by Kristin Cast
“I already sanitized the blades,” added Xena.
Emily sneezed and then thanked her.
“Okay, does anyone have any more questions?” Mercy asked. “Sunset will be in about thirty minutes.”
“I think I get it,” said Emily as she held her athame carefully.
“All I need to know is which one is my tree,” said Jax.
“Your tree is the banyan. It guards the Hindu gate,” said Mercy.
“Em, you already know that yours is the Japanese gate.”
“I’ve always liked that tree,” said Emily.
“Xena, I thought you should go to the Egyptian tree—what with Bast being an Egyptian goddess and all.”
Xena nodded. “Yes, kitten, I agree. And I have the perfect offering. I shall leave a lock of my luxurious hair. I know Bast will appreciate that.”
“Hunter,” said Mercy, “you’ll need to go to—”
“I know what I need to do.”
Mercy thought she’d never seen Hunter’s eyes look so blue or so cold—like someone had frozen the Caribbean Sea. She squared her shoulders and faced Hunter. It was time.
“Do you really know what to do?”
“I’m taking care of the Cyclops. Cleaning up the real mess. As usual.”
“As usual?” Mercy frowned at Hunter.
“And you don’t need to tell me what to do.”
“What’s going on between them?” Emily whispered from the backseat, but Xena gently shushed her.
Mercy felt one of the wounds in her heart begin to bleed, but she ignored it. It was time. “Whatever, Hunter. You’re still not getting it.” She lifted the sheet of paper that had been waiting on her lap. “You have to put aside Tyr and choose a goddess. It’s your god that caused this. Your god that made the trees sick.” Mercy struck twice with her words, drew a breath, and then slashed the third and most devastating wound. “Your god caused the Fenrir to escape.” Hunter’s shoulders jerked in pain, but Mercy forced herself to go on. “Being a lesbian doesn’t mean you had to choose a god instead of a goddess.” Mercy turned the page and held it so Hunter could read it.
Hunter’s eyes blazed with rage as she ripped the page from Mercy’s hands. “My sexuality has nothing to do with choosing Tyr. So, do you also believe that Jax is my best friend because he’s a guy? Did you ever think that I’m more interested in the person, or god, and less concerned with their gender?” Mercy opened her mouth to speak, but Hunter didn’t give her the opportunity. “And, if you’d bothered to do any real research, you’d know that they didn’t see queerness as an identity back when this prophecy was written, so there’s no possible way great aunt whoever could have been referring to me.” Then she balled up the paper and threw it onto the floorboard. She jerked open her car door and grabbed her backpack from where it rested on the seat between them. Before she got out of the car, she hurled her words at Mercy.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll betray my god and choose a goddess. I’ll make this sacrifice and fix everything, not because there’s something wrong with me, but because you’re too weak to help yourself.” Hunter surged from the car. “Jax, I’m riding with you. Drop me off at the sheriff’s.” She stomped away, leaving Jax to scramble after her.
“Kitten! Do be careful!” Xena called through the window at Hunter’s back.
Mercy had to swallow several times before she could speak and when she did her voice sounded hollow, like something had just gouged through her. “Em, would you drive?”
As Emily silently went to the driver’s seat, Xena’s soft hand stroked the back of Mercy’s hair as she murmured, “Oh, my poor kittens…”
Twenty-nine
Goose bumps peaked along Hunter’s arms as she opened the heavy glass door of the sheriff’s department. It was cold. Really cold. Arctic tundra cold. She pulled the sleeves of her holey cardigan over her hands and rubbed them against her arms. Her boots squeaked across the shiny linoleum floor as she headed to the long, beige counter that separated the townspeople from those tasked with keeping them safe.
Trish McAlister poked up from behind the counter. Her curly red hair bounced against her pink cheeks as she hefted up a box labeled DONATE and set it on top of the Formica-covered ledge. An aluminum can spilled over the top of the box and landed on the floor with a thud.
“I got it!” Hunter welcomed the excuse to jog over and supply more heat to her body. “Only a tiny dent.” She pointed to the dimple and set the can of green beans back in the box.
“They’re for the elementary school’s food drive.” Trish brushed a few perfectly spiraled locks away from her green eyes and smiled. “I don’t much think they’ll care about a little dent.” She shivered and zipped her puffy winter jacket up to her throat.
Hunter bounced in place and flexed her stiffening fingers. “I think your a/c has gone insane.”
Trish clasped her hands in front of her and buried her chin in the collar of her coat. “The sheriff is having quite the time staying cool.” Her glossed lips smoothed into a thin line. “With his hot flashes and mood swings, you’d think he was going through some type of male menopause.” She grumbled before glancing up at Hunter. The color in her cheeks deepened cherry red. “But you didn’t come to hear about that.” She waved away the comment and lifted herself onto the stool behind the counter. “Now, what can I do for you…?”
“Hunter,” she supplied.
“Thank you, Hunter. It’s just that you girls are so darn hard to tell apart.” Trish’s shoulders shook with a chuckle. “So, what can I do for you, Hunter?”
Hunter clenched her toes. “I need to speak with the sheriff. It’s an emergency.”
“Oh?” Trish pressed her hand against her chest and tilted her chin, birdlike. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“Not too serious.” She cleared her throat. “Well, it is an emergency. Can an emergency be unserious?” Her toes ached and she blew out a puff of air. “I just need to see the big man in charge.” Hunter bit the inside of her cheeks to keep from spouting more nonsense. If her plan was going to work, she’d have to keep from saying asinine things like unserious emergency and big man in charge.
Trish slid off her stool and straightened her puffy jacket. “I’ll go see if he is taking visitors.”
Hunter fought off another a/c-induced shiver. “I’m not really a visitor. I have a serious emergency.”
Trish stuffed her hands into her pockets. “Hunter, dear, you are preaching to the choir.” Her tennis shoes squeaked on the linoleum as she spun around and marched toward the only office with its door closed.
Except for the occasional ringing phone or whoosh of the printer, the sheriff’s department was silent. Every few weeks, when Hunter followed Mercy in and out of the businesses along Main Street to hang flyers for the bake sales and club activities the more outgoing twin participated in, the sheriff’s department pulsed with energy. Deputy Carter seemed to always be up and around, flashing a straight-toothed grin and those puppy-dog eyes at the women who stopped by to hand out sweets and innocent flirtations. There was laughter from the coffee station, somber meetings in the glass-front conference rooms, and at least one very drunk, very loud townsperson. Hunter rubbed her palms against her bare thighs and shivered. Everything was different now, colder, and it wasn’t just the air conditioning. But that’s what happened when the easygoing sheriff was body snatched and replaced with a murderous monster.
Hunter flinched with each of Trish’s sharp knocks on the sheriff’s closed wooden door. Hunter strained to hear what they were saying, but her witchy powers didn’t extend to super hearing. She picked at her thumbnail and waited.
Everything rested on her. Everything always rested on her, so that wasn’t really a shock, but this was so much different than pulling her sister out of her despair or making sure their mother’s funeral arrangements were in order. This was huge—life ending. And then there was Tyr. Hunter swallowed.
Sheriff Dearborn yanked his door open. I
t slammed against the stopper with a sharp crack. Tension washed over the bullpen. Even the trilling phones quieted in Sheriff Dearborn’s wake.
Hunter stiffened. She could do this. She had no choice.
She lifted onto her toes and shouted, “Sheriff!”
His head jerked from Trish to Hunter. Under the fluorescent lights, the lenses of his mirrored sunglasses looked like two starbursts.
Showtime.
Hunter knitted her brow and frowned. “Out by that old olive tree, there’s a—a—” She pressed her cold fingers against her lips and sucked in a jagged breath.
The sheriff brushed past Trish and stalked toward Hunter.
Deputy Carter stood and picked up his cowboy hat off his desk. “If you take Miss Goode’s statement, I’ll drive out there and take a look.”
“No!” Dearborn’s temples flexed with each sharp clench of his jaw. “What I mean is, I need you”—he swung his gaze around the bullpen—“all of you, to stay here. Finish your work. Protect the town. I’ll use this…” With another clench of his jaw, he flicked the radio attached to his shoulder. “And let you know if I need backup.”
Deputy Carter’s puppy face disappeared as he dropped his hat back onto his desk and sagged into his chair.
Hunter kept her damsel-in-distress mask firmly in place as she surveyed the office. None of these people had gotten to say good-bye to the real Frank Dearborn. After tonight, if everything went well for Hunter, each person’s memory would be stained by the final seventy-two hours they’d spent with Polyphemus, the creature who’d stuffed himself into Frank Dearborn’s skin and ruined him in more ways than one.
“Come with me, twin.”
Hunter didn’t flinch, didn’t recoil when Polyphemus pressed his meaty paw against her back and hurried her down the hall. Instead, she surrendered, turned toward him and let him push her outside. In that moment, she needed him, needed to be rescued.
“What’s out at the olive tree?” he barked as soon as the door had closed behind them.
“Sheriff, I don’t know if you’d believe me if I told you.” She wrung her hands. “You’d think I was crazy!” She bit the inside of her cheek until her eyes watered. “I’ll have to show you.” She swallowed the warm pool of copper sliding across her tongue.
He adjusted the sunglasses on the bridge of his broad nose and sniffled. “Well then, Hunter, I’ll drive us on out there.” He fished the keys from his pocket, pointed the fob at the cruiser, and pressed a button.
Hunter followed Polyphemus to the car as it unlocked and yellow signal lights lit up the parking lot. “Good guess with the whole which twin thing.” Hunter could only muster a slight twitch of her lips to accompany her attempt at normalcy.
Polyphemus opened the cruiser door and paused before climbing in. He leaned forward and rested his arm on the roof of the car. “Oh, Hunter.” He slid his tongue across his teeth and blew out a quaking breath. “I could never forget that spark behind those blue eyes.”
Thirty
Mercy bent to look into the car through the open passenger’s side window at Emily and Xena. “Okay, Em, drop Xena off at the park, and then get right to the cherry tree. You two have candles and matches, right?”
“Yes,” said Emily. “Don’t worry. We’ve got this.”
“Kitten, you must focus on your intention. It is your will that holds all of us together in Ritual.”
Mercy ran her hand through her long hair and shoved it back behind her ears. “That’s hard to do knowing she hates me.”
Xena touched her arm. “No. Hunter hates what she must do tonight. And I hate it for her, don’t you? How would you feel if you knew that you must reject Freya?”
Mercy sighed. “I’d feel awful.”
“Then understand her instead of judging her. Now, go.” Xena paused. “And as you walk to the Norse gate, gain control over your feelings. Blessed be, my kitten.”
“Blessed be, Xena,” Mercy said. “Good luck, Em.”
“Break a leg!” Emily said as she drove off, waving out the window.
With a sigh Mercy hefted her big purse across her shoulder and headed to their backyard and through the little gate to the fields beyond—tracing the steps she and Hunter and Abigail had taken four short nights, but an eternity, ago.
Dusk settled around the cornfields. The evening had been warm, and a soft breeze caressed the growing crops that brought to Mercy the scent of fertile earth and corn silk. The thick stalks whispered secrets she could almost hear. She relaxed into the familiarity of her world and let the earth comfort her internal wounds.
My intention is to lead this ritual to heal the trees and seal the gates with the blood of witches mixed with the representatives of those who once walked this very path—and the unique power that fills this land.
Mercy repeated her intention over and over until it became like the lyrics of a song that wouldn’t leave her mind. It blocked everything else and consumed her attention.
She closed her eyes tightly before she was able to approach the mighty apple tree that guarded the Norse gate, and readied herself. She knew what she would see, though as she drew closer and closer to the wide trunk and the umbrella of ancient boughs, Mercy was surprised at how little evidence there remained of the horrible battle and their heartbreaking loss.
Only a few of the gnarled roots that pushed up from the ground like arthritic fingers showed signs of the goddess’s inferno that had immolated her mother, though a dark scorch marked the skin of the tree’s trunk. Mercy stared at it as her internal mantra faltered.
“Oh, thank you, Athena.” Awestruck, Mercy bowed her head and pressed her hand against the blackened bark. At the place where Abigail Goode had died to save her daughters—and her town—the outline of a perfect heart had been burned into the tree.
Then she lifted her head, wiped away her tears, kicked off her shoes, and got to work—and as she prepared to open the ritual, Mercy breathed deeply, evenly, until she felt so grounded that the bare soles of her feet tingled. Then she began allowing emotions to bubble up and release—bubble and release.
Feeling invigorated, Mercy reached into her boho bag and extracted a thick white candle exactly like the ones her four impromptu coven members were, hopefully, also readying. She placed her candle at the base of the apple tree, beneath the point of the heart the goddess had scorched into its bark. She returned to her bag for matches, her phone, and the little jar filled with the last apple butter she and Abigail would ever make together. Mercy’s smile was bittersweet as her finger traced the pentagram she’d painted on the side of the Mason jar last fall to mark the final batch of that season’s harvest.
“I’ll think of you every fall—every time I make jam or apple butter or homemade bread. I’ll think of you always, Mama.” Mercy placed the jar beside the white candle at the base of the tree, then she waited, repeating her intention mantra over and over.
She didn’t wait long. Her phone bleeped with the first text message, a smiling cat emoji from Xena—followed by Emily’s READY! And then Jax’s LOCKED & LOADED!
Quickly, she joined the four of them in a group call and hit the speaker button as she tucked the phone into a niche in the tree’s bark.
“All right, you have placed your candles at the base of your trees?”
“Yes!” Three voices echoed back to her, like ghosts lifting from a grave.
No! No negative imagery! Mercy pushed the thought from her mind and continued.
“Your offerings are ready?”
“Yes!” they replied.
“Okay,” Mercy said. “Get your matches out and give me a second. Let me find Hunter.”
Mercy faced her tree and centered herself, breathing deeply once, twice, thrice, and then sent her sixth sense—that magical spark that flowed rich and thick through every sister of Salem, each daughter who carried Sarah Goode’s legacy—down, down, down to find the vein of power that hummed beneath her bare feet and formed the potent pentagram that surrounded Goodeville
. As she tapped into the thrumming ley lines she thought of Hunter—of everything she loved about her sister. Her generosity and kindness—her strength and wit—and above all the thing that was always there, no matter what else was happening in their world, the connection that bound them irrevocably together. The bond that had begun at their conception, forged by blood and sealed by nine months of a shared womb.
Mercy gasped as she connected with her sister. Against her closed lids Hunter swirled as a glowing sapphire orb with silver glitter as if a piece of the cosmos had come to earth, and glistened like a spot on the map of her soul.
“She’s there! She’s at the olive tree!” Mercy’s eyes opened and she crouched before the white pillar candle. As she picked up the match she turned to the glowing face of her phone. “Okay, light your matches while I open the ritual.” Mercy struck the match and lit her candle. “And so we begin. We are vessels, cleansed and protected, ready to be conduits for energy. Remember, we do not keep that energy. We only guide it. Visualize the gate before you, deep within the trunk of this ancient tree who has stood guardian for hundreds of years.”
She paused to be sure the others were with her, and as she did she thought of Hunter, sending her sister an image of a brightly burning flame. Please see me, too, Hunter! Please understand! Light your candle! The sapphire orb in her internal map sparked suddenly brighter. Is that it? Did you light your candle?
Mercy’s intuition demanded she continue and set the spell. All she could do was move forward and believe Hunter came with them.
“Now, place your offering near your tree. Let your intuition guide you as to where, and as you place it tell your tree that this offering is in honor of the gate it guards and the ancient world beyond. Jax, release your dove feather and thank the peoples who came before us—whose land we now call our own.”
Mercy lifted the jar of apple butter. She kissed it, and then reached up and, on her tiptoes, placed it in a niche where two low-hanging limbs joined. “Thank you, mighty apple tree. I make this offering in honor of the Underworld you guard and the Norse land from which you come.”