Chapter Seventeen

Deme sat at the diminutive dining table in Brigid's apartment. Despite Brigid's tough-as-nails exterior, her apartment made up for it in feminine decorations, ranging from impressionistic landscapes to fluffy floral throw pillows on the white leather couch. Brigid was a contradiction, the one sister Deme could never quite connect with. The leather and motorcycle riding screamed nonconformity and a harsh demeanor.

Yet her apartment was her realm of peace and tranquility.

"You realize this is the first time I've been to your apartment?" Deme commented.

Brigid shrugged. "Kind of hard to visit when you're in St. Croix."

Deme's lips pressed together and she stared across at her second-oldest sister. "I know. I'm sorry. I deserted you. I deserted all of you."

"Why?" Brigid stepped forward, her fists balanced on her hips. "Were you ashamed of us?"

"No, never."

"Then were you ashamed of what we were? What we are?"

"In a way, yes. As much as Aurai wanted to live a normal life and attend college like any other nineteen-year-old, I wanted to live a normal life, too. But I knew I couldn't."

"So you ran away?" Brigid snorted. "Apparently being the oldest doesn't make you the wisest."

"I didn't say what I did was right. I'm just saying I had to do it at the time."

Selene stood behind Deme and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Because of Detective Black?"

Deme turned in her seat to face the sister who seemed to see right through her. Selene's image swam before her in a pool of tears welling in Deme's eyes. "I couldn't be with him, knowing he wouldn't understand who and what we are."

"And now?"

Deme huffed, a single tear slipping down her cheek. "He's handling it just fine."

"Did you ever think of giving yourself a chance? Giving him a chance?" Brigid rolled her eyes. "For the oldest and smartest, you're pretty dumb sometimes."

Deme smiled at Brigid, pushing her damp hair out of her face. "You got that right. I wasted an entire year thinking I was doing the right thing when I could have been…" She gulped back a sob.

"With him," Gina finished. "And we almost lost him today to the Chimera."

"Which brings up another issue. I don't want him involved in this anymore."

"Sorry, chica," Brigid quipped. "He's in up to his neck. You're not going to keep him out of it. Hell, wild elephants couldn't keep him away. In case you haven't noticed, he's in love with you."

Deme's face heated, an image of them lying naked in his apartment flaring in her memory. Yeah, they were highly compatible in bed, but could they build a relationship on lust alone? "I'll be glad when we get Aurai back and things get back to normal."

Gina snorted. "What is normal?"

Deme sucked in a breath and let it out. "You're right. I don't think we were destined to lead normal lives. Any of us who think we can are sadly mistaken."

Though he seemed to be handling the witch thing well, would it all catch up to Cal and overwhelm him when they finally got Aurai back, took care of the Chimera and life returned to a semblance of normalcy?

"Time's wasting." Selene slapped a heavy volume in the middle of the table, her normally sweet expression one of intensity. Her ice-blue eyes glowed with a light of challenge and determination. "We have to defeat the Chimera in order to get our little sister back."

"Right." Deme stood, pushing her chair back from the table, giving all four sisters space to gather around the Book of Spells their mother had given into their keeping. Deme had left it with Brigid when she'd gone to live in St. Croix. As much as she'd tried to divorce herself of her heritage, she couldn't.

Deme laid her hand on the leather binder. Brigid laid hers down on top of Deme's then Gina and Selene added theirs until all four sisters' hands rested on the book their mother had bequeathed to them. Together they closed their eyes and chanted.

"Feel the power

Free our hearts

Find our way

Be the one

With the strength of the earth

With the rising of the wind

With the calm of the water

With the intensity of fire

With the freedom of spirit

The goddess is within us

She is power

We are her

We are one

Blessed Be."

A surge of energy built beneath Deme's hand until it blasted through her, slinging their arms up and away from the book.

The tome flipped open, one page at a time, slowly at first, building in speed until the pages fluttered, creating a breeze.

Deme stood back with her sisters, watching and waiting. No one dared speak until the pages drifted to a stop, halfway through the book.

As one, each sister leaned over the book to read.

"‘To free the Spellbound,'" Deme read aloud.

"‘Give shape to the victim

with the bones of a rat

Give voice to the trapped

with the scream of bat

Give substance and life

with the seed of a thistle

Then cast out your troubles

Repeat on a whisper

The call to the caged

of all shapes and size

Repeat it five times

and watch your quarry rise

With the strength of the earth

With the rising of the wind

With the calm of the water

With the intensity of fire

With the freedom of spirit

Rise from the darkness

take shape in the light

come to our sisters

bring substance to might

When the ground thunders

it will rise through the rift

Capture it quickly

Before the grounds shift.'"

Deme glanced up at her sisters.

Brigid gave voice to the question in all their faces. "We save her without facing the Chimera?"

"No!" Selene shook her head. "We shouldn't play with magic."

"How else will we get to Aurai? We can't fight the Chimera. It's too strong." Selene pressed her fingers to her temples. "We can't." Her face scrunched in pain.

Deme lifted her sister's chin. "Why?"

"The other sisters…the ones that died…they say it's too dangerous."

"I say we go for it. Aurai's been down there long enough." Gina entered Brigid's kitchenette and opened her pantry door. "What have you got in here? Any rat bones or bat screams?"

"I'm with Gina. Aurai's been gone long enough." Brigid stared across at Deme. "I have everything you left in my care. Unlike you, I didn't plan on ignoring that part of my life."

Deme hugged her sister. "Once again, you prove to be the smarter sister. Thank you."

As she pulled away, Brigid's cheeks flushed.

Deme stood back and looked at each of her sisters. "Are we in this together?"

Gina and Brigid gave a resounding "Yes!"

Which left Selene.

"I want to believe this is the right thing to do." Tears trickled down her sister's face. "But the voices in my head are screaming for us not to. They want us to go away and never come back."

"Not an option." Deme shook her head. "We can't leave Aurai."

Selene wiped the moisture from her face and straightened. "No. We can't."

Deme went to work. "Mom didn't want us to use this stuff until we were good and ready. She didn't even want us to look through it. I have no idea if we have the ingredients we need to perform the spell."

"We have everything but the bat. And I know where we can get one of those on the way." Brigid's voice sounded confident. When the other sisters all looked at her, she shrugged. "I catalogued everything. I'm anal, so sue me."

Gina grinned and hugged Brigid. "Let's get our sister out of there."

"Damn right." Brigid switched the light on in the small pantry and reached to the top of the shelf to grab a bag labeled Rat Bones. She grabbed another labeled Thistle Seeds.

Brigid disappeared for five minutes to the top of the apartment building, returning with a bagged bat. "Don't ask how I knew it was there."

Ingredients in hand, including the live bat, the sisters returned to the Colyer-Fenton campus as the sun set.

For the first time since their mother's death, Deme felt closer to her sisters than ever. Between the five of them, they'd survive and overcome the power of the Chimera.

As Deme stepped out of Gina's SUV, the sun had set and a fat new moon slipped up the horizon, glowing a deep orange. "Ladies, do you realize the fall equinox is upon us?"

Gina reached into the SUV and pulled out the sack with the bags of ingredients and one live bat. "We will give thanks to the goddess for our bounty and for our family."

"Once we have Aurai back in our arms," Selene amended.

"Right." Brigid looked around. "Where to? The tunnels?"

Deme shook her head. "No. We return to where it all started."

"Can we go to the garden without being captured by the Chimera?"

Deme handed each sister a thumb-size leather pouch attached to a leather strap. "Put these around your necks."

Gina draped the charm over her head. "When did you have time to make a protection charm?"

"I didn't. I found these in a jar in Brigid's pantry. Mom must have made one for each of us. Seeing as our pentagrams aren't protecting us like they had in the past, I thought a little added boost might help." She slipped hers over her head and held one more in her hand. "This one was for Aurai."

"She might not be where she is now if she had been wearing it." Selene's voice quietly echoed the thoughts Deme had had when she'd found the charms.

"We can't change the past, but we can shape our future if we choose." Deme set off for the garden, wondering where Cal had gone. He'd said he'd catch up to them and yet he hadn't even left campus. His motorcycle stood where they'd left him over an hour earlier.

With her sisters ready to take on the Chimera for possession of Aurai, she didn't dare take time out to look for him. She prayed to the goddess he was all right.

With the comforting softness of the leather pouch resting between her breasts, Deme lifted the latch of the garden gate between the Gamma Omega dorm and the student commons. The campus appeared deserted. No kids standing around chatting, exchanging notes or flirting with each other. No one hurried to a night class.

A chill shivered along the surface of her skin. She could have sworn there had been a chain and lock securing the garden the last time she was there.

Brigid nodded toward a bush where a chain, a heavy set of bolt cutters and a severed lock lay almost out of sight. "Someone beat us here."

Deme held her hands out to each side. The sisters joined hands in a circle. "We may only have one shot at this before the Chimera tries to take us down."

Gina nodded. "Hit hard and fast. Got it."

"And don't use your regular powers," Selene added.

Brigid nodded. "Yup. That's suicide."

Deme gave a short, sharp bark of laughter. "Like what we're about to do isn't?" She looked around at the familiar faces, her heart swelling inside her chest. "I love you guys."

"Ditto." Brigid's normal tough voice broke. She squared her leather-clad shoulders and said, "Let's go get our sister."

Deme led the charge, carrying the ingredients, her gaze panning the grounds for live roots and vines ready to claim her and reel her into the Chimera's lair. Strangely, no obstacles blocked their path or tried to grab them.

"I smell a trap," Gina commented from Deme's left.

"I smell gasoline." Selene pointed ahead. "We have company."

In the center of the garden, Rachel Taylor shook a plastic gas jug over a pile of robes and little blue vials. "Die, you son of a bitch! Whatever you are. I hope you burn in hell!" Tears streamed down her face and gasoline splashed across her jeans and shirt.

Rachel flung the jug to the ground and pulled a matchbook from her pocket.

Deme's breath caught in her throat. If the Chimera didn't get her, her attempt to incinerate the trappings of the Gamma Omega's foray into witchcraft could include herself. "Rachel, don't!" Deme ran forward.

"I have to do this. I have to stop it from hurting anyone ever again." Rachel struck a match. "We need to be proud of who we are, not ashamed. This is for all the ugly girls dying to become beautiful." The match dropped to the pile of robes and flames leaped into the air, spreading everywhere the gasoline soaked.

A finger of fire raced across the garden lawn and up Rachel's leg.

The girl screamed and backed away from the bonfire growing in size and intensity.

Deme hit Rachel in a flying tackle, pushing her away from the trail of fire. In a desperate attempt to douse the flames, Deme rolled Rachel in the dirt, the flames on her pants and shirt refusing to extinguish until they had thoroughly burned through the fuel feeding them.

Gina joined her, yanking at the girl's shirt, pulling it up over her head.

Rachel screamed and fought to be free, her eyes rolling back in her head, fear and pain making her movements frantic, her young body strong in her effort to be free of the sisters.

Brigid removed her leather jacket and dropped it over Rachel's flaming pant legs, using it as a hot pad to remove the girl's jeans.

When they had her out of the burning clothes, Deme jumped to her feet and hauled Rachel up with the help of her sisters. "Get out of here! Get out while you can."

Brigid draped her jacket over Rachel's shoulders and the sisters pushed her toward the gate, shoving her through and pulling it closed behind her. Then leaning her back against the gate to keep Rachel from pushing through again, Deme shouted to her sisters, "Give me your hands." She grabbed Gina's hand and Brigid's. Gina and Brigid clasped hands, completing a circle of three, and Deme closed her eyes.

She said a silent prayer to the goddess of earth to protect the gate and keep it closed. When Deme opened her eyes, vines were pushing up through the earth, intertwining around the bars of the wrought-iron fence, wrapping around the gate to keep anyone from opening it to come in or out.

With Rachel safely outside the Chimera's range, Deme, Gina and Brigid turned back to the center of the garden.

Selene had gathered the fallen bags of ingredients and the cloth sack with the live bat, then walked toward the fire, her footsteps slow, measured, trancelike.

"What the hell is she doing?" Deme asked. "She needs to wait for the rest of us."

"Wait, Selene!" Brigid ran ahead and laid her hand on her sister's shoulder.

Selene didn't look at her, just shrugged loose and continued toward the fire.

"The Chimera must be manipulating her." Gina broke into a sprint, racing across the lawn, Deme in close pursuit.

Brigid tried to wrest the bags from her hands, but Selene wouldn't let go. Then she was running toward the fire, her pace quickening with each step.

Brigid reached her first and grabbed her around the waist to hold her back from throwing herself into the fire. She stopped her just in time. But she couldn't stop her from tossing the bags into the flames.

"No!" Brigid lunged for the bags, but she couldn't let go of Selene to save them from being burned. An agonizing, high-pitched scream filled the air as the live bat was consumed by flames.

Gina grabbed Selene and pulled her farther away from the fire. "Selene. Snap out of it. Don't succumb to the Chimera. He's using you."

Selene blinked and stared at her sister as if seeing her for the first time. "What do you mean? What's happening?"

Brigid stared into the fire where the bags had disintegrated beneath red-hot flames. "That's it? Did we just lose our last shot at getting Aurai out of this alive?"

"No." Deme grabbed her sister's hands. "The Chimera won't win. It won't keep our sister. The ingredients are there. We just need to say the spell. Do it now, before the Chimera can stop us!"

"But we don't have Aurai to complete our circle," Gina cried.

Deme turned to Selene. "Can you reach her? Can you call to Aurai and let her know we need her?"

Selene squinted, a frown drawing her brows together. "The other sisters are warning me. They say we are making a mistake."

"We have to get our sister out of there," Deme reminded her. "We have to do whatever it takes."

Selene shook her head. "They want us to leave, to get out now while we can."

The fire behind them flared higher, the heat bearing down on them.

"Bullshit," Brigid said. "We're not leaving without Aurai."

Using her best calm voice when all she wanted to do was scream, Deme entreated her sister, "Selene, ask them to help."

Selene closed her eyes, the frown on her forehead smoothing. "I feel Aurai's presence, and the sisters are here, too."

"About damned time," Brigid muttered. "Let's do it."

With one last look around the garden, Deme searched for the angry vines, sudden tidal waves or flash fires they'd been up against before. Nothing stirred and the fire behind them slowly died.

A stillness settled over the garden, so still not even a cricket dared to chirp.

Slowly at first Deme chanted the spell, her sisters joining in until their voices sounded in unison, growing in strength and determination.

"With the strength of the earth

With the rising of the wind

With the calm of the water

With the intensity of fire

With the freedom of spirit

Rise from the darkness

take shape in the light

come to our sisters

bring substance to might."

The four sisters repeated the chant five times. With each repetition, the air around them thickened.

When they finished, Deme said a silent prayer to the goddess and opened her eyes, hoping beyond hope she'd find her youngest sister standing in front of her.

For a long moment, the garden remained still, an energy she couldn't see building, rising in intensity.

Wind blew in from the east and twisted in a circle around the sisters, forming a funnel and rising higher into the night toward the full moon. In the middle of the funnel a ghostly image appeared, a girl in a black robe, with long, flowing blond hair.

"Aurai!" Deme wanted to reach up to grab for her sister, but she couldn't break the ring of truth she and her sisters formed with their hands. All they could do was watch as she rose higher, her image solidifying.

Then the wind died down, lowering the sister until her feet touched the ground.

Aurai's legs crumpled beneath her and she fell in a heap of black robes and blond hair at the sisters' feet.

Deme, Brigid, Gina and Selene broke the circle and rushed forward.

When they gently rolled her over on her back, her eyes blinked open and she whispered, "I knew you would come."

"Thank the goddess, you're okay." Deme hugged her sister, tears running down her cheeks. She couldn't believe it had been as easy as that. All they'd had to do was work a spell and their sister was back among them. She hugged her sister again and sat back to give Brigid and Gina a chance to be with her.

Selene stood back from the group, hovering around Aurai, her eyes wide, her face pale. "Deme."

Deme frowned. "What is it, Selene?"

"We have a problem." She swayed, her eyes blinking closed and open again. "We've made a terrible mistake."

"What do you mean?" Deme rose to join her sister, looping an arm around her shoulders.

Selene shook, her teeth chattering in her head. "We have to stop it."

"Stop what?"

The wind that had delivered Aurai lifted the hair around Deme's face in a gentle fluff. Then it swirled again, twisting around the five sisters on the garden lawn.

"It's coming." Selene stepped back, her face tilting to the heavens. The trees in the garden swayed and lashed out in a frenzy, bending nearly double in the gale-force winds.

Clouds blocked the full moon, darkening the sky. Then they opened up and rain pounded down on the women, hard, heavy drops that slapped against Deme's face, stingingly painful. The rain came in sideways, joining the whirling funnel. The fire Rachel had started flared.

The twisting wind shifted over the flames and added their power to the building tempest. In the midst of the fire, rain and wind, an image grew and grew until it was twice the size of a tour bus.

Deme sucked in a deep breath and let it out. "By the goddess, what have we done?"