by Dani Harper
Brooke pinched her wrist and dumped that line of thinking at once, knowing the danger of negative self-messages. Maybe it came with being an oldest child and therefore a perfectionist, but she had a tendency to be her own worst enemy. She still couldn’t resist trying the spell again—and again, and again.
She finally was just too tired to continue trying, and her head was starting to hurt. Brooke brushed aside a few inches of the salt and left the circle. Wrapping a turquoise silk kimono around herself, she plunked down on the thick cushion beside her altar. The low, round table had been used as a kid’s play center before she rescued it from a yard sale. Its lines and the oddly shaped legs had intrigued her despite the ghastly yellow and blue stripes that then covered it in thick wrinkled gobs. Few would have guessed that under all those layers of paint was a solid cherrywood antique supported by four lion-footed griffins. Brooke worked on it an inch at a time for weeks until the table was beautiful again, and whenever she placed her hand on the smooth waxed surface—even now—she felt centered and grounded.
Many witches preferred to work with oak—and she certainly had lots of it around her in the thick planks of the old hardwood floors—but cherrywood was considered an aid in focusing attention. Goddess knew, she certainly needed all she could get of that. Brooke’s wand was cherry as well—another testament that there were no coincidences. She was meant to have the wand, she was meant to have this table, and she was meant to have this incredible space. All of the tools of her craft had come to her in similar fashion.
Why weren’t they helping her now?
The only thing she hadn’t tried was adding sex to her spells. Arousal created energy, and that natural energy could be used to power magic. Idly, her finger circled her breast through the silk of the kimono as she considered it. Her nipple tightened readily, pressing against the exotic fabric and eliciting an answering quiver from the hidden vee of her legs. A partner definitely wasn’t necessary—if she wished, she could bring herself to orgasm, a damn fine one too. But as far as the spell was concerned, the energy produced would be modest at best.
Combining sex with magic was always more successful with a partner, and more powerful with some partners than others. Of course, the very best magical energy was created with a partner to whom she had a strong connection—but Brooke hadn’t had one of those in over two years. Lately, she’d second-guessed herself, looking back over her past relationships with men and wondering whether she even knew what a strong connection was. And self-service was leaving her dissatisfied on many levels. Most of all, it seemed to underscore her present aloneness, and that just plain annoyed her. Thinking about it was already spoiling her carefully nurtured calm.
She smoothed the velvet altar cloth with her fingertips as she thought. Between a clay bowl of pure sea salt and an offering of fresh-cut sunflowers in an earthen vase, rested nine highly polished stones that reflected the candlelight. Once Brooke had completed the spell, she would draw its power into the stones and tie them in a small silk bag containing sprigs of fresh herbs she’d grown herself in her rooftop garden. This is what she typically presented to her customers, and what Rina was waiting for.
If only I can manage to finish the damn thing. Naturally she needed the money too—after all, witches had bills just like everyone else, especially witches who had a mortgage—but she cared about her clients first and wanted Rina to have the beneficial energy as quickly as possible in her condition. Brooke glanced over at a shelf on the wall, where several little bags sat, each with a collection of carefully chosen stones and a label as to who and what it was for. All waiting, all unfinished.
And all apparently because of something weird in her card readings. That was the real problem here, wasn’t it? Ever since she’d begun receiving the strange tarot messages, she’d been unable to conjure a damn thing reliably. She’d uttered a few simple words over her coffee to reheat it yesterday, and the cup had shattered in her hand and left her with three cuts to her palm. Luckily—if such a thing could be said to be lucky—it was her left hand. She wasn’t sure what effect multiple Band-Aids might have had on her wand hand.
“What the hell am I going to do?” she wondered aloud. Bouncer meowed under the door from the kitchen as if in answer, but he was likely just suggesting that she feed him again.
She’d been too upset to read the tarot again, ever since she revealed her situation to George. But maybe ignoring it had been a mistake. After all, she’d left off at nine, a number of great power, as her friend had been quick to point out. One of two things would happen if she read the cards again—if she got an identical reading, it would be the tenth in a row, and ten was a less potent number. Spookier than ever, of course, but not as powerful from a numerology standpoint. Or she would get a different reading altogether that would break the pattern. Either way, it just might be worth doing…
“No,” she said aloud and smacked her palm hard on the little tabletop. The sound reverberated from the high ceiling and tall walls as if she’d struck a drum. “If the Universe has gone to all the trouble to bring me this same message again and again, then I need to figure out what it’s saying to me.”
Easier said than done, however—even though it was just four little cards and not the whole deck. Why couldn’t she seem to figure out her own damn reading?
Duh. Because it was her own reading. And she was so emotionally tangled up in it that she was practically paralyzed. Maybe what she really needed to do was take herself out of the equation altogether. Pretend that the cards were not for her but for a client.
“Okay, what if a customer drew these cards in an ordinary everyday reading?” she asked herself. Technically, the cards worked much better if the client had a specific question in mind, but a general reading was possible without one.
Brooke took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tried to picture herself in the corner booth of her shop, talking to someone over a cup of chamomile tea—maybe Mrs. McCardie? That might work. At eighty-seven years old, Florence McCardie did two things every Friday morning. She went to the hairdresser’s to have her fluffy white hair styled, and then she visited the Handcastings shop for her weekly reading. Riding along in her giant striped handbag was her ancient black and white Chihuahua, Mr. Socks. Although Brooke usually did a complete spread for her client, she had no trouble imagining just four cards on the table in front of them.
“Card number one is the Fool,” she would say to Flo—she didn’t like to be called Mrs. McCardie by her friends, and she considered Brooke a friend. Not wanting to insult her, Brooke would be quick to add that a much more positive name for the card would be the Innocent. “The Fool depicts a traveler at the beginning of a long journey, signifying all sorts of potential and possibilities.” Many times, the appearance of the Fool meant a new love, one that was out of the ordinary. Wouldn’t that win a chuckle from Flo?
Always a very positive card, the Fool still came with a caution. A little white dog in the corner was forever tugging on the traveler’s pant leg, pulling him back from a cliff. Protecting him from himself. See, George? Dogs are a good thing. Mr. Socks would surely back her up on that.
In her mind, Brooke turned her attention to the next card: the Moon. For a witch, it meant that very powerful magic was involved in some way. But for Flo? “Some people read this card as hidden things needing to rise to the surface, unknown enemies or old hurts that must be dealt with. But for most of us, plain old fear of change is usually the real problem.”
The third card was the Ten of Pentacles. Technically, George had been right—they really were stars. But each star had a circle around it, and that made it a pentacle, a symbol of life itself. “This is a very, very positive card, Flo. Great gifts are coming your way. It’s a card of tremendous transformation, positive and joyful change, but only if you’re willing to take an equally large risk.”
All could turn out well, though, Brooke thought, because of the dogs that were always pictured on this card. “In the tarot, dogs guard and
protect us. Sometimes they enhance communication between people or act as a liaison between one world and another. But mostly, they watch over their people.” Brooke still had her eyes closed, but she couldn’t help but smile as she imagined Mr. Socks agreeing with her. The old Chihuahua had only three teeth left, but he would no doubt use them if anyone ever messed with his owner.
That left one last card to deal with. “Don’t let the Death card scare you, Flo. It only means physical death in bad movie scripts. What it really stands for is change.” Like George had pointed out, death was the biggest change there was. “Huge changes are coming, changes you can’t avoid. They’re not to be feared, however, just accepted.” Despite its name, Death was not a negative card at all.
There was the dog issue, though. What the hell is Death doing with a dog? While the Fool, the Moon, and the Ten of Pentacles were supposed to have dogs in them, she had never seen a deck that depicted a dog as a companion of Death. And now she seemed to be seeing them everywhere. “It can only be a good thing,” she said to her imaginary client. “Dogs are our friends.” If all four of his legs worked, Mr. Socks would undoubtedly be on the table and licking her face by now, the canine equivalent of a standing ovation.
“So, to sum it all up”—she counted off on her fingers—“major changes are coming, transformational changes. They’ll bring good things. They might bring love or wealth, or maybe you’re going on an unexpected trip. You need some courage to take a risk and be open to dealing with some past issues once and for all. And as for the presence of so many dogs in the reading, we’ll just consider it a lovely bonus.”
Brooke opened her eyes and found herself feeling much better. Relieved, even. See, if I’d just spent the time to sort out the reading instead of getting so stressed out about it…
Ferocious barking outside startled her and she jumped up, wrapping the kimono around her more tightly. Within her darkened living quarters, Brooke could hear Jade growling, low and fierce, like the alley cat she pretended to be, even though she’d never had to live outdoors a day in her pampered life. Not one of the three cats had ever encountered a dog outside of the waiting room of her friend Morgan’s animal clinic. Instinct? “Misplaced instinct,” Brooke muttered aloud as she peered around the window blind. A couple of teens in baggy pants were walking their dogs. Or shuffling their dogs—she couldn’t figure out how the guys actually managed to walk with their oversized jeans so low. One dog was barking at a bicyclist, although his owner kept trying to tug him along and shush him. Within a few moments, shufflers, dogs, and bicyclist were out of sight and out of her hearing.
“Well, that was pretty damn timely,” she said. Did the barking of a dog signify anything? Of course it did. Most people would chalk it up to coincidence. But no witch worth her salt believed in coincidences, according to George’s mom, Olivia. There are no random events in the Universe, m’ija.
Maybe it was a confirmation that she’d gotten the reading right? She fervently hoped so.
As Brooke tucked the blind back in place, she suddenly remembered the story G had told her, about his grandmother summoning El Guardia (and that still sounded like some kind of cheesy superhero name). And now Brooke was not only seeing dogs all over the tarot cards but hearing them outside her shop. A sign? She didn’t feel like she needed protection, but George had said that the spectral creature was particularly helpful when spells were difficult. Boy, that certainly applies. All of Brooke’s carefully constructed conjurings, even the simplest ones, had gone from difficult to downright impossible to perform. It was as if she were being blocked in some way. If El Guardia could facilitate castings, like her friend had said, maybe she needed to call on him for a helping paw.
The big question was, how?
Spells were not like recipes. Every witch kept a grimoire, but the spells they recorded inside that book were so personal that they were unlikely to work for anyone else. Whatever George’s grandmother had done to call a spirit dog didn’t matter. Intent was the key to magic, plus whatever would help Brooke focus her intention.
She rose and retrieved a broom from the corner—not her ceremonial besom that brushed away negative energies, but a practical red plastic broom with yellow bristles from the local hardware store. With short efficient strokes, she swept up the salt grains and lavender blossoms that had formed the circle. If she was going to try to summon a spirit dog, it was best to start from scratch. No pun intended.
She paused and looked again at the bright flowers on the altar. She had cut them fresh from her rooftop garden at sunset, just as she had done with the herbs. The vivid yellow blossoms were a humble but beautiful offering to the divine that existed in all things and a way of attracting the earth’s blessings. What on earth—literally—do you offer to a spirit dog? How exactly does one attract the goodwill of a supernatural canine?
The answer popped into her head immediately. As above, so below. It was a basic principle of all magic. Maybe Brooke could offer the creature what a physical dog would like. Biscuits, bones, and toys seemed a little silly for such a frightening beast, but it was the symbolism that counted, wasn’t it? Besides, maybe she could hedge her bets with some frozen burgers or whatever other meats she could find.
Thank the goddess that Mel’s Gas and Grocery is open twenty-four hours a day.
SIX
Time moved forward, folded in on itself and skipped backwards, then wandered off in an indecipherable direction. Aidan had never gotten used to the apparent randomness of the passage of time in the faery realm. A mortal’s mind was obviously designed to see time as a simple line with regular intervals. Had there been clocks here, they would have been mad things, wild creations that treated eras and epochs the same as minutes and hours. To the fae, centuries and seconds, past and present, felt exactly the same. To a human being, it was all an indecipherable mess.
If Aidan had not continued the work of a grim, and thereby continued to visit the mortal world regularly, he would not have known how much time had passed before he decided to act on his proposal to the Lord of the Hunt: forty-two days, eleven hours, nineteen minutes.
Aidan attended twenty-seven more humans who were marked to depart the mortal realm. None reacted as Maeve Lowri Jones had. In fact, four didn’t even see him—although the young blonde waitress serving the last targeted man did. Aidan watched as her face paled, and her hands shook until she’d spilled coffee all over. She ran off on the premise of getting a rag but didn’t return. The man, Robert Michael Bell, didn’t seem to notice her any more than he’d noticed the big black dog staring at him. Dressed in a suit and tie, Robert’s attention was buried in the financial section of the Telegraph. Aidan sat on the chair across from him, looming large over the table so his nose could have touched the newspaper. He could read it had he cared to. Still the man failed to notice him at all. A new waitress began mopping up coffee from the table, her cloth passing close enough to brush Aidan’s fur if he had been in solid form, but she neither saw nor sensed him.
Tomorrow, thought Aidan. Tomorrow morning Robert Bell will go to his place of business, and he will never go home again. Perhaps the man was better off not knowing that. Maybe that was why he couldn’t see the grim there to alert him. Maybe only the people who could benefit from a little forewarning saw the great black dog.
Or maybe the whole idea was a relic of the past. I’m the one who’s a relic of the past, in more ways than one…Lurien had unspelled the silver torc around Aidan’s neck. Other than being free from its compulsion, Aidan hadn’t anticipated any further effects. But memories had started to surface—people, events, and places. And instead of dissipating like the morning dew on the grass upon his return to the faery realm, the memories remained.
Robert Bell picked up a different section of his newspaper and Aidan found himself looking at a small photo of a dark-haired woman with light-colored eyes…
And suddenly he recalled the memory he had been missing, the key to his constant unending pain, the real reason for h
is constantly burning anger and his vow to see Celynnen dead by his own hand.
He remembered Annwyl. The image burst into his brain, vivid and bright, unmarred by the passage of centuries or the machinations of magic: the very first time he’d met his beloved. She had accompanied her father, Deykin the Magistrate, to Aidan’s blacksmith shop from nearby Aberhonddu. It was unusual for a man of such social standing to come to a smithy in person, despite the fact that blacksmiths were generally esteemed members of the community. Aidan had been quick to show the man his very best work. While Deykin appreciated his craftsmanship, Aidan appreciated Annwyl. The name meant “beloved,” and truly she was the favorite of her father. It soon became apparent that Deykin was accompanying her, not the other way around. Her mother had recently passed after a lingering fever, and Annwyl was overseeing the large household alone. With her practical guidance, Deykin purchased a number of pots and utensils, a pair of kitchen cauldrons, several lengths of chain, and a wide variety of tools and other household items.
Her sea-green eyes had lingered on a clever six-sided needle case. It formed an artful pendant that Aidan had fashioned himself, one of a handful of small pieces he had created in silver. The costly metal was normally beyond his reach, but he had gleaned and hoarded small leftovers from the ornamenting of commissioned swords. He had furbished the needle case with polished amber beads he had painstakingly traded for, all in hopes of winning a high price from a wealthy client one day. But Aidan’s mind was changed by Annwyl’s single wistful glance. He noticed that she did not bring the pretty item to the attention of her father but focused instead on the task at hand, the refurbishing of a household largely ignored during her mother’s slow decline.
Aidan could see that the responsibility weighed heavily on Annwyl’s slim shoulders, and that she was determined to carry the burden well. He admired her for that even more than he admired her beauty. And she was beautiful. Her hair was as black and glossy as a starling’s wing, yet her skin was fair in keeping with those green eyes. She didn’t look at Aidan directly, but occasionally he would catch her sidelong gaze and the barest hint of a smile.