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"The Phoenix is the perfect example of how the first step towards immortality is death."
Josie Wright has spent the last four years missing her best friend, Isaac Lahey. But now she's back in Beacon Hills, about to discover an incr...
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" A wise witch knows ... the shadows come from the light."
- Dacha Avelin
TWO MONTHS LATER
Isaac stared at the way Josie moved gracefully around the room with a dumb grin on his face. They were in the 'witchy room' in her house. Josephine placing a map of Beacon Hills on the table in the middle of the room and then placing a wooden bowl over it next to the tiny dagger she always carried around.
"Will this work?" The werewolf asked from his seat in front of her.
"Hopefully, if not then it means we're dealing with more dangerous magic." She explained before snapping her fingers, all the candles in the room lighting up immediately.
"I don't think Ill ever get used to that." She chuckled at his comment. "But, what do we do if it doesn't work?"
"Then ..." She looked reluctant to answer but ended up sighing and telling him the truth. "Then we'll have to ask a Cassandra."
Isaac frowned, not knowing why se had said 'Cassandra' instead of 'Mother' like she used to. "Why did you suddenly call her that?"
She chuckled shaking her head before facepalming. "Sometimes I forget you don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to magic." She smiled at his tilted head. "My mother's a Cassandra, okay?"
"Yeah, her name's Cassandra."
"No, silly." She rolled her eyes. "She's a Cassandra. In a witch coven, 'a Cassandra' is the one who is born with a special ability, a gift. She can see glimpses of the future." A grin rested on her lips when his jaw fell. "The birth of a new Cassandra is announced by the previous one. They are supposed to help protect the coven, foresee the dangers to come their way. Of course, there are things they don't see."
Like the Hale fire, both of them thought. The memory of the way her mother had drowned in her guilt for not preventing the death of her loved ones flashing through Josie's eyes.
"There's supposed to be one in each coven. But, like you already know, coven's can break. People can die or simply decided not to form it anymore, just like Erica and Boyd decided to leave the pack." Isaac looked down at her words, they both felt a sting in their chest at the thought of their lost friends. "It leads to unusual formations, like the Striga Coven. My mother brought me there for my 'early awakening of magic' because they have seven Cassandra's. It was the only way she could've performed that spell. A witch is more powerful when she's part of a coven, pretty much like werwolves and packs."
He took a few seconds to process the information before voicing the doubt that appeared in his mind. "You never told me what that 'ritual thingy' was about."
She stiffened before shaking her head. "S'not important." She tried to dismiss it but it only raised his suspicion. "We have to focus on getting Erica and Boyd back."
Without another word added to the conversation, Josie grabbed the knife and extended her hand to Isaac. The werewolf showed her his palm where she made a deep cut, he fisted it and allowed the blood to fall into the bowl until it healed. Josie followed and made a cut in her palm, letting the liquid drip into the wooden bowl. Using her other hand, she extended it to Isaac.
"Give me their personal objects." She asked and he complied taking Erica's necklace and Boyd's keys out of his pocket.
The witch fisted her wounded hand to make more blood came out of it, hissing slightly at the ardor it caused her. Once the bowl was filled to the middle, she dropped both items in it.
With her fingertips submerged in the blood, she closed her eyes and began to chant 'sanguine reveals et ostende mihi', then she took out the necklace and the keys, holding one in each hand.
She allowed drops of blood to fall from the objects and onto the map, the drops gathering and beginning to move through the paper. They both followed them with their eyes until the collected blood began to spread without direction, staining a large area of the map.
"No, no, no, no. Shit." Josie closed her eyes in frustration.
"What happened? What does this mean?" Asked Isaac.
"Means that they're being hidden by someone. A witch or maybe a druid." She focused her attention back in the map. "At least we now know they're somewhere in the abandoned area of town."
"The old part of Beacon Hills, where the ghosts live."
She chuckled at his comment, snapping her fingers so her hands were clean and then she closed her eyes to cast a non-verbal spell that closed the wound on her hand.
"Why don't you let me take your pain away?" Isaac asked after a few minutes of silence where he just watched her clean up everything.
The thought had been bugging him ever since the night they saved Jackson. The expression she gave him, the way she jerked her arm back, alarmed by the idea of Isaac taking her pain away. Now that he saw her wound closing, it came back to him. Now that they weren't helping Jackson learn how not to kill people during the full moon since he left for London, he could gather the courage to ask.
"I just, don't want you to." She shrugged avoiding his gaze.
"You know I know when you're lying." He touched his ear with his index finger and she sighed in defeat.
"It's not good when a wolf takes the pain from a witch. It isn't like with humans, other wolves or animals in general. When you take a witch's pain, you're also indirectly absorbing part of her magic." She placed her hand on top of his. "It's not like you're draining me, only a siphoner could do that, but think of it like overloading a lightbulb. If it receives too much electricity, it will explode."
"So ... I would explode if I took your pain away?" She laughed at his dumb question making him smile.
"No. But you could go into shock or worse. It would give you a sensory overload and, with your already enhanced abilities, it would end up in you having a seizure of sorts."
Both of them looked down when she said the word 'seizures'. Erica. They missed her greatly. Josie was worried about losing her magical connection to her and Boyd, while Isaac was hurting at not having his pack siblings with him.
"Don't worry, we'll find them." He whispered in her hair as he pulled her into a hug.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and placed her ear against his chest, calming down at the sound of his heartbeat.
"Yeah. It'll just takes us months to explore every building there."
"Better than nothing." He sighed, leaving a kiss in her forehead.
She leaned her head back and gave him a small smile before bringing her lips to his own.
