by S. M. Reine
If Junior had come back so quickly, then he must have news.
He’d found Sophie.
The ritual for a full moon esbat wasn’t complicated for a witch of James’s strength, yet he had to begin well before nightfall to ensure it would be ready in time. It took hours for the same reason that herding cattle across the plains took weeks; James couldn’t simply gallop on horseback across the territory when the witches in his coven needed to be herded.
“Why salt, though?” Betty asked, holding up one glass jar to the sunlight. “And why is it pink?”
“Salt is both protective and representative of the earth,” James said. “I had pink salt on hand for cooking. Ordinary table salt will do equally well.”
“Oh.” She set the jar down. “How about this one? What is this?”
“Dragon’s blood.”
“You bled a dragon for this?” She looked like she wanted to grab it and run away. It wouldn’t be the first time Betty had tried to lay claim to ritual supplies.
“It’s an herb,” he said, feeling tired.
James’s time studying with the White Ash Coven hadn’t prepared him for the task of managing ordinary witches like Betty Beatty. In his family’s coven, everyone was either related to him—and therefore a witch of staggering generational power—or had been acquired through international coven treaties, adding their knowledge to the White Ash Coven’s collective wealth. There had been no people like Betty, hobby witches who had grown up watching The Craft and Practical Magic and wanted love spells to make life better.
Movement drew James’s attention outside the circle. The rest of the coven was resting on towels after a brief, chilly dip in the lake, while Lincoln Keyes was leaving the camp. He faded into the shadows of the trees where the trailhead stood.
“Gosh, I hope he’s not feeling left out.” Betty had noticed his exit too.
James busied himself with the altar. “I’m sure it’s strange to be among unfamiliar witches.”
“Maybe. I thought it’d be better than being alone or worrying about his trouble. I guess he’s in town because his family sucks? And one of his friends needs help? He looked pretty rough when we met. Like life had kicked him in the nards.” So naturally, Betty had invited him into her bed, her coven, and her life. That was very much the kind of carefree foolishness that occupied Betty’s time. For a scientist, she wasn’t terribly bright.
“You don’t know much about him, do you?” James asked.
“I’ve got a good sense for people,” Betty said airily. “I don’t need to know him to tell that he’s all right.”
She didn’t know enough about the world to judge someone like Lincoln. Though Betty was older for a college student, she was still breathtakingly young, with all the naïveté that came from a sheltered middle-class upbringing. She knew that witches existed but had never heard of a kopis. If she’d ever passed a demon on the street, she wouldn’t have known what it was. And she hadn’t spent years of her life dedicated to hiding from potential threats.
That was the real problem with making friends among the general populace. James had warned Elise time and again that she was playing with fire by forming friendships with other students. Elise had never listened. Even when he’d been forming the coven and business under his legal name—since their enemies weren’t the type to search for people by name—he’d reminded Elise frequently that the weakest link in their defenses was their social circle.
Betty had let Lincoln in, and Elise wasn’t going to do anything about it because she loved Betty too well.
James limited himself to saying, “I envy your confidence.”
“I envy how much you’re gonna be a silver fox in a few years,” she muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing! Just talking to myself. Hey, Elise!” Betty waved her arms to catch Elise’s attention. She had just emerged from swimming laps in the lake, and she was still trailing water from the bottommost hem of her board shorts. The skin was turning red on either side of her top’s straps.
“Need something?” Elise stopped at the edge of the circle of power. She’d briefly lived as a teenager with James’s Aunt Pamela, a powerful witch in her own right. She knew to be careful around their workings.
“I need you in here,” Betty said. “Don’t worry, we haven’t closed the circle yet.”
Elise stepped carefully around the bowls on the northern edge of the circle. She’d barely gotten inside before Betty tackled her with a bottle of sunblock.
“Hey! Cold!” Elise protested, twisting away from Betty’s hands.
“You are burning, Miss Kavanagh.” Betty tugged Elise’s braid to keep her close. “I’m going to protect you from our sun’s vicious ultraviolet rays whether or not you like it.”
Elise stopped fighting quickly. With curls stuck to her neck, she looked like a hawk that had gotten stuck in a rainstorm, resigned to her drenched fate. “I’m not going to get skin cancer.”
“You can get freckles, so you can get melanoma. But even if you’re not afraid of dying a horrible death, you should be afraid of getting wrinkly. You’ll never score a hot husband if you get wrinkly.” She smeared the sunblock so liberally over Elise’s skin that she was pasty white, then she pushed Elise back outside the circle.
“I doubt Elise will have trouble getting a hot husband based upon her number of wrinkles,” James said, scooping up a candle that Betty nearly knocked over.
“No, she’ll have trouble because men are weak and easily frightened,” Betty said.
“Weak and easily frightened?”
She batted her eyelashes. “Present company excluded, but you’re not a potential suitor. You’re more like Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer , except without Anthony Stewart Head’s sultry sex-voice. Hey! You should be on Team Elise’s Skincare with me. We can conspire to save her from melanoma and wrinkles.”
He glanced over at Elise. Her skin was far from flawless. She had a tattoo low on one hip, peeking over her board shorts, and several scars slashed over her abdominal muscles. Other ridges lined her arms, her neck, even her chin. The most prominent was on her brow, but it was only one of a hundred. The imperfections made Elise who she was. They were additive rather than reductive. A few more flaws would only make her better.
“I’ll be wrinkled long before she is,” James said.
“That sounds like a challenge to me,” Betty said, squirting more sunblock onto her palm.
He veered away, laughing. “I already put on sunblock!”
“The more the merrier!” She flicked it at him, and James dodged. Thank God for dance training. Even without being in constant battles against the forces of Hell, he remained agile.
Sunblock splattered on Elise’s foot.
“Careful, Betty,” James warned. “You shouldn’t invoke the wrath of the wrinkled future cancer patient.”
“I’m still here. I can hear you calling me names.” Elise attempted to rub sunblock off of one foot with the other. She mostly smeared it around, leaving streaks of yellow sand in its wake. “I can hear literally everything you’re saying.”
Betty raised her voice and cupped a hand behind her ear. “What are you saying? I can’t hear you over the roar of the magic circle! So much power!”
Elise rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. It remained a surprise to James how much Elise smiled for Betty. “Where’d your boy toy go, Bets?” Elise asked.
Betty waved vaguely at the forest. “I think he’s nursing his man-pain somewhere over there. Don’t tell him I said that.”
“Elise isn’t going to talk to him at all, I’m sure,” James said.
But his kopis was already walking off—not returning to swim, but heading into her cabin, wringing the water out of her braid. Droplets slithered down the ridges of her traps and lats. The summertime tan made the ridges look deeper, the valleys more shadowed, her body more shredded.
She shut the door behind her. Only the click brought James’s attention back to the circle of po
wer.
“Elise is acting weird. Weirder than usual, I mean,” Betty said. “Is she okay?”
“Why are you asking me?” James asked. “You don’t need to help me with the circle. You can go speak with her yourself.”
“I guess,” Betty said. “But she talks to you like she doesn’t talk to anyone else.”
“You’re her best friend.”
“You’re different,” she said.
Perhaps Betty wasn’t quite as foolish as she looked—or at least, not only foolish.
“Elise will be fine,” James said. “I’ll make sure of it.”
He always did.
The forest in the Sierra Nevadas wasn’t particularly thick. The trees were towering and old, standing far enough apart that he could never touch more than one at a time, and the branches formed a canopy that only allowed bars of light to penetrate. As Lincoln walked deeper, the sounds of witches splashing faded. Even Betty’s shamelessly loud whooping echoed into nothingness within moments.
Gray stone flashed further down the trail, beckoning him onward. He broke into a jog.
“Junior?”
The wind sighed through the trees.
Protect her .
Lincoln turned at the words, even though he already knew, instinctively, that there wasn’t anyone speaking behind him.
The forest was empty and darkening. Night seemed to be falling. That was impossible—it was barely mid-afternoon.
He rubbed his eyes. Was it his vision?
Where had Junior gone?
Lincoln had faced too much weirdness in his life to interpret his shifting senses as anything but a trap. He headed for the trail again—but there was no sight of it. The dirt was covered in pine needles with occasional tufts of grass.
There wasn’t a single sign of human habitation. He couldn’t even see the power lines anymore.
Don’t let me hurt her .
He spun again.
“Inanna?” Lincoln asked. But the voice was too masculine to be hers. Those words came from inside himself.
Hide her from me .
The voice was soft, but loud. It made his head throb, and he clutched his temples as if it could help keep the pressure inside.
Hot wind blasted over Lincoln’s back.
He stood at the edge of a desert where trees faded into sweeping dunes, jags of yellow stone, and an orange sun that blazed just beyond the edge of his vision. It was still darker in the forest itself. Lincoln faced the light and the heat, shading his eyes from a burn that felt so real.
There was a city shimmering on the horizon. The space between where he stood and that city was so hot that it rippled like water.
At his back, the Sierras were cool, dim.
“A vision,” Lincoln said, just to see if he could talk. His voice sounded normal. He felt normal enough, too.
He blinked, and the desert was gone.
Lincoln was alone in the forest.
“What are you trying to show me, Inanna?” he muttered. Or was this another side-effect of the Traveler’s powers?
He picked a direction and started walking again—the direction that tugged at him, like he could feel Junior waiting for him at the end of a long cable. Every step felt harder than the last. His back burned hot, like the desert had never gone away, even though everything just kept getting darker.
Fog crept in between the trees. His ears filled with a rushing sound, like wind over dunes.
“Shit,” Lincoln said.
His legs gave out, and he fell.
The ground wasn’t there to support him. He fell into an endless blue desert sky. The wind was screaming at him.
Protect her from me .
A city made of mud brick appeared below him, standing beside the glittering serpent of a river. It grew in his vision. He was about to hit it.
Lincoln couldn’t even shout before he was consumed.
Part IV
Anat had known no pulse-racing fear in her life as that which she felt entering the nomarch’s manor. Inanna slunk by her side, glaring at their surroundings with teeth bared and shoulders hunched. It shouldn’t have surprised Anat that a wealthy merchant from Kush would stay with the region’s governor, yet it did. She had heard that this was the case from temple visitors, and still , she was surprised to pass the nomarch’s gatekeeper without being stopped.
“Are you in for the night?” called the gatekeeper.
“Most likely,” said Nügua’s manservant. “Watch the walls for us, friend.”
Nobody asked who Anat was.
She was entering the belly of Inanna’s greatest foe, and it was a finer place than she had ever seen. The verandah was almost as large as that in the House of Maat. The main hall was quiet at this time of night, but Anat could easily imagine musicians playing for the nomarch’s pleasure in the daylight.
They passed through the main house before exiting again. The garden was high-walled, the pool lit by floating lanterns which bathed the surrounding trees in golden light.
“Sit on the edge so that I can examine your wounds,” said the manservant.
Anat blinked at him. He had barely spoken to her while they sailed upriver to the manor, and she had expected him to remain mute. He was Nügua’s hand—no more than a thug. She took a step back from him. “Don’t touch me.”
While they passed through the house, he had picked up a small chest that looked foreign. Dark, glossy wood was held together with polished gold brackets. He opened its lid. There were many tiny glass jars inside, along with small tools and strips of bandaging. “Where I grew up, we’re herders, nomads,” he said. “My grandmother healed men whose wounds turned poorly, and I paid attention. I won’t hurt you.”
Anat imagined she had no choice in the matter. She sat where he indicated. “I was a herder, too.”
“It’s a difficult life,” the manservant said.
“The only difficult part was watching my family slaughtered in front of me,” she said. “It was like Heaven until I was forced to come to Kemet.”
“Then this isn’t your first lesson in how men are violent animals.” He took position beside her, inspecting arms, neck, and face in silence. “He barely hit you,” the servant concluded. “Pathetic effort.”
He thought it was pathetic that Hannu hadn’t been able to beat her properly. She rankled, clenching her fist around a dagger she wasn’t holding. Inanna raged beside her.
“I’ll clean the dirt from the cuts and apply powder so it doesn’t spoil,” he said. “There is illness in the region—a fever that goes into the bones—and it will do no good for you to fall dead before my mother can see you.”
She remained stiff as he washed her with cloth and water.
“You can call me Khet, by the way,” he added. “It’s what my mother is calling me while we’re here.”
Without turning her head, she studied Khet from the corner of her eye. He was all too comfortable here in the nomarch’s home, handling Anat’s injuries and talking about the murderer who employed him. “Is your mother the merchant, Nügua?”
“Yes.” He had a warm, wide smile that made Anat feel as though she’d been bathed in daylight.
“The woman who birthed you?”
“No,” he said. “That one doesn’t matter. What do I call you?”
“Anat,” she said.
He nodded. “A Girgashite of Canaan, and refugee of Kephirah’s razing, found to be in the service of the House of Maat.”
The hair on her arms stood on end. She hadn’t allowed herself to think the name of her birth city since it had been burned. It had been a sprawling place of pastures and low tents where her entire family had lived. Where Inanna had taught her to weave boats of grass and wield a knife like a warrior. Her home was a memory so painfully beautiful that she couldn’t imagine it had ever been real.
“You cannot know her for any reasons that are good, Utu.” Inanna circled Khet unseen, peering closely at his every feature. “Why do you approach as a villain?” It w
asn’t the first time that Inanna had called him Utu. He was said to be another god of her pantheon—her lover, friend, and companion for many thousands of years.
“How do you know who I am?” Anat asked.
“My mother knows everything,” Khet said. “She wanted me to attempt to buy you again. Failing that, I was to abduct you. She’s single-minded when her eye falls upon a target.”
“Then you didn’t save me at all.” The warm wind felt cooler where Anat’s skin had been cleaned. The cuts no longer stung.
Khet’s smile was disarming. It was difficult to think when he had it turned on her. “You are alive and unhurt. To whom do you owe thanks?” He packed up the chest and closed it again. “Her interest in meeting a Remnant of Inanna has saved you.”
“What?” Anat asked.
Inanna echoed her. “What ?”
“The souls of gods can always see each other. You must already know who I am.” Khet’s smile was only getting wider. He had all of his teeth, still. His skin was too fair for the harsh desert sun, and the tops of his cheekbones were pink.
Utu had smiled very much like that.
“Then does Utu speak to you as Inanna speaks to me?” Anat asked, feeling uncomfortable. She had learned quickly that telling people about her invisible companion was unacceptable. She’d only needed to be saved from a childhood stoning once to realize that such things were best kept as secrets.
“I am fully merged with Utu. I am he, and he is me,” Khet said. “One day, you may be like this too. I have had more time to be guided than you have. I’m far more advanced.”
“Speaking so frankly is a sign of a man without the wit for nuance.”
“I’ve nuances a small-minded shepherd girl can’t imagine. You mistake frankness for truth, and the truth is without value. I have told it to dozens before killing them, and none have believed me until my mother’s fangs pierced his throat.”
Anat’s hands flew to her neck. She imagined blood pouring from between her fingers into the beautiful mouth of Nügua.