“You look up whatever you remember of the ritual words, you’ve heard it more than me,” I say as we sit down by the glowing statue, basking in the dry heat. “I saw something about body parts – hair and stuff, in one of these books.”
I get to work hunting down the paragraph that I know I flipped past yesterday. Cray looks through the dictionaries with perhaps less enthusiasm. I know he doesn’t feel the way I do about the ritual; he trusts Sophia completely. I only wish that I could, but the force that threw me back from my parents has me scared. There’s so much I don’t know about the magic the coven uses. Glamours and healing potions are one thing, but the ritual felt like something else, something deeper and much older.
I find the lines after searching through a few thick books. My eyes are tried and my frustration is getting the better of me when I stop short, reading the key phrases again, aloud, for Cray’s benefit.
“Blood, hair, or any part of the body can be used to great effect in magical workings. They represent personal power, the self and the life force of the witch. For this reason these resources are to be guarded and used wisely. As well as being used by the witch these magical ingredients can be used against him or her, often to bind them to the will of another, or to make them the target of a particular spell.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Cray says, “there are a lot of reasons to use those things, it as good as says so. It could represent our personal power going into the protection spell.”
“But listen to this part – ‘Hair from the head of a witch is linked closely with the element of air and so with thoughts and inspiration’. Blood is the life-force part, the personal power – like in my initiation. You gave her your hair at the ritual last time and she’s keeping it in that locket.”
“So?” Cray doesn’t say it unkindly, but as if he’s genuinely puzzled.
“So maybe that’s why you were all so weird and...blank, right after the ritual; you gave Sophia your thoughts.”
Cray frowns, looks down at the dictionary and flips a few pages over, stopping with his fingers splayed on the page. “Cogitationum.”
“What?”
“Thoughts. It’s thoughts in Latin. One of the words I remember.”
I swallow and glance at the stairs, feeling my heart leap into a spike pit when I see Sophia standing there.
Cray turns and sees her too, his hands slowly flip the book closed. “Sophia, hey.”
“We need to do the ritual tonight,” she says, “there’s a threat coming. I’ve seen it.”
“I’ll tell the others when they get back,” Cray says.
“Good. You and Stone can form the circle before dark.”
She goes back upstairs and Cray is still until the door to her room closes. He takes the book from my hands, stacks it with the others and takes it back to the corner.
“Cray-”
“It’s fine. Leave it with me.”
“We can’t just pretend we don’t know.”
“We don’t know,” Cray says, “just...leave it and it’ll be OK.”
I don’t want to leave it and I definitely don’t want to go to that ritual, but if Cray is going there’s no way I’m leaving him alone. The last time I didn’t have to give any of my hair for Sophia’s locket and I’m hoping that this time will be the same. I’m still not fully trained, but Cray is and I don’t know if I can stand to watch him handover a piece of himself to a girl I don’t trust.
*
As we gather in the garden, I know what to expect. Cray and I have brought out the pile of stones from where they’re stored under the stairs. Hard to find them mystical when you’ve seen them stacked next to a broken Dyson.
The coffee table in the centre, the wooden box and metal bowl, the circle of three black stones and two green crystals are all the same. Sophia stands before us and reads her chant through a few times, the rising and falling of the strange language lifts the hairs on my arms. I might be further into my craft studies, but the cold power of her voice still frightens me.
It’s grown colder over the past month, but still the chill that enters the circle is obvious. My breath streams out in a cloud, but once more everyone else seems unaffected. I look at all of them in turn; they’re not breathing icy breath, not breathing at all. Something white on Nara’s headscarf catches my eye – frost. Crystals of frost forming on the folds in the fabric. I look at Campion and see white frost creeping over her collar. It’s on all of us, but I’m the only one that shivers. Maybe they’re used to it, but the twist in my stomach says something else is going on. Something much, much stranger than a tolerance for the cold.
Sophia ignites the paper and places it in the bowl, adding a lock of her own hair. She passes the manicure scissors to Ilex, and I watch as he cuts some of his hair and places it on the lid of the box. Campion goes next, then the scissors pass to Cray and he reaches up, the scissors snick and he puts some of his hair on the box. Well, it looks like his hair – I think I’m the only one who saw him take a tuft of something dark from where it had been tucked into the collar of his shirt.
I can hardly keep my eyes off of him for the rest of the ritual. He remains focused on Sophia, on the centre of the circle. I watch her empty last month’s hair into the fire, winding up the new coils into the locket. My heart is in my throat. Surely she will notice the ritual isn’t complete, but she keeps chanting. The weight of cold power presses down in a final, spiteful punch to my lungs and then it is gone.
Sophia closes the circle and we walk away from the stones towards the house. Sophia goes upstairs and just as it did last time, dead silence reigns in the living room. Everyone looks grey and drawn, there are blackberry-dark bags under Campion’s eyes, and Ilex could almost be a corpse.
I jump as Cray’s hand touches mine. Looking at him, I see that what he has done – putting some kind of fake hair forward for the ritual, has scared him. His eyes are afraid, begging for me to say nothing about it.
Whatever he’s done, he doesn’t trust the others. Only me. Does that mean I can’t trust them either? What’s happened to them since we stepped into the circle? Was I right, is Sophia controlling them somehow, stealing their thoughts?
Cray squeezes my hand, then gives me a gentle shove towards the sofa and disappears up the stairs. The message is clear –we can’t talk now.
I leave Cray alone for a as long as I can stand it. The others have all gone upstairs to their own rooms, pale and silent. I have to know what’s going on.
When I get upstairs and into the bathroom I see how tense he is. Tapping a finger to his lips he takes a crystal from a box on the shelf by the sink.
“Come on, or we’ll be late,” h says offering his hand and pulls me off of the bed.
“What?”
“Your surprise, remember?”
“But-”
Cray doesn’t let me argue. He pulls me along, out of the bedroom and down into the front room. We climb out of the window and I go along with him down the grassy slope and through the tiny village where everyone seems to be asleep. We hurry up the darkened drive like curious mice, jogging towards the cool, white lights of the university campus. All the time my mind is working over the ritual, Cray’s deception, wondering if even now Sophia is holding her locket and realising that she’s been tricked. I crackle with excitement and fear.
Cray leads me along the road, past deserted buildings filled with empty, lit up classrooms, and towards the furthest building out, the union, from which I can already hear a bassline thumping.
“What is it?”
“The Yule Ball. The end of year party.”
It’s so weird to be standing with him in the dark, on the icy pavement, talking about a party. Not one hour ago we were in a circle, surrounded by icy, ancient power. Now there’s Ke$ha and the sounds of whooping from just behind the last building.
“Just trust me,” Cray mutters as we approach the building. There’s a girl at a table in front of the door, checking student ID’s and taki
ng money. I pull invisibility around myself like a wet sheet. I feel Cray do the same beside me.
The girl doesn’t look up as we walk past her, entering the building and hitting a wall of sound as the music pulses. The lights in the tiny entryway are bright fluorescents, but beyond the glass doors there’s darkness, interrupted by pinpricks of light cast from a revolving lamp over the dance floor.
“I think you look fine, but, you might want to go for something a bit more dressy.”
I focus and draw up some energy; the glamour feels like a tight Lycra catsuit being dragged up from my feet, bunching on my thighs and tummy. My baggy hoodie is still there, somewhere, but it’s been ironed out, pushed around into a short, black dress. My leggings have thinned down into silky tights and my high-tops have been sculpted into bright pink heels. I’ve done a total airbrush job on my face and my hair is longer and silkier than I could ever hope for naturally.
“Impressive,” Cray says, with a grin. He’s done some glamouring himself; a rock t-shirt, white blazer, black skinny jeans and a pink streak in his hair to match my own.
“Still not quite in your league,” I mumble, blushing as we go through the glass doors and towards the dance floor.
Cray smiles. “Dance with me.”
“Cray, what are we doing here?”
“Joining the party.”
We turn together under the swirling, snowy dusting of light, with the music pulsing and the chatter from the dancing students surrounding us. The last party I’d been to was Chloe’s sixteenth, where I’d had three Bacardi Breezers and ended up sitting alone on the stairs while Chloe got groped by Andrew Fletcher in her bedroom and Tasha got off with Errol Thompson and his sister Cleo in the living room. I’d spent a lot of time alone at parties, now I’m in the centre of it all. This is the coolest party that I’ve ever been to and I can’t enjoy any of it with the fear of Sophia hanging over my head.
I take Cray’s hand and the fast, angry music cuts out, replaced by Maroon 5, playing quietly. Cray pulls me close and I rest my head under his chin. We turn slowly, dancing in the middle of a bunch of confused students. The starry spotlight somehow finds us, shining through a bunch of mistletoe suspended over the crowd on a ribbon. I smile against Cray’s collar bone and feel him swallow as I squeeze my arms around him.
“This is really nice,” I whisper.
Cray kisses me on the forehead. “I think so too.”
It’s the best night of my life, which I think he already knows. Maybe it’s even a great night for him too. He’s here with me, the girl with two hot friends. Michaela-in-the-middle.
“Cray-”
“We’ll talk about it later,” he says softly, right against my ear so no one can hear but me. I remember that Sophia is the astral-projecting pro in the coven, that she could be here right now, a ghost walking through the dancing couples. A chill goes down my spine.
I try to do as Cray asks, pushing Sophia and the ritual out of my mind and focusing on the music, the feel of Cray’s heartbeat so close to me. I am in love, and for tonight I am beautiful. This is everything I have ever wanted, so I try to be happy as we dance. The music plays on and we never let go of each other, even as it grows late and other people start to stagger away, back to their tiny dorm rooms that probably still reek of hairspray and aftershave. Their temporary glamour, manmade and incomplete, is fading – hair coming uncurled or frizzing out, stains on their shirts, their feet blistered in new shoes.
Cray and I turn slowly under the mistletoe, noses almost touching. It’s only when the music stops and the lights go out that I realise the party is over. We’re too invisible witches hiding from our coven leader and all my fear comes back. Cray takes a step back from me and fishes the small piece of quartz crystal out of his pocket. He traces a rune on it with his finger. I feel the circle snap into place around us, though it feels different to a normal circle. My circles and the ones we cast for rituals, usually feel warm and appear golden in my mind. This one is a low, bluish purple and it crackles with white energy. It feels heavier and thicker around us.
“It’s a special circle I cast, for us to use if we wanted to...you know, without Ilex or someone else spying.” Cray is ducking his head, and were we in the light I know I’d be able to see him blush. “I put it in this crystal, ready to use, just in case.”
“She won’t be able to hear us?”
“Or see us, if I’ve done it right. The original circle was drawn out and traced with herbs for concealment and secrecy. From the outside it should look like a mirror, reflecting everything back on anyone trying to sneak in.”
“So you think there’s a good reason to hide this from her?”
Cray sighs. “I don’t know, just...if what you read is true and what I heard tonight is right - here, look.” He reaches into his blazer and pulls out a library ticket on which he’s hastily scrawled words and one word definitions. “These are all words in Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, maybe some more languages that we don’t have the books for. This one, élenchos, means control. I showed you the Latin for thoughts and that could be coincidental, just a part of the languages she’s put together. But this one,” he points to a word on the page αὐτοδουλεία (which frankly looks like gibberish), “that’s Ancient Greek, I only know it because I’ve seen it written down, back when I did Classics and all this shit at school - it means servitude. Absolute servitude.”
“Like...slavery?” My stomach is in knots and Cray’s face is tense in the shadows. The circle crackles around us, I can feel the weight of it in the air. Sophia used a ritual to make them her slaves?
“I don’t know. I’d have to see the whole ritual, translate it...but, I can’t see any other way she’d use that word, not in a protection spell. It’s not the kind of thing you say to the elements, or to a deity, not if you don’t want to be ignored, or punished.”
“Do we tell the others?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Cray says, “I barely believe it and I’m the one saying it. I don’t know if it’s something she’s done to us but...I can feel my brain trying to reject it, telling me I’ve got it wrong. Maybe I’m just being fucking paranoid.”
“And if you’re not?”
“Then we could all be in danger, from Sophia. If she’s trying to control us, if she is controlling us, we don’t know why, or what she wants. We don’t know how much she could get us to do.”
I try to think back over the past weeks. Had I noticed Cray being strange at all? Anything weird that didn’t seem to fit with what I knew of him? I’m scared, and he takes my hand.
“You have to come with me, when I go,” I say, “I’m not going otherwise.”
“Michaela, you’re leaving,” he says, “you have a life to go back to. But they’re my friends that they don’t have anywhere else to go. I can’t just leave them to it and go off on my own. They could be in serious danger and I’d just be leaving them to fend for themselves.”
A flush creeps over my face. I’m at once angry and ashamed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think.”
“I know, you’re worried, I am too. Truthfully, when I came upstairs and found you like that, after you’d been on the astral, I was terrified. But I’m not going to let you put yourself in danger. They were my friends first, and I brought you into this. That makes it my fault, my mistake to fix.”
“No.”
I blink, unable to believe that the word came out of my mouth, but it had, and it does again. “No. I’m not going to leave.”
“Michaela-”
“No. I understand, they’re your friends and you have to stay and help them, but I care about them too. I care about you. My life, my parents, it’s important and I know how much it means to you, me going back...but this is part of my life too. You got me into this, but you’re not getting me out – we are getting everyone out. All of us.”
I can see Cray thinking it through, turning it over and trying to find a way to fight me on it, but he can’t win and he knows it. For the first time
in my life I’ve put my foot down. I’m not going to be pushed around, pushed out, because someone thinks they know what’s good for me, or because it’s what they want. I’m not going to run away.
“Whatever it is, whatever she’s hiding, it’s at the other coven,” I say, when Cray stays silent, “you all know where it is, but you never go there, she must be controlling you to keep you away.”
“If no one comes back, it must be dangerous, and we don’t know what she’ll do if we find out what’s going on there,” Cray says.
“We’ll have to be on our guard, but yeah, I guess it’ll be dangerous.”
“I don’t like the idea of you going there,” Cray says.
“You don’t have to like it, but I’m going with you.”
Cray nods, clearly not happy but knowing he can’t stop me.
“Cray?”
He looks up at me. I take his hand awkwardly.
“Before we go, can we...I mean, that’s what this night was about, right? Making it special?”
He blinks, eyes widening. “We don’t have to, it was just an idea I had and, things are different now, with the coven and tomorrow-”
“I know. That’s why I want to,” I hold his hand surely now, I know exactly what I want. “Besides, not everything’s different. We’re still here. I still feel the same way about you.”
“I do too,” he clasps my hand and swallows, “Michaela...”
“So, where were we going to go?” I ask, body humming with excitement and nerves.
Cray flushes and leads me out of the darkened union, out across the car park, where frost is forming on the wet tarmac. The circle stays around us, shielding us.
There’s a sweeping gravel path up to the little hill that overlooks the lake, from that point I can see the dark water below reflecting the stars and the dark blue of the sky as the sun starts to rise. Cray takes off his jacket and in one wave transforms it into a thick black blanket, laying it out on the grass. He puts the crystal on the blanket, and when we sit down I can feel warmth filling the circle that’s still humming around us.
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