AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I reach for the notebook, and Esme lets me have it. With the tip of my index finger, I trace the swirling line of the symbol, like a snake chasing its tail in an obtuse pattern. The coin, I’ve never been able to touch like this, and yet I know its curves like the back of my hand.
“Why is it here?” I ask in a whisper.
She flips to the next page, where her mother wrote some notes. “It’s a token of belonging,” Esme explains. “Witches draw and share them with each other so they know who they can trust.”
That would explain why I’m not familiar with it — Isabel was a lone wolf; she never had much of a practicing partner, let alone a coven. I was all the energy source she needed to become the most powerful witch alive.
“You told me a witch made this game. That she cursed you,” Esme says.
Mei’s eyes widen as she turns to stare at me. There’s an unasked question in her expression, but as long as she doesn’t voice it — and maybe past that, too — it shall go unanswered.
I shake my head. “That witch was a solitary one.”
“Maybe not as solitary as you thought.”
Isabel and I spent most of our lives in Spain. Is it really that unlikely that the horrid witch could’ve built connections behind my back? It wouldn’t have been the first thing she deceived me on, nor the last. At the end of the day, I was her secret weapon, and the point of that is you keep it hidden.
“No, maybe not,” I finally concede.
Esme fishes in her tote bag again to pull out the jewelry box. She reaches inside for the coin and holds it in the air. The symbol on it is exactly the same as the drawing; the speckles of blood on the tarnished gold surface do little to hide the pattern.
She puts the coin down on the coffee table in front of us. “The trinkets are parts of you. Segments of your life.”
One by one, she pulls out the other objects. We all look at the line up of objects for a long moment, as if they could speak an answer I’ve waited centuries for.
“Is there anything else about yourself, about your life so far, that you think is missing from this?”
I run the objects and their meaning through my mind several times. It’s sad to see my long existence reduced down to four measly objects and some brass keys, but try as I might, I can’t come up with anything that should be added. “No. This sums it up pretty well.”
Esme takes a deep breath, her shoulders lifting to graze her ears, and fists her hands against her thighs. “Then I think… I think the missing trinket is in your future.”
Mei and I snap our heads to Esme at the same time.
“A meaningful event. Something you’re missing that you need to find, or maybe an experience. I think we need to complete your… biography, if you will.”
I pucker my lips as if tasting a sour lemon. “Do you know what that life event would be?”
Esme deflates. “Unfortunately, not yet. But if we can find out, then…”
“We’d need to make a trinket,” Mei interjects. “These may be Tei’s life events, but the objects representing them were created. Even if we knew what the fifth one is meant to represent, we’d have to immortalize it in an object.”
“A witch made the first four,” I say, never taking my eyes off Esme. “A witch can make the fifth one, too.”
She reaches her thumb for her lips, probably to gnaw at her cuticles, but stops her finger mid-air, and with a deep breath lowers her hand back to her lap. I reach my hand for hers and squeeze her fingers between mine.
“We need to find a spell to make an object out of a life event, and then we need to train you to use it.”
Lifting the spell book that found its way in the crease of the couch, she waves it in the air between us. “There’s nothing like that in here. Trust me, I read it cover to cover at least four times.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” I say, then squeeze her hand harder. “Your family grimoire, on the other hand, might be a good place to start.”
Esmeralda’s eyes widen, her scent turns smokier.
“Ever been to Spain, little gem?”
part three
the truth
