by Terri Garey
Sweep out evil, sweep out gloom!”
And darned if she didn’t sweep her imaginary gloom out into the hallway, just as if she was sweeping dirt out the back door of her house. Then she flipped her broom upside down, so the bristles were pointing up again, and closed the door.
Collective murmurs of satisfaction came from the old ladies on the beds, including an approving grunt from Odessa, but I didn’t dare make eye contact with any of them.
“Helen will now cast the circle of air,” Bijou announced, very formally.
A tiny little woman with her hair in a bun struggled up off the bed, aided by the women next to her. She picked up something from the bedside table. It looked like another besom, only much smaller—a hand-sized bundle of twigs, tied with twine. Then she picked up the lighter sitting beside it and flicked her Bic like she’d done it a million times. Holding the lighter to the bundle of twigs, she set it on fire. It flared, then subsided, one end glowing red and smoking like a chimney.
“Sacred sage, burning free,
Clear our path, help us see.”
Helen’s voice was as thin and reedy as her body. She began waving the bundle of sticks over everyone’s head.
“Protect us as we gather here,
Banish worry, banish fear.”
If I were them, I’d be worried about sparks falling in my hair. Or setting off the smoke detector.
“Cast a circle, round about,
Evil thoughts, get thee out!”
The burning sage made my nose sting and my eyes water. It smelled a little like weed, and I hoped we didn’t get busted for it. I could see it now: Seriously, Officer, we’re not smoking pot, we’re just burning herbs to drive away evil spirits.
Thankfully, that part was soon over. Helen went into the bathroom and doused her sage sticks under running water, while one of the other ladies waved a red ostrich plume (probably from somebody’s hat) around the room, helping to dissipate the smoke.
“Vera will now cast the circle of earth,” Bijou said calmly.
Vera was as round as Helen was thin, and she popped up from the bed with a bowl in her hands.
I assumed it would be dirt—the maids would’ve loved that—but it turned out to be salt, which she sprinkled in a circle directly around my chair, murmuring some chant about purification and protection. Frankly, I’d stopped listening.
Then Bijou stood up and moved to the table beside Odessa. It was a desk, really, where busy businessmen could handle their business while staying at the Embassy Suites. There were candles on it, which I’d noticed before but paid little attention to. Now I quickly counted six white ones, and one black, plus a bowl full of something right in the middle.
Bijou lit the six white candles, while a couple of the other ladies got up and turned off the bedside lamps and the light in the entryway.
And that was when I started to get nervous, the flickering candlelight reminding me of at least two other occasions when I’d ended up scared shitless—once in a hidden voodoo room and the other in the basement of an old house in Savannah. Candlelight and romance were great, but candlelight and rituals seemed to be a bad combination.
I got even more nervous when all the old ladies, including Bijou, formed a circle around my chair, holding hands. No more sweet little smiling faces; no more smiles, period. Odessa was the only one still sitting. For the first time ever, I wished I could join her over there, snug in her corner.
Estelle, the woman who’d waved at me earlier, cleared her throat. As if that had been the cue they’d been waiting for, they all started chanting, in unison:
“Bide the Wiccan Laws we must
In perfect love and perfect trust.
Cast the circle thrice about
To keep the evil spirits out,
To bind the spell every time
Let the spell be spake in rhyme.”
Well, that explained at least one question I had as to why everything they said sounded like a nursery rhyme.
Then they recited a bunch of stuff about the moon, and wind, and burning and stuff, none of which made the least bit of sense to me.
“Merry meet and merry part,
Bright the cheeks, warm the heart,
Mind the Threefold Law you should
Three times bad and three times good.”
Three seemed to be a big number for Wiccans, for some reason. Maybe I should use it when I played the lottery.
“Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill;
An ye harm none, do what ye will.”
I figured I was supposed to feel better by now, but I didn’t.
Bijou stepped back from the circle, and her place was immediately filled in by the two women on either side of her joining their own hands.
I watched as she went back to the candles and, picking up a white one, used it to light the black one. Then, using the black one, she lit whatever was in the bowl in the center of the candles. A weird scent filled the air, mingling with the lingering scent of burning sage, sweet and spicy at the same time. Then, still holding the black candle, she walked toward me. The women unclasped hands to let her inside the circle, then clasped them again as she stood by my chair.
“After the warding spell is cast,” she said to me, “you must say, ‘I cast you out’, quite firmly. Then blow this black candle out, as hard as you can.”
I nodded, to show I understood, but kept my mouth shut. I just wanted this over.
“Whatever evil threatens here,
We cast you out, we have no fear.”
The women repeated what she said word for word. It was eerie, and I couldn’t stop the scene from Macbeth from flashing through my mind. All we needed was a cauldron and some cackling.
“Harmful wishes, dark of night,
Be dispelled by the light,
As the moon reflects the sea,
As we will, so mote it be!”
She thrust the black candle in front of my face, startling me.
Taking the hint, I said loudly, “I cast you out!” then blew out the candle.
“Ah.” There was a collective sigh of relief from the old ladies.
I looked around, bewildered, as they dropped each other’s hands and started chattering like a flock of hens.
“Wasn’t that wonderful? I feel marvelous.”
The lights came on as the clucking continued. “It was magical, wasn’t it? I swear I felt a tingle down my spine during the earth circle.”
“That was your arthritis, dear, but I must agree it was wondrous.”
My stunned gaze went to Odessa, who regarded me calmly for a moment, then leaned over and blew the white candles out, one by one. The stuff in the bowl wasn’t even smoldering.
“Now, I want you to go home and take a ritual bath to cleanse yourself of any lingering negativity,” said Grandma Bijou briskly. She thrust a little bag into my hand. “Put this in the water, just like you would bath salts.”
“That was it?” I had to admit, I was surprised by how abruptly the whole thing ended. No lightning? No thunder? No evil spirits popping up to say, ‘Boo’?
Grandma Bijou gave me a little mock frown. “What did you expect, dear? Lightning? Thunder? Evil spirits popping up to say, ‘Boo’?”
With a sigh, I gave up. Having a sensitive for a grandmother meant I was never going to be able to truly hide what I was thinking.
Not that I was any good at that to begin with.
“Off you go,” she said, making shooing motions with her hands. “Bath time. No dilly-dallying.”
CHAPTER 22
I’d already had two showers today, but a long, hot bath didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Maybe some Elvis Costello on the CD player and a second glass of wine to go along with it. Might keep me from wondering why Joe still wasn’t answering his phone, though it was almost nine o’clock.
Luckily for me, I didn’t have to wonder long—his BMW was sitting in my driveway when I pulled up. Breathing a sigh of relief, I put the car in park and got out of it in record time.
Joe was sitting on my porch swing, waiting.
“Hey, baby!” I forced myself to sound cheerful and upbeat. Though I was bursting with questions, I only allowed myself one. “Where’ve you been?”
“I had some things to think about.” He didn’t get up from the swing, and my heart sank at the quietness of his tone.
I kept a smile, leaning in for a kiss before I unlocked the front door. There was beer on his breath.
Sammy’s words came back to me. “They’re at the Blue Heron, on Piedmont. A life-or-death emergency requiring copious amounts of alcohol, I’m sure.”
So he’d had a beer. So what? “You missed some great barbecued ribs at Nellie Belle’s,” I said lightly. “I needed serious sustenance before I went to meet with Bijou and her friends.”
A noncommittal grunt answered me as he got up from the swing. “Why don’t I have a key to your place?” he asked, abruptly. “You have a key to mine.”
Surprised, I stopped, the key in question already halfway into the lock. “I—” Why hadn’t I given him a key? Shrugging, I just said, “I’ll have one made for you tomorrow.”
Another grunt. He definitely wasn’t acting himself, and it was beginning to make me nervous.
“Is everything okay?” I’d left a lamp on in the foyer and in the living room—coming home to a dark house was a habit I’d left behind once I’d started seeing spirits—so I could see his face clearly as I put my purse down on the table by the door.
He wasn’t smiling. There was definitely something on his mind—the way he ran his fingers through his hair as he walked past me was a dead giveaway.
“I can’t stand this,” he said quietly.
My heart stuttered.
“I have patients to see, people who were depending on me.”
The rhythm steadied, racing now.
“Four years of medical school, a year of internship, two and a half more as a resident.” He swung around to face me. “Did you know I’m one of the youngest E.R. department heads in the country?”
I shook my head, not trusting my voice at the moment.
He went on. “I’ve worked my ass off since high school for a job like this. Scholarships weren’t enough to pay my college tuition, so I had to get student loans and part-time jobs. More student loans to get through medical school. Sleepless nights, sleepless days, no personal life.” Pacing back and forth in front of the couch, hands on hips. “All of it, taken away in an instant.” He snapped his fingers, quick and hard. “Because of a woman.”
I seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. Or move. Or speak.
Joe stopped pacing and stood staring down at the carpet. “That Lisa is a piece of work,” he muttered.
Breath came back to my lungs with a rush. My knees were wobbly, and so was my voice. “L-Lisa?”
“Oh, yeah.” He still wasn’t looking at me, not realizing how close I’d come to complete and total heart failure. “She laid it all out on the table tonight. Called me up, wanted me to meet her so we could talk about lifting my suspension. ‘I can make it all go away,’” he mimicked, in a mocking falsetto. “She has those old farts on the board eating out of her hand.” Shaking his head, he made a disgusted noise. “What a power trip that woman is on. She’s actually trying to pressure me into bed with her—how’s that for a turnaround on the old sexual-harassment cliché, huh? Can you believe it?” He finally lifted his head and looked at me.
What he saw got his attention—I obviously wasn’t as good at hiding my emotions as I thought. “Are you okay?” He came striding toward me, hand outstretched. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
I tried to laugh, still shaky. “I might be.”
He had me by the elbow now, slipping his other arm around my waist. I let him lead me to the couch and sank down on it, shaking my head. He went down on one knee in front of me, eyes searching, hands holding mine. Looking him full in the face, seeing the concern all over it, I decided to be honest.
“I thought you were about to dump me.”
His eyebrows shot to the ceiling. “What? What are you talking about?”
What a lovesick wimp I was—I knew it, but there was nothing I could do about it. “You were talking about your career, and how it’d been ruined by a woman…”
Comprehension dawned. He started to smile.
“…I’d been trying to reach you, and you weren’t answering your phone…”
His grin got wider.
“…and you said you couldn’t stand this anymore and I thought…”
He burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded. “I’m pouring my heart out here!”
“You love me,” he said, still laughing.
“Duh,” I said scathingly, feeling defensive.
“No, I mean you really love me.” He was smiling so big it made me want to smile, too, except I was too busy feeling like an idiot. “You’re afraid of losing me.”
“And this is funny because…?”
He rose from his kneeling position and sat next to me on the couch, pulling me against him. “Because it isn’t going to happen,” he said softly. “And because I’m the one who’s constantly worried about losing you.”
I looked at him beneath my lashes. “You are?”
He made an exasperated noise. “For such a smart girl, you can be pretty stupid.”
A gasp of outrage escaped me, but Joe wasn’t finished. “I lost you once already, Nicki. I pulled the sheet over your white, sweet face, thinking your eyes were closed forever.” The pain in his voice kept me quiet. He paused a second, looking away. “I didn’t even know you at the time, but I thought my heart would break at what I must’ve missed.”
He turned his head toward me again, eyes roving my face and hair. “Then you came back. And then I found out I had to share you with invisible people, a gay guy, an elderly transvestite, a twin sister who used to be my wife, and a heart condition.” He smiled again, just a little. “And oh, by the way, Satan himself has the hots for you, so I have to deal with that.”
“Joe, I—”
“Shh,” he murmured, shaking his head. “And you wonder why I worry about losing you?” His eyes went all tender, while I turned into a giant pile of mush. “That’s what’s so funny, Nick. It’s kind of nice to see the shoe on the other foot for a change, and have you worried about losing me.”
The mush overflowed, and I burst into tears.
Much to his credit, Joe didn’t try and get me to stop. He just let me cry, let me cling to him—smearing mascara and snot all over his shirt in the process—and let me be a lovesick wimp for a few more minutes.
And when I was all cried out, he got up, went into the kitchen for a paper towel for me to dry my tears and blow my nose in, and handed it to me without a word.
“I am such a wuss,” I finally said, throat still clogged with tears.
“Yes, but you’re my wuss,” he answered, quite seriously.
Rolling my eyes, I attempted to wipe the worst of the eyeliner from my cheeks.
He plopped himself down on the couch next to me, watching as I tried to mop up the aftereffects of my waterworks. “You didn’t tell me how things went with Bijou tonight.” I knew he was just trying to get my mind off my meltdown. He knew all about the plans for the cleansing ceremony, of course, even if he thought it was a bunch of hoo-ha, just like I did.
“It was fine, I guess.” I waved the paper towel vaguely. “A lot of rhyme, not a whole lot of reason. Tons of buildup without a concrete conclusion. Kinda like foreplay, without the orgasm.”
He stood up and started unbuttoning his soggy, smeared shirt. “Finally,” he said, with a smile and an exaggerated sigh. “Something I can fix.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, teary-eyed or not. But then I remembered something. “Um, I have to take a bath first.”
He quirked an eyebrow at me, tugging his shirt from his jeans. “Why? Have you done something dirty?”
I threw the paper towe
l at him, giggling at his suggestive teasing. “Not today.”
“Ah. Well, we’re about to remedy that situation.” Now shirtless, Joe tossed the shirt onto the couch and started unbuckling his belt.
“Bijou told me to take a ritual bath as soon as I got home,” I said, feeling less and less inclined to do so. “To cleanse myself of negativity.”
The sound of a zipper completely stole my concentration. Either that, or it was just the sight of a gorgeous, tousle-headed Joe wearing nothing but a partially unzipped pair of jeans and a smile.
He leaned in, placing one hand on the arm of the couch, until his lips were inches from mine. “Did she say you had to take it by yourself?”
“No,” I whispered, cupping his face with my palms, then letting them slide over the smooth expanse of wide, bare shoulders.
“Problem solved,” he murmured.
CHAPTER 23
I woke with a start, knowing something was wrong, but not knowing what it was. The bed beside me was empty.
Then I heard it again—the sound of retching in the bathroom. Throwing back the covers, I headed that way automatically; I didn’t think Joe had had that many beers.
But it wasn’t Joe. I flipped on the bathroom light to see bony shoulders, blond hair, a figure so stick-thin I could count the knobs of her spinal column through her T-shirt. Crystal Cowart was hunched over my toilet, puking her nonexistent guts out.
I stood in the doorway, not knowing what to do or what to say. Part of me just wanted to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head, but there was another part of me that hated to leave her there, alone and obviously miserable. I’d done my share of puking back in my wild days, and it was no fun. When you were dead, like Crystal, even a cold washcloth to the face wouldn’t help.
Finally, she raised her head and sank back on her skinny haunches. “What are you looking at?” she asked me, sullenly. “Never seen anyone throw up before?”