After a couple hours of listening to the repetitive sound of the heart monitor, Uncle Edmund was ready for home. I stayed, assuring him that I would get a ride home later with Marcus’ parents.
Later that day, as I lay curled into Marcus’ side, half asleep, I felt a caress of air against my face. I lifted my head from the pillow. Robyn stood very still inside of the room, in front of the closed door. I hadn’t heard it open or close. A spasm of fear stopped my heart.
Robyn’s exotic features were enhanced by a cascade of beautiful dark curls. Her naturally dark eyes were warm and friendly, not cold and malevolent. She looked innocent.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered.
“I’m not here to hurt you guys. I came to help.”
Even though Robyn sounded sincere, I was still on guard.
“Can I explain?”
I sat up groggily and eased myself off the bed. I walked to the other side and stood between Marcus and Robyn, ready to lunge at her if necessary.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“I know what you are and about your history.”
I felt the color drain from my face, but stayed silent and let her continue.
“I’m a witch. A real one. Not like the zombie witches Maggie has turned the others into. I’m real, like you and Marcus. My mother is a witch and so was my grandmother when she was alive. Maggie killed her before I was born. She knew Maggie was evil and tried to end her existence, but failed.”
I’d known all along that Robyn was different from the others. Now I had questions.
“So, the others are not real witches?”
“No. Not since the early nineteen hundreds, when we all practiced witchcraft together. You and I were good friends then. We both come from a deep line of magic; ancient, stronger than the others, and like you I want Maggie dead.”
“Are the others possessed then?”
“Yes, the demon-witch has possessed their minds, but not their souls. As long as their souls are their own, they can still be saved. She allows them a small amount of magic, enough to make them seem like witches and to aid her in your demise. We must kill Maggie without hurting the others.” She gestured toward Marcus. “How is he?”
“Not good. He’s getting worse every day. The doctors can’t figure out why such a small head injury has put him into so deep a coma.”
“It’s a magically induced coma, Brooke. The minute Evan pushed him, well, the minute he hit his head, Sammy, Megan, Evan and I were instructed to put him into a coma and to keep him there, or he would have woken up by now.”
Her confession stunned me.
“Of course, I didn’t do my part, but I couldn’t stop it either.”
“Can you get him out of it?” I asked, desperate.
She shook her head, making her curls bounce. “Only you have the power to do that, Brooke. You just don’t know how to use it yet. But there is something I can do for you.”
“What is it?”
She reached in her shoulder bag and pulled out a small silver pouch and handed it to me. I loosened the drawstring and tipped it upside down into my other hand. Two translucent, aqua-colored crystals tumbled into my palm. Similar in size, the roughly formed crystals were cold.
“Close your hand over them, Brooke, and think about who you want to keep out.”
Feeling silly and not expecting anything to happen, I closed my hand over the crystals and concentrated first on Maggie and then the other evil witches, excluding Robyn. The crystals grew warm and then hot. Startled, I looked at Robyn.
I was just about ready to drop the stones onto the floor, when she warned, “Don’t let go of them, or else you’ll break the spell before it’s finished.”
“But they’re hot—really hot.”
“Then they’re working. Your hands are the only hands to have come into contact with the ancient quartz in a century. As Claire, you brought them into my great-great grandmother’s magic shop and asked her to keep them until you returned, but you never did. They’ve been guarded by my family ever since.”
“What are they?”
“They’re fairy quartz from Wales. An ancient crystal mined only in the fairy realm.”
My eyes narrowed. “But if I’m a witch, how can I perform fairy magic?”
“My mom says that fairy blood is magical and remains with its soul throughout all eternity, so that whoever has been born of the Fair Folk will remain fair no matter how many lives she or he lives.”
“How do you know about my first life?”
“My mom told me today. I don’t know how she knows. I just found all this out myself.”
As if alive, the fairy quartz pulsed in my palm as they shifted from too hot, to comfortably warm. “So is that it?”
“Place the crystals at the entrances to the room you want to keep people out of.”
I walked over to the door to Marcus’ hospital room and placed a quartz on top of the door frame and then did the same at the window.
“I really wish I could help heal him,” Robyn said, as she looked down on Marcus.
“Can you do any magic?”
She shrugged. “Some, but not healing. I just found out about the whole witch thing when I turned sixteen. My fingers started to tingle, and weird visions began flooding my head. That’s when I started asking questions. My mother kept it a secret from me, hoping I wouldn’t inherit the gene. It’s kinda nice to have someone to share the weirdness with.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said.
Robyn stayed for the best part of the afternoon. When Marcus’ parents came, I got a ride home with her.
A part of me felt relieved with the fairy quartz guarding the entrances to his room.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Every night I lay in bed wearing the Red Sox T-shirt I’d found in Marcus’ gym bag. His freshly showered scent was fading fast. Every night, I tried to decipher the script in the grimoire.
One night, as I was at the middle of the book, I was absentmindedly fondling the double spiral when I thought I saw a word I recognized. I brought the book closer to my face, dropping the amulet onto the open page. My eyes dropped to where it landed.
“OhmyGod.”
In the tiny centers of the spirals, the script was legible, while all around the spirals, the letters stayed foreign. I bolted into a sitting position and grabbed the amulet. I discovered that if I held it halfway between my eyes and the book, I could see through its centers, and the wording on the pages became crystal clear.
All this time, among its other attributes, the centers of the spirals were some sort of magical reading apparatus. I flipped the book to the first page and began reading. For the most part, the pages were filled with spells—some of their ingredients were things I hadn’t heard of in this lifetime.
Too soon, my eyelids grew heavy. It was after midnight, and I had to get up for school in the morning. I flipped to the last page of writing, just past the middle of the book. As Claire, I had written a note to myself.
Saturday, September, 23rd 1912:
It is the day of the eve of the equinox. As witches, we should be celebrating, but the others know about Christian and me now. Margaret has known for a while that I took the amulet of immortality from her. It is rightfully mine.
It is also the day in which Christian and I bound our souls with our blood. A ritual we wouldn’t have known about if not for Beth. I shudder to think of what might happen to her if Margaret finds out she helped us.
Besides Christian, Sally is the only person in the coven I can trust. However, even she won’t risk her own life to save mine—not when she knows how powerful Margaret is. But she doesn’t know that Christian and I will become more powerful than Margaret at the time of sunset, on this eve. It is then that darkness and light will have the ability to absorb all other elements, thus make us stronger.
We must stay alive until sunset.
Someone is coming … .
“What? That’s it?” I whispered loudly, flipping fran
tically to the next page. I took a deep breath to make up for the breath I’d been holding while reading Claire’s—my message to myself.
The rest of the pages were blank. I’d never made it back to the journal. I fell back against the pillows, hugging my book close to me, trying to decipher what I’d just read. It was as if I’d written it to myself for future reference in case something went wrong, and it obviously had.
Our secret blood binding. Uncle Edmund hadn’t said anything about a binding. What was it? And Beth—she had helped us. Maybe Marcus’ injury was meant to happen. Marcus had received two bags of blood so far. I wondered if one had been mine.
Thursday during lunch, Uncle Edmund picked me up at school again and took me to the hospital. With the grimoire on my lap and the amulet in my hand, I read to him what I’d read last night. He didn’t know anything about the soul binding.
Like every other day, Uncle Edmund and I sat and listened to the unwavering beep of the heart monitor. I became in tuned with its lulling melody to a point where I thought I would miss it if it wasn’t there.
“It’s been almost a week and there’s still no change,” I said grimly.
“He’ll get better, you’ll see,” Uncle Edmund said reassuringly.
After a couple long hours, he left me and went home.
I’d only been given the opportunity of being alone with Marcus a couple times since he’d been injured. His parents weren’t here yet, so I slid my chair up against the bed and laid my head on his chest with my arm draped across him. I was exhausted from lack of sleep and had just started to doze off, when a nurse entered the room carrying a bag of blood. I fought off the fatigue and sat up.
“You’re giving him more blood?”
“As long as he’s anemic he’ll need blood,” she answered softly.
“But, I thought the blood he’d had helped with that.”
She picked up his limp wrist and pressed her fingers to the inside. “It did, but only for a couple days.” Her smile was sympathetic.
She was right. Why hadn’t I noticed how pale Marcus was today? The gray hue was back in his skin, and underneath his eyes were the beginnings of purple crescents.
“This is your blood,” she said thoughtfully as she hooked the bag to the support frame.
I gasped softly. “You mean … .” I was too overwhelmed to speak.
“We saved the best for last.” She winked at me and then busied herself with connecting the intravenous line to the inside of Marcus’ arm.
“How is he, really?”
“His vitals are good. Everything is working the way it’s supposed to, except for the fact that he won’t wake up.”
“But he will,” I said.
“Yes he will,” she said.
The nurse stayed a short while; she’d said to keep an eye on the line. Once I was alone again with Marcus, I snuggled up beside his feverish body, stretching out the length of him and watched the crimson love dissolving into his left arm.
The sight of blood didn’t really bother me when it was contained behind plastic, so I watched the point of entry until my eyes grew heavy.
I imagined the fairy magic flowing through his veins. Bright red liquid followed by a trail of sparkly fairy dust, being absorbed by every cell in his body. I imagined it rushing through his heart, draping it in a blanket of sparkle. As my mind wandered through his veins, I even thought I detected a slight change in the beep of the heart monitor. It was the most optimistic I’d felt since his accident.
Then I decided to do something I hadn’t done for a long time. With the fairy quartz in place over the entrances to the room, I figured it would be safe for me to take the amulet off. Maybe Marcus would come to me in a nightmare, but then I thought if Maggie couldn’t reach me because of the quartz, I might not have a nightmare. There would be no reason for Marcus to come to me.
I took the amulet off anyway and shoved it under Marcus’ pillow. In its absence, I felt odd. But I was so tired I had no problem falling asleep.
At first there was nothing but emptiness as I slept, and then suddenly, besides the steady beep of the heart monitor, which followed me into dreamland, a sound way off in the distance made me alert. At first I couldn’t make it out. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t. I tried to yell out but couldn’t move my mouth.
The difference this time was that there was nothing to fear. I felt relaxed and at peace. As the sound grew near, I recognized Marcus’ voice. This time he was calling me Brooke.
My eyes and my mouth flew open and I yelled back. “I’m over here.” Wherever here was. It was so dark.
“Brooke, I see you. Don’t move. I’m almost there.”
My heart beat anxiously as I waited. After what seemed like forever, I saw a faint glow in the distance. Excitement bubbled inside me. Once again, he was bringing my light to me.
I craved the light this time. Slowly it came closer. “You’re so close now,” I yelled out. “I can almost see you, just a little farther.”
The aura that surrounded Marcus brightened as he drew near. All of a sudden the brightness blinded me, and I had to shield my eyes from its brilliance. Then the darkness that surrounded me absorbed some of the light, creating a perfect balance. I lowered my hands from my eyes. Marcus stood in front of me, garbed in a hospital gown, wheeling the support frame the blood bag and IV fluid were attached to.
It wasn’t what I’d expected, but it was Marcus, standing and talking. His color was still an odd shade of gray. In fact, the whole dream was colorless except for the crimson hue that tinted his mouth and cheeks and the bright red blood that flowed through the tube and into his body.
Although I couldn’t feel a floor under my feet, I ran to him and threw my arms around him, ignoring the plastic tubing. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“We’ll be together again soon,” he soothed. He pulled me close. His heart beating against my chest kept time with the monitor.
“When?” I whispered.
“Your fairy blood is already making me stronger. I can feel it absorbing the witches’ spell. They won’t get us this time, Brooke. I remember everything.”
He slid his hands up my arms and rested them on my face, leaving a trail of warmth behind.
I pulled back to look at him. “Everything?”
He nodded. Although colorless, a glimmer of life smoldered beneath the surface of his eyes. I stared into them, willing that faint glimmer to surface.
He brought his face closer until I felt his feverish, reddened lips melt into mine. When he pulled away, the sun-kissed color was back in his face and the spark back in his eyes. Warmth seeped under my skin and into my soul. The empty blood bag hung from the frame beside him. My blood was in him now. At the thought, a tingle shot through me.
“You see, I’m better now. You saved me. And now I’ll fix you.” He gifted me with one of his brilliant rare smiles.
Relieved, I let out a deep breath. Then to my horror, I felt myself floating backwards, back into the dark, away from Marcus. “No. Don’t go,” I yelled out desperately as the brilliant light engulfed him, leaving me behind in the dark, alone.
I heard myself whimper and felt the weight of a hand on my shoulder as someone shook me awake. Distressed, my eyes flew open. The room was softly lit by the night-lighting.
“Brooke, you were dreaming,” Marcus’ mom said softly. She was sitting in the chair beside the bed, which I lay on beside Marcus. How embarrassing.
She slid the chair aside so I could get up.
Through the hospital window, I saw the lights of Salem. From above, it sort of reminded me of Boston—well not quite, but it was a lot brighter than Deadwich was.
I rubbed my eyes. “What time is it?”
“It’s nearly seven-thirty,” Veronica said.
“Crap. I fell asleep sometime in the afternoon. I can’t believe I slept that long.”
“You’ve been putting in some pretty long hours here. It’s no wonder you’re so tired.”
I wondered briefly if I should tell her about my dream, then decided against it. I didn’t want to give her false hope. I however, firmly believed in my dreams. In my head, I saw Marcus’ glorious smile and felt it wrap around my heart. My insides were bathed in the cozy warmth of his essence, and things didn’t seem so hopeless anymore.
Chapter Thirty-Three
It wasn’t until I was getting dressed for bed that I remembered taking the amulet off and forgetting to put it back on. I pressed my hands to my chest where it usually hung. How could I be so careless? I knew it would be safe under Marcus’ pillow with the wards of protection I’d placed over the entrances to his room, but I was vulnerable without it.
It was nearly ten o’clock, and I had no way of getting back to the hospital. Too scared to sleep, I put laundry away and cleaned my room. Both were things I’d been neglecting lately.
When I finally did go to bed, Sammy burst through my bedroom door. Right away, I noticed a change in her. She exuded confidence. Her presence felt threatening. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
She came into the room uninvited and sat down on the edge of the bed, idly twirling a lock of hair between her fingers. I pulled the covers up under my chin, hoping she wouldn’t discover the absence of the amulet. Terror held my mouth shut. Sammy’s black pupils were fixed on my widened eyes. Her breath was cold on my face. With a sardonic grin, she tucked the quilt around my shoulders, like a mother would a child. I trembled beneath the covers.
Then, in a sickening sweet tone she said, “Sweet dreams, Brooke.” When she was finished terrifying me, she clicked the table lamp off and left the room, closing the door softly behind her, leaving me in the dark.
With a shaky hand, I found the lamp and turned it back on. She must have sensed I didn’t have the amulet. Still shaken, I rolled over and curled into a ball. “Oh, my God what have I done?” There was only one thing I could do now. Stay awake all night. But even then, Maggie could still come for me. Without the amulet, I was unprotected. I got up and went to my desk and flipped through the grimoire, but couldn’t read a word of it without the magic of the amulet. I turned the computer on and answered a dozen emails, something else I’d been neglecting.