Spellbound (13 page)

Right away, the mood at the table shifted. Cordelia and Finola stopped talking and they and Elizabeth directed their attention to Eden.

So, she’s the queen bee
.

“First, we want you to know that we agree fully with Elizabeth. Our Serena has made a fine choice with you.” Under the table, Serena squeezed my knee.

“So, we wanted to meet you to confirm for ourselves what kind of man you will make for her, what kind of man you are. And ask if you have any questions for us. I realize that much of your world has been flipped upside down in the last twenty-‐-four hours.

Is that a reasonable assessment, Logan?”

“Yes, ma’am. That about sums it up.”

“Ah, so polite. Another character trait we can credit to your mother. I will relish meeting your mother, Lily, is it?” I nodded.

“Yes, it appears we have much to thank her for, not the least of which is raising two fine children. I understand you have a sister with talents as well.” Not a question, but I nodded again.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Please, dear Logan. You may address me as Eden. I insist.”

Her voice welcomed me and she reached for my hand. By instinct, I reached out, remembering only at the last minute my hand had been injured by the guardian bushes, and made a quick switch to my other hand. But Eden caught it.

“Oh my, did our Wood Protectors do that? Here, let me.”

She reached for my injured hand. The wound had become nasty now, red and angry. The blood had dried on top and caked and the skin around it had stretched and reddened. Eden covered my wound with her other hand and closed her eyes. She lowered her head, closed her eyes and raised my hand with hers to her lips, murmuring something half under her breath. She cradled my hand to her cheek, then opened her eyes and her face became a beautiful smile. “There,” she said, “that’s better.” She opened her hand and dropped my hand to the table. I stared, knowing what I would witness but having a hard time believing it nonetheless. Sure enough, the wound on my hand had disappeared. No redness, no line where the cut had been, not even a scar. Only sign anything had happened? Before where I had hair, now only a smooth, soft spot remained, like a scar that healed over from an accident years ago. Only this had happened two hours ago instead of twenty years. “Thank you.” I managed.

“There,” she said triumphantly. “This is another reason we approve of you, Logan. You have so embraced our world. This can’t have been easy for you and yet you seem so suited to it. So accepting, with such grace and aplomb. We applaud you for your quiet dignity in the face of such upheaval.” She clapped her hands together. “That’s why what we have to say may be the most important thing we have to tell you.” She leaned forward and I thought, here comes the three-‐-pointer. Under the table, Serena squeezed my knee again.

“A little bit of history, first. Per our tradition, we have always believed that the witch gene could be passed down only to a female child if one parent had the power. Such as in Serena’s case and now, it seems, in your own case as well, Logan, since both your mothers were witches and your fathers were not. We believe the reason the Council wants Serena so bad is because this is no longer true.” She measured my reaction. Slowly, I began to put the puzzle together. Could she be saying that they thought I had powers?

Now, that sounded crazy! My mother could tell her, I couldn’t even match up my socks correctly! They all laughed just then. Right.

Forgot who I was dealing with for about the billionth time. Of course, they knew what I was thinking. Then I realized, every time I had any thought, they knew them all.

“Logan, we take great pains to afford you privacy in your thoughts, please don’t worry about that. And as for having powers, I assure you, we have researched the lineage. And you do have them. They may be latent, or dormant, if you will, but they are there. We are more than confident of that.”

“Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t mean to doubt you, but I can’t even guess how many marbles are in the jar at the annual Lancaster Fair. I can’t imagine how I could have any powers.”

“Well, beginning tomorrow, we are going to teach you how.” She sat back in her seat and just like that, they’d decided. I peeked at Serena and she had flushed with excitement. Elizabeth seemed as doubtful as I did, but other than that she appeared to be the only one.

“In the meantime, Logan, you must be diligent, and on your guard at all times. Soon the Council will learn what we have learned and you will become as important to them as Serena is now. We would also like to invite you to bring your mother and sister to meet us. We were so excited and astonished to learn of their presence here in Lancaster. Such a small town for such big talents! Suddenly, this little place is bursting at the seams with sorcerers!” She laughed and everyone laughed with her. It sounded strange. Did I miss an inside joke? I made a mental note to hit the town library and check out some of its history. Maybe we were all missing something?

Serena spoke up.

“Eden, I know Logan has some plans this afternoon with friends. He should probably get going now. I don’t want him to be late.” She got up from the table and I did the same.

“Thank you for the lunch. I enjoyed meeting you all.

Cordelia, Finola, Eden, thank you for your hospitality. I know my Mom and sister would love to come over sometime. I’ll coordinate it with Serena.”

“Wonderful, Logan!” said Eden with enthusiasm. “We’ll all look forward to it. “Something of a family dinner then?” She stood and embraced me. “That’s what we are becoming, I think. A family.” She warmly hugged me again. Cordelia and Finola also stood and each kissed me lightly on the cheek and told me they would welcome me soon for training. Serena walked me to the door.

“Bye, Logan. Thank you for coming. I think it went well, do you?” “Yeah, I think so. Do you believe I have powers?”

“I told you I’d blow your mind. Wait till you harness what you can do, Logan. I don’t just love you for your rugged good looks you know.” She ruffled my hair.

“Yeah, but I never figured my witchcraft would make your top ten list. Crazy.” I kissed her sweet lips and bounded out the front door.

Chapter Fourteen

LOGAN

I got to Dave’s about fifteen minutes early, so I parked in front of his house and replayed the events of the afternoon in my mind. That would be a serious mindblower if Serena’s houseguests were right and I did have some witch powers. There would definitely be some advantages to that. Maybe I would never have to struggle again to get a term paper in on time. I could just whip one up with a spell! Or I could use some witchcraft to become the all-‐-time greatest pitcher in the Major League. Or hey, I could become the youngest, greatest all-‐-time pitcher in the Major League.

Or maybe I could just use a spell to make the dishwasher load itself on my night to do the dishes.
That
would be the coolest thing. Wait, my mom would say I could be less selfish. Okay, first I will use witchcraft to cure cancer, and then I can become a baseball star. Oh, what had gotten into me? None of that would ever happen because I would NEVER be special like Serena. I would always be a perfectly ordinary guy and the only thing special about me would be the most wonderful girl in the world loved me. That did it for me and it always would.

I checked my watch and honked on the horn. About five minutes later Dave came out, ambled across the grass and got in the front seat of my car.

“Right on time, as usual,” he said, punching me on the arm.

“Hey man, what’s up?” It relived me to catch Dave in a normal setting, the dance being still so recent in my mind. I still couldn’t believe no one remembered all the crazy things that went down there, but as we cruised into town, Dave kept up a steady stream of chatter, and none of it had anything to do with the events of last night. Mostly it had to do with how Tamera continued to drive him nuts. This was
so
normal, I almost laughed out loud from relief.

We got to Sully’s dad’s store in about fifteen minutes and pulled around to the back. We spotted Sully as he waited for us, sitting on the loading dock among a ton of boxes and crates. He waved when he saw us pull up.

“Hey, bros!” he hollered good-‐-naturedly. Sully always had such high spirits that even the prospect of hours of hard labor bagging and tagging sporting goods couldn’t damper his enthusiasm for life. There was a lot I liked about Sully, but I liked that the most. You were around him for like, ten minutes, and the good mood just rubbed off.

“Hey Sully!” I jumped out of my car and up onto the loading dock with him. Dave followed. Together we surveyed the boxes.

“Man, that’s a buttload of boxes, Sully.” Dave observed.

“How many trucks off-‐-loaded?”

“Just two, but they were packed to the rafters. Took four guys like, three hours just to unload them all. I offered the forklift.”

He thumbed at a decrepit old four-‐-wheeler in the corner behind them. “But they took one look at it and just shook their heads. Dad wouldn’t let me help either, said they were Teamsters and they could handle it. I thought they were gonna squash my Dad for saying that!” Sully snorted.

Dave clapped his hands together.

“Well,” he said, “Let’s get started or we’ll be here all night.”

He dragged the first box toward him, sliced the top open with a box cutter laying on the ground near Sully, and surveyed the contents. “Got batting gloves in here.”

“Don’t forget to reconcile the manifest, Dave,” reminded Sully.

“I remember, I remember,” said Dave. We had all worked at Sully’s dad’s store one summer or another. The process went along pretty easy; you opened the box, checked the contents against the manifest included in it, and then stocked the shelves with the product. Sully’s dad didn’t believe in making things complicated.

Once a year he would pay us to do an all-‐-night inventory. That usually ended up being a pizza-‐-and-‐-soda cash deal too.

We got into the groove and pretty soon a couple hours had come and gone. The sun went down and before long the darkness took over. We divided the work and it started going pretty fast.

Dave would open the boxes and check the contents. Then, since Sully had the most familiarity with the layout of the warehouse, he would tell Dave and me where everything needed to be stocked.

Dave would stack boxes on the dolly and we would take them into the warehouse and distribute the product on the shelves. It was easy to tell how long it had been since some shelves had been touched because they were coated with spider webs or had dead bug carcasses in the corners. It grossed me out but Dave thought it hilarious. Also, the noises creeped me out. I kept hearing these scurrying sounds, like small animals were underneath the tall, metal shelves that held all the stored sports items waiting to be stocked inside the store itself. A mouse or two might be one thing, but I could swear that skittering meant a lot more than one. I voiced my fears to Dave.

“Hey, Dave man, you catch that?”

“What?” Dave dropped a large box he had been holding on his shoulders, Tarzan-‐-style, and a large cloud of dust swirled up from around it. “You hearing things, Logan?”

“I keep hearing this skittering noise, like toenails on tile.”

“What the frig is wrong with you, man? That’s freaky.”

I almost conceded that
was
freaky, when I heard it again. I started to ask Dave if he did too when I watched his face and realized, oh yeah, he did. Dave’s face had frozen in a mask of fear, and all the color had drained from it. Like, to the color white. I whirled around to identify what could cause that fear in my burly best friend. And then, the puzzle piece snapped into place, because I didn’t just hear
the
noise
, I saw the noise
maker
. Make that noise
makers
. Plural. As in way more than one. Because an army of rats stood at the other end of the aisle we were in. Moving back and forth in a pack, I realized the sound I heard had to be their tiny claws as they clicked on the cement floor. Dave and I started taking involuntary steps backward and that’s when the mass of rats started moving forward toward us.

“Where the heck did they come from!” yelled Dave. But that wasn’t my main concern. Grabbing my attention now were shuddering and twitching rats with their skin rolling under their fur. I had seen the exact same thing last night when the demons at the dance shape-‐-shifted into rats. These rodents were so much worse. As they got closer, several of them seemed to jump into the air repeatedly, like popping corn, and I knew my fears were about to be realized. At almost the same time, I could make out Sully’s voice outside at the loading dock. I didn’t even know he’d gone out there. “Oh no! What are you doing! What the…..” A loud thump cut off Sully’s voice. Dave stared at me, stricken. He started to run out to the loading dock toward Sully but he, too, got cut off. One of the rats had popped up, and in a split second I watched its horrific transformation. Its body jerked and convulsed and exploded in a spray of blood and guts and innards and in its place stood one of the same demons from last night’s dance. A mere seconds later five more rats exploded the same way sending fine sprays of blood all over the floor of the warehouse and presently there stood six demons standing between Dave and me and Sully on the loading dock. An impossibly tall figure stepped from the shadows.

Dressed in black and red and, Jeez, did he have on a cape? A handsome man, even I could tell that, he walked toward us stopping just short of the pack of demons. They parted wordlessly for him to pass and he came right up to Dave and me. As he did so, the remaining rats galloped past us and went to stand beside the demons, like an extension of his army. He appraised us coolly and decided I’d be his audience. He stepped in front of me.

“My name is Christophe. It appears it is time we meet.” His voice rumbled, deep and gravelly. He didn’t extend his hand, he just continued looking me over. He leaned in closer, like an animal would, trying to smell me, and beside me Dave tensed. From the corner of my eye, I could feel Dave’s fists clench and I thought, No, Dave that would be the wrong move. As if he could read my mind, the evil man named Christophe lazily gave his attention to Dave, almost as an afterthought. His arm shot out and he grabbed Dave’s throat and lifted him about three feet off the ground. He glanced back at me and continued talking as though Dave were an annoyance he had just removed.