by Gina Whitney
Chetan entered a sprawling, purple room—purple walls, purple carpet, purple sofas, even purple curtains. Catherine sat in the middle, on a throne-like peacock chair. Samantha’s killer, Catherine’s most ruthless protégé, stood behind her and awaited further orders.
“Welcome, Chetan,” Catherine said in her purring, Italian accent. “Not a minute late. I like that. Oh, let me introduce you to my friend.”
Chetan waited for Catherine to tell him the killer’s name, but it seemed Catherine thought “friend” was enough.
“As you know, I have a small problem named Grace Valois. It seems she is on the verge of awakening, and I need something from her. Now, she is most likely guarded by a group of witches…some from my old coven. Can you believe that?”
Even though Chetan was honored to be one of Catherine’s protégés, her reputation preceded her. He knew whatever answers he gave, he would have to tread lightly. “No, I don’t understand how someone could betray you like that.”
“Exactly! I must admit I have lived a good life, but I’ve had to avoid detection until the Awakening. Now I have the opportunity to consume all of that girl’s power.”
Chetan kept his eyes on the protégé, who seemed to be looking right through him. “Uh, how are you going to do that, Catherine?”
“Consummatio in quinque puncta. I will entrap her in a prison-like pentagram and simply drain her of her power. Then I will consume her flesh.”
“No disrespect, but what is the purpose of all this? You’re already so powerful.” Chetan could see he had gotten Catherine’s hackles up, but she answered him anyway, her voice cold.
“Power, you silly, insignificant thing. To take over the council. As a side benefit, we’ll all be able to hunt humans for sport and feast as much as we want. No more restrictions.”
Catherine pushed the key on a nearby intercom. “Could you bring in lunch?” she said to the dead air on the other end, then looked back at Chetan. “You are going to help me take Grace Valois down. But there’s one thing: remember I don’t suffer mistakes. And it seems my friend has made one.” The stoic figure squirmed a little at that comment.
A mind-controlled helper, Jacklyn, entered the room with a room service cart holding several silver cloches. Jacklyn uncovered the dishes, revealing some of Samantha’s body parts.
Catherine pointed for the figure to stand in front of her. “See, Chetan, my friend could not control his hunger and brought unwarranted attention to us. That’s a big mistake.” She waved her ghostly white hand, and an invisible sword sliced off the protégé’s head.
Chetan gulped as Catherine looked at him. He said, “You won’t have that problem with me.”
Chapter Nine
People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.
—Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Julie and I returned to the house. Aunt Evelyn was on the porch and seemed unconcerned, like she’d had foreknowledge about how this whole deal would work out. She was carefully hollowing out a wooden staff.
“I see you decided to come back,” she joked. “Julie, thanks for getting her.”
Julie replied, “No problem. That’s my girl.” I was just glad she and I were cool again.
Aunt Evelyn inserted a fulgurite inside the staff and sealed it off. She tapped it on the ground, and a tiny spark flickered. I stood there, amazed and terrified by the world in which I now found myself. Aunt Evelyn, on the other hand, was giddy as a mother whose daughter had just gotten her period. Too bad this wasn’t as fun as a tampon commercial.
Julie fixed me a cup of oolong tea with lemon, heavy on the sugar.
Evelyn rummaged through a few items—saint statues, worry stones, witchy bumper stickers, athames—and found a small, black box. She blew off the dust and opened it with a tiny key she always wore on a necklace. A small piece of stiff parchment paper was inside, with an incantation on it.
“Your mother wrote this,” Aunt Evelyn said, handing it to me. The Latin words were handwritten in calligraphy. It didn’t matter what they said; the paper itself was so beautiful. A work of art.
“What’s it for?” I asked.
Aunt Evelyn took the paper back. “It’s a summoning spell. We’re calling the others.” She went over to a cabinet and pulled out a chalice, a pin, and rubbing alcohol. She came back to me and took my hand.
“This will only hurt for a second.” She pricked my finger and squeezed droplets of blood into the chalice. She raised her hands and recited the words of the spell.
I looked around, expecting some army to crash through the walls. But nothing happened. “Well, that’s it?” I felt totally disappointed.
“Yes. It is done. Now we wait.” Evelyn burned the incantation in the chalice. She dumped the ashes into her palm and then blew them into a cauldron in the fireplace.
And to think, I used to make s’mores in that.
Chapter Ten
You can’t stop the future. You can’t rewind the past. The only way to learn the secret…is to press play.
—Jay Asher
“Grace, do you like it? I made that recipe up myself,” said Aunt Evelyn, fishing for a compliment about the dinner spread she had put out.
“Oh, yeah…great,” I said, pushing my dry meatloaf around the flower-trimmed Correlle plate. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. My fork scraped through the sugary, ketchup-ed snail trails of some strange concoction Aunt Evelyn called a glaze. Whatever it was, two more bites of it would have induced a diabetic coma. That didn’t bother Julie, though. She gobbled down her chunks of beef like her life depended on it.
Inside I was feeling like the female counterpart to Atlas, and was wondering how I would navigate this new life as some kind of crazy hybrid. Pondering the surreality of it all. On one hand I was being initiated into some hidden magical world, populated with crazy-ass, cannibalistic assassins and Morpheus-and-Trinity-type protectors. On the other I was asking Aunt Evelyn to pass the mashed potatoes and lumpy gravy.
Because I was still in such a state of shock, my mind had not seen fit to list the thousand commonsense questions it should have…except one. “Why did I dream about Samantha’s murder? You know, as it was happening?” I asked, watching Aunt Evelyn cut her meatloaf into perfect squares.
She put her fork down and wiped a bit of ketchup from the corner of her mouth. “Grace, that is because we all descend from the original coven. We are all somewhat connected to each other. Some witches, apparently, have more of a psychic tie to the group than others…like you for instance.”
“Oh,” I said, now prepared with a more substantial question. “Aunt Evelyn, who exactly are we? You gave me a little background, but it’s obvious I need to catch up a wee bit more.”
Aunt Evelyn pushed back her chair and began to speak like she was a shaman telling little children a story. “In the late 1600s, we were one large coven of peaceful witches, descendants of others who came from many continents. One big family, so to speak. We had maintained the magical traditions of our ancestors even though we were regular mortals. We lived quiet and contented lives, only using our magic for worship and, if the need arose, for continuance of the group.
“That was until one of our men returned from a long journey speaking about rumors of religious killings in Salem. At first we couldn’t fathom such atrocities being committed by so-called civilized people. But, taking no chances, we decided to sequester ourselves from the general population, not knowing how the Salem executions would affect us. However, that didn’t help. Some of those pious fanatics made their way to the area near our settlement. At first the interlopers came with smiling faces and good cheer…”
Aunt Evelyn started stroking her hands, as if the recollection of events frosted her skin and she was trying to warm back up. “They began encroaching on the lands of the natives, stealing it through deception and brutality. Justifying their actions by sa
ying it was some kind of divine right…that their lord had blessed them. And maybe what happened to us was some retribution for not taking a stand when others in our midst were in trouble.”
I watched Aunt Evelyn squirm in her chair, trying to find a position that would somehow make the story easier to tell. None of them worked; she got up and made her way to a large bookshelf on the other side of the room. Her fingers ran across different subjects such as astrology, history, politics, and mythology.
“Aunt Evelyn, are you okay?” I asked, genuinely concerned about the washed-out look on her face. She didn’t answer, she was so focused on telling me what had happened.
She continued: “The outsiders engaged us, trying to figure out exactly what our beliefs were. Not sure exactly what master we bowed down to, they set about their mission to convert, and became hostile when their aggressive attempts to ‘save’ us didn’t work.”
She pulled out a book. The cover featured the painting Saturn Devouring His Son. Aunt Evelyn’s eyes did not move from that book, as if it had some special connection to what had happened back then.
She said, “Now, it came to pass that some of their children started exhibiting strange illnesses and behaviors. Because we tried so hard to keep to ourselves—never getting involved in their rituals—they needed a scapegoat, and we were it. In the middle of the night, they ambushed us, murdering some of our members in the name of their god. We were totally caught off guard by this act of barbarism. We had no time to cast protection spells or anything. They primarily sought out the children, to ensure our lineage of so-called demons would end. They lined them up and impaled them one by one with knives, sticks, whatever they could find… Ritualistic sacrifices they were. After the children slowly bled out, the so-called godly ones buried the bodies underneath one of their churches.”
I sat there utterly transfixed by Aunt Evelyn’s story, horrified and sickened by what had happen to my people. Was that the type of life that was in store for me? Having to worry about superstitious morons, on top of witches?
Aunt Evelyn went on, “The rest of us, so ravaged by our fury and sorrow, sought revenge for our brethren. But all energy is real…in its own way magical. And we were still mortals. The fundamentalist fanatics overwhelmed us in number. They were fueled by an all-powerful, consuming rage, essentially against all life that did not conform to their way. Whatever goodness we had wasn’t enough to overcome them. So we debated whether or not to invoke the Ancients—a malevolent group of disembodied spirits. It’s tricky to invoke them, because the Ancients usually require some kind of grotesque trade-off in exchange for their assistance.”
“The worst kind,” Julie interrupted, shivering a bit.
A faraway look drifted over Aunt Evelyn’s face. I could tell these memories were just as vivid to her now as when they had happened. She drew her arms in close to her torso. “A schism developed between two factions: one supporting the idea of using the awesome power of the Ancients, and those who believed that not only was it morally wrong to do so, but dangerous to the coven itself. The majority decided to invoke the Ancients, and the dissenters left the coven.”
Based on what I had heard so far, I wasn’t impressed by the goody-two-shoes faction of the coven. I blurted out, “I agree with the ones who invoked the Ancients. Really, what is the point of having all this magic if you’re not going to mess up the people who hurt you? I mean no disrespect, but I think they totally punked out.”
I swore I heard Julie think, Oh, shit. Aunt Evelyn’s nostrils flared, and every muscle around her eyes tightened. She walked over to me slowly, deliberately, like she was about to kick my ass. Before I could take a step back, she suddenly ghosted to me, totally invading my personal space, and kept poking me in the chest. I had never seen her like that before.
She said, “Oh really, missy? You think they were weak? You think they were dumb? That the others were the heroes? Let me tell you what happened. The ones who stayed invoked the Ancients. And there was a horrible trade-off. To receive the Ancients’ great magical power, the witches had to allow the spirits to inhabit their bodies for eternity. To maintain these bodies, the witches would have to kill humans and cannibalize their flesh. Forever. Do you understand what I just said? You think demon possession is cool? Is that the life you think is good? If so we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Well, damn. All I was doing was expressing my opinion. I didn’t realize the First Amendment ended at this farmhouse. “I’m sorry,” I said. Aunt Evelyn took her finger away from my dented-up chest and commenced with the rest of her story.
“The possessed witches annihilated the fanatics with phenomenal ease, and used their flesh to feed the disembodied spirits within. To this day people talk about a group of missionaries who suddenly, mysteriously disappeared from their camp—hundreds of them. Really they just became supper… After the massacre most of the possessed witches went back to their homelands, while a small portion stayed in the Americas.”
Julie, who had said very little, adjusted her chair and turned my way. “Meanwhile, the members of the original coven who refused to participate in the invocation intermarried with Native American tribes, creating what is known as the mythical Thirteen Tribes of Long Island. Like the others they called on spirits to inhabit their bodies, but these were benevolent Native American ones who gave them the ability to shape-shift into humanoid wolf-creatures.”
I looked at Julie in amazement, with a deeper understanding of who she was. She shook her head with pride and said, “Yeah, we did it the right way. We wolves managed to blend into the tribes, keeping our true identities a secret. We recognize each other by symbols and items we hang outside our homes. And that, Grace, is some history for you to digest along with Aunt Evelyn’s world-famous meatloaf.”
I was grateful that Aunt Evelyn and Julie had given me some background, even though Evelyn had tried to take a chunk out of my ass. But I couldn’t help it—I still felt like a spiraled pile of dung sitting at the bottom of a rest-stop toilet. I mean, knowing the history didn’t change the fact that I was mentally connected to a bunch of stranger-witches in parts unknown, some of whom were death-dealing degenerates. Just knowing that made my body cold shudder and my spine tingle like right before I have to vomit.
But this time that spine-tingling sensation traced its way to the nerve endings right beneath the surface of my skin. It felt like the color electric green would feel if it were solid. Suddenly the invisible sensation shot out of my pores and knocked over my half-filled mason jar of Sangiovese.
I looked at Julie, expecting her to make some smart alecky comment about my being drunk. Instead both she and Aunt Evelyn sat there like babies looking at bottles—with their mouths wide open.
“How long have you been able to do that?” Aunt Evelyn asked.
“For a couple of months, I guess,” I said. I brushed off my forearm; it felt like it had some sort of charge on it.
“Why didn’t you tell me, you big doofus?” Julie asked, mad and a little surprised.
“Well, obviously all this started happening before I knew what you were. I seriously thought I was delusional. C’mon, you have to admit it’s weird to have things jump out at you. I thought I was a little…you know…loony.”
“Loony? No, no, my dear. Far from it. Can you do it again?” Aunt Evelyn asked.
I put my fingers to my temples like I had seen in hundreds of B movies, and focused on my fork. I cocked my eyes and tried every variation of fluttering lids I could think of. Nothing. “That’s okay, baby girl,” Aunt Evelyn said as she stood up. “What you’ve already shown us is fantastic. In fact this event calls for a celebration.” With that she disappeared into the kitchen.
Julie looked at me with a toothy grin, but I didn’t share her happiness. I was in a void, a kind of unrelenting netherworld between being a young lassie and a ma’am…and I was absolutely terrified. Despite my reluctance to come off like a blubbering fool, I had to confess.
“I’m scared, J
ules.” After my simple statement, all I could do was lower my eyes and be embarrassed by my emotional weakness.
She came over and crouched at my knee. “Yeah, I know.” She looked over her shoulder for Aunt Evelyn. “I’m scared too. But I’m here, and I’ll do my whatever it takes to help you. Not only because it’s my duty, but because you’re my best friend.”
Aunt Evelyn breezed back in with my favorite dessert: strawberry trifle, heavy on the whipped cream. You’d think after the glaze, I’d want nothing more to do with sugar, but trifle… I couldn’t let that pass.
“Grace, after dinner I have something to show you,” Aunt Evelyn said, scooping out my humongous portion with a giant soup ladle. I couldn’t fault her attempt to use the syrupy confection as a device to make me forget the shit that was now called my life.
And things were okay, because for a few moments—as I savored every bite of that spongy sugar high—I did forget.
Chapter Eleven
Am I my brother’s keeper?
—Cain
James had suffered through it all day. A desperate nagging stuck in his diaphragm. One of those aches that always seemed to herald the arrival of something.
The feeling was momentarily interrupted by a phone call. Henry Dodson, a barely functioning heroin fiend, was on the other end. James had learned years ago that if you wanted to live incognito, you had to enlist the services of many unsavory characters along the way. This was because even though a magical ability was a gift, it came with limitations.
James was aware that, like humans, witches were confined to the material world—which was ruled by the laws of space, time, and matter. And it took a tremendous amount of supernatural energy to transcend these laws. Some magical workings required so much force that performing them could result in the witch’s death. Physical and ethereal recovery were real issues no matter how great or small the conjure was. So James always employed mundane efforts, whenever possible, to achieve his goals—even if those actions were felonious.