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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ulfgeir" data-source="post: 7809276" data-attributes="member: 7015719">Book 1: The Blood RiteThe last week had been a bit bad at the theatre I worked at. Johnny, our director, had had a mental breakdown after his boyfriend left him, and were now babbling of moving to Norway and becoming a fisherman. It didn’t help that Jason wanted to replace him as the director, and as well casting himself as the lead role all the time. Sure, he was good looking in a way, and he did have money, something the theatre needed badly in order to stay operational. So I could sort of understand why the owner thought about selling the theatre, but Jason was utterly incompetent at acting, and I shuddered at his directions. Not to mention that he thought that he was the centre of the universe, but he was nothing but a mama’s boy. His two brothers, Kyle and Braden were at least good at what they did.Sure I might not be the best actress in the world, but I had at least earlier gotten smaller roles. If Jason took over, then I wouldn’t even get that. And I sure as hell wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of having sex with him to get a role, not that I was his type anyway. He seemed to prefer blonde bimbos. Nor was he my type. Not in a million years. Anyway, I talked to some of the other members of the cast if anyone of them had any ideas for a new director. It seemed that at least two of older members were a bit interested in taking over as director. At least I got them thinking about it. And given that they were quite good actors, I think they would be able to do well. One could hope at least.The day after, I woke up screaming at 07:18 after a particularly bad nightmare. Hadn’t had such bad dreams since The Night of Troubles. In my dream I had been in a strange room with white concrete walls, and concrete floor, but there were no windows and no doors in the room, and the roof was just utter blackness. I could hear some dripping sound, and then a dark liquid started running down the walls, while three ghostly shapes with screaming faces tried to pass through them. I could see the walls bending and buckling as if it was a piece of cloth. I could see that the beings trying to come through had had their throats cut. The blood started to pool together in some kind of container at the end of one wall, before overflowing and pouring out on the floor. When I woke, my poor room-mate Melissa was shaking my shoulders, and had for the past ten minutes been trying to wake me up.Outside in the hallway, lots of the girls in the dorm was standing, wondering what was going on. Melissa ensured them that I was alright. Imogen though, wanted to check up on me, thinking that someone had been hurting me. When she came in, I was bleeding from my eyes. She instantly called an ambulance, which came rather quickly and brought me to a hospital. Of course she had been exaggerating and claimed that it was blood everywhere. Well, let us just say that having an upset practitioner of magic near delicate electronic equipment, such at that found in an ambulance is not very good for said equipment. The poor EMTs couldn’t make heads or tails of why their equipment started malfunctioning. The doctors at the hospital released me rather quickly when I had finally calmed down, and they were satisfied that I wasn’t physically hurt.I did a bit of research, but couldn’t find anything in the news that would match the horrors I had seen. What ever had happened, or would happen was bad. But I didn’t have any other information at the moment. And without something to go on, there is just so much that you can do. Sure I am good at divination, but I still need something. In retrospect, I should have done more, but I doubt it would have changed anything.Three days later, on the 30th of November, it was time for a big Halloween party at the student pub Avalon. I decided to go as a vampire. I had at first entertained the idea of going as the Wicked Witch of the West, but green isn’t my colour. At the pub, I met some people that I knew. Imogen had apparently gone as the Little Red Riding Hood, but she had decided to bring a huge sword with her. What was she thinking, did she really think that Karl, the bouncer would let her bring that inside? He was btw dressed as a Viking, and the bartender Mirou, or Mirror as some called him, did his best to come across as a Yakuza solider. Not sure why he avoided me at the bar though. Was he angry with me for telling him the vision of him that I had seen? Not sure. Star went as Batgirl. People think I am strange, but she takes it to a new level. She and reality didn’t always seem to be on speaking terms. Then we had Antonio. I had seen him a few times at the sorority. He was dressed as Zorro, and actually made it work.The day after, I again woke up screaming in terror. It had been more or less the same dream as before. But this time I could see arms hanging down from the black roof, and there was much more blood. This time it was Star that were waking me up by shaking me. How had she gotten in, and where was Melissa? I somehow noticed that the time had been the same as before: 07:18. Strange, how the mind latches on to such small details. As I got into the shower, I saw blood on the floor. I had apparently managed to scratch myself bloody as again my eyes were bleeding, and now I also had blood running from my fingers. Damn, this was bad. I silently asked the Goddess to give me strength to endure the pain of these visions. As I finally had calmed down and made myself ready to go out, I was struck by the news that there had been some horrible murders on campus. They had found three victims hanging upside down in a tree, with their throats cut. I didn’t really want to see it, but I had to know. I slowly steeled myself and went down there. A lot of people had gathered, watching as the police took care of the bodies.  I didn’t know the victims, but I felt guilty somehow. I recognized the boy as one of the quarterbacks in the football-team, but I couldn’t place his name. The two girls were unfamiliar to me. Could this have been avoided if I had told anyone of my first nightmare? Probably not. People don’t seem to want to believe in prophecies, or at least not the kind of visions I see. That doesn’t stop them from believing in silly horoscopes that are so inaccurate that they make the weather prognosis look like it is one hundred percent certainty. I took a look at the crime scene, and for the first time I really saw that strange tree. It was totally white with shiny black leaves. It felt old. My instincts told me that there was something not right with this whole situation. It screamed of black magic to me.I spent a most of the day trying to find out what was going on. I couldn’t find anything. So I was quite relieved when it knocked on the door. It gave me a reason to think of something else. I was a bit surprised to see Mirou with a huge white wolf like dog, Antonio, and Star there. Apparently Olivia from the Wiccan sorority had gone missing, and they wondered if there was some way to track her. They thought that there might be a connection between her disappearance and the murders this morning. I told them that sure, it could be done, but it would need something of hers, and the more personal it had been the better. I guess Mirou had told the others about my vision with him, and they figured correctly that I knew magic. Well, to quote Willow from one of my favourite TV-shows, most of the members of that sorority were blessed-be wannabes with no magical talent at all. It was all a façade.Anyway, they had actually managed to get hold of something that I could use. I asked the others to stand back so I could prepare the spell. I drew a large circle on the floor around me. Star backed away a lot from that. Not quite sure why but she seemed almost afraid of it. Then I took out a map of the city, and burned some incense while cleansing my mind. I then used my pendant as a pendulum, and it didn’t take that long before I got a hit. The girl was quite nearby, and she was moving, something that my pendant indicated. The others went to the place that I told them of, and found the girl. She was apparently in a state of shock and covered by blood. After a few minutes they called me, asking me to come to the sorority-house, where they had taken her. We did that, and talked a bit to the girls there as they tried getting Olivia to respond. I touched the clothes she had been wearing, using my ability of psychometry to get an image of what had happened to her. I saw that she had been at the tree at dawn, and lots and lots of blood. I could hear screams of terror. Shortly after that the police came, and took Olivia with them to the hospital after asking a few questions. After they leave, we sit around for awhile wondering what to do, when Star gets a phone call from Imogen who had been doing some research. We decide to go and talk to her, to see what she had found. Say what you want about her, but she did have a lot of contacts, and seemed to know a lot of what happened on campus.I could feel that there was some kind of magic in the air, slowly building up. I had no idea for what and where it came from, but it was powerful and probably not very good. Imogen called campus security, asking them about the mornings happening. Apparently she knew the guys that had found the bodies, and it had been at the same time as my bad dream. That strange tree where the bodies had been found had apparently stood there for as long as anyone knew and even pre-dated the university. Maybe even the city itself, and it had according to rumours been used as a place for sacrifice. Even stranger was that it had always looked like it did now. As far as everyone knew it was an elm, even though elm trees didn’t look like that. As we were talking, I felt the magic spell that was being built up go off, but I had no clue as to what the target was.Mirou had let the dog track Olivia’s scent backwards to see from where she had appeared, but the dog had lost the track at the parking place near the library. Mirou then threw his bag into some nearby bushes and told the dog to fetch it. The dog took of, and shortly afterwards Karl turned up. He told us that he was a werewolf and that he had also tracked the scents from the murder scene, and that they too had vanished at the parking place. Oh my. That was indeed a lot to take in, but sure I could accept that. Apparently Olivia had vanished yesterday from Avalon after having some heated discussion with her boyfriend, then been abducted a few hours before the murders.I thought that I might be able to pick up something from the scene if I went and did a reading of the tree. Karl agreed to accompany me there. As I touched the tree, which I somehow knew to be dead, I got a vision of horrible rituals there. I saw lots and lots of murders. But there had been a long time since last time. As far as I could make out before I fainted, was that it hadn’t happened since the 17th century. By the time I had awoken again, Antonio had just got a call from one of the girls at the sorority that Olivia had managed to hang herself at the psych ward where she had been taken by the police. I was quite certain that the spell had something to do with that. It felt as just too much of a coincidence. Well, having fainted as well as getting such news made me feel a bit too weak to do any more investigation, so I decided to head home for some well needed rest and try to speak with some of my contacts that were knowledgeable about magic if they knew anything. Some of the others decided to try and find Olivia’s missing phone, as they figured that might hold clues to her mysterious boyfriend as that might give some more leads as to what had happened to her.  Imogen and Tim tried getting in touch with their contacts and learn more of what was going on, and see if they could find any witnesses. Of course the police would be doing the same things.We met up the day after at a café, to discuss what we did know, and all the new rumours that were circling around on campus. One of the more chilling rumours we had heard was that each leaf on the strange white elm with the black leaves, corresponded to one human sacrifice. I wouldn’t be the least surprised if it was actually true. Apparently the others had managed to find both Olivia’s phone and her computer, and from there deduce the possible name of her boyfriend. We had some different ideas of what to do with the information we had. Tim took it upon himself to turn the phone and the computer over to the police later on. Imogen talked two of the girls from the sorority that had been close friends of Olivia, into accompanying her and Tim to the psych ward to see how the suicide could have happened. Star veiled herself and accompanied them. Karl accompanies me as I go talk to my contacts. I learned that some of the minor talents here in Boston, also tried their best to find out what had happened. They all expected the wardens to show up sooner or later, but hopefully the community could band together and solve it without their intervention. Karl wondered why everyone was so afraid of the wardens, and I told him that they were a kind of ruthless magical police force that wasn’t exactly big on compassion and empathy. Everyone with magical talent tends to get skittish whenever the wardens are around, due to what they can do. Basically, they are judge, jury and executioner all at once.Later on, we met up at the Avalon and talked while Karl and Mirou were working as it was a Friday night. Given the recent happenings, it was a rather slow night. Of course we hadn’t exactly learned much that was useful. Imogen had learned that Olivia had been restrained to the hospital bed and under guard, when she managed to commit suicide. We all thought that felt very wrong indeed. So either the staff at the hospital had been lying about what happened and possibly been involved, or someone had had gotten to them through supernatural means and made them think that was what happened. According to Imogen’s information the staff had been away for less than half a minute to get some water, and when they got back, Olivia’s restraints had been undone and she had hanged herself, without making any sounds that the guard outside her room could hear. No, there were something fishy going on here.As it was getting a bit late and we all had things planned for tomorrow, we decided to call it a day, and go home. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we would face more problems. I quickly fell asleep once I got home. The dream I had now was much more pleasant, but still unsettling. I felt as if I were floating through a forest. All the while I could hear what sounded almost like a song, but it was in a language I had never heard before. I came to a clearing, filled with moss. In the centre was a huge oak tree. The music gradually changed and I could tell that some kind of consciousness was focusing on me. I could see something white sticking up through the moss near the tree. I also felt how my grip on my own mind was slipping, with the music taking over more and more. Finally I woke up in bed, dripping of sweat as if I had had a fever. Tears were running down my cheeks, and I was freezing as if it was well below freezing. I could still hear the mysterious music, and I knew it wasn’t natural. As I tried to get up, I collapsed on the floor, weak as a kitten and unable to move. Not sure how long I lay there before Melissa woke up. She called an ambulance, and I was taken in for observation. It took a few hours where they gave me lots and lots of intravenous fluids, as the doctors claimed I was severely dehydrated and on the brink of death. All the while, I could not get that haunting music out of my mind. After a few hours when I have stabilized, I am released from hospital with strict orders to drink lots and lots of fluids. A bit like the stuff athletes drinks and I had to come back the day after for a check-up. I met all the others except Star and Antonio in the hospital cafeteria. They were of course quite worried about me and asked what had happened. As I told them, I knew that I had been targeted by a spell, and that I would need to find someone to help me break it, as wards and dispelling weren’t exactly my specialities. Karl was quite interested in my dream, and he decided to go and see if he could find the place I had dreamt about as he thought he knew the whole forest. There was something special about that oak tree.I had to know if the others were targets of the spell as well, so I very carefully used The Sight on them, making sure that there were no distractions of other kinds. None of the others were affected. Not quite sure exactly what Mirou was, but he sure wasn’t all human. I did gather that Antonio somehow also had been targeted by a spell, but they wouldn’t tell me more. So I leave the others to get some more help against whatever was targeting me, and also doing some research of what exactly we were up against. Felt like we were out of our league.During the night, I am harshly awoken by Karl, as he had found me sleepwalking in the forest, dressed only in my panties. He tackled me to the ground just before I entered the same strange clearing that I had been dreaming of before. But now, there were two bodies hanging upside down from the mighty oak. We both recognized them as the two girls, Kim and Cory, from the sorority whom had gone with Imogen to the psych ward earlier. This time they, the victims had not gotten their throats cut, instead they had been cut open from the throats down to their waists. And I could still hear that haunting music, trying to pull me in. Below the moss, we spot what appears to be a multitude of whitened skeletons. Apparently it had been pure luck that he had found me, he had taken his motorcycle out for a ride as he couldn’t sleep, and then come a cross my smell. Intrigued he had decided to follow it, especially since this was a place of the forest he hadn’t been to before.Karl tried calling the police, but couldn’t get any signal. We decided to take a quick look to see if we could find anything. We found a paper bag with a receipt for twenty metres of rope and silver tape, and Karl found the broken tip of a knife. He took the tip of the knife. As I touched, the bag, I got a vision of someone making the purchase and feeling very elated on what was to come. Again we saw that there had been some kind of container beneath the victims to catch the blood. Good thing that a werewolf has a good sense of smell. Karl could sense that the same three women had been present here as on the other gruesome site. We decided to head back to his motorcycle, and then call the others. Maybe we could then be able to track down the murderers. Besides, I needed some clothes as it was a bit chilly. After some time Mirou, Tim, and Imogen came after some serious guidance by Karl over the phone. Star had replied in a text message that she was at the FBI headquarters. What had she gotten herself into now? When I asked about Antonio, Imogen looked very sad. Didn’t I know, she wondered? I shook my head, I had absolutely no idea. Apparently Mirou and Karl had earlier that morning found Antonio lifeless in the white elm. No one had any idea why he had been there, but he had not been sacrificed like the others. His body had been brought to the hospital almost the same time I had been brought there. Imogen had managed to get them to abstain from an autopsy for the time being, as she still held hope that he wasn’t really dead. Why hadn’t they told me earlier during the day? Dear Goddess, why were some people so pigheaded?After we had explained the situation of what we had found in the clearing, Karl shifted into wolf-form again and began tracking the women who had been at the scene. Sadly, the tracks stopped at a road, where they appeared to have had a car waiting. So we headed back again. Had it not been for the lingering smells, we wouldn’t have found our way back to the clearing again. Realizing that there was no way in hell, that we would be able to get the police to the place; the boys gently lowered the victims to the ground and carried them to a place that we could direct the police to. If nothing else so that the families of the two girls could get some kind of closure as bad as it was. So after leaving the paper bag there and the receipt, Karl made an anonymous phone call to the police, before we left.On the way back, Karl got a frantic phone call from Star, and she wondered if anyone knew how to get hold of large quantities of pain-killers, preferably morphine. We of course wondered why she would need that. She claimed that it was for Antonio, that he was alive and in her room at the dormitory, although in very much pain. We naturally hurried back there, and did indeed find Antonio bedridden in pain. Someone had tried to cut him open, and then sew it together. Mirou set of to the Avalon, where he knew that he could get hold of Morphine. I have no idea why they had that there, and not sure that I would like to know. Of course I had heard rumours that for the right price and if you knew the right codes, you could get anything to drink there. Imogen and Tim talked to Star about what had happened, but she was only babbling about her missing monkey, which she referred to as Master. Remember, that I mention that she and reality weren’t always on speaking terms? Well, this was a prime example of that. I tried to ease Antonio’s pain, while Karl set off trying to track down the missing monkey by its smell. How was it that Star was allowed to keep a monkey as a pet in the dorm, anyways?After a few minutes and still early morning, Mirou came back with the Morphine, and the missing monkey. He had just run into Karl who had been running towards the sorority house where he had seen a fire blazing. Imogen, Tim and Mirou quickly followed suit there to help save the girls who lived there. Luckily they got there in time, but as far as I gathered the house was destroyed. I stayed with Antonio and Star. None of the girls that had been there had been seriously hurt. Imogen realized that all the things that had happened had been targeting the sorority. It seemed that last year, three girls had been expelled from the sorority and the school. It definitely seemed likely that they were the culprits. The only ones that knew for a fact why they had been expelled had been Olivia, Kim, and Cory, and of course the school officials. The police had been involved in the matter, so whatever had happened had been bad. During the morning, I set out to track the girls with my divinations, as it was a good guess that they still had the broken knife with them. Karl, Mirou, Imogen and Tim, tried getting hold of more information on what exactly had happened without much success. They did find the former headmaster dead in his house. He had been dead for quite a few days. Imogen then had to excuse herself as she needed to go and participate in the presidential election.  Tim continued his investigation, while Star tried to care for Antonio. Still think he would have been better of at a hospital, but then might be difficult to explain that he was now alive, especially since the FBI had previously brought the body with them for further investigation. By Star’s ramblings, I gathered that it was the FBI that had cut him up. Why would they do that?When I picked up the trail of the knife, Mirou, and Karl, joined me into seeing where it was. Hopefully we would be able to stop the three girls: Cassie Ramon, Katy Goodman and Fiona Campbell. The track led us into a rough Spanish neighbourhood in Boston, where you could almost cut the sense of dread with a knife. People were genuinely afraid. My spell led us to a building that looked like it should have been condemned. As we opened the door, we found a young boy that had been shot in the head. It really sickened me, but it was the kind of neighbourhood where no one would have seen or heard anything. We would have to do something though. The spell led us to the attic, where we found that someone had made a temporary lodging. On the floor were four mattresses and someone had painted a huge pentagram on the floor, and in it was a ceramic bowl filled with blood. This was the place for some foul magic. By the Goddess, I so wanted the perpetrators to be stopped.When we searched the place some more, we found papers, on which they had drawn quick studies for the pentagram, as well as a psychology-book. Apparently it had belonged to Katy Goodman, and was full of lecture-notes in it. But it didn’t make any sense to me though. One thing that was strange though, was that there were no other signs of anyone living there. No food, no clothes, just nothing. It could be that they were already done and had just abandoned the place, but it didn’t quite feel right. I wanted to make sure that no one could use the pentagram for more nasty stuff, so I made tiny breaks in the lines for it. That should neutralize it, hopefully without it being detected, if my understanding of magic was correct. While I did that, Karl decided to pee on the on of the mattresses. Eugh, that was gross, you don’t do that when there are girls around. And to make it worse he only laughed when I asked him if he knew no shame. Bastard! Had he at least been in wolf-form when he did that, I might forgive him. Now it just came across as a juvenile stunt. Just typical of what one would expect from a boy.On the way out from the condemned building, Mirou took a closer look at the body of the dead boy. Rats had started sniffing around the body in the short time we had been upstairs. The boy couldn’t have been more than maybe five to six years old, and had a bit of candy in his hands. The callousness of how he had been killed made me want to cry. Karl did the decent thing and called the police from a nearby phone booth. I don’t think he saw the missing persons-poster there, but I did. It had a photo of the dead boy. His name had been Benito Gonzales, and he had been missing since the 22nd of October. But we were quite certain that he had not been lying there more than a few hours. So what had happened to him in the meanwhile? I really didn’t want to know, but I felt so bad for the kid and his poor mother that had made the missing persons-poster. Life wasn’t fair.Satisfied that there wasn’t anything else we could do there, we left for less scary places in town. Karl and Mirou accompanied me as I took the time to go and vote, and then do the required check-up at the hospital since the dehydration-scare the day before. Luckily the doctors gave me a clean bill of health. For some reason the hospital were crawling with police officers and people from the FBI. Something bad must have happened there, as they asked everyone that came there lots of questions. We didn’t stick around longer than we had to. I did appreciate getting a lift on Karl’s motorcycle though. Maybe I should get a driver’s license myself? It would provide freedom to go anywhere.As we left the hospital, Karl got a phone call from Star, who claimed that Antonio had vanished. Given the condition he had been in, he shouldn’t have been able to go to the bathroom by himself, much less leaving the dorm. Something wasn’t right. He sent a message to Imogen and Tim to meet us there. Before we left Mirou tried calling Antonio’s phone, but only got Star on the other end. Mirou being how he is, he tried convincing her that he was Antonio, and she seemed to fall for it. That girl is such an airhead.When we got to Star’s room, we did indeed find that Antonio was gone. He had only left some bloody bandages behind. Strangely enough we found flowers growing through the floor, underneath her bed. The fragrances reminded me of summer. The flowers were indeed real flowers, but I could feel traces of magic from them. Mirou claimed that Antonio had vanished into Nevernever. This was quite intriguing I thought. How had he done that? I didn’t think he knew magic. According to both Karl and Mirou, Antonio was a Prince in Nevernever. So they figured he had gone to the Summer Court. How did they know that? Had they been there? Imogen was quite confused and wondered what we were talking about. We tried explaining about Nevernever to her, but I don’t think she accepted our explanations.I used my Tarot deck and the bandages that Antonio left behind to do a spell to see if he was still alive, which I found him to be, but I could not get any direction to where he was. Star claimed to have the ability to open a portal to Nevernever down in the basement of the dormitory. Mirou said that we should not go there, as it was dangerous. From all I knew about the place, he was indeed right. It almost seemed like he was afraid of going there. I realized that he had indeed been there and something had gone badly. So that was what the prophecy I had given him earlier had meant. I think I really should ask him at a later stage exactly what had happened there.As I was doing my spell, I was dimly aware of the alteration between Imogen and Mirou. Not sure why, but he had apparently said something about her coming from the wrong family and that she lacked money, status and looks. She of course flew into a righteous tirade against him, arguing that he was nothing but a male chauvinistic pig. He just laughed it off and ignored her. Why, did he have to go and do something like that? We didn’t need that kind of trouble.The situation was luckily defused by Tim’s phone ringing. He had earlier asked one of his contacts within the police force about what had happened last year at the sorority, and now we would know. What we found out were really bad indeed. It seemed that the three girls that we thought was behind it all had last year tried to ritually murder another girl, and had carved a pentagram on her chest when they were discovered by some of the other girls at the sorority. The poor victim, Jessie Hendricks had barely survived but had lost her mind and was now interned at the psych ward. The previous Headmaster of the school, who was the person responsible for throwing out the three girls, had been found dead. Apparently by a heart attack, but he had unexpectedly been bleeding huge amounts from his eyes. Could that be what had affected me in my nightmares?Imogen and Tim wanted to do more researching to get to the bottom of this, and Imogen managed to track down Jessie’s family. Her sister said that she was going to visit Jessie the day after, and Imogen managed to talk her into letting them join her. Mirou on the other hand took another look at the psychology book we had found earlier, and found some notes that indicated that Katy had been romantically involved with some unnamed boy. Imogen called a girl that knew all the gossip on campus. Apparently Katy had been involved with the sports jock that had been found dead in the weird elm tree. The two girls with them had apparently been nasty towards the three murderers. So it all seemed to be about revenge. But why had they used Jessie as their first victim? All we knew was that she had been in the same class as two of the girls, and that she had been beautiful and popular.The day after, most of us spent in classes. I got very surprised when I saw someone who looked like Antonio down in the cafeteria. Well at least like Antonio with a beard and long hair. I went up to him and got his attention. It was indeed Antonio, and he looked fully recovered. I sent the others a message that I had found Antonio again, and we decided to sit down to go through what had happened. Antonio was a bit surprised when I wondered how he had vanished yesterday. For him it had apparently been many months. Months that he said he had spent in a hospital. I thought it looked more like he had been away on a holiday, and you could only see faint scars from the hideous injuries he had gad earlier. I used my Sight to verify that it really was Antonio, and it sure looked like him. I could tell though that he indeed was not quite fully human. Seemed that Karl and Mirou had been right about their comments about the Summer court. I really needed to get the full story about that. He claimed that what had happened earlier was that he had climbed up in the weird elm tree, and then gotten bored and when he climbed down, he had found himself in a version of Boston that was totally empty of all life and that the sun had moved much too fast. Then suddenly something weird had come and attacked him, causing those terrible injuries we had seen. When he woke up he was at a hospital under guard, and then Star had come and gotten him out of there. He said it was his father that had taken him away from her room. No matter how it had happened, we were of course all glad that Antonio was back.He had previously learned that there were two really violent gangs that had started fighting about territory in Boston, and especially the Spanish quarters. He claimed that the gangs were called MS13 and El Eme. I hadn’t heard much about them before, but that explained why everyone there had been so frightened.The meeting Imogen and Tim had had with Jessie’s sister had not shed much light on why she had been taken. It seemed that the poor girl had been totally unresponsive to anything that was said to her. Strangely enough she had been found walking around by herself at two times. Both the 1rst and the 3rd of November. It coincided well with the time of two of my strange dreams. She was indeed linked to the magic. I fear that there was nothing that could be done to help her. The ritual where she had been the intended sacrifice had almost succeeded. Her soul had been almost obliterated. As far as I knew there was no way except possibly a divine miracle to help her. And those can’t exactly be conjured up on a whim. Star claimed that she had had her soul being torn apart and that it had taken her more than five thousand years for her to get back to the state she was in now. Not sure what she had been smoking, because that just couldn’t be true, could it?Antonio got a phone call from the girl that had taken over as leader of the Wiccan sorority, and she invited him to join them in a memorial ritual at midnight on a roof. He gladly agreed, then asked if I could join him. She was a bit sceptical at first but agreed when he said that I knew magic and had been helping him. We would meet them at half past ten. The others would take precautions to safeguard the ritual in other ways. Karl would join us in wolf form, and Imogen would be on another roof with Mirou down below. Star and Tim would apparently hide somewhere else, with Star using a veil to hide them.Me and Antonio then met with the other sorority girls at the agreed upon time. They asked me a lot of questions in an interview. I was then accepted to join them by Yukimi Nagano, who was the new leader. She also explained to me just what the ritual would entail. One of the girls, Beverly asked me to do a reading of her future. Something I gladly did, but the reading was very troubling for me. How do you tell someone that they will die horribly in just a few hours? I told her that she would have a short but intense life, and that she should make sure every moment of it counted. I could tell that she didn’t believe me, when I said she would be in danger. Such is the curse of my gift for seeing the future, that people don’t believe my prophecies.For the ritual, we painted a huge magical circle combined with a pentagram on the roof, and place lit candles on various places. All twelve of us are naked. Wonder what ideas someone would get if they saw that. It should have been chilly, but a warm summer breeze kept us warm, and Antonio made flower petals appear from nothing. I doubt that any of the others had any magical powers, but it was a fitting ritual to the Goddess. Suddenly the door to the stairwell down opened up, and three girls naked but painted with blue symbols showed up. Before anyone had the time to react, they unleashed a magical wind that blew Beverly and Lita, the girl next to her, out over the roof of the four story building. I could hear how their brief screams of terror were abruptly stopped by the sickening sound of bodies hitting the pavement below hard. Damn it, I hate it when I am right.I yelled to the girls to take cover and get away from the edge of the roof, and then I saw Karl in his wolf form attack one of the newcomers. Suddenly I saw a blur of motion, which I took to be Mirou, coming from the edge of the roof and running towards the attackers with a sword in hand. How had he gotten up to the roof? After the three girls a big man stepped out from the stairwell. Unlike the girls, he had clothes on and wielded what looked like huge claws. I could tell how the girls were lining up for another spell, but then it suddenly got very warm as Antonio cast a fire spell at one of them, yelling something like “burn you bitch”. I could understand him; these girls had murdered several of his friends. I too would want revenge.The rest of what happened was pure chaos. The girl that got hit by the fire spell threw herself over the edge of the roof, just as Mirou stunned the witch by smacking her over the head with the broadside of his sword. In the corner of my eyes, I saw how Karl struggled with the girl he had bit earlier. She didn’t seem to care for him and retaliated with a nasty spell. Antonio helped me protect the girls form the sorority, getting them away from the fight. Somehow Imogen had also made the way up to the roof and she interposed herself between the attackers and the girls. Where were Star and Tim?  I could hear gunshots ringing out, but from where? And what was the target? I could see Mirou and the strange man going at each others in a flurry of blows, and then suddenly a strange blue mist surrounded the man’s head, temporarily blinding him. Karl bit down on the woman’s arm with renewed ferocity, and you could hear the sickening sound of bones breaking. With another spell, she flung herself off the roof, probably trying to take Karl with her. I could see how the third woman regained her composure and started working a fire spell of her own. Not wanting to see what would happen, I ran up and knocked her down to the ground with a hard tackle from the side. I really shouldn’t have done that, as she responded by sending an arc of electricity into both me and herself. The excruciating pain racked my body, and made me collapse. Was that what it felt like being hit by lightning? I was dimly aware how both the man fighting with Mirou and the woman I had been facing just collapsed. She appeared to have killed herself with her spell.A warm rain began to fall over the roof, erasing our magical circle as we started picking up our belongings and leave just in time to avoid being arrested by the police that came to investigate the disturbances. Oh, by the Goddess, I really hoped this was over and that the murderers had been stopped. Somewhat later Tim had managed to get an article published in the Trimountaine Arcane, detailing the case, but thankfully he had left out the stuff that could implicate us in the deaths during the ritual. I think we all would need time to come to terms with what had happened. I had gotten some new friends though. Maybe that would turn out to be a good thing.</blockquote>

Verification