Spellbound (6 page)

“Do you think you’ll go to bed with him?”

“Mary K.,” I said, feeling my cheeks heat up. “We’re not even
dating.
Sometimes we don’t even get along.”

“That’s the way it always starts,” Mary K. said with fourteen-year-old wisdom.

 

We’d started early, so we finished the walls around lunchtime. While I cleaned up the painting equipment, Mary K. went down to the kitchen and made us some sandwiches. Recently she’d gotten into eating healthy food, so the sandwiches were peanut-butter and banana on seven-grain bread. Surprisingly, they were good.

I polished off my sandwich, then took a sip of Diet Coke. “Ah, that hits the spot,” I said.

“All that artificial stuff is bad for you,” Mary K. said, but her voice was listless. I regarded her with concern. It really was taking her a while to come out of her depression over Bakker.

“Hey. What are you doing this afternoon?” I asked, thinking maybe we could hit the mall, or go to a matinee movie, or do some other sisterly activity.

“Not much. I thought maybe I’d go to the three o’clock mass,” she said.

I laughed, startled. “Church on a Monday? What’s going on?” I asked. “You becoming a nun?”

Mary K. smiled slightly. “I just feel . . . you know, with everything going on—I just need extra help. Extra support. I can get that at church. I want to be more in touch with my faith.”

I sipped my Diet Coke and couldn’t think of anything constructive to say. In the silence I suddenly thought, Hunter, and then the phone rang.

I lunged for it. “Hey, Hunter,” I said.

“I want to see you,” Hunter said with his usual lack of greeting. “There’s an antiques fair half an hour from here. I was wondering if you wanted to go.”

Mary K. was looking at me, and I raised my eyebrows at her. “An antiques fair?” was my scintillating reply.

“Yes. It could be interesting. It’s nearby, in Kaaterskill.”

Mary K. was watching the expressions cross my face, and I pantomimed my jaw dropping. “Hunter, is this a date?” I asked for Mary K.’s benefit, and she sat up straighter, looking intrigued.

Silence. I smiled into the phone. “You know, this sort of sounds like a date,” I pressed him. “I mean, are we meeting for business reasons?”

Mary K. started snickering quietly.

“We’re two friends getting together,” Hunter said, sounding very British. “I don’t know why you feel compelled to label it.”

“Anyone else coming?”

“Well, no.”

“And you’re not calling it a date?”

“Would you like to come or not?” he asked stiffly. I bit my lip to keep from laughing.

“I’ll come,” I said, and hung up. “I think Hunter just asked me out,” I told Mary K.

“Wow,” she said, grinning.

I skipped upstairs to take a shower, wondering how, when my life was so stressful and scary, I could feel so happy.

 

Hunter picked me up in Sky’s car twenty minutes later. My wet hair hung in a long, heavy braid down my back. I offered him a Diet Coke and he shuddered; then we were on our way to Kaaterskill.

“Why did you care if this was a date or not?” he asked suddenly.

I was startled into an honest reply. “I wanted to know where we stand.”

He glanced at me. He was really good-looking, and my brain was suddenly bombarded with images of how he had been when we were kissing, how intense and passionate he’d seemed. I looked out my window.

“And where do we stand?” he asked softly. “Do you want this to be a date?”

Now I was embarrassed. “Oh, I don’t know.”

Then Hunter took my hand in his and brought it to his mouth and kissed it, and my breathing went shallow.

“I want it to be what you want,” he said, driving with one hand and not looking at me.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” I said shakily.

 

The antiques fair took place in a huge warehouselike barn in the middle of rural New York. There weren’t many people there—it was the last day. Everything looked kind of picked through, but still, I enjoyed the time with Hunter, the time without magick involved. My mood got even better when I found a little carved box that would be perfect for my mom and an old brass barometer that my dad would love. Two Christmas gifts that I could cross off my list. I was woefully behind on my holiday shopping. Christmas was coming up fast, and I’d barely thought about it. Our coven was planning a Yule celebration, too, but fortunately that didn’t involve any gift-giving.

I was engrossed in the contents of an old dentist’s cabinet when Hunter called me over. “Look at these,” he said, pointing to a selection of Amish-type quilts. I’d always liked Amish quilts, with their bright, solid colors and comforting geometry of design. The one Hunter was pointing to was unusual in that it had a circular motif.

“It’s a pentacle,” I said softly, touching the cotton with my fingertips. “A circle with a star inside.” The background was black, with a nine-patch design in each corner in shades of teal, red, and purple. The large circle touched each of the four sides and was of purple cotton. A red five-pointed star filled the circle, and a nine-patch square was centered in the star. It was gorgeous.

I glanced at the middle-aged woman selling the quilts and cast my senses quickly to see if she was a witch. I picked up nothing. “Is it Wiccan?” I asked so only Hunter could hear.

He shook his head. “More likely just a Pennsylvania Dutch hex design. It’s pretty, though.”

“Beautiful.” Again I ran my fingers gently across the cotton.

The next thing I knew, Hunter had pulled out his wallet and was counting out bills into the woman’s hand, and she was smiling and thanking him. She took the small quilt, barely more than four feet square, and wrapped it in tissue before putting it into a brown paper bag.

We headed back to Hunter’s car. “That’s really beautiful,” I said. “I’m glad you bought it. Where will you put it?”

We climbed into his car, and he turned to me and handed me the bag. “It’s for you,” he said. “I bought it because I wanted you to have it.”

The air around us crackled, and I wondered if it was magick or attraction or something else. I took the bag and reached my hand inside to feel the cool folds of the quilt. “Are you sure?” I knew neither he nor Sky had much income—this quilt must have put a huge dent in his budget.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m quite sure.”

“Thank you,” I said softly.

He started the car’s engine, and we didn’t say anything until he dropped me at my house. I climbed out of the car, feeling uncertain all over again. He got out, too, and coming around to the sidewalk, he kissed me, a soft, quick meeting of the lips. Then he climbed back in Sky’s car and drove off before I could say good-bye.

5

Flicker

 

 

On Tuesday, Mary K. and I once again spent the morning working on my room, touching up messy spots on the walls and painting the woodwork. In the afternoon I persuaded my sister to come shopping with Bree and me. The lure of hanging out with us had outweighed her disapproval of our destination: Practical Magick, an occult store up in Red Kill, ten miles north.

“The good thing about Christmas break,” Bree said as she drove through downtown Widow’s Vale, “is seeing all the poor saps who have to go to work.”

“We’re going to be poor working saps one day,” I reminded her, watching people weaving in and out of the shops on Main Street. I picked at some speckles of paint on the back of my hand and adjusted the heater vent of Breezy, Bree’s BMW.

“Not me,” Bree said cheerfully. “I’m going to marry rich and be a lady who lunches.”

“Gross!” Mary K. protested from the backseat.

Bree laughed. “Not PC enough for you?”

“Don’t you want more than that?” Mary K. asked. “You could do anything you want.”

“Well, I was kind of kidding,” said Bree, not taking offense. “I mean, I haven’t figured out what my life calling is yet. But it wouldn’t be the worst thing to be a housewife.”

“Bree, please,” I said, feeling a shade of our old familiarity. “You would last about two weeks. Then you’d go crazy and become an ax murderer.”

She laughed. “Maybe so. Neither of you wants to be a housewife? It’s a noble profession, you know.”

I snorted. I had no concrete idea what to do with my life—I’d always thought vaguely about doing something with math or science—but I knew now without a doubt that the majority of my life would center on Wicca and my own studies in magick. Everything else was optional.

“No,” said my sister. “I never want to get married.”

Something in her tone made me crane around from the front seat to look at her. Her face looked drawn, almost haunted, in the gray winter light, and her eyes were sad. I glanced across at Bree and was touched by the instant understanding that passed between us.

“I hear you dumped Bakker in a big way,” Bree said, looking at Mary K. in the rearview mirror. “Good for you. He’s an ass.”

Mary K. didn’t say anything.

“You know who’s cute in your class?” Bree went on. “That Hales kid. What’s his name? Randy?”

“Just plain Rand,” said Mary K.

“Yeah, him,” said Bree. “He’s adorable.”

I rolled my eyes. Trust Bree to have scoped out the freshman boys.

Mary K. shrugged, and Bree decided not to press it. Then she pulled Breezy into a parking spot in front of Practical Magick, and we piled out into the chilly December air.

Mary K. looked at the storefront with only faintly disguised suspicion. Like my parents, she strongly disapproved of my involvement with Wicca, though I’d talked her into coming to a party here recently, and she’d enjoyed it.

“Relax,” I said, taking her by the arm and pulling her into the store. “You’re not going to have your soul sucked out just by looking at candles.”

“What if Father Hotchkiss saw us?” she grumbled, naming our church’s priest.

“Then we’d have to ask him what he was doing in a Wicca shop, wouldn’t we?” I answered, grinning. Inside, I let go of my sister’s arm and took a moment to get my bearings. I hadn’t been to Practical Magick since I’d come with Hunter to confront David Redstone, the owner, about using dark magick. It had been profoundly horrible, and being in the store brought back the memories in a wave: Hunter questioning David; David’s admission of guilt, wrenched from him against his will.

It hurt to associate those memories with this place, the place I had come to think of as my refuge, a lovely, scent-filled shop full of magickal books, essential oils, crystals, herbs, candles, and the deep, abiding peace of Wicca, permeating everything.

Looking up, I saw Alyce, a gentle sorrow still showing on her face. David had been a dear friend of hers. He had turned over the shop to her, a Brightendale blood witch, when he’d had his power stripped from him. She owned the shop now.

She walked toward me, and we embraced: I was taller than she, and I felt bony and immature next to her womanly roundness. We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, not needing to speak. Then I stepped back to include Bree and Mary K.

“Hi, Alyce,” Bree said.

“Nice to see you, Bree,” Alyce replied.

“You remember my sister, Mary K.?” I asked.

“Certainly,” said Alyce, smiling warmly. “The one who was so taken with The Fianna.” The Fianna was a Celtic band that Mary K. and I both loved. Alyce’s nephew, Diarmuid, played in it. The only way I’d gotten Mary K. to come to the party here was by luring her with promises of The Fianna playing.

“Yes,” said Mary K. shyly.

“We just got in a shipment of really interesting jewelry from a woman who works in Pennsylvania,” Alyce said, leading Mary K. over to a glass case. “Come see.”

I smiled as Mary K. was drawn to the jewelry. Bree moved down the aisle to examine a collection of altar cloths, and I was free to wander the side of the store that was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Soon Alyce joined me.

“How is Starlocket?” I asked. Starlocket was Selene Belltower’s old coven. With her disappearance, Alyce had been asked to lead it.

“Going through transitions,” Alyce said. “Some people have left, of course—those who’d been drawn to Selene’s dark side. The rest of us are trying to heal and move forward. It’s very challenging, leading a coven.”

“I’m sure you’re a wonderful leader,” I said.

“Alyce?” I looked up as a man came toward us, holding up a box of black candles. “Do we put out all the stock at once or keep some in the back?” he asked.

“I usually put out as much as the shelves will hold,” Alyce said. “Finn, come meet Morgan.”

Finn looked like he was in his fifties; tall, and neither thin nor fat, but sturdy-looking. He had short, thick hair that was a faded red shot through with white. His eyes were hazel, his skin was fair, and he had faded freckles across his nose and cheeks. I sent out my senses without even deciding to and ran a quick scan. Blood witch. Probably Leapvaughn, I thought. They often had red hair. Then I saw the surprise in his eyes and shut down my senses, vaguely embarrassed, as though I’d been caught in the Wiccan equivalent of seeing someone’s underwear.