“We will find the answers,” Theo soothed. “I am also frustrated by recent events. I have given much thought to the purpose of the demon seal.”
“And?”
“I wonder why it is branded into the bodies of the victims? What is its significance?” he replied thoughtfully. “In my dreams, I have seen the devil’s trap open, and Nathaniel escape his imprisonment. I know the last victim was there with his heart cut out. I suppose the victims could be some sort of sacrifice... some means of raising the demon.”
Olivia thought over his assumptions carefully.
“You could be right,” she concluded. “I don’t know anything about raising rituals except that, like most spells, there are many variations. Each spell is almost tailor-made to the person or situation. In order to understand how the killer plans to raise Nathaniel, we need to know how Hester trapped him in the first place.”
“An impossible task, Hester’s secrets died with her.”
“Maybe not,” Olivia murmured. “Every witch keeps a record of her magic, every spell she has ever written or performed. This record is known as a Grimoire, or sometimes a Book of Shadows.”
“Then we look in Hester’s Grimoire?”
Olivia shook her head. “There’s just one problem. I don’t have it. I have been through every single one of Hester’s journals. She talks about her magic, but there is no mention of Nathaniel or of her Grimoire. I’ve been slowly searching the house, but I haven’t yet come across it. She would’ve hidden it, but after three hundred years, it’s been lost.”
“In my time, when a person died, they were buried with their most prized possession. My father was buried with his Bible. Could Hester have been buried with her Grimoire?”
“It’s certainly possible,” Olivia conceded. “But the thing is, she wasn’t buried in consecrated ground or in a marked grave. As a witch, she would have been placed directly in the earth so that her body could become part of the wheel of life again while her soul passed on to the summer lands.”
“The summer lands?” Theo repeated curiously.
“It’s like heaven, where we meet our loved ones and pass on to the next life.”
“I see.”
“The problem is, I remember my grandmother telling me that Hester was buried in the woods and a tree was planted over her bones. But I have no idea where, the woods stretch for miles around the lake. She could be anywhere. Besides, even if we did find it, we can’t exactly rip out a three-hundred-year-old tree to get to her grave.”
“True.” Theo frowned, pulling her closer. “Perhaps a solution will present itself, but one thing is for certain, we are not going to discover all the answers tonight.”
“I suppose,” she answered quietly as her eyes locked on his.
Unable to help himself, he lowered his lips to hers and kissed her softly. Unlike before, when the fire burned hot and bright, consuming them both, this time it banked, warm and content, and when he took her under, his kiss was soft and sweet, filled with promises that she wasn’t ready to acknowledge.
Suddenly he broke away and turned his head.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Olivia asked in confusion, but even as the words left her mouth, she heard the sound too.
It was a scratching sound, followed by a whimper. Pulling on his jeans and sweater, he disappeared from the room. Olivia grabbed her robe from the nearby chair and wrapped it around her body as she turned to follow him. Padding down the stairs, she could see him at the door, glancing through the peephole. After a moment, he unlocked the door and stepped out onto the porch.
She followed him out into the bitter night air and scanned the nearby darkness, but when the sound came again, directly behind her, Olivia spun around in surprise. She saw a small cardboard box tucked against the side of the house. There was another small whimper and the box shook.
“Olivia, don’t!” Theo warned.
“It’s okay, Theo,” she replied absently, her gaze firmly fixed on the box.
She folded back the open flaps and peered in. A small bundle of fur lay curled up and shivering on a blanket. Carefully picking up the box, she stepped back into the house and headed into the library. Theo cast one more wary look around outside the house then followed her back in, making sure to lock the door.
Olivia dropped down in front of the fireplace, and with one glance, the fire flared up, bathing her with light and warmth. Reaching back into the box, a head popped up and a pair of dark eyes blinked back at her. Gently lifting up the little ball of golden fur, her face broke into a smile. The puppy shivered as she held him close to her chest to give him some of her body heat.
“Poor thing,” she murmured. “He’s freezing.”
Theo dropped down onto the couch close to her and frowned.
“Why would someone leave a dog on your porch in the middle of the night?”
