Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

FRANKIE

My head felt like it was a balloon barely tethered to a string that was gripped in a toddler's hand at Disney World. The world kept spinning and bouncing. I ran my hand along the line of burgundy lockers to anchor myself as I tried to walk down the hallway. My first class of the day had already started, so there was no one out here to witness me stumbling. I wasn't even sure how I got to school in the first place. I didn't remember driving here, and that terrified me. My stomach rolled like I was going to be sick, and I crashed into the wall. Sweat dripped down my back and coated my arms. My skin was hot and clammy. I needed to sit down.

It was like I was acting on autopilot. My body was doing things, but my mind wasn't actively present. Subconsciously, I knew I was stumbling down the hall, but it was like I was watching a movie of it in my head. I watched my own arm reach out and turn a door handle, then push it open so I could slip into the stairwell. The world spun again. I cursed and threw my arms out to steady myself and then I was on the floor. I had no idea how I'd gotten there, if I'd sat down or fallen, but my back was pressed to the wall at least. I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs.

I closed my eyes and counted to ten while I focused on breathing in and out through my nose.

Then I opened my eyes and choked on a scream.

The stairwell was gone. I sat crouched on my knees on a cold, gray, stone floor in a room with walls made of the same stone. There was no furniture or windows. No statues. I didn't even see a door. The room was tall and circular. The ceiling was vaulted at least fifty feet above my head. I had to get out of this place as fast as possible. It was too cold. My body was covered in goosebumps and trembling. My hands were so cold they burned. I lifted my shaking fingers up to my mouth to blow hot air on them when my gaze landed on the blood coating my fingers.

My breath caught in my throat.

The blood was so fresh it was still dripping down my palms and wrists in little rivers. Tears burned the backs of my eyes. I looked down but there was no blood in sight. But I'm in the middle of the room. A cold chill slid down my spine. I turned and my heart stopped. My eyes went so wide they could've popped out of my skull.

Sitting in the middle of the room was a black orb a little bigger than a basketball. Darkness swirled within it like it was alive. It felt like someone was watching me through the orb. The black pedestal it sat on was covered in strange red symbols. I frowned and followed the stream of symbols down to the floor—the world spun around me. The entire stone floor stretching the five feet between me and that orb was covered in those symbols in red. No. Not red. BLOOD. Those symbols had been drawn in fresh blood . . . the same blood coating my fingers.

A whimper slipped through my closed teeth. My breath left my mouth in a cloud of white smoke. The temperature plummeted. It was suddenly so cold that my bones rattled against each other. A voice whispered in the air loud enough for me to hear it but too quiet to make any of the words out. But the sound made every muscle in my body tense and tight. My stomach was a ball of rocks.

A pair of red eyes beamed from within the orb.

I gasped and pressed my fingers to the stone floor. My body had taken over again, acting on its own. In my mind, I saw a different rune than the ones on the floor, but it was similar. My fingers traced this symbol on the stone. Words slipped through my teeth that I heard myself chanting in a whisper, though I had no idea what I was saying. A sharp, high-pitched whistle shrieked from inside the orb. It sounded like a train whistle right on top of me. Those red eyes were shaking now.

" YOU, " that voice in the orb screeched, its voice cracking.

I felt my lips curl into a smile as I met those eyes head-on. Power filled my lungs and burned down my arms. I wrote that last symbol again, but this time it glowed a hot pink like my hair. " ME ."

Light exploded, and for a moment everything was pure, solid white.

" FRANKIE! "

I gasped and jumped, throwing my arms and legs out in every direction. My legs slammed into some kid's legs and sent him tumbling to the ground. Someone's arms wrapped around my body and yanked me backwards. Gold and navy-blue glitter sparkled from everywhere this person touched me, and it was the only thing that cut through the fog in my mind.

" Esther? " I whispered.

"It's me. It's me. I've got you," she whispered back, her breath rushing over my ear.

I collapsed in her arms and fell apart. Tears I hadn't cried for all the things that had happened to me came rushing from the well.

"Frankie, are you hurt?" It was Archie. That was who I'd knocked over. He leaned over me with a crinkle between his dark-red eyebrows. His hazel eyes were sharp and focused on me. "Are you okay?"

"No. I'm not okay," I said between sobs, still gripped tight in Esther's arms. "I think I'm losing my mind."

"Okay, just breathe. We've got you." Esther squeezed me tighter. "No one is going to hurt you."

I wanted to believe her, but I was having a hard time breathing between sobs.

"Right. We're done with school for today." Esther exhaled and started to rock me like a baby. "Archie, tell everyone to meet us at the beach."

"I'm on it." Archie crouched down and pressed his palm to my back. I felt magic tingle along my spine, and the air I was choking on went smoothly in and out of my lungs. "Just breathe. We've got you."

I couldn't have explained how I got from the stairwell at school to the beach, but the next thing I knew, I was standing calf-deep in the water with the sand squished between my toes. The sun shined down on my shoulders and the water, making the ripples look like little diamonds. For all I knew, I'd passed out, that was how stressed my body had been. Even standing on the beach I wanted to take a nap. The waves gently caressing my feet was my favorite lullaby. If someone put a beach chair behind me, I'd happily sit and fall asleep.

It wasn't even mid-day yet, so the sun wasn't all the way up above me and its rays weren't quite as sharp and aggressive as they would be by noon. Someone had made sure to put my polarized sunglasses on my face, and for that I was grateful. Watching the little fish swim around my feet was therapeutic somehow. Behind me, I heard my friends talking and I knew they were discussing me and what had happened. Esther's voice was calm and steady, and she filled them in on what she knew, which wasn't much. I needed to tell them everything. They were witches. These dreams couldn't possibly be a human thing.

A shadow slid over my head. I frowned and looked up, expecting an umbrella or something, but instead I found a midnight-blue sky with stars twinkling and a golden crescent moon shining down on me. What the . . . How'd it get dark so fast?

When I looked back to the beach, I gasped and jumped back. Glowing blue objects moved along the horizon. They had to be cruise ships or something. The light was soothing, like I just wanted to close my eyes and sleep. I blinked slowly, and then I was standing on top of the water surrounded by the glowing objects. I spun around and my stomach sank. The objects were people —rows and rows of people glowing a pale turquoise-blue and walking toward the horizon. A warm breeze swept over my back. I wanted to go with them. I'd be at peace if I just went with them. I shivered and took a step?—

"Frankie?"

My body was gently jostled. I jumped and looked down to find Archie's hand gripping my elbow. I blinked up at him. "What's wrong?"

He waved his hand in front of my face. "Come back to us."

It was only then that I realized a strange mist had clouded my vision. I exhaled in a rush. "I don't like this."

He frowned and nodded but didn't let go of me. "C'mon, come sit with us and tell us everything so we can help you."

"I hope you can," I heard myself mumble.

Archie's smile was unwavering. "We can. Promise."

The rest of our little group was sitting on that same purple blanket they'd had out at the bonfire Monday night. Ava had a little harness on Float with a long leash so the rabbit could hop around the blanket freely. Madge sat between Jo's legs so her soulmate could braid her hair into pigtail French braids. Jo's hair looked almost white in the sunlight. It wasn't until I got closer that I saw it was braided into a fishtail mohawk braid. I just wished one day I could achieve half of their effortless coolness. Tomás was stretching while Birdie was whispering with Esther. Seamus had an umbrella set up for him and Rootbeer to sit under.

Archie cleared his throat. "Look, don't be embarrassed or shy about all this. You're new to magic but we're not, so as honest as you can be with us, the better our odds at helping you. ‘Kay?"

"Thank you, Archie. Easier said than done sometimes, but I'll do my best." I smiled and sat next to Rootbeer under the umbrella. Animals had a way of calming me. I ran my fingers through her fur. "How's she doing? Heat still a problem?"

Seamus grimaced. "She's okay, but I don't want to push it."

Ava closed her yellow eyes and shook her head. Float was stretching out in her lap, and in the sunshine, the contrast of her white fur with Ava's brown skin was beautiful. "I think I have to become a veterinarian. If we're gonna stay together, I have to be able to put his mind at ease about her."

I cocked my head to the side. "Are there a lot of witch vets?"

She opened her mouth, then shut it. "I only know of the one. Shit, I may have just stumbled onto something."

"See? She helps." Seamus pulled a battery-operated fan out of a bag and propped it up in front of his dog. "She's a good girl."

I chuckled and kept combing my nails through her fur. It was better than those sandpit Zen gardens people used to buy.

Esther cleared her throat. "Um, Birdie, would you mind helping me out?"

I looked up and found everyone staring at me. I sat up straighter. "What?"

Archie's face fell. "We've been talking to you for like ten minutes."

My jaw and heart dropped. What?

"No worries, Pink." Birdie crawled over to kneel in front of me, then she held her hand up and let that gold pentacle dangle. "I'm not hypnotizing you, so don't worry. But sometimes when our magic locks up our minds like this, we need to just help unlock it. Understand?"

I sighed. "Honestly? Not sure. But I trust y'all, so whatever you say."

She started speaking but the words were not registering in my mind, so either that wasn't English or I needed to be more worried about my mental state. None of the others seemed concerned in any way. And then suddenly there was silence. I scowled. My ears had been ringing. I hadn't noticed until it stopped.

"Better?"

I looked up into Birdie's warm brown eyes and smiled. "Thank you."

" Parle-nous, Frankie. Qu'est-ce qui s'est passé ?"

Madge hissed. "Love, give her a second. She'll tell us when she's ready."

Jo narrowed her eyes on her soulmate, then pointed to me. "She is tough. Give her a break," she said in her thick French accent.

That made me smile. "I am tough. Thank you, Jo."

Madge rolled her eyes. "You got lucky," she mumbled to Jo.

Seamus leaned towards me and signed, " What did Madge say?"

"She told Jo she got lucky ," I signed back.

Seamus chuckled.

Tomás pulled a bag of Doritos out of his backpack and opened them. "I agree with Jo. Tell us what happened. Chip?"

I reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of chips. "Thanks. And . . . I just . . . It sounds crazy."

Esther leaned forward and took my hands in hers. "Don't hold back. Give us all the details and let us decide if it sounds crazy."

I nodded and took a deep breath . . . then I told them everything. Even going back to waking up in the hospital and feeling the weirdest deja-vu. All of my dreams layered on dreams. The voices. Those red eyes in that orb. I even talked about Aaron and Jacob. Lastly, I told them about what I saw on the beach. When I finished, everyone was quiet.

"So, yeah." I cleared my throat. "What do you think?"

Birdie frowned at the ocean. "Esther?"

"I need to see a deeper look at what's going on in your magic." Esther sighed and pushed her long black curls off her face. "I need to get a read."

"Like another tarot card reading?"

She shook her head. "No, and not pendulum either."

Madge held her hands out in front of her. "Read her palms."

Everyone else nodded enthusiastically.

"Is that all right, Frankie?" Esther tied her hair up on top of her head, battling against her curls. "It doesn't hurt."

I copied Madge and held both of my hands out in front of me. "Whatever you need to do. I trust you."

She crawled closer so my hands rested comfortably in her lap. Her gray eyes were sharp and focused on my hands for a moment before she took my left hand in hers and lifted it up to her face. Her pale fingers traced the lines in my palm and nodded. She whispered to herself like she was taking notes.

I was a bit too fragile to ask for a play-by-play, so I looked to the ocean instead. At this point, I wasn't expecting to know the answer for my issues, nor did I really need to know the cause. I just needed Esther, or anyone else, to find an answer for me. That wasn't my normal motto, usually I was a hands-on kind of gal, but I knew that whatever this was, it was above my pay grade.

"Interesting." Esther dropped my hand into my own lap. "I want to do an aura reading. Birdie, can you reach my wand?"

"How do you do an aura reading?"

Esther smiled as Birdie sat her wand in her outstretched hand. "Actually, your magic feels a little . . . defensive right now. I'd like if you just closed your eyes and let me do my thing."

I squeezed my eyes shut. "Do your thing."

She chuckled. I felt a tingle in my skin and light flashed against my closed eyelids. Gold and navy-blue glitter swirled in the darkness like her magic wanted to say hi. A bright white light crept into the corner of my vision. A soft, soothing warmth filled my muscles. My body buzzed. I felt weightless, like I was hovering in the air.

"Okay, you can open your eyes."

My eyes flew open, but everything looked the same, looked normal. Whatever she'd done, she'd only done it to me. The others were all looking to Esther expectedly, except for Tomás who held the bag of chips out for me to take some.

"I'm thinking," Esther whispered, holding her hands up to ward off questions.

"Palm reading is her specialty." Madge nodded toward Esther. "The Irit family line is known for their intuition."

Tomás pointed at her with a chip. "The Irits are also known for aura reading."

Esther groaned. "You can't still be upset about that."

Seamus snickered. "Don't tempt him with a good time."

"So . . ." Archie rubbed his hands together. "What did you find?

"I'm afraid to say this, because admittedly it doesn't make much sense, but . . ." Esther put her hand on mine. "But I think you're experiencing clairvoyance."

Ava gasped. "As in psychic visions?"

"It's the only answer that makes sense for what I'm reading in her palm and her aura. There's turbulence on the horizon and I've only seen this kind of . . . kind of . . ." Esther waved her hands around like she was searching for the words. "Acceptance? For most witches with strong intuition, myself included, the feelings and unconscious dreams speak of things that could come, but it's not so literal. It's like feelings and stuff. It makes our magic tense. It's basically like my magic has anxiety because it's constantly trying to guess what's coming. But people with psychic abilities, with actual clairvoyance, their magic is not worried?—"

"How do you know so much about actual psychics? Are any of you one?"

"Bentley Bishop is the Hierophant in The Coven. He's been blessed with psychic powers in more than one way." Esther was staring at her bag. "And before they left town, he and I had a lot of conversations, which I'm suddenly realizing weren't as casual and nonchalant as I thought. He must've seen you coming."

"Her magic doesn't have anxiety?"

"Her magic is a warrior ready for battle. It knows it's coming and it's ready to fight. Which would explain Frankie's ticking time bomb personality where she explodes on people. I'm not sure we're looking at repressed magic at all . . . I think we're looking at evolving magic."

Tomás cursed.

Archie glanced back and forth between us. "So what are you saying? About her dreams?"

"Well, if I'm right and these are psychic visions, it would explain how they seem to attack her out of nowhere. Also explains why they're so visceral for her, because she's actually experiencing them." Esther scrubbed her face with her hands. "I need to talk with my mother . . . We need to get you a healer."

" A healer? "

"Yes. But the right one, because they are not all the same."

"Katherine." Madge snapped her fingers. "Katherine would know."

Katherine? Why does that name sound familiar? An image filled my mind of a woman with auburn hair standing next to my hospital bed. She was hooking up colored IV bags—rainbow light flashed in my eyes. I gasped and my balance faltered but Archie caught me.

"What just happened? Did you have another vision?" he asked softly.

"No." I frowned. "I don't know what that was."

Seamus put his hand on my shoulder. "You need to let your magic rest."

"You need . . . you need . . . Where is it?" Esther dug through her bag, looking for something, then huffed and dumped everything onto the sand. She dug through the stuff until she pulled out two gold necklaces: One had an amethyst crystal and the other had a white-ish stone with black spots. Before I could object, she had both of the necklaces hanging from my neck. "Amethyst and black tourmaline. Good for protection."

"Okay . . ."

As she grabbed her now empty backpack and began shoving her stuff back inside, she accidentally grabbed the corner of a blue velvet bag. At first I thought it was her tarot cards, but that had been purple not blue. She lifted her hands and a couple dozen blue crystals poured out and into the sand. Esther cursed violently and scrambled to put them back in her bag.

I scowled. "What were those?"

" Rune stones ," Jo whispered in her French accent.

"Oh, like from the Nordic tribes?" I frowned. "Or was it Vikings? I don't know. That part of history confuses me sometimes."

" Pas les Vikings. Les Anges ."

"Angels? Les Anges is angels?"

Jo grinned and nodded. She pointed to the bag gripped tight in Esther's hands. " Runes Angéliques. "

"The runes on them are not in the Nordic language. They're Angelic runes," Birdie said softly, almost reverently. "The language of Heaven and Angels."

My eyebrows rose. "How do you know that?"

"The Angel said so." Tomás pressed his hand to his chest over his heart. His normal bubbly, flirty personality was nowhere in sight.

I shook my head. "How . . . how old are these?"

"Ancient." Esther glanced around to the others, then back to me. "So, as you know, my mother and I are part of the Irit founding bloodline. We used to be super powerful. Magic in our line passes from mother to daughter. Centuries ago, an angel went to my grandmother—many times removed, of course—and bestowed an honor upon our family?—"

" Honor is used loosely here." Ava snort-laughed.

"Honor means something different to Heaven." Esther shrugged. "This angel gave these rune stones to my grandmother for safekeeping. The angel told my grandmother that one day in the future someone would cross her path and the stones would sort of . . . come to life. No idea what that literally means, but we're told we'll know it when we see it. And once that happens, we'll know that was the person the stones were fated for, and they are to inherit them forevermore."

I shivered but I wasn't cold. "Why? What are the stones? What do they do? "

"No idea, honestly. But that angel insisted these would be a tool used to defeat Lilith." She took a deep breath, her eyes looking almost wistfully at the bag. "The story says once these stones are passed on and our job is done, our magic will restrengthen to its former glory."

"That's incredible. We gotta find this person for you." I leaned closer to the bag. "Can I see them?"

She hesitated, then cursed. With a quick flick of her wrist, she dumped the bag of rune stones back onto the sand. They were various shades of blue and were entirely transparent. On one side, there were runes engraved in gold glitter, but I'd never seen the symbols before. They were breathtakingly beautiful. There was an aura coming off them in waves. It was warm and made my body feel light weight. My fingers tingled. It was a feeling I'd never experienced.

"What do the runes mean?" I whispered, unable to raise my voice.

Archie leaned forward to get a closer look, his hazel eyes wide and in awe. "People don't speak the Angelic language."

I pursed my lips and tried to think. "Aren't the Nordic rune stones supposed to be kind of like tarot cards or oracle cards? I think I saw that in a movie once. Maybe these are too?"

I reached out to touch the one closest to me and neon-blue flames shot out of my hand and swallowed Esther's stones whole. I screamed and swatted at it, but it was too late. My magic swirled and billowed around the rune stones. The gold glitter-engraved symbols glowed a neon-pink and then lifted into the air. The others all dove back, but I was frozen, locked in place. The rune stones themselves shimmered with light from within until that light was as bright of a blue as my magic. The stones moved together and the runes on them vanished. For a moment, it looked like we were staring at a miniature ocean.

And then a single symbol appeared stretched across the surface of all the stones. The rune looked kind of like a capital C with a five-pointed star in the middle of it. Or like a pentacle whose circle was broken. That meant something and my magic knew it. I felt my pulse flutter as butterflies danced in my stomach. An image filled my mind of me driving that car I'd stolen on Halloween toward the hospital with my best friend dying in the passenger seat. Even with my eyes open, the bright sunlight reflecting off the sand, and the glowing pink rune in front of me, I saw the streetlights shining through the raindrops on the windshield. I saw my arm glowing with little pink flames and then when the flames faded away, there was a tattoo on my skin in black of the letters XVI ? —

Rainbow light flashed across my vision.

I stared at the stones with my heart in my throat. I'd just forgotten something. I knew it with every fiber of my being that I'd just been thinking about something, something that happened to me, and then it was just . . . gone.

And then the symbol vanished. The rune stones went back to being shades of transparent blue with glittery gold runes engraved in them. Like nothing had happened at all.

" Frankie. It's you. You're the one," Esther whispered as my neon-blue magic rolled back onto my fingers. Her eyes were wide as she stared at me. "You're the one the angel wanted me to wait for. It's you. "