Odd Stuff (20 page)

“You have a lot of other stuff on your mind, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Do you have a potion for that, too?”

I was kidding, but she nodded and pulled out a small vial of liquid from her purse. She dabbed some on her fingertips then put the two wet fingers on my forehead. “Sun by day and moon by night, let all dark thoughts be put to flight.”

And it was almost weirder than the granola that made you not-cold. Suddenly, I wasn’t worried about anything.

That there was one neat spell. I wish I had known Julia before every job interview I had ever had. I looked at her and paid more attention to her explanations. “There are eight here tonight, counting us. That is half of our coven, plus our priestess. If the men were here, we would number sixteen. We make a circle and—well, you will see from there.”

I nodded and followed her to join the other women, who greeted us with lots of hugs and, “Blessed Be.”

I smiled at them, trying not to look too confused or out of place. They probably all knew I felt that way, anyway. I mean, they were witches, right?

One of them took a small black handled dagger and began drawing a circle around us once we’d all joined hands in a circle. Another person rang a bell.

The person standing to the east raised her hands above her, palms up, and called out, “Watchtower of the East, I call you. By the power of Air, that is mine to call, let this circle be a barrier separating inside from outside, so that nothing may pass except by our will. As this circle meets, so mote it be.”

Someone rang the bell again. The wind seemed to pick up and make what seemed to be a wall around the line cut in the snow and sand.

Emma, the one I thought of as the Amazon, stood to the north, and she raised her hands. “Watchtower of the North, I call you. By the power of Earth, that is mine to call, let this circle be a barrier separating inside from outside, so that nothing may pass except by our will. As this circle meets, so mote it be.” The very ground beneath our feet trembled.

The older woman—Delores, I think her name was—raised her hands. “Watchtower of the South, I call you. By the power of Fire, that is mine to call, let this circle be a barrier separating inside from outside, so that nothing may pass except by our will. As this circle meets, so mote it be.”

The candles flickered and the scent of bayberry grew stronger in the air. I had the unrelated thought that it must have been magic that kept them lit anyway, since it is very hard to keep candles lit outside.

Standing next to me, Julia raised her hands. “Watchtower of the West, I call you. By the power of Water, that is mine to call, let this circle be a barrier separating inside from outside, so that nothing may pass except by our will. As this circle meets, so mote it be.” Unlike the other three reasonably mild responses from the elements, Julia’s words caused water to flow over the break wall and come at us. It flowed around the circle, but didn’t cross into it.

Everyone stared. Julia dropped her arms. “Wow, and we aren’t even having a water ritual. Why did it do that, Delores?”

Delores looked at me, rather than Julia. “Water is a tricky element. And maybe we have someone with an affinity for it.”

I shifted my feet and looked away.

“In the name of the Goddess, we come here to—”

I drifted off into my own thoughts for the rest of the circle. I wondered how much I really had to do with the water coming toward us. I wondered, since the sun was setting, if Vance was waking up. I wondered if I concentrated on what they were doing, would more water was going to wash up, and decided I would not pay any more attention to the ceremony, just in case.

Before long, they called the elements again, closed the circles and gathered up their tools and miscellany and began pulling out food. Conversation shifted and turned to the sort of things you expected to hear when women were gathered—food, family, work, children.

Emma came over and took my arm. “I want you to meet our priestess. She is a close friend of Mia’s. I think you will like her.”

CHAPTER Eleven

Mia told me before about a woman everyone called Old Mother. If Mia knew her actual name, she’d never mentioned it that I remembered. She would write,
Old Mother said
, and what would follow would generally happen. 

I was curious, and expected something along the lines of crinkled old woman, one milky eye, with knotted hair, resembling the witch from every movie ever made. Instead, Old Mother looked like a grandma. Her hair long ago went gossamer silver, and she wore a large ring on one slender, wrinkled finger. When she reached out to catch my hand in hers, her skin felt as soft as a baby’s though it was wrinkled and worn. Her short hair framed eyes yellowed by time, but she was easily one of the most beautiful women I had ever met. Peace flowed in the very air around her, and a sense of reverence similar to that of an old church. 

She reclined on a slab of slate created by the beach side of the break wall, and I knelt in front of her in the snow. I don’t know why I knelt, but it seemed right. She smiled at me. “What power you have been given for one so young!” 

Usually I would have protested, but it didn’t seem right to do so with Old Mother, so I simply nodded. 

“It is good that the power burdens you, and you don’t take it for granted. What a hard lesson that must have been for you.”

I nodded, again. I tried not to remember just how hard the lesson had been…once I =realized what I was and how very badly things could go, but it all came flooding back anyway. Like a movie playing in my head, I remembered it sitting there in the sand. 

Barely seventeen, Mia and I thought it would be fun to go to a bar. We were amazed that they had let us in. We giggled and some guys bought us drinks. Looking back, I would call them sick old men, but at the time we thought it all a blast. 

We’d hung out with them for a few hours, then Mia and I decided to sing karaoke. I remembered the song had been
Love is a Battlefield
, picked because of some movie about a girl with short blond hair who rebelled, which seemed fitting because we’d snuck out, at a bar, rebelling. I sang. We were too young, too stupid, to notice everyone had gone quiet. We were too busy singing and laughing. 

Then I closed my eyes and let go. 

I didn’t notice Mia stopped singing. I hadn’t drained them, not knowing that was even a possibility, but what happened was worse, somehow. I opened my eyes as the man closest to me started clawing at his eyes, drawing blood. I screamed and more people had torn at themselves. I was alone, even Mia trapped by a spell I neither knew how to use or undo. I yelled, “Help, somebody, help! What is happening?” 

No one had answered. Like a waking nightmare, all of the adults, the people who were supposed to help when an overgrown kid did something stupid, now stared at me. Blank faced except for the tortured ones, the ones who still clawed at their ears, their eyes. I had stopped singing, but it didn’t stop whatever I had already done. No one helped, and I didn’t know how to make it stop.  

I had tried to run away, to run out of the bar, but the people reached out to touch me, eyes dead and blank. They had reached for me, tried to get to me, and all I wanted was away. I pushed off their hands and weaved my way through them, a sea of gripping zombie people, who moments before had been normal. They pulled at my hair, my clothes, anything they could reach. I pushed on until I made it to the door. 

I screamed on the street and eventually help came. Most of the people were okay. Later, they’d say they didn’t know what had happened. The cops said it was some gas leak, far below ground which made everyone go mad for awhile. They always find some way to explain the unexplainable. 

But I knew. It was me. Two men who had stood close to a speaker, they never recovered. One later committed suicide. The other become a drug addict and eventually overdosed. Both claimed to hear a voice in their head. The authorities said that they suffered the most oxygen deprivation to the brain or something... 

The voice in their heads was mine. I killed them as surely as if I held a gun and pulled a trigger. I swore never to sing again.
Never
. My voice was the most terrible, horrible thing—what could be good about being able to destroy like that? For no better reason than to have fun. 

I was a monster. I knew that and tried so hard to make up for it. I worked to be a good person and mother, hoping in some small way to make up for one night when I destroyed two men. All of it came back so vividly that tears leaked out of my eyes. I wondered if the old woman caused me to remember it. 

Old Mother stroked my head. “How hard it must be now to have to break all your own rules to help one you love.” 

I looked at her. “Am I doing the right thing?”

She sighed. “What is right? We are what we are, and I don’t see anything in all of Creation
made
evil. There is better and there is worse. I think you are trying to make things better, but know this—anything that goes against its own nature for too long goes sour. If you continue to try to be something you aren’t, you are going to destroy yourself.” 

“Who is the bad guy? I mean, who is the one who is causing all of this?”

“You are, to a point.”

Now I looked at her, confused. “How can I cause it? I just got here. I’m not making people kill people because of Vance. I haven’t kidnapped Mia. How does any of this mess have any—” 

“Child, hush. Time and space are a lake. The tiniest thrown stone causes ripples that splash to the far shore. You will, soon, betray your friends, and you will save them. There is one who will love you, that, had you accepted him years ago, would have been able to stop this all from happening, but you didn’t and now things will go differently. Time is not linear, it flows like a river and cuts a path now that no one can stop. It is not a bad path, and I think that things will work out in the end. It is, though a bumpy path. You will hurt and you will err, and you will grow and you will love. And love makes everything worth it. Love is a more powerful magic than any we can cast in a spell.” 

I wished I could have taken notes on that speech, as I was sure I was forgetting parts already. It had to all mean something, but it made no sense right then. Admittedly, I was kind of stuck on the betraying my friends part. That didn’t sound promising. “Where—” I began. 

“Canada. Mia is in Canada. And no, before you ask, she isn’t dead, but that is all I am telling you for now, so close your mouth back up.”

I snapped it closed. I had been about to ask another question. She smoothed a hand over my hair again. “Sirens were such beautiful creatures. The world has been emptier without their song. Music can be food for the soul. Then again, you have figured out that much already.” 

Yes, music could be food, but I wasn’t going to be feeding my soul anytime soon, so I just smiled a wobbly smile.

“Oh, and I almost forgot. Remember the rule of three—that which you do, be it good or bad, will come back to you threefold, or as Lewis Carroll said it ‘What I tell you three times is true.’ Your long living friend will explain that to you later. Our way, though it is not exactly your way, can teach you much. Listen to your heart, harm none, and try to return good for evil.” 

“That is a lot to remember.” I frowned.

“You will remember what you need to when it is time. That is the way of my words.”

“Okay.” I tried to keep my doubts from my voice, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded. 

She laughed at me. “Go, now, your future awaits you.” Emma began to speak with Old Mother, so I got up and turned to Julia. 

“She never talks that much. That was amazing.”

“Remind me next time to record it. I hope I remember whichever bits will come in handy when I need them.”

“Mia is in Canada, she said. What is she doing up there?”

“I don’t know, but you can bet your G-String I am going to find out.”

~

We loaded back into her car a short while later. I still wasn’t cold, but I’d come up with more questions about that. “So, since we are out in the weather, but can’t feel it, could we still suffer from hypothermia? Get frost bite? Any of that stuff?” 

Julia smiled, “Nope, but if the wrong witch stirs the potion, you could howl at the moon.”

“Pardon?”

“It is made with lycanthrope saliva. It raises your metabolism so your body temperature is high enough to negate any affects of weather.” 

“Lycanthrope…where have I heard that word before?” I chose to not think about the fact that I ate something made of saliva. 

“Girl, you really
are
behind on your supernatural lore. Lycanthrope, as in ‘were’.” 

“Wear what?”

“Werewolf, were-whatever. Lycathropy…” 

“Oh, those are real, too?” I blinked at her.

“You
really
gotta get out more.” She looked in her rear view mirror. I glanced back to see a State Highway Patrolman followed us. 

“He is awfully close to my bumper on these snowy roads.” Julia looked nervously again at the mirror. Silently, I agreed with her. We came to a light, and Julia tapped on her brakes a couple of times to keep from sliding.  

The State Boy didn’t. He slid and pushed us partway through the light. 

I snapped forward in my seat from the impact and so did Julia. We sat blinking, our shrieks echoing in the car. 

“I just got hit by a cop.” Julia sounded as shocked as I was.

“You are going to be rich.” I shook my head. “They have got to have killer insurance.”

We got out to survey the scene and two men got out of the cop car. One was hunched over funny. I wondered if it was from the accident.

Julia apparently figured out more than I had caught on to. “Shit. It’s broad daylight. What kind of mess are you guys in, anyway?”

The one who had been driving dove at us, waving his arm and crying, “I call the power of wind! Wind beat them, bring them down. Wind deny them, air burn—”