by Isobel Bird
Archer picked up the phone and dialed. When Rowan answered she spoke to her for a moment and then hung up.
“They’re on their way,” she said.
“I’ll go to the bus station,” Thea said.
She left the office quickly, shutting the door behind her. Annie slumped back in her chair, emotions tumbling around in her head.
“Why did you have me do the reading with you?” she asked Archer.
“I wanted you to see that you could still do it,” said Archer. “It’s like riding a horse. When you fall off, you have to get right back on, otherwise your fear of horses grows and grows to the point where you don’t ever want to ride again. I should know. I got thrown when I was ten and didn’t ride again for six years.”
“I don’t want to see another Tarot card ever again.” Annie groaned.
“I’d hate to see that happen,” Archer told her. “You’re very good at it.”
Annie perked up. “Really?” she said. “You think so?”
Archer smiled. “Do you know how long it usually takes before people can understand the cards the way you do?” she said. “Years. But you have a real gift for it.”
“It’s like I’m reading a story,” Annie said. “I look at the cards and they all kind of talk to me at once. I don’t really see them as individual cards. They’re all part of a big puzzle.”
“I can tell you see them that way,” Archer said. “And believe me when I tell you that it’s a rare thing. Don’t tell anyone here I said this, but there are witches in this very store who don’t have half the talent at reading Tarot cards that you do.”
Annie laughed. Then she sighed. “If I’m so good at it, why did things get so out of hand?”
“Because you let them,” Archer said. “And that’s not a criticism. The stronger your gift for any magical work is, the more careful you have to be about how you use it. You discovered that you can read the Tarot very well. But you forgot that you aren’t the one deciding what happens. You let your powers get the better of you. A lot of people do that when they get involved in witchcraft. What we have to remember is that our gifts are exactly that—gifts. They’ve been given to us so that we can use them to do what we’re supposed to do. When we use them for other reasons—like trying to be popular—we get into trouble.”
“There’s something else that’s been happening,” Annie said. “Remember when you told us to meditate on the Major Arcana card that we drew during class?”
“Sure,” Archer said. “You drew the Moon, right?”
Annie nodded. “Well, some strange things have been happening since then.”
She told Archer about her meditations in which Hecate spoke to her. Then she told her about the night in the woods.
“Do you think I really saw her?” she asked.
“Do you think you really saw her?” Archer countered.
“I saw someone,” Annie said. “But that doesn’t seem possible.”
“Did Kate’s spell seem possible?” asked Archer. “Did Cooper seeing the ghost of a dead girl seem possible?” She waited for Annie to answer.
“No,” Annie said. “I guess not. But a goddess appearing to me?”
Archer leaned back in her chair. “I can’t tell you what did or didn’t happen,” Archer said. “But if you had an experience, don’t discount it just because logically you don’t think it could be real.”
“There’s something else I don’t get,” Annie continued. “It was almost like Hecate was mad at me. She kept giving me warnings. And then last time she told me to look for the light in the darkness. I don’t get any of that. If she’s a goddess, why was she so harsh to me?”
“I told you that the Moon was a difficult card when you drew it,” Archer said. “I wasn’t kidding. And Hecate is a difficult goddess. People tend to think that all the deities in Wicca are nice and sweet. They aren’t. Some of them are hard to deal with sometimes. Some of them can even be cruel.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Annie said. “Why should they be mean?”
“Think back to what Wicca is all about,” Archer explained. “It’s about balance. Dark and light. Death and life. Winter and summer. Well, the deities represent those things as well. Hecate is a goddess of death and change. She represents the cycles of nature that a lot of people are afraid of. She also represents fortune, and the Tarot is very special to her. It sounds to me like she chose to challenge you.”
“It looks like I failed, then,” Annie said glumly.
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Archer told her. “I’d ask Hecate what she thinks.”
The phone on the desk rang, and Archer picked it up.
“You did?” she said. “That’s great.”
She hung up and looked at Annie. “They found Sasha at the train station. She’s on her way home right now.”
Annie was so happy that she wanted to cry.
“I think we should pay her a visit,” Archer said. “She deserves an explanation.”
“She’s going to hate me,” Annie said fearfully. “I just know it.”
Archer stood up. “Let’s see if Kate and Cooper want to come, too,” she said.
They walked back to where the class was still going on. Archer motioned for Cooper and Kate to come with them, and she explained what had happened as they walked to her car.
“I’m so glad they found her,” Kate said.
“And you saw all this in the cards?” Cooper asked Annie, who nodded.
“I finally did something right,” she said.
As they drove to Thea’s house Annie went over in her head what she was going to say to Sasha. How should you apologize to someone for using her as an experiment? Would Sasha even want to speak to her? Annie wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. After all, they were supposed to be friends. What kind of friend had she been? Not a very good one, she thought.
When they reached the house Annie reluctantly got out of the car and followed Archer to the door. Thea answered it, and Archer hugged her. Annie gave Thea a weak smile. She’s probably mad at me, too, she thought sadly. That bothered her almost as much as the idea of having Sasha mad at her. She really respected Thea, and she didn’t want anyone involved in the Coven of the Green Wood or the witchcraft study group to think badly of her.
“Sasha is upstairs,” Thea said. “I think she’d like to see you girls.”
Cooper and Kate walked up the stairs with Annie behind them. Annie was dreading seeing Sasha’s face, and she felt like a condemned prisoner walking to her execution. She wondered how much Thea had told Sasha already.
Cooper knocked on Sasha’s door and pushed it open. Sasha was on her bed, a blanket covering her. She looked very tired, and when she looked up at her visitors Annie thought her eyes were sadder than she’d ever seen them.
“Hi,” Cooper said.
Sasha smiled. “Hey,” she said. “How come I feel like we’ve done this before?”
The girls walked in. Kate and Cooper stood, while Annie sat on the end of Sasha’s bed.
“Are you okay?” she asked Sasha timidly.
Sasha shrugged. “I’ve been better,” she said. “Then again, I’ve been a lot worse, too. I guess I’m sort of in between really crappy and pretty good.”
Annie sighed. “I guess I owe you an explanation,” she said. “And an apology.”
“Why did you tell me that this guy was going to come back and try to ruin things for me?” Sasha asked.
Annie sighed. “I didn’t know it was such a big deal,” she said. “I wanted to see what would happen if you thought he was going to do something.”
“But you didn’t even know our history,” said Sasha. “For all you knew, he could have been someone who wanted me dead.”
Annie hadn’t thought of that. “I assumed he was just some guy who knew something you didn’t want people to know,” Annie told her. “But I could tell that he wasn’t really going to do anything, so I didn’t worry about it.”
“Well, he is
some guy who knows something about me,” Sasha said. “Do you want to know what it is?”
Annie didn’t know how to respond. She looked at Cooper and Kate, who seemed equally uncertain.
“The guy you saw is named Ronnie Sturm,” Sasha said, even though no one had answered her. “And yes, he’s blond—and he’s trouble. Big trouble.”
“You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” said Cooper.
“I want to,” Sasha replied. “I think it’s important. I met Ronnie when I was living on the streets in the city I landed in before I came here. He’s actually why I came here. He’s a runaway, too. I met him, and he seemed really sweet. Said he’d take care of me. But he wanted me to do things with him—”
“Sasha,” Annie began.
“Just listen,” Sasha said. “One night Ronnie told me we were going to get some money. He said he knew this guy who owed him, and we were going to go to where he worked and get the money. So he took me to this convenience store where the guy worked. We went in, and Ronnie started talking to the guy behind the counter like he knew him. Then he pulled out a gun and told the guy to give him the money in the register.”
Sasha’s voice was flat as she told the story; it was almost as if she were telling them something that had happened on a television show to people who didn’t really exist. Annie listened, getting more and more anxious.
“The guy didn’t do it, and Ronnie told me to go open the register and take the money,” Sasha continued. “I didn’t want to, but he kept saying he was going to shoot the guy. So I did it.”
Nobody said anything for a moment as they waited for Sasha to continue. She was looking at her hands, on top of the blanket. Annie wanted to reach out and take one in hers, but she was frozen on the end of the bed, unable to move.
“I used some of that money,” Sasha said. “I didn’t want to, but I was hungry. Ronnie told me that if anyone ever found out that I was involved I would go to jail. He said that if I ever crossed him or left him he would tell everyone that I had done it, and because there was a witness I wouldn’t be able to get out of it. I stayed with him for a while because I was scared, but one night I left and came here.”
“So you thought that Ronnie was going to tell someone now,” Kate said.
Sasha nodded. “I thought maybe he’d followed me here. Some of the other kids back in the city knew where I was going, and one of them could have told him. Because of this whole guardianship thing, people are asking all kinds of questions about me. I thought that if Ronnie told anyone that I had been part of the robbery, they wouldn’t let Thea be my guardian. I thought they’d make me go back to foster care, or worse. After everything she’s done for me, I didn’t want to hurt her that way.”
“So you were going to try to stay one step ahead of him,” Cooper said. “That makes sense.”
Annie couldn’t believe what she had done. She’d almost driven Sasha away from the first loving home she’d ever had. And all because she had wanted to see what effect her predictions might have on somebody.
“I don’t even know how to tell you how sorry I am, Sasha,” she said.
Sasha didn’t say anything, which made Annie feel even worse.
“We’re sorry, too,” Kate added as Cooper nodded in agreement. “We shouldn’t have done any of this. We—well, I was just freaked out that something Annie had predicted about me had come true. I guess I just wanted to see if the same thing would happen to you.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” said Cooper.
“Did the cards really tell you that Ronnie is keeping his mouth shut?” Sasha asked Annie, sounding scared.
“That’s what it looked like to me,” Annie said. “I think he’s more afraid of you than you are of him.”
Sasha gave a little nervous laugh. “I doubt that,” she said. “But it’s nice to hear.”
There was another long silence. Then Cooper said, “You’re not going to get into trouble for the robbery, are you? I mean, now that Thea knows?”
Sasha shook her head. “We’re not going to tell anyone. Since nobody got hurt, there’s no reason to cause any more trouble. I was afraid she wouldn’t want me here once she knew, but she was really cool about it.”
“What about us?” Annie said, unable to keep the question inside any longer. “Can you ever forgive us? Me in particular.”
“Do I have a choice?” Sasha said. “It’s not like I have lots of extra friends or anything.” She looked around at the three of them as if she were evaluating them. “Although I hear there’s an opening in the Graces,” she added.
Her joke broke the tension, and everyone laughed. It felt so good to Annie to let go of some of the fear and anxiety that had been turning her inside out. But once she finished laughing, some of the old tension returned. Sasha was okay, but there was still everything else that had gone wrong. One good thing didn’t erase all the other mistakes she’d made and the problems she’d caused. She still had a lot of work to do to make things right. If she could do it at all.
Thea and Archer appeared in the doorway. “I think it’s time to get you girls home,” Archer said. “Are you ready?”
Annie stood up. “Before we go,” she said, “I’d like to make one more prediction.”
Sasha looked at her warily, as did everyone else.
“I predict that Sasha is home for good this time,” she said.
CHAPTER 17
After sorting out the situation with Sasha, Annie knew that there were still some things she needed to deal with. For starters, she had to try to repair the damage to Tara’s reputation. Then there was her aunt and the strained relationship between them. And most important, she knew that there was another encounter with Hecate in her future. Somehow the goddess was tied into everything that had been going on, and Annie needed to find out what it was Hecate wanted from her.
But that proved harder than Annie had expected. After coming home from Sasha’s house, she had gone to her room and sat in front of her altar. She’d tried to do a meditation that would allow her to contact Hecate, but it hadn’t worked. She’d been able to imagine the forest she’d been to before, but Hecate had not appeared.
Finally, after a frustrating hour of trying, she’d given up. Perhaps Hecate was angry with her and didn’t want to talk to her. Perhaps she was trying too hard. Whatever the reason, nothing was working. Plus, she had finals to take, and she needed to do some last-minute studying. She’d spent the rest of the night going over her notes.
But it bothered her that she wasn’t able to reach Hecate through meditation. She’d always found meditating a useful tool for working through problems she was encountering in her magical studies. Now, though, it seemed as if she was being shut out by Hecate for some reason. It made her doubt both her abilities and her relationship with the goddess, and those doubts kept coming back to her as she took her exams the next day.
It didn’t help any that Sherrie was walking around the school like a contented cat. Her smear campaign against Tara was working, and she’d also managed to get the story about Kate and Scott circulated widely. People seemed to have forgotten all about Sherrie’s own indiscretion now that they had better gossip to occupy their conversations, and she was once again the center of attention in her crowd.
“Look at her,” Kate said as they sat at lunch on Wednesday. “It’s like she’s holding court.”
“All she needs is a throne and a scepter,” Tara remarked bitterly.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” said Cooper. “I don’t understand how you guys were ever friends with that hyena.”
Tara and Kate looked at one another.
“It’s hard to explain,” Kate replied. “She doesn’t seem so bad when you’re around her.”
“Yeah,” said Cooper. “That’s because you’re on her side then. It’s everyone else who has to watch out.”
“I’m just glad I got away from her,” Tara said. “Now, if we could just get Jess out of her cl
utches we’d be the old gang again.”
Annie sat silently, eating her lunch and watching Sherrie. Part of her wanted to just forget about Sherrie and stop wasting energy thinking about her. Another part wanted to get even with her for what she’d done. But she’d tried that once and gotten burned. She wasn’t sure that attempting it again would be a good idea.
The rest of the day had been taken up with more finals, and then she’d gone home for another round of studying. But when she arrived at home, her aunt was sitting in the living room with Marcia Reeves. They didn’t hear her come in, and Annie was able to eavesdrop on their conversation for a moment.
“I’ve invited some of my best customers,” Marcia said to her aunt. “This is just the sort of thing they love, so I think we’ll get a great response.”
“I hope so,” Annie’s aunt responded. “I’m really anxious for it to be a success, especially for Annie’s sake.”
“You still haven’t told her?” the realtor asked.
“No,” her aunt answered. “She’s in the middle of finals, and I didn’t want to add anything to her list of worries.”
Thanks a lot, Annie thought as she heard her aunt’s words. Don’t include me in one of the biggest decisions of my life.
“I hope it’s not too much of a shock for her,” Marcia said. “You know how kids can get sometimes.”
“I think she’ll really love it,” Sarah said. “I had to tell Meg because she came with me to a couple of meetings. I’ve been bribing her for a week by buying her new books to keep quiet about this and not say anything to Annie.”
Meg knows? Annie thought, getting angry. She told her but she didn’t tell me? She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her aunt had told her little sister what was going on but she wouldn’t tell her. That was too much.
Marcia stood up. “I’ve got to get going,” she said. “But everything is just about ready for the open house on Saturday, so don’t worry. This will go smoothly, and then you and the girls will be off to San Francisco.”
