The Grimoire

CHAPTER THREE

     Avery’s chest burned with the need for air and that was the problem.  She could breathe just fine; it was the magic that was making her choke and cough on nothing but the air she breathed.  It was burning her up from the inside out.  Vaguely, she could hear her father yelling at the people around them, at their family, to bring him something.  She couldn’t figure out what he had said through the roaring in her ears, but Avery was sure it had something to do with her father’s various healing herds that were stored in the basement of the house.  Her suspicions were confirmed a few minutes later.  Something cool and soft was being rubbed into her throat by gentle hands, the ever fluid language of magic being muttered in her father’s soft timber voice.  Nothing, not even her father’s herbal magic was helping Avery to breathe.

     And she wasn’t even the Guardian yet.

     The thought came out of nowhere, mush in the same way that Avery had had strange thoughts about Bethany Little’s hair while in the middle of a panic attack last Tuesday.  Only this time, it was much much worse.  “Nix...”

     Her voice trailed off in a croak, her Uncle’s name barely discernable as it echoed in her mind to loud to be real.  Travis Winter’s continued to massage a paste of blended her herbs into her throat, paying her no heed as he fell into his healing state of mind.  Avery tried again.  “Nix, where...”

     Her Aunt Millie took a step forward, her slender build making her appear as graceful as a dancer, and for a moment, Avery thought that her Aunt understood what she was trying to tell them.  She was wrong.  “Travis, maybe we should take her inside.  It’s getting cold out and the girl is wearing a belt as a skirt.”

     Which wasn’t true in the least, her skirt may have ridden up a few inches but it was still decent enough to be called a skirt.  Avery tried to protest, but her voice was still nearly nonexistent; it didn’t matter though because whatever protest she would have made was cut off by a blood curdling scream.  A scream that sounded suspiciously like Mia, Uncle Nix’s wife.  

     Travis scooped her up into his arms even though Avery was pretty sure she could walk just fine on her own and ran into the house with the four others that had come out when he had started yelling for help.  Having his daughter collapse on him and start choking for no apparent reason couldn’t have been very fun.  Avery wondered if it would get her out of going back to school the next day.

     She didn’t fight it when her father set her down on the kitchen counter and ordered her to stay put while he ran up the stairs to the top floor where Nix and Mia stayed with their baby girl, Arcadia.  Avery had never been very good at following orders, she followed them all up anyway.

     She found them all standing in a circle around her uncle, who was sprawled on the carpeted floor unconscious and barely breathing.  Mia and Avery’s father were the only two on the floor with him, her father chanting once more and Mia sobbing incoherently as Millie fluttered her hands over the poor woman in a failing effort to calm her.  Not wanting to interrupt her father’s healing, Avery edged around the room sticking close to the wall and silently adding her magic to her father’s, knowing that it would be more likely to help Nix.  Both of their magics were bound to the Grimoire, tying them together in a way that was greater than most of the relationships she had with her family members.

     Against the far wall was Arcadia’s cradle.  The little blue eyed baby was screaming her head off, reacting to the emotions of the others in the room.  Scooping her up, Avery began to gently bounce her up and down in an effort to quiet her down.  Her mother’s song poured from her lips softly, quietly.  After a few minutes, Cady’s cries turned to small whimpers.  Empathic babies needed to be kept as calm as humanly possible, though it was sometimes fun to watch the little bundle subdue a b***h of a cousin into near hysterics.  Janella wouldn’t even hold Cady anymore after the last time she’d started bitching with the baby in her arms.

     Across the room, her father was finishing up his healing and Nix was breathing normally once more even if he was still unconscious.  Maneuvering Nix into his bed and off the floor took the efforts of her father and two of Avery’s bulkier cousins; Mia was tucked into his side within seconds.

     Avery met her father’s gaze from her spot leaning against the wall with a dozing Arcadia in her arms, his chin jerked to the side indicating that she should take the baby and leave.  Effectively dismissed, Avery grabbed the bubblegum pick blanket from Arcadia’s crib, kissed her father’s cheek in passing and went to her room.

     Her father followed her in five minutes later when Avery was in the middle of making a makeshift bed for Cady; she’d stolen Hex’s pillows and used her own to make barriers around Arcadia, who was sound asleep in the middle of Avery’s bed.  She didn’t acknowledge her father’s presence until she’d completed her task.  When Avery did turn to look at him, he was sitting on Hex’s bed studying her with a pained expression.

     In that moment, Avery realized the he knew what she was.  He might have had suspicions in the past, but her actions that night had been proof enough.  Everyone in the family knew that Nix was the Guardian of the Winters’ Grimoire because her Uncle had chosen to inform them when he found out Mia was pregnant little more than a year ago.  Avery feeling his pain was proof enough of her tie to the Grimoire.

     The Grimoire.

     Avery froze as the full extent of what had happened finally set in.  Something or someone had gotten to the Grimoire and who ever it was, was not a Winters by blood or marriage.  “Daddy...”

     “Why didn’t you tell me?”  His voice was filled with hurt and concern; everyone knew that a Guardian almost never died on natural causes.  She knew in that instant that she’d been wrong from keeping her secret from her father, but Avery couldn’t pull her thoughts away from the Grimoire.

     “Daddy, I‘m sorry.  I know I should have told you, I just kept hoping the book would choose someone else.  But Daddy, the Grimoire, where does Nix keep it?  Please Daddy, this is important.  I wouldn’t have felt Nix’s pain if it wasn’t connected to that damned book!”  Avery was getting restless, the need to check on the Grimoire over powering nearly all her other concerns.  She knew that she very well might be deepening her father’s hurt, but if the Grimoire was damaged or worse, missing, then Avery needed to act while Nix couldn’t.

     Her father continued to study her with sorrow before he spoke, and in amazement, Avery watched as the hurt drained from his eyes to be replaced by fatherly pride.  It was a strange shift and Avery was almost positive that she wouldn’t get away without some sort of talking to later on, but her father understood.  “Its upstairs, under the floorboards in the attic.”

     The attic?  Seriously?  It was going to be nearly impossible to get under all the boxes to the actual floor, that is if Avery could even get the Hecate be damned ladder down.  “Will you help me?”

     “Do you even have to ask?”  Her father stood, pulling her into a quick embrace before guiding her out of the room and down the hall.  The Winter’s house was a strange and magic imbued place.  From the outside, it appeared to be a two story house just like all the others on the block, but from the inside, the structure continued to change and shift with only a few solids.  If a mundane were to enter the house unaccompanied, he would probably end up wandering around in the upper floors for the rest of eternity.  As it was, the attic staircase was on the second floor even though the attic itself was on the fifth floor and tended to disappear now and then.

     The intruder shouldn’t have been able to get in and out unnoticed.

     “Wait, what about Baby Cady?  We can’t just leave her alone with everything going on around here.”  Avery paused to look back into her room only to see the light shimmer of magic dancing around Arcadia.  With a questioning look, Avery turned back to face her father with a smile twitching at her lips and a glint in her eye; a glint that was reflected in her father’s own mischievous eyes.

     “And you’re supposed to be magic sensitive.  The ward will alert me to when she wakes up or if someone moves her.  Since she’s to small to roll over by herself just yet, there’s no worries about her falling off the bed.  Besides, that mountain of pillows should be enough to keep her snug.”  He smiled at her, ruffling her hair.  “That ward kept even you securely in your bed at night when you were little and I still use it with Jax.  The little devil is even worse than you were.”

     “Hey, I was not that bad.”  Avery waited as her father pulled open the latch on the ceiling above them, her arms crossed and bottom lip sticking out in a childish pout.  When the ladder hit the floor, he turned and nicked her under the chin with his finger.

     “You weren’t exactly an angel either, my girl.  More like the devil disguised as one.”

     “Daddy!”  He laughed again, kissed her forehead and climbed up into the attic with a small sphere of light floating above him.  Avery headed up after him, the need to find the Grimoire back to the fore now that they’d stopped the lighthearted teasing.  

     The attic was huge and filled with junk.  The entrance had to be spelled to keep the little ones from finding their way up and clambering all over it; more than once, one of her smaller cousins had come back down with bumps and bruises from falling off of boxes.  Avery was guilty of sneaking up there herself when she was younger.  She and Hex had broken quite a few things over the years, so there was a lot of glass shards and splinters scattered throughout the room from when they’d try to disguise their vandalism.  “Where exactly is it hidden?”

     Avery followed her father to the center of the room, hopping over boxes when needed.  When he came to a stop, they both stared at the torn up floor; someone had done a number on the wooden boards with both magic and hammer.  The Grimoire was still there, sitting on top of the carnage as if nothing was wrong.  It’s leather cover free of dust, the cloth and parchment pages yellowed at the edges.

     Dread filled Avery’s heart.

     Without having to check, Avery knew that a page was missing from the book.  She didn’t know how she knew, but she just did.  Watching as her father knelt down to pick up the Grimoire, Avery felt angry tears prick her eyes as he placed a hand on the cover and sent a pulse of magic through it.  “What page is missing?”

     “S**t.”  It was one of the rare times Avery had ever heard her father curse around her, which only made everything so much worse.  “Avy girl, I’m going to need you to go down and see if you can wake Nix up.  Now.”

     She wanted to stay, to examine the book herself.  The aching need grew until it felt like her magic was going to burst from her chest and reach out to the book without Avery controlling its behavior, but she turned and descended the ladder once more.  Numbly, Avery ran up the stairs to the next floor and down the extended corridor to Nix and Mia’s bedroom where several of her cousins and her Aunt Millie still lingered.

     No one protested when she gently shook Nix.  He didn’t wake up right away, so Avery mumbled a spell under her breathe that would send a portion of her energy into him.  It wasn’t much, but when Avery shook his shoulder again, Nix opened his blue green eyes.  “Nix...”

     He wasn’t listening to her or the multitude of protests from her cousins when he shoved to his feet and staggered out of the room; Avery followed him out, tucking a hand under his elbow in an effort to steady him a little.  It didn’t do much good.  Nix was damned lucky he didn’t tumble down the stairs at the rate he was attempting.  When they reached the ladder, Avery’s father was just coming down from the attic.

     She took a moment to notice how pale he’d gone, not having been able to see that well in the darkness of the attic.  The luminance spell only did so much.  Nix staggered, his knees giving out beneath him, and fell to the floor with Avery following him as she struggled with the weight of him.  In her father’s hands was the Grimoire, opened to the missing page.  Whoever had taken it hadn’t been careful; part of the second half of the page was still intact, though the rest was gone.

     “What spell was it?”  Avery asked again, dread and curiosity a painful mix warring inside her heart.  She needed to know, needed to know how bad things were about to get.  From experience, Avery knew that even the most powerful spell could be negated by a witch or wizard of high caliber than the original caster, but some spells were far to black to be ended before they even started their reign of terror.  “Daddy?  Nix?”

     Avery struggled to her feet while Nix pushed himself into a sitting position against the wall, not bothering to attempt to stand on unsteady feet.  Unconsciously, Avery wrapped her arms about herself to hide her shaking hands; she was sick and tired of feeling vulnerable every single moment of every day.  The incident at the club meant nothing.  The wizard boy had been low caliber, weak in every sense of the word.  But anything that had to do with the damage to the Grimoire or what happened at the school, that was well and truly out of her reach.  Avery didn’t know how much more she could take.

     Her father didn’t say anything, just closed the Grimoire and handed it over to Nix, who curled his massive body around it as if he could protect from the damage already done.  When Nix made no further move to get up, Travis held out his hand to Avery with magic on his fingertips.  Avery reached for the glowing, molten ball inside her and pulled a wisp of magic down to her tattooed palm before sliding her hand into her father’s similarly tattooed hand.  They stayed like that for a moment, letting their magic merge and build.

     Without any indication from the other, they released each other and the magic they had molded into a spell; a blue and violet tinged mist swirled around Nix’s form, hugging him in tight embrace, before lifting him off of the floor.  For moment, Avery thought the spell would rebel and carry him up the stair to his bed, but soon enough the magic sank into his skin and transported Nix.

     “Daddy?”  Avery let herself be tugged into his side, needing the sense of safety he brought her.  With everything that had happened to her in the past week, Avery was shocked that she could even think straight without collapsing into a heap and struggling to breathe.  She could feel the panic attack constricting her chest, but for the first time since Mr. Soloman had hauled her into his classroom.

     Right as her father was about to answer, Hex made his way up the stairs having just gotten home.  He looked really confused.  Avery was sure that he was sensing the emotions swirling in the air from his empathic abilities, just like Baby Cady had sensed the distress of her parents and her cousins earlier that night.

     Funny how so much can happen in just a couple of hours and yet it felt like an eternity had passed.