stopped it when my mother appeared sitting there, with Levi at her back.
“Because you are her father. Even if Tobias raises her. It’s your blood that runs through her. She’ll have to know the truth one day, Levi.” Her mother didn’t look up from the page.
Levi put his hand on the page, over the tree. “No, Elizabeth, we can’t risk it. We can’t risk anyone knowing that she is my actual child. Too many people already know, Ira, Oliver.” He shook his head. “Tobias. It’s only time until my maker knows and he’ll want her. Just like Ira wants her.”
My heart dropped. It was true. Ira had been telling me the truth. Merick’s hand tightened on mine. I wasn’t ready for the scene to change. I needed to see more, hear more, of my mother.
“So she’ll never know you?” The grief-laden tone struck me hard. She didn’t want this.
“You knew how we were going to handle it if she lived. Please, don’t make my guilt worse.” Levi turned her to him and pulled her into his arms. “My dearest Elizabeth.”
She leaned her head into his chest. “Our daughter though. Tobias…”
“Is a good man and he’ll make sure to take care of you both. Abigail can never know.”
He let her go so she could turn around. She took the pen and wrote down Tobias’ name and then Abigail, her hand hesitated at the last name and Levi sighed. “Collins. Promise me?”
“Collins. Will you tell her when the time comes?”
Did my mother know what was going to happen? Why would anyone ask that question?
“If a time ever comes that she has to know, yes. I will do anything to protect her, even lie to her.” He kissed Elizabeth gently on the lips. “No matter what, you three will be taken care of.”
She turned away from him and shut the book. “Does it pain you?”
“That I’ll be watching someone else raise my daughter? Yes. I’ve always wanted children, and now I have one that I cannot raise.”
The scene started to shift, and I let it take me where I needed to be. I frowned at Oliver standing in the room with my mother.
“Ollie, please.”
He shook his head. “She’s my niece, Lizzy. Mine. Levi didn’t want her, so if something happens to you, she should go to me. My blood and flesh.”
She met his gaze. “She’s his blood and flesh too, and if something happens to her and she changes? Can you handle her? Could you look her in the eyes and still swear that she is your niece?”
“She will always be my niece.”
“You can’t have her Ollie. I’m sorry.” Her hand tightened. “We don’t have much time to discuss this.”
He paused and put a hand on her shoulder. “Lizzy? You’ve seen something?”
She nodded. “I have Ollie, so much blood. Death at the hands of a vampire.”
The scene shifted, but the words stayed with me. They were similar to what Clarissa had warned me about before which made me wonder whose death my mother had seen.
With my thoughts the time changed and the room did too, not much, just subtle changes here and there. My mother was pouring over something in the book when the door came flying open.
“Go get Abby.”
My father…no Tobias had burst into the room, sweat beading down his forehead and his body shaking.
“What on earth?” My mother spun to face him and then her eyes grew wide. “No.” She sensed something and rushed past Tobias. I went to follow, but Merick grabbed my shoulder and motioned to the edge of the circle.
I knew what night this was. I knew exactly where she was going, and I wanted to follow her. I wanted to see who was invading our home.
A light blinded me, almost as if a flashbulb went off. I heard Merick cry out the same time I did, and our circle came crashing down around us. The magic shoved back into me, and I screamed as it burnt through me. Merick let out a strangled noise that I wasn’t sure what to make of.
The world changed back to the modern times, and Merick and I stared at each other. “Was that you?” I was almost too scared to speak.
Merick shook his head. “No, I thought it was you at first.”
I looked down and saw a glowing rune and growled. “Cult.”
Merick followed my gaze. “From that night. They expected you to try something like this.”
“Swear to me Merick—”
“It wasn’t me.” He shook his head. “It wouldn’t have reacted to me like that.”
Well that was good to know. “Your father’s?”
“Possibly, I know he set the original runes on the house.”
That made me cringe. I had the door and the drywall downstairs replaced because of the runes. “Great. Remind me to get new flooring when this is all said and done.”
“Did you guide it to that day?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I was thinking about Clarissa, and that’s where it switched to.”
“Well, now you have your answers.” He sighed. “About Levi that is.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what I was going to do about that, but I was going to have to approach it somehow. How did one approach their actual father? I rubbed my eyes and heard the keypad on the front door beeping.
Merick and I both met Simon by the front door, and Oliver walked back in. I snarled and pulled my gun. “You bastard, you knew.”
Oliver grabbed my wrist and slammed me against the e
ntry door hall. I slammed my elbow into the side of his head, and he shoved a hand into my stomach, causing me to cry out and stumble.
“You’re injured, Abigail, attacking me was the wrong choice.”
I wrapped an arm around my stomach and snarled up at him as I hunched over in pain. “You. Fucking. Knew.”
“What are you doing back here, Oliver?” Merick crossed his arms. “I thought you had some place to be.”
Simon came to my side, I grabbed my discarded gun and holstered it.
“I swore I felt Elizabeth’s magic. I wasn’t far.” He looked at me. “What did you trigger?”
I shook my head. “Fuck you.” I tried to catch my breath, but the pain in my stomach was almost too much.
“Abigail, whatever it is that you are accusing me of knowing, I swear to you there are reasons that I didn’t tell you or I honestly didn’t know.”
I let Simon guide me to the couch, and I closed my eyes. Oliver and Merick followed us, Merick and Simon kept themselves between Oliver and me.
“You knew Levi was my father.” I ground out and glared at him. “You denied knowing anything about that.”
Oliver opened his mouth to say something, but then frowned. “Abigail, how did you learn that?”
“Trace spell.”
“You did a trace spell. In the house?” He sounded hopeful for a moment. “Did you see who killed them?”
I wrapped an arm around my stomach again; the pain was starting to fade. “No, the images shifted to that night, but it seems that someone was ahead of us on that curve.”
“That was the magic I felt.”
“It was a Cult rune,” Merick stated.
“Elizabeth was familiar with your language. It’s possible she placed it there.”
It made sense with Tobias being a linguist. “Can we go back to the part where you knew about my parents?” I sat up and tried not to flinch at the pain.
“Levi told me he’d kill me if I let you in on that little secret.” Oliver sat on the coffee table and held his head down. “That’s why I watched after you from afar. You should never have been left with him. I should have taken you and hid you.”
I took a deep breath. “You could have found a way to tell me. To warn me that all these crazy people would be coming after me. You work for him; you had to have some idea of what was going on.”
“Levi denied everything. The moment Devon showed up and I learned he was an elemental, I knew what was going to happen. When Tomes showed up with the zombies and the blood-starved vampires started making their appearances, I knew Ira was after you.” He growled. “Levi didn’t want to admit to it, he wanted just to go on as things were normal.”
My life was never normal, but you know there was no point in interrupting my uncle right now.
“Lizzy…Elizabeth was my best friend. She was the only one who did not look down on me when my magic started going darker. When I found out she was pregnant, I was ecstatic, except then I found out Levi was the father.” He licked his lips. “Not that I would love you any less, Abigail, or fight to protect you any less. No. Children of vampires, especially vampires and witches very rarely survive, and if they do, they turn out like Keira or Drake.”
I shivered at the thought of those two. “So you helped my mother save me.”
“How do you know that?” He finally looked up to meet my gaze.
“You wouldn’t have watched my mother go through that grief. Losing a child would have torn her apart.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about all of this. “How did you two do it?”
He shook his head. “I won’t answer that.”
“Tell me. I’m tired of lies and secrets Oliver.”
He hesitated for a moment. “The tablet your parents were translating, it was one of the oldest known rune bases.” He looked at Merick. “Older than your cult’s. And it was on how to infuse a life with magic, wrap it around the soul so that it could make it stronger. Save it.”
My blood seemed to rush in my ears as my heart sped up. I was the result of life magic. I was what Drake had been trying to achieve with his daughters.
“Abby?” Simon asked.
“Let her process,” Oliver answered. “She’s processing everything.”
“Life magic,” Merick hissed. “That is what you people have been hiding from her?”
“You aren’t innocent in all this Merick,” Oliver snapped back, and I realized that the world had gone tunnel-visioned. I wasn’t seeing them, only hearing them as the shock settled in and things started to connect in my brain.
“What would have happened if you bound my magic?” I looked at Oliver. “That can kill a normal witch.”
He nodded. “You would have been fine; it would have been just a physical bind. I made the offer to help Levi because I didn’t trust him to find you proper training.”
I still couldn’t think past the life magic. Someone had to have given their life to save mine. My mind traveled to Clarissa and thought about what Agent Grace had said “She was sacrificed to try and bring someone back to life.”
“Someone has those translations.”
“They can’t have all of it because Tobias threw a fit and burned most of them.”
“The dumbass put them in PIB training manuals,” I growled, and my vision began to widen again. “Oh my goddess.” My eyes grew wide as my mind raced. Someone the cult was after was also using the runes, someone here was. “How many people have gotten their hands on this?”
“Abigail, I swear to you that Tobias destroyed the vital parts.”
It made me wonder if Levi had the full translation. “That’s not stopping people.” I stood and started pacing. “There was a scene when we were at the lab, where my mother was there with Ira and Levi.”
Oliver’s jaw locked. “I remember.”
“He said something about breeding. Was my mother pregnant then?”
“I don’t know Abigail.” He shook his head. “Lizzy would not have shared a spell like that. She was gray when it came to her magic, but that would have gone far beyond walking the line of white and black magic.”
I couldn’t wrap my mind around it all; my phone rang, breaking my train of thought. Simon handed me my phone and frowned. “It’s Liz.”
I swiped to answer it. “Special Agent Collins speaking.”
“I sure hope you’re resting, Abigail.” There was something sharp in her voice that I didn’t understand.
“I’m resting. Don’t worry. Did you need something?” Even to me, I sounded exhausted.
“Yeah, PIB just recovered a body, a body that’s been deceased for about five years.”
I ran a hand over my face. “I’ve been down this road before. Necromancy?”
“That was my first thought, but our only locally known necromancer is locked up tight.”
I sat down on the couch. “Grace was his partner; I have a feeling she got her hands on a nasty spell through him, and she’s having the warlock help her out.”
“How nasty?”
I met Oliver’s gaze as I answered. “We’re talking about bringing living beings back to life. Soul and all without flaws.”
He bowed his head and stood.
“Abigail, that’s stuff of myths and legends.”
“Not any more Liz, hold on to your hat because that tablet information Levi gave you? Yeah, that’s the spell.”
Chapter Fourteen
“What are you saying, Abby?”
“Tobias Collins translated that tablet, according to my sources, and it’s a spell to bring people back to life. It requires a human sacrifice for the life force though.’
“As does any life magic, I studied your raptor case.”
Ah, good old Rodger the raptor. “This is on a much bigger scale than that. I’m pretty sure Clarissa was the sacrifice that was meant to raise the person you found.’
“It didn’t work though, so what went wrong.”
“Tobias supposedly burnt the vital parts of the spells.”
“And where does the demon summoning come into play?”
“I don’t know yet. Do you have an ID on that victim yet?”
I watched as Oliver let himself out. I wanted to call for him to come back. I still had a thousand more questions I wanted answered, but I had to focus on my case first.
“I don’t; I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”
“Good, I plan on getting in some research on Starla Porter after I finish lunch. I’ll let you know if anything useful turns up, but it seems like she’s been a ghost until as of late.”
“Look for another alias; maybe Grace was hiding under another name. I have to go; Mason’s waving me over.”
I wanted to be on the field with her. I wanted to be out there looking at the body, trying to identify it. I wanted to be working, not sitting here dealing with a family crisis.
I sat back down on the couch and Simon pulled me close to him. “You okay?”
“No. And now I have another dead body on my case, a meeting with Ira, and a very big elephant in the room to address with Levi.”
Merick patted my knee. “I’ll go get you a fresh cup of coffee.”
It was a start to making things a little bit better. Neither one of them had spoken about what I had just learned. I wondered if Simon was even aware of what it all meant. Hell, I was still trying to process most of it.
Merick returned with my mug, and I took it with my good hand. “Thank you for your help.”
“I learned a lot too, today. I have some things to address with my high priest.” He bowed his head. “I’m trusting that Simon can take care of you?”
I laughed. “Yeah, he can. I’ll have to head back to the mansion soon anyways. Levi normally starts wandering around a little bit before dusk, and he’ll want my answer on who will be by my side tonight.”
“Where is the meeting?”
“The mansion.”
Simon tensed beside me. “Why would Levi agree to have Ira there?”
I had a feeling it probably wasn’t the first time Ira had been there.
“Because it’s his ground. He can monitor it without having to be in the room.” That was my best guess. “It’ll be okay. I’m going to head out.” I stood and grabbed my bag. My stomach was sore from where Oliver had used my wound against me. I still wanted to shoot him, but part of me understood that he was worried about his own life.
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