Bianca looked over at me and they both looked at Hilda.
“What does that mean?” Bianca asked.
“You saw a wraith?” Hilda asked, the color draining from her face. She motioned everyone inside. We made our way into the kitchen, settling around the table by the small kitchen fire.
“That’s not good,” Branson said. “I guess there’s no doubt about the fact whoever’s after the cemetery is a dark fairy, because only the dark Fae would have the audacity to summon wraiths.”
“There weren’t many wraiths. It was one.”
Hilda’s face was still as white as her hair. “When one shows up, there’s a flock of them somewhere nearby. It usually means they are coming to suck the soul out of some people. In this case, by the fact they attacked you, Chloe, I can only imagine they’re here for the Coven.”
Mae’s face was drawn and tired. “If they can destroy the Coven before we fulfill the Pentacle of Time, then we will have lost the battle. We will have lost it all.”
“What about Kartika?” Bianca asked.
Mae shook her head. “Everyone’s lives are at risk. If we bring her into this, it’s one more life we’ll put at risk.”
“But we need the six coven members,” I said.
“Yes, we need the six coven members.” Mae nodded in agreement, “we don’t need them until we have all six. We know who she is. I saw the pentacle last night. It was glowing with her stone. Kartika’s the fifth member of the Coven, but I don’t want to tell her until we have the sixth one.”
“What if they only come in order?” I asked. “What if we’ve got to recognize and accept the fifth one before the sixth one shows up?”
“Well, how are we supposed to find out?” Bianca asked.
I looked at Hilda and then to Branson, but neither one of them seem to have an answer.
“The crystals,” Antonio said. “We’ll find some answers in the crystals. I don’t know if it’ll be the answers you want or the answers you need, but we’ll find something there. I’m sure of it.”
We moved into the red room where a table had been set up next to the potions table. The boxes of crystals were there. Nobody had even opened since I’d left earlier, but I supposed everybody here was quite exhausted. Bianca and Jane were both still recovering from their run ins with supernatural forces. I’d been busy being attacked by a wraith and Mae, the normal, calm, steady center of our coven had stood there waiting for us to come together.
I stepped forward and opened one of the three boxes myself, pulling an athame, a small handheld blade, off the potions table. Inside there was a collection of pale pink crystals. Rose quartz. In the second box there was a collection of amethyst crystals and the third one held smoky quartz crystals. I stared down at the crystals as we began to take them out of the boxes. There were clusters and pillars. We placed them all out on the table, but it was obvious by the expressions on everyone’s faces that no one knew how to make them work.
“Any of us know how to operate these things?” I asked, primarily looking at Hilda.
“No, it’s a Fae trick,” she said. “The communication through the crystals. It’s an elemental thing. We have Jane.”
“We’ve got shifters and witches galore, but the only Fae we have is air Fae, so Jane’s an elemental, but she would not be able to use the crystals without training.” Branson explained.
“We don’t have a spell, we don’t have a diagram, we don’t have anything?” I asked in frustration.
“We’ve got the crystals,” Antonio shrugged. “There’s got to be something in that. We can figure out what to do with them.”
“Great. I’ll start,” I said, thinking I was the least qualified one in the room to do it but we had to start moving them around.
I tried moving the crystals into a number of different configurations and each time, I had the witches come by and do any spell they could think of to try to make m work. Everything we tried failed. By the end of the day, we had come up with absolutely nothing. It was frustrating. We had spent the whole day discovering a hundred ways to fail at making crystals communicate. It was almost a relief when somebody knocked at the door.
Chapter 32
Branson and Antonio had gone out to do a round of the cemetery. Anita and Drake were running the restaurant. Hilda and Trina hadn’t shown up yet. It was just Jane, Mae, Bianca and myself. The four members of the blood pact. It was warm and cozy by the fire.
I moved next to Mae as she answered the door, my tensions on high alert. Kartika stood outside with a big smile on her face.
Mae stepped back into the house and invited her in, directing her toward the kitchen.
Once Kartika was settled in at the table by the kitchen fire, she made a weird look at Carl, the zombie dog, and then up at Mae.
