DRAMA NOVEL ONLINE Chapter CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MICHAEL MADE HIS WAY THROUGH Central Park in Manhattan. It was partly sunny with only a slight breeze. He went to the base of Augustus Saint-Gaudens General William T. Sherman, the monument of the Civil War General, on his horse across from the Plaza hotel. He sat and watched the horse-drawn carriages lined up, waiting for tourists. A senior couple got in one with difficulty and trotted off; both had huge smiles. He watched them kiss before turning away. The couple’s happiness was the opposite of Michael’s emotional state.
He had no word of Lauren’s fate for two days. Michael was sick with worry. The images that continued to flash in his head were all dreadful things with awful endings. He couldn’t shake the feeling that her bones were lying in some gutter or behind some abandoned building. Over a dozen red sheriffs were searching for her, but they also had no luck. A meeting was arranged by John Shaw with a low-level wizard that had one particular talent. The private eye said once again that he promised nothing, and Michael was starting to think that that’s what he should be paying him. He should have painted those words on his vehicle, I Promise Nothing. John told Michael that Sebastian had one spell he could conjure up that might aid in locating Lauren. At this point, Michael was willing to try just about anything.
He had been told that Sebastian would meet him at the monument, that he would be dressed in red. He was ten minutes early as he scanned the area for Sebastian; it didn’t take long before Michael observed the wizard running across the street between the carriages. He was only four and a half feet tall, wearing shiny candy apple red pants and a shirt; he even had a matching red flat cap and a goatee tied in a long tail. Sebastian was carrying a clear vase of roses with lots of water, which Michael found strange. But the ways of wizards was something he wasn’t privy to; he just wished he could have made contact with a more powerful magic man. If the wizard blurted out that he promised nothing, he just might decide to give him a damn good bite.
Sebastian ran up to Michael. “You must be Michael, must be Michael. I am Sebastian. You have the money, have the money?” The wizard repeated himself as he nodded at Michael. He looked around as if he was expecting some trap; he knew that sometimes wizard’s preyed on one another. He appeared to be nervous and ready to run without notice.
Michael took a wad of cash out of his right pants pocket but then hesitated. “What exactly are you going to do for me? I was told you could help me find her, but I wasn’t told how.”
“I can show you where she is, where she is. Now I must warn you before we proceed. It might show her from a distance, from a distance, or it might show her close-up, close-up. We’ll get a single vision, only one, only one. If neither of us recognizes the location, there’s nothing I can do about that about that. If she’s bones, it’ll show it, so please don’t kill the messenger. Do you want to proceed? Whatever we are going to see cannot be unseen.”
Michael nodded and handed him the wad of cash, which he quickly pocketed. “How does this work?”
“I’ll need a tear from you, a tear from you to add to the others.”
Michael took it to mean that the thirteen roses were sitting in tears, and so he hoped that it wasn’t some evil spell; he didn’t feel that it was something he could ask, nor something that the wizard would admit to in any case. It didn’t take long for Michael to shed a tear. With an eye dropper, it was captured and placed into the vase with the other tears. The roses were placed on the ground to form a hexagon as passers-by stopped to watch. Sebastian threw the water inside the roses, which flowed unnaturally and created a mirror with gasps from some. (And “Did you see that?” from others) The tears turned into a silver reflective surface that was cloudy but then got clearer as Sebastian waved his right hand over it; the image focused like binoculars being adjusted.
There was Lauren in the glass-topped coffin.
“Oh my GOD! There she is! Is this happening now?” Michael demanded. “What the hell is she in? Is she in a coffin? She’s not bones.”
Bent over at the waist, the wizard concentrated on the image. He cocked his head, spitting out strange words that Michael didn’t recognize to strengthen the enchantment. “It looks like some sort of box, sort of box.”
The image brought such emotional pain to Michael that he could barely stand it. “She’s not moving! If she’d dead, why isn’t she bones? Is she dead?”
Sebastian removed his hat and scratched his head vigorously, disturbing some dandruff. “Looks like some sort of binding spell, some sort of binding spell. No, look, she’s not dead! Her eyes are blinking! She looks angry.”
Ripples went through Lauren’s image, which was lost for a second or two but then returned. Michael was becoming more anxious. “What’s happening?”
Sebastian placed the round flat cap back onto his head. “I’m sorry, but the spell won’t last much longer, not much longer.”
“How the hell am I supposed to tell where she is from that? Lauren!”
The image was shown from about two feet away from Lauren, with little to go on. He could see her and part of the coffin but not much more. There wasn’t nearly enough information to show Michael her location.
Inside the image, Lauren looked puzzled as she shifted her head. “Michael?”
“She can hear me! Lauren, where are you?”
“Michael, I don’t know where I am. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can hear you.”
But with those words, the reflection turned into water, and the connection was lost. Michael glared at the wizard. “Bring her back! I need to find out where she is! I need more information. Get her back!”
“I cannot; the spell is finished, the spell is finished.” Sebastian was surprised as no one had ever been able to communicate through image before this. He could only assume that being a red sheriff made it possible unless some magic flowed through Michael. True love had power as well.
“Make another one, make another one!” Michael demanded and mocked.
“It would take several months to gather the tears to cast another. My abilities are limited, minimal.”
Michael pulled his sword, decapitated the wizard, and watched as he turned to bones. Only he didn’t kill the wizard; he simply imagined it. Sebastian sped off into Central Park and out of sight. Michael stared down inside the roses and felt so utterly helpless that he started to cry.