The Spell of Rosette - Kim Falconer [117]
Please don’t worry about me. I’m like nature too. Resilient. You know this. I’ve taken action to save the Earth, and our line is the key. He is the key. You two have to look after each other, and the pups. I can’t cross over again, nor can Luka. We’d be traced. It would be the end.
Oh, Ruby, be warm. Be well, and safe. Love keeps you in my heart always.
She couldn’t read the signature. It was a scribble, and the ink had smeared. She folded the letter, tempted to take it; Nell might make some sense of the words. But after a moment Rosette put it back and moved away from the desk. There was a spell on this place and though it didn’t feel malevolent, she wasn’t going to put it to the test.
She ran her fingers along the mosaic tiles, stopping at a wall that sported Lupins romping beside long-limbed women on massive grunnies. It looked like a boar hunt or a festival of some kind. She closed her eyes and sank to the cushioned floor. Without another thought of her strange predicament she pulled her coat up to her neck, tucked her arms into its warmth and fell asleep.
Kreshkali flipped the compass shut with her thumb, folding the horary chart into quarters. She put both into her cloak pocket. Could this be it? She’d followed the text, a seventeenth-century work from the most famous astrologer of that time, William Lilly. The instructions were not cryptic in this edition. It was a copy straight from the original work of 1647. She’d memorised the relevant section—the rules for identifying witches.
If the Lord of the ascendant be ruler of the twelfth, and combust the Sun, you must observe of what house the Sun rules, and in what sign and quarter of heaven he and the Lord of the ascendant are, and judge the Witch liveth that way; describe the sun sign as he is, and it represents the person.
The horary chart she’d calculated had Leo rising and Leo on the twelfth, so the Lord of the ascendant was the Sun—as close a combust as you can get. The Sun was in Gemini, in the tenth house, ninety-two degrees of south longitude. She’d checked the Moon’s aspects, and followed her compass here, to this street, to this building, number ninety-two. Inside must be the witch she was after, and if she did have those Gemini characteristics, she’d be sharp, astute and ready to go, no matter what her age, or his. She’d be a communicator, by voice, letter or message, no doubt with a notebook already in her hand. Kreshkali took a breath and let it out slowly. This venture was a risk, but she had to take it.
The building in front of her was bleak and weathered—indistinct from all the others in the long line of street-front apartments. If anything, it was in the worst condition. The rusted downspouts were hanging at strange angles from their brackets, useless for the most part. Water fell in sheets down the walls, as if the building wept. The windows were empty, lifeless, but from somewhere inside, Kreshkali felt she was being watched.
She climbed the concrete steps to the front door, her heart racing. It was dangerous business, stepping outside her turf. Before she found Gaela her survival skills had been honed scalpel-sharp, though now that her plans were finally coming together she felt vulnerable—one witch in one world—and everything rested on this errand’s success. She stood before the metal security door, her throat dry, hands sweating.
This has to be it.
According to the chart, here lived a witch who could tell her all she wanted to know about the source inside ASSIST—the mole she needed to contact to set her plan in motion. Whoever was behind this door, she had to get them onboard. If she couldn’t, or worse, if it