covencraft 04 - dry spells (5 page)

He made his way back into the living room. The silence was thick as they waited Dr. Gellar to arrive. Paris wanted to ask Lily about Jade’s migraine, but assumed Dr. Gellar would have similar questions when she arrived. There was no need for Lily to repeat herself. Perhaps there was something else he could do while he waited.

“Do you know where Jade keeps my mother’s grimoire?” he asked.

Lily thought about it, her eyes flickering for a moment. She was scanning Jade’s mind, he realized.

“It’s in our closet, on the floor, in the back,” she replied.

“May I?”

She nodded with a wave of her hand, indicating he could go into their room. He’d been in Jade’s room before - searching for her when she’d been under his mother’s hex - a dream spell, cast under her bed. It had been Bruce, then, who’d led Paris into Jade’s bedroom. Now, entering it under no similar urgency, he felt like an intruder. A bedroom was an intimate, personal space. He tried not to let his eyes focus on anything as he made his way to the closet, but his attention was caught by the minutiae of her life. She had a non-fiction book on multiple dimensions on her nightstand. There was now a second nightstand on the other side of the bed that hadn’t been there before. It held some hair clips and what looked like a romance novel. Both sides had the same brand of lip balm and a lamp. The one with the dimensional space book also had a secondary book on the care and keeping of lizards. Jade’s no doubt. The other… must be Lily’s. He’d reasoned from brief conversations with Jade that she and Lily shared a bed, but he was still surprised by the casual nature of it. Paris turned away quickly, not wanting to pry anymore than he had. In the closet, he pushed past a large section of clothes, the scent of cloves and linden blossom wafting up. The scent of Jade’s magic. He found the grimoire, wrapped in a muslin cloth that smelled even more like her magic and carried the heavy scent of herbs and spices. A zap of magic hit him, like a shock of electricity and then dissipated quickly, with almost a caress of apology running over his skin. Protection and warding for the grimoire. He felt a surge of pride. Jade hadn’t tossed the demon grimoire in a desk somewhere, forgotten. She’d taken care to ward it, yet her magic recognized him and allowed him access to the book.

Paris made his way back downstairs, carefully cradling the grimoire in his hands. Sitting in one of the chairs, he took note once more of Bruce, lying before the fireplace, his tongue lolling out. His serpentine eyes watched Paris, blinking slowly. Paris sent a burst of magic to the fireplace, setting the hearth ablaze. Bruce sighed and closed his eyes, wigging his torso some to get his belly closer to the flames. Paris started turning through the pages of the grimoire, his mother’s handwriting staring back at him. So familiar and yet… suddenly so foreign. He thought of her eyes, her face, her hair, both before her ‘death’ and then as she’d been before just him now - only moments before. So similar. Slightly older, but not nearly as much as she should have been had she remained at the Coven. Was it some kind of magic? An apparition or spell? Was it truly his mother? He wasn’t sure which he hoped for: to be fooled by some kind of demon magic, or to confirm his mother had been practicing dark magic all along. To realize she hadn’t been the woman, the Coven Leader, the mother, he revered and believed in.

Hannah, he needed to call Hannah. As the oldest member of the Coven and his advisor, she would counsel him. Although she was occupied with the Supernatural Council, attending meetings and gatherings, he hoped she would be able to take time for this. In times of crisis, he still called upon her, finding her counsel invaluable.

Or course, Hannah had also been an advisor of sorts to his mother. Could he still trust Hannah’s counsel? How deep had her loyalties to his mother run?

“What about all the birds?” Lily asked, apropos of nothing. She looked up from her phone, her green eyes locking on his.

“Pardon?” he replied, pausing his reading through the grimoire.

“I’m trying to Google some of the things. Jade dreamt of. Birds. Sparrows. I don’t know what they mean.”

“Sparrows may have many meanings. It’s difficult to determine without context.”

Lily made a low sound, like a hum as she considered his words. “Do you think we could ask Seth?”

“No,” Paris answered immediately.

Lily cocked her head to the side. “Why not? Jade thinks he could be useful for information.”

“Did she say that?”

Lily blinked. “No, but I…,” She looked away for a moment, her green eyes going glassy, as though she were far away. She was looking into Jade’s mind, he realized. “She knows he can be used for information. She just doesn’t know how much she can trust it.”

“He’s a demon.”

“So is your mother’s boss. Maybe they know each other,” Lily replied, looking back down at her phone and scrolling through something. “Or is that like when you find out someone is from Toronto and you’re like, ‘hey, I have a friend in Toronto, Mike. Do you know Mike?’”

It took Paris a moment to catch up to Lily’s analogy. “Your brain is frighteningly similar to Jade’s.”

Lily shrugged. “Well, we did share it for most of our lives.”

They both looked up at the sound of someone knocking on the front door of the cottage and Paris was relieved when it turned out to be Dr. Gellar. She made quick work of checking Jade’s vitals and then going over what had happened - taking information from both Lily and Paris. Paris listened intently as Lily explained what one of Jade’s migraines felt like from her side.

“It starts as a buzzing or a hum,” Lily motioned around the back of her head with her fingertips. “Even though she’s only had them since we split, she knows when it’s coming. For me, it starts with that buzzing. And then, I don’t know how to explain it, but for me, it’s like I can sense this dark spot in her brain - a storm cloud. By that time, she’s already having pain, but mild.”

Lily went on to catalogue Jade’s other symptoms - halos in her visions, sensitivity to light and then sound, increasing pain and finally vomiting. Dr. Gellar made continual notes on her tablet as Lily spoke.

“You mentioned you were searching her mind for information,” Dr. Gellar questioned.

“Yeah. Jade has a better memory than me and she knows more magic and…” Lily paused, her face going blank for a moment. “Oh. And then her migraine got worse. And I think…”

“What?” Dr. Gellar prodded gently.

“I think she kind of swatted me away.” Lily swallowed, guilt clearly written on her face as she looked at the prone form of Jade. “I think it got worse because of me. And I think she might have known.”

“Let’s not jump to any conclusions before I have a chance to talk to Jade,” Dr. Gellar said smoothly. Lily’s face clearly indicated she already knew what the answer was, even if they’d not yet asked the question of Jade. “And then you used magic to render her unconscious?” Dr. Gellar asked Paris.

He nodded. “I realized the best thing was to ride out the migraine while unconscious, in lieu of any pain medication. Her kitchen is well stocked with herbs, spices, some stones and runes. I was able to find what I needed for a sleeping potion.” He didn’t add aloud that his only hesitation had been getting Jade’s consent before he administered his spell work. He’d not been sure that Jade understood what he was asking, but Lily had and she’d answered with a resounding ‘Yes.’ He’d taken it as permission. He got potion into her mouth, saying his incantation at the same time. He’d put too much of his own magic behind it, something he only realized when Jade had dropped unconscious like a heavy stone falling in a pond.

Dr. Gellar turned to Lily, her expression serious. “Would you say the migraines are getting worse?”

Lily’s eyes darted to Jade’s form, lying still on the couch. “Yes. Should I… Maybe I shouldn’t…I push her brain, with mine and… she doesn’t really say no, but maybe I shouldn’t do it.”

Dr. Gellar made a low hmm, reviewing her notes on her tablet. “We’ll know more when Jade wakes up.” It wasn’t a yes or a no, and Lily seemed to understand that, a grim expression marring her face. “I’ll write up a prescription for some stronger painkillers than what she has. I’d been hoping that she wouldn’t have migraines so frequently or that they wouldn’t be so severe, but I don’t think that will be the case. I’d like to examine her again when she’s awake and get her point of view.” She looked up at Lily. “Will you ask her to come by medlab if she’s up to it when she wakes? I can come back here if she’s not.”

Lily nodded and then said, “It’s bad that she’s getting them frequently, isn’t it?”

Dr. Gellar paused for a moment before answering and Paris recognized that pause. The pause of a person who knows the answer to a question, but doesn’t want to deliver it. “It’s not what I hoped for, no. But I’d prefer to talk more about this in detail with Jade when she wakes up.”

Lily accepted Dr. Gellar’s answer, promising to bring Jade by when she woke up. The silence after Dr. Gellar left felt heavy and stilted. Lily curled up on the end of the sofa where Jade lay, touching the soles of their feet together as she scrolled through something on her phone.

Paris stood awkwardly at the threshold to the room, where he’d been since they’d escorted Dr. Gellar out. He wasn’t sure where his place was now. Did he stay? Did he leave? If Jade had been on her own, he would have stayed to ensure she was all right. But she wasn’t alone, she had Lily. He didn’t know where that left him.

“Are you going to stand there all afternoon, or are you going to sit back down?” Lily looked up from her phone, her green eyes focused on him. Bruce huffed from the hearth, his slitted eyes watching Paris.

Now that he felt he had an invite, it was all to easy too sit down in one of the chairs beside the sofa and opposite from where Lily sat. Bruce sighed, closing his eyes once Paris took a seat. Lily set her phone down, her eyes measuring Paris carefully.

“While you’re here, I should talk to you.”

Paris frowned, feeling wary. “You are talking to me.”

She bulldozed past his statement. “And it’s not that I don’t want Jade to know I’ve talked with you and yet… I don’t necessarily want Jade to know I’ve talked to you.”

The unsettled feeling in his stomach grew stronger. “If you think this conversation is something Jade wouldn’t want, I question if we should have it at all.”

Lily smiled. “That’s exactly the kind of answer I was hoping for.”

He was confused now and thought it best if he stayed silent.

Lily sat upright, resting her knees on her elbows. “The thing is, Jade doesn’t always know what’s best for her.”

Thinking back on her entrance to the Coven, Paris disagreed. “I’ve not found that to be true at all. Jade seems to know exactly what is best for her.”

Lily waved a hand. “Oh, as far as her physical safety is concerned, she’s bang on.” Lily’s expression went far away for a moment - the same far away look Paris sometimes caught on Jade’s face. She swallowed. “In fact, she’s better than I am at evaluating threats. That’s part of what I want to discuss with you.”

“I’m lost.”

Incomprehensibly, Lily nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure you are.” She eyeballed him. “You’re very patient with her.”

Paris didn’t know how to take that comment. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Lily sat back. “It’s hard for her. Harder than I knew. Growing up, I didn’t know what happened to her. How she drowned in the lake. She kept that part of herself very deep and I always knew we wouldn’t discuss it. There were times I thought… I thought maybe she almost remembered, but then, just as quickly, it was gone.”

Paris wondered what it had been like for Jade. Based on what they knew now, Jade had been four years old when she drowned. Somehow, her soul, her essence, found Lily and latched on - a completely separate identity living inside someone else. While Lily had been older than Jade, it was only by two years. At six years of age, Lily had been no better off intellectually to understand what was happening. Paris marveled that they both weren’t raving lunatics. Instead, it seemed they managed some kind of symbiotic relationship - both of them sharing Lily’s body, until something happened that left Jade alone. He didn’t know what and wasn’t sure he could ask.

Now, Lily was back and they were separate. Some magic Jade had conjured, powerful magic, had enabled them to split. Caused or influenced by his mother’s presence in Jade’s dreams, he didn’t know.

“Jade is really good at compartmentalization. She separates things that she doesn’t want to deal with and puts them away.”

“And you don’t do that?” Paris asked.

“I try not to. Doing that is kind of like shoving a splinter deep into your skin. Yeah, you’ll probably heal over, but it never goes away. It will always be there. It’ll flare up, get infected and you’ll go through the same cycle. Again and again. Best just to go in when it’s fresh, carve it out, no matter how painful and bloody, and then let it heal.”

“I’m still lost. What is it exactly that you’re trying to say? And why don’t you want to say it in front of Jade?”

“As I said, I don’t think she always knows what’s best for her.”

“But you do?”

“In this case, yeah, I think I do. Like I said, it’s hard for her.”

“What is?”

“People. People are hard for her. You’ve noticed she’s slow to warm up to people. Slower still to completely trust.” Lily paused, her green eyes focused on Paris. “But she trusts you.”

A surge of pride unabashedly ran through him at Lily’s words and before he realized he was doing it, he sat up straighter in his chair, preening. He spared another quick look to where the subject of their conversation lay sleeping on the sofa, her chest rising and falling rhythmically.

“I’m humbled by her trust. I know it’s not given readily nor easily.”

“A lot of that has to do with her past, the lake, and the way we lived our life, but there’s also…. You should know…, ” Lily paused and as Paris waited. He could see Lily’s expression change several times - all so quickly he wasn’t sure what the individual emotions were. Something about her face made him sad and afraid of what she would say next. “I asked her once to trust someone she didn’t. You have to realize, we didn’t fight when we were younger, not about important things anyway. We disagreed on what shirt to wear or how to style our hair. But as we got older, as the things in our life became more complicated, we fought more. What classes to take at university, what to spend our money on, how to spend our time.” Lily swallowed and looked down at her hands. “Who to spend time with.”