by Jill Nojack
And then, too weird—it's as though a dome comes down around the circle and it's suddenly like looking through frosted glass. The witches are still there, lit by the awful light, but the distance and the veil around the ritual space make it impossible to tell what's going on. Then, at the center, one of the indistinct figures begins to glow.
Robert starts to move forward, but I stop him with a firm hand on the shoulder. "No, I'll go. I'll see what's happening. It won't help anything for her to figure out you've been working against her. It's dark outside whatever that dome is. Cat will be able to hide in the shadows."
I crouch to the ground and think bad tom, then shift, gritting my human teeth against the pain until they're replaced by cat's sharp, white ones.
I spring out of the brush on four legs, moving swiftly but close to the ground, my tail held out low to drift above the grass as I stalk.
Eunice is looking the other way when I approach the veil. It's not quite glass, but it's not quite air, either. I press a paw to it and try to push through. It gives, but I can't pierce it. Whatever Eunice is doing in there, none of us will be able to interfere.
From where I crouch hidden by a tall clump of grass behind the Cassie-thing's back, the fireflies of light swirl into longer plumes of flame, moving from the black-robed figure in the center of the circle to the box and disappear into its surface. The figure, I think it's Kevin based only on where he knelt in the center of the circle before the veil came down, pitches forward, hands to his throat, then falls to the ground, sparks leaping from his body until he stops moving completely.
When it's done, the golden light fades and the veil lifts. The witches look around at each other, then at Kevin. One of them starts to wail, one of them bolts toward the parking lot, but the Cassie-thing screams out, "Stop."
The witches freeze. Then, they move to her one by one, kneel, kiss the hem of her robe, and walk unhurried to the parking lot.
Once they've all knelt to her, the Cassie-thing turns her head on a sweep around the site. Oh Goddess, her eyes. I shrink as deep into the shadow of the lump of grass I lurk behind as I can. When those lit-up red orbs swing my way, I can only hope she doesn't catch a glimpse of me. They don't pause as they sweep over my patch of ground. She blinks them and the red light is gone, her hair suddenly appearing lighter than before. She looks deceptively like my Cassie again as she walks quickly to her car with the box clasped firmly in her hands.
***
Once Cassie's car leaves the parking lot, I dash toward the misshapen mass where Kevin had knelt. The thing I find there isn't Kevin anymore. His skin is like parchment, dried out and stretched tight across his bones. From his appearance, you'd think he'd been dead for years. He looks like the pictures of the unwrapped mummies from Eunice's archeology books.
I hear someone coming up behind me and look over my shoulder. It's Robert with Gillian trailing. He doesn't need to see this. But Cat is too small to stop him or hold him. I shift, but by the time I'm in control again, it's too late to get in his way and try to soften the blow.
He stumbles over an uneven patch in the grass and catches himself ungracefully before he falls to his knees next to his son, head in his hands, his sobs the only sound now that the wind has blown itself out.
Cat's predatory instinct has given me a high tolerance for all the stages of death, but it hasn't given me any understanding of grief. I have no idea what I'm supposed to say to comfort him. Not that anything I could say in the nude would be a good idea anyway. And I'm definitely not going in for a hug.
Gillian kneels next to Robert and puts a hand on his back. He turns to her and buries his head in her shoulder. She places her arms around him, rocking him the way she would a child. I turn to the woods and leave them alone as I go to gather my clothes.
***
It's unusual for a small town like Giles to have its own coroner, but the members of the choir are happy to pay the extra tax for his salary to assure that magic gone wrong doesn't become magic exposed. Not that the coveners are prone to murder, but a few miscalculations and…well, mistakes get made.
Like many of the residents of our fair town, Dr. Don knows just enough about the goings on around him to know that some things are better off not being written down. Even the non-magical residents have no interest in being scrutinized by the media. They're happy to let Salem ham it up for the business.
He stands up, shaking his head, and pushes his black-rimmed glasses up his nose as he walks to where Robert sits on a fallen log outside the ring that witches' feet have worn into the grass. Gillian still hovers over him. I think she probably won't leave him alone until she sees him safely home.
I step in front before he reaches them and guide him to the side, out of earshot. "Let's give him some time before he has to deal with all of this."
He shoves his glasses up his nose. "I'm calling this one. No ambulance needed. Another obvious case of drowning. That lake is becoming a real hazard."
"Thanks, Doc."
He inclines his head in Robert's direction. "I'd like extend my condolences before I go. He's a friend, you know."
I nod, but when the two men shake hands, Robert's grip is so visibly limp that you might think he'd been deboned.
The doc tells him, "I'll get him covered and contact the rescue squad. I can keep him at the morgue until you've had time to make arrangements."
Robert shakes his head. "No. I have an expert who needs to take a look."
The coroner squeezes Robert's hand again, and then I hustle him away and walk him back to the parking lot. It's easy to get turned around in the woods at night, but I know every inch. I've stalked all of them many times over the past forty-five years. Before we're out of sight, Gillian comes running after me, holding her keys out.
"There's a blanket in the back of my car. Please bring it back with you. Oh, and there's some of those tie-thingies with the hooks on the end. You know, the rubber-bandy things."
Fortunately, I speak female. It's long been a talent due to my appreciation of the species. I return with the blanket and three bungee cords. We wrap Kevin's body and secure it so that we can carry it to the car.
With no water left in it, Kevin's husk is light. Gillian takes his feet but doesn't need to carry much weight. I could carry him alone, but he's taller than I could manage easily.
Robert walks along beside us, the single mourner to our midnight pallbearing. After a silent trip back to the house with Gillian driving, she and I take the body to the cellar to wait for Natalie's inspection.
Although she doesn't admit to still being unsteady from yesterday's self-administered bout of sweating sickness, Natalie accepts the stool I pull over to the workbench so that she can get off her feet. She undresses the body with a no-nonsense air to take a closer look and sets the scorched clothing aside. She's thorough and professional.
She inspects him visually for a moment, then cuts into Kevin's desiccated abdomen with a scalpel, hmmm-ing and ah-ing. Her attitude is clinical until she grabs an arm to turn him, and it cracks out of the socket, tearing away in a small shower of dust.
"Jumpin' jujubees!" She sets the arm aside. It trails dust and flakes as it goes. "Don't mention that to Robert." She smirks at me conspiratorially. The incident appears to have perked her up. "You look a little green, there, Tom."
"Seems more real right now than it did last night. And way more ghoulish." I bring my hand to my nose, but I can't wipe away the musty smell released when the arm broke free. I'm more than a little grossed out by the thought that I've just breathed in a little bit of Kevin.
"It's time to cover him back up, anyway. I haven't learned anything. Basically, he's been drained. Every drop of essence is just gone. Nothing at all lingers. It would usually take a few days for the last sniff of it to leave a body. He's a blank. It's like he was never there."
We wrap him back up in the blanket, and Natalie takes my arm as we head upstairs. I'm just not sure who's steadying who.
***
There are only nine left now from the full coven of eighteen to lend our strength to any magic to come.
Natalie silently takes stock of the available assets as she looks from face to face in Robert's living room at the magical folk who remain.
Me? I barely count as a magical contributor. Even before Eunice bound my magic, I wasn't much of a warlock. The only thing magic about me is my ability to shift, and I needed a few drops of Cassie's blood to gain control of that. Any magic I have now is borrowed.
I have a strong male essence, though. Gillian assures me of that, although it sounds like an accusation the way she says it. In this aging-itself-out-of-existence coven town, only Robert, Darrin, and I are left to provide the essential whiff of testosterone to keep balance.
At the moment, Robert's barely functional. Back in the day, me and my buddies would have written off his expressions of grief as unmanly. We would have told him to buck up, get a grip. Or just avoided him until he could hold it together. Times change. I know better now. Since the night he prevented Kevin from touching magical objects so he couldn't abuse his gift, he has shown me over and over again what it means to be a man.
Natalie encourages the guests who were participants in Anat's ritual to talk about what happened. The first to speak, Prudence, holds tight to Sarah's hand.
"I can tell what I remember, but it's patchy," Prudence says, her voice wavering. "I wanted us to stay. We haven't missed a full moon together since we met. Cassie said she was drawing the Goddess down, but the goddess never acted like that before. She named herself—said she's called Anat. And then she…dear Goddess." Prudence starts to cry quietly and leans into Sarah for comfort.
"And the fertility ritual," Jane adds quickly, avoiding looking at Robert. He wouldn't see her anyway because his swollen eyes are hidden by the hands which cradle his down-turned head. "It was weird. I'm afraid for her daughter if Maureen puts that teddy under her bed. It jumped around like something from The Exorcist."
Nat takes a noisy swig of water from the water bottle at her right hand before she speaks. She spent the night at the hospital and then discharged herself to get back to business. I gotta give it to her, she's a trooper. But she isn't up to snuff right now. She looks exhausted.
"Nat, I think it's best if Gillian leads for now." I hand her another bottled water to replace the empty one. "You're too weak."
She takes another swig and purses her lips, then says, "Yes, and I'm too tainted by my more gray-area experimentations to feel comfortable fighting something that clearly draws its magic from the darkness anyway." She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand and you can see she's fighting a yawn. "When I thought we were dealing with Eunice, I was sure I could beat the rancid old biddy. But not now. Gillian's the only one of us who's managed to keep herself away from darker temptations over the years."
"Have I?" Gillian shakes her head. "When Martin got sick..."
"You what? You lit selfish candles, hoping he'd live? You cursed the goddess for turning her face away? You stopped believing for a moment he would only be stopping for a while in the Summerlands?"
Gillian's eyes close softly, but her face is impassive. She opens them again and a line of moisture glimmers on the top of her lower eyelids. "Yes. I called on the Goddess, I begged her to allow him to live. And I got angry when she didn't heal him. I procured some things I'm not proud of. I came close to using them."
Natalie pats her hand. "But you didn't use them, did you?" Gilly shakes her head. "What you did wasn't dark, dear. I'm sure the Goddess has forgiven you for being only human."
Everyone knows Natalie doesn't believe. She's an atheist pagan who sees the Goddess as a euphemism for the magical force in nature. That's not a problem here: the witchery in Giles has always been eclectic. The words don't mean much coming from her, but none of the ardent believers in the circle disagree when she continues.
"You're the cleanest of us. You would have been high priestess if you had accepted the coven's offer. And that's why you'll need to lead whether or not Tom thinks I'm up to snuff."
Gillian looks around the room wistfully. "If that's true, then Goddess help us all. We've wandered so very far from where we started."
I shove the big couch and coffee table into a corner of the room so that we can form a close circle. Natalie settles onto the couch after offering Gillian a crystal ball. She soon closes her eyes. Good. She needs to rest.
Gillian arranges us.
"Tom, you take the quarter. Janice, you across from Winifred—oldest and youngest just so." She sorts us all into our positions efficiently.
The locals know to stay away from "Natalie the Gypsy Queen" at the annual Witching Faire because Nat has no talent for telling the future. She does, however, have a well-developed talent for finding "lost" items her patrons somehow left behind. But the crystal itself, like all crystal, is a true conduit for magic. Gillian places it in the center of the circle where we all now sit cross-legged, except for Winifred, whose ancient knees no longer easily bend that way. She perches instead on a kitchen chair.
Gillian takes the hands of the witches on either side of her. She has always had the talent to see behind the locked doors of the past and sometimes, of the future. But she never liked it. She avoided it. Said it wasn't right to push into someone's life that way.
Hands raise and grasp now all around the circle. Although I can no longer feel magic, I'm sure it flows through me, picking up some of my essence and contributing it to the flow.
She begins the chant. The golden candles around the colorless globe flare as the power streams around the circle. The candles are the good ones, the ones that contain some of the noble metal rather than being colored completely by a substitution. The radiance is nothing like the lights that the Cassie-thing raised the night before, but it sure feels like a nod from the Goddess that the prayer was heard.
I never take my eyes off the picture that develops in the globe. On a throne sits a woman in an Egyptian robe and headdress. Next to her, a man dressed in nearly the same attire. And before them, hundreds, on their knees, their foreheads touching the floor.
Gillian speaks, but her voice is hushed. "This is no demon. At least not as I understand demons to be. This is worship. Organized religion. I think Cassie was right—we're dealing with a goddess."
Then, the picture in the globe changes and the body of the woman from the throne is being wrapped in cotton strips and placed within a sarcophagus. Natalie sits up, immediately alert, and pulls a small sketchbook from beneath her robe. She sketches as many of the symbols that are engraved on the lid as she can before the flash of history in the crystal is gone. Too soon, the images fade. We've seen all that will be seen tonight.
"Thank you, Goddess, for what has been revealed." Gillian lets go of the hands that hold to hers and steps back from the circle.
I go straight from witch mode to detective mode. "Does anyone know what the symbols mean?"
Heads shake in the negative. Natalie says, "It was definitely Egyptian. The class I took in costume and fashion design in college was years and years ago, but I've got a good memory for that kind of thing." She holds up her drawing. "These are the symbols as close as I can capture them."
I take the drawing and study it. "That's it exactly."
"Do you recognize them?"
I reply, "I do know a few hieroglyphs, but I don't know these."
Robert contributes more than a nod for the first time since Gillian and I carried his son's body to the basement the night before. "I know someone who can help. I have a friend at the University who's an expert in Egyptology. I'll take the drawings into Boston tomorrow and see if I can get us some information."
"Are you sure?" I ask. I don't think he's ready to take an active part in this.
"Yes. Yes, it will keep my mind occupied."
I start to move the furniture back into place. "If you're feeling up to it, then I guess that's it. If everyone could leave at random intervals like you did when you got here s
o that it doesn't look like we've been together, that would be great."
The group breaks up, parting more solemnly than usual as group members leave every ten to fifteen minutes.
Robert nurses a whiskey, lost in his own thoughts.
I grab a blanket from the linen closet and cover Natalie on the couch. Her snoring is quiet, but persistent. She's not going anywhere tonight.
I walk Gillian to the door. When I return, Robert has moved to the study. I signal him good night on the way to my room. I think about stopping to keep him company for a while, but I know what's on his mind, and what could I say? There was no love lost between Kevin and I. I continue down the hall.
I won't be going out the window tonight. The danger is too close, too real. How in the world can this small group of mostly old biddies, two old roosters, and whatever I am, challenge a being who drained the life out of a man with nothing more than a full moon and a small circle of elderly witches?
I stop a moment, think about going back to Robert. He's offered me nothing but support since Eunice took Cassie. I should be able to offer him mine in his grief. Kevin wasn't much of a legacy to leave, but he's the one that Robert had.
But I can't do it. It was only a month ago that Kevin grabbed Cassie outside the shop and threatened her, terrified her.
No, I can't say I'm sorry that he's dead. Not even to comfort a friend.
***
"Robert?"
He raises his head, his eyes not focusing fully for a moment.
"Tom. I must have fallen asleep." He looks at the empty glass his hand still cradles on the side table. "I guess I had a little more to drink than my doctor would advise."
I shrug. "No one would blame you. I just thought…well, I was on my way to the bathroom and I thought you'd be uncomfortable in the morning if you stayed in the chair overnight."