Homecoming

by Amber Benson

  And that was when Eleanora fainted.

  Arrabelle

  Ahigh-pitched howl tore through the calm, and Arrabelle shivered, trying to shake off the unsettled feeling the sound sparked. She froze in place, the unwieldy bag of ash twisting in her hand, and waited for the feeling to pass.

  But it didn’t.

  Instead, it grew larger, unfurling inside her until she was unable to stop herself from looking over her shoulder, eyes darting into the dark recesses of the woods that surrounded the clearing. She saw nothing. No creature standing in the shadows waiting to devour her.

  Rigid with anticipation, she waited a few minutes to see if the sound would come again, but there was only the rasp of her own breath as the tension slowly began to ooze out of her body. She reminded herself she was in the woods, that she was trespassing on the habitat of woodland animals, so of course she would hear their comings and goings. There was absolutely nothing to be frightened of.

  “Just a dog,” she murmured to reassure herself, but the eerie sensation that had sneaked up her arms and the back of her neck would not be assuaged by mere words. Because fear—being honest with herself, that was what this was—is instinctual.

  Arrabelle was far too old to give a shit about fear. She’d lived too long, seen too much, dealt with too many idiots not to have learned how to laugh in its face. She did what she wanted . . . even if it turned out to be difficult, dangerous, or otherwise ill advised—and she hated anyone telling her no or trying to dictate what she could and couldn’t do.

  She had an independent spirit, and that meant she wanted to call her own shots. Fearless. That was how she liked to think of herself.

  Fearless and curious.

  She was interested in absolutely everything, and this innate curiosity seemed to know no bounds. Especially when it came to the human body and medicine. This was due to both nurture and nature, her father being a thoracic surgeon and single dad who’d raised his daughter on his own in the urban wilds of San Francisco. Sure, there’d been a parade of clueless nannies to make sure she was fed, clothed, and sent off to school on time—not that any of them checked to make sure she actually stayed in class—but she hardly remembered any of their faces; they were just phantoms passing through her life.

  In her memories, it was always just her and her dad.

  He may have worked long hours at the hospital, but the time he did spend with her was full of love, acceptance, and amazing stories about his work. She loved listening to him talk about the surgeries he performed, and their dinner table conversation was often so rich with talk of blood and entrails that it put most guests off a second visit.

  Time alone without her father was spent exploring the old Victorian row house they lived in: A hoarder’s paradise, it was filled with an assortment of strange anthropological artifacts and a library full of bizarre medical tomes whose diagrams gave Arrabelle a keen insight into the secret workings of the human body. Many of these items were in her house now, left to her care after her father’s passing. Being surrounded by them made his loss feel less sharp.

  She shivered.

  It was starting to get really chilly out. Arrabelle could feel the cold settling into her bones, burrowing deep inside her. She wished she hadn’t told Devandra she could come at eight—she’d felt guilty and relented because Dev had sounded so sad about not getting to tuck her daughters into bed. But my God, wasn’t that what fathers were for? Shouldn’t Freddy have to bear some of the burden for their care?

  Arrabelle honestly didn’t see the point in having children. She was perfectly happy on her own. She couldn’t imagine being tied down like Dev. The idea terrified her. She wondered if her own father had ever felt this way. Looking back now, she couldn’t pinpoint even a moment in her childhood when her father hadn’t seemed happy to have her around, so maybe she was just a selfish bitch who liked her independence too much.

  She laughed at this. Not because it was funny, but because it was closer to the truth than she cared to admit. And because she was still feeling a little spooked at being out in the woods alone.

  “Done.” She spoke the word aloud just to push back the darkness.

  Pleased with her own handiwork, she stood up and wiped the ash from her hands, staining the sides of her coveralls. Then she surveyed the eternal circle she’d cast within the circumference of the clearing.

  The coven may have called it eternal, but to Arrabelle it just looked like a plain old circle. Creating one was a time-consuming aspect of the ritual process—in fact, Arrabelle and Lizbeth had spent the early-morning hours drinking coffee and burning cedar planks in order to get the right consistency of ash—but it was necessary. All covens used it to create a protective energy barrier around themselves before they began any spell. It kept the good stuff in . . . and the bad stuff out.

  Not that any of them were worried that the bad things would find them here. The clearing was hidden deep within the heart of Elysian Park, away from the miles of walking paths, the police academy, and Dodger Stadium—but not too far from the Dragon, an outcropping of rocks painted to resemble a large blue-eyed reptile whose scales were made of spray-painted pictures and gang tags. The clearing was actually no more than a little glen surrounded by a grove of eucalyptus trees, their green leaves whispering softly whenever they were tickled by the wind.

  But there were protective wards around it. Burlap sachets were filled with herbs, stones, ash, and pieces of precious metal—all blessed and imbued with coven magic—and buried deep within the Earth, tucked in around the roots of the trees to create a warded circle around them. Very rarely a weary but well-intentioned hiker would chance upon the clearing, and the infusion of magic buried there would leave them lighter and happier creatures. But, try as they might, none of them ever found the clearing twice.

  It was here the coven met to maintain their rituals—rituals carried out all around the world by a multitude of covens, creating a unified power that kept the Earth in balance. And when the balance was subverted, when covens were destroyed—like in the Dark Ages when the blood sisters, or “witches” as the world called them, were routed out of their homes and burned at the stake—terrible things like civil war and genocide occurred. Even Mother Nature got in on the act, conjuring droughts, wild fires, murderous heat waves and cold fronts, earthquakes, and floods.

  Arrabelle opened a canvas bag full of thick white tallow candles and began to lay them out in front of her. She needed ten: four at each compass point inside the circle, five for each member of the coven, and one for the initiate—

  Another howl rent the air, and this one was closer. Much closer. Arrabelle looked up, her brown eyes searching the woods, but there was only the quiet rustle of the trees and the hiss of the still-damp grass as the wind danced across it.

  “Anyone out there?”

  She heard the crunch of something treading across the grass, flattening the blades with heavy feet. This new sound startled her, immediately shifting all of her senses into high gear. She knew how vulnerable and exposed she was alone in the woods, totally on display to whatever creature was lurking in the trees, so she went on the defensive, picking up one of the white candles in case she had to lob it at a stray dog . . . or worse.

  If she stayed put, she’d be safe within the confines of the circle—but then she realized that her blood sisters had to cross the woods to get to her, and who knew what the hell was out there, watching them. She slid her cell phone out of her coveralls pocket and punched in Dev’s number.

  A moment later she heard the opening strains to the title song from The Sound of Music.

  “Dammit, Dev, tell me that is not the ringtone you use for me!” Arrabelle called out, scowling into the darkness.

  “Sorry!” Dev replied, stepping through the circle of eucalyptus as she pushed back the hood of her cloak, exposing her head to the cool night air. She’d taken the long strands of her t
hick strawberry-blond hair and plaited them, the braids falling like burnished rope over either shoulder.

  “You’re the one who looks like the Swiss Miss,” Arrabelle said in a teasing tone—instantly feeling better now that she wasn’t alone. “I should Julie Andrews you on my phone.”

  “The girls got into my phone and changed my ringtones,” Dev said apologetically, “and I don’t know how to change them back.”

  She knelt beside Arrabelle, holding up the hem of her long skirts to keep them from getting damp, and picked up four of the candles.

  “Let me help you,” she continued. “Two will get things done faster than one.”

  “I never say no to that,” Arrabelle replied, looking up at the night sky as the clouds overhead began to shift, bathing the clearing in beams of opalescent moonlight.

  “Did you hear the howling?” Dev asked, as she set a candle for each of the cardinal directions. “I think it’s someone’s dog over on Park. I came in that way and it was really loud.”

  Arrabelle nodded as though this were just a passing topic of conversation. She didn’t tell Dev how badly the dog’s cries had unsettled her.

  “—people just leave them out all night,” Dev continued. “That’s why they cry. Locked up in a fenced-in backyard—”

  “Yup,” Arrabelle said, chiming in at the appropriate moments. Her brain was distracted, wanting a logical explanation for what she’d experienced.

  In the end, she chose to believe Dev’s theory about neighborhood dogs trapped behind fences. It was easier and less frightening than the alternative.

  “Eleanora came for a reading this afternoon—”

  Arrabelle nodded.

  “I know. She told me.”

  Dev had finished placing the candles and was standing in the center of the eternal circle, at loose ends.

  “Don’t look like that,” Arrabelle said, as she caught the expression on Dev’s face. “I know what you’re worried about, and it’s fine.”

  Dev looked relieved.

  “She told you?”

  “She didn’t have to,” Arrabelle said. “I just knew.”

  She knew because Eleanora hadn’t asked her. She’d waited for the day when Eleanora came to her. Told her that she would be the next in line . . . and it never happened. Eleanora’s silence had been more than enough to assure her she was being passed over in favor of someone else.

  She’d heard nothing until today—when Eleanora called to ask her to prepare for tonight’s induction ceremony.

  “I asked her why—” Dev began, but Arrabelle waved her off.

  “It’s fine. I don’t have a problem with it,” Arrabelle said. “I trust Eleanora. She’s my blood sister, and the master of my coven.”

  Of course, this was all bullshit. Arrabelle had been pissed. It was true she did trust Eleanora and had faith in the will of the Dream Journals, but it’d still hurt like a son of a bitch to be passed over. At the moment, it was a wound she didn’t dare pick at for fear it would start gushing blood, so she changed the subject.

  “Will you hand me the rucksack?”

  Dev turned in place, looking for Arrabelle’s bag.

  “It’s just by cardinal north—”

  “Got it,” Dev, said, grabbing the bag and bringing it over to Arrabelle.

  Arrabelle loosened the tie, and the top of the rucksack fell open. Inside was an old plastic thermos, a double-edged iron Athamé with a coal-black handle, and a stone chalice shaped like the curve of a woman’s belly.

  She removed each of the items from the bag and set them on a piece of flat sandstone almost hidden in the thick grass. She unscrewed the top on the thermos and held it up for Dev to sniff.

  “Smells like stinky tea,” Dev said, grinning. “Do you remember your induction?”

  She looked like a schoolgirl when she said this, her eyes wide in the moonlight.

  “The Horned God appeared to me, and he looked just like Freddy,” Dev continued, not waiting for Arrabelle’s response as she jammed her hands into the pockets of her cloak. “I was worried the Horned God would come as someone else, but, nope, it was Freddy. Not that I ever told him about the ceremony. Can you imagine what he’d think about everything we do?”

  Arrabelle could imagine.

  “We never talk about this kind of stuff,” Dev continued. “Why is that? Being part of a coven should be like having a perpetual slumber party, but it’s not.”

  Arrabelle shrugged.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Well, I like sharing with you guys. We’re connected in the deepest of ways and I want to feel like we can talk about anything—”

  “Had you ever been with anyone other than Freddy back then? When you joined the coven?” Arrabelle asked. She’d long ago learned that the best way to dissemble was to ask someone a question. People loved talking about themselves, and it got you out of the hot seat.

  “Sure, I mean, yes, there was someone else. A guy from school,” Dev said, beginning to fidget. “That was why I thought it might not be Freddy. That I’d do the ritual and see this other guy’s face instead.”

  Arrabelle stopped what she was doing and looked over at Dev. Dev was a notorious story repeater, telling the same stories over and over again, ad infinitum, until you could barely stand to be around her, but Arrabelle had never heard this particular one before. And since it obviously made her uncomfortable, it garnered Arrabelle’s undivided attention.

  “You thought this guy was your true love?”

  Arrabelle could tell Dev was nervous, her skirt swishing from side to side as she rocked back and forth on her feet.

  “I didn’t know. Maybe,” Dev said. “I thought maybe he was. But he wasn’t. Thank God.”

  “Who was this guy?” Arrabelle asked, teasing her. “You obviously still carry a little torch for him—”

  “I really don’t—”

  “I think you do,” Arrabelle shot back.

  “I’m happy with things as they are with Freddy. I love him and he loves me. We have two great girls, we’re happy—”

  “Happy about what?”

  Arrabelle and Dev turned to find Daniela stepping into the clearing. She shrugged off her leather jacket, dropping it onto the grass before continuing over to them.

  “God, that walk makes me sweat. What did I interrupt?”

  “Nothing,” Dev said, shaking her head. “Just talking.”

  Arrabelle thought Dev was happy to have an excuse to end the conversation.

  “Well, some fucked-up shit happened today, ladies,” Daniela said, sitting down in the grass and leaning back on her elbows.

  “What happened?” Dev asked.

  “I touched Eleanora. With my gloves on”—she’d caught Arrabelle’s disapproving look—“and had an episode, or whatever you want to call it.”

  Dev gasped, covering her mouth with a dainty hand, but Arrabelle remained silent.

  “That’s not supposed to happen,” Dev said, dropping her hand.

  “What can I tell you?” Daniela replied, shrugging her shoulders and sitting up. “But the fucked-up part is that it wasn’t normal. I didn’t just sense Eleanora’s feelings—it was like someone else was using me, my body, to communicate.”

  “Who was it?”

  Daniela glanced over at Arrabelle and shrugged again.

  “No idea,” she said. “But whoever it was said some eerie shit about two sisters and Saint Anne.”

  She stopped talking and stared down at her gloved hands. Arrabelle got the impression there was more to the story, but Daniela was keeping her mouth shut.

  “That’s so weird,” Dev said. “And so not good for you. Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” Daniela said—with a shake of her head for emphasis.

  “What else?” Arrabelle asked, her tone even but forceful. She
knew Daniela was being squirrelly, and since she’d only joined the coven a few months earlier—when Arrabelle’s mentor, Dezzie, died—Arrabelle didn’t one hundred percent trust this blood sister yet.

  “I don’t like the tone of your voice,” Daniela said, crawling onto her knees.

  “What tone?” Arrabelle asked, lightly, trying not to set Daniela off.

  At just over five feet tall, Daniela was by far the smallest member of the coven, but she had a temper that made her unpredictable.

  “Don’t think you can fuck with me, Arrabelle. I don’t intimidate easy,” Daniela said, calm and rational—for now.

  Forever the peacemaker, Dev waded into the argument.

  “Please, let’s not—”

  But she was interrupted by another of those awful howls, a sibling to the ones Arrabelle and Dev had heard earlier.

  “I think someone just walked over my grave,” Dev said, looking out into the darkness as her whole body shivered involuntarily.

  “That was no fenced-in mutt,” Arrabelle said.

  “I don’t know what the hell that was,” Daniela said, “but I’m glad we’re here in this circle and it’s not.”

  No sooner were the words out of Daniela’s mouth than a belligerent squawking echoed throughout the glen.

  “Oh my God,” Dev cried, as three large crows dive-bombed them like shiny-feathered black torpedoes.

  The women scrambled out of the way, trying not to get hit by the bodies.

  After the siege had ended and they had a moment to collect themselves, Arrabelle reached out with the toe of her sneaker and poked at one of the bodies. The crow didn’t move.

  “Dead,” she said.

  She looked heavenward, but there was nothing to see.

  Not even a cloud in the sky.

  Lizbeth

  “Help me,” the girl with the dark hair and striking blue eyes almost yelled at Lizbeth from the doorway.

  It was Lyse, Eleanora’s grandniece. The girl she’d embarrassed herself in front of at the coffee bar. The lady from her dreams had promised her that Lyse would be her friend, but things had not at all gone according to plan during their first encounter.