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When she wasn’t working at the shop, Avery spent every spare moment in the attic looking at her family tree and piecing the history of her family together, while also reading up on White Haven’s history. Anne had really done her research, and Avery’s head swam with details.
She had a meticulous family tree, going back to the 1500s. Whether Anne couldn’t find anything before then, or had given up at that point, it wasn’t clear. She’d also glanced at Gil’s, and that went back to the 1500s, too. It must have taken Anne years. It was odd, to spend so much time on someone else’s history. Some of the names on her family tree coincided with names written in the front of her grimoire. She remembered adding her own when she was sixteen, her mother encouraging her in the family traditions. The only time she had, actually. Shortly after that her mother left White Haven, and she hadn’t revealed anything about a previous spell book, lost or otherwise. Maybe she didn’t know about it.
Amongst Anne’s papers was a map of White Haven and the surrounding area, marked with numbers and letters, and Avery pinned it to the wall, removing a few prints to make room. She marked Gil’s house on there. It was the only one that they knew had belonged to the family through the years. But where had everyone else’s family once lived? She was pretty sure that the bookshop and the house it was in only belonged to the family in the late 1800s.
It was a couple of evenings after their discovery, and Avery lifted her head from her research and looked around at the attic, wondering about the other witches who had stood there working their spells. It was cluttered with papers and books from Anne, her own spell book, and books on herbs, metals, and gems. Her tarot cards were on the table, folded in silk and placed in their own special box. The carved wooden box still sat on the floor, although she had pushed it to the side, under the window. It drew her eye all the time, no matter where in the room she sat.
As the light faded and the shadows lengthened across the floor, Avery felt unsettled and restless. She grabbed a bundle of sage from the shelf and lit the end with a flash from her fingers. The sage sizzled and smoked, and she marched to a corner of the room, chanting a cleansing spell as she worked around the room, clearing the air.
With another click of her fingers, she lit the candles, and the dark corners pooled with a warm yellow light, immediately comforting her. She sat and pulled out her tarot cards, shuffling them thoroughly and focusing on what she wanted to ask them. Alex’s image came to her mind, but she pushed it away. She wanted to know if something was still coming. A stranger, a threat, or what?
The pack warmed beneath her hands and she slowed her breathing as she started to place out the cards. As she turned each one, she saw representations of herself, Alex, and a card that could be Gil, and then the major arcana cards came, chilling her blood. The Devil, the Tower, and the Moon, and too many sword cards, ending with the King of Swords.
She swept the cards up in a hurry, jumping when she heard a knock on the door. Attackers didn’t usually knock, she reassured herself, as she ran down the two flights of stairs to her front door. She could see Alex’s silhouette through the glass and she felt relieved, if puzzled. She opened the door and he stepped in, grinning and waving a bottle of wine. He looked good tonight, his long hair loose and freshly washed; he smelt of something musky.
“I come bearing gifts!” He hesitated as he looked at her. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, I’ve just read the cards again and they look awful. You made me jump, that’s all.”
“Well, good job I’m here then. Do you mind if I look at that box again?”
“Of course not, it’s yours.”
He looked at her expectantly. “Glasses?”
She grinned. “Carry on up, I’ll grab them.”
By the time she returned to the attic, Alex had dragged the box to the centre of the room again, and now sat cross-legged in front of it, examining it closely. He had pulled a book from his canvas pack and it lay open next to him, revealing pages illustrated with drawings and descriptions of runes.
Avery sat next to him and picked up the book. “Where did you get this from?”
“El. She’s had it for years and has marked a couple she thought looked familiar.” He pointed to one on the side of the box. “This one is for protection and repels demons.” He looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
“Demons? As in, red-eyed, evil smoke and brimstone demons?”
“I guess so.” He pointed to the opposite side, where another strange mark was carved into the wood. “And this one repels spirits.” He pulled the book from her hands and flicked through a few pages. “See, here.”
Avery compared the two, and felt a flutter of excitement start to override her fear. “And the one on the top?”
“Incomprehension, blindness—a deflection, almost, of vision. The one that stopped us from seeing the box.” He leaned closer, looking at the details. “See, there are lots of tiny little runes, too, all around the rim of the lid of the box.”
The lid was deep and solid, with more runes on the inside. “And what do these mean?” she asked, pointing at them.
“Another spell.” Alex’s voice rose slightly with anticipation. “They combine to make a sentence.” He looked back and forth between the runes and the box, flicking pages impatiently, muttering under his breath.
While he looked, Avery ran her fingers over the runes, feeling their smooth contours. She had the feeling they hadn’t been carved by hand, but had been magicked in, burnt by fire. Should they even be trying to open it? She sat back on her heels, thinking. It was deep enough to hold a grimoire. Maybe Imogen Bonneville had been lying in her letter. She felt a thrill race through her. If this did contain the grimoire, they were ahead of whatever was coming.
“Alex, I think the grimoire is in the lid.”
“What?” he said absently, still pre-occupied.
“Your family grimoire. The original.”
He looked up at her in shock. “But the note...”
“Meant to confuse—I think so, anyway.”
He looked back to the pages in front of him. “Okay. This makes sense. I think I know what the runes say. It requires a blood sacrifice.”
“What!” Avery jolted back. “We don’t do those.” They never did such things. That was darker, older magic, now forbidden.
“Hold on—it’s not what you think. It needs my blood.” He may have said the words calmly, but he looked worried.
“Go on.” She took a slug of wine, trying to ease her racing thoughts, and Alex reached for his glass, too.
“It needs something of me, something to prove who I am, and that I am worthy of it.”
The room felt very dark suddenly, and Avery shivered. “Your ancestor surely wouldn’t want to cause you harm?”
“I think it’s also an act of faith.”
“There’s a lot of thinks here.” As much as Alex annoyed her, she didn’t want him dead or maimed. And she didn’t relish the thought of black magic unleashed in her home.
“Will you help me?” She hesitated, and he carried on. “I had another vision. More blood, more destruction. I see death, Avery.”
“What if it’s this?”
“It’s not this. This will help us.”
“The cards I saw earlier predicted it, too. Destruction, I mean. Change.” Her well-ordered life, weird as it may be to some people, was also safe, and now it felt threatened. She sighed. “We can’t walk away from this now, can we?”
He shook his head, his long dark hair falling round his face, and in the candlelight she became aware of just how attracted to him she was. He had an animal magnetism, a sheer masculine force that she couldn’t ignore, but really had to. She was pretty sure he wasn’t interested in her at all, and if he was, she was only one among many. And, she reminded herself, he was a superior bastard at times.
“It’s a simple spell; it just requires some herbs and my blood. I don’t actually need you to do anything, just be here in case something crap happens.” He grinned and winked.
“That’s not funny. I’m not the witch cavalry. Should we call the others?” With the night closing in around them, her attic felt threatened and vulnerable. More witches were a good idea.
“No, it would take too long. Let’s get on with it,” he said decisively, rising quickly to his feet. He headed to her extensive collection of dried herbs and selected some jars, declaring, “I need this, this, and this.”
While he was preparing the herbs by crushing them in the pestle and mortar, she flicked through the rune book, looking at the designs and comparing them to the box. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? I’m familiar with a couple of these, but...” Her voice trailed off as she tried to work out the meaning.
“My grandmother was good with runes,” he said from where he stood at the long wooden table. “She taught me some, a long time ago. I remember a few of them now—vaguely. I must have her books somewhere, or maybe she took them with her.”
“Where’s your grandmother now?”
“Not here,” he said with a sigh. Before she could ask anything else, he bought the herb mix over. “Now, I just have to mix my blood in it.”
“We need a black candle,” Avery said. “It will enhance the spell, discover the truth of it, and banish negative energies.” She headed to the shelf to where a number of baskets sat, and after rummaging in one of them, she pulled out a brand new candle, while Alex marked out a circle on the floor with salt.
“Salt?” She looked at him, confused.
“I’m taking precautions. Just in case something unhealthy appears.” He shrugged. “I’m sure it won’t.”
She resisted the urge to glare. “In that case, we need purple candles, too.”
Alex placed the box in the centre of the circle, and then Avery lit the candles on either side.
He looked at her, serious all of a sudden. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Step away, just in case.”
He waited until she was across the room, standing by the table, and then he stepped into the circle and sat cross-legged in front of the box, withdrew a penknife, and slashed it along the centre of his palm. Avery winced as she watched him. He clenched his hand and let the blood drip into the bowl, all the while chanting under his breath. He mixed the blood and herbs with his uninjured hand and started to smear the mixture over the runes in the lid and the tiny ones all the way around the edge. All the while his blood dripped into the bowl, and he seemed to smear a lot of it over the box.
As Alex chanted, the pressure dropped, and Avery realised she was having difficulty breathing. She started gasping for breath, and noticed Alex was doing the same, but she daren’t speak. Something, good or ill, was happening. With a weird sucking sound the pressure dropped again, and Avery felt dizzy as every single candle in the room went out, and then the lamps, until only the two candles in the circle remained lit.
Avery concentrated on Alex and the box. Long, wavering shadows made him look demonic, and it looked as if the runes on the box were moving.
Just as the pain in her ears was becoming unbearable, there was a loud bang like a gunshot, and the wooden lid of the box cracked down the middle. Thick, black smoke began to pour from it. The candle flames on either side of the box shrank to tiny sparks, and Alex chanted louder, lifting his head to stare at the smoke.
Avery stepped forward, raising her hands, ready to send a blast of energy at whatever it was, but the thick smoke stopped within the circle’s protective walls. She remembered Alex’s words. He said it was a test, but was it? The signs on the box provided protection from spirits and demons. Maybe something was locked in.
She stood transfixed. Alex’s voice was strained and he was enveloped in the blackness, almost shouting his chant. She stepped forward again, wondering what else she could do, when suddenly the blackness crackled like it contained lightning and disappeared, leaving Alex slumped on the floor. The candle flames on either side shot high before shrinking again, and the pressure in the room returned to normal.
Whatever it was, had gone.
Avery used her pent up energy to relight every single candle and ran to Alex, pulling him out of the circle, until she fell over backwards on the rug, with him sprawled on her lap.
She eyed the box warily, but nothing else happened, and she quickly felt Alex’s neck for a pulse. She sighed with relief. It was there, strong and steady, but he was a dead weight and completely unconscious.
She leaned over him awkwardly, and shook his shoulders. “Alex, Alex, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
She shouted louder, “Alex. Wake up!”
She had a sudden, horrific thought that he might be possessed, and then chastised herself. This wasn’t Supernatural. But could it happen? She and the others used the elements, did spells of protection, but they never messed with blood magic. Well, never until now. What the hell had they got themselves into?
She looked at his inert form. He was really heavy. And solid. His arms were sinewy with muscle, his shoulders broad, and his shirt had rolled up as she dragged him over, revealing a smooth flat stomach. Her gaze travelled down his legs, and she swallowed guiltily. Tearing her eyes away she focused on his face and shouted again, “Alex, wake up!”
Still nothing.
She glanced at the box and decided she needed to complete the salt circle again. She felt vulnerable and open to attack, having no idea what had been in the black smoke. Sliding out from under Alex, she rested his head gently on a cushion and scooted over to the box, all her senses alert, as she peered into the crack in the wooden lid. She could see a hint of silver. Something was in there, but she’d leave it for Alex to look. She grabbed the salt and completed the circle once more.
Avery was tempted to wake him using a spell, but decided against it. He must have used up a lot of energy, and only rest would restore that. His hand was still bleeding from the cut he’d made across his palm, so she fetched a bandage from the bathroom and dressed the wound. Then she angled a pillow under his head, and threw a blanket over him, trying to make him as comfortable as possible.
The room felt chilly now, even though it was summer. There was a small fireplace in the wall between her bedroom and the attached en suite bathroom, and the rest of the attic space, as the main chimney breast rose between what had once been two separate houses. She lit a small fire, the bright orange of the flames making her feel warmer already.
She wondered how the others were getting on with their research. The past had always felt close to her, and now it felt even closer. She had the feeling that old secrets were ready to be uncovered, whether she wanted them to be or not. Shivering, she pulled a blanket around her shoulders and lay on the sofa, a cushion under her head. It wasn’t long before she slept, too.
