8 Gone is the Witch Read online

  I shook my head doubtfully. “I don’t know.”

  “Doctor Lowell went in and came back out, so why can’t I?”

  Dominic grabbed his arm. “Tony, you can’t. You don’t know what’s on the other side.”

  “I have to try. We’re talking about Leona. She’s completely helpless out there.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Carlos.

  Dominic’s grip loosened. Tony smiled at Carlos. “Thank you, Carlos.”

  “If you go, I go,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “No. You’re not going.”

  “Am too.”

  Tony really tried to put his foot down on that one, but he never had a chance. “If I say you’re not going, then you’re––”

  “Going. It’s final.”

  “It’s not final.”

  “It’s not your call. If I don’t go, you don’t go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I won’t tell you how to do it.”

  “Lilith––”

  “Tony, it’s decided.”

  “I shall go as well,” Ursula said.

  “You will not,” Dominic insisted. “I forbid you.”

  Ursula’s eyes found mine. A year ago, before she and Dominic married, I would have stepped in and fought Ursula’s battles. Now I felt it was time she stood up for herself. I turned my eyes down and away, breaking a connection I thought would cripple her resolve.

  It didn’t. Turns out, the girl has spunk. I can’t say if it was because or in spite of my neutrality that she responded as she did, but I couldn’t have been more proud. She turned to Dominic, who visually shrank from her advance, and when she opened her mouth to speak, I felt as if she had finally come of age.

  “Thou art my husband, aye,” she said to Dominic, “but not my keeper.” She pointed a stiff finger as if scolding him. “True, my love for thee doth rule what breath I take, what thought I hold when none but thee art with me and when not. What voice I have I shall not squander, lest I forsake my rights what till now hath deemed equal in thine eyes and mine.”

  “But Ursula, I think––”

  “Nay, methinks not. Thou hath decided for me without consent my future for last and nevermore. Be it so true my love for you, I shan’t deny, but for trust, thou wilt spare me and see what will of mine doth give me strength.”

  Tony, Carlos, and I stood speechless. Dominic shut up, too, especially when after finishing, Ursula reeled back, folded her arms at her breasts, pitched her weight onto one hip, tossed her hair off her shoulder with a sassy flip and said, “Capisch?”

  I thought I would die laughing, and might have if only Dominic hadn’t gotten all teary-eyed and sappy on us. It was still funny as hell, but I do have some restraint.

  He appeared touched and visibly shaken. Perhaps the thought of Ursula finding her own voice and standing up to his authority made him realize that she could do as she wished, come and go as she pleased. No longer slaved to the seventeenth century, shackled to the whims of a male dominated world, Ursula had proclaimed her emancipation.

  Still, as proud as that made me, I felt I couldn’t allow her to embark on such a dangerous endeavor. I went to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulder. “You can’t go, hon.”

  “See!” said Dominic. “Listen to her.”

  “Shut up,” I said, pointing at him. “This isn’t about you.” I nudged Ursula away from the group, back to one of the windows overlooking the parking lot.

  “Ursula.” I hushed my voice so that the others couldn’t hear. “You know how long I’ve been waiting for this moment, to see you come of age? I mean, I’ve known you since you were just a box of bones. Look at you now.” I splayed my hands in a sweeping gesture. “You’re gorgeous, smart and sexy. You have your entire life ahead of you. Me?” I pressed my hand to my chest. “Well, I’m gorgeous smart and sexy, too, but I’m old. I’ve done the rite of passage thing I don’t know how many times. I probably won’t get to do it again. If I go and never come back, then that’s all right. I’ve made my mark.”

  “But––”

  “But nothing, you have so much life ahead of you: your life with Dominic.” I rubbed her belly lightly. “Life with a house full of beautiful children that I know you will have someday. You can’t risk throwing all that away. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  She looked at me and smiled. “Aye, thou art saying ye hath never taken chances when young and in first prime.”

  “Well, no. I wouldn’t say that, exactly. I mean when I was young….” I scoffed at the stream of memories that raced through my mind, memories of foolish things I did in much younger days when caution was something one threw to the wind.

  “Ursula, I’m not saying I didn’t take chances when I was younger. I did. I took a lot of really stupid chances and––”

  “And did that not help shape the woman thou art today?”

  “Of course, it did but––”

  “But thou hath regrets?”

  “No. I have no regrets. I mean, I might have done some things differently had I known then what I know now, but I have no regrets about doing them.”

  “I see, yet thou doth preach to me, do as I say not as I do.”

  “I’m not preaching. I’m simply offering advice borne of experiences a hundred and seventy-five years in the making.”

  “And what of thee, sister? Would thou hath listened to the voice of experience all of seventy-five and one hundred years ago?”

  “Me?” I laughed openly at that. Tony and the boys turned to look at us. Only then did I realize that they were in their own little huddle. Probably Tony and Carlos were coaching Dominic on how to put his foot down in handling Ursula.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t suppose I would have listened to anyone then, no more so than I would listen to anyone now.”

  “Especially Master Tony.”

  “Yes, especially Tony. I think I’d go to the Eighth Sphere even if I didn’t want to go if he told me I couldn’t.”

  “`Tis my point is all.”

  “Ah, yes, point taken then. My, but you are your maker’s twin, aren’t you?”

  “Thou should know.”

  “Hmm…You sure you want to do this? It could get mighty ugly.”

  She raised her chin, exposing scars from the rope that encircled her neck so many years ago. “Aye, methinks I know ugly.”

  I suddenly felt very humbled in her presence, forgetting the ugliness she had experienced firsthand, and yet she barely speaks of it. I draped my arm around her shoulder and started her back across the room. “Yes,” I said to her, my voice thinned to a whisper. “I guess you do.”

  The boys saw us coming and broke up their huddle. I could tell from their barreled chests and stiff lips that they were going to tell us a thing or two about obedience. I shut them down with a snap.

  “Save it. It’s done.”

  “Oh? Well, good,” said Tony, and the relief on his face told me how poorly he knew me after all our years together. “I’m glad we were able to square that away without arguing over it.”

  “Me, too. Ursula’s going.”

  “What?”

  “Tony!” Dominic pushed Carlos aside and pulled Tony back by the shirtsleeve. “You told me not to worry. You said you’d charm her.”

  “You what?” I said.

  “Lilith.” Tony shrugged off Dominic’s grip. “I didn’t say that, exactly. What I said was––”

  “He said he’d charm you.” Dominic wasn’t giving up. “He said to leave it to him and he’d get you to convince Ursula to change her mind.”

  “You said that, Tony?”

  “He’s taking it out of context. I told him––”

  “Doesn’t matter. Listen, we’re running out of time. We don’t know how long the vector points will stay aligned. We need to come up with a plan, now.”

  “No,”
said Dominic. “I’m not letting Ursula––”

  “It is done!” Ursula shouted.

  Until then, I had never heard her vocalize anything so loudly. We all turned to her; our mouths gaped in collective gasps.

  “What did you say?” Dominic asked, as if needing to make sure he heard Ursula say it and not me.

  “It is done,” she repeated. “I shall go to the Eighth Sphere. I have decided. Thou may protest, as is thy right. Ye may pinch a finch and––”

  “Pitch a fit,” I corrected.

  She looked at me queerly, her brows crowded in contemplation until the light bulb went on in her head. “Aye.” She smiled and nodded. “Pitch a fit. It makes sense now.” She returned to Dominic. “Ye may pitch a fit and stomp thy feet, but beware and be light afoot lest thou doth tread where thou wish not to go.”

  Dominic took Ursula’s hand. “I don’t mean to tell you what to do. I’m simply trying to protect you. I’m afraid if I let you go, I’ll lose you. I’ll never see you again, and I can’t bear that thought.”

  “`Tis a quandary then, is it not?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “`Tis better yes, to let me go and keep my heart, than keep me here and lose it?”

  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  “You can’t,” said Tony.

  “What do you mean, I can’t?”

  “We need someone to stay here to keep tabs on the situation.”

  “Keep tabs? What’s there to tab? This is a deserted old building slated for demolition.”

  “Tony’s right,” I said. “We need you here to monitor the conversion zone. To facilitate a trans-dimensional passage, I’m going to have to set up a portal departure point. That will help hold the zone steady, but it won’t necessarily keep it from moving. If that happens, you’ll have to reset the anchor points and reestablish the portal or we’ll never get back.”

  Tony added, “It’s a big job, Dominic. I wouldn’t trust it to anyone else but you.”

  “You mean it?” He seemed totally taken in by Tony’s bullshit.

  “Of course, I mean it.” Man, he almost had me believing it, too. “You know how to read the EMF meter. You understood everything Lilith explained. Yours is the most important job of all.”

  “It is?”

  “Sure. You don’t think Carlos could do it, do you?”

  Carlos shook his head. “Seriously, it’s all Greek to me, bro. Ringlets, matrix? Sounds like something you find at the bottom of a cereal box.”

  Dominic’s little pigeon chest swelled with pride. “All right then. I’ll do it.”

  “Great,” I said. “Now then, we’re going to need some dynamite.”

  “What!” The exclamation came from all three of the boys. It’s curious to note, however, that whereas Tony and Carlos seemed surprised by my statement, Dominic appeared excited.

  “I can get some dynamite,” he said.

  “You can?”

  “Sure. I told you that a buddy of mine works for Williams and Sons, the company contracted to raze this building. He can get me some. He owes me a big favor. How much do you need?”

  “A lot.”

  “Lilith.” Tony gave me one of his looks. “What do we need dynamite for?”

  I held the EMF meter up for him to see. The needle was still swinging off the chart. “We’ll need it to blow up the research center.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “Tony, if we are to get to the Eighth Sphere and somehow manage to get out again with our asses intact, we’ll need to blow this place up in order to scramble the conversion points so that neither Dr. Lowell nor anyone else can ever follow us back here.”

  “I get it,” said Carlos. “It’s like blowing out an oil rig fire so you can cap it.”

  “Exactly. A large enough blast might knock the transient wave patterns askew and break up the conversion points. It’s our only chance for closing the portal.”

  Dominic said, “It makes sense, Tony. What do we have to lose? The building’s slated for destruction anyway.”

  “It’s getting razed,” said Tony. “Dismantled in an orderly and controlled fashion.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Then Leona can rot in hell, or worse, in the Eighth Sphere, because I’m not opening up a hole to that place if we don’t have a plan for shutting it down again.”

  I knew that would do it. Tony took a deep breath through his nose and let it out with a snort. He walked over to the window and peered down at the parking lot below.

  A couple of officers from the K9 unit had arrived and were already searching the grounds around the building and in the woods. They would find nothing. I knew that, and Tony knew it, too. He turned back on his heels and said to me, “Okay. What do we need to do?”

  I gestured out the same window. “I have to go downstairs to my car and get some stuff out of the trunk.” I turned and headed out, slapping Carlos on the chest as I passed. “Come on, big guy. I’m going to need a hand.”

  We returned a couple of minutes later with two heavy boxes. Well, Carlos’ box was heavy. Mine was just big, and so I grunted as I carried it in to make him think it was heavy, too.

  “What’s all this?” asked Dominic. He seemed about as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.

  We set the boxes down and gathered around them. The mood seemed considerably more somber than it was before I went downstairs. I wondered if I had missed anything, a conversation perhaps, an awkward last kiss between Dominic and Ursula. They were holding hands. Tony’s eyes told me nothing. Dominic and Ursula’s were on each other. Carlos cleared his throat, and that got me moving again.

  “Now listen everyone.” I waited until Dominic and Ursula turned their attention to me. “Before we do this, it’s important to understand some fundamentals concerning trans-dimensional travel. It’s a serious and dangerous business.

  “When attempting to breach the divide forcibly, which, by the way, is what we’re doing, we have to understand something about light, more specifically, something about light waves. You see, between the Seventh and Eighth Sphere, light waves act like particles and particles act like waves. It’s this wave particle duality that allows matter to flow from one spot to another without moving through the intervening space.”

  “You mean like a wormhole,” said Tony.

  “Exactly. It’s a form of quantum tunneling.”

  “Why is it important that we understand wave particle duality?”

  I scoffed at his naivety before realizing he was not alone in wondering about something I considered so obvious and fundamental. I wiped the smirk from my face and answered, “Because, when you’re traveling through a wormhole, you want to stay in the light as much as possible, otherwise the outer fringes might deposit you prematurely into the abyss between the two dimensions.”

  “You’re not serious, are you? Why would I….”

  I caught his gaze with mine and held it, arresting his words in mid-sentence and flushing the rest from his lips. “Why would you what, Tony?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “All right then.” I continued. “We talked about conversion zones already and how they’re often identified by vortexes. But there are times when a conversion zone is completely invisible, as is the case here.” I rolled my eyes up and around the room. The others followed instinctively. “The EMF meter tells us that the conversion points are here, even though we don’t have a vortex to verify that.”

  “So?”

  “So we have to make our own vortex. That’s why I brought these boxes up here. In order to initiate a vortex designed to coordinate with a specific location, we need vector point attracters.”

  “Geez, Lilith.” This from Tony, who was clearly growing frustrated with me. You’re getting way too technical over here. Can you just give us the bullet points in simple English?”

  “Fine. You want simple English? I’ll give you simple English.” I opened the first box. “These are magnets. I use them to establish the precise
contact points for vector triangulation. This,” I opened the second box, “is a truck battery. We’ll use it as an energy source to hold our vortex open.”

  I then reached into the top of my shirt through the neckline, pulled out a small gold pendant on a chain and let it fall against my chest. “This, you may recognize, is a witch’s key, a consecrated object that, along with a witch’s ladder, we’ll use as an energy concentrator.”

  “That’s going to do it?” Dominic asked.

  “I’m hoping.”

  The others seemed concerned with that answer, but I let it ride. “Okay then. Once we open the vortex, travel between dimensions remains possible only as long as the battery continues providing power, or until the transient waves surrender the pulse point convergence.”

  Dominic, “That’s where I come in. Right?”

  “Yes. That’s where you come in. If the convergence points wander out of sync, you’ll have to relocate them, set the battery and magnets back up and reinitiate the vortex. If you can’t do that, well….”

  I trailed off, seeing no use in finishing a thought that everyone had already concluded.

  Tony, who had been looking out the window again, turn to face me. “Lilith, how much time do you think we’ll have?”

  “That’s a good question. In some instances, as with the Bermuda Triangle, the convergence lasts for years, so it’s hard to say. I can tell you this, however, if convergence is lost, and Dominic can’t relocate the points, reestablishing it from the dark side of the vortex will be next to impossible.”

  “You mentioned it’s dangerous,” Carlos said. “Were you talking about the actual travel through the wormhole or about the Eighth Sphere itself?”

  “Both. Although the ride through the vortex is violent and unpredictable, it’s nothing compared to what we might find on the other side.”

  “What will we find on the other side?”

  I tried not to smile, but it’s an involuntary defense mechanism of mine, often triggered by anticipation of the inevitable.

  “What will we find,” I said, stalling in search of words that would not derail our intentions. “As you might imagine, the Eighth Sphere is inhabited by the evil souls once cast aside from this world, and possibly from other worlds as well.