The Hopi Mask

CHAPTER ONE

“PUNCH BUGGY BLUE!” Patrick exclaimed as he drilled his fist into my right biceps.

Though fastened securely in my seat, I sailed sideways, into the car door, and my head thumped the window.

“C’mon!” I squawked.

He’d startled me out of a perfectly lovely dream. I was flying, not on a broom, but with arms outstretched as I soared over the Arizona desert plains, with the same freedom I enjoyed during my astral travels. Come to think of it, the intense fogginess to which I’d awakened made me suspect I had been astral traveling; but the pain radiating in my arm, the result of Patrick’s punch, kept me from exploring the reason behind my journey. My focus was trained on my wound, where a deep purpling bruise spread under my skin and merged with all the others he’d given me, some of which felt like they’d reached the bone.

“Such fun!” Mom hooted, flashing me a humored grin in the rearview mirror. Why should she care if Patrick beat me to a bloody pulp during his ridiculous travel game? A wall of fabric-covered steel stood between his beefy fist and her. She was safe riding shotgun next to Gramps, who was too busy crooning along to Frank Sinatra to intervene on my behalf. I sat cramped in the back seat with Patrick, whose oversized frame took up three quarters of the seat. “How many is that?” Mom asked me with pep.

I rolled my eyes, and droned. “Seventy. Three.” The same number of times she’d congratulated herself for coordinating our cross-country drive. We were on our way to Northeastern Arizona to visit Patrick’s parents, who lived on the second mesa of the Hopi reservation. Mom considered our little holiday a gift for Patrick, who’d saved my life on Christmas morning. The Dragon King’s blood had barely dried on my hands, I still felt weak after having narrowly escaped death, yet she’d plucked me from the Block Island Medical Center before my scheduled release so that we could “share in Patrick’s joy as he reconnected with his Native American roots.” He’d been asking us to take this trip with him for years, but Mom’s “busy schedule” had never allotted us the time.

Another Volkswagen Beetle zoomed by, this one yellow. I saw Patrick’s fist hurtling in my direction and thrust out my hands to block his latest punch. Wham! He nailed both of my palms in one blow.

“Shit, Patrick!” I shook out the burn.

“Watch it,” Mom snapped. She liked my foul mouth about as much as she liked Aldred, her former flame and my father. He’d been ringing her cell phone since the moment we left Block Island. He’d only granted me Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to spend with my family in the contemporary world. This after having acquired my promise to return to the Kingdom of Adehya, my Wiccan home, by midnight on December twenty-sixth.

That was yesterday.

I think what really bothered Aldred was that he hadn’t a clue where my mother was taking me—yet. He would pinpoint our location in time. A powerful warlock, with a nasty penchant for meddling in my private affairs, he often employed the Empire’s intrusive magical devices to record my every move. Judging by his increasing desperation to speak with my mother to uncover my whereabouts, his methods weren’t yielding him his desired results.

“Punch buggy red, with a black top!” Patrick called out. His fist powered into my battered arm, and the pain rippled through my entire body. Even my teeth ached.

“Dammit!” I hissed.

Mom swung around to face me. “Abigail Stone, keep cursing, and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” I asked, arching boldly forward. Despite the Council’s offer to reinstate her powers after I’d accidentally, and illegally, recovered mine, she maintained she wanted nothing to do with Wicca, mostly because of Aldred. She swore she was perfectly happy milling around Block Island, managing our family’s Inn, far away from anything otherworldly.

Her eyes narrowed at me in a way to warn that magic or no magic, she was still my mother, and I was still a minor. She had the power to make our impromptu holiday as miserable for me as she liked. No doubt she would make good on her word if I didn’t smarten up and behave.

Grudgingly withdrawing from our spat, I slumped in my seat and scooted away from Patrick to gain some personal space. Unfortunately, his six-foot four-inch, two hundred-eighty pound frame responded accordingly. His thighs oozed outward, pinning me to the door.

Unreal…

“Look, a trucker!” Patrick exclaimed as an eighteen-wheeler roared past our elfin Escort. With a downward tug of his arm, he signaled the driver to honk his horn, and an earsplitting merrrrrmp! blared in reply.

Patrick whooped.

At twenty-two, Patrick wasn’t an average guy, which is why I found him so endearing. He had Down syndrome. He was also clairvoyant, the sole grandson of his Hopi tribe’s late medicine woman, a true Hopi Indian. More importantly, he was the most thoughtful and giving human being I’d ever met, my nearest and dearest friend. My family and I had unofficially adopted him six years ago, when his parents left Block Island for their native home. While Patrick adored his parents, he couldn’t bear to leave the only home he’d ever known and the only friend he’d ever had—me—behind. So Gramps proposed we take him in. At first, the Robertsons refused Gramps’ offer with the explanation they didn’t accept handouts. This inspired Gramps to offer Patrick a job as our stableman, allowing Patrick to earn his keep and a small income. Gramps promised the Robertsons that Patrick would be well looked after while gaining some independence by living in a cozy suite in the rear of Stone Manor Stables. The Robertsons accepted Gramps’ conditions, and Patrick has lived with us ever since, jetting off to Arizona on occasion to visit his parents. Until now, he’d always traveled alone.

“This is the best vacation ever!” Patrick’s attempt at a fist pump clocked me in the chin.

“Seriously?” I massaged my latest injury. Yet again, I’d suffered another blow for his serious lack of self-control, and our extreme deprivation of space. “Why did we have to take the Escort?” I whined. “The Cadillac would have been way more comfortable.”

“The Escort is stick shift,” Mom reminded me. “Grams can’t drive stick. She needs a car when she visits the mainland, so we left her the Cadillac.”

I scoffed a laugh. The idea of Grams cruising the mainland in a boat-sized luxury vehicle was as preposterous as me parading around in a flamboyant dress. Neither happened unless we were forced. Thankfully, those occasions were far and few between. As sure as I was a tomboy, Grams was a homebody. Ever since the Council had barred my family from practicing magic, eighteen years ago, she stayed put. She didn’t care for ordinary means of travel. Neither did I now that I’d experienced the ease of passing from place to place with the simple turn of an Enchanted Key. To me, travelling by magical means was far more agreeable than putting along potholed roads inside an old jalopy, with a door handle stuck in my side.

The glove compartment groaned and swelled. Mom groaned with it. Nikolas had transformed the Escort’s glove compartment into a magical letterbox so that he could contact me at will. This was his condition for permitting Mom to take me, his girlfriend, to an undisclosed location, against Aldred’s wishes. As Nikolas was also my primary protector, it was his duty to ensure my safety, which meant him knowing my whereabouts at all times.

Mom fetched my latest dashboard delivery. “Yet another love poem,” she complained, passing the message to me over her shoulder. “I can tell because it’s in Spanish.”

Knowing how she disapproved of him, Nikolas had penned his letters to me in his native language, enchanting them so that only a Seer like me could interpret them. His messages weren’t inappropriate by any stretch, but awfully deep for a couple that had just begun dating. Mom didn’t know that Nikolas and I had spent the past six months pining over one another while betrothed to others. What’s more, she hadn’t a clue that our forbidden romance had been the driving force behind the Oracle of the Dragon King. Had she known, Nikolas would definitely be off limits to me, and I would be under lock and key in a tower somewhere no one, not even Aldred, could reach me.

That I currently had to settle for Nikolas’ written sentiments instead of his adoring touch had transformed my normally upbeat and agreeable self into a one-hundred-and-four-pound heap of sour grapes. Nikolas and I had finally gotten together, only to have my mother drive a twenty-five hundred-mile wedge between us.

I sighed dreamily while savoring his latest message:

My Love:

Though miles swell between us, my heart will thunder on, through space, through time, to bring you my love.

Yours in body and in spirit,

Nikolas

Patrick, who was more into romance than most girls I knew, sighed along with me. His gift of clairvoyance had also allowed him to interpret Nikolas’ message. Unlike my mother, Patrick knew well of my budding romance with Nikolas. I’d confided in him every detail, with his promise to never repeat any of it to another living soul, particularly to my mother. “You gonna marry him, Abs?”

“Over my dead body,” Mom growled. She’d branded Nikolas her enemy the day I broke my bind and he ordered me back to my Wiccan home on Aldred’s orders. She had no choice but to let me go, or face the horrific consequences—the Council’s order for my death. Mom hated not being in control, especially where Aldred was concerned. Further fueling her hatred of Nikolas was her discovery that he’d spent years monitoring me on Block Island through the use of his shape shifting skills. He’d disguised himself as a horse, a butterfly, and a blackbird, all to be near me, unbeknownst to my mother. Ordinarily, few things got past her for long.

I shrugged in reply to Patrick’s question. “Eventually Nikolas and I will marry, but not anytime soon.”

I’d only gotten a taste of what it felt like to be someone’s girlfriend by choice rather than by royal obligation. On my initial arrival in Adehya, Aldred had paired me with Drake Williams, the Emperor’s nephew, at Drake’s request. While Drake had fallen in love with me, I was only able to offer him a deep affection in return. Enter him stealing the gods’ powers to morph into the Dragon King and conquer the universe, and then dosing me with Enslavement Potion to force me to love him. While Nikolas would never resort to such an outrageous method to secure my affections—nor would he need to, I was already crazy about him—I had much to explore in the way of freely loving the man of my choosing before even contemplating marriage. This despite that our kind married young. I wasn’t just a witch, but Wiccan royalty, a princess. Nikolas was a prince and the new heir to Adehya’s throne. He was also the love of my life.

Mom was about to shut the glove compartment, when it coughed up another letter. I bowed forward, eagerly anticipating another deliciously lovesick verse from my sweetheart, when she made a terrible retching sound, like glass whirling in a blender.

Gramps broke from his whistling rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon” to ask, “What is it, Angel?”

Twelve straight hours of listening to Frank Sinatra’s Ultimate Sinatra Collection and I could honestly say that his music was making me ill. Unfortunately, Mom and Gramps had decided that the ones doing the driving got to select the ear candy. Since I rarely left Block Island for the mainland due to my loathing of water travel, and because Adehya was rooted in the sixteenth century, I had no need for a license. Therefore, I couldn’t drive. Mom had chosen Empowered Love Radio as her means of entertainment. The station featured endless hours of mind-numbing lectures on the Law of Attraction in Action: Recovery of Narcissistic Abuse, and The Definition of Sacrifice.

Need I say more of my suffering?

“It’s from Aldred,” Mom huffed, opening the letter.

Then she froze.

“Mom?” I poked my head between the driver and passenger seats to get a better view of the message. Aldred’s penmanship left a lot to be desired. I could make out the beginning chicken scratch that read, I must speak with you about— The letter was creased in the center from Aldred having folded it in half, causing the middle contents to appear as random drivel, but his last words were clear as day, slicing through me the same way I’d sliced through the Dragon King with the diamond dagger that killed him and set the cosmos free.

They’re alive.

Mom crumpled up the note.