I’d never spoken to Satan, touched a Tarot card, sacrificed any baby animals, or brewed any potions more potent than a wicked spaghetti Bolognese. Well, no successful potions anyway, and I sure as hell never danced naked in the forest under the light of the full moon.
Okay, that last part is a lie, but it’s been a while. Plus, if anyone caught me dancing naked in Central Park I’d have more to explain than a little public nudity.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s all a bunch of bullshit. A few years ago I gave up my search for more women like me. The Daughters of Hecate shouldn’t have been invisible to each other, but maybe I was just looking in the wrong places.
The last time my witchmark had burned on my thigh had been in Salem. The witch trials had taken a terrible toll on the village, but out of all the names that I read in the records, none of them spoke to me. I felt like I would have known if the young woman who had entered my mind had been on that fatal list. All the “covens” I had found were made up of well-meaning women who desperately wanted what the Daughters of Hecate had... a connection to the old world, whatever that might be. I wasn’t sure if I remembered what that was anymore.
I guess you could say I’d lost the Faith somewhere along the way.
I sat down heavily at my desk, it was scattered with newspaper clippings. Despite all of my grumbling about who I was and the paths my life had taken, there was something about my past that I couldn’t quite shake... and that was my fear of, and I’ll admit it, my fascination with fire.
Fire had taken everything from me, and it was the only thing I really feared, but since the great Chicago fire in October of 1871, I’d taken more of an interest in unexplained fires. Especially those involving female victims. Those names I read in the paper had spoken to me, just a tiny echo in my mind. Even now as I leafed through the clippings, I could hear the names in my ears.
Margarette Ames
Pearle Hegan
Grace Hegan
Hellen Lamb
All gone. All killed by the Malleus. I was sure of it.
The witchfinders that I remembered believed that when witches were burnt that all of their spells would be reversed and the imps that they conjured would flee back to hell, and the black soul of the witch would follow them. Ridiculous.
What they didn’t know was that when witches burn, we freeze.
The Malleus were comprised of a new generation of witchfinders. They thought they were doing ‘the Lord’s work,’ but He’s not listening anymore, and these guys were really just the same assholes they’d always been, just with an updated wardrobe.
The laugh track on the television sounded tinny and sharp in my ears.
“Shut up,” I muttered, my attention on the newspaper clippings. A headache had begun to form behind my eyes and I wished that I had some beer in the fridge.
The television picture narrowed to a grey bar and shut off with a chunking click and the faint sound of static.
It might be something, it might be nothing… but I couldn’t leave it alone. Suki meowed and stretched up to sharpen her claws on my thigh. I flinched, but reached down to fondle her ears.
“Ouch,” I said with a smile. “You’re the worst.” Suki meowed in reply and sat back on her haunches to stare at me accusingly with her amber eyes. “All right, all right, no more research for tonight. You’re the boss.” I shuffled the clippings back into the red leather album I kept them in and stretched. Suki jumped up into my lap and rubbed her head under my chin.
Whaddya think,” I asked her. “Do you want some pho?”
Suki purred.
That was a good enough answer for me.
It was late, or early depending on your life choices, when I heard the living room window slide open. I could feel Suki curled around my head, and her purr vibrated into my skull. I opened one eye cautiously, not really wanting to move. The sky was just starting to lighten, and the air that blew through the open window was cold and fresh.
“I thought I had to invite you in…” I muttered as I felt the mattress shift.
“We covered that a while ago,” a familiar voice whispered in my ear. “I mean, what’s a guy gotta do…”
A pair of cold lips touched my neck and I shivered and flinched away. Suki whined at being woken up and jumped off the pillow in protest.
“For starters, you could close the window. It’s cold.”
“Shit, I didn’t notice.”
The bed moved again, and I heard the window slide shut.
“You never notice,” I mumbled, shutting my eye and snuggling deeper into the covers.
* * *
Eli Maddern and I had been dating on and off for the last twenty years. Considering I wasn’t technically breaking any of Hecate’s rules, you could say that our relationship was unique. Daughters of Hecate were never allowed to marry, we could fuck whomever we wanted and have children, but we weren’t allowed to tie ourselves to men.
My mother had told me a story about someone she had known, who had broken Hecate’s rules and married her lover, claiming that she couldn’t live without him.
“Hecate drained her powers away, and took every memory of magic from her mind. Turned her into a shell of a woman,” my mother had told me, her expression stony. “Her husband died the next spring. He fell from his horse; it was no one’s fault. She had to live out all of her long years, nine lifetimes, all alone, and we couldn’t help her.”
When I was a child that had seemed like a horrifying fate. To throw away every shred of what I had learned, and the life I had with my family for the love of a mortal man. A man that I would outlive. An eternity of being alone had been my greatest fear.
Yet, here I was, in a relationship, and my powers hadn’t been taken, and my memories were all I had to remind me that I was different. Luckily for me, Eli was different too.
When we had first met I knew there was something weird about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It wasn’t until he had tried to turn me into a midnight snack that I had realized what it was.
My boyfriend was a vampire. That was a loophole in Hecate’s rules that I hadn’t anticipated I’d need to fall back on. Sure, he’d live longer than me, and I had to deal with cold hands under the covers in the early hours of the morning, but at least I wasn’t alone.
3
The shriek of my alarm clock always came entirely too early. Haven Coffee was only open during financial district hours, but that meant I had to be behind the counter with my apron on and a smile on my face before 6am.
Eli was sprawled over the bed, his arm flung across my hip. If you ever had any preconceptions about vampires sleeping in coffins with their arms crossed over their chests, forget all about that shit.
My boyfriend was a bed hog who snored like a freight train and twitched in his sleep.
I pushed his arm off and sat up in bed with a sigh. The sun was just coming up, and all of the curtains were open. I shook my hair out of my face and crawled out from under the covers.
“One day you’ll turn into a pile of dust because you’re a lazy shit,” I muttered in Eli’s direction. He grunted and rolled over, taking most of the blankets with him.
I gestured vaguely at the windows as I walked to the bathroom and the heavy velvet curtains slid closed. Using magic in my own home shouldn’t have been a big deal. My aunt used to use it to chop onions all the time.
Eli would be out of commission for the rest of the day, but I was used to that. His supernatural status hadn’t been as shocking as you might think. I mean, I’m an ancient witch descended from an immortal goddess. It’s not like my backstory was any easier to explain.
We didn’t talk about it, but everything important or shocking had been said years ago. He drank blood. I didn’t age. We were both creatures of a different time trying to make our way in the modern world, and it worked for us. Eli didn’t ask to be what he was, and I’d been this way my entire life, and we were both trying to come to terms with what that meant.
&nb
sp; * * *
When I opened Haven that morning, I smiled to see the orange glow of the pumpkin lights in the window. There was something comforting about them.
I went through my opening chores just like I always did and when six o’clock rolled around, the open sign was on and I had my Customer Service Smile™ in place when the first customers came through the door.
Compliments on the decorations, sneering at the pumpkin spice display, complaints about the sudden turn in the weather, I listened to it all with the same expression on my face. My lunch coverage person started their short shift, and then left before it was time to break out the mop again.
Typical Tuesday.
I don’t normally take much notice of any of my customers. They’re all the same. Caffeine junkies looking for a fix, trendy housewives looking for some time to talk to their friends... it took all types to make the world go around. Especially these days.
But one guy, one guy in particular... he shook me. He looked like any other hipster that took up residence in the shop. Like any other guy who would slink in with a laptop, order the smallest coffee possible and stay for six hours using our free Wi-Fi.
The difference was he smelled like smoke. And not just any smoke. He smelled like fire.
Old fire.
Like dead ashes and baked bones, and it made my blood run cold. My smile was frozen on my face as I handed “Adam” his tiny Americano.
“Thanks,” he muttered. An obligatory pleasantry. He didn’t even make eye contact with me. He didn’t even realize what his presence meant.
As he turned away, a vacant look on his face, lost in thought, I knew exactly what he was.
Malleus.
* * *
The guy was plain. With a pinched face and acne scarred cheeks. Nothing special, nothing much to look at. The kind of guy you wouldn’t remember if you passed him in the street. But as he took a seat at a table by the window, I could smell... No. I could feel the café filing up with smoke. It choked me. Filled my nostrils.
The witchmark on the back of my thigh burned.
From everything I had read about the Malleus, they sounded like a weekend club for dropout witch hunters. But what I realized now was that they were deadlier than the groups of knitting grandmothers I had hoped they were. The newspaper clippings I collected, all those fires, they were responsible.
Those women who had died, my sisters in the craft, they were responsible for their deaths.
When witches burn, we freeze.
I coughed, holding on to the edge of the counter. ‘Adam’ didn’t look over, though other customers looked in my direction curiously. I tried to smile, but I felt like I was going to throw up. I wanted to leave. I needed to get out of there.
I turned from the counter and rushed through the stock room towards the back alley fire door, my eyes streaming from smoke that no one else could see or smell.
“Hey! Where the fuck are you going?”
I ignored my angry co-worker, and launched myself against the fire door’s lock bar. The door flew open, crashing loudly against the brick wall. The sound echoed up and down the alley, but I was alone, and I was outside, and I was safe. For now.
I coughed harshly, trying to gasp in as much clear air as I could. My head pounded and my heart raced and I wiped furiously at my face, trying to stop the tears that poured down my cheeks.
All of the anger and hurt and fury that I had pushed deep down inside me so many years ago came welling back up to the surface.
Revenge.
Revenge.
Revenge.
Malleus had continued the work that had killed my mother, my aunt, and my sister. Countless other women in England, Europe and the American colonies had died because of their misplaced morality.
My stomach lurched and I was suddenly grateful that I hadn’t eaten anything more substantial than a banana that day. Vomiting was the worst. I leaned my head against the warm brick wall, trying to calm myself. Just because there was a Malleus member sitting in my coffee shop taking up space didn’t mean they knew about me. When David had given me more shifts, I had taken the time to cast some protective spells over the building, just in case.
I told you I was paranoid. There was no way that my spells had failed, so I could tell myself that everything was okay.
Situation normal, all fucked up.
I took another deep breath, trying to will my headache into submission. It wasn’t really working, but at least my heart rate was starting to slow down. I needed to get back inside; maybe ‘Adam’ would be gone.
I muttered some calming words and took another deep breath.
“You can do this. Get back inside before someone Rachel calls David and you lose your job.”
I kicked a milk crate out of my way and yanked on the door. The smell of coffee floated out and I felt myself calming a little more. The tang of smoke was gone from the air, which could only mean that the Malleus had left while I had been outside having my little breakdown.
The irritating PING of the ‘where the fuck are you’ bell told me that people were waiting, and that Rachel was pissed. I patted her hip with an apologetic smile on my face.
“Sorry, I think I had a bad sausage roll for breakfast…” I whispered.
“Whatever.”
Rachel looked furious, and order chits were stacked up on the espresso machine. I smiled apologetically and rushed to my position behind the machine.
As I worked my way through the orders, my eyes swept the room, looking for anything suspicious. The Malleus was gone, and everyone else in the shop was as unremarkable as they should be on a Tuesday afternoon.
I spent the rest of my shift on edge, Rachel left early claiming she had a headache, and I didn’t blame her. I would have done the same thing. I just wished that I had thought of bailing first.
By the time 4:30pm rolled around I was a mess of nerves and had a headache that felt like my skull was full of razorblades.
Not cute.
Just in case anyone was hanging around waiting or if the Malleus had come back, I went through my closing routine a little slower than usual. The sun had already begun to set as I punched the alarm code and locked the door behind me.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure that I was alone, before I held up my hand and reached out with my power to check the defenses I’d put in place a few years ago.
There were cracks around the edge of my protection spells, but that was to be expected, it’s not like I actually knew what I was doing. I’d been guessing and getting lucky in my guesses for years, but it’s not like I had any guidance to fall back on, and my mother and aunt hadn’t been able to teach me everything they should have.
I was just about to set another layer of protection over the building when I smelled it again.
Smoke.
I’m not going to say that I panicked. But I fucking panicked.
I don’t know if I’ve ever run that fast, but I needed to get my ass out of there. I didn’t run home either. I cut through the edge of Prospect Park, not really knowing where I was going, but looking for anywhere to hide or disappear.
After 325 years in New York, I know that if you ever see anyone running like they’re being chased by a horde of torch wielding party clowns baying for blood, you get out of their way, and you try to pretend you didn’t see anything. That’s how I was running, and that’s how people reacted.
“Hey!”
A voice I didn’t recognize echoed through the park.
Oh, shit.
No one ever yelled at you when you were running like a crazy person. My legs were tired, my mouth burned, and my heart felt like it was going to explode. Cardio was not my strong suit.
“Hey!”
Despite my better judgment, I turned my head to see who was yelling at me, or were they yelling at a dog? The park was darkening as the sun went down, and the streetlights had just started to hum to life. I was alone.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I took two more d
esperate steps, gasping for air, and collided face-first with something solid. With a horribly unladylike grunt I stumbled backwards and tripped over my boots, falling hard on my side on the cracked concrete path.
That hurt.
“Hey, Ophelia, are you okay?”
Eli.
I didn’t like surprises, but for once I was grateful. I looked over my shoulder again, scanning the trees for anything out of place. But the park was deserted.
Eli’s pale hand appeared in front of my face, and I grabbed it, hauling myself to my feet. My hip throbbed and my elbow was bleeding, but it was nothing I couldn’t fix with a few herbs, a hot bath... and a nice box of wine.
“I was just heading out,” Eli said sheepishly. “If I’d known you were going to be off work late, I would have come to pick you up. What happened?”
I shook my head and laced my fingers through his, “It’s nothing,” I said. “I just got spooked when I was locking up. I’m fine.”
“It’s not like you to get nervous... are you sure—“
“Yeah. I know. I don’t know what’s up.” I didn’t want to talk about it. Not here, and not with Eli. We’d been together for a long time... well, a long time for him, I suppose. He was still so young. I had told him a lot, but I had never mentioned the Malleus, or what I knew about them.
I wasn’t sure if I was ready to tell him.
Not yet.
We walked back to my apartment building without speaking, my hand holding his tightly, my shoulder pressed against his. Comforting... solid... real. But how real was this relationship of ours? Two people who weren’t quite human, trying to pretend that we were. It was kind of hilarious.
I must have chuckled.
“What?” Eli murmured.
“Nothing. It’s nothing. It’s just been a weird day.”
We rounded the corner and the sight of my apartment building filled me with a sense of relief. I could feel the protective spells I’d laid over it sitting in place. Strong and unwavering. I’d be safe there.
Sticks & Stones Page 2