by Harper Lin
“No,” Aunt Astrid snapped. “And you sound just like Cath. Suspicious of everyone.”
“It’s a gift,” I replied as I walked to the front window and peeked out. As I scanned the street, I couldn’t say I was surprised to see Cedar and that big behemoth, Ethel, lumbering along with her toward Aunt Astrid’s house. I looked over my shoulder at Bea.
“This tea is good, Bea, but it isn’t bringing my visions back,” Aunt Astrid whined.
“I didn’t think it would,” Bea stuttered.
“Then what did you give it to me for?” Aunt Astrid said as she took another sip. Her attitude was like that of a spoiled child.
“To calm your nerves… way down,” Bea said and looked at me.
As soon as she did, I saw my aunt’s eyelids get heavy. She raised her hand to speak and pinched her eyebrows together in an angry scowl but fell back asleep before she could utter a syllable.
“How long do we have?” I asked.
“A couple of hours. Cath, what are we going to do? Did they steal her gift?” Bea looked ready to cry.
“All right, you calm down,” I said. “That baby needs his mama thinking happy thoughts. Besides, we’ve got company.” I jerked my thumb at the door just as we both heard footsteps on the porch.
“So, what do we do?” Bea rubbed her hands together.
“Cover your mom with that blanket and the pillows on the couch. Then go to the library,” I snapped. The last thing I wanted was to be worrying about Bea and her baby. I knew in the library she’d have access to whatever she needed to protect herself. It was like a Green Beret running into his gun closet.
That left just me to face them alone. It was strange. I had faced multitentacled monsters, black-eyed kids, a giant rat, and a mud-man, just to name a few things off the top of my head. I must have earned my sea legs, because this band of misfits didn’t scare me. Maybe it was because the sun was shining. Maybe it was because I knew Bea and the cats were with me.
Maybe I’d finally lost my mind and didn’t see danger the same way anymore. That was probably it.
14
The Cool Club
There came a pounding on the door as if the fire department was about to kick it down. It was a rude, abrasive knock, and I didn’t like how I got the sense they expected my aunt to jump and run to the door and let them in.
I had had about enough of these witches. With Bea in her condition and Aunt Astrid in hers, it was like we were driving a car with the air quickly running out of the tires. But I had a trick up my sleeve. Quickly, I grabbed the table salt and poured just enough to cross the threshold of the door. Then I yanked the door open, making Cedar and Ethel jump before they could have a chance to knock again. They made an attempt to step inside, but the salt was just enough to stop them. And boy, did it make them mad.
“What are you two witches doing here at this hour?” I scolded. “It’s not even time to get up for work yet.”
“What are you doing here?” Cedar asked through clenched teeth.
I folded my arms across my chest and shifted from my right foot to my left. Cedar looked over my shoulder and saw Aunt Astrid lying on the couch and pointed at her.
“She needs our help. Sweep aside this salt and let us in,” Cedar said, squinting at me with anger. Ethel was no better. Like a coiled snake, she was just waiting to spring at me. Suddenly, I heard all three cats hissing and growling. At the windows were the other witches, glaring in at all of us, and I swear that Hannah was actually drooling.
“You set one foot inside this house and I’ll bite it off.” It was the first thing that came to my mind. Part of me hoped she wouldn’t call my bluff, but as I heard my favorite familiars cheering me on from behind, another part of me sort of hoped she would. I squared my shoulders and stood my ground.
“You’re going to cause more harm than you know,” Cedar replied, peering over my shoulder for a look at Aunt Astrid. “Neither your aunt nor your cousin should be anywhere around you.”
“Now, that’s just rude. I don’t know why I’m not cool enough to be in your club,” I huffed. “I mean, judging by your clubhouse back there, which looks like Aleister Crowley decorated it, you are hardly the kind of people who should be throwing stones.”
“We aren’t here to talk to you,” Cedar hissed. “We want to talk to your aunt.”
“Sorry. She’s not seeing guests or annoying throwback witches from the Puritan era. Why don’t you all hop on your brooms and head on back to Salem,” I snapped back.
“You think you’re very funny, don’t you?” Ethel grumbled.
“I’ve been told as much,” I replied. “Now, you’re on private property. Unless you want me to call the police and have you removed, I suggest you head on back home to make sure no one dropped a house on anyone in your coven.”
“You’ll be sorry,” Ethel said. Cedar stood stone-still with her arms at her sides, glaring at me. “When we’ve got all the pieces in place, you’ll crawl on your belly for our protection. You and those filthy animals will be fed to the serpents, and you’ll feel the burning of your own—”
I shut the door and ran to the library. The cats quickly followed, but I ordered them to stay with my aunt.
“She needs your protection now. Maybe especially now that she’s actually asleep and resting, whether she likes it or not,” I instructed the felines before giving them each a rub on their heads. “Keep her safe, and yell if you need me.”
Just as I tried to enter the room, I was knocked back by an invisible force that sent me flying backward into the wall. I bumped my head.
“Oh! I thought just in case they got you,” Bea apologized. She rattled off a couple words I didn’t understand as my head spun slightly.
“No. That was smart,” I said as I rubbed my head with one hand and waved my other hand past the doorframe to make sure Bea had removed the spell.
“What did they want?” Bea asked as she flipped through the thick book she’d been holding when I tried to walk into the room.
“Your mom,” I said. “There has got to be something in here that can help us. Hey, what was that book your mom said she found that symbol in that they drew outside your house?”
“That was The Tome of Progenitors,” Bea said.
“I’m going to start there. Maybe there is something about that family crest that will help us figure out what they are really all about.”
I went back into the living room, because that was where I had last seen the book when Blake was talking about it as if it was the latest on the New York Times Best Seller list. I looked at the cats, who were all sitting protectively around Aunt Astrid, their eyes narrow slits as they saw and heard everything without moving a muscle.
After checking every flat surface and coming up empty-handed, I started scouring the shelves to see if my aunt had put the book on a shelf, out of the way. I was quite surprised when I kicked it as I scooted past the couch.
“Why did she leave it on the floor?” I asked the cats as I held it in my arms and flipped it open. “It’s not like Aunt Astrid to be so careless.”
“It wasn’t her,” Marshmallow purred. “I can tell by the markings all over it.”
“Ew. Let me guess. Was it one of the Sect of Squares who hid it here?” I held the book out to Marshmallow as if it were contaminated. She purred a yes.
“Why would they hide her book?” I thought. “Unless there was something in it they wanted to hide. And they probably didn’t have enough time or the ability to just walk out of the house with it. Maybe that’s why they came back and were so desperate tonight.”
“I don’t know. But I was hiding under the couch when they shoved it under there,” Marshmallow replied before narrowing her eyes again. I looked at the big cat and shook my head.
“And why were you under there? That had to be terribly cramped for you.”
“The smell. They all give off that bad smell. Sick and pungent,” Marshmallow said.
I just nodded and took the book b
ack to the library. There had to be something in it, that was true. But it contained more than five hundred pages. I flopped down next to Bea, and we began our research.
I went to the pages on the Sect of Symmetry and began reading. At first it was as boring and uninformative as Cedar and her group were. But then something jumped out at me. It was the symbol of greeting they used, the one they had put in chalk in front of Bea’s house.
“Bea, is this the same design as in front of your house?” I asked.
“Yeah, remember? My mom found it, and that’s how we knew who these women were,” Bea replied, as I’d thought she would.
“Okay, but correct me if I’m wrong. We identified all the symbols, but I don’t remember seeing this one on the one outside your house. The whole pattern is just slightly different here. There is a tail on this, and it’s attached to a tiny triangle. Even if we were studying these things, that’s a negligible detail.”
“It was drawn in chalk,” Bea admitted. “I didn’t expect it to be as perfect as this one is.”
“True,” I said. I was about to shrug it off as bad drawing skills on the part of the Sect of Symmetry members. But one word in the text of the description caught my eye. Dolus.
“What are you looking at?” Bea asked as I stared at the text.
“Dolus. That means fraud, right? Or hoax?” I asked.
“That’s right.” Bea immediately looked worried.
“According to the fine, fine print, this image is often used as a decoy for witches looking to gain access to certain properties or areas where the psychic energy is strongest. It looks like a salutation when in reality it is a caveat to keep other witches away.” I looked at Bea. “Why would they want other witches to stay away from you? I’m the one they are treating like a redheaded stepchild.”
“Cath, I’m scared.” Bea instinctively rubbed her belly. “If it were any other time, I’d be ready to fight, but now I’m—”
“You are full of baby. I know, Bea.” I took her hand. “And with your mom out of sorts, we are a little short-staffed. But what do we do when we are short-staffed at the café?”
“We’re never short-staffed at the café.” Bea frowned.
“Okay, you are totally ruining my pep talk. We make do, and we survive. Right? Isn’t that what we do when we are short-staffed? You make do with what you have. And right now, what you have is me. As sad as that may sound, I do believe you could do worse.” I squared my shoulders and held up my chin.
“Cath, you can’t go confront those people alone,” Bea said.
“Well, that’s true. That’s why I’m not going to confront them. I’m going into stealth mode. And I won’t be going alone.” Just then, Treacle appeared in the doorway. “My secret weapon.” I smirked, and Treacle meowed.
“But what are you going to do?” Bea asked.
“First, I need to do a little more research on this Sect of Symmetry. This can’t be the only entry in all your mom’s library on this group.” I got up and started scouring the books. I found three old, dusty tomes that looked as if they hadn’t been touched in years. I handed one to Bea, and I started to flip through the others.
“Sorry, Cath. This one is recipes,” Bea said, handing back an old, crusty book that I had been sure had to contain some kind of history of every coven in existence since the earth cooled. Then I saw the faded cauldron and the spoon on the cover with the words Eat, Drink, and Desserts almost completely worn off.
“Oh, okay. Well, why don’t you pick something for dinner,” I said.
“Speaking of which. What time is it?” Bea said.
I should have known she’d suddenly be hungry, and when she cracked open the book and began to read, I knew I’d be in for it.
“It’s almost five,” I replied.
“I’m going to find something to eat. Are you hungry?” she asked as she awkwardly rolled to her side, got to one knee, and pushed herself up.
“No. I’m good.”
The truth was that I was not good. I had randomly opened one of the other books and found the exact image of what those Sect of Symmetry nerds had put outside Bea’s house. My blood froze in my veins. But I smiled as I looked at Bea and waited for her to leave the room.
“What’s wrong?” Treacle came slinking up to me.
“You aren’t going to believe this. Not only are these witches the only ones who feel cats are more powerful dead than alive but… they believe in human sacrifice.”
I looked to the door, hoping the color would stay in my cheeks so Bea wouldn’t notice I was freaking out. These were the kinds of witches that gave the rest of us a bad name. It had been one thing in the olden days to grab the town drunk or a crooked politician and use them as a sacrifice. But the Sect of Symmetry didn’t work that way.
“Do you think that’s what they want Astrid for?” Treacle asked.
“No.” I swallowed, but there was practically no spit in my mouth. “I think they want her because she’s powerful. But they want Bea more.”
“Bea?” Treacle lowered his head.
“Well, not Bea. Bea’s baby.”
15
Seer
“Are they going to try and kill Bea’s baby?” Treacle’s fur stood on end, and I saw his claws extend and retract as he looked at me.
“Not quite.” I let out a deep breath as I kept reading. “According to this, they need a newborn baby to sort of usher in this doomsday, during which they’ll be put in charge of everything. Can you imagine that group of weirdos being in charge of anything? They can’t even coordinate their décor, let alone rally the forces of darkness to do their bidding.”
Treacle wrapped around my leg then looked up at me again, carefully sniffing the corner of the book I was reading. “What do they do with the baby?”
“From what I can tell, the baby becomes the leader, but it won’t be Bea’s baby on the inside. It’ll be possessed by whatever this thing is that they’ve been paving the way for,” I said telepathically. There was no way I was going to discuss this out loud.
“This doesn’t sound good,” Treacle meowed.
“No. It doesn’t.” I kept reading and snapped my fingers just as Bea came back into the library with a plate piled high with cheese, grapes, an apple, some crackers, and a huge dill pickle.
“Did you find something?” Bea asked with a mouth full of apple.
“I did,” I said as I reached over and snagged one of her crackers. “It says here that this group needs to gather the strength of an interdimensional seer in order to show the way to the blind beast that they are summoning.”
The last thing I wanted was for Bea to get ahold of this book and read what I had just told Treacle.
“That’s why they need Mom.” Bea’s eyes bulged as she chewed her food.
“Looks that way.” I kept reading and swallowed hard. “It also says that if the seer is part of the coven, that will ensure the coven’s place at the head of the table. But if they have to forcefully use the seer, the coven’s power will be significantly reduced.”
“That’s odd. So all they need is for my mom to join the coven, and they get more power?” Bea asked. “They could have just asked her instead of going through all this rigmarole.”
I cleared my throat. “It’s not that easy.”
“It never is,” Bea replied before stuffing some more apple into her face.
“If she willingly joins, she has to go through a thing they call the shredding of the heart.” I frowned as I read the description of this horrific ritual, which involved reducing oneself to nothing more than a piece of meat for the witches to feast on.
“What does it say?” Bea asked.
“You don’t want to know,” I replied, but I kept reading. “If she doesn’t willingly join, the coven will acquire her piece by piece, starting with her sleep. They deprive her of sleep, and that allows them to manipulate her more easily. Then her appetite is hijacked, and they feed her food that will slow her body down. Then her thoughts are a
ppropriated by cutting her hair. It is used in a ritual three days after cutting it.”
“Cath, this sounds crazy. My mom would never be part of this kind of thing. I can’t believe she’d even give them a chance to get inside her head,” Bea said, shaking her head at her half-devoured plate of food.
“No. But I saw a documentary once on cults, and this sounds like good old-fashioned brainwashing with a twist of the occult thrown in,” I said. “Those poor people who drank the Kool-Aid were sleep deprived, starved, manipulated. It’s no different here, except instead of nine hundred and nine people dying, it will just be one. But then again, we don’t know how many died before your mom.”
“That’s a gruesome thought,” Bea added. “I almost lost my appetite.”
“Almost,” I said as I watched her take a big bite out of her pickle.
“Oh my gosh! Cath! Just remember how those witches got the Gingerbread House.” Bea clamped her hand over her mouth. “Jake and Blake are dealing with the deaths there right now. And what about the house down the block? You don’t think these women are the reason for the sudden outbreak of domestic violence, do you? Oh, Cath. What if the boys are in trouble?”
“We can find out with a simple phone call,” I said and tried to roll my eyes at the notion that our men were in anything other than full control of the situation. Nonetheless, I went with Bea into the kitchen, the book I was reading tucked under my arm for safekeeping. She picked up the phone and called the precinct.
“Detective Jake Johnson, please.” She nodded and waited for a moment. Within seconds, she let out a sigh of relief, and her eyes rolled in her head. “Hi. No, I’m fine. I was just checking up on you. Is Blake there with you? He is? Great. Okay, that’s all we needed to know.”
After a few more words of lovey-dovey-ness, Bea hung up but not before arguing with Jake about who loved who more and how the baby was kicking and how hungry Bea would be when Jake finally got home.