Chapter 7 Abigail
Abigail stalked through the yard, away from her foolish progeny, her own last words ringing in her ears: I disown her.
Stupid little girl, she thought.
Behind her, Rissa burst into tears, wailing, “He took Paisley, and now he’s going to take Frannie, too.”
“Shh, shh,” Mina said. “It’ll be okay.” But her voice was breaking.
“Stupid, stupid girl,” Abigail muttered, ignoring the two vixie and their whining.
She needed damage control. Thoughts of what to do now swirled in her mind and she couldn’t choose one.
It wasn’t supposed to be Paisley! The child was foretold to be released unharmed, but the foretelling said a human child, while Paisley was half shiften.
Would Paisley be released unharmed?! Or would the demon realize what he had and keep her?
Abigail reached the corner of the house with no idea what to do next.
“Nana!”
Abigail stopped in her tracks. Mina hadn’t called her, ‘Nana,’ in decades.
“Please,” Mina said.
Abigail stood still, back to Mina, head down, eyes on the ground, willing to be swayed. She needed Mina’s cooperation.
“Please don’t disown her,” Mina said. “She’ll be taken by…” Mina trailed off, maybe thinking that Paisley had been taken even while under Abigail’s protection.
Abigail turned around to see Mina kneeling next to motionless Frannie. Rissa had come close and was also kneeling, her face twisted in concern. They’d turned Frannie over so she was faceup, eyes closed, head relaxed, with vvyst restraining her limbs tightly to her body.
Mina spoke hesitantly. “She’s right about the vod, you know. Sage would never forgive any of us if we hadn’t called them.”
Two neighbors peeked around hedges, watching them. It was a good thing the neighbors were all family.
Abigail shook her head angrily, crooking a finger at Mina.
“Don’t try to justify this—you can’t! Years and years of magic were all erased the moment that stupid little doe invited the vod here.
I’ll have to start over from scratch! It’ll be months before anyone can live here again! You have to move, now.”
“Move!?” Rissa echoed, alarmed.
Mina shook her head. “We can’t move.”
“The vod are coming here now. They’ll search the yard with a fine-tooth comb. They’ll go in your house, I guar-un-damn-tee it,” Abigail hissed, banging her fist on the siding.
Mina’s face lost its color, and she clutched at her throat. “First the demon, now the vod,” she gasped. “But where will we go?”
“I’ll move you up to the Inn.”
“Rissa, too?”
“Everyone.”
Mina gestured at Frannie, her eyes imploring. Abigail stared for a moment then softened.
“Fine,” she said. “Frannie, too.”
Mina gave her a grateful look.
The sound of sirens swelled in the distance, making Abigail’s heart rate speed up. She cast her arms wide and gestured to the houses all around with their backyards connected. Three more neighbors had come out and were watching silently.
“The vod are on their way,” she called as loud as she could.
“There's been an incident. Yes, the demon came to the Ula. Yes, he took… he took…” She couldn’t make herself say Paisley’s name.
She leaned against the wall of Mina’s house, suddenly weak in the knees, feeling too old for this shit.
She put a hand to her forehead, then dropped it, summoning all her strength and will—she would not look weak!
“I’m activating the Vvyndicate,” she shouted, standing as tall as she was able.
“And I’ll notify the elders. The vod are on their way here, because that stupid little doe called them.
” Abigail pointed at Frannie, then steamrolled over there to give her a good kick, but Mina shot to her feet and headed Abigail off.
Abigail kicked some rocks around instead.
“They’ll demand to go in Mina and Rissa’s house.
” She pointed around at the foxen watching.
“They're going to scour the yard, dozens of them. They’ll want to go inside all your houses if they get the slightest whiff of any of us being what we are. They'll come back anytime they want and they'll use any excuse to detain you. Flee now, and don’t come back. Take what you can carry. I’ll provide cabins for anyone who wants one, but you must go now. Do not talk to the vod under any circumstance. Do not use texts or group chats. Each of you follow your emergency vod plan, activate your call tree, and get going!”
Everyone ran back to their houses. Mina and Rissa were staring at Abigail with identical looks of horror on their faces.
“Will you go after Paisley?” Rissa whispered, almost too soft to hear.
“No, girl, don’t be stupid,” Abigail said. “Do you think I would recover her alive? Not one child has ever been brought back from the Pravus alive.”
“The Vvyndicate—” Rissa began, but Abigail cut her off.
“—Is two members short and can’t open a mind-gate to the Pravus because of it.”
Mina looked stricken. “Then what? She’s just enslaved, or killed, or…?”
Abigail shook her head with no idea what to say.
“There’s a vodvod who can get into the Pravus,” Mina said. “Crew Arcoal.”
Abigail saw her chance to get full cooperation and she took it.
“I will scry." She hurried into the house, straight into Mina’s bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t need to scry; she knew what the fates said, but she did need to make sure Dred knew her family had been compromised.
That old fool could activate the Vvyndicate, a secret organization of foxen Citlali, and he would jump at the chance.
Abigail didn’t have her phone. She went out into the kitchen, looking for Mina’s. She found it on the table, and she looked up Eldred Van Crimson in Mina’s contacts and called.
He answered on the first ring. “Yeah.”
“Dred, it’s Abigail. What we’ve most feared has happened. We’re activating all call trees and moving the family.”
“I’ve heard,” Dred said, his voice deep and quiet.
“You’ve heard from where?” Abigail snapped. “This just happened.”
“We all felt the crossover.”
“That’s not even what I’m talking about. This is a vod emergency.”
“Because Frannie called 911.”
Abigail gasped. “How do you—” but then she stopped. She knew how. Dred’s grandson, Reynard Van Crimson, monitored all police communications, even secured ones he should have no access to.
“Great. Why did I even call you? You know everything. Bye.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“I activated the Vvyndicate.”
“I know you did,” Abigail said, because she knew Dred.
“How?” Dred asked.
Abigail hung up. She held her finger on the record of the call and magically deleted it in a poof of electrical discharge. It didn’t go to the trash can or recycle bin, it went straight to the ether.
She hurried out of the house, dropping Mina’s phone on the counter on the way by.
Mina and Rissa were both near Frannie, watching Abigail approach. She nodded firmly and said, “The vodvod Crew Arcoal will be the one to save Paisley.”
Mina took a step, hope in her expression. “She’ll be saved?”
“The fates say yes but we must do our part.”
Mina nodded vigorously, her hands clasped together. Rissa only watched silently.
The sirens swelled loud, sounding so close they could be right on the next street! Abigail called her animal forth and asked it to speak powerful words of ancient spells to slow down the vod. It came at once and the words spilled from her mouth.
“Torp tid tima tam—time be fluid and free. Torp tid tima time—guide the vod and the vodvod away from me.”
The sound of the sirens quieted, and they had a moment to breathe.
Rissa whispered, “Are you stopping time?”
“No, child,” Abigail said. “No one can stop time, or even slow it down, but I can muddy it. I can whip it up into whirls and eddies that seem to lead somewhere, but don’t.”
Rissa seemed confused, and in that moment, Abigail was struck with how much she looked like Frannie, and how much the both of them looked like Sage, Paisley’s mother. An idea popped into her mind.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said.
She knelt at Frannie’s head and lifted it gently, then grasped at the air with her hand open, pulling vvyst from nothing, winding it around Frannie’s eyes and mouth like invisible tape, speaking soft words of containment and fortification.
Once finished, Abigail tapped on Frannie’s forehead, and the girl’s features liquidly changed, until she looked even more like Sage.
Rissa gasped and put a hand to her mouth, her eyes big.
Abigail tapped again on Frannie’s sternum, and this time her breasts and hips filled out, and her legs lengthened two inches.
Rissa and Mina both watched with identical looks of horrified disbelief on their faces.
“When the vod get here,” Abigail said, addressing Mina, “You tell them this is the girl’s mother, and she collapsed from the strain. They’ll call an ambulance and take her to the hospital… and we’ll figure it out from there. We’ll switch Rissa and Frannie, or we’ll—”
“Me?” Mina interrupted. “I have to talk to the vod?”
“Yes you, of course you,” Abigail snapped. “It happened in your yard, and you’re the one who says—” Abigail imitated Mina’s voice, ‘Frannie was right to call the vod, you know.’
Mina and Rissa gave her identical scandalized expressions. Abigail stared them down.
“You’re talking to them and that’s that. I’ll prepare you.” She pointed at the house. “Now go get your emergency drink.”
Mina only stared while the sound of the sirens swelled closer again.
“What’s the matter with you, girl? Go get it.”
Rissa jumped up and ran for the house saying, “I’ve got some in my purse.
” She was back in no time with a small glass bottle.
The label on it said, ‘liquid multivitamin’, but it was full of a special concoction Abigail made and distributed once a year and would make any foxen scent like a human for a full 24 hours.
“Take a full dose, both of you.”
“Me?” Rissa said, dropping the bottle in the grass and clutching her throat. “Not me.”
Abigail’s hands itched to slap the girl. Stupid—all of them.
“You’ll do what you’re told,” she hissed.
Rissa stared with hooded eyes, but she didn’t protest anymore.
“Later, if we need it, you’ll pretend you’re Sage,” Abigail told her, jabbing her pointer finger at Rissa.
Rissa clutched her throat. “Dear deae, I’ve never talked to a vod before.”
“If we’re lucky, you won’t have to today either. Now drink.”
Rissa opened the bottle, then tipped her head back and dropped the dose into her mouth.
Vvyst puffed up in the outline of her body for just a moment, then dissipated.
She handed it to Mina and Mina did the same, with the same result.
Abigail didn’t need to give any to Frannie, because she, like Paisley and Sage, scented human already.
“What’s the closest ‘safe place’ to the hospital?”
“Marnes Mansion,” Rissa and Mina said together.
Abigail pointed at Rissa. “You go there now and stay available.”
Rissa backed away, nodding.
“The vod will come up GailAnne Circle,” Abigail told her. “You take the dirt road or the riverbed and make sure nobody sees you. If you have to abandon your car, do it. There’s bikes stashed on—”
“I know where they are, and where all the cars are too.”
Abigail nodded sharply. “Go then.”
Rissa ran off.
Abigail turned to Mina. “I need to change your memory.”
Mina nodded and bent her head, fully compliant.
Abigail splayed her fingers and held them almost touching where Mina’s head met her neck, making connection with Mina’s recent memories.
She focused her will and pulled an iridescent strand of memory out of Mina’s skull, like yarn out of a dispenser, then she scraped at the strand with her nails, peeling off pearly bits of memory that dropped into the grass.
These were recollections Mina would never get back, but it couldn’t be helped.
Abigail scraped and smoothed with her fingers, then pulled the strand taut like a rubber band.
She released it, and the strand sucked back into Mina’s head like an electrical cord into a winder.
“Ouch!” Mina cried, snapping a hand to the back of her neck. She shook her head, then her expression filled with frantic emotion, like she’d just remembered what happened.
“Paisley!” she cried, collapsing on Frannie’s chest, then sitting up and looking confused.
“Get it together, vixie,” Abigail hissed, grasping Mina’s chin. Mina pulled away, but Abigail held her in place with will and magic. She gestured to Frannie. “This is the girl’s mother. You think she collapsed but you didn’t see it.”
Mina nodded emphatically.
“Some guy took Paisley right from the yard. You heard her yell and you heard a man grunt, and you sensed someone, but you never saw him. And you’re scared, you’re terrified.
Cry all you want, but don’t be scared of the vod, and don’t tell them anything you don’t have to, and definitely don’t tell them anything you aren’t allowed to. Got it?”
The sound of the sirens came from the south, directly below the entrance to the street. The vod would arrive soon.
Abigail caught Mina’s eye and raised her eyebrows. Mina nodded grimly at her, then stalked to the front of the house, taking huge gulps of air, her tear-stained face grim.
Abigail said a quick spell and sent a blast of scent-clearing air Mina’s way. It ruffled her clothes and almost pushed her over. Mina regained her composure and kept walking.
Abigail turned away and went in Mina’s back door. She said another spell, a quick and simple one, and vvyst whipped up into a tornado around her, then left her and whipped through the house, gathering scents and smells, then taking them right out the back door.
Abigail shook her head, knowing it was a poor job, but it was all they had time for. With luck, the precautions would hold until Mina was able to get away.
Leaving the back door open, Abigail left the house and hurried back to the golf cart as fast as she could manage.
She had to get to Ethedra.