by Jill Nojack
“No, you weren’t, and I’m not sure I would have thought anything different than you did if I’d been in the gallery with you,” I say, then put my attention toward the map again. “If it’s true Anat’s been in the gallery, then I hope this one that is probably a D is Deborah—that’s Zelda’s daughter’s name, right?—and not Dash. I don’t see how Anat could use him in a spell anyway—he’s never displayed any magical tendencies, has he?”
Gillian shakes her head. “No. Nor Jon, either. They’re both still out-of-towners by Giles standards even though they moved here years and years ago.”
“Good,” I say. “So it looks like we’ve identified some of the major players and their locations. Although I still wonder where Nat will be in all of this. And we need to figure out what these hieroglyphs…” I say as I point to the scribbled pictographs in the center and at the remaining asterisks “…mean for us.”
“The problem is that she’s using ancient middle-eastern magic, which no one in Giles knows anything about, and she’s got the one person who might have a shot of figuring it out under her influence,” Gillian says.
My brows furl as I shake my head. “Not the only person who could figure it out, Gillian. You’re every bit as powerful as Natalie.”
“As powerful, yes. As knowledgeable about casting, no. Natalie has devoted nearly every waking moment of her life to magic. I had other things to do. But I wasn’t talking about Natalie; I was talking about Robert—he’s studied the arcane for fifty years. Plus, Natalie…”
Her face drains suddenly of color as her sentence peters out.
“What is it?”
“Natalie’s magic is at its strongest at Samhain.”
“So?” I ask.
“Do you remember why the Giles coven stopped using the old ritual grounds in the woods and moved to the newer one?”
“Some guy in the thirties brought his wife back from the dead, right?” I shrug. I don’t know what ancient coven history has to do with it.
“Yes, he pulled her essence back from the Summerlands, or perhaps even from her next life, and into a rotted corpse.”
I hear Cassie’s quiet, “Yugh,” as Gillian pauses.
“That was Natalie’s grandfather. Her family has always had a special affinity for death magic just like mine has an affinity for secrets and hidden things, but you don’t want to bring it up with her. After the zombie incident, the town shunned the family for a long time.“
“So, why did you go white as a ghost yourself for a minute there?” I ask.
“Tom, the Witching Faire is held on Samhain. Non-magicals think of it as a Halloween celebration, but it’s not. It’s a celebration of the new year, the day when the veil between this world and the Summerland is the thinnest. The Faire ends early in the evening so we’ll have time to gather for the Sabbat ritual afterward. And Samhain is the day when Natalie’s powers, which reside between the worlds, are at their most powerful.”
Cassie sighs a long sigh, “Ohhhhhhhhhh…that is so not good.” I look from the young witch to the old one. They’re obviously thinking something I haven’t caught on to. And they both look worried.
Gillian says, “Exactly. Anat’s own magical power is greatly diminished by the lack of a magical host, but if she’s got Natalie’s annual power boost to draw on…”
Oh. I get it now. Natalie’s sorcery-on-steroids just turned into sorcery-on-steroids-on-PCP.
I reach for Cassie’s hand over the table and squeeze it tight. Then Cassie and I both reach out for Gillian’s hands and we stay like that for a long moment before Gillian breaks it up by reaching for the tea things to clean up.
***
Cassie moves to my side of the coffee table and sits between my legs so I can rub at the knots in her neck. I doubt I'm doing much good, no matter how skillfully I knead. Cassie says, "Mmmmmmmmm," as I press my thumbs in at an especially tight spot, but no matter what she says, her body is saying, "Forget it." The knots stay knotted.
Gillian returns from the kitchen after disposing of the tea service, talking excitedly, "Doug says he'd be glad to take a look at the hieroglyphs. Let me just grab some pictures and send them to him."
She snaps pictures with her phone, stopping between each snap to email it off to the university Egyptologist in Boston who helped us out with the symbols on Anat's Ab Khr, the box that held her soul between bodies.
"What if he tells Robert? They're buddies right?"
"You think I wouldn't think of that?" Gillian says, adding a "tsk" on the end. "I told him that I'm preparing a surprise for Robert's birthday, which is quite factually coming up next month, so he won't say anything."
"Perfect." I push my thumbs across Cassie's tight shoulder muscles one last time before giving up and ask, "Do you need us? We…"
She looks up from her phone and smiles. "Oh no—you two can run along for a while."
Cassie holds my hand as she pulls me up toward her room, the only one upstairs that doesn't have holes in the wall from the witch's assault.
Once we're inside, I pull her close and our lips sink into a long, loving kiss, hungry for what they've missed. I stop worrying about us as her mouth glides across mine. There's no hesitation there: she no longer has any doubts about my loyalty.
I place my hands on the sides of her face and reluctantly move her lips away from mine long enough to whisper, "I promise I'll never keep you in the dark again. You and I together, we'll always beat anyone who tries to tear us apart."
We look into each other's eyes for a long moment, then she reaches to the side of my face.
"Always," she whispers back. "You and I are unbreakable. "
Our lips move together again, soft, then urgent. I kick the still half-open door closed with a backward thrust of my foot, unwilling to let her go. She moves back, her hands sliding to grasp my own firmly as she steps backward toward the bed, pulling me along with her. Neither of us wants to break the bond of touch, so we don't. Not for a long time.
***
An hour later, I brush Cassie's silky long hair aside to land a kiss on her shoulder as she playfully struggles against me, trying to get dressed so that we can find out if Gillian's found anything out about the symbols.
So, hang on, wait a minute—that's new. I've memorized every single square inch of Cassie's body, and this blue symbol? Not there before.
"What's this mark here?" I ask.
"What mark?" Cassie replies.
"On the back of your neck. Did you get a tattoo?"
"No. Let me look." She pulls her hair to the side and backs up to the mirror over the dresser. Her lips and brows scrunch in concentration. "That looks like the hieroglyph on the map, doesn't it?"
"Exactly like that." I'm an idiot. I'm trying to decide if girl tattoos are sexy when I should be thinking evil-mark-put-there-by-a-demon. I continue, "And this is the one for 'love', now that I'm looking at it with my brain instead of my…" I don't need to finish the sentence because she giggles. Then her face darkens, and she squeaks out, "Tom? Get it off. Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff."
"Yes. We need Gilly. Now."
***
Gillian's face is a mask of concern as she inspects Cassie's bare neck with her reading glasses low on her nose. She runs a finger along the mark, then bends down and swipes her tongue across it.
Cassie jolts forward. "What the…"
"Sorry, sweetheart. I got into detective mode and forgot to warn you. Sometimes you have to use all senses to investigate, don't you?"
Cassie looks over her shoulder, her lips quirked like she might laugh any minute. "Fine, then. Whatever. Just give a girl a warning next time. What's the verdict?"
"I think, although I can't say for certain, that it's exactly what Tom thought it was. It's a tattoo of sorts. But one created with magic rather than needles. That would be why you didn't know it was there. I think it's purpose was to track you, which obviously worked."
"So, how do we get rid of it?" Cassie asks.
Gilly takes a
deep breath. "We could try to draw the magic out. Like a boil. But we'd have to have something else living to transfer it to for that to work."
My eyes move to Polly's cage in the corner of the room. Gillian's eyes track mine. "Oh, no you don't. Not Polly. And then what would we do, anyway? They'd still think Cassie was here because Polly is."
And then I have the perfect idea. "You work on the spell. I'll bring you just the thing."
After a brief investigation through the cupboards, I go out the back door with an empty mason jar, set it down on the stairs, and take off the lid so Cat can drop his catch in when he gets back. Then I take a quick look around to make sure none of Gillian's neighbors are spying over their fences, and I shift.
It's brief. It's painful. But I emerge smaller, swifter, and completely unconcerned about neighbors or modesty or anything other than the enticing scents of the neighborhood wildlife. I flash away across backyards and under fences, sniffing the air for the scent of the one that will be the best match for what I need.
Cat won't be happy when I have to hold him back from the kill.
When Tom gets back, he comes walking out of the kitchen with a live mouse in a Mason jar. That would explain the clattering around in cupboards he did before he left. I wonder how hard he had to fight to get Cat to drop the poor thing instead of killing it and having it for dinner.
Tom sets the jar on the table, and I get down on my knees to take a closer look. At least it doesn't look injured. Its tiny, fragile-looking paws scrabble at the side of the glass and its black eyes are bright, its whiskers quivering as it sniffs the air. It's so cute! It kind of reminds me of Dash when he's nervous, which is a lot of the time.
I hope transferring my tattoo to it won't hurt it. I'm feeling all kinds of bonded with it now.
Gillian asks, "Ready?"
I guess I am. I pull my hair aside to bare my neck for the herbal glaze and parchment we'd prepared. It should draw and hold the magic until Gillian can place it onto the mouse.
She says, "Just one last thing. Tom, could you hold the jar for me while I prep the mouse?"
He holds it up toward her, and she sprinkles a few herbs inside, chanting softly under her breath, watching the mouse intently. Its eyes close and it slowly sinks to the floor of the jar, its frightened movements stilled.
"You didn't kill it?" I ask.
Gillian shakes her head. "No, sweetness. It's just sleeping. I need to shave a little spot so there's some bare skin available. Tom, would you lay it out on the table for a moment?"
Tom is gentle with the mouse as he tips the jar and the poor little thing slides down the side of it into his big, outstretched palm. I bet he's fighting Cat's every instinct on that one. Cat would definitely not be gentle.
He sets the mouse on its side on the table, and Gillian carefully runs an electric razor over it until its bare, pink skin is exposed. "It should sleep for at least another ten minutes. That should be plenty of time."
The herbal glaze bites down cold on my neck when she slathers it on, and the muscles Tom loosened up in our bedroom contract again in protest. As the magic is drawn out, it feels like dull needle pricks. I bet a lot of people wished they could be un-tattooed this easily. Gillian could make a tidy profit in the broken romance market.
She places the parchment and smooths it down onto the magical ooze, then writes on it with a piece of charcoal. After she pulls it away from my neck with the gel still stuck to it, she brings it around in front, so that I can see she drew a picture of the hieroglyph. Instructions to the magic, I guess: remove this but leave the rest.
She smooths the parchment onto the mouse's skin and says a few more words under her breath. Then she carefully removes the charcoal from the paper with one of those art erasers you can smoosh into different shapes by dabbing at it gently, kneading the eraser to get a clean spot, and then repeating.
She obliterates the symbol soon enough, and the parchment is as clean as it's going to get. She pulls it away from the mouse's body.
Underneath, the symbol that was once on my neck is now on the mouse. Tom picks the sleeping mouse up just as gently as he laid it down and helps it slide softly down into the bottom of the jar by tipping it ever so slowly until it stands upright.
"That's it?" he asks Gillian.
I show him my neck.
"Clean as a whistle." He says, as he plants a kiss where the tattoo had been. "So, I'm off to take this guy back to where I found him. I left a decent distance between here and the house before I started the hunt. It shouldn't lead anyone back here. I'll make sure he's awake before I dump him out. He won't be much of a decoy if something has him for dinner as soon as I drop him off. But hopefully, if they're still tracking you, they'll think we've moved you. And even if they don't, you'll be where we are from now on. They'll have to take us all on if they stake out the house. Although, I think we should probably move our base of operations once this is done."
And then he's gone into the night again, but this time as my handsome, manly Tom, always there to be my white knight. Not that I need one, right? But I have faith we can win any battle together and have our relationship come out even stronger at the end.
No, I don't care how many enchantments anyone throws at me, I'm never going to doubt Tom again.
***
Gillian and I are packing the basics of what we'll need when we bug out for the cabins my Granny owned in Corey Woods. It's a good idea just in case the doggy crew keeps the house under surveillance despite the mouse trick. Her phone chimes, and she looks at it, then gives me a big grin. "Doug has all of the translations sorted already."
She grabs a pen and writes the translations on the map next to each corresponding hieroglyph.
I sit down to take a look, and when I get to the one in the center, a bad feeling runs up my spine and does a couple laps around the inside of my head.
"Underworld?" I ask her.
"Underworld." She replies.
"What do you think that means?"
"It can't be good." She sits quietly for a minute, her face a blank, then bounds up, heading for the kitchen. She calls over her shoulder, "Tea?" before she's out of sight.
Yep, we better pack a lot of tea. I put it on the list.
Then I cycle through the translations again. Love, death, judgment, power, chaos, and finally, underworld. Right at the center.
A lot of possibilities go through my mind. I'm not far enough along in my studies to be sure, but my brain is definitely spitting out ideas.
I've been reading up on witchy stuff lately, and Samhain is the very best time to hold a seance and talk to your dearly departeds. Or to raise someone from the dead. Or to make a zombie. And Natalie, who comes from a family of witches who can probably easily do all those things, and who is uber-juiced with magic on that one night, is under the control of Anat, the bitch-goddess who hates us all.
Gillian reenters the room just in time to hop on the nightmare express with me. When she sits down, I watch her face closely. If she shows fear, we're really in for it.
"So, is Anat up to something that has to do with how thin the veil between the worlds is on Samhain, do you think?"
Her face shows me exactly what I was looking for. I can feel the already tight knots in my neck tying themselves into super-knots.
"I'm afraid so, sweetie. All of the indicators are there. What is it that you young people say?" Her eyes flick up to the right briefly as she searches for the words. She finds them easily enough.
"We are so screwed.
Tom snugs up against my back with his arms tight around me as we watch Gillian frying up breakfast on an old, but adequate camp stove. We've taken over a couple of the better cabins that sit side by side, and it has been comfortable without any disturbances. The heating situation isn't great, though, with only a small space heater that we brought from Gillian's in each cabin. We've had to snuggle close for warmth at night. It's been awful. Really.
I relax into him, figuring this is probably my
last opportunity to be something other than a knotted up mass of anxiety today. With the Witching Faire tonight and everything we're going to have to try to accomplish to free our friends and keep Giles safe, it will be a while before I can lay back into his arms again.
"Tell me what you think will happen if we don't break the lines of power tonight?" Tom asks Gillian. "You've been vague about the whole thing these past few days, and I'm tired of being put off. I want to know exactly what we're trying to prevent."
"Isn't it enough that we have a plan of attack?"
"No, it's not enough. We're all risking our lives here, the way I see it. And I value both of your lives even more than I value my own. I want to know why we're taking the risk."
Can a person's back express annoyance? Because I think that's what Gillian's is expressing right now. The spatula scrapes along the bottom of the big cast-iron frying pan noisily as she lifts and portions out our breakfasts onto waiting plates. She says, "Sometimes, it's better not to know."
"Come on! I know it's related to Samhain, so what is it?" he asks.
I add, "The zomcopalypse? Opening of the hell mouth?" I probably shouldn't be joking at a time like this, but with Tom so serious when it's usually his job, somebody has to do it.
Gillian sighs, picking up two of the plates and signaling with her head for us to take our places at the small, scarred, wooden table. She sets the plates down and everything just goes out of her at once as she folds limply into her chair.
"I think—I'm not sure, mind you—but I think that Anat plans on pulling the town into the afterlife. Does that answer your question?"
Tom and I must be on the same wavelength, because we both burst out with, "No way!" and exchange a glance before turning back to Gillian.
Tom follows up with, "How could she do that? Living things can't enter the Summerlands." He pauses for a minute. "I mean, can they?"