Chapter 30
30
Sephy had spoonfed Lucine some of her favourite broth and she was now fast asleep. Sephy sat in the rocking chair next to the window so exhausted that she kept feeling herself dozing off. If it hadn’t been for Hades hopping in and out, she would probably have fallen into a deep sleep. She felt helpless, Lucine was getting weaker by the day, Dora was out looking for the book and she had a sneaky feeling that Lenny had gone to some bar whilst waiting at the airport and picked up a bit of stuff – when the stress was high her way of dealing with it was by sleeping with a handsome young man half her age. Sephy sighed, a long, drawn-out sigh that she felt carried the weight of the world in it. She spotted a squidgy black spider in the corner of the window spinning a web of intricate gossamer threads and watched her. The spider moved deftly, weaving away until Hades hopped back inside the open window and opened his beak. She waved a finger in his direction.
‘We don’t eat or kill spiders in this house, Hades, mind your manners.’
The spider, who had sensed the bird and was now frozen, waiting to be swallowed up, seemed to be staring straight at Sephy. She shook her head and whispered to it:
‘You are quite safe here, dear. My friend will not pose a threat to you, he knows better than that.’
She reached out and petted Hades’ head, stroking his soft feathers. He let out a low caw and rubbed himself against Sephy’s arm. He glanced over at the bed where Lucine was tucked in and gently snoring then hopped out of the window and took off. Wearily, Sephy stood up. This time it was taking its toll on all of them, today they were a little more drained than yesterday. She desperately wanted to hear Dora’s voice; now that she’d come back into their lives, even only for a few hours, she found that she didn’t want to let her go and hoped that the little bit of protection she had given her had been enough. Tugging her shawl around her, she tiptoed out of the bedroom to go downstairs and see if she had any missed calls or updates from either member of her AWOL family.
The front door opened and in walked Lenny, a black cloud around her blotting out her aura. Sephy shook her head.
‘Why aren’t you on a plane to London? What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Your aura tells me different, Lenny. Have you heard from Dora?’
She sighed. ‘No, I haven’t heard from Dora, well not for a couple of hours. I thought you were keeping tabs on her? In any case, I have some very bad news for you.’
Sephy turned her back on her, walking away to the kitchen, her safe place, the heart of her home where she cooked up spells and made her magic, always for the good of others.
‘Do I want to know this bad news?’
‘No, but I’m going to have to tell you regardless. I saw him.’
Sephy turned to face her. ‘You saw who?’
‘Don’t be coy with me, you know exactly who I saw. Corwin. He looks different this time, but I guess we all do. He walked right past me at the airport and got into a cab.’
Sephy was wringing her hands. ‘Oh my, oh my, what are we going to do? I’m not ready yet, we’re not prepared.’
‘I followed him.’
‘You did what?’
‘I drove your van and followed him.’
‘Why? Are you mad Lenny, are you trying to get yourself killed without even trying?’
She laughed at this. ‘No, but I’ve been thinking. Perhaps keeping Dora from Salem has worked this time. We’ve never seen him panic like this – chasing us across continents. I think we might be able to slow him down with our own spells. Maybe we can buy Dora a little more time to find the book.’
Lenny put her arm around her sister and pulled her close.
‘Remember those freezing-cold winters the first time we lived and how if we hadn’t hunted to eat, we would have starved?’
‘Yes, but I hated it. I hated hurting those animals and how we ate them I will never understand.’
‘We did it because it was survival. If we hadn’t, we would have died without their skins to keep us warm and no, I didn’t like it either, but we never even questioned it. We had to do it; we didn’t think about it. This is the same. We’ve never wanted to hurt anyone, not even him. But we have to this time.’
Sephy sighed. ‘How did we end up with such complicated lives?’
Lenny shrugged. ‘I wish I knew; I think the day Giles Corey cursed Corwin was the catalyst and, God knows, who could blame him, being slowly crushed to death like that. We’ve always had the power; we just haven’t used it to its full capacity. Oh, the irony, they tortured and hanged us and all those poor souls for being witches when we’ve never hurt anyone – not even Corwin.’
Sephy left the room, heading upstairs, and Lenny knew she was going to the attic where she kept her own book of spells, curses and hexes. Their second lifetime had been one filled with powerful magic; had written the spells themselves, all three of them. The binding, curses and hexes were so pure that they worked every time, but also scared the shit out of them. They had hoped they’d never have to use them. But the timing was right.
Corwin had wanted Lenny, even asked her to marry him but because she had said no, he had turned on them. A tear fell from the corner of her eye as she wondered yet again how their lives would have turned out if she’d said yes, how much heartache it would have saved, how much pain they could have avoided if she’d traded her own freedom for that of others.
A loud thwack as Sephy dropped their ancient book of spells onto the table, sending tiny dust motes into the air, snapped her out of the darkness inside her mind.
‘Are you blaming yourself again?’
Lenny looked up at her. ‘Yes, I always deny it but you and I both know that I will forever blame myself. This could have been prevented if I hadn’t been so selfish. I realise that now, this is and always has been my fault.’
‘It most certainly isn’t, I know I hinted it was earlier and I’m sorry that was stupid of me. You didn’t ask him to become obsessed over you, he was like some stalker from hell only we didn’t know what a stalker was back then. He wouldn’t leave you alone, watching you, following you, he was downright creepy. Who in their right mind would want to marry a man who behaves that way?’
‘Are you telling me now that you don’t blame me one little bit, that I shouldn’t have been so wild and instead should have tamed myself to be a good Puritan woman who accepted an offer of marriage from the nephew of one of the most highly respected men in Salem town?’
‘Jonathan was no better than his nephew George. It amuses me to see that it’s him who was made out to be the monster of the witch trials – just because his bloody house managed to survive, so did his name. You have no idea how much I want to write a book on it all, the true account of the Salem Witch Trials written by Seraphina English who lived and breathed every awful moment of them.’
Lenny laughed. ‘You should, it would be a New York Times bestseller, that’s for sure.’
Sephy smiled at her. ‘It would, but then people would think I’m even crazier than they already do, and we all know what happens when an English woman is accused of being crazy.’ She winked at Lenny.
‘So, what are we going to do?’
‘We are going to gather everything we need to do the dark night binding spell and then we are going to call Dora back. Once Dora is back here, and hopefully with Lucine’s lost book of magic, we are going to teach her everything she has forgotten. She is our last defence and our biggest hope but, in the meantime, we are going to equip ourselves with the power to stand up to him. It’s time the English women ruled their own destiny and feared no man, especially not Corwin. We are going to take away his power and bring back our own.’
Lenny stood next to Sephy, and they both placed their hands on the ancient, cracked, black leather book with its fine gilt edges, full of many lifetimes of spells. They were tried and tested, they worked well, from finding lost things to making a lover true; maybe the spells weren’t as powerful as the original ones in the missing spell book but it was a start. Both placed their right hands on the front of the book and closed their eyes, and the air around them fizzed, crackled and popped with tiny blue and gold bolts of electricity.
Hades had hopped through the open kitchen window and was perched on the sill next to Ophelia, not moving as they watched the two women intently. They had never bore witness to this before but the pair of them seemed to know that something magical and powerful was about to happen. Upstairs Lucine murmured in her sleep, too weak to get up and stand with her sisters, but she could sense what they were doing, and she joined them in spirit. Placing her right hand on the book in the middle of theirs, the power of three was the strongest magic of them all and it was about time that they reclaimed it.