By Moon

by T Thorn Coyle

  :Tobias?: they asked.

  He shook his head. “This one’s up to you.”

  Selene steadied themself. He was right. A witch who practiced binding must know how to unbind. Selene found the power within and, placing their hand upon the servitor’s broad forehead, drew the sigil of releasing.

  :Thank you.: Selene heard the small voice in their mind and watched as the servitor gathered itself together, and then it disappeared.

  Selene bowed their head for a moment, and touched the moonstone at their collarbone.

  :You ready?: Tobias sent.

  :Ready.:

  It was time to begin their journey back to their body. Their coven. Their home.

  42

  Joshua

  Joshua was rapidly discovering that Arrow and Crescent coven gathered a lot. He would have preferred some time alone with Selene, but exhausted as they were, they insisted they needed the coven.

  He couldn’t blame Selene. If he had a group of friends this awesome, he would want to be around them, too.

  So they were back at Raquel’s home, this time in her fabulous backyard, sitting beneath the big maple tree, drinking fresh-made lavender lemonade. His aura still felt a bit flayed, but both Brenda and Raquel assured him he would be just fine.

  The coven buzzed around, getting snacks, all except Tobias and Selene. Tobias reclined on a lounge chair, eyes closed. He looked a little too pale, and somehow thinner than before, but Joshua figured that was the by-product of the magic.

  Selene, who sat nestled against him on a rocking bench, felt less substantial as well. But they still smelled of tuberoses and warm skin, edged with a scent Joshua couldn’t quite identify, some combination of ozone and tobacco.

  “Selene?” he murmured in their ear.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’d really like to kiss you. May I?”

  Their head shifted on his chest, and Selene pushed back enough to look at him.

  “Yes,” they said, and smiled, tilting their mouth toward his.

  43

  Selene

  This kiss was even better than the last one. Sweet. Warm. Firm. Soft. Everything.

  It smelled like lavender and tasted of summer. And the moon. And it felt like magic.

  The kiss began healing a wound Selene didn’t even realize they had.

  They heard the coven, and Legis and Frater Louis. The rattling of ice and the scent of rosemary shortbread.

  Selene’s stomach rumbled and they began to laugh.

  “Was the kiss that bad?” Joshua murmured in their ear.

  “No,” Selene replied, still laughing. “No. It was wonderful. I just realized something.”

  “What’s that?” Tobias asked, cracking one eye open.

  “You’re not supposed to be listening,” Selene complained.

  “You’re not supposed to be making out in front of me, either.”

  “Go back to sleep. I’ll tell you when everyone else is here.”

  Selene and Joshua rocked together as the coven found seats in chairs or on benches. Clearing their throat and waggling their fingers, they got everyone’s attention.

  “I have an announcement to make,” Selene said.

  “What’s that, sweetie?” Raquel said.

  “I’m...”

  “Hey witches,” Lucy said, walking through the back gate with Alejandro. He’d gone to pick her up from the hospital once they’d cleaned up the working in the park. Lucy looked fragile, slightly ethereal, but wow, it was good to see her.

  Tabitha had woken up, around the time the servitor’s cords had shattered the Alchemist to bits. Lucy had called Raquel, saying that medical staff were rushing around, and Tabitha’s parents were crying and laughing, and Lucy really needed a ride out of there.

  The Alchemist’s minions had carried him out of the park. He was raving, and seemed feverish and unwell, which was no surprise. Selene had rigged the magical operation so that he could recover his faculties in time, but never do magic again. They had set the injunction, coding it into his aura with every pull of the rope.

  They hadn’t known they could do that sort of magic. It was knowing that the coven was taking care of the rest of it that freed them up to act at their full power.

  Just as the servitor had returned to its mother, Selene had also come back home.

  Lucy and Alejandro found seats.

  Selene took a sip of lemonade, suddenly shy again. The power to Dare, Selene.

  They looked around the circle, at these people they knew and loved. Who knew and loved Selene. Even Louis and Legis were people Selene was coming to trust. “I want to ask if you’ll all be my family. My own family doesn’t want me, so I’m choosing you.”

  They looked at Raquel and Brenda. Raquel’s cheeks were wet.

  Brenda smiled and then said, “We chose you a long time ago, Selene. Of course we’re your family.”

  Joshua pulled Selene closer. That felt good. Maybe someday they’d be family together, too. Selene’s mind knew that was premature, but their heart felt like it was a very good idea.

  “I have fallen so hard for you,” he whispered in their ear.

  They tilted their head back until they could see his beautiful eyes.

  “I’m falling for you, too.”

  They’d still have to take it one step at a time, but this whole being visible thing just might turn out to be okay after all.

  Thanks, Moon Mother. For everything.

  Reviews

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  Many thanks!

  Look for the next book in the series: By Sun

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  By Sun

  From her place at the top of the ladder, Lucy set her brush down in its tray and rubbed her right hand against her painter’s pants. The hand itched, and not in the good “your palm itches because money is coming to you” way. She’d been poisoned by nicotine-tainted flying ointment at Summer Solstice. The year barreled toward Lammas and the weird sensation still hadn’t gone away.

  Regardless, Lucy had work to do. Work she loved.

  The scent of interior house paint was as familiar to Lucy as the scent of her sandalwood shampoo. Paint smelled of industry, creativity, and happiness. There was a deep satisfaction in helping make something beautiful again. Brightening things up. Enriching spaces. Changing people’s lives.

  Oh, that last thing seemed a little grandiose, and Lucy admitted it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Part of her magic was helping to shift ordinary spaces into havens, places of refuge and delight. Painting was part of Lucy’s true work, and she began every project with intention.

  But sometimes paint was also the scent of stress, like right now. Her crew was way behind on this job, stretched thin because summer meant everyone wanted the outside of their houses painted. But indoor jobs were Lucy’s specialty, and this one was for a friend. That last fact didn’t lessen the pressure. As a matter of fact, for Lucy, it made things worse. She never wanted to let down people she knew.

  At least the air inside the house was cool. The owner before Jack had installed a central HVAC system, and the air conditioning worked just fine, keeping the late July heat outside at bay. The only issue Lucy had with that was that with windows closed, the paint fumes didn’t disperse as quickly. Thank all the Gods and Goddesses for low VOC paints.

  Speaking of…

  “Suco, more flat white for the dining room ceiling, por favor!”

  “You got it, boss,” came the reply from the living room.

  Lucy heard the thump of Suco’s boots onto the broad wooden porch, where paint cans and extra drop cloths lived during the day. She exhaled, blowing an errant strand of dark hair from her face and looked around the formal dining room. Jack’s home was gorgeous. The nine-
foot tall ceilings were tall enough to feel spacious but still cozy.

  While Lucy worked on all sorts of houses, old Craftsman and Victorian homes were her favorites. They were built with care. Meant to last. Some of the modern homes these days also had an attention to detail, unlike the cracker boxes of the late 90s, but give Lucy a one-hundred-year-old home to work on, any day.

  The built-in sideboard had been stripped back to the original walnut, and a dark walnut picture rail ringed the room. The walls were currently navy, which did the room no favors, especially during the cloudy Portland winters. Once the ceiling was done, Lucy planned a pale, leaf green for the walls. She and Jack had debated over that. She lobbied for a rich burgundy, but he didn’t want the rooms to feel dark. They wouldn’t, but the customer was always right.

  Even when the customer had been an on-again, off-again lover, and was now a who-knew-what-to-call-them, so they just used the word friend, even though they didn’t exactly hang out these days.

  Jack was part of the ad hoc community that clustered around Arrow and Crescent, Lucy’s coven. There were a lot of people like that, who moved in and out of the sphere of the coven. In Jack’s case, he just happened to be Raquel’s neighbor. Raquel and Brenda had founded Arrow and Crescent, and trained most of the members.

  Lucy had her own training. Her Catholic abuela had a little bit of the witch about her, though she would never call it that. She had tried to train Lucy in the use of herbs, though that had never quite stuck. Reading objects, now, that was Lucy’s natural skill. She’d practiced the art of psychometry since puberty, and was now the go-to person for the whole coven.

  She scratched at her right hand again. The sensation was actually more of a tingle than an itch, and less physical than psychic. Despite all of the clearing and cleansing the coven had done, the sensation hadn’t gone away.

  Lucy hadn’t mentioned it to Brenda and Raquel lately. They would just worry, and frankly, Lucy didn’t see there was anything to be done for it. So she kept mum and just did her job.

  “Here you go, boss,” Suco set the gallon down on a drop cloth and got to work popping the lid off.

  “Gracias,” Lucy said, rattling down her ladder. Once down, she reached for the plastic-lined paint tray and carefully lifted it from the metal perch.

  “Disponha,” he replied, as she set the tray down next to the gallon can.

  The two of them tended to trade off between Spanish and Portuguese. He was one of her best workers, and had moved to Portland from Brazil when he was a child. His family had immigrated during an easier time. Immigrants from poorer countries had never had it easy in the U.S., but lately? Things seemed exponentially worse.

  She’d been raised in Portland, on the outskirts further east, toward the city of Gresham. Lucy could trace her family back to the days when California had still been part of Mexico. They’d moved here during her great-grandparents’ time, when vaqueros moved north, hired by white cattle ranchers.

  Suco went back to the living room, where he was covering the wood built-in bookcases and the fireplace surround, leaving Lucy to her solitary work. After refilling the tray, she stood to stretch her back. Her vision swam with gray. Damn it. She never had issues before, but yeah, ever since summer Solstice, when that self-centered jerk who called himself the Alchemist had poisoned her, things weren’t quite right.

  It affected her psychometry, too, which had always been her strongest gift. Like right now, Lucy noticed she was being careful to not touch the walls with her hands. She wasn’t sure what stories the building would have to tell, and didn’t want the distraction. She wasn’t yet back at a place where she trusted any of her gifts. Perhaps the ancestors would have something to say about that.

  Just like they had something to say about the current issues that plagued not only Portland, but the entire country.

  Immigration forces had stepped up their game lately. Even the mass deportations of the past decade paled in comparison to the recent, more brutal tactics.

  Lucy was worried. Plenty worried. And the ancestors were knocking pretty loudly lately, insisting that she do something.

  What exactly it was they wanted from her, though, had not yet been made clear. All she knew was that both her astral and physical bodies still reeled from that Goddess damned tainted flying ointment. The Alchemist was still in prison for that. The city had proof that he had poisoned several people, resulting in one death.

  Usually Lucy wasn’t a fan of prisons, but if anyone should be locked up, it was that madman.

  Meanwhile though, she had a business to run, jobs to catch up on, and her own health to consider.

  She sighed.

  Your head is cleared, mija. Back to it.

  Lucy placed the paint tray back on the fold-out perch and climbed the ladder. The edges around the trim weren’t going to get cut in by themselves.

  She just wished the tingling in her palm would go away.

  Acknowledgments

  I give thanks to the cafés of my new hometown, Portland, Oregon. All you baristas are fine human beings.

  Thanks also to Leslie Claire Walker, my intrepid first reader, to Dayle Dermatis, editor extraordinaire, to Lou Harper for my covers, Mala Bhattacharjee for an expert pass through, and to my writing buddies for getting me out of the house.

  Speaking of house…thanks as always to Robert and Jonathan.

  Big, grateful shout out to the members of the Sorcery Collective for spreading the word!

  And last…

  Thanks to all the activists and witches working your magic in the world. This series is for you.

  About the Author

  T. Thorn Coyle has been arrested at least four times. Buy them a cup of tea or a good whisky and they’ll tell you about it.

  Author of the The Witches of Portland, the alt-history urban fantasy series The Panther Chronicles, the novel Like Water, and two story collections, Thorn’s multiple non-fiction books include Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives, and Evolutionary Witchcraft.

  Thorn's work appears in many anthologies, magazines, and collections. They’ve taught magical practice in nine countries, on four continents, and in twenty-five states.

  An interloper to the Pacific Northwest U.S., Thorn stalks city streets, writes in cafes, loves live music, and talks to crows, squirrels, and trees.

  Connect with Thorn:

  www.thorncoyle.com

  Also by T. Thorn Coyle

  Fiction Series

  The Panther Chronicles

  To Raise a Clenched Fist to the Sky

  To Wrest Our Bodies From the Fire

  To Drown This Fury in the Sea

  To Stand With Power on This Ground

  The Witches of Portland, a 9 Book Series

  By Earth

  By Flame

  By Wind

  By Sea

  By Moon

  By Sun

  Single Novels and Story Collections

  Like Water

  Alighting on His Shoulders

  Break Apart the Stone

  Anthologies

  Fantasy in the City

  Haunted

  Witches Brew

  The Faerie Summer

  Stars in the Darkness

  Fiction River: Justice

  Fiction River: Feel the Fear

  Non-Fiction

  Evolutionary Witchcraft

  Kissing the Limitless

  Make Magic of Your Life

  Sigil Magic for Writers, Artists & Other Creatives

  Crafting a Daily Practice

 

 

 
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