No, the room wasn’t living up to my intentions. Perhaps I’d put the negative energy here myself.
Paloma handed me a paste made from elderberries to smear over Ivory’s eyes, urging me to move forward with the ritual. This was new territory for me. What if the ignisvisum didn’t work? We had no backup plan.
My confidence ebbed. “Everyone will ask where she went.”
“I doubt anyone will be surprised,” Charles said, “considering the way she’s been acting.”
“Stay with me?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
He nodded.
Paloma joined me in the opening rites to cast the circle and assisted me with a protection spell. A globe of electricity surrounded us as we kneeled in front of the altar. Paloma filled the scrying bowl with chips of driftwood.
“Only you will see the images,” Paloma said, “and only you will be able hear her thoughts.”
I swallowed and nodded, then threw a lit match in my scrying bowl, the wood catching fire and heating my nose and cheeks. I added a cinnamon stick to aid in psychic vision and, using a small cloth, wiped acacia oil across my forehead to strengthen the effect.
Until that moment, reality could have been denied. Now I had to accept what I set out to accomplish.
“Blazing fire as you dance, give me now the secret glance. Call upon my second sight, make me psychic with your light.”
In a quiet murmur, I repeated the words like a mantra, my eyelids growing heavy as I gazed into the fire.
Images from Ivory’s mind displayed like a mirage on the rippling air above the embers, and my clairaudience soaked in all her thoughts and every memory and sense of emotion she’d once experienced.
My heart tightened as the air around our circle filled with black smog and the spirits of the deceased, alive during the imprinting of Ivory’s memories, struggled to break through our protective barrier. How many of them were we pulling from the afterlife? How many were Morts—spirits of elementals that had never passed on?
I focused on my chant, tuning out the crackle of fire and the moans of spirits, watching the flicker of images in the scrying bowl. A dull pain swelled in my chest as millions of words, stretched over hundreds of years, spilled from her thoughts.
There she was. Ivory—though she thought of herself as Sarah. This wasn’t Colorado. This wasn’t the world I’d grown up in. Ivory was searching for dry wood and kindling—anything that might catch fire and warm her small home.
A few feet into the woods, a woman sat leaning against a tree. Long, blonde tendrils of hair hid her face, her white bonnet crumpled and dirty.
This was Ivory’s life before she was turned, not just her memories of me. This wasn’t what I’d called for with my spell, but backing out might mean losing my only chance for answers.
I waited another moment, willing the memories to fast forward, willing the ignisvisum to skip past these moments and arrive at her memories of me—the memories I needed to see.
Despite my efforts, the images continued to scroll. The woman leaning against the tree turned, the moon shining off the tears that soaked her cheeks. She and I could have passed for sisters. I nearly pulled back, determined not to steal memories that had nothing to do with me, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from this woman. In my heart, I knew who she was before Ivory even spoke her name.
“Elizabeth?” Ivory asked.
I should have looked away, but this was possibly my only chance at discovering what happened to Elizabeth’s body…my only chance of gaining complete control over my clairaudience, of finding a way to protect myself and those I loved from the darkness in the elemental world.
It’s often said experiences make a person who they are. But as I stared into the ignisvisum bowl and sent my clairaudience out to Ivory, I soon realized it was the memories of another that would forever reshape who I was to become.
Chapter 21
IVORY’S MEMORIES
Salem, Massachusetts Colony, 1692
THE SKY DARKENED from indigo and ochre into a deep shade of amethyst. The remaining flecks of sun lent a golden warmth to the sepia-washed clearing. Ivory stumbled to a halt, then stepped closer, but Elizabeth remained seated in front of the tree.
She dropped her face into her hands. “Please go along.”
Ivory placed the maple wood she’d gathered on the forest floor and hurried to Elizabeth. “What troubles you?”
“Go.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Something evil has come.”
The sadness in Elizabeth’s eyes—a beautiful sadness that touched Ivory’s heart—created a flutter in her stomach. Ivory held the betraying emotion at bay.
“Don’t let the town’s talk frighten you,” she said. “They’re just stories.”
Elizabeth rocked slightly. “I can hear things. They will see, and they will kill me.”