“Tongs,” Rose said when she appeared back in the living room. “Not just for cooking.”
She lightly touched the metal tongs to the spine of the book to see if the writing would go away, but the contact of metal on book cover did nothing. Brilliant.
Rose opened the book without evening fumbling, as if the tongs were an extension of her body, just like any weapon was to her.
“We need a paperweight to hold down the page.”
“Got it.” I hovered a heavy three-wick candle above the book, ready on her mark. “Go to the intro.”
“The introduction page? I hate book intros,” Rose groaned.
“Something tells me this one is worth it.” I dropped the candle down on the page.
“Dear, witch,” she read from the page, “As a protector of the Earth, your job is to guard the secrets of the metaphysical against those whom may do it harm. The universe is vaster that one could imagine, and mysteries are more plentiful than answers. Understanding where you power draws from is the key to harnessing it. Along with the physical world, a witch’s power can be drawn from other sources of power. A witch’s elemental power works by drawing from the physical plane, but to harness other energies, a witch can utilize other planes of existence, or reach into another dimension.” She stopped reading and turned to me before the next heading. “Mental powers—that means like gift powers right? The ones we pick that only affect us and not anyone else?”
“That makes sense,” I said. “Keep going.”
“Mental powers most often draw energy from other planes, which can be dangerous or costly if done incorrectly—Hmmm,” Rose said, no longer reading. “I’ve been an empath my entire life, sensing and changing emotions, and I’ve been fine.”
“You also had no idea that your power draws from an alternate plane that exists at the same time as our physical world… but it makes sense, considering that Ember’s Den was an alternate dimension. You could probably be stronger if you knew exactly how that worked. This is probably why the Coven is so strong, and why we guard these secrets.”
“I knew my dad was the first Changeling never switched back from the human world, but I do kind of feel like I’ve been lied to all these years,” Rose said.
“No kidding. This book is telling us that the fairy tales and unexplainable supernatural we know, love, and are, doesn’t exist. The Coven feels…”
“Scientific?” She finished for me.
“Exactly. Next headline?”
Rose pushed the candle out the way with her tongs.
“Elemental Powers. A witch’s elemental power works by drawing from the physical plane,” Rose said.
“Look here,” I almost touched the book, taking my hand back as if it had been bitten, “The physical plane creates and moves elemental energy that is drawn from the core of the Earth.”
“That’s mind-blowing if you think about it,” Rose said.
“Yeah—Massive. The core of the Earth is Wiccan energy?” I asked her.
“I guess so,” Rose said. “All of our spells seem to draw from the astral or spirit planes. Does it say anything about the studying you ass off plane?”
“I don’t think it exists,” I told her with a grin, as she turned to the next page.
My eyes drank in the next page, which read: Alternate Dimensions.
“Do you see that bit about pulling power from other dimensions. Look. This is advanced magic—or science? Alchemy? It’s everything…”
Dimensions were even more involved than the planes, and I couldn’t believe everything I read. Different dimensions showed different outcomes if you could see into them, and going forward and backward in time was completely possible, but at the same time, impossible to master. This also meant that our comrades weren’t just witches with elemental powers. Our fellow witches were advanced manipulators of planes and dimensions.
“Maybe we should go back to reading about planes instead of dimensions… for now,” Rose said. “There are three we already know about. The astral plane is straightforward.”
“Astral is Maddi, and the basis for powers like yours. Your power travels invisibly on the astral plane to work, and so do vampires’ echoes, and telepathy. You’re already reaching into alternate planes and you didn’t even know it.”
“What about the spirit plane?” Rose asked. “Does that mean Stan’s powers?”
“These illustrations aren’t so cuddly,” I pointed out. “Just like him but sharper, more violent.”
Haunting, hellish images were sketched onto the bottom of the page, and I felt even more so as if I were looking at something I had no right to. Twisted faces appeared alongside ethereal beings, and Stan’s power as Spirit seemed to work like quicksand at pulling our attention in. We were both silent, which was always a bad omen.
“Other animals appear on the spirit plane too. It looks like Stan could have absolute dominion over the dead if he—”
The lock on the front door flipped over, and we knew it was one of the Coven members. Our hands both went to shut the book at the same time, making the ink disappear under our fingertips. We both swore at the same time, and Rose quickly threw a book over the top of the black one as we sat back in the couch, satiated with forbidden knowledge.
“What are you two doing?” Stan asked. He was probably still my least favorite person in The Coven after the overtly sexual things he said about Rose. Since that hadn’t been my conversation to overhear, I did my best to let it go, but those feelings didn’t drift too far.
“Shining our ankle bracelets,” Rose said. “We’re stuck here, we can’t possibly be getting into trouble.”
“At least you have each other. I’m younger than Maddi and Gregory and was alone in this house when I was inducted.”
“Something tells me you didn’t mind,” Rose said with a glare.
“I didn’t, but I can tell it means something to you.”
“We are like sisters,” I reminded him, remembering he might be a necromancer in disguise.
“How was the press conference?” Rose asked.
“Arbitrary,” he replied, “Just like the funeral will be. Funerals are just a way for the superstitious to standardize a traumatic experience. There is something you should know about the conference.”
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“O’Callaghan—that’s detective O’Callaghan—he wants to report that Moon was murdered because he believes she is dead. There was just too much blood spilled from when she went unconscious. I’m sorry. I was hoping she’d be alive too, or that I could have gotten there sooner…”
“Stan, there is nothing you could have done,” Rose reminded him.
“I know, but even for me, someone who is around funerals more often than most, seeing someone my age dead…” I glanced at Helaine but she looked down. “It’s not easy.”
“Not to sound bossy but you really should get some sleep,” Rose reminded him.
“You might be right,” he said with a mumble, climbing the stairs without even taking his Crystal Palace Football Club jacket off at the door.
“‘Might be,’” I said to Rose. “That’s a start.”
“Perhaps…” She trailed off.
The murders even got to Stan, and I knew all five of us were feeling the same way.
My first peer had fallen. None of us were invincible. It didn’t matter how talented we were at our elements or martial arts. When the end was coming, we had to accept it, but there was no way in hell that Rose or I could. We’d figure out who did this and then do the only thing we could do—catch Moon’s killer and bring them to justice. That evil that my parents were superstitiously concerned about was here, and its emaciated skeleton was after witch families with a ravenous vengeance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Autumn Blooms
Rose
After breaking into our first restricted text, I wanted to learn about the alternate planes, and I couldn't believe that it was something that would be saved for lat
er. I had used fire by tapping into my Changeling side, sourced by astral energy, when I should have known to pull it from the Earth, like when I felt grounded doing a form in class. If I could find the perfect combination, I could use emotions as a boost, not as a basis for my power.
Pulling from the earth would give me more confidence, and likely, I wouldn’t end up as a fireball of frustration again. Hopefully.
And after finding out about Stan’s true power concerning the spirit plane, and also the phrase “dominion over the dead”… was it fair to say I was scared of my mentor now? Perhaps the depth of the black ink on the pages of the book unsettled me the most, but I had the same sinking feeling about Stan as I did concerning controlling my powers.
As usual, I sat in the conservatory sipping on copious amounts of coffee. The fall harvest was blooming in greens, oranges, and reds just behind the wicker set where I sat, and I knew the scent of the flowering herbs behind me would change with the seasons. I ignored the smell of the coffee in the kitchen in front of me as I took a deep breath in. I no longer cared that everyone had confused my name for that of an earth witch at the social. If I was in tune with earth, I could push my astral energy aside.
Stan joined me for lessons, pouring the last two cups of full-caff into his thermos. He didn’t notice me watching him, trying to separate the whole Hades thing from the Prince of England thing, and he didn’t glance my way or say a word until he sat in his white wicker chair to the left of mine.
“Are you okay after our conversation yesterday?” Stan asked. “With the death scene, I didn’t get to ask.”
“Yeah, why?”
“The whole thing about… I made a list of words I shouldn’t say or things I shouldn’t allude to, so I think we can communicate better now.”
I tiny smile befell my lips at the fact that he was trying so hard that he made a list of dirty words. Part of me wanted to read them all even though I knew I should be offering an olive branch to him, just as he was trying to do for me.
“And I’ll try to not be so defensive about passion, sexual energy, and climaxing.”
He choked on his coffee, coughing a moment, and wiping some of the brew from his chin in between staccato breaths. My timing had been perfect.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” But he coughed violently again. “That was just one of the words.”
“It doesn’t bother me.” I shrugged it off. I felt better than ever about being in my own skin. There’s no other choice when you have everything to prove. “The truth is that I’m independent. I can save myself and don’t need someone else to help me out of the tower. I’ll climb down on my own when the time is right.”
“What tower?”
“Fairy tales, Stan,” I said with a laugh. “They put princesses in towers; Princesses who can’t break boards with the instep of their foot or don’t have weapons stock-piled in their rooms. Princesses who don’t wield ice and fire. The writers expect a prince to save the princess. Princes, they usually get to go where they please.”
“I suppose they do,” Stan said.
I glanced down a moment.
“I’m not the kind of swooning girl who has celebrity crushes or looks at guy and drools, and I certainly won’t go out of my way unless I really like someone. And if I want something, I get it.”
“So you prefer men then?”
“Yeah, why? You don’t think there’s something wrong with women who don’t, do you?”
“No guy does,” he blurted out, and then went silent a moment. “Just a question.”
“You?”
“Prefer men? No. I like women very much.”
We sat in an awkward silence that might have made my face pink. It sure felt hot.
“Do you know about the supernatural subcultures yet?” he asked me.
“Your book helped me,” I said, pointing to a leatherbound book sitting on the white wicker coffee table, “and so did my entire life’s experience.”
“Not all witches interact with their supernatural peers as much as you do. You were in a peer group at the Hallowed Locus with Helaine, right?”
“Until I got busy at the dojo last March. My mom works at The Hallowed Locus, and it’s a great resource for a lot of people.”
“I agree.”
“So can I test out of this test?”
I shot him the smile that I usually used when putting on the empath charm, knowing that neither stood a chance at working.
“No. We will be discussing them. There are rules.”
I retired to my room to study the Bathorys, Changeling, Spriggans, Lusions, and Vampires I had already known about for eighteen years, and as I shut my bedroom door, I couldn’t help but cackle.
I had stumped him, had made Stan falter, and it was a victory in standing up for myself.
I heard a knock on my bedroom door and hoped it wasn’t him.
“Come in!”
“How did it go?” Helaine asked, peeking her head in.
“It worked like a charm. Stan’s trying to be more ‘appropriate’ and me being mature about how I used fire nearly made him choke on his coffee.”
“Aren’t you bloody serious.” Helaine grinned wickedly and invited herself to sit on my bed.
“Yes, and to earn his respect—the respect of someone who will be my equal in two years—I’ll keep doing this. Just when he thinks I can’t take on a task or that I’m going to fail, I’ll show him I can. I’ll show him where to stick it.”
Helaine and I cackled. We had the same natural laugh, and the uncanny similarity of our forced cackle was unsettling. I didn’t know what I’d do without her.
“He still intimidates me though.”
“In a mentor way, or a twenty-year-old way?”
“Helaine!” I whispered-yelled her name and all of a sudden I felt my hairline sweating.
“You do spend all day with him, I’m sure it’s perfectly natural,” she covered.
“Well, I have to. Sometimes I think the Mages want me to fail.”
“One good thing about being on house arrest is that we don’t have to be called to council with them or interact at events.”
“You think they’d work on their likeability,” I commented.
“What do you think happened to Moon?” Helaine asked suddenly, as if it had been a question on the front of her mind for the past day.
“Oh… I haven’t thought much about her since there is nothing I can do. She’s likely dead.”
“How can you say it like that? I hate that word.”
“I don’t mean to upset you… it’s just the truth.” I caught it then, a guilt emanating off of her. “Helaine, it’s not your fault.”
“I didn’t say—” she sighed out.
“We don’t know what happened to make the Hallorans targets, okay? And if it has anything to do with you getting in as water, you have four other people to back you up.”
“You’re right,” she said.
“And you know what, my opinion is the only one that matters in the entire world anyway, and I think you shouldn’t feel guilty.”
“Thanks, Rose. I’m off to lessons two floors below.”
“Have fun,” I told her.
As Helaine walked from my room, I took her guilt, all of it. I couldn’t see emotions as they traveled my way, but I always felt them come toward me with frayed ends. They were stronger in the middle, and I could lessen them by picking the strings apart and holding onto them for myself. Helaine’s guilt was deeper, more meaningful to her than I first realized. It would take an hour or so for the culpability to disperse throughout my body, and I’d be feeling its effects, but what else were friends who could draw energy from the astral plane for?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Samhain
Helaine
The Coven’s Halloween ritual would be the extent of our partying for October, because Rose and I would be observing Samhain from house arrest. There were loads of parties taking place in the underground for it
, but we were positively stuck. Some proper eighteen-year-olds we were.
My lessons were canceled for the day of Samhain, and I didn’t know what to do with the free time I’d have today. Regardless of being stir-crazy and spending way too much time with both Rose and Onyx the past five weeks, I was happy to meet with Maddi and Rose in the kitchen to discuss our first ritual as the Coven, and our one and only blessed task for the day.
“Have you picked out your ritual outfits?” Maddi asked us.
“Ritual outfits?” We asked in tandem.
“Yes.” Maddi looked as if she were thinking for a long and hard moment and then burst out with, “Your mentors are men, of course, they didn’t tell you about it! Stanley would surely forget, and Onyx was the one who looked after him all of those years, so it doesn’t surprise me. Did you bring any kind of cloak or outerwear?”
We answered that we did, knowing they were right wretched, and Maddi told us to bring them down anyway.
My hastily packed cloak was black (so plain that I couldn’t come up with a synonym for its color) and Rose’s was unsurprisingly purple. Both were made out of flat fabric that trapped the light and tied with a single string at the throat.
“I can’t believe they didn’t tell you,” Maddi complained. “These are beautiful in their own way, but I could have gotten you anything you wanted in time for tonight’s ritual.”
“It’s okay,” Rose told her politely.
Stan was the next into the kitchen, and Maddi shot him a scathing look on his way through it as he barely mumbled hello to us.
“Stanley,” she said.
“Hands on hips and scowl,” Stan said. “Firstly, I’m sorry. Secondly, what did I do?”
“You didn’t tell your charge about ritual clothing.”
“I forgot,” Stan said with a yawn. Rose suppressed her own yawn, mine came out horribly loud, and Maddi’s eyes watered from lessening her own.
“Stanley,” Maddi said rolling her eyes and turning back to us. “It isn’t a big deal, and I know that both of you are adaptable, but in the future, I think it helps a witch come into her own to find her style. It makes the ritual more authentic and fun.”
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