by Cate Tiernan
Ethan Sharp was interesting—a colorful mosaic of thoughts and feelings, tightly held distrust, poetry and disappointment. Sharon had a stillness to her, a calm center that seemed new. There was also a hesitant half-embarrassed tenderness—for who? Ethan?
Beth Nielson, Raven's best friend, mainly seemed bored and wanted to be somewhere else. My best friend after Bree, Robbie Gurevitch, was startling: a mixture of anger, desire, and repressed emotion that didn't show at all on his face. Who was it directed at? I couldn't tell.
But it was Bree and Raven who almost blew me off the bench. Deep, intense waves of fury and jealousy came from both of them, aimed at me and, to a lesser extent, Cal. With Raven it was all jagged, snaggletoothed edges of anger and frustration and hunger. For all her reputation of being easy, she hadn't actually ever been linked seriously to anyone. Maybe she had wanted Cat to be the one.
If Raven's feelings were barbed wire, Bree's were smoldering coals. Instantly I knew that as much as she had loved me two weeks ago, she now hated me to the same extent. She had been desperate for Cal. Maybe it wasn't real love, but it was a powerful desire, that was certain. And she had never before wanted a guy without him wanting her back. Cal had deeply wounded her when he had chosen me over her.
All these impressions had taken only a moment A heartbeat and the knowledge was within me.
It struck me that none of these people, the people in my coven, knew about my adoption, except Cal. It was such a huge, momentous thing, so life changing, so frightening, yet it had all happened in one day, yesterday. And yesterday had been just another Sunday for them. It made me feel disoriented and strange.
"So," Bree said, breaking the silence. She didn't look at me. "Did your parents enjoy their new reading material?"
I blinked, if only she knew what her revenge had begun. All I could do was shake my head and sit down. I didn't trust myself to talk.
Bree smirked, still gazing at her boots. Cal took my hand in his, and I held it tightly.
"What are you talking about, Bree?" Robbie asked. He took off his thick glasses and rubbed his eyes. Without his glasses he looked like a different person. The spell I had performed two weeks before had worked better than I could have possibly imagined. His skin, once pitted with acne scars, now was smooth and fine textured, showing a dim outline of dark beard. His nose was straight and classical, where it had been swollen and red. Even his lips seemed firmer, more attractive, though I couldn't remember how they had been before.
"Nothing," Bree said lightly. "It's not important."
No, it was just the destruction of my life, I thought.
"Whatever," Robbie muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Damn. Anyone have some Tylenol? I have an incredible headache."
"I've got some," said Sharon, reaching for her purse.
"Always prepared," said Ethan with a smile, like a Girl Scout' Sharon shot him a look, then gave Robbie two pills, which he took dry.
Our coven had united cool kids with losers, brains and geeks and stoners and princesses. It was interesting to watch people who were so different from each other interact.
"I had a good time on Saturday night," Cal said after a pause. "I'm glad you all came. It was a good way to celebrate the most important Wiccan holiday."
"It was so cool," said Jenna. "And Morgan was amazing!"
I felt self-conscious and gave my knees a tiny smile.
"It was really awesome," said Matt. "I spent most of the day yesterday on the Web, looking up Wiccan sites. There's a million of them, and some of them are pretty intense."
Jenna laughed. "And some of them are so lame! Some of those people are so weird! And they have the cheesiest music."
"I like the ones with chat rooms," said Ethan. "If you get one where people know what they're talking about, it's really interesting. Sometimes they have spells and stuff to download."
"There's a lot about Yule coming up in a couple of months," said Sharon.
"Maybe we could have a Yule party," I said, caught up in their talk. Then I saw the looks that Raven and Bree were giving me: superior, snide looks as if I were an annoying little sister instead of the most talented student in our coven. My jaw set, and at that instant I saw a large, curled maple leaf that was drifting lazily earthward. Without thinking, I caught it with my mind and sent it floating over Raven's head.
I kept my gaze on it, holding it in place while it hovered over her shiny black hair. Then it rested, ever so lightly, on her head, and it became a ludicrous, laughable hat.
I laughed openly, pleased with myself, and Raven's eyes narrowed, not understanding. She couldn't feel the large leaf perching there like a flat brown pancake, but it looked absurd.
Jenna saw it next then our whole coven was looking at Raven and grinning, except Cal.
"What?" Raven snapped. "What are you looking at?"
Even Bree had to bite back a smile as she swept the leaf off Ravens head. "It was just a leaf," she said.
Flustered, Raven picked up her black bag just as the homeroom bell rang.
We all got up to go to class. I was still smiling when Cat leaned over me and whispered, "Remember the threefold law." He touched my cheek softly and then left, heading toward the other school entrance for his first class.
I swallowed. The Wiccan threefold law was one of the most important tenets of the craft. Basically it stated that anything you sowed, good or evil, would come back to you threefold, so always put good out there. Don't put bad. Cal was telling me (1) he knew I had controlled the leaf, and (2) he knew I was being mean when I did it. And it wasn't cool.
Taking a deep breath, I pulled my backpack strap over my shoulder.
As soon as Cal was out of earshot, Raven said nastily, "Okay, so he's yours—for now. But how long do you think that's going to last?"
"Yeah," Bree murmured. "Wait till he finds out you're a virgin. He'll find that pretty amusing."
My cheeks flamed. I had a sudden image of his hand under my shirt yesterday morning and how I had jumped.
Raven raised her eyebrows. "Don't tell me she's a virgin?"
"Oh, Raven, leave it," Beth said, brushing past her. Raven watched her for a second in surprise, then turned her attention back to me.
Bree and Raven laughed together, and I stared at Bree. How could she reveal such a personal thing about me? I kept my mouth stonily shut and kept walking to homeroom—which I shared with Bree, of course.
"Come on, Raven," said Bree, behind me. "Anyone looking at her can tell that isn't why he wants her."
I couldn't believe it. Bree, who had always told me I was too negative about my looks, who insisted my flat chest didn't matter, who had worked for years to get me to see myself as attractive. She was turning on me so completely.
"You know what it is, don't you?" Raven sniped on. Did either of them have any clue that I was ready to kill them both? I wondered. "Cal saw her, and it was witch at first sight."
I ran to class, hearing the echoes of their laughter floating behind me. Those bitches, I snarled to myself, u class I sat for ten minutes, trying to calm my breathing, trying to release my anger.
For just a moment I was glad I had been mean to Raven. I should have been ten times as mean. I couldn't help it. I wanted to wipe Bree and Raven out. I wanted to see them miserable.
CHAPTER 6
Searching
January 9, 1980
They found Morag Sheehan's body last evening. Down at the bottom of the cliffs, by old Jowson's farm. The tide would have taken her away and none of us the wiser, but it was a low tide because of the moon. And so she was found by young Billy Martin and Hugh Beecham. At first they thought she was the charred, rotted mast of a ship. But she wasn't. She was only a burned witch.
Of course Belwicket met before dawn. We hung blankets over the shutters inside and gathered around my folks' kitchen table. The thing is, Ma and I had out that powerful protection on Morag last year, and since then nothing had gone amiss with her. All was right as rain.
"Yo
u know what this means," said Paddy McTauish. "No human could have got close to her, not with that spell on her and all the ward—evil spells she was doing herself."
"What are you saying?" Ma asked.
"I'm saying she was killed by a witch," Paddy answered.
When he said that, of course it seemed obvious. Morag was killed by a witch. One of us? Surly not. Then is there someone in the neighborhood, someone we don't know about? Someone from a different coven?
It makes me cold to think of such evil.
Next circle we're going to scry. Until then I'm keeping a weather eye on everybody and everything.
— Bradhadair.
The first chance I had to tell Cal about my research was after school. He walked with me to Das Boot, and we stood by my car and talked. "I found out about Maeve Riordan," I said bluntly. "A little bit, anyway."
"Tell me about it," he said, but I saw him glance at his watch.
"Do you need to go?" I asked.
"In a minute," he said apologetically. "My mom needs me to help her this afternoon. One of her coven members is sick, and we're going to do some healing."
"You can do that?" It seemed every day I learned of new magickal possibilities.
"Sure," Cal said. "I'm not saying we'll definitely cure him, but he'll do a lot better than if we weren't working for him. But tell me what you found out."
"I ran a search on the computer," I said. "I hit a lot of dead ends. But I found her name on a genealogy site, which led me to a small article from the Meshomah Falls Herald. So I looked it up at the library."
"Where's Meshomah Falls?" asked Cal.
"Just a few hours from here. Anyway, the article said that a burned body had been identified as Maeve Riordan, formerly of Ballynigel, Ireland. She was twenty-three."
Cal wrinkled his brow. "Do you think that's her?" he asked.
I nodded. "I think it must be. I mean, there were other Maeve Riordans. But this one was close to here, and the timing's right. When she died, I would have been about seven months old."
"Did the article mention a baby?" asked Cal.
I shook my head.
"Huh." He stroked my hair. I wonder if there's somewhere else we could get more information. Let me think about it. Will you be okay? I don't want to leave, but I kind of have to."
"I'm okay," I said, looking up into his face, relishing the fact that he cared about me. And it wasn't just because I was a blood witch like him. Raven and Bree were just jealous—they didn't know what they were talking about.
We kissed gently, then Cal headed toward his car. I watched him drive off.
Motion caught my eye, and I glanced over to see Tamara and Janice about to get into Tamara's car. They grinned at me and raised their eyebrows suggestively. Tamara gave me a thumbs-up. I grinned back, embarrassed but pleased. As they drove off, it occurred to me that the three of us should try to see a movie soon.
"Skipping chess club?" came Robbie's voice.
I blinked and looked around to see Robbie loping toward me, sunlight flashing from his glasses. His choppy brown hair that only last month had looked so awful now seemed to I have a rakish trendiness.
I considered for a moment "Yeah. I am," I said. "I don't know—chess seems kind of pointless now."
"Not chess itself," Robbie said, his blue-gray eyes serious behind his ugly glasses. "Chess itself is still really awesome. It's beautiful, like a crystal."
I braced myself for one of Robbie's chess rants. He's almost in love with the game. But he just said, "It's just the club thing that's pointless now. The school thing." He looked at me. "After you've seen a friend of yours make a flower bloom, school and clubs and all of that seem kind of silly."
I felt proud and self-conscious at the same time. I loved the idea that I was gifted, that my heritage was showing in my ability. But I was also so used to blending in with the woodwork, not making waves, standing happily in Bree's shadow, it was hard to get used to being noticed so much.
"Are you going home?" Robbie asked.
"I don't know. I don't really feel like it," I said. In fact, the thought of facing my parents made my stomach knot up. Then I had a better idea. "Hey, do you want to go to Practical Magick?" I felt a mixture of guilt and pleasure as I suggested it. My mom definitely wouldn't approve of my going to a Wicca store. But so what? It wasn't my problem.
"Cool," said Robbie. "Then we'll hit Baskin-Robbins. Leave your car here, and I'll bring you back to it."
"Let's do it." As I was walking up the street to Robbie's car, I caught a flash of Mary K.'s straight auburn hair.
Glancing over, my eyes locked on Mary K. and Bakker plastered together against the side of the life sciences building. My eyes narrowed. It was the most bizarre feeling, seeing my fourteen-year-old sister making out with someone.
"Go, Bakker," Robbie murmured, and I punched his arm.
I couldn't help looking at them as we approached Robbie's dark red VW Beetle. I saw Mary K., laughing, squirming out of Bakker's arms. He followed her and caught her again.
"Bakker!" Mary K. squealed, her hair flying.
"Mary K.!" I called suddenly, without knowing why.
She looked up, still caught in his arms. "Hey."
"I'm getting a ride with Robbie," I said, gesturing to him.
Nodding, she motioned toward Bakker. "Bakker will take me home. Right?" she asked him.
He nuzzled her neck. "Whatever you say."
Suppressing a feeling of unease, I got into Robbie's car.
The drive north to Red Kill took only about twenty-five minutes. After Das Boot, Robbie's car felt small and intimate. I noticed Robbie squinting and rubbing his eyes. "You've been doing that a lot lately," I said.
"My eyes are killing me. I need new glasses," he said. "My mom made an appointment for tomorrow."
"Good."
"What was Bree talking about this morning?" he asked. "About your parents' new reading material?"
I wrinkled my nose and sighed. "Well, Bree is really angry at me," I said, stating the obvious. "It's all about Cal—she wanted to go out with him, and he wanted to go out with me. So now she hates me, I guess. Anyway—you know I was keeping my Wicca books at her house?"
Robbie nodded, his eyes on the road.
"She dumped them all on my porch yesterday morning," I explained. "My mom went ballistic, it's all a big mess," I summed up inadequately.
"Oh," said Robbie.
"Yeah."
"I knew Bree liked Cal," said Robbie. "I didn't think they would be a good couple."
I smiled at him, amused. "Bree would make anyone into a good couple. Anyway, let's not talk about it. Things have been kind of… awful. The only good thing is that Cal and I got together, and it's really great."
Robbie glanced over at me and nodded. "Hmmm," he said
"Hmmm, what?" I asked. "Do you mean, hmmm, that's I great? Or hmmm, I'm not so sure?"
"More like—hmmm, it's complicated, I guess," Robbie told me. "You know, because of Bree and everything."
I stared at him, but he was watching the road again, and I couldn't read his profile.
I looked out the window. I wanted to talk about something that we hadn't really hashed out. "Robbie, I really am sorry about that spell. You know. The one about your skin."
He shifted gears without saying anything. "I won't ever do it again," I promised once more.
"Don't say that. Just promise you won't do it without telling me," he said as he parked his Beetle in a tiny space. He turned to me. "I was mad that you did it without telling me," he said. "But I mean, Jesus, look at me" He gestured to his newly smooth face. "I never thought I'd look like this. Thought I'd be a pizza face forever. Then have awful scars my whole fife." He glanced out over the steering wheel. "Now I look in the mirror and I'm happy. Girls look at me—girls who used to ignore me or feel sorry for me." He shrugged. "How could I be upset about that?"
I reached out and touched his arm. "Thanks."
He grinned at me and
swung open his door. "Let's go get in touch with our inner witches."
As usual, Practical Magick was dim and scented with herbs, oils, and incense. After the chilly November sunshine, the store felt warm and welcoming. Inside, it was divided in two, one half floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and the other half shelves covered with candles, herbs, essential oils, altar items and magical symbols, ritual daggers called athames, robes, posters, even Wiccan fridge magnets.
I left Robbie looking at books and went over to the herb section. Learning about working with them could take my whole life and then some, I thought. The idea was daunting but also thrilling. I had used herbs in the spell that had cured Robbie's acne, and I had felt almost transported in the herb garden of the Killburn Abbey, when I'd gone there on a church trip.
I was looking through a guide to magickal plants of the northeast when I felt a tingling sensation. Glancing up, I saw David, one of the store's clerks. I tensed. He always put me on edge, and I could never pinpoint why.
I remembered how he had asked me what clan I was in and how he had told Alyce, the other clerk, that I was a witch who pretended not to be a witch.
Now I watched him warily as he walked toward me, his short, gray hair looking silver in the store's fluorescent light.
"Something about you has changed," he said in his soft voice, his brown eyes on me.
I thought about Samhain, when the night had exploded around me, and about Sunday, when my family had blown apart. I didn't say anything.
"You're a blood witch," he stated, nodding as if he were simply confirming something I'd said. "And now you know it."
How can he tell? I wondered with a tinge of fear.
"Were you really surprised?" he asked me. I looked around for Robbie. He was still over by the books.
"Yes, I was kind of surprised," I admitted.
"Do you have your BOS?" he asked. "Book of Shadows?"
"I've started one," I said, thinking of the beautiful blank book with marbled paper that I had bought a couple of weeks before. In it I had written down the spell I had done for Robbie and also about my experiences on Samhain. But why did David want to know?