Brynja smiled sympathetically. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that Brigitta. I’m suggesting we close early.”
Jerick gasped, and I stared at my boss, mouth agape. Brynja was the queen of working late. Nature’s Magick opened at eight and closed at seven Tuesday through Saturday. She didn’t even close for the quarter holidays.
Jerick backed away and held up a hand. “Uh-uh, honey. You’ve done caught whatever insanity Mikhail has, and I don’t want that nonsense.”
Brynja rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m perfectly capable of closing up early when the need arises.”
Jerick and I exchanged glances. “You didn’t close when the deli fire melted the back room.”
Brynja pursed her lips. “Do we conduct our sales out of the back room, Jerick?”
He grinned. “Whatever you say, boss.”
* * *
TRUE TO HER WORD, BRYNJA flipped the sign and locked the door at four.
We congregated in the back room, where Brynja had spent the better half of the last hour setting up for Circle. The modest, austere room had been transformed beneath her hands: royal purple curtains dangled from hooks in the ceiling, forming a comfy womb around the worktable. Four pillar candles on tall pedestals flanked the four quarters, and a variety of herbs and tools waited for us on the table top.
Brynja wasted no time casting her circle with the grim efficiency of a woman on a mission. Her solemn monotones were cringe-worthy, but the power she raised filled the room. I rode the waves, swaying on my feet as she cast the circle around us. Brynja liked to be in charge, and I liked to be led.
Jerick, on the other hand, cringed every time her words didn’t rhyme. I had to bite my lip to keep from giggling. How different we witches could be.
Finally, Brynja returned to the “altar” of the worktable and threw a pinch of herbs on the burning charcoal in the censer. The dried leaves flared and fragrant smoke drifted viscously towards the dingy ceiling.
“We gather here to seek answers, in this world between worlds, in this time outside of time,” Brynja intoned, her eyes closed. My skin prickled. “Great Lady and Lord, guide our hands in this act of magick, so that we may discover the truth.”
We’d done plenty of circles with Brynja before, so we reached for each other’s hands without comment. I clasped Brynja’s small, cool palm in one hand, and let Jerick’s warm, strong hand dwarf the other. The moment our circle completed, a zing of energy fluttered through me, originating from my hands but burrowing deep inside my abdomen.
This was Brynja, tapping into my magick. We could do that in Circle: take from one another what was needed to work the spell. Brynja’s cool presence drifted through me. She began to draw from me, and the sensation of losing bits of myself continued until I grew weak-kneed and lightheaded.
When she had what she needed, Brynja let go of our hands. She glowed ethereally in the candlelight, energy crackling from her fingertips. She grasped a handful of stones from an ornate box on the table, gently exhaled white mist over them, and then flung them on the tabletop.
The tiny hail-thuds of stone on wood broke the drifting silence. Jerick straightened, as if awakened from a spell, and I gazed upon the rune stones, eager for their message.
Every single stone had landed upside down.
“That… that’s so strange.” Brynja grabbed the edge of the table, steadying herself. She cleared her throat. “Let’s try again.”
Once more, we linked hands. Once more, Brynja pulled from me, until I thought I might collapse. The heady herbs and warmth of the candle flames had begun to get to me. The world spun and danced like the firelight.
Brynja let go and cast the runes for the second time.
I held my breath. Leaned forward.
Not a single visible rune.
Such small, insignificant white stones, their message hidden. Impenetrable.
I flushed hot. My vision began to tunnel.
I let go.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When I opened my eyes, Jerick held a glass of amber juice and a cellophane package of saltines.
He offered both to me with a wry grin. “Some girls just can’t handle their Circles.”
“Bite me.” I sat up with a groan and snatched the saltines from his hand. The back of my head pounded — no wonder, considering I’d taken a dive headfirst to the concrete. I shoved a handful of crackers in my mouth. “Wher’ Brenya?”
“Getting some air.” He glanced at the back door, cracked open on a cheerfully sunny afternoon. “She’s freaked.”
“Tha’s weir’, righ’?” I finished chewing and swallowed the crackers; they felt like sawdust in my mouth, but the flour and salt grounded me. “The stones landing upside down once, that’s a mistake. But twice?”
“Yeah. She’s worried.” He offered the glass.
I washed down my crackers with lukewarm apple juice. The tang restored a little of the balance I was missing. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know. Try to heal him?”
“How can we heal him when we don’t even know what we’re dealing with?”
Jerick shrugged. “Faith, I guess.”
“I’m fresh out.”
The back door swung open, and Brynja knocked the doorstop up with her boot. She stepped inside and let the door slam shut. I was sad for the loss of fresh air. The back room seemed stifling.
“We’re closed tomorrow,” Brynja informed us.
I envied her abrupt return to poise. “No, we’re not.”
She raised an eyebrow. “We are. Tomorrow is Samhain. I can afford to shut down. Tonight, we will rendezvous at your house to perform a spell for Mikhail. Midnight.”
I grimaced at the tone in her voice. Brynja had always been strong like my dad, in her own spitfire way. But now, in the wake of a failed spell and facing the question of what was really wrong with my dad, she’d lost that steadiness.
Maybe my ears deceived me, but Brynja was scared.
* * *
DREAD TUGGED AT ME EVERY step of the way on my journey home. Dad had answered all five of my phone calls today with his usual distracted nonchalance, but life-altering change could take place in an instant.
Herm met me at the door with his soulful dark eyes. “I have not feasted since your departure this morn. I am famished.”
“You have plenty of fat stored for times of famine.”
“Not amusing, Brigitta.”
“You just don’t get my humor, Hermod.” I patted his head, but veered into the kitchen to fill his bowl.
I found my dad still in bed, staring blankly at the television. He peeled his gaze away from an old black and white western to look at the clock. “You’re home early.”
He was nothing but a face, the rest of him huddled beneath a mound of blankets. The room was stuffy and smelled of sickness.
“Brynja let me go early,” I lied. “Did you eat lunch?”
He shook his head. The dark circles beneath his eyes had deepened, and his skin had grown more ashen. He looked awful.
“You need to eat. It will help you feel better,” I told him with a confidence I didn’t actually feel.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You have to eat.” I lay my hand on his forehead. His skin burned. “Soup and a thermometer,” I added cheerfully to cover my fear.
Helga followed me into the kitchen and perched on the counter as I opened a can of tomato soup. “He worked until noon and complained of a headache. He slept fitfully most of the afternoon and awoke shortly before your return.”
“Has he said anything else?”
“Very little beyond, ‘This will put me behind.’”
“Sounds like Dad.” I dumped the soup in a bowl and slid it into the microwave. I pushed the 2. “Have you talked to Herm?”
“I have. He expressed concern that Mikhail may have been touched by a curse.”
“What do you think, Helga?”
The prim cat swished her tail, and wrapped it arou
nd her tiny front paws as she sat next to the microwave. “I, myself, have wondered if it might be metaphysical. Mikhail, though quite wonderful, is a very powerful man. And powerful men often have powerful enemies.”
“Do you know of any?”
Helga’s tail twitched. “I know a few.”
“Brynja and Jerick will be over later. We’re going to do a midnight spell and see if we can pinpoint what’s wrong with him. Do you think it will help?”
Helga turned her head, tail moving across the counter. She watched the hallway in her mysterious way as if someone stood there, watching us. I never asked when her gaze drifted; I didn’t care to know what ghosts walked this house around me.
The timer buzzed. I lifted Dad’s soup onto a dish towel to protect his hands from the heat, and found an old TV tray in the pantry.
As I hefted the tray, Helga’s green gaze finally shifted back to me. “I think when you find the answer you seek, you should turn your energies on protecting this house.”
My skin prickled at the darkness in her tone. Eons before she birthed into a Himalayan’s body, she had ruled a tribe of nomads in Sumer as a shaman. Sometimes, especially when she was at her most pensive, I could taste the dust and parchment of her age, could sense the infinite depth of her power.
“Something builds, Brigitta,” the little cat said softly. “The spirits are restless and the earth rumbles from within. We must calm them both before it is too late.”
* * *
HELGA’S WARNING TRAILED IN MY wake as I carried dinner to my dad. I found him unmoved beneath his mountain of blankets, his glassy stare still focused on the western.
“I’m not hungry,” he argued with little vehemence.
“Just a couple bites and then I’ll leave you alone. Come on. Sit up.”
Slowly, he rose, covers falling to his waist as he scooted to sit against the headboard. Beneath the blankets, he wore a hooded sweatshirt, the neck and sleeves of a long-sleeved t-shirt visible beneath it.
And he wore gloves.
I crawled onto the bed in front of him and sat on my knees. I placed the bowl in his lap. “You must really be cold,” I remarked as his gloves hand reached for the spoon.
“Hmm? Oh, yes. Very cold.” He slurped his soup, his preoccupied gaze shifting around me to the television screen.
I sat silently as he ate, studying his face. The lines of his face seemed deeper, drawn. His eyelids drooped. He almost looked like an entirely different person.
But he ate the whole bowl, one bite at a time. When he sat the spoon in the empty bowl and sagged against the headboard as if he’d run a marathon, I took the bowl from him and stood.
“Do you need anything else?” I asked.
“A nap.” His eyes were already closed.
“It’s not too early for bed, Daddy.” I sat down his bowl and helped him ease to his back. “Rest.”
I left him with his gloves and his purple-shadowed eyes, and the western’s theme music jingling on the TV.
* * *
AT MIDNIGHT, I OPENED THE front door to Brynja snapping, “You are never driving me anywhere again.” She whirled on me, icy-blue eyes blazing. “Do you drive like a crazy person?”
Jerick rocked back on his heels, hands tucked in the front pockets of his hoodie. “Don’t answer that question.”
“I don’t have a license, so…” I shrugged.
“Don’t let this fool drive you anywhere.” Brynja pointed a thumb at Jerick as she brushed past me and into the house. My uber-efficient surrogate mother wasted no time on pleasantries. She tossed her duffel bag on the couch and handed me a finger stick. “We need his blood. I’ll start setting up.”
My cousin followed me down the darkened hallway. Dad lay snoring beneath his pile of blankets. The channel on his television had flipped to infomercials.
“Daddy, Brynja and Jerick are here.” I touched his forehead. “We’re going to do Circle. We think it might be magick doing this to you.”
My father grunted but didn’t open his eyes. “Just the flu.”
Jerick raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think it’s just the flu, Mikhail.”
Dad didn’t respond. He snuffled sleepily and dozed on.
I extracted his hand from the blankets and peeled at the fingertips of his glove.
“Damn. It’s a sauna in here and he’s wearing layers and gloves?” Jerick shook his head. “Maybe it is the flu.”
At his last word, Dad’s glove popped off. I froze, the leather dangling from my fingers.
My father’s hand and fingers were crossed by thick black lines — the discolored veins beneath his skin.
Neither Jerick nor I spoke for an interminable minute. A chipper woman in pearls and a tight white blouse told us we’d never mop again after trying the Blue Hawk 300.
I finally hissed, “Helga!”
The little cat lazily opened one eye from her perch on Dad’s pillow. “Hmm?”
“Look at this.”
She stretched to her feet and sauntered to the edge of the bed. At the sight of Dad’s mottled hand, she sat, and her body stilled. I didn’t need to read her body language to know she knew something.
“What is it, Helga?” I demanded.
But Herm was the one who answered. “It is as I feared.”
I whipped around to find him in the doorway. He looked as if he’d just awakened.
“That is a sign of blood poisoning,” Herm went on. “Of the magickal persuasion.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Brynja clucked and muttered in German as she gently turned Dad’s palm over between her small hands. “Oh, Mikhail. How did this happen?”
I cringed as the tips of his fingers came into view. They were colored purple, nearly blackened.
She shook her head and clucked again. I waited irritably for her to tell more, to give me more information.
To give me reassurance that we could fix this.
Brynja lay his hand down and reached for the covers. Dad grunted as she pulled them away from his torso, but he didn’t awaken. Perspiration beaded along his hairline, and his skin had paled even more from earlier that evening.
She tugged at his sweatshirt, exposing his abdomen. Dark lines carved pathways beneath his skin, all roads converging in a circle of spider-webbed darkness where his heart beat.
A wave of nausea hit me. I sat on the edge of the bed and closed my eyes against the sight of my father’s magickally destroyed body.
“He really has worked himself to death,” I murmured.
“What?” Brynja sounded lost in thought. She covered Dad up again and looked at me. “No, sweetheart. This isn’t something he’s done to himself. He’s been cursed.”
“Someone did this to him?” My vision swam. I leaned forward and stuck my head between my knees, sucking in deep, even breaths. Someone had cursed my dad.
Someone had cursed my dad.
Jerick leaned stoically against the wall by the door, all trace of his good humor gone. He asked, “What can we do? Can we heal him?”
“We can try traditional methods — some tinctures meant to curb spells perhaps. But ultimately, our only road from here is to find out who did this. The perpetrator is the only person who can cease the spell before it…” Brynja trailed off.
Kills him hovered in the room around us.
“Can we trace the magickal signature?” I asked.
Brynja trailed a palm over Dad’s torso. She closed her eyes as her hand hovered over his heart. She shook her head. “We can try. I can’t sense anything. It’s so easy now to hide one’s signature.”
Easy for her to say. My signature may have been a neon-flashing go-go dancer, for all the stealth it had. The Council catalogued all witches by thirteen years of age, when their powers became most evident. If I cursed someone, the Council would take one whiff of the magick and haul my ass to jail.
Between the collected centuries of practice shared by Herm, Helga, and Brynja, we didn’t need a spell to confirm what they cou
ld tell by sight. But a brief spell using Dad’s blood validated what we already knew — it was a curse, and it couldn’t be traced.
“What now?” I asked. My father slept soundly, his chest rising and falling beneath his layers of warm clothes.
“We have three days from the beginning of the spell to stop it,” Brynja responded, subdued. “Two of those days are gone.”
“So, what can we do?” Jerick cut in.
Brynja caught his eye and touched her forehead in an acknowledgement of the divine. “Pray.”
* * *
BRYNJA LEFT SOON THEREAFTER IN a cab. I sat on the edge of my father’s bed, Jerick in a chair in the corner, as Dad slept. His breathing seemed labored; his face sweated profusely. He moaned under his breath and rolled to his side. I touched his leg, at a complete loss.
On the floor at my knee, Herm leaned against me soundlessly.
“I don’t know what to do,” I murmured. “I can’t live without him, Jerick. I can’t lose him. He’s all I have.”
“You have me. Herm. Brynja.”
“I know, but he’s my dad. He’s my world.” The words caught in my throat, strangling me. I wanted to scream or cry or stop breathing entirely.
The room was dark, lit only by the ceaseless annoyance of infomercials. They comforted Dad. They always had. He could sleep with them going all night, the sound high enough to wake the dead.
Jerick took a shaky breath. “What would you do to save him?”
I looked at him like he’d asked me the stupidest question in the world. “Anything. I would do anything to save him.” And I felt it intensely, deep within my gut, an ache that told me I would sacrifice heaven and earth to save my only parent.
Jerick closed his eyes. “I’m going to regret telling you this.”
“You never regret telling me anything. You’re a gossip.”
I expected my cousin to laugh, but he just opened his eyes and leveled a serious glare on me. “There’s a guy you should see. I’ve heard of him before, but I’ve never met him. Not personally. I don’t know… he’s always seemed like a-a boogey man. Nobody I know has ever met him. Legend says he holds the key to the gates of hell.”
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