A Cast-Off Coven

by Juliet Blackwell

  He laughed bitterly. “Yeah. Right.”

  And he disappeared inside the bar.

  Chapter 9

  “What was Sailor like?” Oscar asked excitedly when I returned to the van.

  “Sullen. Dressed in black to match his mood. Why?”

  He shrugged. “He’s like a legend in this town.”

  “Really?” I asked as I pulled away from the curb and fought heavy North Beach traffic for a block or two until it thinned out in the financial district, mellow on this Sunday evening. “That guy’s a legend? What’s he done?”

  “He knows things.”

  “He doesn’t know much about civility.”

  “Big things.”

  “He’s no fan of Aidan’s—I tell you that.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It always is.”

  I’m the first to admit I’m not what you’d call a good judge of character. Not surprising, since I hadn’t had much practice interacting with humans. Growing up as a (super) natural witch in a small Texas town, I learned early to stay out of people’s way. The other children, the teachers, even my own mother, were afraid of me. If it hadn’t been for Graciela, my grandmother, herself a talented midwife and curandera who taught me how to harness my considerable powers, I wouldn’t have known a moment of tenderness. One of the many curses my powers bestowed was a near-perfect memory, which meant I recalled every alienating episode, every isolating incident, every personal and social humiliation visited upon me in my thirty-one years.

  In brief, I had a few “trust issues,” as they say here in California.

  Still, this Sailor character was off the charts on the peculiarity scale. Undeniably good- looking in a bad- boy way, he oozed a kind of overt, primal sensuality. But the man had a chip on his shoulder the size of Lake Tahoe. What was up with that? And why would Aidan send me to see him?

  On the other hand, Sailor did know a great deal about spirits. And he had confirmed a few things for me; chief among them was that whatever was going on at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts spelled trouble with a capital T.

  Ghosts were one thing; demons quite another. Who was it? What did it want? How had it come to be at the school? As Sailor had pointed out, demons didn’t just show up; they were summoned. Who could have summoned it, and why? And what, if anything, did it have to do with Becker’s death?

  Sailor was probably right about that, as well: Jerry Becker had most likely been killed by a human. He had money—was it as simple as that? They always say “follow the money” . . . but who was Jerry Becker? Why were people so intrigued with him? I should read Max’s article about him, and soon.

  The streets of San Francisco were quiet as I steered the van home to Haight Street, near the corner of Ashbury. This hippie-turned-hipster enclave was now a bustling neighborhood full of stylish restaurants, chic artists, and trendsetting young celebrities, but like the rest of San Francisco, it closed up early. My stomach growled, and Oscar’s belly answered with a growl of its own. After years spent in Europe, I found it shocking that it was so hard to find a meal past nine thirty in this otherwise urbane city. It was tough on night stalkers like me. Good thing I liked to cook.

  But none of that now. I was tooling around in a van full of possibly haunted Victorian garments. Given where these clothes had come from, I wanted to drive out any lingering traces of evil posthaste. What I needed now was a potent cleansing spell. And for that, I needed the tools of my witchy trade.

  Oscar and I entered the front door of Aunt Cora’s Closet, made our way across the main floor, and passed through the rear storage room that housed the industrial front-loading washer and dryer, a jade green linoleum kitchen table and chairs circa 1962, a hot pot, a microwave, and a roomy storage closet. We climbed the narrow staircase that led from the rear storage room to the cozy one-bedroom apartment on the second floor.

  I showered, then dressed in a freshly laundered white skirt and plain white T-shirt. Many witches wear special spell-casting garments, but I’ve never bothered with those sorts of details. For me, being clean and dressed in black or white was sufficient, but even that wasn’t really necessary. Most ritual preparation was about helping the practitioner to focus her intent, and since I already had more power than I knew what to do with, I didn’t need to harness still more.

  In the kitchen, I filled my iron cauldron with fresh springwater and set it to boil on the old Wedgewood stove, then went up on tiptoe to retrieve a massive red leather tome from a high shelf—my bible, my Book of Shadows. Graciela had given it to me when I was eight years old. Already fat with spells, chants, and blessings that she had written down over the years, the book was one I had been adding to ever since, jotting down notes on what worked and what didn’t, inserting new spells and lists of potent ingredients, as well as inspirational quotes and newspaper clippings—some positive, and some regarding things I must remember whether I wanted to or not.

  I laid the massive Book of Shadows on the counter and started flipping through it in search of the appropriate cleansing spell. I knew virtually all my spells by heart, but looking them up like this was how I began my casting ritual and got myself focused and in the right frame of mind.

  Besides, every once in a while my Book of Shadows had something to tell me. It might change the order of a familiar spell, add or subtract a page or a few lines of writing. This used to bother me—where did this information come from?—but I could only surmise that the book, like my power itself, had a life force of its own. It literally hummed with memories and rare knowledge.

  I checked the lunar calendar that hung over a collection of jars of special salts: It was a waning moon, late in the month . . . perfect for the potent cleansing spell I wanted to use.

  Oscar munched on Goldfish crackers and followed on my heels as I carried my basket and white-handled boline, a sickle-shaped knife used to cut magical herbs, out onto my lush terrace garden. I gathered sprigs of lavender and Syrian rue, bits of blackthorn and devil’s pod, eupatorium and galangal. I brought the fragrant botanicals into the kitchen and chanted while crushing them with the ancient mortar and pestle I had taken with me when I left home.

  Graciela swore the stone set had been handed down to her from an Aztec curandero who worked his magic long before Cortez had arrived on the scene and mucked things up . . . but she tended to exaggerate. Either way, the mortar and pestle always reminded me of home and history.

  I continued to chant while I dropped the herbs, one by one, into the boiling cauldron, then added a thin slice of unleavened bread, a tiny crumb at a time. I stirred the concoction deosil, or clockwise, until it began to swirl on its own. The brew continued to boil after I removed it from the fire, a sign of a proper brewing. Thirteen drops of raw goat’s milk, two pine needles, and three threads of a spiderweb.

  And finally, I cut a small X in my palm, adding two drops of my own blood.

  A great burst of vapor rose from the brew, and an amorphous, barely there face emerged above me. Vaguely, I heard Oscar squeal and run away. I couldn’t blame him. My helping spirit was awe inspiring, an indication of my power.

  While the cauldron bubbled, I gathered the remainder of my materials. In my pantry-cum-supplies closet I found a rusty square-headed nail I had picked up from a New Mexico ghost town, the site of a major silver-mining accident that killed twenty-two men; a small spherical stone smoothed by the rushing waters of a sacred river in Nepal; and a length of red silk twine, which I knotted as I intoned my spell, one rhyme for each knot.

  Finally, I brought my supplies down to the van. Oscar and I climbed in and I closed the doors behind us, then set out candles and lit them. Opening the black tooled-leather trunk and the boxes, I spread the clothes about, sprinkling them with my brew.

  I set the small flat stone atop a strong wooden box and cast a circle, then set the nail upon the stone.

  Striking the nail thrice with an iron hammer, I intoned:

  Clavus Ferreus Malleus . . .

&nbs
p; Ferreus Ferrum Refilum . . .

  Ferrum Nobilis.

  I scored the stone three times with the nail’s point, then added the nail to the charm bag securely tied around my waist.

  Next I wrapped the stone with the knotted silk twine, saying, “I ward thee to keep harm at bay. As I will it, so mote it be.” I repeated the lines in Spanish, then in broken Nahautl, the language of the Aztecs and Graciela’s native tongue, as I had been taught. What mattered were not the exact words, but the focus of my intentions. And my powers were focused.

  The air hummed with energy as I slipped into a semitrance. Scraps of paper and bits of material floated through the air on the vibrations, and the metal of the van reverberated. I subsumed myself, becoming a conduit of mystical powers, a vessel of the craft. I felt the touch of my helping spirit and my ancestors reaching through me.

  Casting a spell, especially a potent one, always reminded me that what I was doing wasn’t about little old me, or Jerry Becker, or the students at the School of Fine Arts. We were all interconnected.

  Afterward, Oscar curled up asleep in the passenger’s seat while I drove across town. Parking in the official View Area on the San Francisco side of the Golden Gate Bridge, I walked halfway across the span with my tied, treasured stone in hand.

  I turned up the collar of my wool coat against the cutting, damp wind blowing across the mouth of the bay. The beguiling beauty of the Golden Gate Bridge, the way it drew tourists and locals alike, might be explained as aesthetics, a marvelous feat of engineering. But I knew it was more than that. The Golden Gate was a magical point, uniting two important bodies of water: the wind-tossed, powerful Pacific Ocean and the sheltering refuge of the San Francisco Bay. At this point, far below me, wildness joined with serenity, ceaseless motion with calm tranquility.

  Not long ago I had been dragged down into those icy bay waters to face a malevolent spirit called La Llorona. I survived through the help and intervention of my new friends, including Maya, as well as Bronwyn and her coven . . . and lest I forget, the invaluable assistance of Aidan Rhodes, the witch Sailor had warned me against so vehemently.

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself against a profound sense of isolation. I stood alone at the center of a massive bridge painted not gold, as its name implied, but the warm red of the earth. It reminded me of the precariousness of my new life. All those years wandering the globe, I tried to put the loneliness out of my mind, seeking only safety and security. But now I wanted more. A community of friends. And . . . to be brave enough to call Max and ask him over so I could jump his bones. But we had toasted to taking it slow, and that made sense—for lots of reasons, not the least of which were that he was a journalist who had just written a story on the same man I found dead, and all I knew about his wife’s death was that he felt a sense of guilt far beyond the norm.

  I forced my thoughts back to the task at hand. This was, arguably, the most important step of the spell: casting the danger where it would no longer be a problem.

  I kissed the stone, thanking it for helping me by binding the evil within its flinty core. Like most witches, I felt a fierce affection toward what most of the world sees as inanimate objects; an innate, profound sense of kinship with the natural world, which offers solace and cloaks us with protection and fortitude . . . whether we humans recognized it or not.

  Bringing my arm back, I hurled the stone as far as I could over the railing, out to the mouth of the ocean. Forever to rest in the deep, brackish realms of the sea spirits.

  The next morning I had to deal with a cleansing of an entirely different and much more prosaic kind. Monday is Wash Day at Aunt Cora’s Closet, the most important day in a vintage clothes dealer’s week. Fans of vintage clothes take nips and tucks and mends in stride, but they have zero tolerance for dirt. Wash Day was labor-intensive, and though it tired me out, I was usually excited to spend the day just handling the clothes, and reveling in the sense of accomplishment.

  But not this Wash Day. I hadn’t slept well. The mares were back, despite last night’s incantation. I walked my bedroom again last night, casting them out temporarily, but I could sense they were not cowed.

  Clearly, I needed to stop thinking about my love life late at night.

  The main challenge with vintage clothes is that almost by definition, they’ve been worn before—repeatedly. The only exception is “dead stock,” stashes of unopened, never-before-used items long locked away in warehouses or store basements or factory sheds and forgotten. In my experience, dead stock usually consisted of items such as stockings, lingerie, and accessories, and occasionally shoes.

  But most of my acquisitions had to be thoroughly cleaned before I could put them up for sale. Unfortunately, few vintage garments could be popped into my jumbo washer and dryer like modern clothing.

  I glanced up at my antique mantelpiece clock. Bronwyn would arrive at nine, so I took some time to complete a little commerce- related paperwork—sales tax reports, quarterly estimates—and write checks to my mother and Graciela. I hung my Brazilian marketing basket on my arm, said good morning to Conrad, and then slipped down the street to the Coffee to the People café. This bastion of 1960s style, decorated with political slogans and the portraits of Che Guevara and Harriet Tubman, remained much as it must have been during San Francisco’s famed Summer of Love, except that these days most of the patrons were grooving to iPods and computers rather than to transistor radios and newspapers.

  “Good morning, Xander, Wendy,” I said to the baristas behind the counter.

  “Hey, Lily,” said Xander with a thrust of his chin. Silver glinted with each move of his head. He was a tall, lanky young man with a sweet expression, if you could see past his numerous, painful-looking piercings.

  “Hey, Lily,” Wendy echoed. “What’s up?”

  Today Wendy was wearing a cotton-candy pink slip I had sold her last week, but rather than using it as intended, she was wearing it as a dress. She had paired it with heavy black boots, fishnet stockings, and studded black leather wristbands. Wendy was an ample young woman, far plumper than current fashion dictated, but she didn’t let that hold her back. On the contrary, she wore her black bob in dramatic bangs across her forehead, favored heavy eye makeup, and never went without bright red lipstick. In spite of the black leather, she looked like a voluptuous pinup girl from the 1950s. . . . the kind of girl mamas in my hometown would have warned their sons about.

  Wendy also happened to be a high priestess in Bronwyn’s friendly Wicca coven.

  Not long ago the sometimes surly baristas had decided that I was cool enough to acknowledge. I felt a little thrill, as though I had been invited to sit at the popular kids’ table during lunch.

  “Lily, you’ve got art deco stuff at the shop, don’t you?” asked Wendy as she prepared my drinks. I had ordered a cayenne mocha for myself, a blend of espresso, chai, and soy milk called Flower Power for Conrad, and three bagels with avocado and jalapeño peppers.

  “Some, yes,” I said. “I’ve got several flapper costumes and a couple of 1930s-style evening gowns.”

  “Perfect.”

  “What’s up?”

  “There’s this dance called the Preservation Ball. It’s put on every year at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, sponsored by the Art Deco Society.”

  “There’s a society for art deco?”

  “Cool, huh? Anyway, I put Aunt Cora’s Closet in the newsletter.”

  “There’s an art deco newsletter?”

  “You bet.” Wendy placed my drinks on the counter and started to prep the bagels, fresh from the toaster. “These folks are organized.”

  “What do they do?”

  “Throw parties, mostly. Everybody dresses up in period costume and there’s music from the era, lots of big band stuff. The Preservation Ball raises money to save old art deco buildings.”

  “So it’s just a group of people who like the style?”

  “Pretty much. I mean, I don’t think they have a social agenda or anythin
g like that. But it makes for some kick-ass parties.”

  “I can imagine.” I pondered the idea of a social club that existed simply to enjoy a particular historical and stylistic era. Sounded like fun. Maybe Max and I—maybe we could go sometime? Did he even still like me, or had he decided he’d had enough of spooks? I shook my head and brought my thoughts back to the current conversation. “So what does it mean that we’re in the newsletter?”

  “It means you’re sure to have your deco wardrobe scouted, and soon. Competition for really great costumes is fierce. I’ll make it over in the next day or two myself.”

  “You go?”

  “Sure. You should join us.”

  “Really? Would I need . . . a date?”

  Wendy laughed. “It’s San Francisco in the twenty-first century, sweetheart. Going stag is considered cool, not lame.”

  “Good to know. I’ll think about it. And thanks for putting our name in the newsletter. That was thoughtful.”

  “Any time.”

  I loaded the food and drink into my basket and returned to Aunt Cora’s Closet, offering Conrad his breakfast and scootching down to sit with him on the curb. Oscar joined us; I had brought him a bagel, too, even though he’d already eaten a peanut butter sandwich up in the apartment. The morning was surprisingly sunny—uncommon in coastal San Francisco, where most mornings come in gray and overcast, with the sun making a leisurely appearance after noon. The changeable weather made dressing for a day out a constant challenge and was famous for driving unsuspecting tourists into the welcoming arms of the sidewalk sweatshirt vendors.

  We ate in companionable silence. Afterward, Conrad helped me unload the newly cleansed clothes from the van—we carried in the black trunk, the bags and boxes of clothes, and the music box. I looked around for the letter from France that Luc had been looking at. I checked the back of the van and amongst the clothing. No sign of it. I must have left it in the closet.

  Rats. I didn’t relish the thought of going back into that chamber of horrors without having a better handle on what was going on.