by Kayti McGee
As soon as I heard Rose set foot on the floor of my ritual room, I left. I moved to the farthest end of the house, which happened to be where I kept my exercise equipment. That suited me perfectly. I blew off steam on the bench press and listened as Rose moved around the house. I expected her to try to leave, but it seemed that I had instilled a healthy fear of the Blackmanes in her, because she did not. She went directly to the library and became very still and quiet. I heard her huff. Book pages flipped softly.
I thought about my parents then, who were shadows in my mind. Once, in a place beyond memory, they had loved me—they had held me and leaned over me. Perhaps they had died protecting me. I tried to picture it: A man with my face passing a bundled child to Marion. I wondered exactly how it had happened. How had I, a helpless infant, survived? How had they died? Were they ready? Was it quick? And what would they say to me now, if Rose could call them up?
She was right; I was lying when I said I didn’t care. Perhaps we always suspect that the place beyond memory is the place where meaning lies.
I gasped and lowered the weight above me. Sweat trickled through my hair. I felt like a little boy again, lost and loveless.
Rose and I avoided one another for the rest of the day. I skipped dinner and showered. While I was in the bathroom, she skittered to the kitchen, grabbed something out of the fridge, and hurried back to her books. On my way down the hall, I stopped at the library door and laid a hand against it. I needed her. If she couldn’t feel that, then she couldn’t feel anything.
But she couldn’t feel it, or she was ignoring it. Probably the latter. I glowered at the door. The only thing more infuriating than Rose’s indifference was the fact that I needed her at all. I stalked to the living room and sat in an armchair in the dark. Normally, I would have had a view off the deck, but the blinds were closed all throughout my house—another small sacrifice in the service of protecting Rose.
I closed my eyes and emptied my mind. Sleep would not come, nor would the specter of my parents depart. They were affable, unfamiliar figures on the edges of reality. I reached out to them unthinkingly. If they had been reaching for me all these years, then Rose could connect us. Rose could die trying to connect us. I pictured her with a death mask, blossoms framing the black and white porcelain. I pictured us lying side by side.
Her voice rippled the surface of my consciousness. I thought that I was imagining it at first. Before I met Rose, that murky place between wakefulness and sleep was where I’d spent most of my time. I believed it was the precursor to madness.
“Thorn?” she repeated. “Can I come in?”
I opened my eyes and turned my head slightly, just enough to see her silhouette in the hallway. She wore a black slip and nothing else.
“Of course. What time is it?”
“Two in the morning.” She padded through the dark room and climbed onto my lap. I folded my arms around her. She pressed closer, her silken curves sliding against my chest. “You weren’t sleeping, were you?”
“Not exactly,” I murmured. There was almost no point in lying to her anymore.
“And you don’t eat.”
Her powers of observation surprised me. I’d taken great pains to pick at food whenever she ate a meal and to appear to be sleeping beside her.
“I do, sometimes.” I dragged my fingers through her hair. “Not often. The need of those things...”
“Say it. I’m not afraid.”
Of course she wasn’t. She seemed to fear nothing.
“It fades, with time.”
She placed small kisses along my neck and jaw.
“Do you miss it?” she whispered.
“Yes. Sleep most of all.” I ran my fingers down her spine, then back up, in a slow rhythm. I had wanted her earlier, but now I felt drained. I needed this more—this comfort and closeness. “You’re good for me, Rose. Better than you know. I need you here... but that doesn’t mean you’re my prisoner.” I sighed and almost chuckled. “Far from it. I’ll help you get away if you really want to leave.”
“I don’t!” She nuzzled closer. “I don’t want to leave. I’m sorry I said that. I overreacted.”
Since we were trading honesty, I said, “I would love to know what my parents would say to me, but I won’t risk you practicing your craft here. I can’t.”
“I know. I understand.”
“Do you?” I took her face in my hands and made her look at me. “Maybe someday, somewhere else. Here... never. Not as long as the Blackmanes are around. They’ll feel your magic and descend like wolves—Marion first. The others might be curious and tolerant, since we don’t kill other witches lightly, but not the Maven. She would kill you before I could even get to you. Sometimes, I’m not sure you know how much danger you’re really in. Every second you’re here is a risk I shouldn’t be taking.”
“It’s worked out so far. That’s all we can ask for.” She spread her fingers on my chest and rubbed gently. “And when things settle and Marion thinks I’m gone, we can leave.”
That was the nearest thing to a plan for the future that we had discussed, and it wasn’t unreasonable. Before Rose happened, Marion had urged me to travel. Travel would be the perfect cover. Marion had farseeing powers of prognostication—she had seen Rose in Ella’s Café before she even set foot in town—but the tattoo I had given Rose would help conceal her, and more tattoos and wards would follow. I could keep her safe. I could make her invisible.
I held Rose until the sun paled the edges of the window. We did not sleep. We caressed one another and spoke dreamily of the places we could travel, the things she wanted to see and do. A picture of our future opened in front of me like the Summerland mural, vibrant enough that I might have stepped right into it. It was pink and gold, with sand and docks, brine-scented air and seagull cries... and cream-colored villas, a gondola in a nighttime canal, light splashed on black water, cathedral darkness. I saw the faces of enchanting new witches passing before us—men and women we would bring into the small circle of our trust. The so-called unbroken chain of my Blackmane family might break, but I would fill my life with Rose. We would watch sparrows and drink espresso in the fairytale towns of Europe. We would escape into the breathless beauty of Western Canada and swim naked in glacial lakes.
Truly, my vision was a castle in the clouds. Marion would not let me go. She had never said as much, yet I knew it. I had been groomed for my role in the coven. I was needed here; many people would have traded limbs for such a sense of belonging. So why wasn’t I grateful?
My thoughts skipped lightly over all these things and more until we both became silent, unwilling to speak about wherever our minds had landed. I lifted Rose and carried her to my ritual room. I stood near the wall where my grimoire hung. It was disguised as a mask in a series of Iatmul ceremonial masks. The weathered faces smiled, leered, grinned, and menaced. I touched a small mask to the left side of the collection. Its sleeping visage melted, the bridge of the nose lengthening into the spine of a book, the ears and cheeks widening into worn leather covers.
Rose gave a delighted little gasp.
“I was thinking about what you asked,” I said, gazing sadly at my grimoire. It was my book of shadows, my most personal and powerful spells, but it was not a true family grimoire. “About deathcraft, I mean. I can’t teach you because I know so little. This could, though.” I opened the book indicatively. For me and only for me, faint letters whispered over the pages. “All families have a grimoire that they pass through generations. It contains spells and teaching, even some family history. My parents’ grimoire was lost...” I gestured, not wanting to speak about them again. “This is mine, though. Your family grimoire would be a font of knowledge, if you could find it.”
Her eyes widened, her fingers dancing along the edges of my grimoire.
“Then we have to find it.”
“I have to find it,” I corrected. “It’s not safe for you to be poking around Rune’s property. I’m supposed to be there, though. I’m
searching for you, after all.”
“Could it have been destroyed?”
“Very unlikely. Grimoires are heavily warded and almost always disguised.” I closed my grimoire and it melted back into the shape of a mask as I hung it on the wall. Rose’s dark eyes, now quite awake, danced between the mask and my face. “If it’s on Rune’s property, I might be able to find it. Might. But please, don’t get your hopes up...”
From the way Rose was looking at me, I could tell that I had already gotten her hopes up. I decided to spare her an explanation of the difficulty of sensing an enchanted object, especially one that wanted to remain hidden. Then, even supposing I found the book, there came the difficulty of transporting it. It could be a table. It could be a tree. It could be spelled to transform into a dove at the touch of enemy hands. I imagined myself trying to tell Rose that her best chance at learning about her heritage had literally flown away.
“You have to let me help,” she said.
One glance at her told me that she was right: I had to let her help. She was too stubborn to stay out of it.
“Sure. There are things you can do from here, scrying spells that might help me focus my search. Your will is our best shot at locating it.”
“And if that doesn’t work—”
I raised a hand. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
She wanted to step into the mural straight away, but I managed to convince her that bed was a better idea. I was becoming quite good at convincing her of that.
When she woke, however, her enthusiasm for the grimoire had not diminished. It had possibly increased. She gobbled down a brunch of avocado slices, fruit, and toast, and dragged me to the ritual room.
“What’s the rush?” I laughed.
She pouted prettily at me, a low trick. We stepped into the mural and I taught her the basics of scrying. She was petulant when we didn’t even reach the astral plane that day, or the next. I told her it was difficult, advanced casting, and not without danger, to which she repeatedly replied, “Let’s go again.”
Her frustration muddied the waters. The dark energy that came off of her as we cast was chaotic, jumbled. I guided her through focused meditation. I burned through spells for calming, gave her extensive massages, plied her with tea and aromatic baths, but she couldn’t stop getting angry when she failed. The faux life around us suffered for it. She killed more than one tree in an outburst of rage, deadened an enormous length of meadow grass, and once brought a swarm of locusts churning toward us.
“Rose!” I snapped. The frayed band of her intentions went outward instead of upward, away instead of in, failing to connect her to me and to the astral plane. Her brow twisted. She squeezed my hands with painful, unnatural strength. “Rose, stop!”
Her eyes flared. They were bloodshot.
“Damnit,” she hissed. “Why can’t I do this?”
“You can. You will. It’s not something you learn overnight.”
“It’s been a week, Thorn.”
“Fine, it’s not something you learn in a week. I’ll search the cabin again today.” By then, I had combed Rune’s cabin as well as the grounds. Twice. I had begun to despair and to regret ever mentioning the grimoire to Rose.
“Why is this one thing so difficult for me?”
“Because you want it too much,” I said. “Desperation is infecting your casting.”
She huffed and scrubbed her scalp.
“If I could just ask my mother...”
It was, admittedly, the most elegant solution. And it was out of the question. I gave Rose a dark look, one that said let’s not have that fight again. She deflated and stepped out of the mural.
We barely prepared for the coming holiday—I barely prepared—which might have seemed out of character to my coven, though Marion must have made excuses for me. She knew I was busy; she believed I was feverishly searching for Rose.
I crafted no pentagrams. I made no sacrifices with my family. In the days leading up to Samhain, even blood witches were prone to attempting contact with the dead. I didn’t do that, either. Not one gourd, jack-o’-lantern, or harvest wreath decorated the land around my house. I did not festoon the rooms with candles and death masks. I could not sleep in a cemetery with Rose. I shunned the bonfires and the cakes and ale my family enjoyed every night that month. I smelled blood in the air. I saw sparks and shadowy figures between the trees.
And I longed for all of it. I was not a human, nor was I a witch like Rose who had been raised as a human. I was wild and pagan since my birth. In me, the cycle of the seasons cried out to celebrate death, the darkening year, and the spirit world.
While Rose slept off our marathon casting sessions, I roamed the forest around the house like an animal in an enclosure. I began to wonder if it was my restless energy, and not her desperation, that was holding her back. In the last few days, she had finally managed to project her will into Juniper Hollow, but no sooner did we begin scrying than our intentions grew disordered and dissolved.
Our frustrations mounted in tandem.
One evening, she caught me standing on the deck, straining toward sounds of revelry that only I could hear. I was barefoot and shirtless, my hair wet, my body humming with magic. The coven was calling for me, longing for me to complete their circle. A tap on the deck door drew my attention. I whirled and saw Rose peeking through the blinds.
I pretended to survey the landscape a few moments more, then I slipped inside and caught her wrist.
“You can’t do that,” I warned.
“How else am I supposed to get your attention? You’ve been out there for two hours.”
I tapped my phone.
“Call or text,” I said.
How about this? Her voice sounded husky and sweet in my mind. Nevertheless, I shook my head.
“Not when I’m outside. It’s too dangerous. Another witch could hear it.”
“So I’m supposed to call you when you’re five feet away?”
“Yes, Rose. How many times do I have to tell you this is a matter of life and death?”
She folded her arms and wandered away, looking down.
“Why don’t you just go to them?” she whispered after a while.
“What?” I shook myself, as if I could shake off the longing.
“I can tell you want to be somewhere else. You’ve told me about Samhain...”
“I’ve told you I’m glad to have an excuse to dodge a few dozen get-togethers. I have to be out there sometimes. I’m supposed to be looking for you. Marion has eyes everywhere.”
“Thorn, it’s okay.” She turned and put on a brave smile. “You think I can’t feel your desire? You have a family. You want to be with them. That’s natural.”
“It’s not like that. It’s more instinctual. It’s like...” I drew closer to her, gathering her against my cold chest. She was right; I’d been standing shirtless in the October air for much more time than I had realized. Even so, she pressed against me. “It’s like desire,” I murmured into her hair.
“Then you shouldn’t ignore it.” Her fingertips skated low around my waist.
“Well, there is one get-together I can’t duck out of, a week before Samhain. On the full moon we have an egregore. I shouldn’t be gone for more than an hour or two.” My breath hitched. Rose’s hands were eminently distracting. I raised her shirt and dropped it behind her. She yanked down my zipper as I lifted her breasts. “The urge to celebrate Samhain is in my blood. It’s in yours, too. Can’t you feel it?”
Previously, I had hesitated to ask her things like that—if she felt the call of the woods or the shift in season—but curiosity got the better of me.
When she shook her head, I felt truly sorry for her. So sorry, in fact, that I didn’t notice the lie.
Eighteen
Rose
I could hardly believe Thorn believed me when I told him I didn’t feel that magnetic pull towards the woods. Towards the cemetery dirt. Out into all the places he’d taught me to feel in
stead of see. Instead, I channeled it all into him, into the fierce longing for him that I also felt deep in my soul. I showed him with lips and teeth and claws until he forgot anything existed outside of us.
And for a moment, nothing did.
Cumulatively, the time we’d spent in our own universe added up to months. A year, perhaps. It was a shock each time we emerged to realize that it had only been a matter of weeks since I shed my human life like snakeskin. The frantic tug backwards I had initially felt towards normality was foreign to me now. Why would I miss a place where I never tasted the power of the universe coursing through my veins? Why would I miss the people who only knew me as a chrysalis?
It reminded me of what he’d said about Summerland. That the longer you were there, the less human you became, until finally, the waters of Lethe had washed you clean enough for rebirth.
Though it seemed that a fragment of memory remained. The fragment of my mother that remembered me. The fragment that could show me, at last, what I needed to know to save my own life. And his. I needed to find a way to save Thorn before my vision of the future became our present.
Another lie, this one of omission: how frequently I dreamed of his death while he lay patiently next to me, unaware.
And that was why, when he left me for the egregore, I lied for a third time, and told him I’d wait for his return in the library. No sooner had I felt his wards shiver as he passed outside their bounds than I threw my boots and jacket on. The full moon and fresh snow frosting the mountain meant two things. I’d be able to see clearly. And the extra light meant extra shadows; as within so without.
“Etsi ambulavero in medio umbræ mortis,” I chanted softly, to make my black clothing melt seamlessly into the patterns the trees cast on the paths I’d take from Thorn’s to Rune’s. My body hummed with the simple spell. It felt better than any wine, the electric feeling of being so part of the world. Part of me wanted to run, to get there faster and get it over with before Thorn caught me out, but the crisp feel of the air, the scent of snowfall, and the freedom of putting one foot in front of the other without ending up at a wall slowed me down.