Chapter 16: The Baby, the Salt, and the Spirits

Ezeru Etlu, I typed. Ezeru was Sumerian for ‘curse,’ a frequently used word on Magic Web. Ezeru Etlu, however, didn’t show up until the third page of the search results.

"Try this one." Kirby pointed at the laptop screen. The two of us sat at the round table, doing our research while sipping on the tasteless herbal tea Vanna made.

It had been three days since Doyle killed Viessa. I tried to look for him, but locator spells didn’t work. Did he go back to the castle? Did Jivar find him? I was worried sick, but why? Doyle and I are not friends. I don’t care about him... Do I?

The link Kirby chose brought us to an extract from a book by Grace Winbolt, a famous witchcraft historian from England: "Written in 1751: the child whom the powers cannot hurt will break the curse of the beast. When the day turns into night, he shall be born, and when the day turns into night, his death shall be."

Upon reading, I turned to Kirby, looking frantic. "This is talking about Doyle, right? They’re going to kill him."

"But what does the rest of the text mean?" he asked. "When the day turns into night?"

"Makes sense," he said. "When the moon blocks the sun, the day turns into night."

"In nineteen days," Doyle’s voice broke in. He stood at the door of Vanna’s apartment, his shoulders sagging and his clothes tainted with dry blood.

"No, no." I waved. "Stay. Please. You look exhausted. Get some rest, and we’ll talk later."

"You can take my room," Kirby said as he stood up. "I’ll get you a towel and a change of clothes."

I walked into Kirby’s room to see Doyle resting on the window seat with his head between his bent knees. "Can we talk?" I asked.

Keeping a moderate distance between us, I sat next to him. Still, I was close enough to smell the soap he showered with and to notice the light beard he had grown. "I also wanted to thank you for what you did the other day. You saved my life."

"I don’t understand," he said. "Why did you jump off the building in the first place?"

I stayed quiet, wondering what to say next. In Doyle’s eyes, I saw sorrow and remorse that I didn’t understand but wished to alleviate.

"I apologize for showing up uninvited," he said. "I had nowhere else to go. Zaros must be looking for me."

"Locator spells don’t work on you, so he won’t find you here. Even if he does..." I paused, hesitating for a second or so. "We’ll protect you."

"This is the least I can do after you saved my life," I explained. "Also, we now have a common enemy, so our best shot is to ally, at least temporarily."

"First, let me be clear on one thing." He let me hang there. "I’m willing to work with you and to fight Zaros and Jivar, but the Katarus are where I draw my line."

"Without me and Viessa, it’s unlikely for Jivar to hunt. And on the rising day, the Katarus will be the least of your problems." That sounded like a warning.

"Jivar has been assembling an army," he said. "Viessa and I helped him, and I think Zaros did as well. He recently traveled to the spirits world to recruit dark spirits."

"Dark spirits?" Vanna had warned me about them. "A dark spirit is a dark place," she used to say. "If you go there, you’re lost." The lore referred to them as the devils or the darkness. On their own, they were as harmless as a shadow, though sly and manipulative. They played with the human mind, bringing out the worst, and they gained strength by joining hands with dark witches.

Only the sword of a spirit of light could kill a dark spirit, but Vanna and Kirby had lost their powers years before. So, if what Doyle said was right, what were we supposed to do?

The house was oddly quiet that night. Ebba and I arrived to find the lights out and no whispers or noises whatsoever. We knew Jackson had taken Lillian to see her grandmother, but where did Tara and Grandpa go?

We headed to my sister’s room upstairs, but before I knocked on the door, I heard Grandpa’s voice from inside. "First, she calls off her engagement, then drops out of college. She’s rarely home, and she’s surrounded herself with new friends—"

"Her friends are nice," Tara interrupted. "Ebba is harmless, and her other friend, Doyle, seemed like a gentleman. This is all Mom’s fault. She’s the reason Echo is acting this way."

"Your mother is gone, Tara, and your sister is a grown-up, not a rebellious teenager."

"You’re right." Tara’s voice dropped. "I didn’t want to show you this, Grandpa, but look what I found. Echo dropped this on her way out."

There was a short pause before Grandpa replied, "I’m not sure what it is, but it’s not drugs."

My heart ached as I listened to their conversation. Who would’ve thought I’d end up being such a disappointment. What did I drop on my way out? Should I go in and defend myself? But what am I going to say? I was going crazy.

"One day, they’ll learn the truth," Ebba whispered, trying to comfort me. "And they’ll be proud."

Her words didn’t help numb the pain, but she did stop me from storming into the room. It wasn’t like I could explain anyway.

"Dinner party?" I was really surprised when Tara came into my room with her announcement. After her conversation with Grandpa the night before, I expected them to be furious, not to throw a party.

"Why not?" she said, forcing a casual tone into her voice. "I learned some new recipes, and I want to try them out on your friends. It’s also a good chance for Grandpa to meet Doyle." She winked at Ebba.

"You want my friends to come over to eat?" I asked again, just to make sure I got it right.

"Yes, Stiff Head. That’s what a dinner party means," she replied. "What’s wrong with you today? Your eyes are puffy and red."

"By the way, you dropped something the other day." She handed me a bag of white birch powder I used for purification spells.

"Thanks," I said. I put the bag in the nightstand drawer without offering an explanation. This must be the drugs they talked about.

At Vanna’s apartment, everyone prepared themselves for the party—except for Vanna, who decided she didn’t care. Doyle emerged from Kirby’s room in a chevron gray tweed suit I bought for him.

"I’m new to this world, and yet I know these clothes come from the 1940s," he said.

Thoughtlessly, I grabbed his hand and put a fancy, silver smartwatch around his wrist. "Now it doesn’t."

"Explain again, why do I have to wear this?" Kirby waved the beret in his hand. He was wearing brown pants and a waistcoat, like a young French poet.

"I’m not going—A-choo— to change my hair for you." He grabbed a tissue from the table. The woody aroma must have tickled his nose.

"I’m sorry, Kirby. Grandpa can be overly judgmental, and I want him to think we’re a group of sophisticated friends who have nothing to do with magic...or drugs."

Kirby sighed and reached out to pat me on the head. "Don’t worry, Echo. We’ll make you proud, but I’m keeping my hair."

"This is not the hand you sneezed in, right?" I pointed at the hand touching my hair.

The living room clock ticked, its long arm moving from one minute to the next. Staring at it, I wished for the night to be over.

"So, Kripke. What do you do for a living?" Grandpa crossed one leg over the other. He sat on the chair facing mine, while Ebba, Kirby, and Doyle took the couch.

Doyle cleared his throat. "Yes. I work at a library." He went along with my lie.

I was surprised he remembered the name. A while back, we had passed by that library on our way to Dr. Jensen’s clinic.

"What the hell are you guys wearing?" Tara cruised into the room, laughing out loud. "You did this, didn’t you, Echo?"

"Never take fashion advice from my sister," she said. "She doesn’t even know what Chanel is."

After dinner, Ebba, Doyle, and I lounged around in the kitchen while Tara prepared the dessert. "Put that down, Echo," she said. "We’re about to eat ice cream."

"I can’t help it." Tara’s cookies were my weakness—crunchy on the edges, buttery on the inside. Not to mention the irresistible cinnamon flavor. I couldn’t let the cookie jar go.

The mouth-watering smell of chocolate grew stronger as Tara stirred her special sauce on the stove. She didn’t have any trouble cooking while holding baby Lillian in her free arm. I should’ve been more helpful.

Tara’s phone started to ring, so she pulled it out of her pocket and glanced at it before turning to Ebba. "I have to take this. Can you hold Lillian for a minute?"

Ebba’s lips parted, but before she said anything, Tara had placed the baby in her arms and walked away. Wincing, Ebba stepped back, almost toppling over.

"Sure. Go ahead," I said as I took the baby from her, and as soon as I did, she ran out of the kitchen.

"I think Ebba has some kind of phobia of kids," I said as I checked in on the baby, glad she didn’t wake up. "There’s something else too."

"I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I’m really worried about her. Ever since she moved in, I noticed she gets terrible nightmares. One night, she was whimpering. Her eyes twitched and her chest pounded. I was scared she’d hyperventilate. Do you think this is sleep paralysis?"

"It’s a condition common between trauma survivors. There are other causes too, I guess. I’m not an expert," I said, thinking back to when I first met Ebba. "Perhaps she’s having a hard time after what happened to her father."

"Perhaps." Doyle closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. His brows came closer as he sank in thought.

Does he feel bad about Ebba’s father? It seemed that way. A changed man, isn’t he? Or am I just seeing a new side of him? There was so much I didn’t know about Doyle, but despite all, I trusted him.

"Yeah, you’re right." The memory came to me. "All the man did was offer her a flower, yet she panicked and yelled at him. It’s like he triggered her."

The baby’s scream interrupted the conversation. It was one of those long-lasting, frustrating fits. Her face became pained, and her voice barked like a car alarm in the middle of the night. "Hey, Baby Girl, what happened?" I asked as I rocked her in my arms.

"I don’t know." I tried everything to calm her down. I paced around the kitchen, sang to her, and made funny faces, but nothing worked.

Soon, I burst into tears. "Come on, Lillian. Stop it. I can’t take this anymore... She’s so loud."

"Echo, you don’t have to... cry." Doyle loosened his arms. He seemed to have no idea how to handle a crying baby (or a weeping adult woman). "Try singing again. That song about spiders and walls."

Doyle looked reluctant. His lips curled down and his eyes widened. As the crying persisted, I continued to panic, leaving him no choice but to utter. "Row, row, row your boat..."

His voice seeped through the noise, lulling us into silence. I must’ve heard this nursery rhyme hundreds of times before, and it had never stirred me, but listening to Doyle, a wave of sorrow took hold inside me. It was his grief, his remorse, his hurt—all revealed in a light hand tremble and a shaky voice. I wondered how strong a person had to be to contain all these feelings and not crumble.

"Life is but—Watch out!" Something whizzed right by my face. It would’ve hit me had Doyle not pulled me away.

"W-was that a fork?" My voice shrilled. It wasn’t just the fork, but all the knives and the cutlery flew out of the drawers and began to attack us.

While shielding me and the baby, Doyle flipped the table over so we would hide behind it. "That’s Zaros’s work," he said. "We have to leave. Can you teleport?"

"Not with a baby, no," I said, panicking. "What are we going to do?" I had gotten used to fighting with fire, wind, and water. But spoons? Plus, we were in the house, which meant my family was at stake.

Meanwhile, in the living room, Mr. Knight and Jackson watched the soccer game. Kirby had agreed to join them, thinking it was a board game. He was shocked when they turned on the TV.

Trying to fit in, Kirby mirrored everything Jackson did—from cheering and yelling at the screen to leaning forward while resting his forearms on his thighs.

"If they win this game, they’ll get into the semi-finals," Jackson said. "Do you think they have a chance, Kirby?"

As the game went on, the TV flickered and buzzed. "What’s going on?" Mr. Knight pressed on the remote, but nothing changed.

The chandelier swung on the ceiling. Its rattling noise grabbed everyone’s attention. "An earthquake?" Mr. Knight clutched the arms of his chair, which started to shake. "We never have these in the city."

"That’s true," Kirby said, seized by an unsettling feeling, a familiar yet strange feeling. He rushed to the window. There was no sign of an earthquake outside. Looking at his feet, he saw a dark shadow moving through the floor and into the wall. "Uh-oh."

The earthquake escalated quickly. Off the piano, the black panther fell, smashing into pieces. The earthquake brought down the wall paintings and the vases. The three men hid behind the couch. "I have to find Tara," Jackson said.

The ceiling cracked with the weight of the swaying chandelier pulling it down. Kirby jumped to his feet and grabbed Mr. Knight by the arm. "Jackson is right, we have to get out of—"

With a loud thud and shattering noises, the chandelier fell. Hadn’t it been for Kirby’s quick reflexes, Mr. Knight would’ve been crushed. Feeling pain in his leg, Kirby glanced down to see blood wettening the fabric of his pants.

"Have you lost your mind, Jackson?" the old man yelled back. "How dare you talk down to me?"

"What are you going to do about it?" Jackson asked in a belittling tone. "I’m sick of this unsparing humiliation you’ve shown me and Tara. You’re always trying to control everything." He grabbed a piece of a broken vase and waved it at Mr. Knight.

"Stop it." Kirby hurled his body between the two to stop the scuffle. "Look around you," he said. "You don’t want to hit each other. They’re making you do it."

Kirby pointed at the walls, where sinuous, umbral shadows crept like drowning people desperate for air. But it wasn't air they sought; it was attention. The devils only gained power by hijacking the human mind.

"What the hell is this?" Jackson flinched when a shadow reached out of the floor and caught his leg.

"Doesn’t matter now," Kirby replied. "Where do you keep the salt in this house?"

The three men escaped the living room and tiptoed near the hallway walls, surrounded by shadows. To reach the kitchen, they had to cross a long corridor, whose ceiling had become saggy.

The three sprinted forward. As soon as they reached the kitchen, the hallway ceiling collapsed. Mr. Knight pressed his hand to his chest and tried to breathe. Jackson shook his head, unable to process what had just happened. The house was falling apart.

Kirby shut the kitchen door, preventing them from looking outside. He grabbed the salt bottle from the pantry and sprayed it all over the place. Salt was the one thing the devils hated the most. It blocked their energy, temporarily incapacitating them.

"Mr. Knight. I apologize in advance," Kirby said before he threw some salt at the old man’s face.

"What the—?" Mr. Knight almost exploded, but the salt cleansed away the power of the dark spirits, instantly soothing him. "I feel...peaceful," he said in a sleepy-like manner.

"Mr. Knight. I can’t believe what I said to you," he said. "I don’t know what has gotten into me."

Kirby exhaled in relief. "Where’s Echo and the others?" He tried to call, but his phone wasn’t working. He didn’t realize that, at the moment, he was in a different reality.

Doyle and I made a successful run to the living room, but it wasn’t any safer than the kitchen. Not only the cutlery but the furniture also attacked us. The carpet somehow caught fire, and a gust chased us around like a tiny, loud tornado. To make things worse, the baby was crying again. I hid with her in a safe corner while Doyle fought off the flying chairs and vases. The fire blocked the only exit.

"Can you extinguish it?" Doyle yelled. I barely heard his voice over the baby and the rumbling tornado.

"I can make it rain," I yelled back, then started to cough because of the smoke.

"Rain?" He pushed against a violent armchair that just wouldn't give up. "We’re indoors."

I closed my eyes and moved my attention to the water pipes inside the walls and beneath the house. I can easily break one of them, but this will get out of hand. What if I increase the water flow and teleport it to the living room? A two-in-one spell—this might work.

The more I concentrated, the faster I reached the meditative state where I saw and heard the water flowing inside the pipes. Flexing a finger, I imagined the desired outcome I wanted. "Sine pluviam abundantem cadere solum."

Water plunged into the living room through the door and the windows. I almost slipped and dropped Lillian, but Doyle caught us.

It took seconds for the flood to cease, leaving the furniture burned and doused. Lillian stopped crying and gaped at us with innocent curiosity.

I tried to call Vanna, but I got no signal. I considered letting Doyle out of the window with Lillian, but separating wasn’t a wise choice. After all, we didn’t know where our friends were or what had happened to them.

Beneath Doyle’s feet, the devils flowed through the wet-carpeted floor like fish swimming in water. "Killer, killer," they whispered.

Sweat slid down Doyle’s cheeks. As his tension heightened, he began to detach from his surroundings. The whole room vanished, and he was left alone in the empty, in a starless space with no walls, no floor, no burned furniture, and no ceiling to bind him.

Only when the time was right did the devils appear, penetrating the darkness in a bright red color. The sound of heels echoed in the empty.

"What’s wrong, Doyle?" She said with her wax-doll expression. "Are you scared?"

"Are you?" Viessa blinked twice and opened her arms. "Then why don’t you come and give me a hug?"

"Stay away from me!" Doyle cried out and stepped back. Once he wished for a weapon to protect himself, a knife appeared in his hand.

"Ain’t this funny?" Viessa toyed with her hair. "You’ve always hated humans for being killers, but now you’re just like them."

"That’s right," she said. "But when you kill a killer, what does it make you, Doyle?"

"Prove it." She simpered. "Kill the killer. Decide who lives and who deserves to die."

Doyle glanced at the weapon in his hand. For a man who fought monsters and beasts, it was so effortless to thrust a knife into Viessa’s heart, but would killing her again save him from the aching guilt?

The malicious grin on her face reminded him of every wrong he had done. All he wanted was to be righteous, but he failed to distinguish right from wrong, so he vacillated between the extremes. Along the way, he started to loathe himself. Good and bad, darkness and light, innocence and malice—the definitions were jumbled in his mind like puzzle pieces. Secretly, he wished to be reborn into a different world, one where he didn’t have to live in the unyielding self-torture.

There was one way to end it all though, and he knew it. With trembling hands, he held onto the knife and pointed it at himself, falling right into the dark spirits’ trap.

From where I stood, I saw Doyle about to stab himself. In the nick of time, I put Lillian on the wet couch and snatched the knife from his hand while shouting, "What are you doing?"

Doyle fell to his knees, shuddering. When I got closer to him, the room dissolved into darkness, and I could see what he saw—no walls, no furniture, no ground under our feet. It was just the two of us in the empty.

"Dark spirits," he said in a cold tone. "It’s me they want. Walk away, and you’ll be safe."

"This is what I deserve," he replied. "I have met my dark side, Echo." These were the same words he said after he killed Viessa.

"This is not who you are," I assured him, remembering what Vanna had told me about the dark spirits.

"How can you be so naïve?" His voice rose as he looked up to see me. "You have no idea who I am or what I’ve done. "

"No." I kneeled in front of him. "No, I can see you clearly, Doyle. You may have made wrong choices, but there’s kindness in you." I paused when our eyes met. "There’s goodness in you."

As his eyes widened, their blue color glistened in the darkness. "Back in the oasis," he said. "You did something to me."

"In the Oasis? What did I do?" I had heard the same thing from Ebba, so I wanted to know, but, reluctant to share more of his thoughts, Doyle buried his head. "Answer me."

His words stunned me. I wanted to say the right thing to get him out of this black hole, but I was helpless. All I could do was reach out and brush my hand through his hair, wishing to comfort him.

It took him a moment to look up and see me. Once our eyes met again, a white light flashed in the empty, and we were sent back to the living room.

I rushed to check on Lillian, who was asleep on the couch, while Doyle stayed on the ground, holding his knees and looking all around him. "Are they gone?" he asked.

Waving my hand in circles, I invoked a new spell that assembled the dark spirits from the entire house. They merged like a black cloud in the middle of the living room, and when I pointed at the ivory mirror on the wall, it absorbed them, leaving no shadow behind.

Everything in the house went back to normal: no water, no fire, and no misplaced furniture. Within a minute, Kirby, Jackson, and Grandpa reunited with us.

"What happened here, Echo?" His voice cracked. "Did you see what was happening?"

I gave Jackson the baby and ran upstairs. Doyle followed me to Tara’s room, where Ebba lay on the floor.

"What happened here?" I asked, searching the room for a clue. My eyes bulged out at the sight of a message written on Tara’s mirror: An eye for an eye.

We wasted no time. While Kirby took care of Ebba, I looked for Tara’s hairbrush, and Doyle used chalk to draw a pentacle and an eye on the floor.

"Custos vanescentium. Audi me nunc. Aperi oculos. Ostende ubi sit ea." I cast the old locator spell, and an image of my sister flashed in my head. I tried to control it as Kirby had taught me.

"A warehouse," I said as I opened my eyes. "Tara is in a warehouse at Street Forty-Four. It’s ten minutes away, but it’s much faster to teleport there."

The warehouse seemed unusually quiet for a place that offered 24-7 service. I was surprised to see the front gate unlocked and no one standing guard. What didn’t surprise me was the sign outside the building, reading: The Mortons Inc. It proved Kirby’s theory about the Mortons working for Jivar.

Inside the warehouse, all the lights were on. There were boxes stacked along the aisles, pallets loaded with products, and a forklift parked on the side. No signs of the workers, nonetheless.

He gave me a reassuring nod before he called out, "Zaros. I’m here to offer you an exchange."

"Doyle, Doyle, Doyle," a man’s voice came out of the noisy speakers on the wall.

"No." From his pocket, Doyle pulled out a knife that he pointed at his neck. "If you don’t give the girl back, I’ll slit my throat, and you’ll have to answer to Jivar."

"Doyle." My heart skipped a beat. I went to the warehouse expecting to fight, not to watch Doyle sacrifice himself.

Zaros’s voice disappeared. Then I heard the thuds of a Kataru, dragging its heavy tail on the floor. As it approached, I saw my sister hanging down its shoulder, completely unconscious.

"Tara."

Doyle held me back. He took my sister from the Kataru and gave her to me. I reeled, trying to adjust to her weight.