Page 20 of A Circle of Uncommon Witches
EIGHTEEN
Ambrose stared down at Doreen, his mind racing. It was too easy to lose himself in her eyes, in the desire to get lost inside her completely. He was still reeling from the moment in the chapel when he saw a flash of Lenora. Her bright green eyes, her mouth on his. A new and wild truth she had passed from her to him in what he was certain was meant as a goodbye kiss.
As soon as he felt lips brush his, he heard her voice inside his head. “I am sorry, Ambrose. For you never knew the truth.” She showed it to him then, and it rocked him to his marrow.
Nothing was what he thought it had been, and he had made so many mistakes.
Staring down at Doreen, he was determined not to make them again. He vowed to himself to love her unconditionally, with honor and honesty.
The feeling was so overwhelming, he had to force himself to look away. To take a step from her side. It was like shoving a boulder along a hillside. He had never wanted to move less, and yet too much was at stake to remain still.
Margot came hurrying back into the room, with Sinclair alongside her. “I found Sinclair,” she said, slightly out of breath, her blue eyes bright. “I thought if we want to know about the spirits bound to Ada, we might want to ask an actual spirit.”
Sinclair shimmered and shifted, coming to stand before them.
“Sinclair,” Ambrose said and rubbed the back of his neck. Of course. They had a spirit before them, one he cared for. Maybe finding out why it was bound to this world would help them to free her. “Why are you here, my friend?”
Sinclair leaned forward. Her eyes closed. Wind blew into the room, rattling the crockery, sending the fruit rolling off the table onto the floor. Ambrose braced himself against it. Sinclair’s hair flew back from her face, off her shoulders. It floated behind her as though caught in a storm. She lifted her hands as though she could fly. She shifted, arching as though over something.
Doreen thought Sinclair looked like a woman standing on the edge of the world, about to leap. She had stood in the same position before, when she freed Ambrose, when she jumped from the ledge of the castle to nowhere and into this world. It was a hair-raising place to stand.
“I am here,” Sinclair began, and started to shake. A vibration tremored up and down her body. Full, consuming spasms wracked her. Doreen thought of Eleanor, of the spirits being splintered. Anchored and yet not. She reached out, and placed her hand into the spirit of Sinclair, through her.
“Why are you stuck?” she asked Sinclair, keeping her hand steady, holding on to that which she could not see. The light inside of Sinclair pressed against Doreen, a spark of something greater.
The tremors shuddered into submission as Doreen kept a hold of the spirit. Sinclair sighed air she could not breathe in relief. “I stole my way into this place,” she whispered. “It is not mine; it is yours. Yet into the woods I crept, the woods so lovely, dark and deep.” Sinclair’s eyes focused on Doreen, she placed a hand over hers and squeezed . Doreen gasped as Sinclair leaned closer. “The old man knows.”
“The old man?” Doreen said.
“Nothing here can be anything other than what it is in the real world. Except me. I came and was more than I was; I was the first possibility. Able to transform once I crossed the barrier in the Goodbye Castle, because my bones reside along the veil there. The rules here are hers, but your magic is changing it. Your magic has the power to alter this prison. It is a cage, and all cages are made with doors to be bent, kicked, slammed open.” Sinclair shifted closer. Her words flooded out in a rush. “The bones bind this prison world. Her blood. Your family’s blood. Her bones. Our bones.” Sinclair’s voice shifted, the Sinclair from Ambrose’s castle coming though, deep and male. “Destroy her. If you do, you will set us free.”
Before Doreen could speak, Sinclair shook like a carbonated bottle of fizzy soda. Her form wavered before them. “Follow the song. Through the forest, so lovely, dark and deep. Finish her trials.”
Then Sinclair rushed into Doreen, knocking her off her feet.
For a moment, Doreen was underwater. Back inside the moat outside the castle walls. She was drowning, dying. She tried to shout, and she was standing in a forest. Sinclair leaned against a tree, beside her. The spirit lifted a finger and pointed into the woods. Tall oaks and pines dotted the landscape, spreading out onto a runway in the night. Between them flickered little lights. Fireflies. A song filled the air, and the fireflies blinked out one by one. Not fireflies; these were sparks—bright and luminous.
Souls.
Sinclair turned and pointed in the opposite direction. Doreen spun until she was facing the castle. Sinclair clapped her hands together, twice, and the singing in the forest intensified.
The castle wavered. The one she had come from stood with the moat surrounding it, and then it was gone. Ambrose’s family home was there instead. The gardens wild and unruly. She looked up and saw the ledge of the castle, and two forms standing there.
Herself and Ambrose. Holding hands.
Standing on the edge of the world. Preparing to jump.
She called out for them, and the world wavered again. The forests no longer held the lights and trees; instead, row after row of blue flowers dotted the cliffs, blowing gently as the wind swept across them from the sea.
“It’s not real,” Doreen said, taking in the castles and the forest and cliffs. “None of this is real.”
“It is as real as magic can be,” Sinclair whispered. “Save him, save yourself, save us all.”
Then Sinclair faded, and Doreen was underwater again, spinning and flipping until she landed with a thump and found herself in the kitchen of the castle, in the embrace of Ambrose’s secure arms.
Doreen came to, gasping for breath. Her body trembling so hard she couldn’t stop it. Every muscle shook, her nervous system revolting from what Sinclair had done. From the things she had shown her.
“We’re trapped,” Doreen gritted out.
“Yes.” Ambrose nodded. “We are aware.”
“No,” Doreen said. “I don’t think we’re even here. I think you and I are still standing on the ledge, about to jump.” She looked to Ambrose. “I think we’re as stuck as the spirits.”
“What ledge?” Margot asked.
“When we crossed into the trials, we had to make a leap of faith,” Ambrose said.
“I didn’t jump off anything,” Margot said. “I was shoved.” She picked up the berries littering the floor. “The aunts sent me to you.”
“The aunts,” Doreen said, sitting up. “Maybe they can help?”
“The ones who cast us out? Those aunts?” Margot said.
“They don’t know about the souls. Their souls will eventually be taken by Ada too, if we don’t succeed. We need to tell them what’s going on. That our family line is stuck in this world, and if we don’t get out, we will all be trapped here for eternity and then we’re all screwed.”
Margot’s brows shot up. “It sounds more convincing when you say it like that.”
“Yes.” Doreen nodded, and she rubbed at the side of her head, where a knot was sure to form.
“They may try to take him,” Margot said, nodding at Ambrose.
He grinned. “I would love to have them try.”
“Stop,” Doreen said, giving him a look. “Sinclair… she also said to ask the old man. I haven’t seen any men here besides Ambrose.”
“Could be part of the curse,” he said. “There is only one old man I know of on the Isle of Skye.” Ambrose’s hand lingered on Doreen’s arm, his fingers trailing up and down, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “Sinclair loved to tell the story of him to me as a child, the Old Man of Storr.”
“If everything here is a copy of the real world,” Doreen said, “maybe he’s who Sinclair means.”
“What you’re saying,” Margot said, reaching for the closest open bottle of wine and taking a gulp straight from it, “is that we need to send a message to the aunts who have excommunicated us and go visit the Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye, a freaking rock formation, because we’re trapped in a prison of our minds and that is the only way out.”
“Pretty much, yes,” Doreen said.
“Good, good. So long as we’re all on the same page.”
Ambrose and Doreen exchanged a small smile, and they all got to work.