Homecoming

by Amber Benson

  Lizbeth was tentative in her approach, meeting Lyse halfway. She was unused to shaking hands and squeezed Lyse’s fingers too hard.

  “Ow! Okay, okay,” Lyse said, laughing. “I need that hand.”

  Lizbeth dropped Lyse’s hand, embarrassed all over again.

  “So, are we cool?” Lyse asked, massaging the fingers Lizbeth had just crunched.

  Lizbeth gave Lyse a shy smile.

  “Good,” Lyse said. “Now, go keep an eye on Eleanora for me. That way I can actually pee without worrying.”

  Lizbeth nodded, and then, hair flying behind her, she left the sitting room at a gallop. She felt more settled, and the prickly feeling was almost gone. She floated down the hallway with a wide grin on her face, pleased that Lyse seemed to trust her.

  Curiosity was sitting in the middle of the living room, waiting for her. Lizbeth stopped so the kitten could bump into her ankle, rubbing her face against Lizbeth’s jeans.

  Hi, kitty, Lizbeth thought as she dropped to her knees, picking the squirming kitten up and letting it nuzzle her chin.

  She imagined the kitten answering back with: Hi to you, too, Lizbeth. You smell like magic. I want to eat you.

  Lizbeth grinned, liking the made-up personality she’d given the kitten—this wasn’t their first conversation, actually. She talked to Curiosity almost every day.

  Hey, you don’t want to eat me, Lizbeth thought, as she stroked the soft spots behind the kitten’s ears. I’m your friend.

  In her head, Lizbeth heard the kitten say, You’re nobody’s friend.

  Unsettled, she set the kitten back down on the floor and wandered back to the kitchen to wait for Lyse.

  Lyse

  Walking through the dark streets of Echo Park after they’d left the safety of Arrabelle’s house behind them, the streetlights and pregnant moon their only means of illumination, Lyse recalled how, as a teenager, she’d dreamed of the original bohemians and radicals of Echo Park. Not just daydreams, but convoluted, lucid things that woke her up on the hottest nights of the summer to find the covers bunched at her feet, her heart beating in time with her shallow breaths. She would lie there, listening to the birds chirping out their night songs, the sound carrying through windows left wide and screenless to let out the pervasive heat and take advantage of the unpredictable crosswinds.

  She dreamed of nights spent dancing around a devilish bonfire lit by the Semi Tropics Spiritualists—a long-disbanded camp of bohemians and psychic enthusiasts who’d resided not far from where Eleanora’s house stood. Fever dreams of old Echo Park that made her want to be alive sixty years earlier, when the neighborhood was nicknamed Red Hill because of all the political radicals and artists that populated its lush hills, their tiny bungalows hidden within the tangle of wooded greenery high above Sunset Boulevard.

  She’d been a teenage girl full of nostalgia for a time that wasn’t her own. But all that changed the minute she slipped the noose of adolescence and left Echo Park behind her for college. She’d lost the magic of adolescence in favor of more adult pursuits. She’d found a few good friends—like Carole—who seemed to understand her, and she was happy.

  Her time in Echo Park became a hazy dream, a faded photograph pinned to the sheets of a forgotten photo album.

  Walking these streets brought that world back to her with a vengeance. As they got closer to Elysian Park, more memories began to resurface, filling her head with a sense of nostalgia so strong that her heart ached.

  They passed a funny little cottage Lyse remembered from her teenage wanderings, and she was surprised to find it hadn’t changed a bit. Peeling brown wood, stained-glass front windows, and wind chimes hanging like luscious grapes from the porch rafters, their hollow bodies tinkling wildly as the wind pushed them to and fro.

  Night-blooming jasmine grew all over these hills, woven into trellises, snaking over metal and wooden fences alike, permeating the air with its creamy, almost tropical scent. Nature was still alive in Echo Park, concrete and drywall and brick mixed together with trees and wild animals and the smell of living things.

  They took the rolling hills at a brisker pace than she’d have liked. She’d have preferred to linger and marinate in thoughts of the past, and she was worried about Eleanora wearing herself out, her great-aunt moving too fast when she should’ve been taking her time.

  But this wasn’t Lyse’s journey. She was just a spectator, following Eleanora and Lizbeth as they led her deeper into the hills, past the houses and streetlights, and into the heart of Elysian Park.

  “This is really far,” Lyse said, out of breath as they crested a sloping hill.

  “Not too much longer,” Eleanora said, stepping off the marked trail and cutting into the trees.

  “Where are you going?”

  “It’s just through these trees,” Eleanora said, pointing off into the thicket of greenery.

  Lyse sighed, aware nothing she could say would dissuade her great-aunt when she had her mind set on doing something. When they were still back at Arrabelle’s house, before the epic hike into the heart of darkness, she’d tried to get Eleanora to go home—but she’d been shot down. Her great-aunt was stubborn, determined to do what she liked even when it wasn’t healthy for her.

  “I’m dying,” Eleanora had said. “There’s nothing bad a hike in the woods can do to me anymore.”

  Lyse had no argument for that, though she’d already decided she was going to force Eleanora to get a second, or third, or fourth doctor’s opinion—she didn’t care how many it took. She remembered that Carole’s brother had gone to Sloan-Kettering when he’d been diagnosed with lymphoma. She was gonna call him in the morning and get his doctor’s name and number. There had to be more cutting-edge stuff a specialized place could be doing for Eleanora.

  Plus, she was worried about her great-aunt’s state of mind. Maybe a psychiatrist should be on the docket, too. This whole game about witches and blood sisters and rituals was clearly some kind of psychotic delusion. Eleanora had gotten mixed up with a group of well-meaning (probably) Earth mother Wiccan ladies and, in her demented state, had decided their Earth magic stuff was for real.

  And she didn’t even want to think about the weird conversation Eleanora had been having on the way to Arrabelle’s house. The one with the “Dream Walker” called Hessika.

  “Just through here,” Eleanora said, her voice low.

  The perfume of night-blooming jasmine gave way to the sharp scent of eucalyptus, and Lyse looked up to find herself in the middle of a stand of trees.

  “Come on, slowpoke,” Eleanora called back to Lyse. “Pick up the pace.”

  Lizbeth had Eleanora’s arm, and the two of them were moving away from her through a gap in the trees. Lyse shook her head, not wanting to follow, but knowing it wasn’t a choice. She pushed on, keeping Eleanora and Lizbeth in her sight line.

  This is ridiculous, she thought. It’s pitch-black out. We’re in the middle of nowhere . . .

  She realized belatedly that Eleanora and Lizbeth were no longer ahead of her.

  Shit.

  “Eleanora!”

  The quiet whoosh of the wind through the eucalyptus leaves was her only answer.

  “Dammit,” she murmured, annoyed with herself for losing track of the others.

  The fog was beginning to roll in—or maybe it’d been there the whole time and Lyse just hadn’t noticed it. No, that’s not right, she thought. There was no fog before. The night was clear.

  An eardrum-shattering howl cut through the stygian night, and Lyse took an involuntary step back. The shawl she was wearing wasn’t warm enough. It let the cold leak in, chilling Lyse down to her very marrow. She began to walk again, faster than before, moving through the dense stand of unending eucalyptus trees. It was getting colder, and the fog was thicker the farther she ran—because she was running now—her brain thrumming with the need
to escape.

  “Eleanora!” she screamed into the night, the eucalyptus smell cloying in her throat and nose.

  No response.

  “Oh shit!” she shrieked, stopping her forward momentum and beginning to backpedal as terror gripped her heart.

  Crouched in the fog ahead of her was a feral dog, its muscles tensed to attack. She didn’t dare turn her back on the beast, afraid it would pounce if she took her eyes off of it. She slowed down, not wanting to trip over anything in her haste to get away. All she had going for her was that she was bigger than it. If she ended up on the ground, she could imagine the nasty creature using it as an excuse to attack.

  “Shoo!” she hissed at the dog. “Get away from here!”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a fallen branch lying on the ground a few feet away and she started inching toward it.

  She slowly bent down to pick up the branch, and the dog snarled at her. She froze, the makeshift weapon a few inches from her grasp.

  “Get away!” she yelled, trying to sound as confident as she could, and then in one sweeping movement, she grabbed the branch and swung it out in front of her, brandishing it like a sword.

  The dog attacked, racing at her with almost supernatural speed. She didn’t flinch, just aimed the branch, and the moment the dog was in range, she swung it like a bat. She missed but was able to sidestep out of the dog’s way before it could sink its teeth into her.

  The beast turned around and went for her again, but this time she hit it square in the face with as much force as she could manage. The dog gave a pathetic whimper and veered off course, steering itself away from another wallop with the branch.

  “Stay away from me, or I’ll do it again!” Lyse cried, adrenaline pumping through her body. She felt glorious and sick to her stomach at the same time.

  It wasn’t light enough to see if she’d drawn blood, but the dog’s whimper gave Lyse a clue that she’d scored a direct hit.

  “Go home, or back to wherever you came from!” Lyse yelled, swinging the branch around to further dissuade the dog from attacking.

  “Need a little help?”

  Lyse wheeled around. Behind her stood a tiny slip of a woman in a sexy sweatshirt cut strategically to hang off one shoulder—and though it was hard to tell for sure in the moonlight, Lyse was pretty sure the woman had pink hair.

  “I think I’ve got this—” Lyse started to say, but the dog chose that moment to take another run at her.

  “Go,” the woman said, stepping in front of Lyse as the dog pounced.

  Lyse did as she was told, taking off into the trees. Tree branches sliced into her as she ran, but she didn’t dare stop. She wanted to put as much space as possible between herself and the dog.

  Behind her, she heard a snarl and then a soft yip of surrender, the sound fading into the night. Out of breath, she stopped and leaned against the trunk of an old eucalyptus tree. She took a shuddering gulp of air and realized she’d been holding her breath. She let the branch fall to her side and felt her body shake with relief . . . and the aftereffects of a heavy adrenaline surge.

  She didn’t know what else to do, so she started walking again. It didn’t take long for the fog to clear and the trees to thin out, and soon she found herself stepping through a gap between the foliage.

  She gasped . . . and stared into the clearing from her nightmare.

  * * *

  “Lyse,” Eleanora said, running over to her grandniece and grabbing her wrist. She was trembling.

  “My nightmare,” Lyse whispered, patting her great-aunt’s arm as she pushed away an overflow of emotion. “It’s real.”

  “Are you okay?” Eleanora said, with an intensity that was frightening. “You were right behind us, and then it was like you’d vanished. I was so worried—”

  “I’m fine,” Lyse murmured, wanting to reassure Eleanora, even if she had to lie to do it. “There was a stray dog, but it’s fine.”

  She gritted her teeth, channeling all her energy into putting on a happy face. Eleanora didn’t need her to fall apart right now.

  She slid her arms around her great-aunt’s shoulders, hugging the older woman to her. The trembling in Eleanora’s body worsened, and Lyse wondered if this was going to become a constant thing—if so, it was even more upsetting than her great-aunt’s appearance, which was bad enough, all fragile eggshell skin revealing the bones beneath the flesh.

  Dammit, Eleanora was really dying. Any idiot could see it—and she was the delusional one if she thought a second opinion would change that.

  “I’m glad you’re here now,” Eleanora said, peeling away from Lyse’s embrace.

  She’d never been one for prolonged touching, was forever pulling out of hugs too soon, nodding instead of shaking hands. It was an aspect of Eleanora’s personality that drove Lyse crazy. Now Lyse was just happy for any morsel of affection from her great-aunt.

  “This place,” Lyse said, the words spilling from her lips. “I know it. I’ve dreamed of it. For years and years it’s haunted me—”

  “I didn’t know,” Eleanora said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “What was there to tell?” Lyse said. “I had nightmares. I didn’t know they were actually about a real place.”

  Eleanora sighed and rubbed at her chin, her fingers splaying across the lower part of her face like wings. She began to nod, turning Lyse’s words over in her mind.

  “I should’ve known,” she said. “I’m the master of this coven and it’s my business to be on top of these things. Besides, I know now that I should’ve told you everything: about myself, about my ability . . . about the coven. It wasn’t fair to keep things from you.”

  “Why?” Lyse asked. Ever since Eleanora had begun talking about witches and magic and covens, Lyse had wondered why her great-aunt had kept this information from her. “Did you think I couldn’t handle it? Or was it that I wasn’t good enough to tell—”

  “No, you were always good enough for anything,” Eleanora said, interrupting her. “That’s a ridiculous thing to say. You were just young. I didn’t want to burden you—”

  “Lizbeth is a goddamned kid!” Lyse yelled, pointing in Lizbeth’s direction. The younger girl shied away, embarrassed at being singled out. “She’s a teenager. I was her age. That’s a bullshit argument.”

  “You’re right. I’ve been thoughtless,” Eleanora said, spinning off in another direction, one Lyse hadn’t expected.

  “What are you talking about?” Lyse wanted to shake her great-aunt.

  “I wanted you to have a normal life,” Eleanora said, sighing. “Even if it was just for a little while. I didn’t want you to be like me. To only know sacrifice . . .”

  “Why would you say something like that?” Lyse said. “That’s all I wanted. To be like you. You’re wise and strong and I love you—”

  Eleanora didn’t seem to know how to respond. She shrugged.

  “You don’t know what I’ve done in my life, Bear. The terrible—but necessary—choices I’ve made. If you did, you wouldn’t want to follow in my footsteps.”

  Lyse let her eyes flare with disbelief.

  “Then tell me. Let me make my own decisions. Stop trying to protect me or keep me in the dark.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you, Bear,” Eleanora said, exasperated. “Please, can we just table this conversation for another time? There’s so much we have to do tonight—”

  “No,” Lyse said. “I’ll do anything you want. I’ll join whatever club you need me to join. Do whatever ‘ritual’ you want me to do. But only if you talk to me right now. Because tomorrow may be too late—”

  She stopped, trying to collect herself and failing miserably.

  “Because . . .” She began to cry. “Because you could be dead tomorrow.”

  “Not unless you plan on murdering me in my sleep,”
Eleanora said with a snort.

  Lyse shook her head, Eleanora’s sarcasm killing her tears.

  “Fine, don’t be serious. I don’t care. Just tell me what’s going on here. Why have I been dreaming about this place?”

  “The coven is your destiny. It always has been. That’s why it infiltrated your dreams. The part of you that belongs to the coven wanted to be known,” Eleanora said, and sighed. “As to what’s going on here . . . I think that’s pretty easy to figure out. I’m dying—as you’ve so succinctly pointed out—and I need you to take my place. I need you to be me. It’s as simple as that.”

  Eleanora pointed behind her—and for the first time, Lyse realized she was standing in a circle within the clearing. A circle someone had drawn with ash or black chalk, she wasn’t sure which—and it was quartered by white candles, their flames guttering as the wind whipped across them. Two women, each markedly different from the other, stood in the middle of the circle.

  “Lyse, I’m not the only one who needs you,” Eleanora said, and smiled. “Meet the rest of my blood sisters.”

  One was smiling at her, and the other was watching her with a studied gaze that bordered on surliness. The smiling one was the first to step forward.

  “This is Devandra.”

  “Hi, Lyse,” Devandra said. “It’s so lovely to meet you—and you can call me Dev, if you like. Everyone else does.”

  Lyse immediately liked the woman with the long strawberry-blond hair plaited on either side of her head. There was a safe, maternal feeling about her presence. Like she had a whole lot of love inside her that couldn’t help but shine out of her face like a beacon.

  Lyse held out her hand, but Dev only laughed at her.

  “We do hugs around here.”

  She pulled Lyse to her, the scent of her vanilla-spiced perfume making Lyse feel about ten years old.

  “I’m Daniela.”

  Lyse turned to find the tiny woman who’d come to her rescue out in the woods. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold, but the streaks of pink on her otherwise pale face only made her look more beautiful.