by Jessica King
“I can take a punch for it.” He turned to Broadway. “Sorry, man. Won’t happen again.”
Broadway nodded and walked toward Cameron, the muscle in his arm now flexing. Adrenaline already had him hyper-aware, and he didn’t miss the outline of the gun in his pocket. Cameron looked up at Broadway and tried not to let his eyes twitch with a premature wince. “Man, can you get my ribs or somethin’?” he asked. “Ma’ll see it if it’s on my face.” He didn’t even want to imagine his father’s reaction.
“Sure,” Broadway said. Cameron refused to look at his hands even when Broadway cracked his knuckles and stared at the cracked pavement. “Up, then.” Cameron stood and let his hands fall to his sides. Broadway pointed up to the pullup bar drilled into the brick of Robbie’s house. Cameron raised his arms, his hands gripping around the metal. It was warm from a day in the sun, a horrible contrast to the chilled clamminess of his hands, which made the surface immediately slippery. Broadway rolled his shoulders, and Cameron breathed in. Broadway pulled his arm back, and Cameron pushed all the air out of his lungs, readying himself.
Broadway’s punch was worse than he had imagined. He swayed back with the motion of it, and he imagined himself as a piece of meat in one of the old-fashioned meatpacking factories he’d seen in a history textbook, animals and giant slabs of meat hanging from hooks, sent along swinging conveyor belts. His ribs vibrated with the hit, even after Broadway had drawn back, panting from the energy.
Once his shoulders relaxed, Cameron dropped the pullup bar and groaned, propping his hands on his knees. Robbie passed him a lit blunt, and Cameron took it with shaking hands, trying to breathe in relief from the throbbing in his side. He couldn’t feel anything at all from the stuff, even after a few hits, so he switched to another cigarette. Broadway held up a beer in Cameron’s direction.
“Thought you were gonna run, Cammie,” he said, voice stiff.
Cameron shook his head and took another drag of the cigarette. He wasn’t quite ready to be on speaking terms with the older boy yet.
“Don’t be sore about it,” Robbie said, leaning back. “Happens.”
Cameron could read Broadway’s eyes. He hadn’t forgiven him, but he at least respected him, which Cameron thought was more important. Still, Cameron didn’t think a punch like that could happen without at least a little bit of malice to it, and he twisted the cigarette beneath the sole of his shoe. It hurt too much to breathe in like that.
“He just hasn’t been around enough in that middle age,” Broadway said, waving it off, nodding to Camera. “You left before high school started, that’s when you get used to it. Gotta learn.” He stood. “I got what you need,” he said, digging around in his bag. He pulled out a mini bottle and tossed it to Cameron. An amber liquid swam beneath the image of a red dragon. He’d seen the logo before, had heard the gagging noises people made after they took it. “Tastes like cinnamon,” Broadway said. “It’ll help.”
Cameron had tasted beer before, but when he unscrewed the top, his nose told him that liquor was going to be much different. He tilted the contents back into his throat, the burn of it stronger than the taste. “Ach,” he said, twisting the top back on. “Thanks.”
“Like it?” Robbie asked.
“Dunno yet,” Cameron said, but he managed a smile.
“Atta boy,” Robbie said, clapping him on the back and grinning. “I’ve altogether skipped most liquors, graduated to tequila a year and a half ago, I think.”
“How you gettin’ away with that with your pops around?” Cameron asked.
Robbie’s grin dropped off his face, and his eyes searched the ground as if he were looking for it, wanting to pick it up. “He’s not around much anymore,” he said.
Cameron cast a glance at his friend. He’d known Robbie’s father well when they were young, and he remembered soapy carwash sessions and late-night bonfires where Mr. Cortez had let them drink soda and eat donuts way after it was dark. “He alive?” he asked.
Robbie nodded, but he didn’t look up from the concrete, the little white flowers budding up from between two pieces of cement. “Yeah, he’s alive. But he’s always got a warrant on him for something, and he’s got a new girl or somethin’ but dunno. Not my business, he said.” Robbie propped his face up with a fist, a cheek squishing up. “You’d think a new brother would be my business.” He took a sip of his beer. “Whatever.”
Cameron took another hit of the blunt, and he didn’t know if Robbie even realized how often he tried to pass the thing off.
“What about your dad?” Robbie asked.
Cameron stiffened; they were getting too close to the topic of Trinity. “Yeah, yeah, he’s good. You know, he’s got that new job he’s at all the time or whatever. But he seems to like it and stuff, so.”
“What about your ma and sister?” Broadway asked. “Trinity was what, few years behind me in school?” He tilted his head, trying to remember.
“Ma’s fine,” Cameron said. The pause of his sister hung heavy in the air, and he spat onto the ground. “Trinity’s funeral’s soon,” he said. He didn’t want them showing up. All of her girly friends would be there. He didn’t want them thinking Trinity hung around thugs when she wasn’t at cheerleading practice or getting her nails done. Would Trinity be embarrassed?
“I’m sorry, man,” Robbie said. He didn’t ask what happened, which released pressure off his chest, and not having to explain felt like the balloon that had been taking up space, pushing his organs away from the center of him, deflated. Just an inch, but an inch that gave him space to breathe.
+++
Friday, March 31, 2017, 9:00 a.m. | Central European Standard Time
The Piazza della Rotonda was a blur of faces, languages, and flags. Ivy thought the parade might be a solemn affair, a sort of somber march meant to mourn the woman who had died for participating in a Wicca ritual.
This was not the case.
Witches were giggling and laughing, jumping from one crowd to the next with greetings. Some were dressed in the movie depictions of witches in black gowns and black pointed hats, covered in green face paint from head to toe. A man in full body paint had written WICCAN across his chest and down his legs in red. A gaggle of British witches had shown up with hot-pink brooms and matching T-shirts that said, “I’m a bad witch,” and a cluster of men and women beneath the Moroccan flag had covered themselves in long strands of beads.
Ivy saw Amara across the courtyard looking entirely different from the woman she’d seen the day before. She was in a floor-length, purple, layered skirt that moved with every stir of the wind, a corseted black top, and she was grinning as what looked like the Roman coven exchanged kisses and smiles with the Sicilian coven, a sudden churning pool of purple and aqua, which appeared to be the color of the Sicilians.
Portable speakers around the space pumped music into the air, from pop music Ivy recognized to national anthems to slow, meandering notes that Ivy could only place as “trance music.” A chant in Russian ensued from one of the trance groups and a collection of Dutch witches over two hundred strong performed some sort of dance they all knew, much to the excitement and encouragement of the watching German “Sorcerers” and the sea of green and orange that made up the Irish Magick Society.
“This is way different from the Prophetess gatherings,” Vince said at her side.
She had just been thinking the same thing. It was less like a suave party, and almost more like a spirit day at her middle school. She scanned the crowd for Kingsmen, a natural habit now. She and Vince had been allowed to carry their guns if they were in police uniforms, which was getting them a few sidelong looks. The all-black uniforms of the LAPD were different enough from the blue-gray of the Italian polizia, but she tried to keep her shoulders straight. They were there to protect these people, even if they were clearly squinting, trying to figure out if they were real police or some strange mini-coven of militant witches.
A burst of a familiar accent made its way to Ivy’s ears.
She turned and saw a small collection of women beneath an American flag, and Ivy raised her eyebrows. “New Yorkers?” Vince asked. Ivy listened closer to the group.
“New York,” Ivy said, pronouncing “York” like “Yawk.”
Vince laughed. “Good to know there are some East Coast covens,” he said.
It was good to know, Ivy realized. She’d seen how important the L.A. coven had been when the Kingsmen had started attacking, how much they’d needed one another’s support. She hadn’t necessarily worried about the witches all across the country since they were surely in safer areas as California quickly became the epicenter of witch-based violence. But seeing the New York coven gave her a sense that there was broader protection across the country.
The crowd broke out into a cheer, and Ivy searched for the direction of their excitement. A banner was being unrolled by an Amara and a few other Roman witches. The front of it had a title in dark lettering, The Protection of the Female Goddess.
Ivy nearly swallowed her tongue. The organization her mother had founded had made it all the way across Europe? Her throat tightened at the thought of a legacy that large. Did Cassiopeia know that it had reached so far? Despite her position as the L.A. coven leader and the main outreach point of The Protection of the Female Goddess in its original location, Los Angeles, she doubted Cassiopeia knew about this.
The collection of flags and music and colors and broomsticks made their way behind the banner. Dancing ensued, ribbons and puffs of colored smoke shot up into the air, and the swell of mismatched music grew louder as what had to be nearly five thousand witches began their march forward. Ivy and Vince didn’t fall into line as so much walked in a parallel to the witches.
The tourists had stopped and stared at the group, recording as flags from all over Europe, all over the world, even, were lifted up against the backdrop of a blue sky. Ivy laughed, wondering if this would make it onto the news, if it would be spread far enough that the Kingsmen in America might see it and realize they were up against something far larger than they suspected.
As the group headed toward the main road, Ivy could hear yelling from the corner. She nodded at Vince, and they made their way forward. The Italian police officers on the other side of the marching group caught her signal and moved forward as well, a strange paradox of pictures: grinning witches covered in color and smiles, and American detectives and Italian police sticking to the shadows, their hands near their weapons—all moving forward as one unit.
Ivy reached the end of the street first and swallowed. A group of about seventy people stood with signs, many of them resembling the Kingsmen calling card. The moment they saw the banner of The Protection of the Female Goddess, they started hurling insults at the witches. Ivy crossed the road with Vince on her heels. She’d hopped out of the way of a moped when the traffic seemed to come out of its trance, and Ivy snaked her way through the crowd of Kingsmen. Most of them were yelling in Italian, though she caught wisps of other languages as well. Her eyes ran across pockets and hips, hands hanging at people’s sides.
She couldn’t see any guns. She couldn’t see any weapons at all, though handguns were easy enough to hide. She saw Vince cutting his way through the crowd after her, setting his hands-on people’s backs as he went, as though he were simply passing by, but she knew he was searching for firearms tucked into waistbands. He shook his head. Nothing. She nodded her agreement, and they backed out of the group.
The section of the parade belonging to the Irish Magick Society stopped; their apparent leader, a stocky woman with bronze-brown hair called out some sort of command as if she weren’t a witch, but a general. The group around her raised their hands, connecting their fingers to one another in intricate movements. The Gaelic chant was a beating drum to which the Irish Magick Society moved to in sync, and Ivy vaguely wondered if they practiced this sort of thing. Like a military armed with their belief in charms and magic.
Whatever they were doing, it was working. The Kingsmen were staring and silent. Ivy had always thought the witches in the L.A. coven had to be a bit crazy to believe the things they were doing constituted as magic that could make a real, distinguishable change in the world. She hadn’t thought about how much the Kingsmen themselves must believe in the power of magic. If they were so scared of it, they decided to resort to killing “witches.” Ivy turned back to the Kingsmen crowd. They were murmuring, leaning against one another. One Kingsman dropped his sign and walked away, holding his hands up and shaking his head. Most of the others stood their ground, but Ivy saw a few moving the posters to cover their bodies, pulling their collars up, as though it might offer them protection.
Ivy almost laughed. It was like watching an epic adventure film and children on a playground pointing sticks at one another and claiming they were magic wands that built worlds.
Two smaller groups from Bulgaria and Croatia had joined, several of them pulling crystals from their bags, rolling them between their hands and raising them above their heads. Someone had lit and incense and walked around the group. Ivy had learned about this from watching the L.A. coven. The smoke was to help cleanse the group, to make sure the curse they were casting didn’t come back on themselves.
Another Kingsmen left. Then another. The group dwindled around the edges, though most continued to stand, watching as the witches, wizards, sorcerers, and even a few who were dressed like fairies, cast hexes and curses and spells. There were a few who were smiling but weren’t participating. A group from Greece dressed in all white with the word WICCAN across their T-shirts was among the observers; Ivy had come to understand that Wiccans often refused to work with dark magic, only light. But the traditional practicers around them clearly had no issues with it. The woman leading the Irish group pushed her hands forward, and everyone around her did the same.
Ivy almost expected to see some sort of ripple effect like in the movies, but nothing particularly spectacular happened. The cars on the road still drove by, and the group had remained, no one disappearing or dissolving into air and ash. The Kingsmen, too, looked unscathed, albeit a bit green around the gills.
The witches turned and kept walking as though nothing had happened.
Ivy smiled, momentarily enjoying a world where witches didn’t have to be afraid of Kingsmen, and magic seemed to be real, and things were peaceful.
The group continued down the road, passing the Panama Embassy and the Vidoni Palace. They curved around the Museo di Roma, landing at the Fontana del Moro. It hadn’t been a particularly long walk, but they clearly had the intention of rounding the whole oval-shape that housed the fountain. Tourists stopped and stared at them, one man raising both his fists and cheering when he saw his home country’s flag.
When they’d finished their tour, bookbags were torn open and pockets emptied as the groups traded amongst themselves and with each other. A Moroccan witch gave a German sorcerer a strand of beads in exchange for chocolate, making Ivy believe not all the products being moved were magical in a traditional sense, though Vince muttered something about wanting to try magic chocolate.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Friday, March 31, 2017, 6:30 p.m.
Cameron never wanted anyone to say the word “condolences” to him for the rest of his life. It was the fancy way of saying “sorry,” and it ended up with him thanking people for being sorry about his sister being dead. He felt like he shouldn’t have to thank anyone, that the idea of thanking people for asking forgiveness for a death they didn’t cause was entirely ridiculously.
He was standing third in line after his parents to receive everyone’s condolences, many of them from people he hardly knew. Callie and Emma, Trinity’s two closest friends, were both dressed in the same black dress, and they both flung themselves into Cameron’s arms in the same way, their voices cracking about how much they’d miss her.
Cameron patted them awkwardly on the back. He’d gone through a growth spurt in the past year and was now a good foot taller than them, but he still felt much yo
unger than the two whimpering girls, which made comforting them feel odd. He saw several of his teachers, which was strange out of context on any day, but now they were swiping at tears or staring at the coffin.
He’d stared at the coffin a lot, too. It was an open casket. She hadn’t gotten shot in the head, so the clothes covered wherever it was in her back and stomach that had taken the two bullets that killed her. He knew everyone was curious. He was curious. But no one would look. No one would touch her. When he’d seen his sister earlier in the afternoon for the first time, she looked sunken, despite the pretty nice makeup job someone had done on her. He wished someone had told the makeup artist his sister preferred purple colors to gold when it came to eyeshadow, and then he was startled to realize he even knew that about her.
That had been new, too. He constantly realized things he knew about Trinity he’d never realized he knew. Like which of her two cereals she would eat first and the fact that there were at least twenty water bottles under her bed, which he had fished out earlier in the week and thrown away.
She was wearing a purple blouse though, so in part, he guessed there was at least one point.
His tongue was bleeding by the time they made it to the actual service. He’d been told he didn’t have to say anything, which he was grateful for. He didn’t think anything he’d be able to say would be particularly insightful or beautiful or peaceful the way funerals were supposed to sound peaceful and quiet. Most people had whispered their condolences like they might wake Trinity up. Shouldn’t everyone be loud? Send her out with a band and fireworks or something? It’d certainly brighten the mood, and he hated to think that his sister’s spirit might be seeing the funeral right now and wondering why no one threw her a real party.