by Cate Tiernan
Gently we each put two fingers on the stone’s edges and closed our eyes. This was where you cleared your mind and concentrated, opening yourself to what the stone wants to tell you. But all I could think about was Ciaran coming back for me, how much he scared me even as I felt oddly drawn to him. And Hunter—he wanted Hunter dead. Hunter, who was a beautiful mosaic of contradictions: strong, but infinitely gentle. Kind, but also ruthless and unforgiving when confronted by those who practiced dark magick—like Cal Blaire and Selene Belltower. I had seen Hunter flushed with desire and white-faced with anger and pain. He was my love.
“Morgan?”
“Sorry,” I said.
“We don’t have to do this,” he offered.
“No, no, I need to.”
I closed my eyes again and this time, determinedly shutting out all other thoughts, I sank successfully into a deep meditation. Slowly I opened my eyes to see the smooth plane of the obsidian meditation. Slowly I opened my eyes to see the smooth plane of the obsidian beneath my fingers. Lightly I murmured,
“Show me now what I should see,
What was past or what will be.
The stream of time will start to slow;
Show me where I need to go.”
Hunter muttered the same words after me, and then there was silence as I focused my gaze on the stone. Minutes went by, yet the stone’s face remained unchanged. It was odd—scrying is always unpredictable, but I usually got a better result than this.
Consciously I let my mind sink deeper into meditation. Everything around me faded out as I concentrated on the stone. My breathing was slow and deliberate, my chest barely moving. I no longer felt my fingers on the stone, my butt on the hard floor, my knees touching Hunter’s.
The stone was black, blank. Or... looking closer, could I detect the barest, rounded outlines of... what? I looked at the stone so intently, I felt like I had fallen into a well of obsidian, surrounded by cold, hard blackness. Slowly I became aware of movement within the stone—that I was getting a scried vision. A vision of billowing, black, choking smoke.
“The blackness is the vision,” I murmured. “Do you see the huge cloud of smoke?”
“Not clearly. Is it from a fire?”
I shook my head. “I can’t see a fire. Just billows of black, choking smoke.”
An image of my birth mother, who had been killed by fire, came to me, and I frowned. What did it mean? Was this an image of the future? Was this directed at me? Did it mean I would suffer the same fate as Maeve, at Ciaran’s hands?
For five more minutes I stared at the smoke, willing it to clear, to dissipate, to show me what was behind it. But I saw nothing more, and finally, my eyes stinging, I shook my head and sat back.
“I don’t know what that was about,” I told Hunter in frustration. “I didn’t get anything besides smoke.”
“It was a dark wave,” Hunter said quietly.
“What?” I felt my back stiffen with tension. “What do you mean? Was this a prediction of a dark wave? It seemed to be about me.” I got to my feet, feeling upset. “Is a dark wave coming for me?”
“We don’t know for sure—you know scrying can be unpredictable,” Hunter said, trying to comfort me.
“Yeah, and you know that almost every image I’ve ever seen scrying has come true,” I said, rubbing my arms with my hands. I felt nervous and frightened, the way I’d felt as a kid, playing with a Ouija board, when it had moved on its own.
“I’ll follow you home,” Hunter said, and I nodded. Another downside of Mr. Niall living with him was that Hunter and I had no privacy anymore. It was one thing to be alone in Hunter’s room when Sky was around, but there was no way I felt comfortable with his father in the next room. I felt depressed as I got into my jacket. Hunter and I really needed time alone to talk, to be together, to hold each other.
“Will you be okay at home?” he asked as we walked outside.
I thought.“Yeah. My house is protected out the wazoo.”
“Still, I reckon it wouldn’t hurt to add another layer of spells.”
At my house, though we were both exhausted, Hunter and I made the rounds and added to or increased the protective powers of the spells on my house, on Das Boot, and on my parents’ cars. When we were done, I felt drained.
“Go on inside,” Hunter said. “Get some sleep. These spells are strong. But don’t hesitate to call me if you sense anything odd.”
I smiled and leaned against the front door, exhausted, wanting to be safely inside yet reluctant to leave Hunter. He came up the steps and I went into his arms, resting my head against his chest and feeling amazed at how, once again, he had seemed to read my mind.
“It’ll be okay, my love,” he said against my hair. One strong hand stroked my back soothingly while the other held me closely to him.
“I’m tired of it all,” I said, suddenly feeling close to tears.
“I know. We haven’t had a break. Listen, tomorrow why don’t we go to Practical Magick, see Alyce? That’ll be nice and normal.”
I smiled at his idea of nice and normal: two blood witches going to an occult bookstore.
“Sounds good,” I said.
Then I lifted my face to his and was at once lost in the heady pleasure of kissing him, his warm lips against mine, the cool night air surrounding us, our bodies pressed together, magick sparking. Oh, yes, I thought. Yes. More of this.
“What’s wrong?” I asked the next afternoon. Ever since Hunter had picked me up, he’d seemed edgy and distracted.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I’ve been trying to reach the council for news on Ciaran,” he said. “But I haven’t been able to get through to anyone—not Kennet, not Eoife. I talked to some underling who wouldn’t tell me anything.”
Eoife was a witch who had tried to convince me to go study with Wiccan scholars in the wilds of Scotland. I had said I needed to finish high school first.
Kennet Muir was Hunter’s mentor in the council and had helped guide him through the hard process of becoming a Seeker. Hunter still spoke to him about council business, but their relationship had been permanently damaged when Hunter realized Kennet had known where his parents were in Canada and hadn’t bothered to tell him. If Kennet had let Hunter in on their whereabouts earlier, Hunter might have seen his mother alive. I knew this idea was hard for him to accept. In fact, he was so hurt by Kennet’s betrayal, he never even confronted him about it. “It’ll never be the same between us regardless,” he’d reasoned.
“Okay, so we don’t know,” I said, watching the old farm fields fly past the car window. After being winter brown for months, it was heartening to see tinges and flecks of green here and there. Spring was coming. No matter what.
“No. Not yet.” Hunter sounded irritated. Then he seemed to make an effort to cheer up. Reaching out one hand, he interlaced his fingers in mine and smiled at me. “It’s good to spend time with you. I missed you so much when I was in Canada.”
“I missed you, too.” Once again exercising my gift for understatement. Then, taking a breath, I decided to bring up a sensitive subject. “Hunter—I’ve been wondering about your dad. I mean, he knows I’m not in league with Ciaran, right? He knows Ciaran tried to kill me, doesn’t he?”
Hunter tugged at the neck of his sweater, pretending to not understand me. “He just needs more time.”
Great. I looked out the window again.
“Is it Rose?” I asked suddenly, turning back to Hunter. “Is it because I’m a descendant of the witch who created the dark wave? I mean, he was running from the dark wave for eleven years.” Eleven years, while Hunter was separated from his parents, thinking they’d abandoned him and and his brother and sister. My stomach plummeted as I realized yet again how many horrible things my blood relatives were responsible for.
Hunter glanced over at me, taking his eyes off the road, and in that quick glance I caught a world of reassurance. “He just needs to get to know you, Morgan. You are not your ancestors.
I know that.”
I sighed, watching the bare trees pass overhead. If only I could convince myself.
Red Kill, the town where Practical Magick was, came into view slowly, the farm fields giving way to suburban lawns, then more streets and actual neighborhoods. Hunter turned down Main Street and drove almost to its end, where the small building that housed Practical Magick stood. He parked, but I made no move to get out of the car.
“It’s just, I want your father to like me,” I said, feeling self-conscious. “And I don’t want to come between you and your dad. I don’t want you to have to choose.” I looked down at my hands, which were twisting nervously in my lap. I forced them to be to be still on my jeans.
“Goddess,” Hunter muttered, leaning over the gear shift toward me. He took my chin in his hand and looked intently into my eyes. His were the color of olivine, a clear, deep green. “I won’t need to choose. Like I said, Da just needs more time. He knows how much I love you. He just needs to get used to the idea.”
I sighed and nodded. Hunter touched my cheek briefly, and then we opened the doors, climbed out, and headed for the store.
“Morgan, Hunter! Good to see you.” Alyce Fernbrake waved us in from the back of the store. “I haven’t seen either of you in a while. Hunter, I want to hear all about Canada. I couldn’t believe your news.Wait—I’ll fix tea.”
We threaded our way through the scented, crowded store: my home away from home. Alyce disappeared into the small back room, separated from the main room by a tattered orange curtain. Her assistant, Finn Foster, nodded at Hunter with reserve: many witches didn’t trust Seekers. “’Lo, Morgan,” he said. “Have you heard Alyce’s news? The shop next door is moving to a bigger location. Alyce is going to move to that space and make Practical Magick almost twice as big.”
My eyebrows rose. “The dry cleaners are moving? What about her debt to Stuart Afton? Can she afford to lose their rent?”
Alyce bustled back with three mugs. “Well, fortunately, my business has been getting better and better the last couple of months. The real estate market is good enough that if I move into the store next door, I can rent this space for almost as much as the dry cleaners paid. And we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed that our increased sales will make up for the rest. It’s a gamble, but I think it will be worth it in the end.” She smiled.
“Congratulations,” Hunter said, taking his mug. “It would be fantastic if the shop were bigger.”
Alyce nodded, looking pleased. “It’s going to be a lot of work,” she said, “and I really don’t know when I’ll have the time. But I think the business could support the extra room. I would love to expand what I carry.” She gestured to a pile of about five paper grocery bags, each packed with old-looking books. “I buy stuff at yard sales, estate sales, things that interest me, but I don’t really have the space to put them out. You should see what I have in storage. But now I want to hear about you. It’s amazing that your father has come to live with you.”
Hunter nodded, and the two of them drifted over to the checkout counter, where Alyce propped herself on a stool and Hunter leaned against the lighted case. I went over to the bags of old books and started poking around, sure that Alyce wouldn’t mind. I decided to sort them for her and started making piles of nonoccult books and some history books. Then, in the second bag, I found some titles about Wicca, the history of the sabbats, some spell-crafting guides, some astrology charts. Hunter and Alyce were still chatting, Alyce occasionally taking a break to wait on customers. Finn was reorganizing the essential oils shelves, and everything around me smelled like cloves and vanilla and roses.
Now I was surrounded by stacks, and in the fifth bag I found some interesting older books about weatherworking and animal magick. There were a couple of old Books of Shadows, too, handwritten, filled with writing and diagrams. One looked quite old: the writing was spiky, from a fountain pen, and the pages were deep tan with age. Another book looked newer and also less interesting: fewer drawings and long periods of no writing. There was another BOS, in a green-cloth-bound diary. It looked much newer and less romantic than the others, but I flipped through it. It was written by a witch during the seventies! So cool. Most recent Books of Shadows are still in the possession of their owners.This was unusual, and I started reading it.
“Morgan, shall we?” Hunter asked a few minutes later.
I nodded. “I sorted your books,” I told Alyce, gesturing to my piles.
“Oh, how nice!” she said, clasping her hands together. She’s shorter than I am and rounded in an old-fashioned womanly way. She looked like a youngish grandmother from a fairy-tale book, all in gray and lavender and purple.
“This one is great,” I said, holding up the one I’d been reading. “It’s from the seventies. Are you going to sell these books? Maybe I could buy it.”
“Oh, please.” Alyce waved her hands at me. “Take it, it’s yours. Consider it payment for sorting all these bags.”
“Thanks,” I said, smiling. “I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.”
“Come back soon,” she said.
In the car Hunter and I looked at each other. I felt a tiny smile cross my lips.
“I think I need to work on convincing you of my undying love,” Hunter said mischievously, reading my expression. “Let’s see. I could cast a spell that would write your name in the clouds. Or I could take you out for a nice meal—or we could go to my house and fool around on my bed. You know, as practice before we do the real thing.”
“Is your dad at your house?” I asked. Hunter and I had both wanted to make love for what seemed like a very long time. But the last time it came up, right before he left for Canada, Hunter had decided that we should wait. It was important to both of us for it to be just right—but who knew when that would ever happen?
“No. Today’s he’s at Bethany’s,” said Hunter. “She’s been doing some deep healing work with him.”
My eyes lit up.“Oh, yeah, let’s go to your house!”
2. Alisa
“The barrier between the world and the netherworld is both stronger and weaker than we ken. Strong in that it never breaches by itself, come earthquakes, floods, or famine. Weak in that one witch with a spell can rend it, allowing the passage of things unnamable.”
— Mariska Svenson, Bodø, Norway, 1873
“It’s okay, Alisa,” said my friend Mary K. Rowlands on Monday afternoon. “You’re not a guy. You can come in.”
I laughed and followed her into the living room. Both of Mary K.’s parents worked, and she and her sister, Morgan, weren’t allowed to have boys over when their parents weren’t there. It was so funny—almost antique. But her folks are really Catholic and keep Mary K. and Morgan on pretty tight leashes.
“Let’s hang in the kitchen,” Mary K. called over her shoulder.
“That’s where the food is,” I agreed.
Everything about the Rowlandses’ house looks like it got frozen in about 1985. The living room is done in hunter green plaids with maroon accents. The kitchen is dusty blue and dusty pink, with a goose theme. It’s corny, but oddly comforting. Now that my evil stepmother-to-be was madly redecorating the house I shared with my dad, I really appreciated anything familiar.
I dumped my messenger bag on the wood-grained Formica table while Mary K. rustled through the fridge and the pantry. She surfaced with a couple of bottles of Frappuccino, some apples, and a big bag of peanut M&M’s.
I nodded my approval. “I see you’ve covered all the major food groups.”
She grinned.“We aim to please.”
We settled down at the kitchen table with our food and our textbooks open. I had been going to Mary K.’s pretty often after school lately—I guess to avoid going home—and Mary K. was really cool. A good friend. She seemed so normal and kind of reassuring somehow, especially compared to Morgan. Morgan had done a lot to weird me out in the past. I still wasn’t sure what to make of her.
“Alisa?” Mary K. said, twirling a stra
nd of hair around one finger as she frowned at her math book. “Do you have any idea what the difference is between real and natural numbers?”
“No,” I said, and took a swig of Frappuccino. “Hey, did Mark ask you out for Friday?”
“No,” she said, looking disappointed. She’d been crushing on Mark Chambers for weeks now, but though he was really nice to her, he didn’t seem to be picking up on her “date me” vibes. “But it’s only Monday. Maybe I could ask him, if he hasn’t asked me by Thursday.”
“You go, Mary K. Fight the system.” I smiled, encouraging her. Then I sighed, thinking about my own romantic possibilities. “God, I wish I had a crush on someone. Or someone had a crush on me. Anything to break up the delirious joy of being around my dad and Hilary.”
Mary K. made a sympathetic face.“How’s the Hiliminator?”
I shrugged, my shoulders rising and falling dramatically. “Well, she’s still with us,” I reported dryly, and Mary K. laughed. My dad’s pregnant girlfriend had recently moved into our house, and now she was already pooching out in front, before they were actually getting hitched. I couldn’t believe my straitlaced, ultraconservative dad had gotten himself into this nightmare. It was like living with a couple of strangers. “But she’s quit barfing, which is good. Every time I had to listen to her hurl, I got the dry heaves.”
“Maybe the baby will be incredibly cute, and you’ll be a great big sister, and when she grows up, you guys will be really close,” Mary K. suggested. She couldn’t help it: she was born to pour sunshine on other people. It was one of the things I loved about her.
“Yeah,” I allowed. “Or maybe it’ll be a boy, and when I’m forced to change his diaper, he’ll pee right in my face.”
“Oh, gross!” Mary K. shrieked, and we both started laughing. “Alisa, that is so, so gross. If he ever does that, do not tell me about it.”