I tilted my head and the looking glass, trying to see past my friends to try to figure out where they were. I expected to find them in the same wooded area where Jodi had managed to tap into her elemental powers again, but they obviously weren’t there tonight. Jodi stumbled over a dip in the ground. Steven’s hand on her arm kept her from falling, but we all heard something break, making Jodi curse.
“Hope that isn’t bad luck,” Steven whispered, reaching down to pick up the broken vase and scattered roses. He bundled them into a bouquet and set them carefully against a tombstone. My heart stopped for a moment before slamming into my chest again.
“A cemetery?” I hissed. “Are you two freaking serious right now?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Jodi asked, turning her wide blue eyes up to him.
“What?” Steven said, turning to look at her again, realizing what he said. “I was just kidding. I have no idea if that’s a thing or not.”
“Not funny, dude,” Jodi said, furrowing her brow in a scowl.
“Kinda funny,” Steven argued, quirking one corner of his mouth in a smile.
“Just c’mon,” Jodi said, grabbing him by the sleeve and pulling, taking more care with where she placed her feet as she walked.
“Where are we meeting them?” Steven asked, keeping his voice at a whisper as if he could disturb the dead just by speaking. I couldn’t see the iridescent spectral ghosts like I could when I was on that plane, but I knew they were there nonetheless.
“A little further in,” Jodi said, gesturing in front of her with her empty hand. In her other hand, she carried a small, plastic birdcage with a chirping, brown sparrow trapped inside. “So we won’t be seen from the road.” As they crested another hill, I realized where they were: the largest and best maintained cemetery in Ventura. My great aunt and uncle were buried there. I had only visited their plots a couple of times, but as Jodi and Steven moved across the sweeping, sloping lawn, I finally recognized it. Steven hitched the bag on his shoulder a little higher, reaching out to take Jodi’s hand out of habit, making sure she didn’t trip again.
If I could’ve screamed through the looking glass, I would have. We never, ever cast in a cemetery. Cleaning your space of any interfering entities was nearly impossible, and really, the only types of people who would cast in a cemetery were the kinds of people that would use the dead to help empower evil spells. People like Ian. People assumed cemeteries were consecrated ground, but that wasn’t always true. Nowadays, not all cemeteries were on church grounds, so they were rarely blessed by clergymen. This wasn’t a good idea, and I had no idea why Jodi and Steven were going along with it.
“I think I see them,” Steven said, nodding his head in the same direction they were already walking.
“Oh yeah,” Jodi agreed. “Well, if it’s not them, then we’re not the only creepy people in the cemetery tonight.” Steven snickered, making Jodi smile. It was good to see them a little more lighthearted finally. I just hoped they didn’t get themselves into trouble with this crazy idea.
“Hi,” Sherry said when she saw them approach. She rushed forward to guide them around the salt circle she’d already drawn, leaving a one foot space open for them to walk through. Once Jodi and Steven were inside with Jane and Sherry, Sherry picked up the canister of sea salt and poured a line to close the circle.
“How’re you kids doing?” Jane asked in the same hushed whisper Steven had spoken in.
“Fine,” Steven answered while Jodi said, “A little creeped out.”
“Nonsense,” Jane said with a smile. “Few places are safer to be at night than a cemetery.” I couldn’t help the snort that escaped me.
“Right,” Sherry said with a nearly identical smile, “everyone here is already dead.”
“Oh yeah,” Jodi said with an eye roll. “That makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“Jodi,” Steven admonished. Seeing them trade roles was strange, but right now, I totally agreed with Jodi.
“What?” Jodi demanded, giving up speaking in hushed tones. “Can you please explain to me why we’re doing this in a cemetery? We never, ever cast in cemeteries. They aren’t exactly safe.” I let out a sigh of relief.
“’Atta girl,” I said, even though she couldn’t hear me.
“Well, for a number of reasons,” Jane said as she walked around the inside of the circle, placing white candles at equally spaced intervals. “For one thing, we won’t be disturbed out here. This is a rather vocal spell.”
“But isn’t that why you live where you do? So you can cast in the forest on your property without being seen?” Jodi asked.
“Yes, but that’s our family’s sacred space,” Sherry said, careful to use their code word for “coven.” “And since they voted against helping you, we can’t use it.”
Jodi made a small noise of discontent before nodding at Jane to go on.
“Also, we’re not invoking some random spirit of a deity or angel,” Jane said, continuing with her candles so that she didn’t notice the look Steven and Jodi shared. “We’re invoking a dead person, so the cemetery will lend us its power and energy.”
“I don’t know,” Jodi said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Still doesn’t seem right.”
“Sure, I mean, yeah, we’re working with the dead.” Steven’s voice caught on that word. “But we want her back alive, or at the very least her active spirit, so shouldn’t we work somewhere that promotes that?”
“Where would you suggest?” Sherry asked. She placed the four different items that represented the four different elements and directions in their appropriate places on the altar in the middle of the circle.
“Like a forest,” Steven offered. “That was Shay’s place of power after all.” Steven’s suggestion actually made them pause, and I had to wonder why they hadn’t had this argument while they ironed out their plan in the first place.
“Well, if Shay’s power laid in the ground and growing things, then it really shouldn’t matter where we perform this,” Jane said, coming to help her sister.
“Right, so long as we’re outside.” Sherry lifted her face to smile at my friends. They were right, to a point, but so were Jodi and Steven; they shouldn’t be in a cemetery.
“I guess,” Steven said without much conviction. He glanced at Jodi and gave a little shrug of defeat. Jodi pursed her thin lips, cocking one blond eyebrow, but with a shake of her head, she too gave in and knelt to help place the various casting tools.
Jane sat back on her heels to survey their work. “Okay, we have the pillar candles around the perimeter, and we have the symbols for Air and Fire.” She gestured to the caged bird and the large black candle. “We brought the blessed Water and the sacred Earth.”
“Um,” Steven held up a finger to interrupt her, “where did the dirt come from?”
“The sacred Earth,” Jane stressed, “was taken from the garden here.”
“From the cemetery?” Jodi asked, her head snapping up to look at Jane.
“Kids,” Jane said, her voice holding the first signs of strain, “I promise, it’s going to be fine. Sherry and I know what we’re doing.” Jodi and Steven shared another silent look, and if they could still speak mind-to-mind I knew they would be arguing frantically about how wrong all of this was. This was definitely not our kind of magic.
“All right,” Steven finally said, gesturing for them to go on. “This is your show.”
“No, it’s our show,” Sherry said, making a circular gesture to indicate all four of them. Jodi and Steven chose to keep their mouths shut. Sensing the strain, Sherry glanced at her sister, who was still moving items around until she was absolutely satisfied with their configuration.
“Did you bring something of Shayna’s?” Jane asked, looking at Jodi and Steven expectantly.
“Um, yeah,” Steven said, drawing all three gazes toward him. He pulled off the black leather glove from his right hand to dig into his pocket. When he opened his fist, I saw the bracelet he’d woven for
me the first year we’d met. It looked so small in his hand and more faded than it actually was against his tanned skin. He stared down at it for a long, quiet moment, brushing the frayed ends with his thumb before closing his eyes and sniffing.
“I know, sweetie,” I whispered, as if I could reach out and touch his arm to comfort him.
“Just place it in the middle,” Jane said quietly, trying to keep her voice as gentle as possible. Steven opened his eyes, blinking rapidly, and set the bracelet in the center of the altar. In the darkened cemetery, cresting on the small circular piece of black onyx, it looked like a thin crescent moon.
“Shall we begin?” Sherry asked, her voice a little too sharp, startling Jodi, Steven, and me.
“Sure,” Jodi said, shrugging her shoulders. I had never seen her so reluctant or unsure at the start of a casting.
Jane lit a taper and stood to light each of the white candles that surrounded them; I counted twelve as she went. We had never used a clock formation to create our circle of power, so watching her say a blessing over each candle as she lit them was interesting. She returned to the center taper, a mere couple of inches long now, and used it to light a small white candle next to the large black candle.
Strangely, when they began, they remained seated. Whenever we did great magics like these, we always stood, though I’m not sure if either made much of a difference. Jane and Sherry led the spell, starting by banishing any unhelpful entities from their sacred space, moving into a silent meditation, intending to build up their Cone of Power, outlined by the salt circle and candles. Jodi and Steven both cracked an eye open to steal a glance at each other. Steven tilted his head in a silent question, and Jodi answered with a small shake of her head. Neither of them could feel the Wiccans’ power.
Then they called upon each of the four earthly elements of Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Jane handed the small white candle to Steven to light the black candle when they spoke that element. Watching Steven light a candle manually was odd, just as odd as it was for Jodi to speak her element without the subsequent gentle breeze that had always followed before.
I squirmed, suddenly very sure that it just wasn’t going to work. Maybe I wasn’t giving Jane and Sherry enough credit, but I could tell just by looking at Jodi and Steven they weren’t feeling that special magical feeling they should be. I wondered, even as handicapped as their powers were right then, if they wouldn’t have been more successful attempting it on their own. After all, Jodi had already started to make some progress by herself.
Before long, the four began calling me, imploring me to answer them, come to them. I sat there, clutching the looking glass, staring down into the black glass, and felt no answering pull. Whatever they had done, it wasn’t a summoning or an invocation. For a moment, I could hear my own voice echoing in my head, telling Jacob how important belief was for magic to work. I really didn’t think Jodi and Steven truly believed that Jane and Sherry’s spell was going to work. Maybe that affected it, maybe not, but it certainly didn’t help.
They remained in the circle for a long time, holding their hands over their heads. Jane and Sherry never gave up on calling out my name, but never actually pulled me through. Jodi was the first to drop her hands, followed almost immediately by Steven. They stared at the two witches with their eyes closed and hands raised, waiting for them to give up.
Sherry’s arms began to shake first. Eventually she was forced to let her hands drop to her lap. When she opened her eyes and saw that Jodi and Steven were just staring at her, the look on her face was a mix of surprise and disappointment. She knew in that moment they’d given up on her and her sister fairly quickly.
“Jane,” Sherry said softly, interrupting her sister’s chant, “I think that’s enough.” Jane opened her eyes, keeping her hands in the air, and glanced at the others. Her brow furrowed as if she was confused.
“I told you this wouldn’t be easy,” Jane said, refusing to let her hands drop. I felt a wave of affection for her then, appreciating how hard she was trying even though my friends and I had given up already.
“Right,” Steven said, “but it’s not working, and your fingers are turning blue.” Jane glanced at her hands and saw Steven was right; her fingers had lost so much color they were starting to turn from white to blue. She finally lowered her hands, rubbing them to get the blood moving again.
“I’m sorry, you guys,” Sherry said, dropping her eyes.
“Don’t be,” Steven said with a shake of his head.
“Yeah,” Jodi said, “you tried. It was a really good effort, and we appreciate it.”
Jane and Sherry shared a look as Jodi and Steven stood to help disassemble the circle, blowing out the candles and making the appropriate gestures and saying the banishing spells we all knew by heart, scuffing a gap in the salt line to break the circle. Steven snatched up my bracelet just as Jane reached to move it. Steven stared down at her with a strange look before slipping it into his pocket and turning away.
Once everything was packed away and Jodi had released the caged sparrow, watching it flutter away, Jane cleared her throat. Jodi and Steven turned to face her and her sister, standing side by side.
“Kids,” Jane said. Jodi gritted her teeth hard enough to make the muscle in her jaw jump; she hated being called that just as much as I did. “You may have to consider a hard truth.”
“That Shayna may have gone on?” Steven asked.
“Yes,” Sherry answered. “It’s very possible, even likely.”
“Nope,” I said.
“Of course it is,” Jodi agreed even as Steven shook his head resolutely. “But it’s doubtful.”
“Jodi,” Jane started, but Jodi held up a hand to stop her.
“Thanks for trying, you guys,” Steven said, effectively ending the argument. The four said their goodbyes with hugs and words of “Merry met and merry meet again.” Jodi and Steven stood and watched the two witches walk away, disappearing over the crest of a hill.
“Well that was pointless,” Jodi said with a sigh, tugging at her scarf.
“No,” Steven said, “we had to try.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Jodi said, turning away to gaze off into the distance.
“Do you really think Shayna moved on?” Steven asked, not looking at Jodi.
“No,” she said quickly, so sure of the answer. “I think when you banished her, she went somewhere, and it’s just gonna be a little harder to get her back.”
Steven’s shoulders inched up close to his ears, flinching at the comment, though I knew Jodi didn’t mean anything by it. Steven shook himself visibly, forcing his muscles to relax before he moved to stand next to her.
“Maybe it was like that true love spell we did for Tracy,” Steven said.
“What? Like Shay could still show up?” Jodi asked.
“Yeah.”
“That’s not how invocations work. They either show or they don’t; this wasn’t a seeking spell.”
“Right.” They stood in silence for a while. Jodi eventually slipped her arm through Steven’s to hold on to him. “C’mon,” Steven said, “let’s head back to the car.”
Steven turned them around to head back the way they’d come only to be stopped short, Jodi jerking to a halt with a small gasp of surprise. Steven said something in Spanish, his free hand coming up to protect Jodi.
Ashriel, my guardian angel, blocked their path.
Chapter 17
I nearly dropped the looking glass when I saw Ash. Strangely, he looked entirely human, dressed in dark jeans, a black jacket, and boots. His soft brown hair curled around his ears, and even though he’d hidden his impossibly large, white-blue wings, his eyes would always betray his inhuman nature. Though it was the middle of the night and the moonlight was weak, his blue eyes were crystal clear, glowing with otherworldly power.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Steven asked, recovering first. He took a half step forward, placing his body slightly in front of Jodi.
“Definite
ly not there,” Ashriel replied, attempting a small smile at his not-so-subtle joke, but it was still lost on my friends.
“What?” Steven asked, stopping himself from glancing back at Jodi.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ash said, waving one hand in front of him.
“The hell it doesn’t,” Jodi snapped, coming out from behind Steven, placing her hands on her hips and leaning toward him. “Just what the crap do you think you’re doing sneaking up on us like that? What the fuck do you want?”
Ashriel flinched visibly at Jodi’s foul language, closing his eyes for a second as if she’d slapped him. Steven seemed to catch the pained look, but if Jodi did, she didn’t care.
“I apologize,” Ash said in a measured tone. “I didn’t intend to startle you or sneak up on you. I’ve come to offer you my help.”
“Your help?” Steven asked.
“Listen, creeper,” Jodi said, “we don’t need any help from you, so thanks, but no thanks.” Pivoting at the hips, Jodi reached out and took Steven’s hand before she pulled him along with her.
“Please wait,” Ashriel said. He pitched his tone so perfectly that even I wanted to stop my friends and ask them to listen. I shook my head, trying to clear it; it was just an angel trick, same as a damn faerie trick.
“Jodi,” Steven said, pulling back on her hand, his weight and strength stopping her easily.
“Are you serious?” Jodi demanded, rounding on Steven.
“I just want to know what he wants,” Steven said. He stepped close to her and whispered, “Look at him, really look at him.” Jodi glared at Steven for another moment before she flicked her blue eyes to Ashriel’s. When he caught her gaze, he held it. I saw the flare of light in his icy blue depths. Jodi wrapped her arms around herself against a sudden and strange chill.
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