By Dark

by T Thorn Coyle

  They reached his BMW.

  “My keys are in my jacket. Right hand side.”

  She fished the key fob out and clicked the car open with a beep before racing to open the passenger door in the back. She helped Alejandro ease Tish in, then get her buckled. Tish was gone again, eyelids fluttering once more.

  “I’ll sit back here,” Shekinah said. “Let’s go to my place. Or is yours closer?”

  “Mine has an elevator, and it’ll be just as quick to get there from here. Would you call Brenda from the car? Let her know where we’re headed? She’ll want to know.”

  “Let’s go,” she said. “And thank you for coming.”

  He caught her mouth in a kiss, and caressed the back of her neck with his hand. “Of course I would come for you. Always.”

  She took in a shuddering breath and crawled into the back of his car.

  Once upon a time, Shekinah would have believed he’d always come. And he had shown up for her today, hadn’t he? But deep inside, the hurting part of her still didn’t believe him, and wondered if he was lying to himself.

  25

  Alejandro

  Once Alejandro and Shekinah got Tish to Alejandro’s place, Tish had slept for hours, finally waking around four in the afternoon. He’d made them all a quick stir fry for a late lunch/early dinner. Brenda and Raquel had just texted to say they were on their way, which was a relief. He definitely needed backup for this discussion.

  He was also avoiding a text from Thomas. A sweet message that read, Had a great time, Daddy. Would love to see you again soon.

  Tish rested, eyes closed and color better, on his leather sling chair in the library corner, feet up on the ottoman, covered by a sage-green throw. Shekinah was cleaning up the kitchen, as per their usual agreement. Whoever cooked didn’t have to clean.

  He sat on the couch, nursing a bitters and soda, wishing it was whisky instead. But until this evening was through, alcohol was not advised. There was too much work to do yet, and who knew what Raquel and Brenda had in store.

  He glanced at the message again, before dropping his phone on the couch and taking another drink. When had he become a daddy? The minute you decided to grow your hair out and sport a beard like some young hipster and discovered they were both shot through with silver. The minute you turned forty-five and brought a late twenty-something home. He smiled to himself, then frowned. He shouldn’t be thinking about Thomas. Not when Shekinah was clearly still upset.

  They had skirted around the conversation as Tish slept, touching on it only briefly, discussing the police, the action, and visions, his and Tish’s both. As Shekinah checked email on her phone, he’d thumbed through the books from the Inner Eye, searching for something that made sense, but he just couldn’t concentrate. Finally, they’d settled into their old, companionable silence, sitting on the long leather sofa, his arm around her shoulders, her head resting on his shoulder as they gazed out the windows onto the city.

  Now Tish was back to dozing in his sling back reading chair, and Shekinah was finishing clean up in the kitchen, because he’d cooked.

  Alone on the couch, he was back with his current, free-floating anxiety as a companion. He fiddled with his phone, moving it from hand to hand.

  “You can call him, you know. Or text him back.” Shekinah stood behind the kitchen counter, wiping her hands on a dish towel and watching him with steady eyes. “It’s okay.”

  “I didn’t want…you were so upset.” He felt tongue-tied. Stupid. When had their conversations become uneasy things? He knew the answer to that, but the reality of it startled him all the same. He’d made his partner careful around him and had become careful around her as well.

  Shekinah hung the towel up to dry and padded toward the couch in her stockinged feet, jeans swishing as she walked. Her hair was down and swung gently across her shoulders, blond strands brushing at the soft gray sweater she wore, sleeves pushed up on her slender, muscular forearms. Goddess, he still loved her. Even with the distance between them, she made his heart skip a beat inside his chest.

  She curled up on the leather couch, facing him. “I was upset. I’m still upset. But I think you understand why, now.” She kept her voice low, not wanting to disturb Tish. “And you not talking to Thomas—not having sex with him, even—isn’t going to change the underlying fact that you really need to work on us. Besides, making love last night helped.”

  Shekinah smiled and reached toward his hand that rested on the sofa back and touched his fingertips with her own. Warm. Friendly. The way Shekinah his lover felt to him. The way they felt together. Before.

  A knock came at the door and Alejandro groaned, even though this was the knock they’d been waiting for.

  “No rest for witches or yogis in this town,” he said, then brushed his lips across her knuckles and stood to get the door.

  Raquel and Brenda stood on the other side, looking like the priestesses they were. Raquel wore dark jeans that hugged her curvy hips and beneath a leather jacket, a red T-shirt sporting her café’s logo. Brenda was in the same boots and leggings under long tunic and gray coat she’d worn on their earlier walk, a big purse slung over one shoulder.

  “I hope you haven’t been drinking,” Raquel said, giving him the eye. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  “I know better than that.” He huffed out in irritation. This wasn’t starting on the best foot.

  “I know you do,” Raquel said over her shoulder as she walked through the vestibule, “but I also know how things have been lately.”

  “Hello again,” said Brenda. “How’s Tish doing?”

  “She had us worried, and she’s still a little out of it, but we got her to eat, so I think that’s good. Come take a look.”

  They entered the common space, only to find Raquel standing in front of the weavings, practically vibrating, Shekinah at her side. Tish was still out of it in his chair.

  Brenda set her purse on his coffee table and pulled out an herbal smudge stick. He caught a hint of lavender and rosemary.

  “I figure Tish might need it,” she said. “You, too.”

  “That would be great, actually.”

  “Stand wherever.” He stood facing Raquel and Shekinah, standing stock still in front of the weavings. As the herbal smoke wreathed around his body, he felt himself relax.

  “What do you see?” he asked the two women. Brenda moved around him, periodically blowing on the end of the wrapped bundle. He squinted against a waft of smoke.

  “The red bars look like protection to me today.” Shekinah spoke first, surprising him.

  “And those arrow shapes?” Raquel chimed in. “I think Brenda was right. They feel like…like we need to prepare for battle. Like, making me wish I’d been training with the Sons of Sàngó alongside Zion, prepared.”

  His heart sank, but the base of his skull buzzed again. The ancestors, awake and talking, just not in words he could understand. But it seemed as if they agreed.

  “What’s happening?” A soft croak came from the corner. Tish was awake.

  “Hey, Tish,” Brenda said. “We came to check on you. How are you feeling?”

  “Like a truck slammed into my head.” Her voice was weak. Scratchy.

  “I’ll make you some tea,” Alejandro said. He needed a little time.

  As he put the kettle on, the three women helped Tish up from the chair, then walked her carefully to the couch, where they propped her feet up and covered her with the throw again.

  Shekinah came to help him in the kitchen. She lightly skimmed her fingers over his waist, then plopped teabags into the mugs he’d set out. Orange and cinnamon spice. When the kettle was ready, he poured, and she ferried two of the mugs out to the living room. He followed with the other two. Shekinah settled on the couch with Tish, Raquel was in one of the chairs on the other side of the coffee table, and Brenda sat on a leather ottoman in front of her array of tools. He took the other chair.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” Raquel asked, her
voice a lot gentler than the one she’d used with him.

  Tish blew across her tea, cleared her throat, and winced. “When the cops came, the visions started coming through again. I tried to hold them off, but then…”

  “But then trying to get out of there, halfway through a hedge, you doubled over, and then fell.”

  “Yeah. The visions kind of took me over. I’m kind of freaked out by it now, but it all happened so fast…” She looked up, dark eyes huge and haunted. “And they went on for a long time. It was too much. Just too much.”

  Tish’s eyes filled with tears, and she took a sip of tea.

  “Too much how?” Brenda asked then. “Can you tell us?”

  “Too many people…if we don’t stop them now, they’re never going to stop killing us. And the rituals? You were right. They are rituals. They scared the shit out of me. But the worst part? Was their faces.”

  Every hair stood up on Alejandro’s arms. “What about their faces?”

  Tish turned her head and looked straight at him.

  “They were smiling. These horrible, horrible smiles.”

  Alejandro knew those smiles. Above the reflection of a shining tin star in his mind was a meaty, toothy smile.

  He never knew it was actually possible, thought it was just some fancy phrase novelists used, but he swore the blood ran cold inside his veins.

  26

  Shekinah

  After Brenda and Raquel had left, promising to see Tish safely home, Alejandro had wanted Shekinah to stay. It was tempting, that was for sure, but a sudden, driving sense had compelled her back to the Shiva Center. She needed to see her teacher again. She told Alejandro she’d be back if she could but would at least check in after her meeting.

  If Yogi Basu even had time to see her.

  She sat on a wooden bench in the foyer, boots off, coat hung up, breathing in the scent of incense and wood oil, waiting. Focusing on her third eye, Shekinah breathed in slowly, fingers of her right hand pointing up, thumb gently pressing her right nostril closed. Then she exhaled, still breathing through her left nostril. Slowly, the calming breath took effect, cooling the fires of stress. She felt her connection to life return as the day’s tensions drifted away. In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Exhale, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four.

  Her body knew the familiar structure, and that was exactly what she needed right now. In the midst of the maelstrom of her relationship with Alejandro, Tish’s visions, and the memory of feeling surrounded by police, then shoving through that tight corridor of green, fighting off panic, she needed the support of this thing she did every day. Whether the breath of fire, or this cooling breath, her body was the practice, was the prayer.

  She heard the doors to the meeting room open, and exhaled in one final cycle before lowering her hand and opening her eyes. There. She was better. But she still needed to speak with her teacher. She could hear the low rumble of his voice, speaking to some yogis as he always did after class. For newer people especially, any chance for a word with their teacher was a boon. There was a time when she was like that, and then she went through a phase of avoiding him, like recently.

  But tonight, the need inside her still beat strong, like the wings of a great bird inside her chest.

  She waved at a few of her friends as they exited out into the cold night air. One nice thing about yogis, they were pretty good about not pushing if it was clear a person didn’t want to speak. Silence was both respected and defended here.

  Finally, finally, the last stragglers pulled on their shoes and boots and left the space. Yogi Basu padded toward her in his soft, leather-soled white dance slippers, one hand stroking his long beard, the other tucked behind his back, where she knew he would be fingering a mala. Always praying, her teacher. It was one of the things that made him who he was, and one of the reasons his presence felt so comforting.

  “Shekinah! You were not in class tonight. Nor was Tish.” He knew. She didn’t know how, maybe he was psychic, or just intuited information from the way she sat on the bench, but he knew.

  “May I speak with you?”

  “Of course.” He gestured her toward the still-open wooden pocket doors that led to the prayer and practice room. That was a surprise. She had expected to be ushered once again into the cozy womb of his office space. Entering the practice room calmed her further. The energy of the other yogis’ prayers still permeated the space, along with the subtle trace of incense.

  She pulled two fat cushions down from a stack in the corner and set them on the wooden floor. Yogi Basu sunk gracefully to his cushion, as though he was a person half his size. Shekinah sat with a thump. The calming breath had clearly not erased all of the tension of the day. And knowing what she had to talk about, and how unhinged it was likely to sound, only increased the tension again.

  Placing her hands in prayer position in front of her, she gave a slight bow, then straightened and inhaled.

  He just sat, back perfectly straight, belly resting comfortably on the tops of his thighs. His hands were on his lap, wooden mala clicking softly in the empty room. Waiting. As if they had all the time in the world.

  When it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything, Shekinah inhaled and exhaled once again, then tried to relax her hands, which were gripping her knees as if her knees were tiny life rafts in the midst of a stormy sea. Slowly, she uncurled her fingers, and then spoke.

  “Tish is having terrifying visions, and so is my partner, Alejandro. And today, we almost got trapped by police while out supporting a family whose son…”

  “Jeremy Landis.”

  Shekinah stopped, startled.

  “You think I do not keep track of such things. But of course I do. How else can I keep this world in my mind, and in my prayers?”

  “Right. We were just gathered. His mother…she was so fierce, and so broken. It was just…terrible. And then the police came, and Tish and I were trying to get away, through this hedge, when she collapsed.”

  “I think this was not the first time. Her spirit has been troubled, our Tish. I was waiting for her to speak with me. So why are you here tonight, instead of her?”

  “She was out of it for most of the day. I hope she’s finally sleeping. But also, this isn’t just about the visions.”

  She looked up at her teacher, feeling small all of a sudden, but knowing that she had to ask.

  “The Center…we feed homeless people once a month.”

  “As is our duty. We also feed any who come to our door.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “But you think it is not enough?”

  Shekinah felt a blush rise on her cheeks. “No. I don’t. I used to, but now I see that feels selfish to me. Self-centered. Mostly, all we do is pray. Practice. But if seva—service—is part of yoga, doesn’t that mean we need to look outside the self of our immediate group more often than that?”

  “Ah, perhaps you are speaking of what Brahmachari Vrajvihari Sharan pointed to. ‘Having faith or an understanding of Vedantic spirituality means living social justice.’ Do you feel we must act differently than we do now? Are you disputing our ways?” One eyebrow raised in its own challenge, but his eyes were still warm.

  Shekinah listened to her breath, moving in and out. She listened to the stillness of the hundred-year-old building, settling around them. Then she closed her eyes, and tried to sense what was right.

  She thought of the visions Tish and Alejandro spoke of, and saw the effects of those visions on her dear friend’s faces.

  “I think we are in the middle of a war, and more war is coming, still.”

  “The Kali Yuga.”

  “Yes. And I think that we must do everything within our power to counter that. Or at least ameliorate some of the pain and harm that comes with war.” Her eyes snapped open. Her teacher’s gaze was steady, unwavering. So kind. “We have more to give than we are currently offering, so yes, I challenge that. I agree. It’s time we made a change. The Bhagavad Gita says ‘That
knowledge by which one undivided spiritual nature is seen in all existences, undivided in the divided, is knowledge in the mode of goodness.’ But we feel divided. I want help. I need help.”

  “With what?”

  “To understand what it means to act as if there is truly no division.”

  “And you think social justice action is the way? That we should direct the work of seva in that way? The way that our sister yogi does in Los Angeles?”

  She gave a quick nod but held her tongue.

  He nodded himself, a motion so brief she almost missed it.

  “It is a strong thing, to challenge your teacher’s school.”

  “I’m sorry, I….”

  He held up his right hand, wooden mala dangling from his fingers. She caught a whiff of sandalwood and tried to remember the strength and fearlessness of Lord Shiva. Tried, and failed, to feel it in her bones.

  “Do not apologize for attempting to speak what is true. Now go home, bathe the toxins of this day from your skin. Sleep. We will speak again tomorrow.”

  Shekinah’s breath stopped in her throat, just for a moment, before exiting in a rush. She rose and bowed.

  “Thank you, teacher.”

  He rose and left the room, padding softly down the hall.

  27

  Alejandro

  Alejandro filled two cups with coffee and a dash of real coconut cream. It was morning, though the light flooding through the kitchen windows was tinged with gray. Clouds had gathered in the night and hung low over the city. The Portland rains were coming.

  Last night, with impeccably strange timing—the sort of synchronicity he’d come to expect since becoming a witch—right after Shekinah had called to say she was wiped out and just needed to crash if that was okay with him, his phone buzzed. It was a text from Thomas. A sexy booty call inquiry that made him laugh.

  He’d texted back Come by before he could second-guess himself. So this morning, sitting on a barstool at his kitchen counter, Thomas shoveled eggs with salsa and steamed vegetables into his winsome face. As Alejandro walked toward him, coffee mugs in hand, he couldn’t deny how good being with the younger man made him feel. If he had to go through a sucky midlife crisis, at least he could take advantage of some of the perks.