by Cate Tiernan
“Like this.” I bent my knees, dropped into a crouch, then stood up. “Or let him get it.”
She gave me a dirty look but put on the miniskirt. I switched out her plain silver hoops for some dangly earrings that almost brushed her shoulders.
“Your hair is fine, but we have fabulous eyes,” I said, examining her face. “You should do more with them. And your skin is still a little pink, so we need to tone it down.”
Ten minutes later, when Kevin rang the bell, Thais was ready. She looked fabulous, much more like me.
Nan and I hovered in the background as Thais opened the front door. I saw Kevin standing there, and Thais was right—he really was good-looking.
“Whoa,” I heard Kevin say, and then, “Uh, I mean, you look … really great.”
Thais laughed, then waved goodbye to us and shut the door behind her.
“Did you want to meet him?” I asked Nan.
“I can meet him later,” Nan said, heading into the workroom. “He seemed like a nice guy.?
“And he’s not a witch,” I said, following her. “After Luc, anyone else is simple.” As soon as I said it, I winced and thought, Crap. I’d worked hard to not mention Luc’s name—not to Racey, Nan, or Thais. I’d downplayed how I’d felt about Luc, how heartbroken and sick I was about it. I didn’t want anyone to know. It was bad enough that I knew.
But of course Nan, as sharp as a shard of glass, caught it and turned to me.
“What do you need to tell me about Luc?” she asked gently.
“Nothing.” Nor did I need to tell her that Richard had kissed me the other night. A fact I was still trying to suppress in my own memory. And I got to see both of them tomorrow night at the Récolte celebration. Goody.
I went to the cupboard and got out our four cups. We’d planned to work on scrying magick tonight since Thais would be out of the house and pathetic Clio didn’t have a date with a normal, appropriate person who wasn’t 250 years old.
Nan started to draw a circle on the floor with a thin line of sand flowing through her fingers. Chalk circles are good, all-purpose circles; circles drawn with salt have protective, purifying powers. Circles can be made out of almost anything—shells, rocks, gems, leaves, silk fibers—you name it. Todays circle of sand had powerful protective qualities because of what sand is made of: quartz, lime (in the form of ground-up, calcified shells), feldspar, mica, magnetite. They all had protective powers.
I set up the four cups and lit the incense and the candle and then another pillar candle, a blue one, in the middle of the circle. Nan and I sat down, facing each other. It wasn’t like it was before, before I knew she’d lied to me, kept my father from me. Just two months ago I had trusted her completely, put myself in her hands without question. Now I knew that I couldn’t. I wondered if it would interfere with our magick, our connection.
I looked up to see her watching me, as if she knew what I was thinking. With a small, sad smile, she took my hands, then closed her eyes.
Eventually Nan started singing, and I joined in with my own song when I felt ready. We each watched the candle flame between us, and soon I had become part of it. I saw the almost-clear base of fire, faintly tinged with blue, that seemed to hover at the bottom of the wick. Then the orange parabola that rose above it, burning steadily. Above that, the peak of white and yellow, swaying, undulating, burning like life itself. The essence of fire became bigger than the candle flame, as though this small mote had broken off a raging inferno and somehow landed here. I could feel its appetite, its eagerness to consume. It seemed so pure, so above considerations of good or bad. It just was itself, with neither pride nor remorse.
I wanted to be fire.
Then, as I gazed dreamily at it, my vision opened up to see a campfire on the ground. An iron pot was boiling above it, supported on a trestle. I looked around and saw a village. A narrow road, covered with crushed oyster shells, wound through an uneven line of wooden houses. It looked like a movie set, and I walked down the road, curious. A pig ran past, squealing, followed by two small boys with sticks. Loose chickens pecked in the dirt by the side of the road. I smelled wood smoke.
One smaller house stood a little ways off the road. It was painted yellow and had flowers and herbs growing in the yard. It felt like a place I knew, and I walked toward it. The front door was open, and a cat ran out of it, followed by a woman with light brown hair, almost blond. It was Nan, a much younger Nan, holding a toddler on her hip. Her lips were pressed tightly together and she seemed distracted.
Then a man came out of the house, holding a valise made of carpet. It was the same man we’d seen arguing with Nan in our vision. He was tall and handsome, with black hair. He had my birthmark on one cheek, but his skin was tanned so darkly you could hardly see it. He said something to Nan, and she shook her head angrily, not looking at him. He let out a breath, threw up his hands, and walked away from them. A horse was tethered nearby and he got on it, then rode off into the distance out of sight.
The scene changed abruptly, and Nan was much older, as old as she looked now. She was in a small room, standing by a narrow bed. Her forehead was damp with sweat and she looked tired. A girl I recognized as Sophie stepped forward and handed her a basin of steaming water and a towel. A young woman was on the bed, not the girl from the rainy night who died, but someone different. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and our birthmark but still somehow looked like a young Nan.
She was in labor, and Nan was helping. The baby was born, and Nan lifted it and tied the cord with string. Sophie smiled happily and took the baby in a white cloth. Then Nan looked alarmed and leaned over the girl in the bed, grabbing her hand. The girl’s face was pleased and relaxed, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. She was dead. I felt Nan’s grief, her anger, a huge sense of despair. In another scene I saw Nan fill out the death certificate. The girl’s name had been Béatriz Rousseau. The year was 1818.
The baby had had a birthmark too. That birthmark had been handed down in our family for generations, as though we were marked for death even before we had lived.
I didn’t want to see anymore and felt myself closing off. I was half aware of sitting on the workroom floor, and then I felt Nan’s warm hands slowly pulling themselves out of mine. She drew away and left me, clearly meaning for me to continue practicing my skills.
I didn’t know what to scry for. I didn’t want to see any more of the past, see how generations before me had died, one after another, like dominos, in childbirth. Like my mother. I had the sudden realization that I myself would die like that if I had a child. I would die. I’d never thought about children, didn’t even know if I wanted any. If Luc and I had stayed together somehow, would I have wanted to have his child? A gulf of longing and emptiness rose inside me, thinking of it.
I shook my head. This wasn’t scrying. I wasn’t concentrating. I could think about all this later.
Luc. God, Luc. Would I ever not miss him? Not want him?
Then he was right in front of me; I was scrying him in the flame. I hadn’t meant to—my longing had opened this door. But now that I was here, I didn’t close it. I hadn’t seen him in days and my eyes feasted on him, as if I could consume him just by looking.
Luc was in a dark, swampy, woodsy place. He was kneeling on the ground, surrounded by crystals and hunks of salt rock. Before him was a broad, shallow bowl of water. He was working magick.
He blinked and looked up, right into my eyes.
I drew in a startled breath and winked out my vision, dousing the candle. I swallowed and opened my circle quickly, my heart pounding. I was ashamed of spying on him, yet everything in me was singing with joy at seeing him again, just for a moment.
I put away our tools and swept up the circle. I heard Nan in the kitchen and hoped she wasn’t doing any of the cleanup, which would only make me feel worse. Though of course I would be happy to do less.
I had seen Luc, and he’d been working magick. For what? I would have given anything to know what he’d b
een doing. What if the two of us made magick together, joining our hearts and minds, losing ourselves in a magickal place where power and life were all around us? It would be heaven, as close as I would ever get to heaven, since our religion didn’t have a heaven or a hell.
Luc loved Thais. He’d used me and lied to me and made me love him. I hated him for it—yet pathetically, I admitted only to myself that I still loved him despite everything. And I would be seeing him tomorrow night.
“So Ponchartrain is a Native American word, right?” I asked Kevin. We were walking along the levee at the lakefront, hoping to catch any kind of breeze. We’d gone to a movie, which I could already hardly remember, but it had been mildly funny and not too bad.
“Yeah,” Kevin said, taking my hand. “Look up ahead. There’s a neat fountain I want to show you.”
As we headed down the sidewalk, I began to catch on to the fact that the lakefront was a major parking and make-out spot. There were also tons of people just standing around their cars, talking, drinking beer. Other cars drove past and called to them or razzed them. It was a whole scene, and we hadn’t had anything like it in Welsford.
I was liking Kevin more the better I knew him. It wasn’t an overwhelming, joyous, desperate thing, like it had been with Luc, but it was pleasant and nice. Which was a welcome change.
“Oh my gosh,” I said as we came closer to the fountain.
“It’s called the Mardi Gras fountain,” Kevin said. “It was made back in 1962, and just last year it didn’t work and was all broken. But they’ve restored it. It’s cool.”
It was an enormous fountain surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence. Around the concrete base was a ring of tiled plaques, and we walked closer to see them.
“Each one is for a different Mardi Gras krewe,” Kevin explained. “Some of them don’t exist anymore, and the new ones aren’t shown. But a lot of them are still around.”
We walked slowly around the fountain, reading the plaques. The names of the krewes were weird and funny: Momus, Comus, Zulu, Osiris, Rex. The fountain itself shot maybe twenty feet into the air, with rings of jets that played at different times and heights to make it seem patternless. Plus lights set into the bottom changed the color of the water itself from purple and green and gold, to just one shade, to red and blue and all sorts of combinations.
It was bizarre, overdone, and gaudy yet beautiful and strong. Very New Orleans.
“This is awesome,” I said sincerely. “I love this. Thanks for showing it to me.”
Kevin smiled down at me. “It’s cool, isn’t it? My folks used to take me here when I was little.”
“And now you bring girls here,” I teased him.
“Uh, a few.” He grinned.
“Are they supposed to be doing that?” I pointed to some people who had climbed over the fence and were actually playing and splashing in the fountain.
Kevin shrugged. “No. But people always do. Sometimes people soap it too. There are fountains all over the city, and people always play in them. It’s too hot to not take advantage of a chance to cool off.”
“You’re right about that.” Here it was, practically October, ten o’clock at night, and it was probably still in the high eighties. I reached back and lifted my hair off my neck to let the breeze get to it. Leaning over, Kevin blew softly on my neck to cool me off.
It was really intimate and really sweet. I looked into his green eyes, a more olive shade than mine, and wondered if he was going to kiss me. But he drew back and gestured to the fountain.
“Wanna join them?”
“Yeah!” We climbed easily over the low fence, and I kicked off my sandals, the only part of my outfit that Clio had approved of. Kevin took off his Tevas, then led me over the shallow rim of the fountain.
Immediately the smaller jets shot up, raining down on us. People around us were playing and laughing, pretending to really splash each other. When we got wet, I gave a little shriek, but Kevin was laughing, and he took my hand and pulled me away from a group that was getting too raucous.
The water was almost cool, and it swirled around my legs. “This feels great,” I said, wading, looking at my bare feet lit up by the fountain lights.
“And your skirt’s so short you don’t have to worry about it getting wet,” Kevin said.
Quickly I looked at him and saw a gentle, teasing expression on his face. He made me feel so comfortable, as if I could totally trust him. “You noticed it, did you?” I said.
“Oh, yeah.”
I laughed, and then my foot hit something and I almost lost my balance. Kevin grabbed me, and I saw that I’d run into a little faucet handle set into the fountain floor.
“Thanks,” I said, then realized he hadn’t let me go. He looked at me, not smiling, and I thought, Here we go, and caught my breath. Slowly Kevin lowered his head, giving me time to escape, but I didn’t and met his lips with mine, actually kissing someone else besides Luc, which I thought I’d never do again for the rest of my life.
Kevin was a good kisser. He was much more sure of himself than Chad Woolcott had been, and there was none of the deep, heavy urgency that Luc’s kisses had ignited. Instead it was sweet and exploring, not tentative. I kissed him back, and pathetically, I was glad that Luc wouldn’t see this. Then I was so mad that I’d even had that thought, and I went up on my toes and wrapped my arms around Kevin’s neck. It didn’t seem to matter that we were out in public, that tons of people could see us.
At that moment, it was as if someone flicked a switch and turned off the moonlight. Despite the overhead lights around the fountain and the water lights themselves, the area still somehow seemed draped in sudden darkness. A chilly breeze made goose bumps rise on my arms, and I pulled back from Kevin and looked at the sky. Huge, dark thunderclouds were rolling in off the lake, blocking the moon and stars.
Suddenly everything was washed out, so brightly lit with lightning that all color was leached out of my sight, as if an enormous camera flash had gone off.
“Move!” Kevin said, starting to pull me to get out of the fountain. Everyone else was scrambling to get out, and then a huge boom! of thunder seemed to shake the earth itself. I was hurrying through the knee-deep water, but about a foot from the edge I had a shocking premonition of death, danger, dying. Without a moment to think, I yanked my hand out of Kevin’s and threw my arms into the air. Closing my eyes, I cried out the strongest protection spell Petra had taught me, hoping I had memorized the syllables correctly. Then I said, “Goddess, hear me! I call on earth, water, fire, and air! Protect us!”
In the next millisecond, an enormous bolt of lightning snaked down from the sky, making my hair fly up with electricity. I smelled something burning, and then the lightning hit the water we were standing in. My whole body tingled, and the fountain’s lights all around us burst, with glass and sparks flying everywhere. But Kevin and I were protected, as if we were in a bubble that slowed time down and absorbed the enormous voltage of the lightning bolt. I whirled in slow motion and saw Kevin, looking stunned, reaching for me. Oh goddess, my magick had worked! For once, it had worked properly! Ecstatic joy flooded me, and I raised my face to the sky and laughed. In the next fraction of a second, I saw Luc’s face, right in front of me, his eyes wide and startled, alarm making him still. But my magick had worked and now flowed out of me seamlessly, and I was part of the world again.
Then Kevin started to fall, the moment seemed to pop, and suddenly I was back in the now, hearing scared cries, the fountain’s silence, the distant honking of cars. I lunged forward, almost slipping, and caught Kevin. He was heavy, and the best I could do was sink down against the fountain ledge, propping him against me. Had my spell protected only me? I was suddenly terrified. We’d been standing in water that lightning struck—we should have been killed. But was Kevin more hurt than I was?
“Kevin! Kevin!” I said, holding him in my arms. A man ran over and helped me get him out of the fountain. Kevin shook his head and blinked, looking up at me.
“My God!” said the man. “Never seen anything like it! You two should be dead!”
“Are you okay?” I asked Kevin worriedly, keeping my arms around him.
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “What happened?”
“We got hit by lightning, sort of,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“Y’all better get out of here before you get hit again,” said the man as heavy rain began to fall. “Storm looks bad.”
“Can you walk? Are you okay?” I asked again.
He nodded and got to his feet. He rubbed his forehead with one hand, looking confused. “I’m okay,” he said. “I just don’t remember what happened.” He seemed more himself, and he took my hand. “Let’s get to the car—we’re getting soaked.”
Together we ran back to where he had parked the little Miata. Inside I felt cold, either from the temperature drop or a delayed reaction. I had made magick. I had saved us. It was exhilarating. And scary. And I had seen Luc, right when my spell had occurred. Why? What did that mean? Had he … been part of it somehow?
“You’re shaking,” said Kevin.
“I am? Oh. Yeah, I am.”
He reached into the minuscule backseat and pulled out a soft cotton throw. It was big enough to wrap around both of us, even over the stick shift, and I immediately felt better.
“Are you okay?” I asked for the third time. “Should we go to a doctor?”
“My dad’s a doctor,” he said, “but actually, I feel okay. A little shook up, maybe, but fine. So lightning hit the actual water?”
I nodded. “It broke all the lights. It was pretty scary. I felt like I’d stuck my finger in a light socket.”
He shook his head, trying to figure it out. “It should have killed us—a fountain that small, a direct hit. I don’t know why it didn’t.”
I shrugged, wide-eyed, realizing suddenly that Kevin hadn’t heard my spell. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“Yeah,” he said, not sounding convinced. The rain was pouring down now, with more lightning and huge, rolling booms of thunder, but I felt cozy and safe inside the small dark car. Kevin seemed normal again at last, and he started the engine and took me home.