The Necromancer's Daughter

|| twelve ||

Lucille held the shaking Rebecca in her arms. She tried to make sense of what the girl had just told everyone but somehow her mind couldn't come up with a coherent conclusion. From their position on the floor, she looked up at Grandma Vai. The Gypsy matriarch wore the same confused look on her face. Lucille also saw the distraught look on the kids' faces, Jili's devastation especially.

Grandma Vai turned to Kaven, and when their eyes met, the elder woman came up with a possible next step. "Let's take her to the Viewing Room," she told Kaven.

The boy nodded and handed his sister over to his grandmother. Lucille didn't know where they were going, but she trusted the old woman and her ways. They helped Rebecca to her feet and slowly lead her downstairs. Her breathing was still erratic and her whole body still shivered from the intensity of her vision.

Lucille kept her arms around Rebecca as they walked inside what Grandma Vai called the Viewing Room. Much like Lucille's apartment, this space was protected by magic. The small sigil on the door glowed green instead and though very low and faint, Lucille sensed great magical energies running about the area.

The room was octagonal in shape, its eight equal sides represented the Eight Focal Points in Romani Magic. Four of those walls were connected to the house and are decorated with symbols and runes of past Gypsies that used this blessed space. The other four were equipped with large stained glass windows that, at the moment, were letting in warm rays of morning sunlight. The room was spacious and could comfortably fit about twenty people at once. In the center laid a round table with floor length mantel embroidered with the Sign of the Gypsies. On top of it was a Scrying Sphere about the size of a basketball and around it, equidistant to each other, were eight chunks of enchanted crystals. Its ragged points glinted as the witches and gypsies moved about around it.

"Seat her here," Grandma Vai instructed Lucille and pulled out two chairs from beneath the table. "Kaven, the drapes. Jili, the candles," she ordered and quickly, the kids followed their Grandma's words. Lucille and Rebecca just sat in a tight embrace as Kaven closed the door and pulled down the drapes, inducing darkness in the otherwise illuminated Viewing Room. Jili's candles on the other hand, prevented the room from being pitch black.

With all of the preparation over, Grandma and the kids sat on the opposite side of the table, their facial expressions flickered along the with the dancing flames of the candles before them. Lucille couldn't read Jili and Kaven very well. They looked angry, confused and afraid at the same time.

Grandma Vai took a huge breath and explained to Lucille. "This is the Viewing Room. Our ancestors, from the very first Padureani Gypsies, to my daughter, Masilda, used this room for divination. Kaven have been using this, too, scrying for their lost mother but he was yet to tap on his full potential. Only the room's Vision Mistress could activate it's magic well. And that was still Masilda.

"I don't know if this will work," she continued. "since we've never had to channel a witch's vision here before. But I will try my best as the former Mistress to try and re-view Rebecca's vision."

"Re-view? You mean you're gonna see what Rebecca saw just now?" Lucille asked. The concept of viewing a clairvoyant vision again was alien to Lucille. Clairvoyant witches only saw visions once. Apparently, Gypsies really did have more control over their talents.

"We all will," Kaven replied. "The Scrying Sphere in front of you will project her vision in this room. We will all see what she just saw."

Jili grabbed Kaven's hand without taking her eyes off of Rebecca. Lucille understood her apprehension. She turned to Grandma Vai and asked, "Should the kids be here to see it? I mean, if Rebecca's vision did show The Necromancer..." she couldn't continue with the words 'killing her'.