Salem Falls (23 page)

She logged off the computer and walked to the kitchen. Astral projection was going to be her Beltane surprise for the coven; the effects would be even more startling if they were completely unexpected. Gilly stirred the thermos of iced tea and considered the vial in her hand once again.

Courage.

She trickled a tiny bit of the liquid into the tea, then stuck her finger into the thermos for a taste . . . nope, it was still tea, if a little bit bitter-1/20 of a grain? 1/100? Shrugging, Gilly emptied the entire contents of the test-tube into the thermos and screwed on the cap.

Jack woke to find Addie curled beside him, her hand clutching a washcloth that was spreading a water stain over the comforter in the shape of a bell. He came up on one elbow, wincing at the ache of his ribs, and touched the side of her face. When she didn’t stir, he carefully levered himself off the bed.

What might his life have been like if he’d had someone like her standing by his side during the nightmare in Loyal? What if he’d served his time but met her every Tuesday night in the common room where inmates could face their visitors over long folding tables, under the watchful eyes of the guards? What if he’d had Addie to come home to?

He paced through the dark house, wishing he could do for her all she’d done for him. Thanks to Addie, Jack no longer spent time reviewing his mistakes. He had put them into a box and shut the lid tight. Addie, though . . . she sorted through the box daily, holding up each memory to the light like an heirloom, even though it made her bleed inside.

He found himself standing in front of Chloe’s bedroom door.

Within minutes, he had stripped the bed of its sheets and covers and removed the posters from the walls. He stacked Chloe’s toys in a box he’d found in her closet. If he could just clear out the constant reminder of what Addie had lost, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard for her to look forward rather than back.

“What the hell are you doing?” Addie’s voice throbbed, as if she’d taken a punch.

“Cleaning up. I thought that if you didn’t have to look at this every day-”

“That I wouldn’t see her face first thing when I wake up in the morning anyway? That I don’t know her by heart? Do you think that I have to look at a . . . a hair clip to remember the person I love the most in the world?”

“Loved,” Jack said quietly.

“That doesn’t stop just because she’s not here anymore.” Addie sank into the tousled sheets, the fabric floating up around her like the petals of a tulip.

“Addie, I didn’t do this to hurt you. If what we’ve got means anything . . .”

She turned her face to his. “You will never, ever mean more to me than my daughter does.”

Jack reeled back, her words more painful than any blow he’d felt that night. He watched her fold herself into the pool of linens, her spine rounding. “What did you do with it?” she said, suddenly lifting her tearstained face.

“With what?”

“The smell of her. Of Chloe.” Addie scrabbled through the sheets and pillows. “It was here; it was here just this morning . . . but it’s gone now.”

“Sweetheart,” Jack said gently. “Those sheets don’t smell like Chloe. They haven’t in a very long time.”

Her hands made fists in the fabric. “Get out,” she sobbed, turning her face away as Jack shut the door softly behind him.

The Rooster’s Spit had never, in anyone’s recollection, had anything to do with either chickens or expectorating, but a few old-timers could have told you that the bar tucked at the far edge of town had been a Knights of Columbus hall in a past life, and a Baptist church in another. Now, it was a dark, close space where a man could fall into a puddle of his own troubles, or a tumbler of whiskey, which was just as good.

Roy Peabody nuzzled the lip of his drink, closing his eyes at the sweet heat that rolled down his throat to bloom in his belly. After weeks of being hounded by Addie, or kept watch over by Jack St. Bride, he was in a bar again. He was alone, with the exception of Marlon, the barkeep, who was polishing glasses until they squeaked. Unlike some bartenders Roy had known-and Roy had known many-Marlon was gifted at simply staying quiet and letting a fellow savor his alcohol. In fact, Roy felt more at home in this bar, where no one expected a goddamn thing of him, than in his apartment.

When the door to the Rooster’s Spit swung open, both Roy and Marlon looked up in surprise. It was rare for people in Salem Falls to be out drinking at 10 P.M. on a weeknight, and Roy felt a small needle of resentment at the thought that now he would have to share this wonderful moment with someone else.

It was hard to say who was more stunned when each first saw the other: Jack or Roy.

“What are you doing here?”

“What does it look like?” Roy grimaced. “Run along now; go tell my daughter.”

But Jack just sat heavily down on the barstool beside him. “I’ll have whatever he’s having,” he said to Marlon.

The whiskey was stamped before him like a seal of approval. Jack could feel Roy’s eyes on him as he took his first long swallow. “You going to watch me the whole time?”

“I didn’t figure you for a drinking man,” Roy admitted.

Jack laughed softly. “People aren’t always what they seem.”

Roy accepted this, and nodded. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks so very much.”

The old man reached out and gingerly touched the cut over Jack’s eye. “You walk into a wall?”

Jack glanced at him sidelong. “You drinking lemonade?”

At that, Roy hesitated. “I take it Addie knows you’re here.”

“ ’Bout as much as she knows you are.”

“I told you, St. Bride, if you break her heart-”

“How about when she breaks mine, Roy?” Jack interrupted bitterly. “What are you going to do for me in that case?”

Roy took one look at the deep grooves carved beside Jack’s mouth and saw in his face something too, too familiar. “I’ll buy you a drink,” he said.

Once, on a Girl Scout campout, Gillian had built a fire. While the other kids were busy making their s’mores and singing “Kum ba Yah,” Gilly had fed things to the flame: sticks and pine needles and shoelaces, bits of bread and pennies and even a hapless toad. She had been mesmerized by its greed, by the way it devoured everything in its path. She’d stared at the bonfire and thought: I don’t have a heart. I have one of these inside of me.

Tonight’s bonfire was smaller . . . or maybe she was bigger. She stood holding hands with the others around it. But they were no longer Gillian, Chelsea, Whitney, and Meg. Goddesses all, they were a coven. And she was their high priestess.

The wind, ripe with spring, slipped between Gillian’s thighs like a lover. It was her only covering; her clothes lay in a pile by the dogwood. When she’d said that she wanted to be as pure as possible, the others had been surprised. But Whitney had whipped off her shirt. Chelsea shivered in her bra and panties. Only Meg, self-conscious, was fully dressed.

Gilly met the eyes of each of the others. Did they feel it? Never had her body buzzed like this. She tilted her head back, casting her voice into the night sky. “Guardians of the watchtowers of the east, where sun, moon, and stars are born, I do summon, stir, and call you up!”

The words wrote themselves, drawn from her heart like a ribbon, and for the first time Gilly understood what Starshine had meant about the power of writing your own spells. “Travel over our skin like a whisper, caress us. Bring us imagination; teach us to dance. Blessed be.”

The others swayed slightly. “Blessed be,” they repeated.

Whitney turned, her face glowing. “Guardians of the watchtowers of the south, passionate and hot, I do summon, stir, and call you up. Share your heat with us; make us burn inside. Blessed be!”

“Blessed be!”

“Guardians of the watchtowers of the west,” Chelsea continued, “the blood of the earth, I do summon, stir, and call you up. Let your mystery flow over us. Blessed be!”

“Blessed be!”

Finally, Meg spoke. “Guardians of the watchtowers of the north, night of cool magick, I do summon, stir, and call you up. Bury us deep in your soil; give us the power of earth and stone. Blessed be!”

“Blessed be!”

“Spirit,” Gilly cried, “come play with us as we weave our ribbons; sing with us as we light the fire. Take us to a world without words. Make this night magick . . . blessed be!”

“Blessed be!”

She knelt before the altar, her breasts swaying, and touched the incense burner, the water, the earth, and then sliced her hand through the flames of the bonfire. “I do cast out any and all impurities both of the spirit and the world. As I will it, so mote it be.” Gillian cast the circle three times-with water and earth, with incense, and finally with energy. Then she smiled. “The circle is perfect.”

Gillian brushed a branch of the dogwood tree, and a festival of delicate white petals rained over her shoulders. She raised her hands, her body slender and blued by the moon. “Mother Goddess, Queen of the night, Father God, King of the day, we celebrate your union. Accept these gifts.” Digging into the L.L. Bean canvas bag, she pulled out a sachet filled with the herbs she’d bought at the Wiccan Read. There were twenty in there, all crafted by Whitney. “You do it,” Gilly suggested, and she handed the sachet to her friend.

Whitney strung it on a branch, a poppy red ornament. She reached into the bag and handed out the rest of the sachets to the others, who began to trim the tree. Their gifts winked out from the thick profusion of blooms, a rainbow of offerings.

“Ouch!” Whit said, jumping. “I got nailed by a twig.”

“See, there’s a reason we wear clothes,” Meg said.

Chelsea sank down on the ground. “Well, nudity aside, it seems to me that the God and Goddess have all the fun.”

“What do you mean?”

“Beltane’s all about sex, right? But I don’t see Freddie Prinze Jr. hanging with our coven. No offense, Gill, but you don’t have the right equipment.”

Gillian turned. “But that little geek Thomas McAfee does?”

Chelsea’s cheeks flamed. “He’s not like that-”

“No? Then tell us what he is like. You’ve been hanging out with him so much I thought you might bring him along. You have to do that when you’re training a puppy, right? Keep a close eye on them?”

“Gilly-” Meg said, trying to keep the peace.

“Let’s conjure a man,” Whitney suggested. “We’re all just jealous. Right, Gill?”

But Gillian didn’t answer. The other girls exchanged glances, unsure of what to do, what to say. “We’d never agree on what to call up,” Whitney hastily continued. “You know, like I have a thing for redheaded guys, but Meg likes those squat, stubby bull types.”

“Italian,” Meg corrected. “And they’re not stubby.”

Finally, Gillian smiled. The others were careful not to show it, but inwardly, they all relaxed. This was the Gilly they knew, the Gilly they loved. “Maybe if we’re really good little pagans, the God and Goddess will give us a gift, too.”

She walked to the tree beside the dogwood, a pillar of a pine. God knew how, but Chelsea had managed to affix long streamers of ribbon from a branch nine feet off the ground. Gilly picked up a silver ribbon and smoothed it between her breasts, over her belly and thigh. She arched her back, and the other girls were transfixed-channeling a spirit was one thing, but here Gilly was shifting shape, turning into a siren as if she had done this a hundred times before. “Now,” she said softly, “we celebrate.”

Addie woke up, her cheek flush against Chloe’s pillow. It was so easy to see her daughter’s little face, her flyaway hair. She touched her hand to the worn cotton, pretending that it was Chloe’s soft skin beneath her fingers.

It isn’t.

She heard the words as clearly as if Jack had spoken them, a thought that dropped like a grenade, and was just as devastating. Even more upsetting was the intrusion of Jack into her mind when she was stubbornly trying to think about Chloe. She tried to force her memories to the surface but kept seeing more recent ones: Jack sliding his arms around her waist; Jack looking up at her as he chopped peppers in the kitchen, Jack’s slow smile. The truth was that although she found it hard to believe and had no idea how it had happened, she could no more picture her life without Jack than she could without Chloe.

Frustrated, she threw back the covers of the bed and began to pace through the house. At the bottom of the stairs, she automatically touched the small picture of Chloe that hung there, the same way she did every time she came up and down, as if it were a mezuzah. And that was the moment she realized she’d lied.

Jack might never mean more to her than Chloe. But God, he meant just as much.

Addie sank down onto the bottom step and rested her forehead on her knees. The last person she’d loved had been taken away. This time around, her second chance, she should have been holding onto him tightly, with both hands.

“I love him,” she murmured out loud, the words bright as a handful of new coins. “I love him. I love him.”