The Bewitching - Blurred Lines - Book 3

Chapter 2 - A Glimmer of Hope

Annette sat at the desk in the dimly lit room in the back of her shop. In front of her sat one of the thickest books ever written. Its pages were so old that she had to be careful lest they crumble as she turned from page to page glancing through what had been recorded since almost the beginning of time.

A deep sigh escaped her lips as she looked up, removing her glasses to rub her eyes. The last few months had been hard on her, and she had spent long hours cooped up at this very desk. Seldom did she leave or go outside. What little contact she had was usually with Dantes, and it wasn't often she found information worth relaying to him.

What she was doing was vital though. As angry as she was at Elyssa for casting a spell from the cursed book, a part of her also understood. She just wished that Elyssa had shared her plans before going through with it as maybe they could have found another way. She shook her head. Who was she kidding? There was no other way, not without time on their side, and they never seemed to be that fortunate.

Then there was her mom, Alicia. At first she hadn't noticed it, but things had begun to change a few weeks after the battle with Aine. It began with her mom becoming unresponsive for moments here and there, as if she went off into some daydream. Initially Annette thought nothing of it, assuming it was age or the stress of battling demons that had begun to get to her.

There was something not quite right about it though, something dark and foreboding about the look on her face and the way her body would stiffen up. Tobias, their dog like familiar, noticed it too as he'd hide under the table and growl whenever it happened. That should have been Annette's first clue that something wasn't right. If only she had taken it more seriously sooner.

Those brief moments of distraction and distance soon started to last much longer, and Alicia's hours of sleep drastically changed. Not long after Annette first noticed the issue, Alicia began sleeping all day and at night she'd stand like a zombie in front of the window staring out into the night sky.

Annette had tried using magic to diagnose Alicia's condition and found nothing. She ran through a witch's normal checks for demon possession and even those showed Alicia to be okay. There had to be an answer though, she just didn't know what it was. She could only assume something had happened to Alicia when they were trapped by the stalking shadows Aine had sent after them. Something in that dark world must have gotten to her. The question was what.

Dantes knew a bit about those other worlds, and the passages between them. He had come from one himself as he had recently revealed. What he had known though was of little help but at least it was a start. Annette had scoured her library for books that might reveal more, and Dantes had done the same with his own resources.

It had taken a few weeks but eventually, buried deep within her library, Annette had found the book she was now reading through as quickly as she could without destroying it. She wasn't quite sure where the book came from, or how it got into her library, but it was old and filled with information that had been long lost and forgotten.

If there was anything that could help Elyssa or her mom, it had to be in this book. The problem was that large parts were written in lost languages that Annette had to translate, and the pages were so fragile that they'd crumble if she turned them too quickly. She had already lost several pages to impatience. Hence, going through the book had been a long and tedious endeavor, and she had only touched on a fraction of what it contained.

Carefully, she turned another page just as Dantes came through the door. The light from outside blinded her for a second as she covered her eyes.

"What happened to knocking?"

"Sorry. I came as fast as I could. You found something?" asked Dantes.

"Maybe. Assuming I translated it right."