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“This is the Magnus ceremonial chamber, ma’am. First used by Deliverance herself.” He turns to speak to Nate. “I’ve pulled the book, Sir. And your grandmother’s journal as well.”
“Thank you, Brian.”
“Will someone please tell me what is going on?”
Nate looks up from a large desk he went behind to start reading a very large, very old-looking book. “I don’t know. I don’t know what just happened, okay? That’s why we’re down here. So I can try to find the answer.”
The entire time, Brian is looking through the tons and tons of books in the stone bookcases lining the room. Nate goes back to flipping pages leaving me utterly useless and lost. I finally give up on a quick answer and flop in one of the chairs on the side of the room well away from the circle in the center. It…feels strong, forceful almost. You can almost feel that a lot of magic went on in that circle over the years.
As I sit doing nothing and feeling useless, I start looking at some of the books. Some have titles but most don’t. There are all sorts of different shapes, sizes, and colors on the binding. One of them sticks out to me like an object that doesn’t belong, my eyes keep coming back to it. I turn and reach up, slipping it out of the space it inhabits.
I probably shouldn’t be touching this. It is most certainly old and was handed down through Nate’s family line. I place the book on my lap and run my fingers along the leather cover. It has the image of a tree with branches and roots going both up and down. The image reminds me of the one etched on the back of the crib I saw in the nursery.
And as soon as I take my hand away the book flips itself open and starts flipping through pages, freaking me the hell out in the process. “Nate!”
I sense his gaze on me but don’t dare look away from the book in my lap. His chair scraps on the stone floor as he comes to me even as the pages keep flipping almost violently until it comes to rest on a page halfway through the book. I wait a heartbeat to find out if it is going to do it again and when it doesn’t, I chance a glimpse up at Nate.
He doesn’t take it out of my lap but instead comes to stand by my side, propping his hip on the edge of my armrest so he can look at the book with me. “How did you…? Why did you pick this book?”
“I…it…,” I close my eyes knowing I am going to have to tell him about finding the nursery and the crib. I look from Nate to Brian before I explain what happened. Once I tell him, I flip the book closed while holding the place the book chose with my hand. He runs his fingers over the cover much the same way I did.
“The same image. Open it. Let’s read what they wanted us to find.”
I open the book and move my hand so he can read the tight elaborate script. “Two become one…,”
I don’t recognize any of the words when I try to follow along with him. “What language is it written in? I don’t recognize it.”
“It’s mostly English and Latin but some of it is written in an ancient language, the language witches use.”
“They have their own language?”
“Hmm, see this…” he points to a symbol in the middle of a word, “this is an ‘s’ and this one right here is a ‘t’.”
He looks up for a second like he’s trying to piece something together. “A star. She’s talking about a star…wait.” He rushes to the desk and comes back in a matter of seconds. It should not change the temperature next to me, but it does. When he goes, the air feels colder. “My grandmother talks about a star.”
He looks from one book to the other and then back again. He sits back with a faraway look in his eyes like he’s trying to mentally put the puzzle pieces together. I want to give him time but at the same time I need answers, or I might go crazy. Surely there is a simple reason this happened. Something put on the door to make us both hallucinate, group delusion, something in the wood being burnt in the fireplace, maybe.
“Okay…I’m not sure how to even start…,” he rubs his forehead, “backwards and work forwards or the opposite.”
I wait, not saying a word.
“My mother died when I was a teenager. My grandmother raised me. She would tell me stories. Stories about the past and where we came from. Stories about the future and what was to come. My ancestor could see things before they happened, and she would write them down - in the book you found.”
“Deliverance?”
He nods. “She wrote about how evil wasn’t something that just popped out of nowhere. It could be called, beckoned to a place, or a person. The human heart is where it starts, and it grows and grows until it consumes everything around it. It can fester and rot everything it touches. And it can become contagious, infecting everyone like some virus.”
Why is he telling me this?
“It’s what caused the witch hunts all those years ago. What drove those men we saw in the vision to break in and try to kill my ancestor.”
“But why could WE see them? See your ancestor? Deliverance I assume?”
“Because…we share our power with the person who is meant to be our mate.”
Chapter Ten
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