Something Wicked (14 page)

He sat back. “It wasn’t Victor. It wasn’t even human.”

“It
belonged
to him. It was
sent
by him. Victor’s dabbling in black magic.” And yeah, I was aware of how hypocritical that might sound, coming from me. Then again, I’d once had magic training, long before I started slinging my own curses around. And I’d lived with witches all my life. Victor, on the other hand…

Ben shook his head. “Victor doesn’t believe in magic.”

Cancel the damned curse,
he’d said on the Acropolis. “Oh, I think he does now.”

“He is after the Hekate Grail,” Eleni reminded us. “It is magic.”

Which was as good a time as any for Thea to arrive with a tray of teacups and a warm teapot. Ben stood to pace. But he still watched me with a dark gaze, as if arguing with me in his head.

Only after Eleni and I had taken swallows of warm tea, and Thea had sat on a folding chair, did he say, “So you’re saying anyone who wants to do magic can just do it?”

We three witches exchanged uncertain glances. This was magic we were talking about, not algebra. There weren’t always clear right and wrong answers.

“It’s like this,” I tried, since I was the one who’d brought Ben in the first place—and English was my first language. “Everything is magic, right? It’s all around us, all the time. When someone says ‘Have a nice day,’ it’s like a little magic spell.”

“And when someone says ‘Drop dead’?”

“Same thing. But the reason you won’t always have a nice day—and especially why you won’t drop dead—is because most people don’t put a lot of power into their wishes. To harness real magical power, you need four ingredients. You need to know what you’re doing. You need the will to make things change.” What were the other two, again? To know, to will, to something and…“And to keep silent. A good magic user doesn’t talk about her magic very much, because that leeches power out of it. To know, to will, to…”

“Dare,” offered Eleni softly.

That was it. To know, to will, to dare and to keep silent. “Yes, to dare. The strongest magic uses all four aspects. But that doesn’t mean someone with a whole lot of one of them—like the will to hurt someone—can’t occasionally blast off something nasty.”

“Or good,” Thea reminded us.

“I get the idea Victor doesn’t have trouble daring to do things.” I didn’t mean that to come out as sourly as it did. “And apparently he wanted to hurt us. So somehow, he figured out how to…”

A sick feeling came over me, and I closed my eyes. Golly, where might Victor have picked up some basics on cursing? Maybe from…me?

Not everything I’d done that night had been out loud, though.

“How much does Al know about curses?” I asked, opening my eyes.

“No,” said Ben, stopping midpace. “I don’t know what Al’s doing with Victor, and I’m pretty sure he was lying to me, but
curses?
That’s even less Al’s style than Vic’s. He rarely remembers the things we’ve talked about by the next show. You’re wrong. It’s not Al.”

Maybe he was right. And maybe he wasn’t. But I knew one thing for sure. “Then you find out, Ben. Carry the amulet with you. Be careful. But find out. I’ve had enough.”

He squinted at me, as if I were speaking Greek…or, well, Spanish…anyway, some language he didn’t understand. “What do you mean, you’ve had enough?”

“There are two good ways to deal with a magical attack. One of them is to cut off all ties with the person who attacked you. Don’t speak their name. Don’t go near them. That’s what Eleni and I are going to do. We’re going to go help out at some women’s rally, in Turkey, and we’re going to get on with our lives.”

“Are you sure?” asked Eleni, still shaky.

“I wasn’t going to find the damned cup for He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken anyway,” I said firmly.

“Okay.” Ben shoved a hand through his hair, looking concerned…maybe because by cutting off all ties with his brother, I was kind of cutting ties with him, too. But it had to be done. “I’ll let you know if I find out anything.”

“You’re going?” Okay, so that’s what his path toward the door indicated.

“Should we wait for the next attack?” But he did pause in the doorway to ask, “So what’s the second way to deal with a magical attack?”

The realization that he should know that, what with being cursed, closed my throat. Luckily, Eleni was able to answer for me. “This is easy. You send the spell back at its source.”

“And that’s
easy?
”

“It is natural,” agreed Thea.

“Karma,” I muttered—and felt not all that safe myself.

Especially not after Ben left.

On the edge of the Plaka, in the Hotel Zeus, Victor Fisher awoke to complete darkness. He couldn’t see, not even the sheet of paper on which he’d written Kate Trillo’s name in a watercolor made of her own blood. He couldn’t breathe. Something cold and heavy filled his room to choke him, crush him, punish him. And he couldn’t even scream.

Not for long, eternal, heart-pounding minutes. Maybe hours. Maybe…

Then, on the slow realization that he was still somehow alive—he screamed like a girl.

The witch had beaten him again.

But it wasn’t close to over.

G
etting out of Athens was almost too easy.

So was getting away from all that magic. I might have enough abilities to be dangerous, but soul-deep, where it counted, I wasn’t really a witch at all.

Not a witch by choice, anyway. By choice, I was a nurse.

I was thankful that Hekate had saved me from Ben’s killer brother, whose name I was trying not to think, much less say. I would always be grateful for that. But still.

Wasn’t my life my own?

The problem, I realized after only one night in a small hotel in Istanbul, was that I didn’t exactly
have
a life anymore. Diana was gone. My parents were long gone. I didn’t want to leave Eleni alone, what with you-know-who playing with black magic back in Greece. And until I got my hand out of this damned itchy cast, it wasn’t like I could do my full-time job anyway.

And
the first kiss I’d had in months, from a really smart, really good, quietly sexy guy, had been the result of a spell gone bad.

So this weekend, I decided, was the start of my
new
life. Or my new
old
life, working as a nurse. In Turkey, a country I wouldn’t have been able to find on the map before now.
Especially
what with it spanning two continents—Europe and Asia—the way Kansas City spans two states.

This new beginning was mostly the doing of Dr. Gaye Serif, who was kind of a Turkish equivalent of Eleni. Both were doctors who rotated working at different women’s clinics, a week at a time. And both were considered remarkably progressive around here, partly because they were unmarried women doctors, and partly because they were working together to offer a free clinic, despite being Turkish and Greek.

Apparently, with the exception of helping each other out after earthquakes, Turkey and Greece don’t usually play well together. I’d been instructed not to mention a place called Cyprus, just to keep the peace.

Anyway, Gaye and Eleni had raised money to rent an empty shop several blocks off of Beyazit Square to hold a three-day free health clinic for women. It would run from Monday through Wednesday, Tuesday being International Women’s Day. Now I was volunteering to help, too. If one-handed.

And you know? I felt kind of proud of myself.

I could help women just fine
without
finding the Hekate Cup, and this way nothing was at risk of being stolen.

Or murdered.

“This is good,” I told my cousin as we finally got out of the clinic on Sunday afternoon, a day before opening, to hand out flyers and to eventually find something to eat at the Sunday-only flea market. “What you and Gaye are doing, I mean. Thanks for letting me help.”

“
Letting
you help?” She laughed and swatted at my shoulder, which was padded by my coat. “It is good to have the help of a trained nurse.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing patients who aren’t dying,” I admitted, and Eleni gave me an odd look.

“We are all dying.” Something about how she said that seemed
so
Diana.

“I’m just glad I came. I like leaving the cloak-and-dagger stuff behind us for a while.”

Who knew? Depending on how hard the psychic backlash was from that entity we’d faced in her apartment, maybe the darkness was behind us forever. Even Vic—I mean, He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken—wouldn’t be stupid enough to try it again, would he? Not if he’d gotten even a portion of what we’d faced.

If he’d gotten it three times as powerful? He might just be history. If only we could be that lucky.

“And you do not miss Ben?” Eleni teased, stopping to buy us some juice. A swarthy man in white, with a red vest, was walking around carrying a large silver urn on his back and wearing cups around his waist. He bent low to pour the juice from over his shoulder into the cups. Neat trick.

Ben? We’d barely talked since that night, that kiss. It seemed…safer, this way. Considering that any attraction he felt toward me was the magic, I mean.

Instead of answering, I looked around us at more than just the juice vendor. Now that I knew how close Greece was to Turkey, I was surprised by all the differences. The biggest, it turned out, was that while Greece is a Christian country, Turkey’s mainly Moslem.
Moderate
Moslem, Eleni had insisted, when I expressed an embarrassing concern—she said the majority of Islam was as different from the extremists in the news as standard Christians are from people who bomb abortion clinics. Even among that moderation, Turkey was considered laid-back. People ran around in blue jeans and T-shirts, just like in Greece or the United States. And yet…

In Athens, there had been long-bearded priests in black stovepipe hats, not something you see every day in Chicago, and some of the prettiest buildings were round medieval churches. Here in Istanbul, a lot of women wore headscarves and the skyline was spiky with minarets. I’d already heard the call to prayer broadcast from up high several times since our arrival yesterday, from all across the city, the singers’ voices warbling into a strange harmony that gave me chills.

In a good way. A nonmagic way.
Peaceful.

This huge square with its trees and street vendors and rectangular gray flagstones beneath our feet was named after the ancient Beyazit Mosque, looming to the east of us. The other sides were flanked by Istanbul University, the Grand Bazaar and the Old Book Bazaar.

I wondered if Ben knew there was a whole section of the city for books, here in Istanbul. That seemed his kind of thing. But I was trying not to think about Ben, as hard as I was trying not to think about magic.

Luckily, there was plenty here to distract me.

Plenty of people were gathering for what promised to be one hell of a demonstration. Two days away from the rally, and already a couple hundred demonstrators were thronging the square, painting signs, calling encouragement to each other, making impromptu speeches. Some of them wore T-shirts over long sleeves or under jackets, not that I could read the Turkish slogans. Some of them chanted with vigor, maybe practicing for the rally, or argued with the many policemen patrolling the crowd. Some worked on banners, which they happily unfurled to show off to the rest of us.

I couldn’t read those, either. But I understood the smiles of the people around me—hopeful, determined, willing to believe that they could make a difference through
positive
methods. As I watched Eleni hand out flyers about the clinic, I couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement.

“So why do Turkish women need women’s rights?” I asked, and she gave me another long
look.
Like I really didn’t get it. “What?”

“It is the International Women’s Day rally,” she reminded me. “There will be demonstrations in Kuwait City, in Bangladesh, in Fiji…” Maybe she realized she was naming more places I couldn’t find on the map, because she added, “And New York. It is not just for Turkey.”

“Okay, then—so why are we in Turkey instead of Greece?” Or Fiji, or New York? See, I
did
have a point.

“Turkey wishes to join the European Union. To do so means change. They abolish the death penalty, and they change many laws to help women. But to change beliefs—this comes more slowly. All the world watches them.” She gestured toward the bazaar, and I saw a news crew slowly panning their camera across the gathering crowd. “This country, it is good for women in many ways. Almost a hundred years ago, they give education to women, allow divorce, give the right to vote. They outlaw the veil. Turkey has the first woman Supreme Court justice, when our grandmothers are young. It is time to continue such progress.”

She passed more flyers to a group of older women who were passing us. I let myself enjoy it all—the blue sky, the crisp air, the spirit of working to make the world a brighter place.

These people were my sisters—and brothers, since a lot of the demonstrators were guys. There were women as old as my
nonna
and children in baby carriages, and one particularly cute, curly-headed girl dancing in a circle like a ballerina. When you get a lot of women together, they come with children, after all. There were strong young men, and fatherly types, and lanky teenagers.

“So what’s wrong that still needs to be changed? Is it…is there too much violence against women?”

“Of course,” Eleni said simply. “As there is everywhere. Despite new laws, Turkey still sees honor killings. The government does not outlaw virginity testing, though they try. This, too, must be changed.”

“Virginity testing?”

Her look told me that was exactly what I thought it was. Ugh. No wonder Dr. Gaye wanted to make an extra effort to reassure patients about well-woman exams and birth control.

Those minarets were starting to look more foreign by the minute.

“Then there is the woman trafficking,” Eleni sighed, barely audible over the chanting of a group of women ahead of us.

“What?”

“White slavery. It is illegal. But outsiders take advantage of Turkey’s visa laws, take advantage of poor women, especially from the Ukraine. This also must be changed.”

“So why hasn’t it been?”

“Tradition is powerful,” she insisted with a shrug, passing several more flyers to a cluster of apparent students in blue jeans and fleece jackets, their bright headscarves tied in different ways as if to reflect their personalities. “Change comes slowly. But this does not mean it cannot come.”

A police officer shouted at the chanters. They changed their line to something else, also militant sounding, also in Turkish. He yelled some more, then shook his head and stalked off, leaving them victorious.

“So what are they saying?” I asked, since my cousin spoke Turkish.

“‘We are not intimidated,’” she translated. “‘We resist.’”

Good for them. “And before that? Before he challenged them?”

I assumed their original battle cry had been something about the honor killings, or the virginity testing, or, oh, the white slavery? I wasn’t at all prepared for Eleni’s mundane answer.

“Equal pay for equal work,” she said.

Well, didn’t I feel silly? “We’ve still got some of that problem in the States,” I admitted. I’d learned that when you’re overseas, you call the United States of America “the States.” “Woman-y jobs like teaching and nursing don’t pay as well.”

Eleni said, “You have a violence-against-women problem in the States, too. Every place does.”

Which made me think of the time for goddess grails. But I had a good reason for not pursuing those, damn it! I tried to hand a flyer to a couple that passed us. They seemed distracted, though, by shouting farther down the square, a shouting that added to the air of revolution.

“At least we don’t have to wear headscarves.”

“Many women like the headscarves. They can go out without doing their hair.” But Eleni was distracted, too. The disturbance toward the side of the square was getting louder.

A lot louder. Not just one shout, either.

A lot of shouting.

Victor,
I thought, despite my resolve not to. That right away told me he was still winning, if I assumed anything that went wrong must be his fault.

No, this was something else. Something bigger than us.

Eleni noticed, too, and immediately looked concerned. “We should go back.”

Some of the demonstrators, from the direction we’d been heading, were already doing that. Others were picking up their signs and heading toward the disturbance. “Why?”

“Something is wrong.”

The yelling kind of gave that away. Something was
very
wrong, just ahead of us. And I noticed something else.

“Crossroads,” I whispered, realizing where we were. A square wasn’t just a square, it was a meeting of different streets, different directions. Which meant, in a way, magic. Where there are crossroads, there are decisions. Go back. Go forward. Those were both decisions.

But so was standing and watching, wasn’t it? Oh woe, I thought—and grinned.

People around us were running in different directions. Some people were standing on their toes, or even climbing onto chairs or vending carts, to better see what was happening.

What kind of decision did
I
want to make?

My own words surprised me. So did the way I started forward, half resigned, half determined. “We should see what’s wrong.”

“
What?
Katie, no! It could be dangerous.”

Which was true. But people were screaming now—
screaming,
just up ahead! And unless we moved forward, faced whatever was happening, we couldn’t possibly help. And we had to help…didn’t we?

“Stay here, then.” I handed Eleni my flyers. “I’ve got to find out.”

And I took off running.

Diana’s voice laughed through my head.
“You can’t even speak the language!”

No,
I agreed silently, grimly.
I can’t.

“So what makes you think you can help?”

But damn it, we already knew that, didn’t we?

I could help because I had abilities, and not just as a nurse. I had powers, whether I wanted them or not. It had been easy to use them when I was being threatened. It had been instinct to use them when Eleni was in danger.

And now, for complete strangers?

Hell…how could I
not
do whatever I could? Magic wasn’t just about knowing and willing, but
daring.

Still, as I reached the knot of running people, shouting, screaming, I almost turned back, stunned.

Policemen in riot gear can have that effect.

Faceless behind helmets or gas masks, dozens of men had converged on the demonstrators. Tall, translucent shields that read
Polis
were being used to push through people, sometimes to knock them over. Truncheons rose and fell above the heads of the crowd.

One officer, not far from me, swung his baton again and again, clubbing a young woman down to the ground. Then he kicked her. Another officer wrenched one of the male protestors’ arms behind him, despite the man’s cry of pain, dragging him off to who knew where. Another demonstrator held his arms over his bent head, running, while not one but two policemen followed, beating him with their sticks.