Chapter 14 #2
And what it had shown me was a man named Ambrose Wright.
Exactly who he was or when he lived, I didn’t know.
The woods in which I found him had felt extremely old, and I trusted that feeling.
He had lived long ago, and he had lived here—here, in this, the place that would someday become Sedgwick Cove.
I accepted this as true, deciding to trust my instincts for once.
He had looked so much like the young man in Sarah Claire’s memories that I thought he might be the very same man, but altered somehow—more human.
He hadn’t been the flawless ethereal man of Sarah’s remembrance, but something much more real: an imperfect, living, breathing being.
If he had been the same man, something very strange had happened to him between that desperate night in the clearing, and the encounter with Sarah in the forest years later.
He had undergone some kind of deep and abiding transformation that had turned him into something else entirely.
Either that, or some other kind of being had taken on his appearance.
I couldn’t be sure which it was yet, so I let both possibilities sit there side by side in my mind, and moved on to the other being in the vision.
Abaddon.
A shiver ran through my body that had nothing at all to do with the cold.
The—goddess, I didn’t even know what to call it.
Creature? Being? All I knew was that it wasn’t, nor had it ever been—human.
Every horror movie and dark fairy tale I’d ever experienced flooded my mind.
I had never believed that anything like Abaddon could exist in real life.
Even now, when I had experienced so much of the hidden magical world, my mind didn’t want to accept that something like Abaddon could be real, could be summoned from wherever Ambrose had summoned it from.
Clearly, I needed to get over that. There was no part of me, physically, mentally, or emotionally, that didn’t believe every detail of that vision was real.
Just like with Sarah Claire’s memories, I knew that what I was watching had truly happened.
It was possible, seeing it through Sarah’s mind, that some of the details were subjective, but there was no amount of subjectivity that could turn Abaddon into anything other than an absolutely terrifying monster.
I tried to put the fear and disbelief aside, and focus on what the vision had taught me about Abaddon.
Fear would not serve me, but information would.
Ambrose had summoned Abaddon specifically because he believed that Abaddon had the power to help him. And that seemed to be the case—Abaddon, apparently, had the power to snatch someone from the arms of death… for a price.
The price. That made me shiver all over again.
There was no doubt that Ambrose was desperate enough to bargain away almost anything, and I had no doubt that Abaddon knew it.
A piece of soul seemed, even from my totally ignorant perspective, an awful price to pay.
I also had an aching sense of dread that Ambrose had made a terrible mistake to bargain with a being like Abaddon.
As I walked, all these thoughts whirling in my mind, I realized that a new feeling was burgeoning inside me, and it surprised me.
As much as the experience had frightened me, I now felt a growing flicker of impatience, like the feeling you get when you’ve begun reading a really great book, and you just wish you could read faster so you could know what happens next.
I was anxious for the continuation of the story—the next chapter.
And yet I was torn. For almost a week, I’d been scrying with no luck at all.
That initial glimpse in the mirror had been just that, a glimpse, and since then…
nothing. It had gotten to the point that I’d assumed nothing would happen, and as a result, I’d let my guard down.
Then, in the moment I had least expected it…
boom. It had not been within my control.
I hadn’t made a conscious decision to scry, to ask a question, and search for an answer.
Rather, the answer had found me, thrust me into its world, and forced itself upon me.
I didn’t love that—especially the fact that it had happened in broad daylight on a public street.
I would need to be very careful, very attuned to my surroundings, if I was going to have any chance of preventing that from happening again.
And even then, it might not be enough. It seemed that, when it came to answers through scrying, I was not at all in charge.
“Wren?”
I looked up, startled, to see that I was standing in front of Lightkeep Cottage’s front gate. I’d been so lost in thought, I hadn’t even realized I’d made it home. My mother was staring at me from the front porch, framed in a rectangle of golden light in the doorway, like a painting.
“Are you okay, honey? Why are you just standing there?”
“Oh yeah, sorry. I was just… thinking.”
Her answering smile was understanding. “A lot on your mind, huh?”
“You could say that.” I tried to return the smile, but it felt wrong, so I gave up.
I unlatched the gate and trudged up the walkway, studying my mother’s face as I did so.
Had news reached her somehow about what had happened in front of the cafe?
She looked concerned, but that was kind of her default expression these days.
She didn’t look more concerned than usual.
I decided she couldn’t know, or she’d already be accosting me with questions.
“Rhi’s starting lunch,” my mom said, planting a kiss on my head as I reached the door. “Are you hungry?”
“No, I’m good,” I said. “Eva fed me when I stopped by the cafe.”
My mom smiled. “Lucky you.”
“I’m gonna change, and then I’ll be in the library for a bit,” I said. “I’ve got some reading to do.”
My mom’s expression cleared a bit. “Let me know if you need any help. Are you finding those books from Rhi helpful?”
“Sort of,” I said. “I’m working my way through them.”
“We don’t have anything from the Conclave yet, but Xiomara is working on it,” my mom assured me. “I’m sure we’ll have more resources for you soon.”
“Great,” I lied, trying to sound hopeful.
“How about a cup of tea?” My mom suggested. “I think Rhi’s got a new blend ready that’s good for anxiety.”
“Perfect,” I said, and eased past her through the living room and up the stairs.
Having changed into a cozy set of pjs and slippers—and avoiding looking in my mirror—I made my way down to the library with Freya trailing behind me.
A cup of tea was already waiting for me, sending curling tendrils of steam up into the air from the coffee table.
I picked it up and sipped on it while I walked along the shelves, scanning the titles.
I didn’t really know what I was looking for.
I doubted our little family library had a book called “Encyclopedia of Terrifying Creatures,” for instance.
Still, it was worth a look. I certainly couldn’t ask my mother or my aunts if they’d ever heard of this Abaddon thing, because then I’d have to explain where I’d seen it in the first place, and there was no way in hell I was going to do that.
I ran my finger over dozens and dozens of spines, looking for a likely title, but nothing jumped out.
Then I started pulling out the books with no titles on their spines, one by one, examining the covers and flipping through a few pages, but I still felt like I didn’t really know what I was looking for.
I’d been at it for nearly an hour when I pulled a dusty volume off the shelf at random, and knocked a second to the floor in my haste. I bent to pick up the fallen book, which lay with its well-worn cover splayed open, revealing a spread of pages inside. I reached for it, and froze.
The writing was tiny and cramped, barely legible, but it wasn’t the writing that caught my eye. It was an illustration, somewhat crudely done, and yet the details were clear enough that recognition bloomed inside me.
It was a Circle. The exact same Circle that Ambrose had drawn to summon Abaddon.
Wait, was it? I didn’t want to get ahead of myself in my excitement. I needed to examine it more closely. I picked it up carefully from the floor, and brought it over to one of the chairs, where I laid it on my lap and focused on the details.
The longer I looked at it, the more sure I was that it was identical.
My memory of what I’d seen in the cafe window had crystallized in my mind.
I could close my eyes and see it all again, as though it was playing out in front of me.
I tried to push away the more upsetting details—like the sounds of sheer animal agony that were coming from Ambrose as he gouged the Circle into the earth—and instead did my best to focus on what he had drawn: the shape of each rune, the positions of them both inside and outside of the Circle, even the compass direction each element was supposed to face.
I could now confirm it. This was the exact same Circle.
My heart pounding, I turned my attention eagerly to the writing on the page. Specifically, the caption right beneath the drawing:
“A traditional witch’s Circle designed for conjuration of a demon most wicked.”
My mouth went dry. I had a sensation of falling, like in a dream, only I couldn’t wake up. The falling feeling just went on and on as I stared at that word. Demon.
Okay. So, demons were real. I had to process that for a good long minute.
I had always put demons into the category of totally imaginary.
I’d never been religious, and I’d always treated any pop culture references to demons in the same way I thought of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster—something that people had willed into existence by simply wanting to believe they were real, grasping at every unexplained event or mysterious sighting to prop up their unfounded delusions.
Now I had proof. Well, maybe not proof, I reminded myself.
Just because something is written in a book doesn’t by default make it true. I needed more information.
I flipped back a few pages in the book, and began to read.
It wasn’t a book about demons, but rather a book about different methods of conjuring.
In fact, as I continued to skim the pages, the only reference to demons specifically was on the page the book had fallen open to, which in itself felt like too much of a coincidence.
I read the whole paragraph beneath the drawing, and though it gave specific instructions for the creation of the Circle, it also warned witches against creating such a Circle, and offered no further advice other than “such conjuration invites danger and dire consequence.”
I sat there on the couch for a long time, letting my tea go cold and bitter, thinking.
I needed to find out more about this, but asking my mother or my aunts was not an option.
If they thought I was messing with things like demons, they’d probably trap me in the magical equivalent of a bubble, and never let me out.
It wasn’t that I wanted to conjure a demon—coming face to face with something like Abaddon was the absolute last thing I wanted.
But I did need to understand more… to figure out how a demon might fit into the story of the Darkness.
Because, despite all the questions I had, I was now sure about one thing.
I was closer to understanding the Darkness than I had ever been before.