by Susan Sey
“They don’t care about my SAT scores.”
Maria made her voice skeptical. “No?”
“Bigger fish to fry and all that.”
“Bigger than their daughter’s future?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Like what?” Maria didn’t figure she’d get an answer, but that had never stopped her from asking a question. That plus the judicious application of some friendly silence sometimes yielded fascinating results.
“They have their hands full keeping my sainted brother alive,” Yarrow said, going after her quads like they had personally offended her. “It doesn’t leave them much time to worry about their perennially fucked-up firstborn.”
Maria chewed on that for a moment. “You have a brother?” she asked.
“Stevie,” Yarrow said. “He has cystic fibrosis. Been drowning in his own lung crap from the moment of conception. Pale, perpetually suffering and saintlike in his endurance. In other words, my complete opposite.”
“You’re pretty darn pale,” Maria observed.
Yarrow rolled her eyes. “And oh so saintly.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Yarrow yanked her arm across her chest and worked viciously at her triceps. “Who would? I’m the devil, didn’t you know?”
“I thought you were more a slut.” Maria gave her an innocent look. “Isn’t that the whole idea behind the maiden thing? The goddess of sulky, sexy energy?”
“You have been paying attention.” Yarrow surprised her with a laugh. “Good for you.”
“Are you?”
“What, a slut or the devil?”
“Either.” Maria paused. “Both. You pick.”
For a long time, Maria didn’t think Yarrow would answer. The silence stretched out between them, broken only by the quiet in and out of their breathing. Maria bent her forehead to her knee and sighed at the blessed release of her hamstrings.
“I got arrested last spring,” Yarrow said abruptly. A fierce thread of self-hatred ran under a surface calm like an underground lava flow. Maria froze for an instant, then resumed her leisurely stretch.
“That’s what Einar meant last week? About your folks getting some charges dropped?”
“Yeah. We got picked up for possession, me and my friend Jilly and this guy we were both into.” She snorted. “Or maybe we were just into the shit he sold us. Hard to tell now. But we were all pretty high when we got pulled over. And wouldn’t you know, the glove box was full of pot?”
“It happens when you ride around with drug dealers.”
“It wasn’t his car. It was Jilly’s.” She shrugged. “And that’s what happens when you fuck drug dealers then lend them your car.”
“I see.”
“And when the police put us in separate rooms and asked us who the pot belonged to, Jilly said it was his. He said it was Jilly’s.”
“And you?”
“I lied,” Yarrow said baldly, as if daring Maria to judge her. To condemn her. “I knew he had a record and would go to jail if I told the truth. I also knew Jilly wouldn’t. Her rich parents would get her a slap on the wrist.” She looked Maria straight in the eye and said, “But mostly? Mostly, I wanted Jilly out of the way so I could have him myself.”
“What happened?”
“Jilly got probation from the state. She got Catholic boarding school from her parents.” There was a burning brightness in her black eyes a less sympathetic person might have mistaken for evil or, at the very least, heartlessness. Maria knew better. “I told you her parents were rich.”
“Did she forgive you?”
“Not exactly.” Yarrow threw her a wretched smile from the snow-packed floor, where she’d dropped to work on her gluts. “Every guy in the greater metro area now thinks I’ll suck his dick for a dollar’s worth of meth.”
“Ouch.” Maria drew her arm across her chest to stretch her triceps. “Was he worth it? The guy?”
“He threw me a gratitude fuck and moved on. Fast.”
“Ouch again. What did you do?”
“Oh, I went high drama. Swallowed a bunch of pills, a fifth of Jack and put myself in the hospital.” Yarrow didn’t look up, just shook her head as she bent over her knee. “As it turns out, my parents only sympathize with kids whose health problems are involuntary. So here”—she waved an expansive hand—“I am.”
Maria didn’t say anything. She didn’t figure Yarrow expected her to. She let the silence play out while she tried to decide where to step next. Yarrow had revealed more than Maria had dared hope and she didn’t want to break whatever unexpected magic had prompted the confidences.
Apparently, she waited a beat too long, because the girl suddenly leaped to her feet.
“You know what? Whatever.” She snatched up her backpack and headed for the door. “Like it matters.”
Maria jumped up and said, “Yarrow, wait! Let me—”
Yarrow shoved her arms into the pack and turned on Maria with a hard smirk. “Jesus, settle down. I’m just going to pee, not kill myself. I’m not stupid enough to try that shit twice.”
“See that you don’t,” Maria said, with deliberate coolness. Everything in her said it would put Yarrow more at ease than some heartfelt speech. “I’m counting on drafting off you on the way back to the island. I’m not as young as I once was, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” Yarrow said, her smirk losing a degree or two of ice as she pushed through the door. “Granny.”
“Bite your tongue,” Maria said mildly.
Yarrow laughed as the door swung shut behind her, but Maria watched with worried eyes as the woods behind the hut swallowed the girl up with alarming ease.
ON FRIDAY night, Maria let Rush lead her into the circle Lila had cast in her snowy backyard. Flaming torchères on long bamboo stakes marked the compass points, their tongues of fire spearing straight up into the still night air. Not a breath of wind stirred the flames, while beyond them, through the trees, the lake was a serene white stretch glittering under a gibbous moon.
Maria wore nothing but the thin white shift Lila had provided, and her hair bounced crazily on the crystalline air, but she didn’t feel the cold. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe it was the sauna Lila had insisted she take beforehand, but even her bare feet radiated heat.
She saw Lila waiting for them by her backyard altar, and Rush threaded his fingers through hers.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked softly. He didn’t seem to feel the cold either, and he wasn’t wearing much more than she was—a boy-cut version of the same thin tunic thing, his in black.
“Sure.” The strength and calm that were his essence flowed into her through their joined hands and steadied her. “It’s a protection ceremony. How could it hurt?”
“You look nervous.”
“I was.” She lifted her shoulders as if to say, Go figure. “But I trust you.” She smiled. “Let’s do this thing.”
They joined Lila in front of her altar, where three slim candles—black, white and purple—burned.
“Merry meet, children,” Lila said. She glanced at their tunics with disapproval. “You’re sure you wouldn’t prefer to do this sky-clad?”
“Sky-clad?” Maria looked to Rush for translation.
“Naked.”
“Hell, no.” Maria looked back at Lila, her free arm over her chest, where she knew her nipples were beaded and plainly visible against the thin white material. “This is bad enough.”
Lila sighed. “All right, then. Let’s get started.” She laid her hands over Maria’s and Rush’s joined ones. “I come before the goddess this night, in the fullness of the moon, to seek Her blessing on Maria. To anoint Rush Her champion and to request for him Our Lord and Lady’s strength that he may turn aside any wickedness that seeks Maria, and defeat any who wish her harm.” She lifted her arms to the nearly full moon hanging bright and low in the sky, tossed back her head and proclaimed, “An’ the goddess will it.”
&
nbsp; “So mote it be,” Rush said.
Lila folded her arms over her chest in what looked like some sort of ritual cross. “Begin,” she said to Rush.
A wave of awareness washed over Maria, along with something prickly and powerful and unknown. She kept her eyes pinned to Rush, somehow sensing it emanated from him.
She stood silent and waiting, her arms loose, her hands relaxed in spite of her exquisite vulnerability. She was all but naked, yet she burned. Burned with heat, yes, but with hunger, too. For what she didn’t know. All she knew was that relief could come only from the man standing before her with an answering hunger in his eyes.
Rush turned to the altar and picked up the white candle burning there. With his left hand he reached across his body to hold the candle above Maria’s left shoulder. His eyes hot on hers, he tipped it, allowing a single drop of melted white wax to fall onto her skin. Skin that was already too hot even to register the sting.
With the candle, he drew a line in the air from her shoulder to her opposite hip. A tingling need sprang up in its wake, as if he’d stroked her with his hand. He stepped closer, brought the candle behind her back and the heat pumping off his body slid into hers. The half inch left between them went heavy and hot, and Maria forgot how to breathe.
He reached behind her with his other hand, the loop of his arms encircling but not touching her. Certainly close enough to touch, though, Maria thought wildly. Close enough to taste. To smell. She closed her eyes and dragged in a greedy lungful of him. Even with her eyes closed, she knew the taut swell of his shoulder was right there next to her cheek. All she had to do was lean forward a scant inch and put her mouth on it.
The hot splash of a second drop of wax joining the first on her shoulder startled her out of her lustful little daydream. God. She could see what Lila meant about paganism being very sex positive. She shook herself lightly and almost chuckled. She opened her eyes, ready to share the joke with Rush, but he wasn’t laughing. His eyes were on hers, direct, patient, serious.
He said, “My shield be thy shelter.”
Any urge to laugh died a swift and unsettling death with those old-fashioned words, spoken in that economical voice of his. Rush might not be a pagan anymore, and he might not believe in the ceremony Lila was performing, but this promise to protect her? To put her firmly under his aegis and take all comers until anybody who wished her harm was in bloody shreds at his feet? That was serious, and he was in deadly earnest.
Something shifted inside her, something huge and heavy and vital. She gazed at him in wonder while her internal landscape heaved and cracked like all her tectonic plates had come unexpectedly unmoored.
And suddenly Maria knew. Her body wasn’t responding to smoke and moonlight. Her head wasn’t turned by magic and goddesses. This wasn’t paganism. This wasn’t even that dangerous, heated hunger that lived inside her. This wasn’t sex at all. This was love.
She’d fallen in love with Rush.
Chapter 28
MARIA’S CAREFULLY constructed world had already sustained some heavy shelling over the past few days, but now it collapsed into rubble around her bare feet and she could only stare at the man responsible. She was in love? With Rush?
Her face must’ve shown her utter dismay because he gave her a reassuring look as he replaced the white candle. Then he took up the black candle, this time with his right hand.
Okay, Maria thought. She tried to breathe while he drew another tip-tilted circle in the air around her with the candle, only in the opposite direction this time, right shoulder to left hip. Okay, this is bad. It’s bad but it’s manageable. I can figure this out. I can—
A line of fiery want followed the candle across her skin and she knew she was lying to herself. She couldn’t figure this out. She couldn’t fix this. She was in love. With Rush, who refused to tolerate even polite social fictions, let alone all the willful dishonesty that made her little world go round. What the hell was she going to do?
He sealed the circle with a second stinging drop of wax and she forced herself to meet his gaze.
“My sword, thy guarantee,” he said, and his voice washed over her skin like a rough caress. The need inside her spiraled higher and tighter and suddenly she didn’t care how dangerous this was. How inconvenient or unscheduled. This was love and it was inside her. She couldn’t change it. Wasn’t that what he’d said? She was what she was. Now all that was left was to look it in the eye and decide if she could live with it.
He set aside the black candle and lifted the purple one. He brought it into the charged and vibrating space between their bodies. She gazed past the flame into his steady silver eyes, eyes that held humor and heat and that terrible, beautiful honesty that made him what he was.
And she thought to herself, Okay, yeah. I can live with this.
Then he hooked one finger into the loose neckline of her robe and she realized it was less a question of living with it, and more a question of dying without it. Her nipples beaded, begging shamelessly as he allowed a single drop of purple wax to slip from the candle into the valley between her breasts. She lifted her arms as he passed the candle around her rib cage, completing a third circle. A final drop of wax joined the first drying on her damp, unsteady chest.
“My courage be thy safeguard,” he said, and the words ran into her bloodstream like warm honey.
“Our Lady will it,” Lila sang out. Maria jumped. She’d forgotten Lila was even standing there. A flush rose in her already overheated cheeks as she imagined the sharp-eyed Lila watching the whole byplay between her and Rush from six inches out. No wonder there were no secrets on Mishkwa.
“So mote it be,” Rush murmured.
He set aside the purple candle and held out his hands. Maria laid hers into them with a sigh of near relief. She ached for him with a dizzying need, a physical hunger that unstrung her. She had the rest of her life to worry about what loving him meant. Right now she needed his touch. His skin. His palms against hers.
She needed him.
He bent his head and, without warning, laid his lips against the white drops of wax on her left shoulder. Her heart nearly exploded in her chest and a desire geysered up inside her that made what she’d experienced during the circling part of the ceremony look tepid.
“My shield is thine,” he said, then kissed the black wax on her other shoulder. “My sword is thine.” He dropped to his knees and pressed his lips to the purple droplets between her breasts. She nearly went to her own knees. “My courage I pledge to thee. Circles to keep thee, charms times three.”
“An’ the goddess will it,” Lila said.
“So mote it be,” Rush murmured against her skin.
“Blessed be this woman,” Lila said, authority ringing in her tone as she turned her face up to the flowing moonlight. “May the goddess protect and strengthen her against all forces that would impose their will on her, whose appetites would sate themselves at her expense, who value their ambitions more highly than her life.”
Lila knelt to the earth and scooped up a handful of snow. “Blessed be this man, who dedicates himself to that most sacred duty—protecting the source of all life, all love, all compassion and forgiveness.”
She lifted the snow up to the moonlight, and droplets of meltwater fell from her fingers as she said, “Blessed be this pair, this man and this woman together. Invest in them the strength to turn aside attack, the vision to see themselves and their enemies clearly, and the wisdom to lay down crippling burdens. Grant them compassion enough for mercy, strength enough for might and the insight to know which is which.”
She dropped her arms. “An’ the goddess will it.”
Rush said, “So mote it be.” And this time Maria joined him.
Chapter 29
IT WAS well after midnight by the time Maria and Rush made it back to the Ranger Station. Maria hung up her jacket on its wooden peg while Rush brought the embers in the stove back to a blazing crackle. The little stove pumped off heat like a blast furnace, b
ut Maria’s fingers ached with the cold as she combed them through the wild thicket of her hair.
Nerves, she told herself. She tucked her frozen fingers into her elbows, then thought, Oh, shit. Honesty. She couldn’t lie anymore, not even in her internal monologue. Rush could sense a lie at twenty paces. Her big confession of love wasn’t the time to test him.
So, fine. She wasn’t nervous. She was terrified. The kind of terrified that came in one color (flat black), one size (extra large) and sucked the light and hope out of everything it touched like a Harry Potter Dementor. Because what she felt for Rush made her crush on Ridge Calloway look like a kiddie ride, and if those feelings had cost her a sister, what might loving Rush cost her?
Not that it mattered. Not loving Rush would cost more. Infinitely more. The prettily painted, perfectly composed Goose was nothing but a shell. Safe, attractive but ultimately empty. And Maria wasn’t content with emptiness anymore. Rush had shown her more and she was addicted. Now she not only wanted more, she needed it. Required it.
But asking for it—for him—would take courage. A lot more than she had, unfortunately. Still, she scraped up what she could find, hid her trembling fists in her elbows and said, “Hey, Rush?”
“Yeah?” He closed the stove door and threw her a look over his shoulder. She started to smile at him, big and reassuring, but caught herself and killed it. No smiling unless she was actually happy, and since she thought she might die any minute from pure fear, she probably shouldn’t smile.
He blinked. “Yikes. That bad, huh?”
She swallowed. “What’s that bad?”
“Whatever has you doing that”—he circled a finger in the air—“with your face.”
“I’m trying to be honest here.” The trembling in her hands threatened to escalate into full-body shivers, so she banded her arms tighter across her chest. “Isn’t that the deal? Honesty?”
“Well, sure.” He rose, slapped at the sawdust on his jeans and studied her carefully. “But that looked more like nausea than honesty.”
