“You should have asked Savvy to do it for you,” Gage said. “It looks like shit.”
“That’s possibly the rudest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Well, now I feel extra accomplished today.” He took a slight bow and smiled.
Nor thought of all the injuries he’d sustained trying to help her — the broken fingers, the burn on his arm. She thought about how he had trudged through that flooded room, had upheld his promise to get Sena Crowe and Savvy home safe. She thought about the smear of blood she had left on his neck, like a lipstick kiss, the remnants of a lovers’ tryst.
“Look, about when I kissed you —” Nor started.
“You thought you were heading to your death,” Gage cut in. “It was a natural reaction. It could have been worse. If I hadn’t been there, you could have ended up tonguing Sena Crowe instead.”
“I did not tongue you!” Nor insisted.
“There was some tongue.”
Nor laughed. “Shut up.”
Gage smiled, holding out his hand. “It didn’t count. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” They shook hands, and Nor was relieved that he let go first.
Across the hall, in Judd’s room, Nor found her grandmother standing at a window, smoking her rosewood pipe. The room, full of large masculine furniture and rich-colored fabrics — all dark greens and scarlet reds and chestnut browns — had always made Nor feel particularly small. Today was no different.
Nor’s grandmother led her to a worn leather couch. Nor sat down next to Antiquity. The old dog’s dream of running through the forest wasn’t quite as winsome as one of Bijou’s dreams, but it was a pleasant one nonetheless.
“Let me get a look at you,” Judd said in her gruff way. She gripped Nor’s chin with her large fingers and turned Nor’s head one way and then the other. She examined Nor’s hands, but nothing was left to heal. Those particular wounds had stopped hurting hours ago.
“I met my father,” Nor blurted out.
That caught Judd’s attention. “I suspected you might. Is he still alive?”
Nor shook her head.
“That’s probably for the best.” Judd grunted.
“Do you think she loved him?” Nor asked. “Do you think that’s what caused all of this?”
“Some hearts can’t do anything with love except turn it rotten. I think that was the case with Fern. She believed she loved him, but that love was a sour thing. Who knows what might have happened if you hadn’t been powerful enough to stop her.”
Nor gaped. “I’m not . . .”
“I think it’s about time we start talking truth, don’t you? Far as I can tell, you’re a very powerful witch, Nor. Though some lessons in the healing arts probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
Nor blanched. “How did you —”
“I’d had my suspicions. It was seeing that fern, lying there like a dried-up tongue across the kitchen table, that solidified it for me. But at that point, I didn’t want to say anything out of fear that —”
“That I was somehow using black magic?”
“I should have known better,” Judd said. “You’re the eighth Blackburn daughter, girlie. I suspect these gifts have been yours all along. I’m sorry.”
Nor wasn’t sure what to say. As far as she knew, the Giantess had never apologized to anyone before in her life. “What does it mean, though?” she finally asked. “If I’m not like my mother, am I like Rona?” Nor wasn’t sure that comparison would be any better. She sure as hell didn’t want to be Fern, but following in their matriarch’s footsteps wasn’t very appealing, either.
“I think it’s safe to say you are something entirely your own.” Judd patted Nor’s back affectionately. “Now, I hate to bring up your mother again, but letting certain people know you had a hand in her demise might work in our favor.”
Nor let the shock of what her grandmother was saying settle over her. “What do you mean?”
“I think a lot of people are going to be very afraid of what people like your mother — like us — can do. And fear can make people act in all kinds of terrible ways.” She turned back toward the window. “For now, though, you might think about heading off to bed. You, girlie, look like you’ve been through hell and back.”
“I have.”
“It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a shower, too, then, would it?” There was a catch in Judd’s voice this time, causing Nor’s heart to leap up into her throat. Was it possible that being Fern’s mother had scarred Judd just as much as being Fern’s daughter had scarred Nor?
As Nor left the room, she looked back, but Judd’s face was obscured by the smoke spiraling from her pipe.
Nor climbed to the third floor as fast as her tired muscles would carry her. She found Savvy curled up on her bed, a blanket wrapped around her like a shawl. Bijou was asleep on Nor’s pillow.
“I like your hair,” Savvy said.
Nor laughed. “Gage said it looked like shit.”
“What does he know about anything? What a dick.” She paused, giving Nor a guilty look. “I mean, putting aside the fact that I’m pretty sure he saved my life, numerous times in fact, and that if not for him, I wouldn’t be standing here. So, I mean, as long as you don’t consider that whole mess then, you know —”
“He’s a dick,” Nor finished.
“Such a dick.”
“I’m having trouble believing it,” Nor admitted cautiously. “That she’s gone.”
“But she is,” Savvy said, then looked alarmed. “She is, right?”
“Yeah, she’s gone.”
“Well. Ding dong, then.”
Savvy moved over, and Nor climbed onto the bed. Through the skylight, they watched an array of colors arc over the moon like a twirling skirt: Aurora Borealis. The northern lights transformed the night sky with their undulating swirls of bright blues and yellows and greens. Nor rested her head on her best friend’s shoulder.
“Yeah,” Nor said softly. “Ding dong.”
A late May rain slipped down Nor’s bedroom windows. Her breath fogged up the glass. The blurry red-and-blue flashing lights of two police cars lit up the night. Nor glanced back at the menagerie of animals in her bedroom: Bijou and the little fox curled up together on the bed, Antiquity sitting on the floor. Kikimora perched on top of the dresser and tracking Nor’s every move with golden eyes. “Stay here,” she told them.
Nor found her grandmother lurking on the second-floor landing. The voices of Apothia and Reuben drifted up from the first floor, where they were greeting the officers and letting them inside. The officers’ steps, resolute and unyielding, resounded loudly on the wooden floor. Their shadows crept like monsters up the winding staircase.
“What do you think they want?” Nor asked.
“You know as well as I do what they want,” Judd whispered hoarsely. “They want to know what we’re capable of. They want to see if we’re as much of a threat as she was.”
Fern’s influence over her followers had ended the moment she’d died, a little over two months ago. All over the country, her millions of fans had suddenly been freed from her control, freed from that fog that had clouded their sight and their judgment. People had been stunned to learn that money hadn’t been the only price paid for one of Fern Blackburn’s spells. Their wishes for success, for power, for beauty had been granted, but at the cost of someone’s life. Guilt-stricken, Fern’s loyal followers had looked in the mirror and seen faces they didn’t want to own.
A rash of suicides had followed. The waters below the Golden Gate Bridge and Niagara Falls had been littered with the bloated bodies of those who couldn’t forgive themselves. The Manhattan subway stop at Union Square and Fourteenth Street had been another common spot for suicide attempts.
Anti-witch propaganda had flooded the media. Occult shops like the Witching Hour had become targets of vandalism. Schools banned the use of black nail polish. Owners of black cats kept them inside for their safety. The public was in a panic. How could they
protect themselves and their families if they didn’t know from what, or rather from whom, they needed to be protected?
“Because,” as one speculative talk radio host insisted garrulously, “how likely is it that there is just one Fern Blackburn out there?”
In the hopes of calming a fearful nation, the president had held a press conference. In her plainspoken way, she’d reassured the public that their government would be diligent. She declared all “practitioners of conjuration” a threat to national security and urged citizens who had knowledge of someone practicing witchcraft to come forward.
Neighbor had quickly turned on neighbor. The bruja known for her homebrewed cold remedies no longer seemed so benign, nor did the local tarot reader with his eerily accurate predictions.
An organization calling themselves Families Laboring Against an Anti-Moral Environment (FLAAME) had staged a rally outside the capitol. “In Plain Sight” was their battle cry. Copies of the Malleus Maleficarum, a guidebook for witch hunters, had sold out in bookstores across the nation. It would have been funny if so many people hadn’t taken the 1486 text so seriously.
Truthfully, Nor had known it was only a matter of time before they targeted her and her grandmother. She just hadn’t thought it would happen this soon.
“What if we just deny that we’re witches?” Nor asked Judd. “Insist that it’s mere speculation?”
“Blackburn women have never been very good at covering their tracks,” Judd answered frankly. “It’s too late for us to start now. No, we’re going to cooperate. We’ll go with them willingly, we’ll answer their questions, and hopefully, once they see we’re not a threat, they’ll leave us alone. Just remember, girlie,” she said, peering down at Nor, “this is not the time to be stupid. Don’t go showing them something they’ll want to see.”
A few hours later, Nor was led through a sterile police station. The reek of disinfectant — a sickly sweet orange — turned Nor’s stomach. The officer she was following had seemed a lot nicer when he’d helped her into his car. Well, maybe nice wasn’t exactly the word. Maybe placid was better.
Officer Placid left Nor in a room, shutting the door behind him with an obstinate click. The room was bleak at best. There was a table and a hard metal chair that screeched against the concrete floor when she pulled it out to sit down. On one side, a window looked out into the hall, the blinds twisted and broken, the glass smeared with fingerprints and what looked like dried blood. On the other side, a window looked out into the street where the wind continued to blow and rain beat down on cars and pedestrians.
Why was it that disaster never arrived in the middle of the day, when the noonday sun was casting prisms across the kitchen floor? Why was it always dark — and raining?
Nor tried to hold on to what Judd had told her about not giving them anything worth seeing. Try to be unmemorable, Nor thought. Check. At least she’d had plenty of practice with that.
Officer Placid returned, carrying two additional metal chairs. He set them down on the opposite side of the table and settled heavily into one of them.
A woman in a crisp white suit and kitten heels came in next. She hesitated a moment before perching primly on the other chair, making sure to point herself away from the officer beside her. Nor didn’t exactly blame her. She could smell the officer’s unwashed hair and coffee breath from across the table.
Finally, a third person entered, so quietly that had he not been the one to shut the door, Nor wasn’t certain she would have noticed his entrance. His otherwise handsome face was scarred with pockmarks. Standing off to the side, he smiled at her with teeth so white they were practically blue.
The woman pulled a Kleenex from her pocket and held it to her nose as she examined the tablet in her hand, flicking her fingers across the screen in quick movements. The screen radiated an electric violet across her sharp features. “Let’s see then,” she mused. “Nor Blackburn? Born in 1998 on the thirty-first of October, which makes you —”
Officer Placid narrowed his eyes. “A Halloween baby.”
Superstitious piece of — Nor thought sourly. “It makes me seventeen,” she interjected.
The woman pursed her lips in irritation. “Yes. What I was about to say is that you are not yet legally an adult. However, in a few short months, you will be.” She clucked her tongue. “Incidentally, that also means you can be charged as an adult.”
“And what would I be charged with?”
“Nothing yet. Still, best to behave yourself, Miss Blackburn.” The woman consulted the screen again. “Let’s see. Daughter of Fern Blackburn and Quinn Sweeney, both deceased. Is that correct?”
Nor nodded, unable to forget the look on her father’s face as he sank beneath the water, or the gruesome image of her mother disintegrating before her eyes. Nor swallowed hard.
“Miss Blackburn, do you understand the purpose of your visit today?” the woman asked.
Visit? Is that what this is? Nor thought. “Uh, I’m guessing you want to know if I’m a witch.” She paused. “Like my mother.”
The woman blinked at Nor furiously. “We already know you’re a witch,” she said, practically hissing. The word was a foul thing in her mouth that she had to spit out. “What we are interested in learning is if your — abilities pose a threat to the safety and security of others, like your mother’s did.”
“All I can do is tell you when it’s going to stop raining.” Nor shrugged as sheepishly as she could. “Which should be soon.”
“So you can predict the weather?” The woman set the tablet down and folded her hands demurely. “How marvelous,” she said flatly.
Outside, sheets of rain pounded against the windowpane as an onslaught of storm clouds, dark and ominous, rolled across the sky. “It’s been raining like this for almost a week straight,” the officer scoffed. “It doesn’t look to me like it’s letting up anytime soon.”
The woman ignored the officer. “Miss Blackburn, can you be more specific? What exactly do you mean by ‘soon’?”
“I mean it’s already stopped.”
A look out the window confirmed what had seemed impossible only a moment earlier. The sky was clear, and the setting sun was blooming like fire across the darkening sky.
“What the —” sputtered the officer.
“Is there anything else you can predict? Droughts? Earthquakes?” The man standing in the corner spoke for the first time. He was looking at Nor with interest, his blue-white teeth flashing at her like the Cheshire cat. Shit.
Nor shook her head. “Only rain,” she answered, making up her responses as she went. “And I’m wrong most of the time.”
“You weren’t wrong this time.” There was something particularly hungry about the way he was looking at her.
Nor gulped. “I got lucky.” She’d seen this look before: a hungry, greedy look, like the face of one with an unquenchable thirst.
“That’s not luck,” grumbled Officer Placid. “It’s unnatural, is what it is.”
The man in the corner came closer. “What’s your radius? Could you, for example, predict a tsunami in the Philippines?”
Nor paused. “Not unless I was in the Philippines,” she finally said.
“So to be clear,” the woman interrupted. “You can predict the weather. Can you, in any way, control the weather?”
“Oh, no,” Nor said, shaking her head. “I can just tell you when it’s going to rain or stop raining, which isn’t much of a party trick around here.” The officer did not look convinced. “My mother always considered me a great failure,” she added seriously.
“Well, that’s good news for us,” the woman said humorlessly. “And for you.” She shared a look with Officer Placid.
“It’s like I said,” Nor added as meekly as possible. “I’m wrong most of the time.”
The man in the corner stared at her for a long minute before turning his attention back to the window. The rain had begun to fall again.
Judd was waiting for Nor outside under t
he awning of the police station entrance. The rain made satisfying plopping noises on the canvas. Someone’s lost umbrella sat in a puddle near her feet.
Her grandmother’s face remained as stoic as ever, but Nor caught a slight tremor in her hand when she pulled out her rosewood pipe.
“What happened?” Nor murmured.
“They heard I was a healer,” Judd said. “Seems they learned that from a few of our neighbors.”
Nor’s mouth dropped open in shock. All those people Judd had helped — how could they betray her like that? And so easily? “What did you do?”
“Not much else I could do,” Judd finally answered. “I healed a woman’s headache.”
The rain blew over Judd’s face, pooling in the deep purple bags under her eyes and the crevices etched along the sides of her mouth. She looked — old. Why did that scare Nor more than anything else that had happened that day? Even more than whatever it was that woman had been typing on that tablet of hers? Even more than the Cheshire-cat man?
“And?” Nor held her breath, praying that the pain hadn’t come out as something alarming.
Judd rubbed her temples. “Rose petals.”
Nor let out a sigh of relief. “It could have been worse.”
It took Judd a long time to respond. “I hate to say it,” she finally said, “but I think we’d better prepare ourselves for when it does get worse.”
“What do you mean?” Nor asked.
“There are a lot of scared people out there right now, girlie,” Judd said quietly. “And it’s my opinion that nothing good has ever come of actions driven by fear.”
Judd lumbered out into the rain toward Reuben’s truck, which was waiting for them across the street. Nor moved to follow, but paused to pick up the broken and discarded umbrella. She absentmindedly ran a hand over it, repairing it instantly. Someone could find use for it in all this rain. She was looking for a place to leave it when she sensed movement in one of the windows behind her. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. Someone was watching her. Nor dropped the umbrella and darted out from under the awning. Not until she was safe in Reuben’s warm truck did Nor dare to look back.
The Price Guide to the Occult Page 19
