The server set a small dish of almonds down on the table. Caroline shoved a few of the nuts in her mouth. They were roasted with salt and rosemary.
“Did she say what sort of magic?”
Now it was Caroline’s turn to furrow her brow. She shook her head. “I’m not sure. But it seemed as though she was trying to…I don’t know, this sounds so strange.”
Brenda took a sip of wine. And waited. She was so patient. It was one thing that struck Caroline about her. Caroline was not patient.
“I swear, she said she was trying to plant voices in people’s heads.”
Brenda knocked over her wine glass. A red cascade flowed across the table. Caroline jumped up. Both women grabbed their napkins and tried to stem the tide. The glass rolled, and Brenda caught it right before it fell off the edge of the table onto the floor.
Their server hurried over with a damp rag.
“I’m so sorry,” Brenda said.
“That’s okay,” the woman said. “It happens all the time. Just let me clean this up, and I’ll get you a fresh glass, all right?”
“Thank you so much.”
When the waitress went to replace the glass of wine, the two women just stared at one another. Caroline knew something had just happened, but she wasn’t sure what.
“Well, that was embarrassing,” Brenda said, reaching for some almonds. She chewed for a moment, licked her lips, and finally spoke again. “I’ve had person after person come into my shop this last week…all of them hearing voices.”
No wonder she had knocked over the wine glass.
“What kind of people?”
“All kinds. A few of them are just my usual customers….”
Caroline held very still, barely breathing. This was deeply, deeply strange. She clutched the medal of the Archangel Michael, hand fisted over her breastbone. Waiting.
“But some of those people?” Brenda grimaced and rubbed at her forehead. “They’ve been from the local government.”
“Holy shit, are you serious?”
Brenda nodded. The waitress set down a fresh glass of Pinot Noir. Brenda thanked her profusely.
“Anything else I can get you?” the woman asked.
“No. Thanks so much.”
Brenda sipped her wine until the server walked away.
“You said this was the support group for…?”
“For survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse.”
Brenda looked pale, too pale. Then her face flushed with what looked like anger.
“What are you thinking?” Caroline asked.
“I’m wondering if these political people aren’t covering something up. Something to do with domestic violence. Or rape.”
“And you think this woman, Sharon, is getting her revenge on them?”
Brenda shook her head, then leaned forward, voice low. “I don’t know what to think. All I’m sure of is that up until four months ago, I pretty much took city government for granted. But after what the coven has seen. The corruption…I hate to say it, but very little surprises me anymore.”
Caroline took a long drink of her martini and coughed. It burned a little going down. She appreciated the sensation. It reminded her that she was alive.
“I don’t think I’ve thanked you enough. You and the coven.” Tears filled Caroline’s eyes. “I think you all saved my life.”
“I think he did,” Brenda said, pointing to her medal. “The Archangel.” She nodded. “Now we just have to figure out what these other voices are and whether this woman you spoke to tonight is delusional, or actually has something to do with this.”
Caroline nodded. She realized what a sheltered life she led so far. First raised in her upper-middle-class neighborhood, going to good schools, doing all the right activities. And then being more and more sequestered, isolated, by Rafe. Some of the literature Sydney had given her said that was pretty typical of abusers. They isolated their victims as a form of control.
But here she was now, drinking a martini in a dim lounge, across from a beautiful woman. A witch. And possibly saved by an archangel and a coven, and possibly hot on the heels of what? A delusional person? Or a powerful psychic sowing discord throughout the city?
“So you think this woman might be having an effect?”
“It all depends. It depends on whether or not she’s had any training, or whether she’s a natural psychic. Or whether, in her grief or rage or whatever it is, she didn’t open up a channel strong enough to broadcast.”
“I guess I have a lot to learn,” Caroline said.
Brenda looked thoughtful, staring over Caroline’s shoulder.
“Caroline?” Brenda caught her gaze. “What did the woman tonight look like?”
Caroline drew her image up. “Slightly older than we are. Maybe fifty? Blond, curly hair. A lot of it. Curvy, I think, though it was hard to tell. She was wearing this sort of sweater coat thing.”
“Well damn.”
“What?”
“I think I caught her stealing in the store this week. I had to ask her to leave.”
27
Brenda
Brenda rang the doorbell next to the glass door set between two bay windows. Traffic raced by behind her. The busy street seemed like a strange place for a temple, but she also knew folks rented what they could, where they could, if their group was too large to meet in someone’s home.
Red curtains hung in the windows, obscuring what was inside. There was a banner in one of the windows, also red, with the elongated oval of the vesica piscis emblazoned on the fabric. Within the oval was a triangle with an eye in the center, a white dove flying downward, and a flaming chalice. White letters above and below the symbols read, “Light Eternal Lodge, Ordo Templi Orientis.” The Thelemic Temple, they often called themselves, thelema being an ancient Greek word that represented the marriage of love and a person’s will.
They were ceremonialists, and ceremonial magicians had different tools and techniques than witches, and she was really hoping Frater Louis could help her out.
The door opened on a smiling man with dark salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in all black.
“Brenda! Welcome! I was so happy to hear from you,” Frater Louis said. “It’s been entirely too long.”
“Thanks for making the time to see me, I know you’re busy.” Brenda looked around. She hadn’t been in the local Thelemic Temple in years. The front room Louis ushered her into wasn’t the sanctuary itself, of course. The ritual space was behind a set of double doors to the back. This front area was just a meeting hall where they held lectures, study groups, and the occasional party. It was a comfortable enough place. Nice, actually.
The wood floors were strewn with warming rugs in jewel tones; the walls, lined with bookcases and devotional art. A small kitchen area was set up on a cabinet near a single door that Brenda recalled led to the toilets.
Padded wooden folding chairs were arrayed in stacks along the back wall opposite the doors. Years of incense permeated the rugs, books, and walls. For the first time, Brenda wondered what sensitive people did about joining magical groups. She couldn’t imagine how they managed without migraines.
Frater Louis led her to a study table surrounded by five chairs. An older Latino man, he’d been part of the OTO since the 1960s. Brenda liked and respected Louis. He carried himself with a natural sense of authority, shoulders straight and spine erect. His brown skin was slightly pockmarked, but Brenda barely noticed, his face was that beautiful. Dark brown eyes, a Roman nose, and full, dark lips. But mostly? His beauty came from the energy he radiated.
Louis was a self-possessed magician, and to Brenda, that was one of the most attractive things in the world. If she’d been into men, she would have approached Louis years ago.
He waved Brenda into a chair. “Please, sit. Can I get you some sparkling water? Coffee?”
Brenda shook her head. “No thanks. I’d rather just get down to business.”
Frater Louis sat across from Brenda and fo
lded his hands together on top of the table. She glanced at his thick silver ring. Another dove, set in the vesica pisces.
“So, what can I do for you?”
Brenda closed her eyes for a moment and took in a deep breath. She asked her spirit guides for help. She also called upon the Voice. Might as well use it, if it was going to keep intruding on her life.
She dropped her attention deep inside herself, down into her center. Give me the correct information, she thought. Let me ask the right questions, and hear the right answers. Please.
“Well, I’m not sure whether I’m dealing with angels or demons, or both. All I know is I’m hearing a voice, and a lot of my customers have been hearing voices, too. And then…a new friend of mine encountered someone who said she’d been seeding people’s thoughts. Tangentially, I also caught the same woman stealing from the Inner Eye.”
Frater Louis just raised one hand as if to say go on. He was almost preternaturally self-contained. She looked past his shoulder, eyes scanning the bookcases, but not seeing the titles on the spines. Buying time to search her thoughts.
“I’m not sure if these visitations are connected. But I’m also not sure that they aren’t. And some of them seem benign, actually, even helpful. The voices I’ve been hearing”—she paused a moment, then corrected herself—“the Voice I’ve been hearing, well, my coven is pretty convinced it’s an angel. It arrives on a shaft of light. Also, my new friend? The Archangel Michael seems to be an ally of hers. He burned the shit out of the hands of a man who was trying to hurt her.”
Frater Louis leaned forward, hands clasped again, arms sliding across the table toward her. If the table hadn’t been so large, he could have reached out and touched her at this point.
“A physical manifestation? How?”
“Through a sacred medal. He grabbed it, and the image burned him.”
He stroked his chin. “Impressive. And the other voices?”
“They’re frightening people. They’re scaring a wide variety of people, from ordinary students and waitresses, all the way up to…” She paused, not sure if she should say anymore. She took her priestess’s vows pretty seriously, and didn’t want to disclose too much. But she also needed help.
Frater Louis caught her discomfort, and slid his hands away, sitting upright once again.
“I can, and will, hold all this in confidence,” he said.
Brenda nodded, and puffed out a breath.
“This goes all the way up to judges, and the chief of police. Maybe even beyond that, but those are just the people who have come to me so far.”
He expelled a heavy breath. “No shit,” he said, then tapped a finger on his lips. Thinking.
“How much do you know about the seventy-two bright spirits?” he asked.
Brenda shrugged. She’d heard of them, of course. She couldn’t run a metaphysical shop and not have.
“It’s not something I’ve studied in depth. I’m a witch. We don’t usually work with those sorts of forces. But I know that they are considered to be angelic entities, right? That’s what you all do with the angelic languages, and Enochian magic….”
Frater Louis was nodding.
“That’s true. All of that is true. We do work with the angels in that way, and there are traditionally said to be seventy-two of them.” He shrugged and smiled. “But of course, these things can’t be measured, can they?”
Brenda traced a finger across the wooden table, following the grain up to the tangled dark whorls of a knot. “I suppose not. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth’ and all that, right?”
“‘Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’,” he finished the Shakespeare quote. “The thing is, there’s also the flip side. Goetia.”
“Demons,” Brenda said.
“That’s right. And you know that some of us in the OTO work with the demons as helpers. We form a compact, an agreement. They do the work we need, and then we work to lift them up to a higher, more sublime plane. Closer to the angels.”
“To redeem them,” Brenda said.
“To redeem them, and redeem ourselves. Some people are agnostic, and posit that angels and demons are both just parts of ourselves that we need to deal with. Others work with them as discrete entities.”
Something itched at her skin. Brenda felt restless all of a sudden, finding it hard to sit, having a calm conversation about these things. Not when she didn’t know whether or not people were in danger.
“So what are you saying?” she asked.
“What I’m saying is, a lot of us have a theory… Some of us even have the experience.” And he paused, and placed both hands flat on the table. Then he looked at her as if to make sure she was truly listening.
“I’m ready.”
“Many of us suspect that the beings we call angels and the beings we call demons, whether they exist inside, outside, or somewhere in between, are simply reflections of each other.”
“And?”
“I’m saying that often we name things demons or angels, because of how we perceive them acting in our lives, but really we’re talking about the same thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“Forces too powerful for the human mind to understand without cracking into bits.”
Well, damn again.
Frater Louis steepled his hands beneath his chin, dark eyes flashing.
“So, are there seventy-two of each, or do we just badly perceive what we see in the mirror?” he asked.
“How do we tell the difference?”
“Does it matter? In working any sort of magic, and in dealing with any forces, whether internal or external, we must know ourselves to the best of our abilities. We look at the world from there, and the cleaner our internal processes are, the clearer the reflection in all the worlds. We do what we can in order to act with confidence, and without fear.”
“I know all this, but…I think I just got shaken.”
“I do sense an angelic presence around you, by the way.”
How much more confirmation do you need, Brenda? Stop fighting this.
“What’s the first thing an angel traditionally says when they appear to a human?”
“Be not afraid.”
“There’s a reason for that,” he said. “They know they’re going to freak you out, for one thing, but they also know that in order to face the challenge they bring to your doorstep, you’re going to need to step up. Getting past fear is the first thing you need to deal with.”
“It’s either getting past the fear or learning how to act with courage regardless.”
“Exactly.” he said, “It strikes me that what you need to do is remember what your will is. What is your primary motivation? What threads through your entire life?”
Brenda thought for a moment.
“To teach. To serve the light—the Sun and the Moon—in the form of Lucifer and Diana,” she said. “To serve the people to the best of my ability. But mostly?”
Brenda paused. A truth she didn’t often seek out stirred inside her.
:Bring forth that which is slumbering in darkness. Know thyself,: the Voice said.
What was it? What was her truth? Her task? Her will?
“Mostly—and I don’t know why I didn’t figure this out until now—mostly my will is to work for the liberation of all beings.”
“And that is why you work with the deities you do. They are all about light and liberation, despite what popular culture might say. You were marked, likely years ago, as one whom the people could trust. And your Gods have worked through you.”
Brenda wished she’d accepted that cup of tea now. She could use it.
“It is also likely the reason these angels are coming to you. And the reason all of these people are appearing, too.”
“Angels plural?”
He looked startled. “Yes. You’ve named Michael and Lucifer both in the course of this conversation.”
“Oh Goddess. How have I been so stupid? Since I work with Lucifer as
Diana’s brother, the sun to her moon, I always forget he’s also a Goddamned angel!”
Frater Louis laughed. “Only damned according to one of the stories.”
“So what do I do now?” she asked.
“We,” he corrected, “are going to make some tea, and talk some more about how angels and demons work in the world.”
“And then?”
“We’re going to figure out whether or not we need to stop them, or offer them our aid.”
28
Caroline
Still a bit worn out from the physical altercation, and then from all the information swirling in her head, Caroline decided to go for a drive.
The coven had dealt with Rafe. She couldn’t do anything about that woman, Sharon, and whatever the heck she may or may not have been doing to poison the Portland airwaves with psychic interference. Whatever that was. Not being a trained psychic or a witch, she couldn’t help Brenda with the people hearing voices, either.
But she could do something about her business.
If she was going to build a new life, or even have a chance at it, she needed to make some changes.
She had invoked freedom the other evening. Freedom and love. Well, she had two sample cases filled with gemstones and jewelry that might go a long way toward helping with the first.
She just had to take some action.
Over a cup of tea in Dan and Sydney’s kitchen that morning, Caroline realized she’d already made begun the first change that might boost sales and help grow her business. She could visit more shops, talk with the proprietors, and ask them what they wanted in person.
“Nothing like the personal touch,” she said she pulled into a parking spot in downtown Salem, Oregon.
It was a lovely day. The storm had broken, leaving behind ragged white clouds that swept across the blue sky. Blooming cherry trees lined the streets, showing off pink and white and deep rose petals cascading softly to the sidewalks. She took in a deep breath of the fresh air, and locked the Jeep.
Downtown Salem was cute. Brick-fronted buildings with bright awnings were interspersed with plaster-fronted buildings that looked like they had been built in the 1920s. Caroline found the red brick charming. That was something they didn’t have much of down in earthquake central. Wood and steel were the building materials of the San Francisco Bay Area.
By Wind Page 14
