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Summary: Morgan, Hunter, and Sky spy on Maggie Fisher and her son
Cràdh and reach a grim conclusion about their situation.
PART V: Return
HUNTER'S P.O.V
"Sky."
No response.
"Sky!"
Still no response. She left me no choice but to send her a witch message. A loud one.
-SKY, GET UP!-
As she shot up in bed with a loud cry of pain and clutched her head at what must have been a reverberating boom sounding inside her, I frowned. That might not have been a very good idea. True, now she was awake, but when she's pissed off, Sky is a force to be reckoned with. Morgan was standing behind me in the upstairs hallway, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet nervously.
"Shhh!" she whispered into the room. "You'll wake everyone else up!"
As Sky stormed over to the bedroom door that Morgan and I were peeking into, now fully awake and very aggravated, I jumped back to avoid the hand that she was clearly set on hitting me with.
"What the hell was that for???"
"You need to come with us," I said quietly, lowering my voice so as not to wake Raven up. "We're going back to Maggie's house."
She looked very irked. "Hunter, it's past midnight!"
"That's why we have to go now," Morgan explained, still checking down the hallway for any signs that anyone else had awakened. "She'll either be asleep or off her guard."
"Now is the time to gather some concrete evidence that she's been doing dark magick," I said hastily. "But we have to go now, or else one of the others might wake up."
"We already have evidence!" Sky cried, her voice rising as Morgan and I both desperately held up hands to try to calm her down. "She tried to give me a freaking hernia! That's pretty solid evidence, if you ask me!"
"Oh, just come with us, will you?" I asked irritably. I tried another edge. "Besides, if you don't, Morgan and I could both die because she would maim us with her evil magick and we wouldn't have another blood witch to protect us."
Sky sighed with frustration. "Give me five minutes." She then proceeded to slam the door in my face. Or, rather, on my face.
"Ow! Sky!"
"Sorry." She didn't sound very sorry.
MORGAN'S P.O.V
Six and a half minutes later, Sky plodded into the kitchen wearing what I recognized as Raven's leather jacket over her pajamas and still looking righteously angry.
"What took you so long?" Hunter asked as he pulled on his own jacket and headed out of the kitchen and into the foyer.
"Gee, sorry, Hunter," she said sarcastically. "I only had to explain to my girlfriend why I was stealing her precious jacket and sneaking out of the house at 12:30 am."
"There's no need to be sarcastic," Hunter said touchily as he pushed open the front door and held it open for Sky and I.
They continued squabbling all the way down the street while I walked slightly ahead of them, giggling at Hunter's I'm-not-listening-I'm-not- listening-I'm-not-listening's as Sky began describing, in detail, how exactly she had managed to persuade Raven to lend her the jacket. As I walked, though, I noticed how eerie the night had become from the time that we had left Shelagh and Beck's cabin to now on the side street that we were walking through. There had previously been audible the sounds of several night insects buzzing around and a few birds left chirping, but now the noise level had plummeted. I was barely aware of my feet making any noise as they walked down the gravel path that lead to 53 West Kingston Drive. I had already started walking up the path leading to the door when Hunter grabbed me and pulled me back to where he and Sky were hiding behind a huge clump of hedges.
"Wait," he muttered. "We need to conceal ourselves so that she can't see us."
After the three of us had all traced hundreds of drawings of Laguz, the rune for concealment, on our skin and clothes and had repeated the "I-am- invisible" spell at length, we crept up silently (except for the "hey!" that Sky hissed when Hunter stepped on the back of her shoe) and ducked down underneath one of the windows that was built into the wall of Maggie Fisher's living room.
"I'd just like to say right now that if I feel even the slightest pangs of a stomachache, I'm going back," Sky whispered.
"If something happens, I'll be the first one running," I assured her, my heart rate speeding up as it hit me that we were trespassing on a witch's property. A witch with no problems in using dark magick against others. Great.
"Would you two shut up?" Hunter asked in frustration. "If you were being quiet, you would have noticed that someone is coming."
Sky and I both wisely fell silent as what Hunter said proved itself true; the lone taps of a single pair of shoes walking up the pathway towards the house drew nearer and nearer until, peering around the corner, we could see the vague outline of a tall, thin man pulling out a key, inserting it in the keyhole, and opening the front door. Racing back to the window as quietly as we could, I cautiously raised my head to see through the window and into Maggie's living room. It was connected to the entrance hallway near the front door, and I saw her, easily distinguishable because of the waist-length gray hair, hurry towards the man that had just entered her house and pull him into the living room.
Feeling Hunter and Sky doing the same, I cast out my senses so that I could hear what she was saying to the man, who was in better light now due to the single lamp that was lit in Maggie's living room. I involuntarily shivered at the sight of one of the most physically scary people that I had ever seen. The man wasn't horribly disfigured, but his pointed nose, cold gray eyes, and thin mouth gave him the appearance of a rat. A really ugly rat.
"Cràdh, how many times do I have to ask you not to do this?" Maggie's voice was pleading.
I felt my heart rate spike. Cràdh? Cràdh Fisher? The magickal abuser, rapist, and convict? I felt Sky and Hunter both tense, as well, and silently made a prayer to the Goddess that we not be seen.
"What do you mean, Mother? I'm home before curfew." Cràdh's voice was cold and sinister, just as I had expected it to be. I shuddered as if I had just heard Bree's manicured fingernails scraping a chalkboard.
"You have no curfew." Now Maggie was angry.
"Oh, then why am I in trouble?" Cràdh smirked, and I could see his pointed teeth reflected in the light from the lamp. He looked even more like a rat when he smirked.
"Cràdh, people from the council were here today! Shelagh and Beck Eventide's daughter and nephew! Somehow, they know what's going on. They know that I've been using dark magick against Radharc."
I felt Hunter give a silent cheer of triumph in his head.
"Mother, don't worry," Cràdh said, his voice taking on a soothing edge that actually made me more uncomfortable. "No one will find out that it's you. That is, of course, if you've taken the proper precautions."
"I have," Maggie insisted. "Blocking spells, concealment charms, runes of protection and harm to outsiders on the outside of the house ..."
The three of us gathered outside all scooted a little bit away from the windowsill.
Maggie's voice now took on an accusing tone. "Cràdh, I want this to stop. Now. You've had your chance for vengeance, and if I get caught by that Niall boy, there won't be anyone left to help you because I'll be locked away by the council."
"Father would help me."
"Your father doesn't care about you, and you know it," Maggie said sharply. "The only reason that he's ever helped you was because I asked him to. You're an embarrassment to him and to everyone else in this sorry town, but I do have some sympathy for you. You are my son. My only child. I will help you and aid you, but this dark magick tirade has gone on long enough."
"Are you saying that you won't do this for me anymore?" Cràdh sounded deadly.
"Don't you take that tone with me, Cràdh! Now, until my magickal attacks against the coven have dissipated and those two blonde interlopers have left, I want you under seclusion in your room. Your father and I will see to it that you cannot escape. If you attempt to defy my orders, I will not hesitate to use my magick against you and force you to remain unknown. Goodnight, Cràdh."
With a final withering look at her estranged son, Maggie turned and swept down the hallway out of view with a swish of her robe. Seconds later, however, she reappeared.
"Do you hear something?"
I instantly retracted my senses and quieted my breathing, doing as little movement as possible. My knees, which had dug into the soil of the flowerbed underneath the window, were numb with cold, as were my hands and fingers.
"No."
"Someone is out there."
"That's our cue," Hunter murmured to Sky and I, and with a gentle shove, we crept out from underneath the window just as Maggie thrust it open and glared out at the surrounding darkness.
"Who's there?" she demanded, her voice rising louder and louder.
"Go! Go!" Hunter hissed at me, and, followed by him and Sky, I took off sprinting down the path away from the house, not caring if Maggie heard me anymore as long as I could get away. Suddenly, though, a bright blue streak of light whizzed by my head about half a centimeter from my ear with a burning heat and struck a nearby tree, which groaned and nearly burst into flames. Maggie had shot witch fire at us.
"Hurry!" Sky said urgently as she deflected another crackle of witch fire with an invisible screen emanating from her outstretched hand and sent it disappearing into the shrubbery around the Fisher house, which promptly went up in an orange and red blaze. This was enough to distract Maggie and Cràdh, who had joined her at the window, as the three of us raced to safety away from the house. Extending my senses once more, I could hear that Maggie was now on the telephone, presumably dialing the local fire squad.
"Yes, this is Maggie Fisher at 53 West Kingston Drive. There's a fire on my property ... some of my hedges are burning ... no, I don't know how it happened ... thank you. Please hurry."
Hunter, Sky, and I didn't stop running until we had made it safely all the way back to Shelagh and Beck's cottage and into their foyer, which seemed considerably warmer than the freezing night outside. Taking a moment to steady my breathing, I threw my jacket on a coat hanger and slipped my shoes off.
"That old hag," Sky said in disgust, examining her arm. "She nearly singed me with her witch fire, Raven would have killed me for ruining her jacket ..."
"No, she wouldn't have," I said calmly. Then I grinned mischievously, my eyes darting to Hunter and back to Sky. "But she might have punished you a little ..."
Hunter gave a disgusted groan. "Oh, that's great. That's just great. There's a dark witch on the loose out there that just tried to kill us all and the two of you are making jokes! I'm calling the council so that at least one of the three of us will be taking this seriously."
I stared at him. "The council? Now?"
"Someone's got to be there," he said. "I have to talk to them as soon as possible about what the next course of action should be."
"Hmmm ..." Sky said, pretending to think. "All in favor of stripping Maggie of her powers?" She raised her own hand as Hunter and I stared at her. She looked back at us innocently. "What? She nearly turned me into a fish stick!"
"Nevertheless," Hunter said sternly with a glare at her, "I need the council's approval."
"Um, with all due respect, Your Seeker-ness, tomorrow is either our last day to save the coven or the day when they will actually be killed," I said seriously. "Other than stripping Maggie of her powers or trying to temporarily bind them, I can't see another way out."
"We should try a binding spell," Sky said quickly, looking to Hunter for approval, who nodded.
"Yes, I think that until I can get in contact with Kennet or someone else in command, that will be a necessary step."
"All right," Sky said, pointing down the hallway that led to the kitchen. "Morgan, the third door on the left is Da's circle room. That's where we can do the binding spell. Hunter, if you get in contact with the council and they tell you to strip Maggie of her powers, wake Ma and Da up so that you don't do anything stupid by yourself." Hunter's ears burned slightly, but he nodded and disappeared into the kitchen.
"Come on," Sky said to me, leading me down the darkened hallway. "And be quiet. Da has magickal alarms on his door that alert him whenever someone tries to gain entry."
When we reached the door that would open to Beck's circle room, I gasped suddenly and took a shocked step back. The door was covered with glowing symbols of hundreds of different colors, symbols depicting the four elements, the eight sabbats, and hundreds of runes and sigils that appeared to be inscribed on the door. When I blinked, though, they all disappeared and it just appeared to be an average wooden door.
Sky was looking at me strangely. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I whispered, reaching out to touch the door gently with my fingertips before Sky grabbed my arm away.
"Alarms, remember?" she whispered. She drew a sigil in the air in front of the door and then I reached out to touch it. It felt like it was buzzing slightly under my hand.
"Sorry," I said apologetically. "It's just kind of amazing. I've never really been in a room where magick has been worked for a long time. Like, years. Cal had a kind of secret place where he liked to do magick, but it didn't feel this strongly."
Sky smiled slightly. "Yeah, Da's really powerful. He's been casting spells supposedly since he was two. Or so Grandmum claims, anyway."
I grinned faintly as she pushed open the door to the circle room and we stepped inside. As I looked around the room, my eyes widened in wonder; the walls of the room were indeed circular, but pushed against them were tens of bookshelves and cabinets holding hundreds of different items and magick- making tools, including four entire glass cabinets filled with nothing but differently colored and scented candles, two glass cabinets displaying over twenty styled athames and wands each, bookshelves literally packed with books, some old and some new, and a huge array of other Wiccan objects and tools. In the very center of the room, a circle had been permanently traced into the red carpet with hundreds of chalk tracings piling up over the years, and a plain and yet beautiful altar, a simple circular table with a pentagram engraved on its surface, stood shyly in the middle.
"Wow ..." I breathed.
"You like?" Sky asked, grinning. "Yeah, this place is incredible. Hunter and I used to spend hours in here, just looking at everything." Her eyebrows furrowed slightly. "Well, that and trying to maim each other with the athames, but that's another story."
"Never tell it to me."
"Deal. Anyway, the spell is pretty simple, but really quite effective. It shouldn't take long, providing that nothing goes wrong." I groaned; whenever someone said that, something was DEFINITELY sure to go wrong. It was an unwritten law of the universe or something.
Sky spent about twenty seconds opening cabinet after cabinet and case after case and pulling out a myriad of different objects for the spell, with such precision in knowing what she was looking for that I suspected she really was glad to be back here.
"Ready?" she asked me as she placed an incense stick, a candle, a bowl of salt, and a bowl of water in separate corners of the circle. I nodded and stepped into the chalky ring to sit down opposite from Sky around the tiny pentagram table, on which she had set up a tiny cauldron.
"I'll send you the words to the spell," she said. "They're pretty easy, but useful."
I nodded and fell into a deep meditation pretty much on my own command. I saw Hunter, Sky, Uncle Beck, Aunt Shelagh, Maggie Fisher, and Cràdh, all of them separately, and concentrated on my own breathing, which was now coming slowly and deeply.
"... an di allaigh, an di aigh ..." I whispered softly, beginning my personal power call. "... an di allaigh, an de ne ullah ..." My fingertips tingled. "... an di ulla be nith rah ... cair de na ullah nith rah ..."
By the time Sky and I had both finished calling our powers to us, I was feeling like I was practically ready to implode with the energy that had built up inside of me. Sky lifted her hand and began drawing runes and sigils in the air around us, some that I recognized and some that I did not. Runes for protection and safety, sigils identifying the two of us as well as Maggie Fisher, the subject of our spell. I saw silvery wisps of what looked like smoke hovering in the air, and I realized with a bit of a start that the smoke from the tiny incense stick on the altar was shaping itself into the shapes of the runes that Sky was drawing in the air. Runes for plants and flowers, and then runes for death and chaos. Runes for animals, the creatures of the Goddess, and then runes for death chaos.
Sky started speaking, and I found the words forming in my mind right before she said them. I followed suit, and we fell into a harmony of chanting.
"With the signs of the crimes Of your own designs, We bind your evil Three times three.
We bind you from behind, We bind you from before; That you will hurt our people Never, ever more.
We bind you from the left, We bind you from the right, We bind you by day, And we bind you by night.
We bind you from below, We bind you from above; That you may never know The laws of life and love.
We bind you with your own Good conscience within And so let this magick Unfold and spin."
Suddenly the cauldron on the altar, or whatever was in it, burst into flame and almost sent a spark into my eye. With a quick peek inside, I realized that Sky had already written identical runes for the ones that she had just drawn in the air on little scraps of parchment and placed them inside the cauldron.
Once again, though, I felt her words tugging at my mind and began chanting again.
"Goddess of darkest night, Send our troubles all to flight! Burn them in thy sacred fires And replace them with our hearts' desires!"
I closed my eyes with intense difficulty, as they were glued to the fires of the cauldron, and released all of my energy into the chant as we repeated our mantra twice more.
"Goddess of darkest night, Send our troubles all to flight! Burn them in thy –"
A huge burst of wind cut off my words as I felt myself being thrown out of the circle and falling away. At least, that's what my senses were telling me I was doing. My eyes were shut tight, away from the outside world and stubbornly refusing to open. I was falling through what felt like open air, trying to scream but unable to, my arms trying to move, trying to flail with terror, but unable to move. The ground, the sturdy ground of Uncle Beck's warm, comfortable circle room, was gone and my stomach turned as I tumbled downward.
'Help me!' I screamed inside my mind. 'Goddess, somebody, help me!'
I was screaming, and someone else was, too. I didn't know where I was, what I was feeling, as a torrent of pain suddenly wracked my body; my bones were breaking, my head was bursting with pain as an ear-splitting, inhuman cry forced itself into my mind.
"GET OUT!!!"
I was sitting in Uncle Beck's circle room, still cross-legged across the pentagram table from Sky. Gasping, I nearly fell over and clutched at the ground with both hands, my knuckles white and my eyes wide. Sky looked terrified, as I'm sure I did, her face practically paler than a sheet of paper. She stared at me and I stared back.
"Did you hear her?"
All I could do was nod.
Maggie had managed to block our spell. Somehow, she had forced herself into our minds to deliver one last warning.
"We have to get Hunter."
We ran into Hunter quite literally, who was just coming out of the kitchen when we bumped, or more accurately full on collided, with him in our haste.
"Whoa, what's going on?" he asked, barely managing to stop himself from being pushed over. "Did you bind Maggie's powers?"
"No," Sky said furiously. "She got to us first."
Hunter looked worried. "What do you mean?"
"She blocked our spell somehow," I said, my voice quavering. "She ... it-it didn't work."
"Well ..." Hunter looked grim. "I suppose it's just as well. It wouldn't have been necessary anyway." Off our confused looks, he explicated his previous statement.
"I got in touch with the council. Get Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck. We're going to strip Maggie of her powers."
Summary: Morgan, Hunter, and Sky spy on Maggie Fisher and her son
Cràdh and reach a grim conclusion about their situation.
PART V: Return
HUNTER'S P.O.V
"Sky."
No response.
"Sky!"
Still no response. She left me no choice but to send her a witch message. A loud one.
-SKY, GET UP!-
As she shot up in bed with a loud cry of pain and clutched her head at what must have been a reverberating boom sounding inside her, I frowned. That might not have been a very good idea. True, now she was awake, but when she's pissed off, Sky is a force to be reckoned with. Morgan was standing behind me in the upstairs hallway, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet nervously.
"Shhh!" she whispered into the room. "You'll wake everyone else up!"
As Sky stormed over to the bedroom door that Morgan and I were peeking into, now fully awake and very aggravated, I jumped back to avoid the hand that she was clearly set on hitting me with.
"What the hell was that for???"
"You need to come with us," I said quietly, lowering my voice so as not to wake Raven up. "We're going back to Maggie's house."
She looked very irked. "Hunter, it's past midnight!"
"That's why we have to go now," Morgan explained, still checking down the hallway for any signs that anyone else had awakened. "She'll either be asleep or off her guard."
"Now is the time to gather some concrete evidence that she's been doing dark magick," I said hastily. "But we have to go now, or else one of the others might wake up."
"We already have evidence!" Sky cried, her voice rising as Morgan and I both desperately held up hands to try to calm her down. "She tried to give me a freaking hernia! That's pretty solid evidence, if you ask me!"
"Oh, just come with us, will you?" I asked irritably. I tried another edge. "Besides, if you don't, Morgan and I could both die because she would maim us with her evil magick and we wouldn't have another blood witch to protect us."
Sky sighed with frustration. "Give me five minutes." She then proceeded to slam the door in my face. Or, rather, on my face.
"Ow! Sky!"
"Sorry." She didn't sound very sorry.
MORGAN'S P.O.V
Six and a half minutes later, Sky plodded into the kitchen wearing what I recognized as Raven's leather jacket over her pajamas and still looking righteously angry.
"What took you so long?" Hunter asked as he pulled on his own jacket and headed out of the kitchen and into the foyer.
"Gee, sorry, Hunter," she said sarcastically. "I only had to explain to my girlfriend why I was stealing her precious jacket and sneaking out of the house at 12:30 am."
"There's no need to be sarcastic," Hunter said touchily as he pushed open the front door and held it open for Sky and I.
They continued squabbling all the way down the street while I walked slightly ahead of them, giggling at Hunter's I'm-not-listening-I'm-not- listening-I'm-not-listening's as Sky began describing, in detail, how exactly she had managed to persuade Raven to lend her the jacket. As I walked, though, I noticed how eerie the night had become from the time that we had left Shelagh and Beck's cabin to now on the side street that we were walking through. There had previously been audible the sounds of several night insects buzzing around and a few birds left chirping, but now the noise level had plummeted. I was barely aware of my feet making any noise as they walked down the gravel path that lead to 53 West Kingston Drive. I had already started walking up the path leading to the door when Hunter grabbed me and pulled me back to where he and Sky were hiding behind a huge clump of hedges.
"Wait," he muttered. "We need to conceal ourselves so that she can't see us."
After the three of us had all traced hundreds of drawings of Laguz, the rune for concealment, on our skin and clothes and had repeated the "I-am- invisible" spell at length, we crept up silently (except for the "hey!" that Sky hissed when Hunter stepped on the back of her shoe) and ducked down underneath one of the windows that was built into the wall of Maggie Fisher's living room.
"I'd just like to say right now that if I feel even the slightest pangs of a stomachache, I'm going back," Sky whispered.
"If something happens, I'll be the first one running," I assured her, my heart rate speeding up as it hit me that we were trespassing on a witch's property. A witch with no problems in using dark magick against others. Great.
"Would you two shut up?" Hunter asked in frustration. "If you were being quiet, you would have noticed that someone is coming."
Sky and I both wisely fell silent as what Hunter said proved itself true; the lone taps of a single pair of shoes walking up the pathway towards the house drew nearer and nearer until, peering around the corner, we could see the vague outline of a tall, thin man pulling out a key, inserting it in the keyhole, and opening the front door. Racing back to the window as quietly as we could, I cautiously raised my head to see through the window and into Maggie's living room. It was connected to the entrance hallway near the front door, and I saw her, easily distinguishable because of the waist-length gray hair, hurry towards the man that had just entered her house and pull him into the living room.
Feeling Hunter and Sky doing the same, I cast out my senses so that I could hear what she was saying to the man, who was in better light now due to the single lamp that was lit in Maggie's living room. I involuntarily shivered at the sight of one of the most physically scary people that I had ever seen. The man wasn't horribly disfigured, but his pointed nose, cold gray eyes, and thin mouth gave him the appearance of a rat. A really ugly rat.
"Cràdh, how many times do I have to ask you not to do this?" Maggie's voice was pleading.
I felt my heart rate spike. Cràdh? Cràdh Fisher? The magickal abuser, rapist, and convict? I felt Sky and Hunter both tense, as well, and silently made a prayer to the Goddess that we not be seen.
"What do you mean, Mother? I'm home before curfew." Cràdh's voice was cold and sinister, just as I had expected it to be. I shuddered as if I had just heard Bree's manicured fingernails scraping a chalkboard.
"You have no curfew." Now Maggie was angry.
"Oh, then why am I in trouble?" Cràdh smirked, and I could see his pointed teeth reflected in the light from the lamp. He looked even more like a rat when he smirked.
"Cràdh, people from the council were here today! Shelagh and Beck Eventide's daughter and nephew! Somehow, they know what's going on. They know that I've been using dark magick against Radharc."
I felt Hunter give a silent cheer of triumph in his head.
"Mother, don't worry," Cràdh said, his voice taking on a soothing edge that actually made me more uncomfortable. "No one will find out that it's you. That is, of course, if you've taken the proper precautions."
"I have," Maggie insisted. "Blocking spells, concealment charms, runes of protection and harm to outsiders on the outside of the house ..."
The three of us gathered outside all scooted a little bit away from the windowsill.
Maggie's voice now took on an accusing tone. "Cràdh, I want this to stop. Now. You've had your chance for vengeance, and if I get caught by that Niall boy, there won't be anyone left to help you because I'll be locked away by the council."
"Father would help me."
"Your father doesn't care about you, and you know it," Maggie said sharply. "The only reason that he's ever helped you was because I asked him to. You're an embarrassment to him and to everyone else in this sorry town, but I do have some sympathy for you. You are my son. My only child. I will help you and aid you, but this dark magick tirade has gone on long enough."
"Are you saying that you won't do this for me anymore?" Cràdh sounded deadly.
"Don't you take that tone with me, Cràdh! Now, until my magickal attacks against the coven have dissipated and those two blonde interlopers have left, I want you under seclusion in your room. Your father and I will see to it that you cannot escape. If you attempt to defy my orders, I will not hesitate to use my magick against you and force you to remain unknown. Goodnight, Cràdh."
With a final withering look at her estranged son, Maggie turned and swept down the hallway out of view with a swish of her robe. Seconds later, however, she reappeared.
"Do you hear something?"
I instantly retracted my senses and quieted my breathing, doing as little movement as possible. My knees, which had dug into the soil of the flowerbed underneath the window, were numb with cold, as were my hands and fingers.
"No."
"Someone is out there."
"That's our cue," Hunter murmured to Sky and I, and with a gentle shove, we crept out from underneath the window just as Maggie thrust it open and glared out at the surrounding darkness.
"Who's there?" she demanded, her voice rising louder and louder.
"Go! Go!" Hunter hissed at me, and, followed by him and Sky, I took off sprinting down the path away from the house, not caring if Maggie heard me anymore as long as I could get away. Suddenly, though, a bright blue streak of light whizzed by my head about half a centimeter from my ear with a burning heat and struck a nearby tree, which groaned and nearly burst into flames. Maggie had shot witch fire at us.
"Hurry!" Sky said urgently as she deflected another crackle of witch fire with an invisible screen emanating from her outstretched hand and sent it disappearing into the shrubbery around the Fisher house, which promptly went up in an orange and red blaze. This was enough to distract Maggie and Cràdh, who had joined her at the window, as the three of us raced to safety away from the house. Extending my senses once more, I could hear that Maggie was now on the telephone, presumably dialing the local fire squad.
"Yes, this is Maggie Fisher at 53 West Kingston Drive. There's a fire on my property ... some of my hedges are burning ... no, I don't know how it happened ... thank you. Please hurry."
Hunter, Sky, and I didn't stop running until we had made it safely all the way back to Shelagh and Beck's cottage and into their foyer, which seemed considerably warmer than the freezing night outside. Taking a moment to steady my breathing, I threw my jacket on a coat hanger and slipped my shoes off.
"That old hag," Sky said in disgust, examining her arm. "She nearly singed me with her witch fire, Raven would have killed me for ruining her jacket ..."
"No, she wouldn't have," I said calmly. Then I grinned mischievously, my eyes darting to Hunter and back to Sky. "But she might have punished you a little ..."
Hunter gave a disgusted groan. "Oh, that's great. That's just great. There's a dark witch on the loose out there that just tried to kill us all and the two of you are making jokes! I'm calling the council so that at least one of the three of us will be taking this seriously."
I stared at him. "The council? Now?"
"Someone's got to be there," he said. "I have to talk to them as soon as possible about what the next course of action should be."
"Hmmm ..." Sky said, pretending to think. "All in favor of stripping Maggie of her powers?" She raised her own hand as Hunter and I stared at her. She looked back at us innocently. "What? She nearly turned me into a fish stick!"
"Nevertheless," Hunter said sternly with a glare at her, "I need the council's approval."
"Um, with all due respect, Your Seeker-ness, tomorrow is either our last day to save the coven or the day when they will actually be killed," I said seriously. "Other than stripping Maggie of her powers or trying to temporarily bind them, I can't see another way out."
"We should try a binding spell," Sky said quickly, looking to Hunter for approval, who nodded.
"Yes, I think that until I can get in contact with Kennet or someone else in command, that will be a necessary step."
"All right," Sky said, pointing down the hallway that led to the kitchen. "Morgan, the third door on the left is Da's circle room. That's where we can do the binding spell. Hunter, if you get in contact with the council and they tell you to strip Maggie of her powers, wake Ma and Da up so that you don't do anything stupid by yourself." Hunter's ears burned slightly, but he nodded and disappeared into the kitchen.
"Come on," Sky said to me, leading me down the darkened hallway. "And be quiet. Da has magickal alarms on his door that alert him whenever someone tries to gain entry."
When we reached the door that would open to Beck's circle room, I gasped suddenly and took a shocked step back. The door was covered with glowing symbols of hundreds of different colors, symbols depicting the four elements, the eight sabbats, and hundreds of runes and sigils that appeared to be inscribed on the door. When I blinked, though, they all disappeared and it just appeared to be an average wooden door.
Sky was looking at me strangely. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I whispered, reaching out to touch the door gently with my fingertips before Sky grabbed my arm away.
"Alarms, remember?" she whispered. She drew a sigil in the air in front of the door and then I reached out to touch it. It felt like it was buzzing slightly under my hand.
"Sorry," I said apologetically. "It's just kind of amazing. I've never really been in a room where magick has been worked for a long time. Like, years. Cal had a kind of secret place where he liked to do magick, but it didn't feel this strongly."
Sky smiled slightly. "Yeah, Da's really powerful. He's been casting spells supposedly since he was two. Or so Grandmum claims, anyway."
I grinned faintly as she pushed open the door to the circle room and we stepped inside. As I looked around the room, my eyes widened in wonder; the walls of the room were indeed circular, but pushed against them were tens of bookshelves and cabinets holding hundreds of different items and magick- making tools, including four entire glass cabinets filled with nothing but differently colored and scented candles, two glass cabinets displaying over twenty styled athames and wands each, bookshelves literally packed with books, some old and some new, and a huge array of other Wiccan objects and tools. In the very center of the room, a circle had been permanently traced into the red carpet with hundreds of chalk tracings piling up over the years, and a plain and yet beautiful altar, a simple circular table with a pentagram engraved on its surface, stood shyly in the middle.
"Wow ..." I breathed.
"You like?" Sky asked, grinning. "Yeah, this place is incredible. Hunter and I used to spend hours in here, just looking at everything." Her eyebrows furrowed slightly. "Well, that and trying to maim each other with the athames, but that's another story."
"Never tell it to me."
"Deal. Anyway, the spell is pretty simple, but really quite effective. It shouldn't take long, providing that nothing goes wrong." I groaned; whenever someone said that, something was DEFINITELY sure to go wrong. It was an unwritten law of the universe or something.
Sky spent about twenty seconds opening cabinet after cabinet and case after case and pulling out a myriad of different objects for the spell, with such precision in knowing what she was looking for that I suspected she really was glad to be back here.
"Ready?" she asked me as she placed an incense stick, a candle, a bowl of salt, and a bowl of water in separate corners of the circle. I nodded and stepped into the chalky ring to sit down opposite from Sky around the tiny pentagram table, on which she had set up a tiny cauldron.
"I'll send you the words to the spell," she said. "They're pretty easy, but useful."
I nodded and fell into a deep meditation pretty much on my own command. I saw Hunter, Sky, Uncle Beck, Aunt Shelagh, Maggie Fisher, and Cràdh, all of them separately, and concentrated on my own breathing, which was now coming slowly and deeply.
"... an di allaigh, an di aigh ..." I whispered softly, beginning my personal power call. "... an di allaigh, an de ne ullah ..." My fingertips tingled. "... an di ulla be nith rah ... cair de na ullah nith rah ..."
By the time Sky and I had both finished calling our powers to us, I was feeling like I was practically ready to implode with the energy that had built up inside of me. Sky lifted her hand and began drawing runes and sigils in the air around us, some that I recognized and some that I did not. Runes for protection and safety, sigils identifying the two of us as well as Maggie Fisher, the subject of our spell. I saw silvery wisps of what looked like smoke hovering in the air, and I realized with a bit of a start that the smoke from the tiny incense stick on the altar was shaping itself into the shapes of the runes that Sky was drawing in the air. Runes for plants and flowers, and then runes for death and chaos. Runes for animals, the creatures of the Goddess, and then runes for death chaos.
Sky started speaking, and I found the words forming in my mind right before she said them. I followed suit, and we fell into a harmony of chanting.
"With the signs of the crimes Of your own designs, We bind your evil Three times three.
We bind you from behind, We bind you from before; That you will hurt our people Never, ever more.
We bind you from the left, We bind you from the right, We bind you by day, And we bind you by night.
We bind you from below, We bind you from above; That you may never know The laws of life and love.
We bind you with your own Good conscience within And so let this magick Unfold and spin."
Suddenly the cauldron on the altar, or whatever was in it, burst into flame and almost sent a spark into my eye. With a quick peek inside, I realized that Sky had already written identical runes for the ones that she had just drawn in the air on little scraps of parchment and placed them inside the cauldron.
Once again, though, I felt her words tugging at my mind and began chanting again.
"Goddess of darkest night, Send our troubles all to flight! Burn them in thy sacred fires And replace them with our hearts' desires!"
I closed my eyes with intense difficulty, as they were glued to the fires of the cauldron, and released all of my energy into the chant as we repeated our mantra twice more.
"Goddess of darkest night, Send our troubles all to flight! Burn them in thy –"
A huge burst of wind cut off my words as I felt myself being thrown out of the circle and falling away. At least, that's what my senses were telling me I was doing. My eyes were shut tight, away from the outside world and stubbornly refusing to open. I was falling through what felt like open air, trying to scream but unable to, my arms trying to move, trying to flail with terror, but unable to move. The ground, the sturdy ground of Uncle Beck's warm, comfortable circle room, was gone and my stomach turned as I tumbled downward.
'Help me!' I screamed inside my mind. 'Goddess, somebody, help me!'
I was screaming, and someone else was, too. I didn't know where I was, what I was feeling, as a torrent of pain suddenly wracked my body; my bones were breaking, my head was bursting with pain as an ear-splitting, inhuman cry forced itself into my mind.
"GET OUT!!!"
I was sitting in Uncle Beck's circle room, still cross-legged across the pentagram table from Sky. Gasping, I nearly fell over and clutched at the ground with both hands, my knuckles white and my eyes wide. Sky looked terrified, as I'm sure I did, her face practically paler than a sheet of paper. She stared at me and I stared back.
"Did you hear her?"
All I could do was nod.
Maggie had managed to block our spell. Somehow, she had forced herself into our minds to deliver one last warning.
"We have to get Hunter."
We ran into Hunter quite literally, who was just coming out of the kitchen when we bumped, or more accurately full on collided, with him in our haste.
"Whoa, what's going on?" he asked, barely managing to stop himself from being pushed over. "Did you bind Maggie's powers?"
"No," Sky said furiously. "She got to us first."
Hunter looked worried. "What do you mean?"
"She blocked our spell somehow," I said, my voice quavering. "She ... it-it didn't work."
"Well ..." Hunter looked grim. "I suppose it's just as well. It wouldn't have been necessary anyway." Off our confused looks, he explicated his previous statement.
"I got in touch with the council. Get Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Beck. We're going to strip Maggie of her powers."