Night's Touch

Serafina waited until Anton had gone to bed, and then she left the house, her destination Anthony's secret lab located in an abandoned brick building on the outskirts of town. The front door was made of heavy steel. The windows were boarded up on the inside and barred on the outside, but she had a key. After unlocking the door, she stepped inside, then closed the door behind her.



She wandered from room to room before entering Anthony's laboratory. Save for a new state-of-the art computer and printer that Anton had bought to replace his father's old ones, the lab was just as Anthony had left it. Serafina ran her hands over the glass jars and test tubes, the beakers and flasks and funnels, and as she did so, she imagined she was touching him. She paused in front of a shelf that held several books on witchcraft, anatomy, and hematology. A small refrigerator, a microscope and an incubator shared space on a counter that stretched across half of one wall. A large gray metal file cabinet stood on one side of the door. A circle of power had been drawn on the floor in the center of the room. A gray metal table stood in the middle of the circle. A splotch of blood, now a dark, ugly brown, stained the floor.



She moved around the room, walking where he had walked, touching what he had touched. She didn't know what had happened the night her beloved Anthony died, but from reading his notes, she was certain that Roshan DeLongpre and his witch wife had been involved.



The story of Anthony's death had made all the papers. Speculation ran wild as to the cause of his demise and what had happened in the house the night he died. Myra's body had been found cocooned in plastic.



There had been blood on the sheets on the bed, but it hadn't been Anthony's blood and it hadn't been Myra's. The newspapers had had a field day. The headlines screamed, "Witches Run Amok in City."



She had crossed the yellow police tape under cover of darkness, gathered up all of Anthony's journals, personal effects, and clothing, and taken them home. After the funeral, she had placed an enchantment on one of the gravediggers, directing him to return that night, dig up Anthony's coffin, and transport it to Anthony's lab where a stone crypt waited. When it was done, she had erased the memory from the man's mind and sent him on his way.



Nights when she was lonely for her beloved, she came here to the lab to talk to him. If only he had discovered . the secret of immortality, he would be with her now.



She made her way down a flight of stairs and unlocked the door to a large, windowless room that had once been used for storage. Anthony's tomb rested inside. Sometimes she opened the coffin and looked at him, and when she did, she saw him as he had been in life.



"Where are you now?" she murmured "Is your soul still in Summerland?"



She wondered if he was resting peacefully, recovering from the trials of his most recent life, or if he was reflecting on all the lives he had lived in the past. Perhaps he had rested long enough and he was already planning his next incarnation.



Hopefully he had not already been reincarnated. If so, her spell would most certainly fail.



The thought brought tears to her eyes. Sitting on the floor, she laid her head on his tomb and wept.