The Blood of Ivy

by Jessica King

  Her stepmother, Sandra, had squinted at her in confusion when Ivy had asked her to retrieve the journals from her apartment and bring them to the hospital, but she hadn’t asked questions and did as Ivy asked. Ivy was flipping through them now, though, each one facedown somewhere on the hospital bed, looking for anything relating to Andrew Wilkins or “Justice,” his real first name. The blanket was too warm with the extra layer of pages, and she fanned herself.

  She found it again: I fear Justice, I fear Death.

  “Do you mean Wilkins by Justice?” Ivy asked the journal. “Or do you just mean justice, justice?”

  A nurse peeked in at her. Several of them had. They didn’t get a shot cop every day. She raised a hand and waved, knowing she looked insane with the complete disregard for her hair, surrounded by the colorful binding

  The first journal her mother had kept was from college, before she’d believed, or had even known, about witches her father claimed.

  Wilkins appt. after class—p bldg. 314—internship?

  Wilkins—lab Mondays 2:30–7 (testing—logo recognition, impression, brand acceptance)

  Reminder: AW sign intern form—need 4 credit!!

  AW Xmas party 12/13—need date (ask Andy Hart? Jon Young?)

  She paused at the mention of her father’s name, a small smile on her lips. But it slipped away quickly. Had their first date been at the home of the man she now considered a suspect for her mother’s murder?

  Searching through the other journals would take time, but she remembered an entry she’d read a while back. She figured it was a tiff between friends, but now…

  She dug for a later journal.

  I wanted to talk to Wilkins about the whole “witch” thing to get his take on it. If I’m crazy, then at least he’d be able to tell me. But when he told me I was (crazy), I was still shocked. We’ve known each other for years, and I suppose I’d assumed he’d support me, even in this unconventional path I’ve taken.

  If it hadn’t been his office, I think he would have stormed out. I’ve never seen him grow so angry. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone grow so angry, especially so fast. Only a few weeks ago, he’d told me that I could call him Justice. Still strange to use his first name, but I had been trying to remember.

  After he settled down, he asked me not to contact him anymore. He said I should be careful with witchcraft. I asked him if he had any personal experience with it, but he dodged the question.

  I don’t need his approval, but I’d always valued his opinion. I guess I will no longer value either. That makes me sad.

  Ivy reread the lines over and over: He said I should be careful. She tried to imagine the professor nearly twenty years younger, what excuse he made up to dodge the question of his experiences with witchcraft. If he had some sort of background in it—either himself or someone he knew—that would strengthen her theory that the Justice her mother feared was indeed this Justice.

  Or maybe she was grasping at straws. Maybe it was insane to think her mother was afraid of a seemingly normal, nice psychology professor who was as scared by witchcraft as many normal people who found out about the shootings.

  She couldn’t come out swinging at their therapy session and interrogate him about the death of her mother that he very well might have had nothing to do with, either. But he also could potentially take it upon himself as King to kill her, too, and take care of the Mary Caste reincarnations in his lifetime.

  He wouldn’t kill her while she was still in the hospital, would he? That seemed to be a level of dishonorable that she didn’t see the debonair professor stooping to. He did seem to be going quite out of his way to ensure that she could have her first appointment as soon as possible, though. She thought it was odd that he offered the hospital version of a “house call” when he normally only worked with clients out of his office on UCLA’s campus.

  Speaking of the devil, someone knocked on the door. She’d lost track of time.

  “One second,” Ivy said, and she dropped the journals on her legs into the box next to her bedside, one of them bouncing on the edge and falling onto the floor. She didn’t have it in her to move, and she didn’t like testing the length of the IV. She’d ask for help later.

  “Come in!” Ivy said.

  Wilkins was the scholarly-looking type, and Ivy wondered if Mason, the young psychologist and protégé of Wilkins who had been killed after going undercover in the ranks of the Kingsmen for a time, had tried to model his personal style after the older man. The scruff along his jaw and chin, the square, thick glasses, sharp part, and carefully combed hair were a mirror image of Mason’s signature look. Wilkins wore dress slacks and a sweater vest, which Ivy figured was an item of clothing that belonged solely to the older members of academia.

  She had been allowed to change into her own clothes, but she felt hopelessly underdressed in the sweatpants and T-shirt Sandra had brought her to wear. She tugged at the LAPD letters across the chest of the shirt and pulled her hair into a ponytail, having no idea if it was helping her look better.

  “Ivy,” Wilkins said as a method of greeting. “How are you feeling?” He set down a beaten briefcase on one of the two chairs in Ivy’s room, and unbuckled it, pulling out a steno pad and pen.

  “Better,” Ivy said. “Feel pretty helpless here. I want to get back to work.”

  “Your Kingsmen hunt?” He sat heavily into the chair with an “oof” and flipped open the pad of paper, crossing his legs. He tossed her a candy bar from his briefcase. “Rations,” he said. A chuckle. “I imagine the food here isn’t the best.”

  “Um, yes,” Ivy said.

  She quickly examined the candy. Untampered with. “Thank you,” she said, tugging at the wrapping. She salivated, her fingers nearly trembling. She tried to hide it. “Do you happen to know anything about them?” she asked. “The Kingsmen.”

  Wilkins looked at her from above the top of his glasses, which had slid to the end of his nose. The wire rims winked in the sunlight from the windows. “Well, I hope it’s not presumptuous of me to believe that you’ve seen several of the interviews I’ve done over the past few weeks on television about the topic.”

  Ivy nodded. “Yes, well, I meant maybe something you weren’t able to tell a general audience.” If he really was the King, how far could she egg on this conversation without tipping him off to her suspicion?

  Wilkins raised one eyebrow, salt-and-pepper scruffy, a strong frame to blue eyes. “I’m afraid I do not understand you,” he said. Ivy dropped his gaze instead, opting for the too-small picture on the too-beige wall.

  “I was wondering if you’d had any opportunity to talk to a Kingsman, or if you had any experience with witchcraft practices…in your studies,” she said, trying to make the question sound innocent, the way she hoped the man was receiving it.

  “I studied a group of Wiccan women way back when. Their worldview presents an interesting take when it comes to what one controls and what one doesn’t. But no, I’ve never had reason to speak with a Kingsman and don’t expect I will.”

  “Of course,” Ivy said. She laced her fingers together, laying her palms on the blanket draped over her lap. “How does this, ah, work?” she asked.

  “A therapy session?”

  Ivy hesitated. “Sure,” she said. She felt squeamish about the idea of talking about her torture experience at all, especially with someone she barely knew. She fidgeted, toes and fingers fluttering.

  “Well,” the man said, clicking the end of his pen, “I usually ask you a few questions about your past, just to get a feel about who you are. Then we’ll talk a bit about what happened in the last week or so, so I can understand what triggers you might have when it comes to PTSD. We’ll work from there on how to combat that when you are placed in situations that might call your experiences with torture back to your mind. Sound good?”

  It didn’t sound good. It sounded awful. But Ivy nodded her head all the same. “Okay,” she said.

  “So, le
t’s start with family. Relationship with your parents? What is that like?”

  It felt odd to talk about her parents in a way that analyzed them. Even as an adult, she still felt the urge to always talk in a manner that she considered respectful. She doubted that ever went away. “I mean, you know about my mom,” Ivy said. “She passed away when I was twelve—”

  “And how did you find out she had died?” Wilkins asked.

  Ivy picked at a hangnail. She hadn’t painted her nails in ages, but there were still a few speckled notes of gray-blue clinging to the center of her thumb. She scratched at it, sending chills through her, hair raising on her arms. “I found her body,” she said. “I heard the crash, but by the time I found her, they were gone, and…” A piece of her memory had been a little murky after that. She remembered crying, screaming. Crying and screaming into the phone as the operator begged her to calm down. At some point, her father had found her. Paramedics and police had come. She didn’t know who cleaned up the blood. “I had to be pulled away from her. I know that sounds really traumatic, but I don’t think it affected me as badly as you might think.”

  She didn’t want his pity, and saying it all out loud made her feel a bit pathetic. She’d managed to move forward, come to terms with that moment as a reality. The nightmares faded after a few years, at least.

  “Hmm,” Wilkins said, nodding. He made a note on his paper.

  Ivy didn’t like that he was writing about her, but she felt odd asking him what he had put down.

  “And your father?”

  “Good,” Ivy said. “Took us a little while to figure out a pattern without her, but we managed. When I left for college, he met Sandra, my stepmom. They got married when I was nineteen.”

  “And how did you feel about that when you found out?”

  “I mean, every kid would feel a little betrayed, right?” Ivy asked. She laughed. “But I got over it pretty quickly. I don’t want him to be alone, and Sandra’s great. She’s good for him in a weird way. She makes him go out to plays and redecorates and stuff like that.”

  Wilkins smiled, and she was wondering if he liked the sound of Sandra, or if he was just mirroring her. Police work had left her with a good read on most people, but perhaps psychologists were exempt from being read. “Was your mother good for him like that, do you think?” he asked.

  Ivy shrugged. “I’m not sure. I wish I remembered more than I do,” she said. She doubted a twelve-year-old version of herself was complex enough to consider the dynamics of her parents’ relationship. She did remember her making him eat vegetables, telling him to smile while he did. He’d laughed, even as he gagged around broccoli. Her milk had come through her nose like she was a character in a sitcom. “But I think so. I know he didn’t love the witchy stuff, but he loved her for sure.”

  “And what about you?” Wilkins said. “How do you feel about her practicing magic?”

  Ivy shook her head. “Don’t really know. I mean, I know I’ve known for about a month now, but I haven’t really had time to think about it enough, I guess.” She tried again to imagine her mother casting a spell or saying a blessing over rocks the way the Prophetess had. “Hard to picture, but I know that she was still the same person, even though she had gotten into witchcraft. She was still caring, founding the Protection of the Female Goddess to help other women, and standing up for witches and stuff. It’s cool that she would be willing to do something like that…”

  “But the actual magic…” Wilkins said, gesturing for her to continue.

  She thought about it. She respected Cassiopeia and the other witches. But, for her mother, it seemed a bit juvenile. A thought flickered through her mind. She was old enough now to be the sister of a woman of her mother’s frozen age. She pushed the thought away. The thought that one day she’d be older than her mother. She shook herself.

  “It’s a little strange,” Ivy said. “It’s like my mom believed in Santa Claus after I decided I didn’t.”

  Wilkins nodded and scribbled more into his notebook. Ivy pushed herself up farther against the pillows; it did nothing to help her see what he was writing.

  “What did you think about it?” Ivy asked.

  Wilkins’ head jerked up from his notebook. He clearly wasn’t used to being asked questions during his counseling sessions. Ivy wondered if it was rude. The idea made her feel self-conscious, and she tugged at an earring.

  “What did I think about what, her magic?” Wilkins asked.

  “Yeah,” Ivy said. “You knew her pretty well when she was in college. What do you think?”

  Wilkins laughed and waved her off. “My opinion doesn’t matter here,” he said. “We’re talking about you and what you believe.”

  “Humor me,” Ivy said. She shifted in the bed, and Wilkins’ eyes briefly attached to the box at Ivy’s side. At the journal on the floor. He locked eyes with Ivy, and she got the impression he recognized that journal on the floor. That her mother had likely written in front of him.

  Wilkins sighed, his eyes tugging away from hers. “I think your mother was an incredibly smart woman who got incredibly confused, and she paid for it with her life.”

  Her skin prickled. “She didn’t commit suicide,” Ivy said. “It wasn’t her fault that she died.”

  “Of course not,” Wilkins said, shaking a hand. “That’s not what I meant. But I think her practicing witchcraft confirmed her identity as Mary Caste to the Kingsmen, and then they killed her. I think it’s tragic that that’s how things ended for her.”

  Ivy nodded. She agreed with him at least that far.

  “Can you tell me about the time you spent with Marsha Leeds?” Wilkins asked.

  Marsha Leeds, Ivy had learned, was the name of the Kingsman who had tortured her for the new location of the L.A. coven with the intent of killing her after as the sixth reincarnation of Mary Caste. She’d called her Mary as she carved designs of ivy into her leg and arm, had shot her through the shoulder, broken her rib, and left her with a black eye and a nasty scar on her face that was still healing. Marsha Leeds was in jail now, but that didn’t always make Ivy feel safe. Marsha had allies, and she still saw the ex-marine in her nightmares.

  Ivy told Wilkins about being hit by Marsha’s car on a secluded road, being drugged and trapped in her trunk until they arrived at the woman’s cabin in the California forest. She explained the bloodstains on the floor and being tied to a chair with zip ties that made her feel her heartbeat in her hands and feet. “She carved me like a pumpkin,” Ivy said. “I’m healing well, but this half of me might end up covered in scars,” she said, indicating her left leg and arm. “The bullet was the worst, and she knew that was the way to scare me, I guess. She would shoot bullets all around me to freak me out.” She recounted her frantic escape, and the evidence she found on the way out—evidence that Marsha had helped Senator Roy Cline poison his supposed “witch” wife.

  “Sounds like a wild ride,” Wilkins said, neither offering sympathy nor asking for more than she told. His pen flew across the page as he wrote, trying to filter her experience onto lined paper.

  “Yeah,” Ivy said.

  “And last time I saw you, the things you said about trying to help stop the shooting at the Long Beach Prophetess Gathering…”

  Ivy swallowed, crossing her arms. The motion made her shoulder ache, but tucking her arms around herself made her feel in less of a freefall while trying to describe it again. No one at the hospital had asked, and she’d refused to tell her parents the gorier details. “Well, I’d just gotten away from Marsha, so I was pretty beat up. But when the officer who was driving me got a call for all units to respond to a shooting, I told him to skip the hospital so that we could help; we weren’t very far away from it. And I was fine at first—in pain, obviously—but fine. It was just when the actual shots going off from guns that weren’t mine that were close, like loud enough to be like they were in the house, that I don’t know, my vision kind of went dark. I felt like I was back there for a bit, and I
felt my lungs close up. She’d waterboarded me, and that feeling came back, just for a second.”

  “How’d you get out of that?” Wilkins asked.

  “I hit my bullet wound, actually,” Ivy said, scoffing. “That’s so weird. It helped pull me back, though. Sort of grounding.” But the bullet wound would heal, and she wouldn’t have that option for much longer. Her shoulder pulsed with her heartbeat as if reminding her it wasn’t healed yet.

  Wilkins laughed a bit, too, nodding. He scribbled into his notebook, furiously. “And then what happened?”

  “I shot three Kingsmen, then helped arrest Kingsmen who were still on the run. But after that, my wound was bleeding pretty bad, and I could feel my ribs again—one was broken and another bruised, I guess the adrenaline staved it off during the shooting, but it was killer when I could feel it.”

  Wilkins nodded. “And then you were taken to the hospital.”

  Ivy nodded. “I had to stop helping—I couldn’t manage—but I waited until the victims were taken. I wasn’t going to die from my wounds. I’d broken a rib, but my lungs were fine. So, I sort of waited it out until the place had been cleared.”

  Wilkins nodded again. He didn’t say that it was brave of her or if she should have insisted on seeing a doctor. He didn’t say any of the normal things a person in a conversation would respond with, and she found it off-putting. He turned a page in his steno pad and tapped the pen against the empty page. “Nightmares?”

  “Yes.” She suddenly didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Her kidnapping, there was some separation from it. She’d just woken from a fresh nightmare an hour or two ago. That bout of adrenaline was still in her body.

  “And how would you describe them?”

  “Scary,” Ivy said.

  “Okay,” Wilkins said. She was certain he could sense that she didn’t actually want to relive them through a description. “And do you have trouble falling asleep?”