It was nice to travel in an actual vehicle to get where I needed to go. Not having to stop a billion times to gather new riders and drop off existing ones made it much faster. And how could I forget the ability to rage to some tunes! Aster and Cooper were exactly alike in their taste in music, and I watched as Aster belted out every lyric to a rock song while she drove.
She waved one arm around in the air to the beat and caught me watching her. She laughed at herself dancing in the car and paused her karaoke.
“I’m sorry, is this too loud? I’m usually by myself, so I don’t think about ruining anyone else’s eardrums, let alone torturing them with my dying cat impressions.” She almost yelled over the music and adjusted the volume to a more tolerable level.
“It’s not that; I was just enjoying it; I'm curious what this song is. I like it.”
“It’s Steppenwolf - ‘Born To Be Wild’ - I’m surprised Cooper hasn’t played it for you like a hundred times; it’s like his hype song or something." She turned it back up to keep singing along.
Hearing Cooper's name stung my heart. Lying to Rachel and Sue meant lying to him too, and making Aster do the same. Knots tightened in my gut, crushing any butterflies that had dared to take flight. As I stared out the window, the wind whipped my hair against my face. Every sting across it was like my temporary punishment.
The music's sudden stop ripped me from my own personal torment. It took a second to register that the ticking sound wasn't my eternal doom for being such a shitty friend but was Aster's blinker. My eyes flicked to the side of the road where her apartment building loomed, the windows like eyes, casting judgment on my soul.
'Shitty, shitty friend.'
It looked so much different in the daylight. I could now see how run-down it seemed in comparison to the other buildings close by. It sat outside the city but close enough that you’d still think you were there.
As we pulled into the parking lot, a familiar chill ransacked my body, and I shivered in my seat. Goosebumps formed all along my arms, and my hair stood on edge. We parked in the same space Cooper had only days before, and Aster pinned me with a grin as she shut off the ignition.
"Yup, you’re magic alright," Aster said, laughing as she peered over at my arms and removed her seatbelt. “That about proves it as much as you can without scrying it.”
I tilted my head in confusion, raising an eyebrow. “What proves it? Huh?” I asked as I unbuckled my belt, unsure if I wanted to continue now.
“You felt the barrier. The shiver, the cold air. Your goosebumps.” Aster gestured to my arms. "Magical beings can feel it; regular people can’t.”
"What do you mean, barrier? Barrier for what?”
Aster turned in her seat to face me better. “Okay. I’ll try to give you the tldr version. Our coven uses this building as our ‘home base’ if you will. Most of the coven lives here, but there are also non-casters who live here too. Now a coven’s base of operations is its sacred space, and the magic held within almost always draws other magic to it, sort of like a lighthouse. For good or for bad," she paused for a second.
I assumed she was waiting to see if I was following what she was saying so far, so I nodded. "Okay, lighthouse, got it.”
“So to protect our coven, we have a barrier up to keep out those who would do harm to us. Now think of this like a protection spell," she pulled her arm in front of her and placed her hand into a fist upright. “Now say this is the building.” Stiffening her fist a little, she stopped and looked around her car.
Aster grabbed a napkin out of the cup holder between us, opened it all the way, and moved it toward her fist. “Now say this is the barrier our coven casts over our building.” She shook the napkin and wrapped it over her fist. “The barrier goes over the entire building to cover the beacon, hiding it, sort of like a flashlight under a blanket. Understood?”
Nodding as I followed, “But what’s with the cold air?”
“Oh, that’s nothing. That’s you feeling the magic. Everyone feels it differently. Now if you had intentions of harming us, then you’d feel something much more than cold air. Believe me. You don’t ever want to cross that barrier in a foul mood with bad intentions toward anyone inside. It’s not pleasant," she laughed. “But, yeah, that’s basically a quick-ish rundown of what I meant. You wouldn’t have noticed the air if you were a non-caster, hence… Magic!” She did jazz hands at me, letting the napkin fall.
“Wow. That’s already a lot to take in," I said as I opened my door. “But thank you, I get it, and it makes sense. You have to protect yourselves. Understandably so.”
We made our way inside, and I bypassed the elevator, recalling its ‘OUT OF ORDER’ sign and headed for the stairs. Aster grabbed my hand and tugged me in a different direction.
“Uh not so fast. We’re going down, not up.” Aster giggled.
“Still, don’t we go down the stairs?” I questioned as I pointed to the enormous poster duct-taped to the elevator doors.
Aster giggled again and turned to peek behind us. She stepped up to the elevator door and whispered, waving her hand in front of herself. “Averital.”
The elevator doors shimmered out of sight, and a spiral stairwell appeared in the empty shaft. Aster smiled as I jumped back.
“Holy shit. What the fu- how did you do that?” I shook my head in disbelief and listened for an answer without taking my eyes off the opening.
Aster turned and mimed jazz hands again before taking a step backward into the shaft's metal landing. "Magic," she teased as she reached inside, still wiggling her hands. “Now hurry before someone sees.”
“Oh, right, yeah. That would be kind of hard to explain," I said, inspecting the doorway as I passed through.
"Averital," Aster whispered once more as she waved her hand behind me to close the doorway.
My jaw dropped as the elevator door shimmered back into reality. Once it had fully appeared before me, I reached out my hand to test it. The smooth steel felt extra cold to my touch, colder than I thought it would be. ‘Must be the way you feel the magic.’ I replayed what Aster had said in the car.
“So is the elevator really broken or is that a ruse? Like ‘the elevator is a lie’ type scenario.” I chuckled inside, knowing Cooper would be jumping for joy at my reference. I had spent hours upon hours watching him play the game.
Leaning over the railing at the top of the landing, I peered down the spiral staircase into the darkness below. My insides quivered at what could lurk within.
“Uhm, no, it’s a regular elevator. Nothing special.”
“So what if someone were to be in this secret stairwell and the elevator were to move? Would they die?” I puzzled as we began our descent down the staircase.
Aster stopped below me, glanced over her shoulder, and shrugged. “I’m not sure.” She appeared to be thinking off in the distance somewhere far away, and then she laughed. “We’ve never had that problem because the electrician won’t come fix it anymore. Every time he got it working, we broke it, so now he’s convinced it's haunted and refuses to come back.”
“I bet that was hilarious to watch. How many times did you guys mess with him?”
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“About seven or eight times. It’s not like it’s a huge building and everyone has to have an elevator. There are only four floors and coming from someone who’s on the top, it’s not so bad.”
"Well, as someone who had to trek up those four flights and isn’t used to it, all I can say is screw you guys.” I laughed. “And I’m going to assume once we’re done down here, there isn’t some magical way to get back up, is there?” I groaned, sarcasm dripping from my tone.
“You would be correct," Aster chuckled, resuming her descent. “One way in, one way out.”
I was hesitant. The staircase appeared to go on forever in the darkness below. My stomach churned with anticipation of what was to come, and it increased with every step I took. As I spun around the central pole for the fourth time, light began to flicker into view. The darkness retreated from it and gave way to a final platform with a wooden door in front of us.
I stopped behind Aster and gasped. “How could this be so close? We didn’t walk down very far, and you couldn’t see the light from above. How is this possible? What is this place?”
My eyes kept darting from the door before us to the staircase above us. Droplets of sweat formed at my hairline as unease took over.
‘What have I gotten myself into? I should have never agreed to this. This is all too much.'
The feel of Aster’s hand on my shoulder as I peered up into the darkness, full of questions and thoughts, brought my attention back to reality.
“Hey, it's okay. It’s just a magic spell. It’s a failsafe if any of us were to be a little too hasty in our coming and going and forget to close the doorway behind us fast enough. If a non-caster were to somehow get in, the stairway would continue to lead them on and on in darkness. Eventually, it would land them right back to where they started and out the same doorway they entered.”
She stepped closer, wrapping her arm all the way around my shoulder and peered at me with a grin. “Also, bonus points to the last part that’s woven into the spell. It wipes their last few minutes of memory and closes the gateway on its own the moment they pass the threshold back out. Neat, huh?” she giggled and let go, moving closer to the door.
As Aster stepped to the door, she placed her ear against it and held a finger to her mouth to signal me to remain quiet. After a few seconds of listening, she stepped back.
“Ok, the coast is clear. I don’t hear any maintenance workers, so we should be good to exit.” Aster opened the door and stepped out, turned back to me, and motioned for me to follow. I rushed through the doorway, and a gust of wind whipped past me. The second I turned, there was a regular elevator door fitting into the wall where the wooden door had been.
“You have to always make sure there’s no one down here before you exit, or else we could get caught. It’s why we can’t just take the regular stairs down here, the basement level is for maintenance personnel only and stays locked with a keycard. Unfortunately we can’t use our magic to get past the system without breaking it… we’ve tried before. Something about our flow messing with the electrical current, " Aster said, grabbing my arm and pulling me to follow. “This way, quick.”
We walked to a far wall, and she repeated her spell to open another section like she had for the elevator shaft. Instead of a staircase, a long hallway greeted me with a torch barely visible at the end. The pit in my stomach grew five times larger, expanding up into my throat, making me swallow hard.
Aster held my hand as we walked through the open arch and stepped into the hallway. Another small gust of wind blew, but I was too worried about what was ahead of me to glance back. Every brick closer to the torch intensified my feelings.
Reaching the torch, I paused, my breathing much more uncontrollable than before. My heartbeat drummed in my ears, and a river of sweat ran down my back, causing me to shiver. I fought every instinct I had that was yelling, begging me to run.
Aster stopped a few steps ahead and glanced back. I connected with her gaze and saw the warmth in her eyes.
‘Get it together, Savi. She's not going to lead you to your doom; she wants to help. That’s all. Help.’
She gestured the motion of taking a long, deep breath in and exhaling it with pushes inward and outward of her arms.
“Sorry, I’m a tad nervous. What if this goes badly like before?” I asked as I plunged the rock in my throat back into my chest with a gulp.
‘The possibility of answers is worth the risk.’
“There’s nothing to worry about here, hun, because the Elders have way more experience than I do. They may be able to see more than I could. We’re all here to help. I promise," Aster assured me with a calm voice. “Come, you’ll see. We’re already here.” She waved a hand to the room right off the hall.
I walked with her out into the open room, and my eyes widened, taking it all in. The soft torchlight danced on every surface around us. The wooden table stood tall and proud, filling the majority of the center. I couldn’t keep my gaze on one thing; my eyes bounced from object to object, detail to detail. It was unlike anything I could have imagined a magical room to be.
The unease in me melted away as I saw more bits and baubles that caught my eye. The feeling lingered one last moment as I realized we were not alone. Off in the distance across the room, I made out a group of women standing huddled together by an old cabinet. They were looking over one woman’s shoulder at a book she was holding, and all turned to face us simultaneously. The feeling made its way right back to my throat.
"Oh, Aster, welcome back, my child," came a powerful voice from the one holding the book.
She closed it and stepped closer.
“And you must be Savi. We have heard and seen so much about you. You must be riddled with questions, dear child. I am High Elder Mora. Come now, may we help you find the answers you seek.”
She stepped toward the grand oak table in the center of the room and waved her hand. In an instant, runes carved around its border began to glow, and chairs popped up one by one around it wherever a lit rune resided. Soon the entire table had enough chairs for everyone present to sit except Aster and me. The other women made their way over and sat in their respective chairs. Once everyone had seated, High Elder Mora walked to her seat and called Aster.
Aster moved to the High Elder’s side and stood watching me. I trembled with anticipation as I wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but the gentle smile on her face calmed me.
“We’re here to help this lost soul find her way. We believe you possess magic and want to uncover the truth. Aster shared your visions and story with us.” Mora looked at Aster, then at me. “We’ve read about your encounter and the mark you bear. It’s a persistent presence, one we sensed. If you have magic, we need to teach you to control it so it can guide you on your quest for answers.”
‘Shit. How the hell did she know about my scar? Did Aster tell her? But then again, how did Aster know?’
The worry returned in an instant, and I teetered in place, trying to hold my anxiety in before it exploded.
“Do not tremble and do not fear us, child. We are here to help. We do not let any harm come to those of our own kind. Would you please step forward so I can get a better look?” High Elder Mora stepped from the table and held out her arms.
Everything in my body told me to move toward her, but I couldn't make my muscles listen. A small gust of air passed over my shoulder, sending a shiver down my spine, and it released my frozen body. I inched to High Elder Mora, never breaking eye contact. Once I was within arm's reach, I glanced at Aster again. She only smiled and winked. I could tell she was trying to calm me, but it felt so strange.
High Elder Mora placed her hands on my upper arms and gave them a slight squeeze.
“There, there. See, nothing to fear. I need to see if I can sense any of your power. I am a Seer with the gift of sight.” Mora reached up and caressed wisps of hair from my face, resting my chin between her thumb and forefinger. She brought my face closer to her own and stared deep into my eyes. “Curious, my child. So curious.”
Her face gave way to concern as I felt her hand leave my chin. The other elders seated at the table began whispering among themselves. Elder Mora turned and raised a single hand to quiet the sound.
“I-i-i-is that bad?” I asked.
“I am unsure at the moment. Every witch has a flame within. A singular flame ensconcing their soulstone, signifying their magic. Their Witchrite. The source of our divine gift. It may vary by sigil and color depending on their Aura, but it is always a singular flame surrounding the stone.” She paused and peered to the side in thought, her face sullen. “And yet I see two flames residing in you. One as clear as day, the other shrouded in darkness, concealing your soulstone altogether, but ever-present." She glanced back to me.
“What could that mean?” I asked as I crossed my arms and reached for my neck.
“Well, again, I’m not quite sure. Aster says you have no memory of your family. Is there anything at all you can remember from your past? Any memory of how you managed to get those scars?” She pointed to my chest again and then to my neck where I was rubbing. “Any unusual beings that may have come across your path?"
“Beings? My scars? N-n-no.” I jerked my hands to my sides. “I don’t remember anything. Sometimes I see things when I’m dreaming but only pieces of a life I don’t know. I assume it’s me but it’s so very different. It comforts yet confuses me, and when I wake, this scar hurts," I said as I pointed back to my neck. “H-h-how did you know about my scars? And you said unusual beings? What beings?”
“There are many different unusual beings that walk this earth as you or I do. As for your scars, I can sense them. I can feel their presence beneath your clothes, though I am unsure as to why.” She flicked her eyes back to mine and stared. “Have things happened to you, things you cannot explain?”
I shifted on my feet, trying not to break eye contact while Elder Mora continued her soul-searching gaze.
“Umm, no, not really. Nothing that I can think of off the top of my head.” A lie. One I hoped she wouldn’t be able to read. I was unsure of how deep her magic went or how it even worked. Aster had only explained a few basics, and even those had my head in a daze of confusion.
High Elder Mora turned to her coven and then back to me. “Would you be willing for me to scry further in? I could perform the same spell as the one on Aster which allowed us to see what happened that night. It might give me the chance to see further back. Possibly giving way to more answers.” High Elder Mora caressed my arm as she asked, comforting the blow of the question.
“Would it hurt?”
“Not one bit, my child.”