Series 1/Chapter 4: THE SEEING SPELL

The Seeing Spell

Savannah's port-side docks were like a murky world of fog and mists once the sun disappeared beyond the Western horizon. In the cool air of the early summer night the sweet smell of far off Magnolia trees and ocean sea salt filled the air around the wooden docks that ached with the pains of the heaving ocean tide. 

Walking along the misty dock on this evening was the witch going by the mortal name of Morgan Isles  sent by Caspian to reignite the prophecy of giving him an heir to his evil world, an heir that beyond his knowledge still existed in the form of Cressida's son the comatose and bewitched Caleb Craine. 

Morgan breathed in a large dose of sea air and grinned as the moon beamed down a glow of blue light down on her beautiful face. She had her own plans that could derail Caspian's plot altogether. She had a feeling that Caspian himself was tricking her into leading him to Caleb in which case her still unconceived child would be irrelevant--to be the most powerful witch in the universe she needed to conceive a child of her own--and kill Caleb.

Her plan and deceiving and creating a side plot against her leader would prove deadly if he found out  but she had no intention of that happening and she already knew who would be the mortal seed to her child: Nick Falconer. 

As Morgan retied the long sash of her trenchcoated around her waste, a cool wind began to pick up and she turned from the sea she so much loved and began her way down the long wooden docks back to town and rest at the hotel she had checked into.

Her shoes made a tapping sound each time she took a step. It was like the ticking of a clock, each step in synch with the crashing of the waves below her feet and as she turned from the dock on to the desolate slick street of town she began to hear a second pair of shoes behind her.

Each time she heard the shoes behind her clicking a little faster as if to keep up. Each time her heart would skip a beat knowing someone was after her. Oddly it scared her. A chill ran up her spin imagining who it could be. A monster was a monster no matter his mortal status. 

She felt as if she were a lost gazelle, alone in a meadow, waiting for a hungry lion to pounce.

Each step made her that much closer to her near by hotel, each step the person trailing her too made it closer to her body, and suddenly as she passed a empty store she looked to her left and saw the person in the widow's reflection. A shadowy figure dressed in black quickly making it across the street and darting towards her. 

Morgan then took a quick two steps and passed the store and jumped into an alley way where she turned to face the shadow person who was following her and as the shadowy person came into her view, obscured by the shadows of the taller building next the alley way, Morgan lifted her arm and spread all her fingers apart allowing a bright light of energy to escape her hand and burn the air around them until it hit the shadowy person in front of her. 

The shadow person, in a form that seemed more like an animal than a man, grunted in pain and fell to his knees. 

Morgan, a wicked woman at heart, still feared whatever may be chasing her; she knew of the karma that came along with being a witch who'd betrayed many a mortal over decades. As she slowly made her way to the crumpled over man. 

He was moaning on his knees with one hand grasping is stomach. She wasn't sure how he survived the energy burst from her hand and as she got close she could see something familiar on the man's free hand. 

A mark. Caspian's mark.

The man, seeing Morgan's shoes only inches from him leapt to his feat and grabbed Morgan by the throat and pushed her all the way back into the alley and locked her in position up against the brick wall of a building.

She coughed, gasping for air. The man loosened his grip on her throat and as  her eyes cleared from the build up of tears she saw why the man had Caspian's mark. It was Pascal, fresh from the hospital battered and bruised but alive and well.

"Let go of me." Morgan said through a tight choke hold.

"I'd love to just choke the life out of this pretty little body of yours. All the shi..." Pascal paused with a growl in his voice. He snarled at her. There was an animalistic heavy breathing and a coldness in his eyes that glowed yellow and amber like light.

"Let ...go!" She said, still trapped in his beats like grasp, her magic useless on a man protected by Caspian.

Pascal, who was now holding Morgan 5 inches off the ground narrowed his eyes and wished he could kill the woman that did what she did to him all those years ago. Their history was woven together in a tapestry of evil, betrayal and cruelty. She was the witch who trapped Pascal in the world he lived in now. She was the woman who sold Pascal's soul to Caspian. They were once lovers, but she acted as Caspian’s agent, trapping young mortal men into a world where he'd control them and they'd be his army. 

Many other men Morgan trapped were freed or were destroyed by Caspian, but Pascal was a favorite of Caspian's to torment, so he kept him around. 

Pascal, grunted and dropped his ex-Morgan to the ground. 

She quickly got up and rubbed the strain on her neck. Coughed and narrowed her eyes in disgust.

"What are you doing here? Did Caspian send you? He always seems to think he needs to keep me on a short leash. I can do what he asked without a chaperone." Morgan said, stepping into the orange glow of a near by street lamp. 

"Well he doesn't think so. He's unsure that you can do what you've been tasked to do. A witch can't be trusted. Especially a witch like you." Pascal replied.

"Oh poor baby. When are you going to let that go honey? I can't change things now, can I? You are who you are and I think you're a damn good little pet for Caspian. You have been for ages. But who am I to make those kinds of assumptions. Maybe one day he'll get bored of you too and then.... well we all know what happens when he gets bored. What happened to your face?"  Morgan said noting the cuts and bruises from Pascal's brush with a hit and run on  his arrival to Savannah.

Pascal rolled his eyes as his form changed back into something more human.

"I'm not here because I want to be. I have a job to to and I need to make sure you do yours. Did you find the coin or not?" 

Morgana began to circle Pascal like a shark smelling blood in the sea. She sneered at him with a face that showed complete irritation with his being in Savannah. To watch her. To chase her down. To make sure she completed her task.

"I'm doing what I was asked to do. He's got to have more patience." Morgan said, reach into her bag. 

"You'd think you'd know him better by now. Caspian doesn't live in a world where patience or time exists. He wants what he wants when he wants it. So where is the coin? Where have you found it?" Pascal said.

As Pascal spoke, Morgan reached into her bag and pulled out a small vile on a golden necklace. She quickly removed the top of the vile and blew a golden dust in the air that fell on Pascal's face that began to burn him like acid. He screamed and fell to the ground and Morgan watched as the flesh began to burn off of him like the melting fat off of pork loin. He screamed in agony until his body fell in a heap of smoke and steam face down on the ground. 

Morgan snickered with delight. She wanted no one chasing her down and watching her Caspian's own paranoid plot. She waited as the steam from Pascal's flesh dissipated and then went over to his body and flipped him over to see his face that had been eaten away.

His eyes were bloodshot. His teeth were gaping through an empty whole in his cheek. His nose was gone. His tongue was gone. The skin on his flesh burned back revealing his skull.

And as she smiled at her work, a sudden shock his her. The flesh was returning. His cheek was regenerating. His eyes were popping back into their sockets. His lips returned. His face began to reshape into its beautiful and perfect form. The acid dust, bewitched by her own magic had not worked.

Pascal stood back up. The angry and fury burning through his protected veins.

He lunged at her and pushed her up against the stone walls again, his face was now half an inch from her. She wriggled and tried to escape his hold but he was incredibly strong. Caspian made him this way. His soldier. His spy. Her ex lover. 

"Don't Ever. Try that again." Pascal growled.

"I hate you." She said, frustrated that Caspian sent him in the first place. Choosing her ex lover was a clear message from Caspian in the first place.

"Morgana," Pascal said, using her witch name, "Listen to me and listen to me well, I'm going to be watching your tricky ass the whole time you're here. Don't try anything. Don't do anything. Don't make me hurt you because nothing, and I mean NOTHING you do to me will hurt me. Caspian made sure that a witch's power, even yours, can't touch or hurt me. But I can hurt you." Pascal replied in a clear warning to her. 

She looked at him, she knew she was now trapped into finding The Coin and making sure it was returned safely rather than making her own coin with Nick. She wanted the baby of her own to give to Caspian but with Pascal in town she may not be able to double cross him the way she wanted.

"Just do what you are told, and no one, I mean no one will die. How much clearer do you want me to be?" He asked her.

"Fine." She grunted. 

He wanted to kill her. He wanted to so badly destroy the witch who tricked him into love and tricked him into selling his soul many years ago. It was all in hi to take revenge on her but he could not Caspian would do much worse if Morgan Isles was destroyed. 

Pascal released her from his hold and stepped back and warned her again to do what she was sent to do, find the coin, Caleb, and return him. No talk or active search for a new male mortal to make a new child should be done. She had to find Caleb.

With his final warning, Pascal then returned to the street and disappeared into the Savannah fog.

Morgan would do as she was asked. She would find Caleb, that was always apart of this task, but she would not return him. Not in once piece. Her plan was to kill Caleb and bring Caspian her own child making her, the mother of the new coin, the most powerful witch in the universe. 

Morgan thought of what she would do first....creating a baby with Nick then kill Caleb, the light if the street lamp bathed her in a yellow light that made the evil grin her thoughts gave her that more deranged and out of control. 

****

The next morning, the sun had burned off all the late night fog that drenched Savannah in a white mist like the veil of a bride. Caitlyn and Nick were sitting at an outside table at a coffee shop on Broadway Street still stinging from the news of Caitlyn's redacted adoption records at the hospital. 

Her stomach was in knots. Her heart heavy, like an anchor sinking deeper and deeper into an abyss of sadness that she just could not shake. No matter how hard Nick tried.

As the two discussed their next move over coffee, Gabrielle Loures, the secret witch and doctor at the hospital that overheard Caitlyn discussing her records just the night before, was on a run in the park adjecent the coffee shop. She spotted Caitlyn right off. Gabrielle too could not shake what she had heard that night, Caitlyn and Caleb Craine's matching birthdate.

She had yet to tell Cressida of what she discovered; the possibility that the twin coin was in Savannah too...another lethal feather in Caspian's hat should both his missing children be in the same place.

Gabrielle thought for a second as she stopped her jog. She stared at the couple across the street and wondered what she should do next. Her instincts pulled her body to the coffee shop and...

"Hi! I'm sorry to bother you. Dr. Gabrielle Loures. I think I saw you at the hospital last night." 

Caitlyn looked at the stranger funny. Confused even.

"Uh..,yeah. I was. Did we speak?"

"No, no. I just couldn't help overhear that you were looking for adoption papers. I have a lawyer friend here in the city that might be able to help you if you wanted. Sometimes the hospital just needs a little push and shove. I was adopted too, so I understand. What exactly do you know about your birth?" Gabrielle asked, lying about herself to get more info from Caitlyn.

"Uh, not much really. Nothing other than I was born here and in that hospital. My adopted parents really didn't give me a lot of information." Caitlyn replied.

"She hired an P.I. who sent her some information and lead us here. I'm Nick, this is Caitlyn." 

"I see. Well sometimes things can get a little cloudy if the birth parents have chosen to keep things under wraps for whatever reason. I can definitely ask my friend to help push things in the right direction. Do you have a number I can give her to call you?" Gabrielle asked.

"Yeah, of course." Caitlyn said surprised at the gesture from Gabrielle. She then scribbled her cell phone number on a coffee shop napkin.

"Can't you get into some kind of trouble with the hospital?" Nick wondered, his detective brain always in full force. 

"I won't tell if you won't tell." Gabrielle said with a wink, doing all she can to win their trust. 

Once Caitlyn and Gabrielle's hands met with the napkin with the cell number between their hands acting as a bridge, a sudden jolt of energy burst into Gabrielle's brain. It was like an electric shock that sparked images and memories from Caitlyn's subconscious. Things Caitlyn could never remember on her own. It was of her birth. It was the hospital room. Flashes of a doctor's face covered by a mask. Flashes of a nurse rushing off a newborn to a table, then another nurse grabbing another new born. Sounds of babies crying. Sounds of Doctor congratulating the mother. The heart monitor bleep, then a quick flash of Cressida's face, sweaty and tired; The mother. 

"Are you ok?" Caitlyn asked noticing Gabrielle's sudden stillness.

"Yeah! yes! Sorry. A little tired. Maybe too much of a jog. It's getting warn. Listen, thank you for this, Ill hand this off to my lawyer friend and she'll give you a call ok? I'm positive she can help you. We'll be in touch." Gabrielle said in a sort of shaky voice, shocked that she was actually standing in front of Cressida's second child, Caleb's missing twin.

"Thank you. We may be in town for just a few more days, so she can call anytime." Caitlyn replied to Gabrielle who now knew she was on a timetable.

"Got it." Gabrielle replied. 

The good doctor and avid jogger Gabrielle was still shaken from her visions she just had. She tucked the phone number in the side pocket of her leggings and jogged off down the street. But the story she said of her lawyer friend was a lie.... it wasn't to give to a lawyer, it was to give to Cressida, her birth mother, and it all had to happen before Caitlyn and Nick left Savannah. 

"What? What's that face?" Cailyn asked Nick who had a pessimistic look to his handsome mug.

"Huh?" He replied, not knowing his expression.

"I can tell when you have something on your mind. I can always tell." Caitlyn noted.

"That wasn't odd to you? At all? Some random woman comes up to you and said she overheard you at the hospital and suddenly has some lawyer that can help?" Nick replied. 

"Well sort of but at this point we don't have much to go on. What's a little more help going to hurt?" She said.

"But you don't even know her! She just came up to us from the park and said she remembered you from last night. Cait, you've gotta be more careful." Nick said.

"It'll be fine, worry-wart. The worst she can do it have people crank call me all night. Caitlyn joked. "Beside like I said, what do we have to lose?" 

Nick, as usual, felt a twinge of uneasiness about everything around him. His whole body constantly felt needles pricking his skin with anxiety of all that he kept seeing in his mind, much like Gabrielle. In fact, the visions Gabrielle saw registered in Nick's own mind. He did not see what she saw, but he felt the energy go through Caitlyn and into Gabrielle. 

He wasn't sure what it meant, but he knew he was going to see more of Dr. Gabrielle Loures, he just had no idea how much the young hidden witch would impact his life in the very near future. 

Two blocks down from the coffee shop, around the corner from the center of town, Gabrielle stopped to rest from her job. She pulled the paper with Caitlyn's number on it and looked at it. The ink, black and dark floated on the paper like seaweed on waves. She stared at it and let it sink in further that she had just encountered the second coin. Caspian's secret spawn, a link into a dark world that the young woman had no idea she belonged to, and if she were discovered to exist, could spell disaster for them all. 

Gabrielle took a deep breath and replaced the phone number back in her pocket and headed for Cressida Craine's home, Caitlyn's birth mother had to be told her other child had returned and that danger was that much closer. 

****

Over in a shady willow lined neighborhood where Cressida lived she and John Barrett, her closest male friend, sorted through many of Mae's papers in a dimly lit room filled with books from wall to wall. Cressida surrounded herself in the most legendary stories ever told. Her life, in the mortal world, had been one of shrouding herself in secrecy and projecting a personae from a high ranks of Savannah society--that was the extent of her façade. She was indeed well educated, well trained and extremely intelligent.

In fact, her intelligence and elegance was what John found most attractive about her. 

"I had all of Mae's papers brought over yesterday afternoon. She would have really appreciated you going through it all with me." Cressida said as she sat cross legged on the imperial Chinese rug in her study with Mae's papers all around her.

"Of course! I just can't believe she's really gone." John replied sitting down on the floor with her and handing her a mug of coffee.

"The hospital still hasn't told me the cause of her death but, it must of been natural." Cressida added, clearly misleading John from what she really saw happen to Mae by the hand of the evil Caspian.

Mae, Cressida and Gabrielle had escaped Caspian's clutches over 25 years ago. They had successful assimilated into Savannah society without anyone knowing their true nature. Their powerful strengths hidden from view and their lives as a doctor, a socialite and as Mae portrayed, a retired teacher. 

The papers they were sorting through---all faked. Another piece of the disguise crafted by the witches to keep themselves safe from detection. 

"Have you spoken to Khai?" John asked of Mae's son who lived overseas.

"Yes. He can't leave Japan just yet, he said that it's important for us not to wait on any arrangements and that he'd be here soon." Cressida replied of the boy Mae sent to live in Japan with family at 3 years old when Mae escaped Caspian.

"I'm really happy you can be here for him in this time and that Mae knew she could trust you. Everyone needs that person in their lives, Cress." John said touching her hand softly. "You know that I can be that person for you." He added.

Cressida knew for years how much John loved her. In fact she did care for him too. His eyes were kind and warm and her intuitions, be it magic or womanly, could sense he was genuine in his affections. But her baggage was too much. Her life was too dangerous for her to get involved with anyone --much less a mortal man who could be swept up and perverted in the knowledge of what she really was and where she really came from. Her powers, being the mother of Caspian's children was incredible. Cressida never used all of her magic, she kept it hidden deep inside. 

The mortal world and any man she would ever truly love could never see that side of her. Not even John.

"John, I know that..." She began before he interrupted her.

"You're going to tell me that you're strong enough on your own and you never have to count on a man before. I get it I get it." He said with a joke.

"I appreciate you. I really do. Doing all this with me and being here for me through all the things with Caleb ...but I don't think it would be fair of me to pull you into all of this." Cressida said with a vague tone.

"All of what? I'm already all in. I really do love you Cress. And Whatever that means to you it doesn't matter. I'd never push you into something that you didn't want. But you still have me in your corner. Forever." John added.

"You're amazing. I don't think it's fair for you to just linger around if I don't feel I'm on the same page." Cressida said.

"Cress, listen to me. You're not getting rid of me, ok? I can love you in many capacities. I also want to be sure you're ok and that you don't feel alone. Gabrielle is busy at the hospital and Caleb needs you to be strong, and I want to  be able to be strong for you. No matter what." John said.

Cressida knew it in her heart that maybe she did need someone from outside her own world. It made her feel normal too, his love, his touch, even if she knew in her heart of hearts she could not give him more than a close friendship. She grabbed his hand again and squeezed. Their friendship was important to her, and maybe one day, when all of it, the dangers, the darkness, the terrible lies, when it was all over they could perhaps be together like he wanted. In love. 

Late that evening, when Cressida was alone and all of Mae's papers were sorted and ready for her funeral in the morning, Cressida watched over her son. The sleeping spawn of the evil Caspian. She looked over him, his perfect skin his beautiful face. His perfect lips. He was her son. Her own flesh and blood and she did love him. She couldn't help love him. He was part of her too. 

She took a deep breath and left Caleb's room and walked into her study again where Mae's paper's were stalled away in boxes in the corner. She smiled at them thinking of Mae, the coven mother. The woman who saved her and saved Gabrielle and protected them. She was like a real mother to her. A woman who nurtured her and cared for her all her life. 

Then suddenly, one of the books on Cressida's many book shelves left from the shelf and fell to the floor opening to a particular page. It startled her even more when she realized which of her thousands of books had fallen to the floor. 

Her spell book.

The book was opened, to a spell called THE SEEING. The page lifted as if a light breeze was pulling it up at the corner. Up and down. Up and down. 

Cressida walked over to the book and picked it up. The spell of THE SEEING was one that would show the person who cast the spell the truth of a certain matter. The truth of something that had occurred. It would let the person who cast the spell SEE the truth without any cloud of secrecy or deceit. 

It was Mae. Mae was telling her to use this spell. To See the truth of her death.

Cressida picked up the book. She sat on the floor with her legs under the coffee table and the book opened to the page Mae had opened it. 

Cressida put her hands on the pages and closed her eyes. She let the power within those pages infuse into her hands. A large burst of energy began to fill the air around Cressida and into her skin and into her body like a fire raging into her body and when she opened her eyes again they were like to hot red coals seeing into the pages of the SEEING SPELL. 

In her vision, she saw Mae in her house. Her face was tight with pain. Her skin pale and fearful. A hand around her throat. And as the red hot coals of Cressida's eyes followed the arm she saw that the power energy of Caspian Casador was choking Mae, confirming he was the one that killed her. 

And with the truth now confirmed, the energy from the book suddenly left Cressida's body and immerged as a ball of light in front of her suddenly bursting into a shape of a person.

Then, like a ball of sun dissolving in thin air, appeared the spirt of Mae Watanabe. 

"Mae!!" Cressida screamed leaping to her feet.

She reached for her but Mae pulled back. 

"You can't." Mae said. "I'm untouchable. But I'm here. I really truly am." Mae added.

"You look so alive. Your body. It's like I can touch it. You don't seem like a spirit or ..." Cressida said noting Mae's life like appearance. 

"You've opened the See Spell like I had hoped. You've created me again as a life spirit. I'm here just as you are but ...lifeless. Powerless. And I cannot leave your home." Mae said with frown. 

The See Spell had show Cressida the truth and also regenerated Mae's sprit into body form once again. It was as if she were alive and well but untouchable and unable to leave the space in which she was recreated. 

"Cressida, there is an urgent issue. You saw Caspian in the vision. You saw how he has discovered me. He know where we are. He knows how to find us. And no doubt he has already dispatched someone....or something to come for us. We do not have time. We must act, Cressida. We must act before he finds Caleb." Mae said in her new spirt body.

"What should I do? His power is too much for me, even with what I can control and what I can do. The only thing I can think of that may give us a chance is waking Caleb. But his fury, the darkness within him may be too much. Its a risk." Cressida replied, her heart pounding in her chest with worry.

"Waking Caleb to use against his father isnt just risky, Cressida, its dangerous. Caleb would not be able to control himself after all these years in his sleep. It is unpredictable." Mae warned.

"What should I do?" 

"Wake someone else. Someone who we can trust. Someone who no longer lives among us and who we once loved and welcomed in our circle." Mae explained.

"Someone we trusted?" Cressida asked confused.

Mae had one person in mind that she requested for Cressida to "wake"...someone that only a few years back they had low to enter into their coven circle. This person was the only person that knew their secret outside the coven. But this person was dead.

"Who?" 

Mae walked over to a picture frame on one of the shelves filled with books. It was of Gabrielle and her former boyfriend Ashe, a man who died 4 years ago in an accident.

"Read the SEEING SPELL again, Cressida, it requires you to open the ground and lift one of our trusted back into the circle. Ashe.....Ashe will act as our hunter. To Hunt those who are here for Caspian and destroy them before they come for us." Mae explained.

"Why Ashe?" Cressida wondered.

"His soul is clean. And he already knows who we are. His purity in death is the only thing that will protect us and he, and only he can kill those who come for us. He is our hunter."

"How will I explain this to Gabrielle, how will she feel with Ashe back??" Cressida wondered of how traumatizing it would be to see her dead former boyfriend back on earth.

"For now, keep this away from her. Complete the SEEING Spell and wake Ashe from his death sleep before the next moon and save us, Cressida. Save us all from Caspian. We do not have time to waste. I can already feel Caspian's minions on this plane....he's coming for us. And if we don't destroy them first, there is no telling the destruction that will occur." Mae explained.

The seriousness of Caspian's return was settling in. Cressida closed the spell book and Mae's spirit, vanished, leaving Cressida alone in the house thinking of her herculean task on the next night, she'd have to complete the SEEING spell that would bring a man back from the dead.