CHAPTER FIVE
Keys
Two days had passed since the eventful night when Naberius and Aslyn the Azure made their presence known. While Jimmy was back home putting the finishing touches on patches in the hallway walls, and hanging a new bedroom door, she and Layla were here watching the book shop. Layla sat at the office desk slumped over some smelly old book and Emma sat in front of the TV at the register counter flipping through news channels. She had been hoping to find any coverage on a women found nude and drained of blood in an alley dumpster. But, so far for the last couple of days she was unsuccessful.
Layla emerged from the office behind the counter. She looked at Emma with her hands on her hips and sighed.
"How in the bloody hell am I supposed find anything on this Naberius character if you won't help! Now, I have about fifty to a hundred GIANT books in there and I can't do this all by myself." Emma slowly turned around and looked at Emma at her down her nose.
"There is no way I am getting near those musty things! And what part of me leads you to believe that I can understand any of the ooga booga anyway?"
"Oh! Well, if that's all then here." Layla gleefully produced a paper back book that was evidently fairly new. It was yellow and had some kind of character on the back. She flipped it over and was stunned by the title. The Ancient Marduk Sumerian Texts For Dummies.
"Are you kidding me?" Emma quipped. "Am I supposed to believe this is real?"
"Absolutely! You think that after thousands of years they wouldn't translate a copy or two with slayers in mind!" Layla quipped back. Emma nodded her head once in agreement and then suddenly realized that it was meant as an insult.
"HEY! Just because I don't read Ancient Sumerian, or want to inhale God knows what from those fossils, doesn't make me stupid!"
"First of all your parents owned this place for years, you think would have cracked a book or something. Secondly, sorry love, but, Slayers are not exactly known for their superior intellect. Mostly just for the brawn." Emma stood up slowly and walked over to Layla, even thought she was still a couple of inches shorter than her, she still had a powerful presence.
"Jealous Watcher girl?"
"That's WITCH, Watcher, girl, don't forget that! I may lack you Slayer strength, but I think you know that I can hold my own." Layla stated calmly.
"Look, there really isn't much else you can do to me that hasn't already been done. You could bippity boppity boo me into pot-holder hell and it still wouldn't compare to hiding in a closet while your family is turned into Happy Meals, and then your own foot becomes desert on the go. But you are staying in MY house! Therefore, I think you need to start getting you attitude into check or you will find your ass thrown back across the pond." Emma stood back and sat back down on her stool. Layla remained where she was with her arms crossed still emanating the air of authority.
"Are you off your trolley? If you sent me away you would be making a stonking cock up! Don't you remember what Aslyn told us earlier? And oh yeah, THE GIANT SCARY GUY! The one who tore up your hall and could have killed you?"
"If I remember correctly, Mr. Grey was there for you!"
"That's total pants and you know it! He was there for all of us; he just got to me first. We have a job to do and apparently you're too shirty to deal with it! You're more worried about your self image! You really need to get over that! There are more important things at stake here, than if you will be able to wear those fancy schmancy boots you saw in a shop window." Layla turned around and headed back to the office. Emma sat slumped on her stool and scanned the book shop. It was dark and wooden. It seemed the only way she could describe it. The walls and the doors were all wood. There were rows and rows of wooden book cases full of old and rare books. There were also tables covered in linen also stacked with books. She got up and shuffled around in and out of the rows of cases. She reminisced about the past. Thinking of the many times she sat tucked away in the back corners thumbing through various texts and leather bound books with yellowed pages and elegantly inscribed vellum. Sometimes her mother would come and cuddle her as they thumbed through them together. Her silky dark hair would drape over Emma head and shoulders as she leaned on her mother's. Emma couldn't really understand most of the texts, but they had beautiful pictures and she could look at them for hours.
"Ah mom, this isn't me! I'm not this bitter person. It wasn't supposed to be like this! I wish you were here. You were stronger than I could ever be."
"You underestimate yourself." The voice came from Emma's right. She recognized right away but could not allow herself to believe such a preposterous notion. But, sure enough as she turned there she was. Her mother, Katherine. She stood leaning against the very corner that they had frequented over the years. "You are the bravest soldier I know."
"Mom? Is that really you? Mom?" She walked towards her mother but stopped short. She was afraid of the possibility.
"Emma, there are things in this place that you need. There are things that we kept from you and your brother and your sister. We wanted you to have an ordinary life. We thought out of sight out of mind. But, reality came knocking one night and changed your lives forever."
Emma bowed her head and pushed away the flood of violent memories from that wretched night; flashes of her listening to the screams and cries of her mother and sister while she was hidden in the closet under the stairs.
"If there is one thing you learned from that night is that you cannot hide for ever. Sometime, you are going to have to come out and fight in order to survive! This is what you must do now!" And then she was gone. She had vanished as if there was nothing ever there. Emma's grew wide in panic..
"Mommy! NO! Come back come back I need you!" Emma cried over and over again. She fell to her knees and sobbed. "Mommy, please come back! Please, please, please come back!" She knelt there with her head in her hands and let her pain out in sobs. Layla came from around a corner and looked at Emma very put off.
"What are you on about? I didn't mean it! I'm not going to poof you anywhere. I need you to drive me around I don't have a license yet."
"My mother was here! You idiot! I thought you were some kinda powerful witch or medium or whatever. Didn't you feel a change in the force or some shit like that!" Layla's face softened immediately and she joined Emma on the floor.
"I'm sorry pet, I had no idea. I didn't notice anything. What happened?"
"She was standing over there. She told me that she kept things from me and that I need to fight to survive." They both looked in the direction of where Katherine had been. "Wait a minute. What's that?" Layla pointed out a small metallic object glinting in the low lighted room. Layla nudged Emma and she got up and walked over to see what it was. She bent down and picked up a small silver key. She sat down with it and inspected the key closely. The handle was ornate and fascinating to look at. It was a Celtic knot with the capital letter "W" elegantly inscribed in the center in Celtic fashion. There were only three teeth at the end of the shaft and they also seemed to be in the shape of a "W".
"I've never seen this before." Emma said sniffling and wiping the tears away.
"Someone could have dropped it while in the store." Layla suggested as she came nearer. They both looked each other and then promptly shook their heads at the ridiculous notion. Emma handed the key to Layla to let her inspect it.
"I think my mother wanted me to find it, like SHE dropped it there just now." Emma said. Layla looked at it intensely.
"What do you see? What is it?" Emma prodded.
"It's brilliant. I don't know." Layla answered softly. "But, I know I have seen this symbol before, and I am definitely getting a vibe from it." Layla placed it back into Emma's hands after turning it over and over in hers. "I wonder…." She trailed off as she got up from the floor. She turned and headed for the office in a bit of a hurry. Emma looked confused and jaunted off in her direction. Layla exploded in to the office and sifted through stacks of her books that she had brought from England and Cleveland. Her arms were flying above and behind her as she tossed books aside, followed by a series of nos and "bollocks". Emma entered the doorway and stared and the raving Layla. She dodged an airborne leather bound book that look like it might have taken her head off.
"What are you doing?" She asked urgently. Layla didn't stop to turn and answer her. She kept rustling through them more and more anxiously. Emma found herself questioning her ability to see straight when she saw Layla going down deeper into the trunk to where all was visible of her was from her calves down. "How are you doing that?" Emma questioned.
Finally, she stopped and produced from the depths of her giant steamer trunk, an old tattered, dusty, worn book. It was the biggest book Emma had ever seen!
"How in the hell was that hard to find?" Emma asked. "And once again, HOW were you doing that?"
"The trunk's enchanted." Layla answered without looking up.
"En-wha-hoo-ha?" Emma staggered.
"ENCHANTED, are you deaf? Or am I speaking Spanish?" Layla spitted. "It was my father's trunk. Passed down from his father and so on and so forth. All of these books have belonged to my family since they first were initiated as watchers."
"And when was that?" Emma asked.
"Since the beginning." She stated. "They even wrote a few their selves."
"Well what's with that one? We found a key, that doesn't look like a lock Layla, that's a book." Emma condescended.
"Look, you're the muscle, I'm the brain. Trust me or just shut up. You know what? Just shut up anyway and let me talk, ok?"
Emma folded her arms and reached up with her right hand to wipe the remaining tears away from her encounter with her mother. She figured that if Layla was her to help then she guessed she was about to find out.
"This book is among the oldest of my family's Watcher Journals. It dates back to feudal times when my ancestor, Brahma Siddig, was a watcher to the Slayer of that time in India. This chronicles his passage as a Watcher and a student of the mystical arts." Layla pushed passed Emma into the front of the store and laid the book out onto a large display table. She flopped open the heavy book to about a quarter through, to a page that had a portrait of a tall man standing over scrolls in old Hindu style. It was very ornate and elegant. Emma reached forward and lightly ran her fingertips around the page and felt the raised and recessed hills and valley's of the ink. He wore a simple turban and wrap. Behind him were shelves filled with scrolls and books and to his right there was the trunk looking a little less modern. A monkey sat on his shoulder and it looked like it was stroking his mid length beard. Looking at his eyes you could see the family resemblance. Brahma stood behind a simple desk with many papers laid out on it. In his right hand he held what seemed to be a writing implement. Emma continued to study the page when something he held in his left hand caught her eye. She tried to squint her eyes harder to focus. All it once it came together. He was holding the key! She couldn't believe her eyes! She looked down at the key in her hand and back to the one in the picture.
"That's my key!" Emma exclaimed as she pointed to the picture.
"No." Layla stated. "That was his key."
Emma looked back down at Brahma and at his key.
"When the men brought forth the Slayer, they were in Africa. They then became the Watchers. They soon realized that when a Slayer was a awoken, she wasn't always in their part world. Real bloody geniuses eh? Slowly they seeded their order through out the known world. It was about this time that they decided they needed a way to keep their sacred texts and chronicles secret. There very few of them in the world and they didn't have many means of defending their selves and their secret. So, they came up with this key! The Celtic knot represents continuity, or eternity. A knot itself represents a tie that binds. And well you know what the "W" is for." Layla stopped and looked up at Emma.
"What are you trying to say? That my mother was a watcher? Don't you think I would have known?"
"Not if she didn't want you to! And I am not saying that your mother was a Watcher, I am telling you that your whole family line were Watchers! These keys were passed down from generation to generation in a family. They were enchanted and could only be used by members of that family. But, their use was short lived. After a while the Watchers' numbers grew and so did their wealth. They didn't need special keys to lock up their texts and journals anymore. They had an enormous network of Watchers through out the world including council houses strategically placed. Some of the keys were lost, but, some families kept the keys and passed them down as a family heirloom; it became a tradition. Most Watchers these days don't even know about the keys. Only the old families have heard of them let alone actually have one! We were one of the families that had lost the key and had forgotten it. If it wasn't for Brahma's journal, we might have never known about it! Until, we found this one in your shop just moments ago, I had completely forgotten about it! What I am trying to make clear to you is that you family was one of the oldest Watcher families! You parents really kept things from you!"
"An ordinary life." Emma mused as she stared off into nothing.
"A what?" Layla asked.
"It's what my mother said. She said that her and dad kept things from us, that they wanted us to have an ordinary life."
Layla lifted an eyebrow. "What's ordinary?"
"I think it's safe to say that you are not it." They stood quietly for a long moment. They were both pondering where the lock to this key could be, when the silence was broken by the evening news blaring to a start on the TV.
"Good evening, I'm Tanya Jacobs. Tonight on our top story, a local family pleads with the public to help find their missing daughter. 24 year Veronica "Nica" Todd, disappeared three nights ago from the parking lot of Mega Rack-Ords downtown. The young woman had been closing the store last night and was last seen by a fellow employee headed for her car. If you have any information as to the where abouts of Veronica "Nica" Todd please call the number on your screen." As the reporter addressed the number, a picture of the missing woman flashed on the screen along with the number. She had short black hair and large eyes. As Emma stared at the TV she knew exactly who it was. It was the girl the vamp killed in the dumpster two nights ago! She finally found something on her on the news and it's that they haven't found her yet!
"It's been two days. Why haven't they found her yet?"
"Is that the girl you were talking about?" Layla asked.
"Yup that's her alright. I'll go by there tonight and make sure she's still there and call in an anonymous tip."
"I really think you should leave that to the authorities. We have more pressing issues at the moment."
"Don't you think her family needs to know what happened to her! How is that not important? I have a responsibility…"
"Your job has already been done. There is nothing more you can do for that girl. She's dead and you dusted the beggar that killed her." Layla held up Emma's hand that held the key. "This is all that matters right now! This may very well help us fix that balance."