by Dima Zales
As we approached the door — a massive thing of local twisted juniper, lovingly polished — I could hear laughter from within, and a pang went through me. I wished I didn’t have to disturb my aunt on her night out, but I certainly didn’t want to go back to the apartment without reinforcements that were somewhat more substantial than what Adam could offer.
So I raised my hand and knocked, then waited for a minute until Tobias opened the door. He held a wine glass in one hand and blinked down at me, his gaze traveling over to Adam and then back as if he couldn’t quite figure out what was more strange — that I should be there at all, or that I was standing there with Adam McAllister next to me.
“Angela?” Tobias said at last.
“Hi, Tobias,” I replied, attempting to sound breezy and probably failing miserably. “I need to talk to Aunt Rachel. Is that okay?”
He blinked again, then seemed to recover himself. “Of course, of course. The two of you come on in.”
We both went inside, and waited as Tobias shut the door. The place was laid out with a small entryway, and then opened into a large combined living room/dining room/kitchen. The remains of dinner seemed to still occupy the dining room table, and off to my right I saw Aunt Rachel sitting on Tobias’s large leather couch. A fire flickered in the freestanding fireplace near the far wall.
As soon as she saw us, she set down her own wine glass on the coffee table and got to her feet, her expression understandably puzzled. “Angela?” Her gaze flickered to Adam, and she frowned. She knew I wouldn’t have dragged him down here without a very good reason. “What’s the matter?”
“I — ” Now that the time had come to explain what had happened, words seemed to fail me.
“She saw something, Rachel,” Adam supplied.
Her hazel eyes widened. “Saw what?”
Tobias moved past us to stand near Aunt Rachel. “It couldn’t have been good, to have you come walking all the way down here.”
I found my voice. “No, it wasn’t. It — there was something in the store, something…evil. Dark.”
The lighting wasn’t all that good in there, since the only real lights on were the overhead fixture in the kitchen. Candles flickered on the dining room table and on the coffee table in the living room, and by their uncertain light I thought I saw her turn pale. But her tone was firm enough as she asked, “Do you know what it was?”
“No.” I pulled the pashmina a little more closely around my shoulders, as if it could do anything to rid me of the pervasive sensation of cold that seemed to take over whenever I thought of the dark shape I’d seen in the store. “But…it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it.”
“What?” came in unison from both my aunt and Adam, and then they stared at one another in confusion.
Might as well come clean. The only way to attempt to figure out what was going on was to use all the available facts. “I saw it last night as I was driving home. It was standing in the last bend before the road curves up to town. Since it was so dark, I thought it was a person. I thought I’d hit somebody. But when I got out, no one was there. And then today….” I trailed off, and swallowed.
“Today?” my aunt prompted.
“It was after you’d left, right after I put the money and the receipts away. I think maybe it was waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For me to be alone.”
She watched me carefully, gaze fixed on me, as if we were the only two people in the room, as if Tobias and Adam didn’t exist. “Go on.”
“It was standing in front of the window. It was shaped like a man, but it had no detail…only shadow. And when I asked it what it wanted, it said it wanted…me.”
Silence then, as she watched me, and Tobias watched her, and Adam stood beside me, not saying anything, either. I think he knew he’d done what I’d asked of him, and now it was time for the more important players to step in.
At last she said, “This is not good.”
“I didn’t think it was,” I replied.
“Tobias, would you come up there with us?” she asked him, and he nodded grimly.
“I wouldn’t let you go back without me.”
After that he went and got his coat, and Rachel’s as well, and we all went back outside. He didn’t bother to lock his door. Jerome was sort of like that; the only reason we locked up the shop was all the merchandise inside, and the fact that it was right on the main drag.
Tobias and Aunt Rachel took the lead, with Adam and me bringing up the rear. Maybe I should have volunteered to go first, but I wasn’t feeling very brave at the moment. They wouldn’t have allowed it, anyway — their duty, as they saw it, was to protect the next prima.
We came up the back way, along Hull Avenue. As the three-story building loomed over us, black against black in the night, I swallowed. No, I didn’t really feel anything back here, except the heebie-jeebies I was giving myself, but it was so very dark. We had a light we usually kept on at the back entrance, but of course I’d run away so quickly that turning it on had been about the last thing on my mind.
Aunt Rachel fished her keys out of her purse and unlocked the door. As she did so, I heard her murmuring under her breath, a spell of protection, of light. I guessed that was why she used her key — she wanted to save her energy for the protection spell. And the hallway lights did blaze forth as the door opened before us, showing the same short hallway I’d walked down thousands of times, with its scuffed tile and the warm sienna paint we’d applied two summers ago.
“Do you feel anything?” she asked Tobias.
He put his hand against the doorframe. Solid, natural materials were his strength — wood and stone, clay and tile. He shook his head. “No.”
Apparently heartened by this reply, she stepped inside, with him following so closely they appeared joined at the hip. Adam and I followed. I put forth a mental plea for strength and vision, and sent my own questing tendril of thought down the corridor, out into the main shop space. I felt nothing, sensed nothing.
Then again, I hadn’t sensed much until I’d seen that…thing…standing right in front of me.
The lights in the store turned themselves on at my aunt’s silent request. Everything looked perfectly ordinary, perfectly normal, from the display of windchimes in one corner to the table loaded with books on local history in the other.
Aunt Rachel stopped in the middle of the space, eyes shut, and turned slowly with her arms outstretched. This was something I could sense — the ripples of power moving out from her, the glow of her spirit as it attempted to find something wrong with the very fabric of the world. Her talent had always been order, knowing when the peace and calm of the community was somehow being disrupted. It was a quiet strength, but an important one.
At last she opened her eyes, but I saw no relief in them. She was frowning, and I saw her teeth worry at her bottom lip. “I felt it…very faint, but something…wrong. Distorted, cold. Hungry.”
That last word sent another shiver through me. Hunger. Yes, that was something I’d sensed from the apparition, although at the time I’d been too scared silly to stop and really identify it.
“What now?” Tobias asked briskly, as if he realized I didn’t know what to do next. I might be the next prima, but I had no experience with this sort of thing.
“We’ll check the apartment, just to make sure, but we need to have the coven here to cleanse the place, to lay down the spells of protection again. Something got through, although I’m not sure what and not sure how.”
“All right,” he said. “Let’s send out the call, then.”
This was something we could all do together. In unspoken accord, Tobias, Aunt Rachel, Adam, and I all stepped closer to one another and joined hands, Adam’s strong and cool in my right, my aunt’s fingers warm and reassuring in my left. The energy surged up and out, calling to the coven, broadcasting our need.
Brothers and sisters, come to us now. Come for the circle — your strength is needed!
There were just shy of 450 people living in Jerome, and a little more than half of them were part of the McAllister clan. Of those we only needed a fraction, of course. Many rituals were performed with as few as three or seven. For the greater workings, we would need to combine the powers of twenty-one. That, I knew, was how many would answer tonight’s call, and I also knew it would be the strongest, the best suited for this sort of ritual.
Cousin Rosemary was there almost at once, since she lived in the apartment over the tea shop next door. Aunt Rachel had just pulled the white candles out from underneath one of the counters when there was a knock at the back door. Tobias went to get it, since I could tell my aunt didn’t want me out of her sight, and Adam sort of shifted from one foot to the next as if not sure exactly what he should be doing. I wondered if he would end up participating at all, as protective magic was not his strongest suit.
“Goodness, what is it?” Rosemary asked, emerging into the main shop space and blinking at all of us. She always reminded me a bird, light and fluttery, with her pale hair and big green eyes. She was five or six years younger than Rachel, but somehow seemed older, as if she’d embraced a little too much the whole idea of being a solitary witch. It didn’t take much mental effort to imagine her stirring a cauldron, although we McAllisters actually weren’t that big on potions.
“An incursion,” my aunt said briefly, setting a container of pink Himalayan salt next to the white candles. “We’ll need to cleanse the whole building and set up new wards.”
“Oh, my!” she exclaimed, and despite everything, I had to stifle a laugh as Adam sent me a sideways look. Cousin Rosemary did tend to act like she’d just escaped from a Harry Potter novel or something.
After that there wasn’t much time for conversation, as more people converged on the shop — Allegra Moss, who had a sculptor’s studio across the street from Tobias, and Efraim Willendale, who ran the tiny post office, and Wyatt McAllister, owner of a B&B a few doors down from the stately Victorian where Great-Aunt Ruby lived. So many of them, all surrounding us with their strength, until the magic number of twenty-one was reached. Well, twenty-two, counting Adam, but he wasn’t going to be participating.
“What about Great-Aunt Ruby?” I asked. Usually she would take part in something this important.
My cousin Dora, who lived with Ruby, shook her head. “She’s been feeling a little tired the past few days, so I thought it better if she sat this one out.”
At that reply I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. When was the last time I’d gone up to visit my great-aunt? Had to be almost a week now. I’d spent way too much time wrapped up in my own problems.
Aunt Rachel also looked rather grim, but then she shook her head, as if reminding herself to focus on the task at hand. After pulling out a soapstone incense burner and some cedar incense, she said, “Angela, you’ll need to lead the ritual, as you’re the one who saw the entity we’re protecting against. We’re all here to support you.”
I’d guessed she would ask that of me, but it didn’t make this any easier. Even with all of them there, I couldn’t help feeling alone. I would have to put myself out in front of everyone and hope that whatever it was had long gone.
There wasn’t much I could do except nod, however. I picked up the candle and sparked the flame with my thought. It lit at once, its glow steady and calming.
“Goddess, we ask that you lend us your strength, and aid us in cleansing this house of whatever evil spirits might have visited here. Let this pure white fire dispel the shadows, and bring peace to this place.”
An icy breath seemed to pass over me, and the candle flame flickered wildly. At once I heard the echoing murmur from the coven.
“Bring peace to this place.”
Warmth began to return, and the candle stilled. I moved to the front door and repeated my plea to the Goddess. From there I moved clockwise around the room, although the coven members stayed more or less in the center of the space. Not that it would have been all that easy for a crowd that size to follow me everywhere, what with all the table displays and bookshelves that filled the store.
I moved down the hallway to the stairs opposite the storeroom door, and hesitated. Were they all going to follow me upstairs to the apartment?
Apparently they were, although they had to straggle their way upward in ones and twos, a line that stretched almost all the way back to the first floor by the time I reached the second story. I felt nothing up here, not even the hint of a chill I had sensed before the power of the light pushed it back, but of course I wasn’t about to take any chances. Clockwise again, moving from the living room to the kitchen , and then to the funny little cubbyhole off the dining room that my aunt used as a workspace for drying flowers and herbs. From there we climbed yet again, to Aunt Rachel’s room and my own bedroom, past the inadequate little bathroom we had to share. All the while I focused on the power of the white light, of how it sent the darkness away from every corner, every cubby.
Then it was all the way back to the ground floor again, and the ritual repeated with the burning incense and the purifying power of air, then finally with spring water poured from one of the bottles we always kept under the sales counter, mixed with the pink Himalayan salt, bringing the strength of earth and the balance and clarity of water to all the spaces in the building. As I worked, I could feel the energy of the coven humming along with me, lending me the power necessary to perform the ritual and make it a lasting one, something that would maintain its protection for months and even years.
At last we had made all the circuits. I took up the bowl with the spring water and salt mixture, then went to the front door and traced the form of a pentacle there with my index finger.
“Peace and purity dwell here now,” I said. “Nothing of ill will may enter. So the Goddess wills it, and so it will be.”
“And so it will be,” the members of the coven repeated.
For the barest second I almost thought I heard the sound of faraway laughter, mocking and cold. But then it was gone, and I told myself it must have been the wind. After all, around me was only warmth and light and the reassuring presences of the people who stood a few feet away. My coven.
My family.
It seemed I was safe now. But even then I wondered whether it would be enough.
5
They all dispersed after that, talking quietly. Adam was watching me with something like awe, which I didn’t really understand. After all, he’d seen me work magic before. But then I realized this was the first time I’d actually led such a large group, been the one to direct all that energy. In the past, Great-Aunt Ruby would, as prima, have been the one to take on such a role. There was power in me, of course, although it was nothing compared to what it would be when she passed the strength of the prima to me and I had found my consort.
Cousin Dora had said Ruby was too tired to perform the task today. Was she really too tired, or was this her way of telling me it was time I stepped forward and showed everyone that I really was capable of taking on the mantle of prima?
I didn’t know for sure; my great-aunt was eighty-eight years old, and if there’s one thing you’ve earned at eighty-eight, it’s the right to be tired. Even so, I couldn’t help wondering.
Aunt Rachel began taking the items I’d used in the ritual and putting them back in their places under the counter. As she worked, however, she looked from Adam to me and back again, her gaze thoughtful.
“Thank you, Adam,” she said after an awkward pause. “I think Angela’s pretty tired after all that, so….”
He wrenched his eyes away from me. “What? Oh, yeah, I guess I should get going, too.”
“Thanks, Adam,” I added, realizing I was sort of falling down on the job here. However I might feel about his unwanted intentions, he’d certainly come to my aid tonight, and the very least I could do was express my gratitude…even if he might prefer that I express it a little bit differently than with a simple “thanks.”
“No
problem,” he replied, too casually. Then he said, in a quick undertone clearly intended for my ears only, “You know I’d do anything for you.”
He left after that, hurrying to the back door, since of course the front was still locked. For a minute or two after he left, neither Aunt Rachel nor I said anything.
Finally, after closing the little storage area under the counter and locking it, she asked, “Is that going to be a problem?”
“What?” I blinked, then realized what she probably thought the “problem” was. “You know there isn’t anything between Adam and me.”
“I thought I knew that…until I saw the two of you show up on Tobias’s doorstep.”
“He saw me at Grapes and basically invited himself to sit down with me. But he was the one who convinced me to go to you and tell you what happened, and yeah, I was glad to have him walk with me. After what I saw, I was kind of spooked, you know?”
Her expression gentled. “I do know. I only felt traces of…whatever it was…and that was enough for me.” She came out from behind the counter and moved toward me, pulling me into a quick, fierce hug before she let me go. “I won’t lie and say I’m not worried, but things do seem quiescent for now. Still, Angela, if anything like this happens again, come to me at once. I don’t care if you have to pull me out of bed with Tobias. Understood?”
My cheeks flamed at the thought of having to interrupt my aunt having sex with her boyfriend. “That’s a mental image I didn’t need.”
She shot me a warning look.
“Okay, okay. I know. I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly. Too many things coming at once, I suppose.”
Surprisingly, she didn’t offer any more remonstrances, but only nodded. “Well, I think we’ll both feel better after a good night’s sleep. The house is cleansed, and safe. There isn’t anything here that need worry you.”