Caroline did, lifting up her heavy dark hair. He clasped the chain and let go. As soon as she felt the chain and medallion settle themselves on her skin, she knew she needed them.
“There’s a mirror over here.”
Looking at her reflection, she saw that he was right. The sword and wing rested perfectly in the vee made by the longer chain holding the amethyst.
“How much?” she asked.
11
Brenda
She tried calling Caroline, but the woman’s phone went direct to voicemail.
It was funny: even in the middle of her own strangeness and upheaval, she couldn’t get the woman out of her mind. Brenda wondered if she needed to do one of those “If your life was a dream, what would this mean?” exercises that she always assigned to beginning students.
If her life was a dream, and she started hearing voices, her customers started acting strangely, and a beautiful, lost-looking woman walked into her shop?
She would say…there were messages she’d been avoiding, that she needed to listen to. Avoidance was, of course, the likely reason for her pounding head and body aches. She knew that, too. But oh, how she didn’t want to deal.
All right, Brenda. Take your own medicine. The coven had insisted she do more work at her altar, and call on her particular Goddess and God.
“You aren’t going to get anywhere with this by running away,” Raquel had said.
“We’re here for you, Brenda.” That had been Alejandro. “And if you’re meant to carry an angel, like Tempest and Cassiel think you are, we’ll work with you on it. You aren’t alone.”
She didn’t want to carry an angel, but they were right. She couldn’t avoid this thing. Too many people were being drawn to the shop right now, needing help. If an angel showed up at the same time? It was all clearly connected.
So she bathed, slipped a loose purple caftan over her head, and settled herself in front of her altar. Not the bedroom altar, but the larger one that she often called her “working altar.” It took up one wall of the spare bedroom she used as her home office. The altar had two tiers, the top one with images of the Gods and Goddesses she was most connected to: Diana and Lucifer.
That wasn’t something she talked about much at the shop. People were still so frightened of that second name, thinking it meant “the Devil.” But in the Gospel of Aradia, it was clear that Diana was the Moon and Lucifer, the Sun. The name simply meant “one who bears light.”
He was often seen as a liberator.
If there were things you’d rather remained hidden, a being who bore light could feel very frightening indeed. Witches gained power by facing down their fears. It was time for Brenda to face hers. She needed all the illumination she could get these days.
These were not figurative statues—they were literal representations of sun and moon, made of brass and silver. She lit the votive candles in front of each statue, then recited a passage from the Gospel of Aradia.
“Diana was the first created before all creation; in her were all things; out of herself, the first darkness, she divided herself; into darkness and light she was divided. Lucifer, her brother and son, herself and her other half, was the light.”
She bowed, then turned to the small side sections of the altar, and poured out water from a pitcher into waiting cups. One cup was for the ancestors, the other for the descendants. A witch needed to know where she came from and honor where she—and the world—was headed.
Then she settled into meditation on the low cushion at the altar’s base. Slowing her breathing down, she allowed her attention to drop into her core. She exhaled slowly, tuning in to the energy fields around her. Once again, all felt in order.
The disturbance wasn’t there.
Which meant it had to be coming from outside.
Which didn’t make her feel good at all. Her stomach and shoulder muscles tensed up again, and the aching started up at the base of her skull. Brenda sighed, and worked on relaxing.
Then she picked up her long, double-sided athamé and the birch wood wand she had gathered herself on the new moon, talking to the tree, leaving offerings, and then stripping, sanding, and oiling the wood. They were her most prized possessions, and for tonight’s working? She needed to feel them in her hands.
Fire and air. Will and intention. Action and thought.
She was as ready as she was going to be tonight.
“Great powers of above and below, I call upon you. Powers of air, fire, water, and earth, I thank you. You who hold the sun and moon in your hands, I ask you, please, come to me now. Be with me. Help me to see the path I’m walking toward. Guide my mind and heart. Make quiet my fears. Strip away my ignorance. Allow me to continue to serve the great wheel of time, and those who come to me, seeking knowledge. Blessed be.”
Then she waited. Breathed. She softened her gaze, eyes flickering between the candle flames in front of the sun and moon statues.
And felt punched in the gut with fear.
Her body trembled and shook. She doubled over, in pain, then a force snapped her body upright again. Nonsense words—a strange series of guttural, repetitive syllables—poured from her throat. Hands shaking, she set the blade and wand down with a crash that rocked the altar.
The shaft of light appeared. Her vision flared and dimmed, over and over, as though the light strobed. But she knew it didn’t. It was a steady, golden-white beam, the width of a person’s shoulders.
:Be not afraid: the Voice said.
Brenda gasped, struggling to sit up straight on the cushion again. The shaft of light began to grow, until it was human-sized. She could still see the altar through it. It penetrated the altar and the space before the altar as though solidity held no restriction upon it.
Be not afraid? How was she supposed to manage that, when every molecule inside her wanted to run screaming?
She, who had faced her inner demons, who had stood in the presence of Gods, who had seen the worst life offered, and the best, how was she afraid? What was this thing that felt so foreign that it made her babble in strange tongues?
“Who are you?” she asked.
:I am a messenger of the ever-living planes of existence. I am that which knows itself. I am that which bridges the spaces between formlessness and form. I am that which has one purpose.:
Her breath came in small pants. She steadied her hands, and took in as much air as her lungs would manage, then held it in. Then she exhaled as much air out of her lungs as she could, and held that, too. Then she drew in another breath. She did this for four cycles of four. In. Hold. Out. Hold. In. Then she tilted her head back and breathed a stream of life-giving air upward, connecting to her higher self. She felt the column of her spine snap erect and into place. The rest of her bones and muscles followed suit.
Good. Her body at least felt calmer. And when the body could calm itself, so could the emotions and the mind.
She picked up her tools again, feeling the wand and blade in her hands. Brenda crossed them over her chest.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
:To remind you of whom you can become.:
That’s cryptic, she thought. She also knew that was the way with a lot of these entities. They spoke in riddles, or stated things that were only obvious if you weren’t occupying a human body here on earth.
“I don’t understand,” she said out loud.
The air in the room felt agitated, rippling like heat rising up from tarmac in the summer sun. Or the way the winds rose over the ocean come sunset. She wondered when the calm would come again.
“And the people who’ve been coming to see me this week?”
:They are but a symptom of something…:
It almost felt as though the presence was seeking out a word she would understand. Good.
:Something worse to come. Cataclysm. Apocalypse. You must seek out your strength to challenge and protect those who come to you in need.:
Fury filled her, driving out the final vestiges of fear.
:I am the messenger of the ever-living planes of existence. Your anger is misplaced. I come not from this place your kind calls hell. I come simply from the great unfolding ways of space and time. My work is to carry messages to those who can bear the weight of them.:
Brenda uncrossed her tools and raised her arms, holding the blade in her right hand and the wand in her left, pointed straight up toward the ceiling, and the sky beyond the roof of her home.
“Powers, hear me! My name is Brenda MacMillan, priestess and witch! I hold the powers of sight and sound. I see between the worlds and beyond. Protect my home, my business, my coven, and my friends.”
Then she stared directly at the shaft of light.
“You are not welcome here, unknown creature, to sow fear and confusion in my life. Be you trickster, or deceiver, or the messenger you claim to be, I bid you to depart now from my home. Return only if and when you have clarity and true aid to offer me. In Diana’s name, so mote it be!”
She swept the wand and blade out in an arc around her, making a cutting motion, circling the tools until they rested once again, crosswise, over her heart.
Slowly, very slowly, the shaft of light dispersed. She saw the altar clearly again. The votive candles in front of the sun and moon had burned all the way down and extinguished themselves.
“How?” That wasn’t possible, she was about to say. But she knew it was. She had seen stranger things before.
Brenda sat for a moment, enjoying the fact that she could simply breathe. The tension was gone and her head felt clear.
She pressed her lips to blade and wand, and set them down on her altar once more.
Thanking the powers and the elemental forces, she closed the working, stood, and bowed.
“I need to eat something,” she said to the empty room. It was true. For the first time since the Voice arrived, she actually felt hungry.
So, food first. The second thing she needed to do was to call Raquel.
12
Caroline
Sydney and Dan’s kitchen was a sun-filled oasis. The famous Portland rains seemed to be taking a vacation while she was here, and while Caroline loved rain, she was happy to see the sun filtered through the big trees. It played through the kitchen windows set above the sink and counter area, next to the big, black, retro-style refrigerator, lighting up the white marble counters and the chili-pepper red of the kitchen walls.
The house was quiet, the hosts both at work. Bella the Labrador clicked her way into the kitchen to see what was going on.
“Hey girl, do you need to go outside?”
The dog just yawned, and flumped bonelessly onto the kitchen floor.
Caroline hoisted two heavy grocery bags onto the breakfast bar where she had sat the night before, drinking wine and eating chicken cacciatore. That seemed like an age ago. The terror and shaking fear was gone, replaced by a sense of goodness. Well-being.
Maybe it was Sydney’s home, and the fact that she felt safe here. Maybe it was meeting Brenda…which she wasn’t still ready to think about yet. Thinking about Brenda made Caroline feel slightly giddy and ridiculous.
“You’re only up here visiting, for one thing,” she murmured to herself as she fished the gorgeous golden-yellow roses from one of the brown paper bags.
Or was she? Caroline had no idea yet. Her life was rapidly turning upside down. But, while she could imagine making a home up here, she realized that for the first time in her life, she couldn’t imagine living in Silicon Valley anymore.
It wasn’t home.
Everything down there felt constricted. Rushed. And thinking about going back made her teeth ache and left a sour taste on the edges of her tongue. It was the taste of the brown haze of smog from the traffic that increased more each year. The blue Bay Area skies were tinged with it now, especially during the warmer months.
Not Portland. Portland air smelled of pine, jasmine, and roses. She was sure the city had its problems—every place did—but maybe she wouldn’t have so many problems here. Maybe she could become the person all her clients thought she was.
She ran her fingers over the new angel medallion. “What do you think, Michael? Do I have a chance up here?”
The medal felt good against her skin, as though she’d been wearing it for years. It hummed slightly, she swore it, as though it was forming a link with the amethyst crystal that hung upon her breastbone.
Caroline knew stones. She knew their properties—which ones were good for healing energy, and which were good for clarity of mind or grounding of spirit. She knew how they felt in her hands, she knew the effects that silver settings had upon them, but she’d never felt anything like this before. She’d never heard anyone talk about the way a stone might work when it met another power as great as its own.
That had to be what was happening. Right? she asked herself. If she’d learned one thing in all of her years around New Age types, it was that you should listen carefully, and then assess, whether it was a new situation, or a new gemstone.
And the sense she got from listening so far was that the medallion of Archangel Michael had called to her, and called to the stone she already wore. The shard of a once-mighty crystal cluster, shattered by her husband’s anger.
Together, perhaps they would help her build a new life. Perhaps even in Portland, Oregon.
“Thank you,” she whispered, touching the stone and medallion in turn. Then she set about unpacking the groceries she had stopped for on her way home. It was the least she could do; Sydney and Dan had been so gracious in taking her in. Caroline shook her head and smiled. She knew she was a mess right now. She was just grateful that Sydney didn’t mind, and that her partner was a big bear of a protective man.
The kitchen really did already feel like home. She unpacked asparagus and early strawberries, a bag of spinach, and a packet of lamb from the butcher counter. She kept unpacking until the breakfast bar was filled with food. She inhaled the fragrance of the roses, admiring their startling shade of golden yellow. They were beautiful. She just needed to find a vase.
Grabbing a step stool, she began to hunt through the tallest cupboards; that was usually where people hid their vases, and other things that they didn’t use very often. As soon as she opened the first cupboard, her phone buzzed on the countertop, vibrating its way across the tiles.
“Shit.” She could hope it was Joshua from The Road Home, or another of her customers, checking on orders, but she didn’t think so. The medallion grew warm, a small spot of heat beneath her collarbone. That was strange.
“Are you protecting me, Michael?”
She hoped he was. Lord knew she needed it. Caroline ignored the phone and scooched the step stool over. Climbing it again, she opened the cupboard and there on the top shelf, just as she had thought, were three vases. Two were crystal—one tall, one squat and round—but the third was a beautiful variegated clay tube made up of swirling shades of green, blue, and ocher. She had to stand on her toes to reach it, careful not to overbalance herself. The last thing Caroline needed was to fall.
The smooth vase in her hands, she shut the cupboard door, clambered back down, and set it on the counter. She glanced down at her phone.
Sure enough, it was Rafe’s number. Missed call. She sighed. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”
She was so sick of it. She actually felt astonished she had let it go on so long. How in the world had she let someone treat her that way? And why had she hidden it from other people? Her hands arranged the roses in the vase, careful of the thorns. The scent of them mingled with the ghost of coffee and bacon from the breakfast Dan had cooked that morning.
The phone buzzed and jangled again, and a thorn sliced into her thumb. “Dammit!” Shoving her thumb in her mouth, she almost knocked over the
whole vase. She steadied it quickly, then glanced down at the phone.
Rafe.
“I’m done with you, you bastard; this ends now,” she said to the empty kitchen. The refrigerator ticked in reply. She jabbed the talk button. “Rafe.”
Immediately, he started screaming in her ear.
“I want you to leave me alone,” she said.
His shouting was so loud, she set the phone down on the counter, and scrabbled in the pocket of her jeans for her earbuds. As she plugged them in, she felt almost as though she were floating. As if her body wasn’t solid anymore. As if…she was watching and listening, half outside herself. Her emotions were muted. The room was still bright with sun, but slightly misty, as though someone had hung a pale, sheer curtain around her.
She felt her anger, that was definitely there. But she also felt calm. She slid the earbuds in, and heard Rafe’s voice, still shouting at her. Thumbing the sound down, she felt…Michael. The warmth of the medallion and the humming of the amethyst crystal spread out and covered her, surrounding her.
It felt like being enclosed in a set of wings, and for the first time in years, Caroline felt as if she was going to be okay.
She reached her arms into the final grocery bag, only half listening to this man. Her husband. The one she thought she’d be with for the remainder of her life. Might as well get the groceries put away while they were at it.
“I’m done with it. I’m done with putting up with you. I’ve taken your shit for too long.” Good for you, girl, cursing at him like that. Caroline heard him sputter. She opened the refrigerator and started shifting containers of leftovers, cartons of eggs, and bottles of juice aside. She needed to make room for the fresh stuff. “Yes, I’m putting away groceries while I’m talking to you. I already know what you’re going to say, so it isn’t as though I need to pay close attention. No, it’s none of your business where I am.”
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