Bewitched and Betrothed

by Juliet Blackwell

  That was no boyish prank, I thought, sipping a Coke and waiting for my turn to answer questions.

  I limped home late that night after a lengthy debriefing and refusing the ministrations of the medics. What was troubling me wasn’t something modern medicine could fix.

  When I got there, Aunt Cora’s Closet was dark. Maya and Bronwyn, Conrad, and the others had closed up shop and long since left for the evening.

  I knew Sailor and Patience were attending a family dinner—really a family meeting—with Renna, so I couldn’t (a) make up with Sailor, or (b) have Patience read for me—which, now that Elena had been found, was a moot point—or (c) meet with Renna to see if she was possessed by a demon—and given what I had seen and felt on Alcatraz, I now feared that such a demon might carry the name of Sitri. On the other hand, maybe the extended family would be able to deal with whatever was bothering their aunt. Maybe it wasn’t demonic at all.

  I tried not to think about the damage that could be inflicted by a practitioner as powerful as Renna if her talents were exploited by, or somehow combined with, a demon’s.

  Ugh.

  Upstairs, I checked Oscar’s cubby over the refrigerator but his nest of blankets was gobgoyle-free. I had gifted him a travel cloak a while back, which enabled him to go pretty much anywhere he wanted in time and space. Not that he necessarily needed it, I thought. Oscar seemed able to get around on his own, anyway, in some mysterious fashion. I wondered whether he had snuck into Beijing’s Forbidden City yet, or whether, as I suspected, he really wanted Sailor and me to be at his side when and if he found his mother.

  I showered off the grime from our adventure in Alcatraz’s dungeon and ancient ventilation shafts, then checked to see how the wax was dripping on the black five-day candle, then performed the second day of the MoonWish spell. Now that I knew I was dealing with Sitri, I carved Twelfth Prince into the candle, to call on him directly. As tonight’s sacrifice I left out a beer, a shot of whiskey, and a cheese and chili tamale that had miraculously escaped Oscar’s notice.

  The offering on the final day was supposed to be a blood sacrifice. Given that it was Sitri, a demon that I had already battled, that seemed more necessary than ever. I pushed that from my mind for the moment.

  Sitting at my little pine breakfast table, I flipped through my massive Book of Shadows to find the section I had added when I went up against Sitri the first time, in the third-floor closet of the School of Fine Arts.

  I had written down a quote from the Ars Goetia:

  The Twelfth Spirit is Sitri. He is a Great Prince and appeareth at first with a Leopard’s head and the Wings of a Gryphon, but after the command of the Master of the Exorcism he putteth on Human shape, and that very beautiful. He enflameth men with Women’s love, and Women with Men’s love; and causeth them also to show themselves naked if it be desired. He governeth 60 Legions of Spirits. His Seal is this, to be worn as a Lamen before thee, etc.

  Sitri’s sigil, or seal, was a large U cut by a bar and topped by three Gothic crosses.

  I remembered it well.

  I read on: Also known by the names of Bitru, or Sytry, perhaps the same or related to the Egyptian deity Set, a god of chaos and darkness. Sitri is a day spirit, his element is water, his tarot suit is Cups. This Prince is known for inspiring chaos, trickery, darkness, lust, and love. He is also connected to the creative arts and passion for life.

  In my Book of Shadows I had included the recipe for the brew I had made, the salts for the circle, as well as a list of the items I brought with me: my athame, or magical knife; sprigs of sorcerer’s violet; a segment of sacred rope; and three horizontal slices of an apple cut to display the hidden pentacle, or stars, at its core.

  Looking at it now, it struck me as a rather meager magical toolbox with which to go up against any demon, much less Sitri. But of course what really mattered was my inner strength, the ability to focus my intent and subsume my conscious mind to channel the strength of my ancestors—the chain of powerful witches who had led to my walking this earthly plane.

  Still, I had been overly confident. Quite arrogant, really. I could see that now. But isn’t that the gift of youth? To tumble into things without thought, throwing caution to the wind?

  Unless, of course, I had screwed up.

  I had also written down the script for the exorcism, including calling Sitri by name and repeating the words, over and over, despite everything he threw at me:

  With the strength of my ancestors, I am the power. I command you to show yourself. . . . I do hereby license thee to return to thy proper place, without causing harm or danger unto man or beast, I compel thee.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering the gruesome scene. The flies and wasps that stung me, the seductive visions that promised the love of my father. Sitri had tried his best, but I had, indeed, triumphed. I had trapped him in Solomon’s Triangle and helped to save the school—and perhaps the city. I may have been young and naive, but I was strong even then.

  But as I had told Carlos, that didn’t mean that someone couldn’t have opened a portal elsewhere. Anyone with the know-how—and enough foolishness—might have conjured Sitri.

  So where did that leave me?

  Yes, Elena had been found, and she was alive, and apparently not badly hurt. And that was huge. But I still didn’t have a clue why she had been kidnapped or how all of this related to Sitri. Much less what to do about it, without making things worse.

  Snap out of it, Lily.

  I needed some company. Maya deserved a night to herself, though, and Bronwyn was spending the evening with the coven at Calypso’s house. So I called Selena to ask if she would like to spend the night with me.

  “I guess,” she said, sounding neither interested nor uninterested. With her grandmother’s permission, I drove to the busy Mission District to pick Selena up.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asked as soon as she climbed into the car, a bright blue nylon backpack slung over her shoulder.

  “Um . . .” I should have thought about that before picking her up. Selena liked to eat almost as much as a certain gobgoyle of my acquaintance. “Today’s your lucky day! We need to stop at the grocery store, anyway, so you can choose whatever you’d like.”

  She frowned, thinking. “Pad thai.”

  I laughed. “I can cook Cajun and Mexican and a fair amount of regular old American, but I’m no expert in Thai food. But if you look up the recipe, I’ll give it a go.”

  Selena used her phone to find a fairly simple-sounding recipe, and we had fun in the grocery store’s extensive Asian foods section, picking out wide rice noodles, chili sauce, and a jar of pad thai paste, which promised to make the dish that much easier. Then I stocked up on other basics, such as bread and eggs and fruit and—in deference to Oscar—potato chips, Cheez Doodles, and a jumbo bag of Tater Tots.

  We lingered in the frozen food section while Selena debated which flavor of ice cream to choose for dessert. I made a silly joke about a box of chocolate-dipped frozen bananas called “monkey tails,” and when she laughed, lights bounced off the metal edges of the freezer doors and played across her face, a kaleidoscope of disco lights revealing her special metal magic.

  When we got back to my apartment over the store, Oscar was watching an old movie on my ancient DVD player. I imagined he had intuited, somehow, that I was going to make dinner and hadn’t wanted to miss out.

  “I figured the tamale you left out was for a spell,” said Oscar, seeking praise for not having given in to the temptation to scarf it down. “Not to mention the booze.”

  “Thank you, Oscar. Never let it be said virtue goes unrewarded in this household,” I said, tossing him the bag of potato chips. “You and Selena can chop the veggies for dinner.”

  “We’re making pad thai tonight,” said Selena. It did my heart good to hear her excitement in the words. The teenager used to be so somb
er that now every smile, every laugh, felt like a gift.

  They chopped and I cleaned the shrimp and prepped the chicken for the pad thai, then started the brew for Conrad’s morning tonic. While we worked I gave them an abbreviated account of what had happened on Alcatraz.

  “You shoulda brought me with you,” said Oscar, shaking his big head.

  “You’re right, I should have,” I said, putting on a pot of water for the rice noodles. “It’s just that pet pigs are a little tough to explain, at times.”

  “You should have brought some silver with you,” added Selena, shaking her head just as Oscar had.

  “Do you think that would have helped?” I asked. Selena was still young, but she was growing in confidence, control, and knowledge when it came to magic.

  “Couldn’t hurt,” she said with a shrug, offering no further explanation.

  The meal ready, we took our seats at the kitchen table. The pad thai was pronounced a resounding success, and we finished the feast with ice cream while practicing making conjure balls from soft red wax. Talking and laughing together around the table, we made a homey scene: Just a witch with her protégée and gobgoyle. Practically a scene out of Currier and Ives, if it hadn’t been for the cauldron full of brew and the ongoing spell to battle a demon.

  I served Oscar and Selena seconds on ice cream, then ran to the bedroom when I heard the landline ringing. It was Carlos.

  “How’s Elena?” I asked.

  “Officially her condition is ‘serious but stable,’” he answered, sounding weary but relieved. “There’s no sign of assault, thank God, but she is suffering from exposure and was given some kind of drugs. As yet she hasn’t been able to tell us what happened.”

  “I’m just glad she’s safe now.”

  “As am I. Lily . . . I owe you one. A big one. And Elena’s wife wants to give you a medal, or their firstborn, your choice.”

  I smiled. “If Elena recuperates and is able to shed some light on everything that’s been going on, that will be more than enough thanks for me.”

  “I have to warn you: Given the trauma of her experiences and the drugs, it’s possible she won’t remember much, if anything.”

  “Her recovery, mental and physical, is the most important thing,” I said. “Why don’t I ask my grandmother’s coven to cast for her? They can use Elena’s hat that you brought.”

  “Should I tell the nurses on her ward to expect a coven of Texas witches to drop by?”

  I smiled at the visual of a witch invasion at the hospital. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. My grandmother is usually able to help from a distance. I’ll give them Elena’s hat and her picture on the ‘Missing’ posters; they should be able to work from where they’re staying. It might help, and couldn’t hurt.”

  “Like I said, I’m not proud. We’ll take all the help we can get. Anyway, just wanted to let you know what’s what. I’d better get back.”

  “Of course. And get some sleep yourself, Carlos.”

  “Lily?”

  “Yes?”

  “Again, thank you. Gracias, de verdad.”

  “You’re welcome. De verdad.”

  I hung up, thankful that Elena was on the road to recovery, but frustrated that we still didn’t know what was going on.

  While Selena and Oscar watched a movie, I went out to my terrace garden and started gathering roots and herbs. A far-off siren wailed, and the sounds of people laughing and yelling drifted up from Haight Street. Part of me yearned to be with Graciela’s coven at Calypso’s enchanting house, ensconced in a forest clearing, the warm energy of wise women wrapping itself around me like the warmest, softest, hand-sewn quilt.

  Instead, I was here, in my little urban oasis with Oscar and Selena.

  As in Calypso’s greenhouse, my Solomon’s seal plants were growing—and flowering—in a location I hadn’t planted them, which just happened to be directly over bits of broken glass that I had buried here, long ago. The shards came from the full-length mirror in Sitri’s closet at the School of Fine Arts, which I had shattered during my first encounter with the demon.

  Interesting.

  I dug up the shards, nicking myself a couple of times in the process, and placed the pieces, still encrusted with garden dirt, in a silver bowl Selena had polished—and imbued with some of her power—last week. I covered the bowl with a woven Mayan cloth and set it in a salt circle. I wasn’t sure what I would do with the shards, but because they were connected to Sitri—he used to manifest in that mirror—they might well come in handy.

  Their movie having ended, Oscar and Selena joined me on the terrace, following me around as I gathered my herbs. Oscar nattered on about one place or another that he wanted to check out on our honeymoon trip.

  “Could I come, too?” asked Selena.

  “Not this time, Selena. A honeymoon is really more of a couples’ thing.”

  “Oscar’s going.”

  “Yes, but it’s . . . different.”

  “Different how?”

  “It’s hard to explain,” I said. “I made Oscar a promise and to fulfill that promise he needs to come along.”

  She didn’t look convinced.

  “Besides, your grandmother needs you,” I added. “How would she cope with her store without your help?”

  “That’s true,” she said, again showing a new maturity.

  “Mistress, can I go with you and Maya tomorrow?” Oscar asked. “I read that the famous East Bay architects, Julia Morgan and Bernard Maybeck, were medievalists, and the medieval folks love putting gargoyles on their buildings.”

  “How did you know we were going to Oakland tomorrow?”

  He shrugged. “Also, I like the East Bay. That’s ‘beast’ in pig Latin. Get it? Cuz I’m a pig?”

  “What’s pig Latin?” Selena asked.

  “Stick with me, kid, I’ll learn ya.”

  As I puttered about, weeding and watering the plants, Oscar taught Selena how to say “I eak-spay ig-pay atin-lay.” He was being so nice to her that I caved.

  “I suppose you may come with us tomorrow,” I said. “But you’ll have to remain in your piggy guise.”

  He made a rude sound. It wasn’t as if I needed to remind him of such things.

  “And wear a leash.”

  Selena covered her mouth with her hands and snorted in laughter. So much for their détente.

  Oscar narrowed his eyes. “It’s humiliating.”

  “I know, Oscar, but it’s hard enough explaining to people why I have a pig with me. An unleashed pig is even harder.” I turned to Selena. “Would you like to come, too?”

  “Can’t. I have to go to class in the afternoon, remember?” Selena attended summer school a couple of days a week to make up for a bad grade in algebra. I felt her pain.

  I made a simple salve out of mugwort and honey for my assorted scratches—the ones Noctemus had given me, the ones from the Spanish dungeon, plus the nicks from the mirror shards—and then another small jar of salve to speed the healing of black eyes while Oscar and Selena played a few hands of go fish at the kitchen table. Then Oscar crawled into his nest over the fridge and I tucked Selena into the bed I’d made up for her on the couch.

  Before heading off to bed myself, I checked the wax of the spell candle one more time. It was flowing and pooling freely, as it should.

  Although it was only the second day of the spell, I could feel its strength building, the conduits aligning.

  I just hoped Sitri held off for another three days.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next morning I checked in with Carlos, who reported that Elena was about the same, resting comfortably, but had been unable to tell them anything about her ordeal. He also spoke with the FBI, who said that a forensic archaeologist was going to analyze the skeleton we had stumbled over. Unfortunat
ely, results would take a while.

  “Unlike on TV, this sort of thing takes a long time in real life,” said Carlos.

  “I wonder: Could I look at the letters from Ray Perry’s cell?”

  “I don’t see how. They’re part of a historical exhibit.”

  “I’ll be careful with them. Surely it’s not a violation of privacy if he’s been dead for decades.”

  “Probably not. Otherwise, your average historian would be in deep water. But what difference could they make?”

  “I was wondering if they could tell us something about what was going on in the prison when Perry was there.”

  “Okay. I ask again: What difference could they make?”

  “Hear me out: Suppose Perry never escaped? Suppose he was killed the same way Albright was?”

  “You like him for the skeleton we found?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “A lot of things are possible.”

  “Listen: I don’t usually see spirits, but Perry has shown himself to me twice now. Once in the attic where his shirt was found and then again yesterday, in the cell right before we were trapped inside.”

  “You’re thinking there’s a connection.”

  “I’m thinking there must be a reason I encountered two unprecedented events in two separate locations.”

  “You think he wants you to unmask his murderer?”

  Is that what I thought? My witchy unconscious often reached conclusions before deciding to let my conscious self in on it.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “I mean, the guards themselves would be dead at this point, surely. But maybe Perry wants me to solve his murder. His letters might describe some of the guards, or his treatment at their hands. Maybe they were hidden or never noticed, and squirreled away until the archivist found them.”

  “Seems to me you’re grasping at straws, Lily.”

  “Isn’t that what I do best?”

  “Fair point. I’ll see what I can do. Oh, by the way, I’ve got the wool coat you left at the crime scene. It’s a little dirty and smells like smoke, but I figured you might want it back.”