by Shannon Page
As the ornate grandmother clock in the front hallway chimed midnight, Leonora began the incantation. Her murmuring voice lulled us all, soothing everyone and bringing us into light trances. After a time, I felt Nementhe join us, floating in the center of the pentagram. Calm and rightness settled over me at last.
Leonora finished chanting, and Nementhe gave the ritual response: Thank you for welcoming me into your midst, Mother.
“We thank you for returning to this plane to guide us, Ancestress.” Leonora reached forward with her right index and middle fingers and closed the small gap in the line of salt before her, and we were in Circle. A glowing light rose from the pentagram. The line of salt also glowed, drawing power from the intersection of ley lines beneath the house.
Nementhe communed with us for a time without words; I felt her regard brush over me, seeking Rose’s energy.
When Nementhe was done with her gentle scrutiny, Leonora spoke once more. She reported to our ancestress what important collaborative spells the coven had cast this week, what communications were made with other covens, the status of our financial investments, and the like. She mentioned nothing about Logan’s body, or about Gregorio being in the coven house. Had she told Nementhe these things silently? I wanted to squirm almost as badly as the witchlets had.
I hated secrets.
After Leonora, each sister was invited to share. Honor spoke of the winds and the rushes and the reeds and the journey ahead. She made very little sense to me, but my older sisters nodded solemnly. Many sisters had not much to say that was new. Despite my impatience and curiosity, I felt myself once again relaxing into the comfortable, well-worn rhythm of the ritual, and stopped attending very closely to their words. When it came Niad’s turn, though, I perked up; but she only reported an unusual dream.
Should I mention my dream? About the cats? I wasn’t sure.
When it was finally my turn, I began with, “Nementhe, can you share with me any insight about when my daughter will be born?”
There was a pause. Rosemary Luna walks many paths, she finally answered.
“What? That’s not her name—she’s Rosemary Leonora,” I blurted. My coven mother squeezed my hand in warning. “I am so sorry, Ancestress; but I’m not quite sure what you mean?” I added, as politely as I could.
It is not for me to tell her story.
“I’m sure Nementhe has larger things to worry about than the precise date the child is born,” Leonora muttered, her testiness from earlier surging once more. “She hardly even shares our notion of time any longer.”
Luna, Nementhe said. Luna.
What was she talking about? I had not known Nementhe well while she was on this side of the veil; she had long since retired from teaching by the time I was a student here, spending much of her time in her room, speaking mostly to the oldest sisters. She was rumored to be slightly mad. Because her going to the Beyond had created the vacancy which I filled by joining the coven, we were supposed to have a special connection. If we did, it was largely symbolic.
Our dealings with her in Circle over the last twenty-five years had never revealed any signs of confusion or madness, though. This was unsettling.
After another pause, she said, Do you have more to share, my daughter?
“No, thank you, Nementhe,” I said. Now I was a little frightened to mention my sort-of lucid dream of a few weeks ago, and how Elnor hadn’t felt it at all. “That’s all.”
“We all thank you for your love and wisdom, for your guidance in our mortal lives, and for your continued intercession from your much greater place,” Leonora said, reaching for her athame to break the Circle. “Until next week, Ancestress.”
The gathered sisters murmured their ritual farewells.
Light filtered back into the room as candles were extinguished and lamps relit themselves. The cats rejoined their mistresses as we put the room back in order.
“Calendula, I am not sure why you felt the need to bother our ancestress with such trivialities,” Leonora said, as I scooted an easy chair back into position.
“I hardly think a baby is trivial,” I said.
“You are being deliberately obtuse, and I do not appreciate it,” she said. “Of course the baby is not trivial. The exact moment of her arrival, however, is.”
I shivered slightly. It was never fun when Leonora was in this mood. But it would pass. It always did. “What was wrong with Nementhe?” I asked her. “She wasn’t making any sense. What was all that about ‘Luna’?” Several other sisters gathered around, looking worried. Even Niad frowned.
“She may well have been referring to the full moon of the twenty-ninth of October,” Leonora said. “Two days before Samhain. Your daughter will surely make her appearance by then.”
I looked back at her, stifling the urge to argue as my brain began to re-engage. What if Nementhe had been trying to send me some subtle message? She, at least, would not be confused about who Rose’s father was: denizens of the Beyond saw and understood vastly more than we did on this plane. She had never spoken to us in code before…at least, not that I had ever been aware. “I’m sure you’re right. Thank you.” I smiled and turned to help Sirianna with one of the loveseats.
Leonora nodded, then said to the gathered coven, “Are there any other urgent matters that need tending to before we retire?”
Twelve witches shook their heads in unison.
I was tempted to flee to my house, but it had been my practice to spend at least Tuesday nights here, if not more; I didn’t want to trip Leonora’s temper yet again today. I climbed the stairs, then tried to arrange myself, a bellyful of baby, and a cat into a single bed.
That went about as well as one might expect.
As much as I would have loved to continue avoiding Gregorio, I needed to know what was going on.
Sebastian Fallon greeted me at the clinic’s front door. “I thought I felt your presence nearby,” he said, pulling me into a sideways hug.
“It’s good to see you. Thanks for the other night.”
“How are you doing?” He drew back and looked at me.
“I’m all right. No more weird dreams.” I patted my belly. “This is pretty much the biggest thing going on in my life. No pun intended.”
He snickered, appraising my bulge. “It is getting hard to miss. When do you think—next week?”
“Or the week after. Leonora thinks just before Samhain.”
He lifted his hands. “May I?”
“Sure, but…inside?” I glanced down the street. Though it wasn’t very busy, there were still humans passing by.
“Oh! Of course.”
I followed him into the building and then to one of the small exam rooms in the first hallway, sat in the padded examination chair, and leaned back. Sebastian put his hands on my clothed belly and sent his senses into me, doing his usual gentle probe into Rosemary’s health, essence, development, and anything else a healer-in-training would want to look for.
After a few minutes, he removed his hands and looked up at me. “She seems great—very strong, robust. Ready, I’d even say.”
“I’m ready,” I agreed, hefting myself up out of the chair. “Whew.”
He smiled to watch my struggle. “It must be hard to get used to, with it changing all the time.”
“You have no idea.”
“So, did you just come in for an exam, or—”
“Not at all,” I said. “I hear Gregorio brought Logan’s body here for further study?”
“Ah.” He frowned. “Yes.”
“Have you guys learned anything?”
Sebastian stepped over to the exam room’s door, opened it, and peered down the hallway. Then he came back in and shut the door. “Gosh, I could use a coffee. Want to join me?”
I raised an eyebrow, then nodded. This again, eh? “Coffee sounds fantastic.”
Five minutes later, we were squeezed into a noisy café South of Market. “Something isn’t right,” he murmured over a double cappuccino.
I leaned over my wretched cup of chamomile tea. I should have gone for mint. “I’ve had similar thoughts myself. What’s going on there?”
Sebastian shook his head. “Dr. A. won’t let me, or anyone else, even see the body. It’s not here, anyway—he took it to his Berkeley lab, and he’s spending a whole lot more time there. He’s recruited a bunch of ‘volunteers’ and isn’t telling anyone what for. He insists he’s perfecting something and needs to be able to concentrate on it fully…but that’s no reason not to let any of us look at whatever he’s doing.”
“Volunteers? What do you mean?”
“Unaffiliated witches and a few young warlocks. I don’t like it.”
I felt a coldness in my belly. “That sounds like…”
“Yeah. Like what Flavius did.”
Or supposedly did. “Are they—where are they—” I couldn’t quite put the question together. “Is he doing, whatever he’s doing, with the volunteers in Berkeley too?”
“You mean are they going to the lab there? Yes, though some of them check in here. I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Is there any way of telling if they’re still…around?” The implications of my question were awful, but I didn’t know how else to put it.
He sipped his coffee. “So far as I know. But it’s hard to check, without…” His hand trembled slightly as he set the cup back in the saucer. “Callie, I just don’t know what to think. He’s my mentor, and he’s taught me so much; I trust him implicitly.” It hurt to hear his words—I’d felt that way myself, not all that long ago—and it hurt even worse to keep this to myself. “But I don’t even know the full extent of his powers,” Sebastian went on. “I’ve never known anyone so old! If he’s just gotten stronger over the centuries…” He bit his lip and glanced nervously around the café.
“He is powerful, but he can’t hear us here—we’re blocks away,” I assured him, though I didn’t say the warlock’s name out loud either.
“How do you know?”
I shrugged. “No one is that strong. And if he was using that much power, we’d feel it. Wouldn’t we?”
Sebastian frowned. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Unless he knew how to mask it.”
“But, I have been thinking…” I paused, wondering just how to say this. “I haven’t ever known anyone that old either.”
“You’ve known him a long time.”
“All my life. He’s a good friend of my father’s. He taught me most of what I know about biogenetics.”
“Has he always been like this?”
“Like how, exactly?” I thought I knew what he meant, but I wanted him to say it.
“Well, you know—paranoid.”
I sighed. “No, not overtly so. But he was always…polished? Guarded?” I thought for another moment. “What I mean is, it’s always been really important to him to be in control.”
“It’s a fine line between control and paranoia, don’t you think?”
“Indeed.” I stirred my tea. I wouldn’t be so foolish as to add more sugar, but wow, I wished there was something I could do to make it even slightly palatable. “Why do you think he’s still here?”
“You mean, why hasn’t he decided to go Beyond?”
“Yeah.”
“Because he likes it here?” Sebastian tried for a teasing smile, but it came out somewhat sickly.
I leaned forward, speaking even more softly. “Are we sure he’s…still entirely in his right mind?” That was about as far as I was willing to test the waters. In fact, probably too far. But surely Gregorio had better things to do than monitor my conversations all day, didn’t he?
And I wasn’t giving away any precious secrets. Nothing wrong with asking questions. Even leading questions.
Sebastian’s eyes widened. “I’ve seen no evidence of mental decay. Just this odd possessiveness.”
“Okay. Forget I asked.” I shrugged, as if none of this mattered.
“I mean, a change in behavior could signal the onset of senility. But, Callie, I doubt it. He did find out who was behind the essence-stealing, after all, and set up the trap to snare him. That’s not the work of someone who’s losing his marbles.”
“True,” I had to concede. I couldn’t push the idea any farther. Though the point still stood: if Gregorio had committed the entire crime and set up a fall guy to take the blame for it, that too would hardly be the work of a senile old warlock. I took another sip of my tepid nasty tea.
“And even if he was losing it,” Sebastian went on, “what could we do about it?”
I kind of wished I hadn’t brought it up, though I was also relieved. Sebastian wasn’t going to let this go. I’d wanted an ally, some company, someone to confide in…too bad for me. But also good! I hoped. “Nothing. Everyone gets to decide when they want to go Beyond.” Unless some horrible criminal decides for them, I thought. “But usually they do it long before eight hundred years.”
“He does enjoy being unusual,” Sebastian said, shaking his head.
“Indeed he does. So, are you able to accomplish anything else in the lab these days, or are you all just standing around waiting for Dr. A. to let you in on his secrets?”
Sebastian brightened. “Oh! Actually, one of the healers showed me something really interesting…”
Thus diverted, he filled me in as he finished his coffee. I supposed it was interesting, if you actually wanted to be a healer. When we stood to go, I left my tea half-finished; it was disgusting, and my belly left very little room for food and drink anyway. I sort of felt hungry all the time, and mostly couldn’t eat much. I would be very glad when Rose decided to join us out here. Pregnancy was all very nice, but it was pretty all-consuming.
When I got home, I found Petrana tidying up, as she did most days when I hadn’t asked her to do something specific. Today she was working in the front room on the second floor—the room I’d decided was the library/reading room, though I didn’t spend a lot of time lounging there reading.
“Are you using magical power to do that?” I asked her, trying to recover from the enormous task of climbing the stairs to get here.
“No, Mistress Callie. Would you like me to?”
“No, no,” I said. “You’re doing great just as you are.” I turned to head for my bedroom. Maybe a little nap would perk me up.
If Petrana wasn’t directly draining my power by using magic, was she still a drain just by the fact of existing—or because of the potential power resting within her? She was supposed to be self-powering, self-propelling, as it were.
Yes, it would probably have been smart to have researched this part of golem-lore before I’d made her. I’d focused so hard on her creation, I hadn’t really given much thought to what happened afterwards.
You’re supposed to unmake them long before this, I could almost hear Leonora lecturing me.
But why? She was so very useful.
Besides…she didn’t seem like a machine, despite what the lore said. She felt like a living, sentient creature. I was just supposed to kill her, when I didn’t need her anymore?
No, thanks.
My ringing cell phone woke me from my nap. How nice to hear from Raymond, I thought, reaching for it with a smile. It was good to be on speaking terms with him again.
I just barely noticed in time that it was an unfamiliar number. “Hello?”
“Callie? It’s Christine.”
“Oh, hi! You called!”
She chuckled. “I told you I would. Sorry to take so long, and I only have a minute right now, but I wanted to get on your calendar for lunch. How’s next Thursday?”
I thought a moment. That was two days before the coven house’s big annual Samhain party. Even more importantly, that was the day of Rosemary’s arrival—if Leonora’s assumption was correct. “Hmm, that’s not the best; I might be having the baby that day. Can you do any earlier?”
“Oh! Are you inducing? Where are you having it?”
“No, I’m not inducing, I just…I hav
e a feeling. It’s my due date.”
She laughed. “Callie, you know those dates are estimates at best. We usually don’t even know the exact time of conception.”
You humans don’t, I thought, though probably they could narrow it down in most cases. Unless humans were even more bunny-like than I’d previously understood. “Oh, I know. But I’d like to leave the day free anyway—call me superstitious. Can you do any time this week? Or earlier next week?”
“Can’t—I’m out of town all this week, and next week is slammed—Thursday is all I had. What about the following Tuesday?”
“That should be fine.”
“Assuming you’re not in the middle of having a baby then,” she said with a chuckle. “Though if you are, at least I’ll know what to do about it.”
“Right, you will.”
“And if you have a newborn by then, we’ll just reschedule.”
“Or I can bring her along.”
I heard a brief pause on her end. That’s right; human women needed more time to recover post-partum, didn’t they? “Well, let’s just check in with each other,” she said. “I’ll call when I get back, on the weekend. And if you can’t answer or can’t call me back right away, I’ll know what’s going on. You just take care of yourself, okay?”
“Don’t worry. I will.”
“Good luck!”
Nice as it might be to have an extra midwife around, if for some reason Rose hadn’t arrived by the time of our lunch date, she certainly wouldn’t come then. Not during the waning moon; we would be safe. I’d be happy to bring a newborn to lunch, though I wouldn’t want to freak Christine out. Well, as she said, we’d play it by ear.
I really looked forward to getting to know Christine better. Why the heck hadn’t Raymond ever introduced us before?