The Lebrus Stone (31 page)

"Insecurities?" he asked. His voice had risen with some type of shock or camouflaged agreement.

He was suddenly kneeling in front of me. His warm hands soothed the tips of my cold fingers. "You have nothing to be insecure about, Crys. You're the most beautiful, intelligent, strong-willed and kind person, I've ever met. You've no reason to worry about any of that. It's me that has to, since you could find someone else. Someone better. Someone who knows what to say to you, make you see your worth."

His voice kind of warbled and struck off at the end. I didn't have to wonder if he meant what he said. He was being honest, so honest he couldn't bring himself to look at me. Elandra was so wrong about him.

He wasn't the kind of person who explained a lot or told you everything you needed spelling out. I sensed he didn't give compliments easily usually, either, or maybe he hadn't found somebody to flatter.

But he was saying them to me. And that boosted my confidence. I was learning the hard way to accept myself. I had to learn to accept him in the same way.

"See, you're so much better at compliments than I am," I said with a smile. There was nothing cute about his face, nothing too boyish and too clean cut. He was the rugged handsome I preferred. A young man finding his way and becoming his own person, someone I knew I could always admire and maybe even fall completely in love with someday.

Cray left early in the morning to help his friend, Luke, out of some problem, something to do with a wheel barrow and his Mercedes Benz.

The night before, we had talked till the early hours in his room, snuggling up while watching a few of his DVDs. We also did other things that were inevitable to happen when alone and in his bed. And though we were determined to be as quiet as possible, we didn't quite manage it.

I'd lost count how many times we'd been intimate. At times, it was as heated and frantic as that first night. Sometimes slow paced and savored. Every day felt like he was touching me for the first time. Each day he acted as though he had never experienced being so close to me. Again, I wasn't intentionally disrespecting Isobel boundaries. I really hoped they really couldn't hear us from their rooms on the third level.

I learned Cray was also studying art and textiles and that he was taking media and psychology classes; an interesting mix for someone who aspired to be an actor. I hadn't known he was studying art in another way like me. The first two subjects I understood. He knew so much about them. But the last one I didn't.

I got the answer in great detail. He liked studying the brain, what made us, in his words, tick like clockwork. He found the human mind complex, yet at the same time, uncomplicated once the reaction behind a function was pieced together and scrutinized without a microscope.

I wondered if he could read my reactions through my speech and very direct body language. Maybe that was why it always felt like he did see what I tried to keep hidden. Well, now I knew one secret.

After a low carb breakfast of mainly orange juice, I called Jess. The conversation soon moved on to my recent meeting with Elandra. I explained what she had suggested. I couldn't reveal my fears, Jess had a difficult voice to talk over. It was eager and straight to the point.

She thought I had no choice but to try and meet her coven. She was right in a way, I didn't. There were a billion questions floating around in my head that I had been trying to ignore. They had been popping up and then disappearing, only to make an appearance again, then fizzle out to come back another day.

If a couple of probable fruit loops believed they could conjure up the dead and bring me to life in another person's past to clear any confusion, who was I do judge or find a missing trick? It was time I faced the inevitable.

It was hypnosis in a way, with maybe some spell casting. Plenty did it. I saw something similar on Montel Williams.

At least I wouldn't have an audience. It would be just Elandra, Jess, and a bunch of no names I probably wouldn't remember after I was out like a flash light and hopefully back just as fast.

It was only when I hung up that I realized what I'd gotten myself into.

~ * ~

Jess beeped her horn to let me know she was parked in the driveway. I ran downstairs, hoping to avoid anyone who might have wanted to ask where I was going. I might have blabbed and asked to have my brain reported or deported. Whatever. I needed restraining.

Jess was wearing aviator shades, an accessory I hadn't seen on her before. She was even perkier than the last time we met, obviously excited about finding out what her grandmother had been talking about all those years.

We travelled along dusty lanes in her Nanny's old station wagon, bypassing the highway to take a longer, scenic route. She must have known I was quaking in my Gucci shoes as I twiddled with the ends of my hair.

"So. How's the day been so far?" she asked, keeping her attention on the lanes.

"I don't know. It hasn't really started yet. Ask me when I'm back from the past." I attempted to joke.

She smirked. "Now you know it's the right thing, don't you? You can bet your ass, you'll be getting the answers you've been looking for."

Need?
How did she know I needed it? I had only discussed it with her a few times. It wasn't like I banged on and on about it.

I nodded, fanning my face with my hand. "I just wish I didn't have to leave in person to get to them," I groaned.

She gently squeezed my hand.

We didn't speak the rest of the way. I had a feeling she didn't want to in case the subject became Cray, or worse, Cray and me. She must have heard about us by now. I figured she wouldn't be keen on the idea either if she knew his track record. But people changed. I was beginning to.

I had to be secretive around Cray, as well. It was difficult keeping something so big from someone who had become so important in a short span of time. But I swore to Jess I wouldn't tell anyone. I gave my word and so had she.

She slowed at a curb and bumped over a cobbled road that brought us to a street named Riverton: Elandra's place.

The house was small: a cottage, alone among an everglade of shrubs and cedars. It was painted pastel blue with moss and maybe even fungus growing around the edge of a craggy roof. A small wood gate the same color blue led to a masonry brick footpath surrounded by uncut grass and various plants sat in pine boxes.

The pathway curved toward a pale brown door numbered thirty-nine. It opened as soon as I pressed the doorbell. Elandra answered, just like I supposed she would in her own home.

She beckoned us inside with her long finger, reminding me I was about to sit in a room full of witches. Something I hadn't anticipated really happening.

The house was even smaller looking on the inside, cluttered with novelty trinkets and goddess statues. The coat hooks beside me were heavily piled with jackets and pashminas; multi colored shoes and slippers lined the wall against a steel radiator.

An overpowering smell of dog breath and biscuits came from my left, mixed with honey dew and cinnamon that must have been burning somewhere in the lounge, or every room, considering the strength of it was making me light headed.

Jess and Elandra spoke as if they'd known each other all their lives. I wondered if they had. Elandra then took me by the hand and led us both into a room inches from the stairs.

It was too quiet inside. It was hard to believe there were a group of people waiting. But when we entered, there were at least fifteen of them sat in the shape of a circle, their eyes closed in some deep mantra as their lips moved like a silent movie with bad overdubs.

Men and women were dressed in long overcoats in a manifold of shades and patterns. I couldn't help but admire the ingenuity behind the designs. The way they seemed to represent some sort of trait, a meaning, maybe an endowment.

When Elandra spoke, all eyes flew open.

The woman who spoke had a distinctive voice, a mixture of what I figured was something like French or Russian, and that created a snippy and extrinsic tongue to her every phrase. She also had frizzy white hair pulled back and lodged beneath beetle clips. Her coat appeared the most imperative; a midnight blue with a saturnine green.
The leader?

"Come. Yur seeth heearr." She patted the circle where there seemed to be a shrine; a thick gold plague with the names Rashulu and some scriptures with a small pot of burning incense.

Jess sat on a stool as I stepped lily-livered into the circle, trying my best not to sit on it.

"Yur seerk ther pest," the woman said.

I assumed she meant the past and not a rodent. I also assumed it wasn't a question, although I still nodded.

The others mumbled as the woman retrieved a glass bowl from behind her. It was filled with orange liquid that had floating bits of green and steamed like sulfuric acid.

She dipped a large brush inside it, then flicked it at me, especially at my face. My eyes streamed from the droplets that were probably melting my corneas.

She paid no attention to my yelps, and wiped the brush across my forehead and down my neck so that it left a sticky residue. I cringed. I hated anything wet on me.

"Thees clenss yur surl forum negertive energee," she said lifting the bowl. "Drrinkh. All drinkh."

On closer inspection, there were blobs of something black and gooey swirling at the bottom. For all I knew, the orange substance could have been something pumped from someone's colonic eructation.

"I should—"

"Drrinkh!"

I flinched and grabbed the bowl at a leisurely speed, trying not to look at the contents as I brought it to my lips and took the tiniest sip.

"Drinnkth!" she still commanded.

I flinched again, and inhaled a deep breath, as though I was about to nose dive into a spinning river. Elandra explained how the process was to restore momentous energy fields. It didn't make it easier for me to drink how I imagined fish spawn fried with duck gizzards would taste.

Jess motioned me to hold my nose and chug faster, giving me the thumbs up when I tried not to regurgitate the drink out of my nostrils.

I stopped drinking to heave twice, only to have the woman push it to my mouth, assuring me it would help.

When I finished what must have come from the black lagoon, the woman finally smiled, along with the rest of them, who continued to mumble as the woman introduced herself as Shikra.

Her smile didn't last, though. It turned dismal pretty quickly.

"Lie downth," she demanded.

I did, on my back, closing my eyes since she forced them to with her palms. She kept them there like a stodgy blindfold.

I think something was hovering over me. I peeked between her fingers and saw her holding a large stick burning with red smoke. It was cooling me. She was chanting. Something that calmed my nerves and made me sleepy. It wasn't so bad.

Her hands touched my temples and I was back to freaking out again. It felt like permafrost was cutting through me. I grabbed hold of her hands and yelled at her to stop. I began to overheat, toasting all the way down to my feet so that a ticklish sensation crawled from my waist to my legs. The chanting grew louder. Shikra's inured voice recited words from an unknown text, but a language I somehow understood.

Seekh thi truf for it sha cum tu yur

Garrd thi gate of Rumalu.

Seekh herr, see herr, farr fom vew

Seekh herr, seekh herr mik herr yur.

I kept hearing the same words repeated. The name Rumalu strung like a mournful harp, humming and shattering Shikra's voice, until her twist of words became a whisper.

In its place became a resonant ringing, a dead signal like that of a life support machine when switched off.

I think my heart had stopped beating. I was drifting far away, farther than the Earth and the Universe. I could see our planet as a dot that blinked; a tiny incision. I couldn't reach it since I was being sucked backwards. My limbs snagged apart from my body and my head disintegrated. My previous life sped in reverse, to a past not of my own, but of someone's whose fear prickled my skin.

I opened my eyes and screamed from the top of my lungs.

Just then, a scratching on my arms turned into a burning itch.

I wasn't at Elandra's house anymore. I was in a dark forest. Knuckles kneaded the earth beside a blazing fire. Hands were blistered, and labeled potions were spilt on bracken. Winter leaves crunched beneath old worn boots.

Whoever it was walking away, opened a door to a dim room. Piles of worn books were on a large table; an oil lantern burned blue.

I was suddenly standing in a cupboard. It was empty, smelling of cold meats, salt and pepper, and cheese that smelled like feet.

I wanted to sneeze. I also needed to cough but was wary of being heard. I pressed my hands over my mouth, breathing hard through my nose. That's when I noticed a hole through the wood and peered through it. The room outside had no windows and was lit simply by candles, wavering to stay alight. The walls were made of a friable wood. The floor was carpeted with matted fur skin; maybe from a boar-like animal.

There was no furniture. No shelves or compartments except for what I was standing in.

The woman from the forest was in the room. She was short, dressed in layers of faded brown. A young man with dark hair and a thick moustache followed after her, wearing old slacks and attached braces and a battered cotton shirt.

He took one last peek outside before closing the door behind him, then headed toward the woman. She bent down to blow out the candles.

"Elsbeth," he whispered.

Elandra's ancestor.

She kept blowing out the candles.

He grabbed her by the arm, but she pushed him away. "Bevan, I have nothing more to say to you. If you continue to tarnish your fate and ours by wanting to be with a Fallion, you are surely playing with fire. We are allowed to live among them, but we have been forbidden to court them," she hissed." Especially those of such ranking. I want nothing more to do with this." She continued to blow out the candles, making the room seem to shrink.

"I cannot help how I feel," the young man said. "You must understand that."

"Your actions are selfish, Bevan. The only one to benefit from this is you. And when you are both caught." She wagged her finger at him. "Which you will be, you will suffer the consequences, as shall the whole coven."