GG walked up to Julien and stared. "Where is it?" She hissed. "Where is my heirloom? My treasure?"
Julien appeared unfazed. He continued puffing on his cigarettes and studied his nails. Ellie watched in confusion.
GG continued, "Don't think you can hide it from me, warlock. My family has the greatest claim, and we have searched for centuries. It is calling to me, pulling me." She showed him the green-tinged brand on her left wrist. "I know it's here. Now give it to me!"
Was GG talking about Ellie's book? Why was everyone suddenly so interested in something they hadn't even known Ellie possessed. Where was all this interest when she first discovered the book? Unless that was it. They had been waiting for her to find it so they could take it from her.
Understanding finally pierced the mental fog Ellie was under. Julien had been searching all these years - not for Ellie, not for love - for the book. But what was GG doing here? Had she been part of the scheme all along? How could that be possible since GG wasn't even born when Ellie and Julien met?
Ellie wanted answers. Unfortunately, she couldn't ask questions. The pain in her throat had subsided, but she still had no voice. And where was her anthology? How had it vanished without Ellie realizing it? Julien had been holding it just seconds ago.
Ellie's mind reeled. Her internal lava had enveloped her brain. Her thoughts burbled in the hot, red magma, completely beyond her control. She had so many questions, too much anger, and not a small amount of fear.
GG stepped closer to Julien. She snatched the cigarettes out of his mouth and threw them on the floor, crushing them under the ball of her foot. "You can smoke your cigarettes and examine your cuticles later, you vain peacock. Right now, you'd better hand over that book while you still have a hand left to do it."
Julien rolled his eyes and moved away from GG. He finally spoke. "You are a bit late to the party, little one. Your petite amie left less than a half hour ago."
That shocked Ellie. Had it only been thirty minutes? It felt like an eternity. Had it only taken thirty minutes to watch Julien pay Tai to abort a fetus? To be bound by invisible bonds? To find out that her husband was a warlock who’d stalked her since college? To find out that both a student and her husband were after her book?
Julien continued taunting GG. "If you give that old rattletrap you drive a good, hearty push, you might be able to catch up with her." Julien's cool demeanor didn't fool Ellie. She knew underneath his bravado that he was miffed. He hated being called vain.
She could tell by the way he fiddled with the contents of his pocket that he was planning something. Ellie's first impulse was to warn GG, but on second thought, she wasn't sure she wanted to help the student who had just silenced her with a flick of the wrist. Not that Ellie could have warned her anyway, mute as she was.
"Besides," Julien spoke up. "I don't have the item you want. I wouldn't be able to give it to you, regardless." He sighed. "The book didn't choose me; it chose her." He looked at Ellie.
GG whipped around to face Ellie. "No! Not you!" She growled. She raced over to Ellie and grabbed her left wrist and stared at the glowing, silver mark. "You disgusting, hopeful, romantic little twat!" She shoved Ellie's arm away from her. "I cannot believe that the book would choose someone so positively Pollyanna." She took a step closer to Ellie, looking her up and down.
"Although I have to admit that I underestimated you this year. You managed to escape each one of my attacks -- the dunking booth, the poison ivy, the fire at the studio."
Ellie's eyes grew wide again, the only response she could give. Those "accidents" had been intentional! She never would have suspected GG, though.
"Maybe there's more to you than I thought." GG interrupted Ellie's thoughts. She circled Ellie as she spoke. "How fitting that Tai, the one you doubted all along, was the one who finally managed to get you out of the school and practically under house arrest." GG laughed. "And to think, she didn't even know she was helping me. She only had eyes for pretty, prissy, preening, peacock over here." GG rounded on Julien.
"I can't believe you let Tai suck you in like you did." She spat the words at him. "We could have been a team, you know. Remember the day I offered you a chance to hire me? If only you'd taken me up on my offer. Then we wouldn't be here with all this," she tilted her head toward Ellie, "collateral damage." She resumed her pacing. Julien sat on the edge of his desk, watching.
"What a mess you've made, Julien. Let's see, there's Ellie," she held up her fingers as she counted, "Méline, Bibianne, Tai and her baby. That makes one mistake for each finger of your right hand."
Before GG finished her statement, she made another slicing motion in the air in front of Julien, and he let out a scream. He grabbed his bloody stump of a wrist and cradled it to him as he groaned in pain.
GG talked over his cries of agony. "You can't say I didn't warn you," she sang. "Now hand over that book! Oh –pardon the pun." She cackled at her own joke.
Julien's face hardened. A beaded line of sweat covered his upper lip, and he managed to contain his groans. As Ellie watched, he used his left hand to make an intricate swirling motion around the bloody stump. A golden light the color of Julien's eyes burst forth from his left hand and traveled over the cut wrist, searing the skin back together. Ellie watched in horrified fascination as the skin began to grow. The flesh looked thin and pink, but it continued to expand until another tiny hand erupted from the end of the stump.
It appalled Ellie, but she stared despite herself. She couldn't look away. Julien was re-growing his own hand. Who was he? What had she been living with these past ten years? If he had this kind of supernatural power, why hadn't he just used it all along to get what he wanted throughout their marriage?
Oh, my God. That is exactly what he did.
Images of their courtship and marriage flooded her mind, and Ellie noticed a pattern. She'd made things easy for Julien. Hadn't she agreed to every one of his whims and relocations? Julien was the one who insisted on leaving the beautiful French island to return to her native Boston. Julien was the one who dragged her to Salem for every festival. Julien was the one who was fascinated with her lineage. Julien was the one who suggested the move to Stusa. Sure, Ellie had agreed and had been caught up in the idea of a rural childhood for the girls, but hadn't it been his idea in the first place?
A zinging streak of light whizzed just over the tip of Ellie's left ear, singeing the delicate skin and interrupting her thoughts. She felt the urgent need to move out of danger's way. She twisted against her invisible restraints and found that she could adjust her shoulders. Maybe the spell holding her in place would weaken since Julien and GG were concentrating on each other. They seemed to be aiming streams of light at each other.
She focused on her feet, realizing that she'd need them the most if she was planning on moving. As she tussled with her invisible restraints, she saw GG and Julien thrusting bolts of light at each other. As each one landed, it scorched whatever it hit. Based on their cries of rage and the scorch marks that burned and sizzled, the parries strengthened in proportion to their masters' anger.
Julien and GG growled and hissed at each other in between blows. At one point, GG's green light singed Julien's shoulder. He returned the blow with his own golden light and struck GG's ankle.
GG stumbled but didn't fall. She threw out an answering bolt as she ducked to grab her ankle. Her green streak connected with Julien's golden one, and the two lights sizzled and crackled -- each one trying to overcome the other.
Luckily for Ellie, as the attacks strengthened, her bonds weakened. Before long, she was able to lower her hands from her neck and take one small step towards the door, and then another, and another. She edged closer and closer to the door. When she could almost reach the door handle, however, she felt a tug at her back.
Something pulled her from behind. A cord had been attached behind her navel and was tugging her backwards. It was dragging her back into the room to prevent her leaving. The sensation was so real that sh
e looked around to see if Julien or GG had lassoed her.
Instead of a rope, however, a thin, silver, glowing thread reached out from her lower back. When she turned to face the room again, the silver thread moved around with her so that the tiny line went from her belly button to a place on Julien's bookshelf.
Ellie glanced at GG and Julien. They were so busy firing spells at each other that they’d forgotten her. She inched her way over to the bookshelf, following the silver thread, trying not to call attention to herself.
The silver thread ended at a book on the left edge of the bookcase. It was a large, solid volume. It didn't look like her anthology, but the thread led straight to it. Had Julien bewitched the anthology to look like another ordinary book? Ellie reached over to pull it off the shelf.
The book was wedged in tightly. She pulled harder and heard a click. The entire section of shelving swung back revealing a small, windowless room. A safe room, the words formed in her mind even though she'd never seen one other than in movies. When had Julien built this? What was it even for? Why had he never- there it was!
The anthology lay on top of a rectangular, podium-shaped structure made of stone. There was a silver knife lying on top of the open book and a set of three black taper candles. They burned with black flames. An image of the candles the twins had in church on New Year's Eve came to mind. Strange, thought Ellie.
She rushed to the altar -- it could be nothing else -- but stopped before picking up the anthology. It was open. Words glowed on the page. When she squinted her eyes, she could see another, thinner, golden line that went from the anthology to Julien. If her line was a piece of yarn, Julien’s was fishing line. His golden line wasn't solid. It sputtered like static on a television.
A third line, in emerald green was growing out of the book. It was a vine, trying to make its way to GG. It hadn't reached GG yet; it swayed, searching for her as it stretched its way out of the safe room.
Ellie shuddered to think of those lines becoming as solid a connection to the anthology as hers. She didn't know what would happen, but she had a feeling it would be terrible. She didn't understand why her cord had the best connection to the anthology, but she suspected it had to do with the fact that she had been the one to unearth it after all these years. Had it really been hidden away since the Salem Witch Trials?
Suddenly, Ellie knew what had to be done. Neither GG nor Julien could be allowed to possess the anthology. After what she'd seen them do, she knew that if it increased their power in any way, they'd be unstoppable. She reached out to take the book from the stone alter when an arm shot out from behind. It crooked around her neck in a wrestler's hold.
"Well, well, well. What have we here?" GG's sarcastic voice crackled. "Tsk, tsk, tsk," she clicked her tongue, scolding. "What have you been hiding from your wife, Jules? A safe room? It looks more like a kill room, don't you think, Ellie?"
GG frog-marched Ellie around behind the altar so that they both faced the open doorway and could see into Julien's office. "Look around, Elles. Look at all this crazy town." GG tightened her hold on Ellie's neck. She grabbed Ellie's head with her free hand and forced Ellie to face each wall in turn.
Symbols and shapes covered the walls. The writing was black and smudged, like it had been written in charcoal. Ellie's name appeared several times, and each time there was a giant brownish-red X covering it. Ellie paled in sudden understanding of what the knife had been used for.
"That can't be good, can it Elles? Looks like dear old hubby was going to get rid of you all along."
Julien was standing in the doorway watching both women. His eyes flickered back and forth from the book to GG and Ellie. He made a sudden move towards them, and GG reacted instantly. The hand that had been controlling Ellie's head reached out for the knife. Before Ellie had time to blink, the knife was at her throat, blade pressing against her skin. Ellie let out a little involuntary whimper.
"So, your voice is back, too, along with your ability to move. Huh. How'd you manage that?" GG asked. "I feel my connection to the book getting stronger. How are you able to interrupt my link?" GG laughed. "It doesn't really matter, though. I don't need magic to work this knife." She pressed the blade a little harder into Ellie's neck.
As soon as the blade pressed into her neck, one of the black flames went out. GG released the pressure on the knife blade just a bit, then pressed it back into Ellie's neck making a small cut. A second black flame extinguished itself.
GG laughed in victory. "This is too easy." She laughed again in delight. "I can take the book from both of you at the same time! Ha!" She pressed the knife a little deeper and the third candle went out. Ellie could see Julien's golden line, though. It hadn't disappeared. He still had some link to the book.
Julien had been watching them from the doorway. His hands were raised as if to throw another bolt at GG, but he seemed hesitant, unsure about what would happen if he attacked GG. He finally spoke up.
"Not quite that easy, little one," he spoke to GG as if she were a child. "Yes, the book must be taken from each disciple, but you cannot get rid of us so easily. With a flick of his wrist, he relit all three candles. The pain in Ellie's neck vanished.
The knife clattered to the floor. GG threw a green bolt at Julien, but he ducked, and it ravaged the doorframe instead. As soon as GG's grip on Ellie loosened, Ellie reached over and grabbed the anthology. Julien and GG were battling again, and sparks were flying.
Ellie ducked down behind the stone altar to avoid getting hit. She clutched the anthology to her chest while her heart pounded in time with the blows. She knew what had to be done. She must do it quickly before Julien and GG realized what was happening.
Ellie peeked over the rim of the altar and grabbed one of the candles. Still stooped over, she held the candle to the pages. The book didn't blaze up in flames as she’d imagined, but the edges did turn black and curl a little.
Julien and GG froze mid-action and turned to look at Ellie. They gasped in unison.
"Non," shouted Julien, "you mustn't!"
"How dare you!" GG shrieked.
Ellie had their full attention now. They both pointed at her, and she shoved the anthology into the two remaining flames burning on the altar. Now the book had three flames smoldering its pages. GG and Julien froze again, afraid that Ellie would damage the book.
"Both of you -- stop right now, or I swear I'll destroy this evil thing!" Ellie could see their golden and green lines still reaching out for the anthology, trying to connect to it. GG and Julien looked at each other and made some unspoken agreement. Both of their lines hovered in place and stopped growing.
"Back slowly into the office and sit down!" Ellie barked out the orders. They complied. She followed with the book in one hand and a single black candle in the other.
Who has the power now? She thought with a smirk. It would be so simple to keep the anthology all to herself. Her silver gossamer thread was now a shining cord, thick like a rope, and it pulsed with power as it traveled from Ellie and wrapped around the book three times.
"I have questions, and I want answers!" The anthology prompted her. "I know why Julien wants the book, but what about you?" She looked at GG. "What is your connection to this book, GG?" When GG didn't respond, Ellie felt a surge of anger course through her, and her silver rope grew an extra tentacle that lashed out at GG and struck her like a whip across the face.
GG sucked in a breath and looked at Ellie in surprise. God, that felt good, Ellie thought. A sense of satisfaction like none she'd ever felt wormed its way right down to her belly. How easy it was to lash out and take what she wanted. The silver rope intuited what Ellie wanted. It recoiled and poised itself, ready to strike.
A needle of panic pricked Ellie, stinging her back to her senses. What am I doing? Horror replaced the satisfaction she’d felt milliseconds earlier. She willed the silver cord to stop. It wanted to lash out again, but Ellie restrained, teeth clenched. "Explain yourself. Now!"
Neither GG nor Julien
perceived Ellie's inner struggle. Julien watched Ellie with furrowed brow while GG's scowl of pain dissolved into resignation. She began to talk.
"Haven't you figured it out yet?" GG sneered. "You've had all year with The Crucible, and I've sent plenty of hints." Even in pain, GG still managed to condescend and provoke. Ellie tried not to react. She narrowed her eyes and waited for GG to continue.
"The letter I wrote from Abigail Williams' point of view? History may not know what happened to her after she left Salem, but my family does."
GG's smirk sent another wave of heat crashing over Ellie. She had a burning need to understand GG's connection to the anthology, and before she could think twice about it, her silver rope shot out again. It wrapped itself around GG's head three times and then slithered into her left ear. GG emitted a moan and twisted in her chair, but she was unable to escape the silver rope.
As the cord snaked its way into GG's head, Ellie saw snapshots: GG taking Ellie's cash from under her mattress, GG hitchhiking, GG setting fire to a cabin, GG as a young girl, GG with her grandmother. The memories raced through Ellie's mind like someone flipping through a photograph album. Then they stopped. A film began to play in Ellie's mind.
A small girl kneeled in front of an elderly woman who spoke in quiet tones. "Abigale, you are the one who must find the heirloom. Your mother is not strong enough to wield its power. You are the one."
"You must remember this. I have seen the heirloom’s future, and you will be the one who succeeds after all our family's many, many years of searching. Your mother was right to name you Abigale. Our ancestor would be proud."
"She started our family on this long journey. Her time in Salem led to a taste of great power. Never forget her. She will lead you to her treasure, our heirloom – and its power will become yours to brandish as you see fit."
Ellie's thoughts interrupted the film. Abigale? GG's name was Abigale? Gale Guillaume. Of course! Gale was short for Abigale, and Guillaume was French for William. GG had changed her surname to misdirect anyone trying to poke around in her past. But could she be a descendent of the Abigail Williams?
Crucible Crisis Page 28