The Gathering Darkness (34 page)

A
gainst its will, my body surrendered its fight against unconsciousness. The illusion of sinking farther and farther into the cushions of the recliner as I grew heavier and heavier overwhelmed my senses. No longer able to hold my eyes open, I concentrated on my breathing while struggling in vain to stay alert.

“Listen, Mom,” I let my head roll to the side and forced my eyelids open into slits, careful not to look at the blood-filled tube protruding from her arm, “if I faint, don’t let them stop, okay.” As I said it, I felt myself losing the battle. “Please promise … .”

“Brooke? Nurse! I think she fainted.”

Mom and the nurse sounded as if they were talking under water—a distant muffled sound. My heavy breathing was the next sound I heard. Gradual noise from the outside world pulled me back. Something cold and wet lay across my forehead. I concentrated all my energy toward the refreshing coolness.

“Are you okay baby?”

“Uh huh,” I breathed.

I pushed my heavy lids up, looked down at my arm, and sighed with relief. Still attached to me, the plastic tubing sucked the fairy blood from my vein.

“I’m okay now,” I said once fully conscious.

“I’m very proud of you,” Mom said.

I nodded, unable to lift my heavy head off the back of the recliner. It was just her, me and the nurse in the room. Dad was in the hallway filling out his form, waiting his turn—with Amy, who I had discovered was comfortable talking to just about anyone.

“This probably isn’t the right time to bring this up, but I’m really sorry I made you leave Boston. I’ve been feeling guilty about the whole thing, and if you want to come home, your dad and I really want you to.”

With strength I didn’t realize I had yet, I peeled my head from the back of the recliner and looked at Mom incredulously. “Forget it! I’m not leaving Deadwich.” As if I would even consider moving back to Boston now.

“Okay, calm down. I just want you to know that you can if you want to.”

I let my head fall against the backrest of the chair and took a deep shuddering breath.

“Well, on that note, we’re going to Deadwich to look at a house in a couple of weeks. It’s on the Peninsula.”

I perked up, forgetting for a moment about the blood-sucking tube in my arm. “Really?”

“Yes. You remember the Peninsula, don’t you? We used to visit the Carver’s there, during the summers when we went to Aunt Rachel’s.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course I remember. I only live two blocks away from there. Marcus lives on the Peninsula,” I added, trying to act casual. Although I knew, perceptive as Mom was, she’d see right through the act.

“Is that a fact? Poor kid. What exactly happened, anyway?” she asked.

I told her the story that everyone believed, except Evan and me.

“Hopefully, this blood will help him.”

“It will,” I said with confidence. “It has to.”

“You really like this boy, don’t you?”

The subject was unavoidable. So I decided to be honest and get it over with. After a deep breath I said, “I don’t expect you to understand this, because you think I’m so young, but trust me when I say that Marcus is the one.”

“I understand more than you think. Remember, your father and I were both sixteen when we met and fell in love.”

Gross
. I had no reply. I tried to keep the image of my parents in love at sixteen from entering my mind.

Twenty minutes later, the two synthetic bags were completely filled with our blood. The nurse wouldn’t allow me to leave the room until I drank a bottle of juice and rested for a bit.

“How soon can he have it?” I asked her while she stuck a bandage to the inside of my elbow.

“The blood will have to be tested first.”

“For what?” I asked innocently. I had pictured them rushing into Marcus’ room, with the fresh, warm blood and hooking it up to his arm immediately.

“For disease and other abnormalities.” She checked my blood pressure as she answered my many questions and when she finished, she said I was ready to go. “You’ve been very brave.” She smiled at me.

“I fainted,” I said, embarrassed.

“A lot of people faint, believe me.”

Mom wanted to walk me back to the room, but I made her stay with Dad. Amy promised her that she’d stay with me.

“Did it hurt?” Amy asked, fascinated.

“Actually, it didn’t hurt at all. I just fainted because I’m such a wuss when it comes to hospital stuff. But now that I’ve done it, and I have such rare blood, I think I’ll do it again, often. You should try it.” I coaxed her.

“Maybe I will,” Amy said, exhibiting what seemed to be a new sense of admiration for me. “How do you feel now?”

“Great.” And I did, knowing that with little effort on my part, I was giving someone else a chance at life.

It would be the next day before Marcus would receive the blood we’d donated. There was a slight blushing of his cheeks and lips, but that was the extent of any new signs of life he’d shown after the transfusion. He was still in a coma, and the doctors were still baffled as to why.

Tuesday I resumed my school life, although concentration was impossible. Sammy and Megan resumed their hatred of me and didn’t seem to care about Marcus’ health. They acted happy and normal. Robyn, however, was different. She seemed sympathetic, but kept her distance.

Uncle Edmund stopped by the school during lunch on Tuesday to ask me if I wanted to go to the hospital with him, so I skipped afternoon classes and went.

After a couple hours of listening to the repetitive sound of the heart monitor, Uncle Edmund was ready for home. I stayed, assuring him that I would get a ride home later with Marcus’ parents.

Later that day, as I lay curled into Marcus’ side, half asleep, I felt a caress of air against my face. I lifted my head from the pillow. Robyn stood very still inside of the room, in front of the closed door. I hadn’t heard it open or close. A spasm of fear stopped my heart.

Robyn’s exotic features were enhanced by a cascade of beautiful dark curls. Her naturally dark eyes were warm and friendly, not cold and malevolent. She looked innocent.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered.

“I’m not here to hurt you guys. I came to help.”

Even though Robyn sounded sincere, I was still on guard.

“Can I explain?”

I sat up groggily and eased myself off the bed. I walked to the other side and stood between Marcus and Robyn, ready to lunge at her if necessary.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“I know what you are and about your history.”

I felt the color drain from my face, but stayed silent and let her continue.

“I’m a witch. A real one. Not like the zombie witches Maggie has turned the others into. I’m real, like you and Marcus. My mother is a witch and so was my grandmother when she was alive. Maggie killed her before I was born. She knew Maggie was evil and tried to end her existence, but failed.”

I’d known all along that Robyn was different from the others. Now I had questions.

“So, the others are not real witches?”

“No. Not since the early nineteen hundreds, when we all practiced witchcraft together. You and I were good friends then. We both come from a deep line of magic; ancient, stronger than the others, and like you I want Maggie dead.”

“Are the others possessed then?”

“Yes, the demon-witch has possessed their minds, but not their souls. As long as their souls are their own, they can still be saved. She allows them a small amount of magic, enough to make them seem like witches and to aid her in your demise. We must kill Maggie without hurting the others.” She gestured toward Marcus. “How is he?”

“Not good. He’s getting worse every day. The doctors can’t figure out why such a small head injury has put him into so deep a coma.”

“It’s a magically induced coma, Brooke. The minute Evan pushed him, well, the minute he hit his head, Sammy, Megan, Evan and I were instructed to put him into a coma and to keep him there, or he would have woken up by now.”

Her confession stunned me.

“Of course, I didn’t do my part, but I couldn’t stop it either.”

“Can you get him out of it?” I asked, desperate.

She shook her head, making her curls bounce. “Only you have the power to do that, Brooke. You just don’t know how to use it yet. But there is something I can do for you.”

“What is it?”

She reached in her shoulder bag and pulled out a small silver pouch and handed it to me. I loosened the drawstring and tipped it upside down into my other hand. Two translucent, aqua-colored crystals tumbled into my palm. Similar in size, the roughly formed crystals were cold.

“Close your hand over them, Brooke, and think about who you want to keep out.”

Feeling silly and not expecting anything to happen, I closed my hand over the crystals and concentrated first on Maggie and then the other evil witches, excluding Robyn. The crystals grew warm and then hot. Startled, I looked at Robyn.

I was just about ready to drop the stones onto the floor, when she warned, “Don’t let go of them, or else you’ll break the spell before it’s finished.”

“But they’re hot—really hot.”

“Then they’re working. Your hands are the only hands to have come into contact with the ancient quartz in a century. As Claire, you brought them into my great-great grandmother’s magic shop and asked her to keep them until you returned, but you never did. They’ve been guarded by my family ever since.”

“What are they?”

“They’re fairy quartz from Wales. An ancient crystal mined only in the fairy realm.”

My eyes narrowed. “But if I’m a witch, how can I perform fairy magic?”

“My mom says that fairy blood is magical and remains with its soul throughout all eternity, so that whoever has been born of the Fair Folk will remain fair no matter how many lives she or he lives.”

“How do you know about my first life?”

“My mom told me today. I don’t know how she knows. I just found all this out myself.”

As if alive, the fairy quartz pulsed in my palm as they shifted from too hot, to comfortably warm. “So is that it?”

“Place the crystals at the entrances to the room you want to keep people out of.”

I walked over to the door to Marcus’ hospital room and placed a quartz on top of the door frame and then did the same at the window.

“I really wish I could help heal him,” Robyn said, as she looked down on Marcus.

“Can you do any magic?”

She shrugged. “Some, but not healing. I just found out about the whole witch thing when I turned sixteen. My fingers started to tingle, and weird visions began flooding my head. That’s when I started asking questions. My mother kept it a secret from me, hoping I wouldn’t inherit the gene. It’s kinda nice to have someone to share the weirdness with.”

“Yeah, it is,” I said.

Robyn stayed for the best part of the afternoon. When Marcus’ parents came, I got a ride home with her.

A part of me felt relieved with the fairy quartz guarding the entrances to his room.

E
very night I lay in bed wearing the Red Sox T-shirt I’d found in Marcus’ gym bag. His freshly showered scent was fading fast. Every night, I tried to decipher the script in the grimoire.

One night, as I was at the middle of the book, I was absentmindedly fondling the double spiral when I thought I saw a word I recognized. I brought the book closer to my face, dropping the amulet onto the open page. My eyes dropped to where it landed.

“OhmyGod.”

In the tiny centers of the spirals, the script was legible, while all around the spirals, the letters stayed foreign. I bolted into a sitting position and grabbed the amulet. I discovered that if I held it halfway between my eyes and the book, I could see through its centers, and the wording on the pages became crystal clear.

All this time, among its other attributes, the centers of the spirals were some sort of magical reading apparatus. I flipped the book to the first page and began reading. For the most part, the pages were filled with spells—some of their ingredients were things I hadn’t heard of in this lifetime.

Too soon, my eyelids grew heavy. It was after midnight, and I had to get up for school in the morning. I flipped to the last page of writing, just past the middle of the book. As Claire, I had written a note to myself.