Strega (Strega Series) (10 page)

"You are in danger, Jay."

Mr. Whitmore rifled through a peculiar book on his desk. I caught a glimpse of its dark cover, which had a large symbol on it. As he flipped its pages, I saw that it was a collection of pages handwritten in black ink and bound together by a copper wire.

"Here it is," he said with a sigh of relief, keeping his hand firmly on the page as he looked up at me.

"Jay, do you believe in magic?" he asked me suddenly. I didn't know how to answer this question. Until recently, I never really thought much about magic, the supernatural, any of it. I was a science girl. A concrete, black and white, see it to believe it kind of person. I read plenty about ancient myths and superstitions. None of it was real. It couldn't be. But for the first time in my life, I had no explanation for the things I'd seen.

"To be honest with you, I don't know what to believe right now."

"Jay, I completely understand how you feel. What you are going through is something I can relate to all too well. I truly believe we've been brought together for a reason."

My forehead crinkled as I stared at him.

"I want to tell you something," he said, adjusting himself in his seat and resting his forearms on his desk. "Something I've never told anybody else."

He let out a long, exaggerated breath before he began.

"In early April, I took a drive north along the coast. I was feeling trapped after such a long winter and I was eager for spring. It was rainy and foggy, I remember, but it was about 50 degrees—the warmest day we'd had. I kicked off my shoes, rolled up my jeans, and stepped into the water. It was still as cold as ice, but the waves rolled in and I felt my winter shell begin to crack. I sat in the sand alone, just me and the wide open ocean. It was pure heaven. Rejuvenating. Peaceful. Normal.

"Anyway, I grabbed something to eat at a little sandwich place and kept driving along the shore. I wasn't quite ready to go home yet. I passed the antique shops, restaurants, and waterfront motels, and after a few miles I came across a little bookstore. I was thrilled at the thought of finding a good read
—something that would help me through the rusty fits and starts of spring.

"It was just a little hole in the wall kind of place. The smell of old stale used books and musty trapped ocean air hit me as soon as I walked in. It was tiny. Only five or six bookshelves. It was quiet too. Only one or two other people, and the woman behind the cash register by the door. I still remember what she looked like. Silver bracelets on her wrists. Long hair flowing down her back. She smiled at me in a peculiar way as I walked in. I didn't think much of it at the time, but there was something strange about her. I still believe she had something to do with what happened next.

"As I wandered through the small store, I wasn't looking for anything in particular. I just hoped that something might pop out and grab my attention. And then it did. Along the far wall, I saw it. A book with a drawing of a horned god on the cover.
Etruscan Roman Remains
, it was called.

"As I thumbed through the pages, I discovered a collection of ancient pagan practices and beliefs thought to have belonged to the Etruscans. The subject piqued my interest. I'd just received an email from my alumni mailing list inviting me to join a small, privately funded archaeological excavation of a site in northern Italy, thought to contain the remains of a small Etruscan village dating back to 500 B.C.E. That's where I met Jack. Invitations like this come through all the time and I don't usually travel for them, but I seriously considered this one.

"I got to the counter to pay, and the peculiar woman with the bracelets on her wrists reached under the counter for a brown paper bag. She unfolded it and placed the book into it, and then handed it to me along with my receipt. I peeked into the bag at my new book, excited to dive into it right away. I drove back to the beach and parked to do a bit of reading before heading back home. I reached in to grab the book out of the bag and I felt something else inside. Something that was not in there a moment before. I pulled my book out and placed it on the seat. Then I reached back in and pulled out another book."

"The first thing I noticed was the symbol branded on the leather cover. The triquetra. An ancient symbol representing all things threefold."

Keeping one hand on a particular page inside, he closed the book to show me the symbol on the cover.

"What was inside was even more fascinating. Parchment pages were filled with images of the most beautiful and terrifying creatures, and text handwritten in a language that I did not recognize.

"I put the book back in the bag and sped home. I was up all night trying to make sense of the text. I suspected that it was written in the Etruscan language, but I knew that virtually no Etruscan documents survived history. Like all remnants of Etruscan culture, written material was sought and destroyed by the Romans...cast into fire and burned."

I gulped, recalling again the book from the library and its pages disintegrating before my eyes, like they were being consumed by fire.

"The Romans quite literally wiped the Etruscans out of existence. They absorbed much of their culture, and rebranded it as their own, which is why the Etruscans are rarely credited for their significant, lasting contributions to society. Ah, Rome gets all the glory. But I digress...

"Archaeological finds rarely yield written materials
—only fragments, short lines, or single words have ever been found, mostly on funerary urns or sculptures. Historians have been trying for more than a century to understand the Etruscan language. There just isn't enough written material available as a source of study, and it takes a dedicated historian to even attempt decoding a lost language like this. For all intents and purposes, it was impossible that this document even existed, but there I was, looking right at it.

"That night, I fell asleep studying the book, and I had a dream. In that dream, I began to read it. And I know this doesn't make any sense, but in my dream I understood every word."

Mr. Whitmore stared out the window, lost for a moment in his thoughts. With a defeated exhale, he turned back to me and continued.

"When I woke up the next morning, the book was gone. I searched everywhere for it
—on the floor, under the sofa cushions, in my desk—but it was gone. I know I didn't dream up its existence. I had it in my hands! Before I ever fell asleep, I thumbed through every page, studied the pictures, and read the text even though I didn't understand a word of it."

"I thought I was nuts. At first, I tried to blame it all on a dream to maintain my sanity. But too many things confirmed that it wasn't. I went to that bookstore. I had the mileage on my car to prove it. I stopped at the beach to read it. I still had sand on my floor mats. I tried to forget the whole thing, but it just kept eating at me all day until I couldn't ignore it anymore. I drove back up to the bookstore. I pulled into the parking lot. But the store was gone. I was sitting in an unpaved lot. I drove up and down that stretch of road searching for the store, doubting myself, hoping I'd mistaken its location. But I knew I didn't. It was just gone. As if it never existed."

I stared at him blankly. I didn't know what to say. A part of me wished he'd just told me that I needed professional help. Anything. But not this.

"As soon as I got home, I started to put together this book here," he said, signaling to the book with the symbol on the cover. "I tried to recreate what I saw in that dream. All the text that I was miraculously able to understand. I wrote down everything I could remember. Drew every image I could recall. Magical beings both good and evil. Spirits. Gods. Demons. Potions. Spells. Summoning rituals. But I couldn't remember everything. So much is still missing."

His eyes were wild as he spoke. I don't think he'd blinked for ten minutes.

"Since that day, I have done more research on the Etruscans than I did any subject in grad school. But the information I have been looking for isn't in the textbooks. The only place it exists is with the Strega that have survived history. That is why I went to Italy for that dig, though I only spent a few days
at the site. For weeks, I traveled from village to village, searching for anyone that might know something and, more importantly, might actually share it with me. I went to fortunetellers, seers, the oldest and wisest people in these villages, searching for the keepers of the Old Ways. I chased whispers, rumors, gathered scraps of a bigger picture, but in the end I left Italy with more unanswered questions."

He leaned in toward me, and I swallowed hard, realizing then that my throat and the rest of my body was frozen stiff.

"Strega were considered one of the greatest forces of good before the days came when they had to hide their magic. They kept private books. The book that came to me was one of them, I am sure."

He pointed to the words written on the cover just below the symbol.

"
Libra dei Segreti
. Book of Secrets. It was clearly a book of magic—an early version of a Grimoire or a Wiccan Book of Shadows. Its pages revealed a rising force of darkness that threatened to consume the world. In the remote villages of Tuscany, they still speak of this evil with terror in their eyes. It was never vanquished. And the only reason it has not destroyed us all is because something out there is fighting it. Strega are still fighting it."

Placing his fists firmly against his desk, Mr. Whitmore locked eyes with me and leaned in as he carefully continued.

"This book came to me for a reason, Jay. Now today, you come here with this athame. I know it's all connected. I think the Strega are surfacing again. And if I am right, then their enemies are not far behind."

I looked at Mr. Whitmore and for a moment I truly wondered if we were both just plain crazy. He picked up the athame again and traced the three symbols with his finger.

"These symbols..." he mumbled. "Like I said, magical tools are commonly forged with symbols that represent sacred spirits, to call upon in a moment of great need. More than anything, I wish I knew what these represent."

He turned the book toward me and opened it to the page he'd been saving. He pointed emphatically at an illustration of a blade, and placed the athame beside it. They were identical, right down to the symbols etched upon them.

"You asked me how I know this blade belongs to a Strega. This is how, Jay. I saw it in that book. I drew it from memory, with as much detail as I could. My greatest regret is that I cannot for the life of me remember what was written on that page."

We both sat back in our chairs. I was nowhere near where he was in terms of understanding any of this, but if there was anyone I could talk to about all the bizarre things I'd seen and experienced, it was him. So I did. The book in the library. The tree consumed by flames. All of it.

"Mr. Whitmore, you know that everything we've told each other...well, it's just crazy, right? What happened to you. What is happening to me. It's all impossible. It's not reality."

"I know, Jay. It's crazy. But we are on this path for a reason. And at least now we are not alone."

"I feel like my world is turning upside down. I don't even know what to grab onto anymore."

"We can't run from it." He smiled, somehow knowing that was exactly what I wanted to do. "It will find us no matter where we go, as we've both experienced."

Through the small window in Mr. Whitmore's office, I noticed the sun sinking deeper on the horizon and the darkness of twilight creeping in. I was more than done with our conversation. I'd endured more than I thought possible, and my body and mind begged for it to stop.

"Let me walk you to your car," he said. "You have to be careful. Whatever followed you last night is probably after the athame."

"
Whatever
?" I asked, noting his strange choice of words. I waited for reassurance, but I didn't get any.

"Jay, there's a bigger picture here that you don't see yet," he said emphatically.

"What do you mean,
whatever
?" I asked again.

"Demons, Jay," he said reluctantly.

My mind went blank. I couldn't fathom that anything we had talked about was actually real. Especially this.

"Demons?"

"I know it's a lot, Jay. Please, just be careful. Go home and try to get some sleep. We will talk more in the morning," he said, resting his hand on my shoulder as he walked me to the door.

"Would you mind if I kept this tonight? I'd like to crack these symbols if I can. I haven't made much progress with them, but now with more than just a rough sketch to go on, I hope to. These symbols might be the key to understanding all of this."

"Sure," I said, relieved to hand it over to him.

"Don't worry," he added. "I will lock it in my safe before I leave tonight."

I wasn't worried. Part of me hoped that he'd lose it and I'd never have to see it again.

"Thank you, Jay. You have validated all of my experiences and all of my research. This is a critical piece of a much bigger picture, which I promise I will do my best to uncover."

As I opened the door, he offered one last time to walk me to my car.