by Berinn Rae
“She’s painting,” Gran spoke, her voice no longer cold but almost lyrical. “Swirls of color and … and emotions. Such emotion. She wants to know him, wants inside his heart. Wants him to see and know her. Oh, her frustration, her confusion! And tenderness, desire that overwhelms. It seeps from her hands, spills into the canvas … too intense for paint to hold. The geode burns!” Gran’s eyes flew open and she threw the rock at Lily as if it were on fire. In a shattered voice, she said, “You love too much, girl! An empath cannot survive such a devouring, restless passion!”
“Daniel would argue that with his last breath, Mrs. Gilmore. He opened me up, showed me love like I never imagined. Love like a living organism, too omnipotent for one heart to hold! Who are you to decide what he and I can share?” She turned to Madame Bagasha. “Why isn’t Daniel here? He’ll tell you.”
“He cannot be near you without suffering great pain.” Gran said, sympathy draining the rage from her voice. “Not for a long time. He must heal. A stripping leaves — ”
“He is not stripped!” Lily cried. “If he is as vulnerable to raw emotion as you claim, then how can he tolerate me inside his head? The power to heal him lies inside my magic, inside what I feel. Daniel knows this, he’s always known. And he’s not afraid, he’s rejoicing!” Impatient, Lily wiped away her suddenly falling tears. “Just who do you think is keeping us linked?”
A stunned silence filled the room. Gran spoke, “You have felt this connection with him before?”
Lily blushed. “Only once, briefly. We were … kissing.”
“The love potion she drank. Would it … ?”
Madame Bagasha shook her head. “Nila hasn’t such power yet. The potion was nothing more than a séduction. It merely enhanced Lily’s more appealing attributes, nothing more. But there have been curious side effects.”
“Side effects?”
Madame glanced around the room warily before saying, “It seems to have awakened Lily’s latent powers. There were … manifestations. What Lily painted became animated.”
Frightened exclamations greeted this announcement.
“How is that possible?” Gran’s panic paled her skin.
But Madame smiled reassurance. “When she and I sit down for our first lesson, we’ll discover more. Does the girl have more power than Nila and I assumed? Obviously. Did she hurt Daniel on purpose? No, clearly the girl’s crazy about your grandson. So, Maggie, can we please relax, perhaps share tea together? After all, if Lily has magic, she will become one of us.”
“We must still create a talisman,” Gran said with an obstinate lift of her chin.
Madame took Lily’s face between both hands and looked deep in her eyes. Nodding, she said, “The girl speaks true, he will not wear it. None the less, we will make one.” Her smile, as her hands slipped from Lily’s cheeks, was ironic. “It is what we do.”
Chapter Seventeen
Madame gripped Gran’s hand in hers as the two women walked, heads bent close in talk, from the room. The level of tension barely diminished. Nila dashed from her solitary stance in the corner to collapse on the settee beside Lily. Hands shaking, the young witch tempted a few birds from Lily’s shoulder onto her own and stroked their downy breasts until Lily felt the girl’s body, pressed close to hers, relax as well.
Lily expelled a deep breath. “Tea. Who needs tea? I need freaking whiskey!”
“If only I could conjure.” Nila attempted a shaky smile. “Can you sense booze nearby? I could float a bottle in if I knew where it was.”
“All I sense is scotch. Poor Daniel, he hates scotch.” Lily unclipped her hair to run nervous fingers through it. “He’ll be so sick. Gradyn may be a class act in most things, but he’s also a sadist.”
Nila sat hunched and silent. After a moment, Lily whispered, “What is Rogue magic, exactly?”
The girl winced, reached to take the geode from Lily’s lap and turning it in her hands, watched the crystals catch and reflect the firelight. “Rogue Magic is very rare,” Nila said. “A very strong, volatile, and unpredictable magic. Most of the horrendous things witches have been condemned for down through the ages were done with Rogue magic.”
Lily felt sick to her stomach. “And you believe I have it?”
Nila said nothing, just turned her cheek to rub against a finch fluffed near her ear.
“Does Madame think so?” Lily persisted.
Carefully Nila placed the geode back in Lily’s lap. “Yes. It … it explains so much, you see. The geode waking, the love potion gone awry, the painted man coming to life.”
Lily clamped her mouth shut on a compulsion to tell Nila that not only one, but two painted men had come to life and rather than disappearing, roamed the earth haunting her. But in this hostile environment, if these women suspected Lily of one more magical malfunction, she’d be lucky to escape a lynching.
She glanced at them all talking in groups of twos and threes about the room. “If my magic is Rogue and they so dislike me, why am I still here? The currents in this room, magical and otherwise, are making my skin crawl.”
“You and me both.” Nila shivered.
“Are you afraid of me, Nila?”
“Yes,” the girl said immediately, then, “No, not especially. You have a good heart, Lily. And a conscience, thank the Gods and Goddesses. But Rogue Magic terrifies witches and that’s a fact. It’s not easily categorized so it’s often misrepresented and misunderstood. And it, well … it possesses a dark side which one has to work hard to keep leashed. My magic has Rogue elements, as does Madame’s. I was raised knowing this and received rigorous training and discipline because of it. I still can’t always predict what it might do.”
“Like with the love potion?”
Nila grimaced. “Like with the love potion. But you … Lily, there is reason to fear your magic. You don’t have the knowledge or skill to contain it. And power without knowledge is … ”
“I get the picture,” Lily cut in brusquely, staring down at the geode in her lap. Oh, yeah, the signals were coming through loud and clear. She didn’t need Second Sight to feel it. Yet none of these women knew her, even Nila. None here realized that as an artist, she possessed great discipline of craft and a devoted technical skill. Her magic might be Rogue but it manifested first in her paintings and her relationship with art. It was born of her creative spirit and was as essential to her existence as the beating of her heart. No one here could convince her that her power wasn’t as it should be and therefore good and true.
An uneasy truce had settled over the room. Looking around, Lily realized Madame Bagasha must have cast a calming spell — not a bad idea considering each of these witch women carried an athame, a not always dull, ceremonial knife used in ritual magic. Eleven heads lifted in relief at the sound of the tea cart.
The mundane had arrived in the shape of tea and thick slices of pumpkin bread. Steaming mugs were passed around by Nila’s cousin who had to force herself to extend a cup to Lily. Lily mumbled her thanks without looking up, curling her hands around the mug as if a deep breath might shatter the delicate china. At Gran’s presence in the room a band of tension had tightened around her chest and she wondered again why she had to be here.
Talk buzzed among the women, who perfunctorily ignored both Nila and Lily sitting on the settee. Lily could understand being left out, she being the offender in their eyes. But Nila was one of them, a trained healer and probably related to most of these women. Did this snubbing have to do with Nila being Rogue or was it part of her training as an apprentice? Either way, no amount of coaxing would ever compel Lily to become a member of this group!
Madame wandered the room, casually touching each woman as if measuring their mood. She approached the two girls pressed together like so much refuse tossed on a beach.
“Nila, dear … ” The tiny Hungarian woman cast a quick glance at Gran who, by the speculative gleam in her eye, was also measuring the merit of her chosen witches. “Keep a sharp eye, will you, dear? You’ll
be inside the circle, I will not.”
Nila nodded, once, quickly.
“What’s going on?” Lily said. Nila hushed her with look.
When the tea — which, Nila explained, was actually an herbal concoction meant to promote harmony for the working of joined magic — was finished and the cart wheeled away, two women bent to roll back the large rug in the center of the room. Gran rose to her feet, at once imposing and austere. Lily saw her already dark eyes darken further and felt a sullen drift of magic across her skin. The birds took flight all at once, to roost on lampshades and curtain rods at the far edges of the room. The staccato flap of wings echoed the rapid beat of her heart.
“Lily, you and Nila stand here.” Gran positioned them near an empty table pulled into the center of the room to serve as an altar. On this table Gran placed a bowl hollowed from a burl of wood. Beside the bowl she laid out a chain holding a set of gemstones wrapped in an elaborate filigree knot of burnished silver.
Nila breathed in Lily’s ear, “The dusk-colored gemstone is fluorite, for psychic protection.” The other stones are lapis lazuli and amber to enhance psychological healing, all worked together with silver to secure the spell.”
This then, was Daniel’s talisman … his protection against her. Lily’s heart felt like a lump of lead in her chest and unwanted tears rose in her eyes. The room seemed to shrink around her, stifling, too warm from the fire. She gagged at the Sandalwood incense clinging to her hair, her clothes.
“I can’t stay here,” she said suddenly and took a step towards the door. But Gran had already closed the circle of power she’d been chalking in one continuous stroke around the wooden floor. Her voice, low and musical, chanted a spell as she moved. Lily saw rich burgundy light sink into the curved line at its closing. The eleven women of the coven, along with Nila, athames in hands, walked the circle of power, one following the other. They too, chanted.
Lily watched their magic drip off their knives in colors as individual and varied as themselves and sink into the chalked line. Pain began pounding at the base of Lily’s skull as a surly power thickened inside the circle. Within the chalk line, Gran marked out a large, five-sided pentacle. Lily saw her glance once, rather furtively, at Madame standing outside the circle before she sketched a fleeting pattern in the air with her fingers. For the briefest instant, Lily thought she saw a dark shape in the air before it sank into the pentagram.
Panic snaked up Lily’s spine. Something was not right. The magic rising was too sharp, too oppressive. Even the sense of Daniel, loose and easy inside her head, did not reassure her. Nila moved, still chanting with the others, to stand beside her once again. The girl had relaxed into a ritual as familiar to her as prepping a canvas was to Lily.
The remaining women took their places at each compass and pentacle point. One stood like a guard on each side of Nila and Lily. They all watched Gran light candles a translucent maroon with a simple pass of her hand. She handed them around until each witch except Nila held a candle in their left hand and their athames raised in their right.
Gran then moved to stand at the northern most compass point, lifted her chin and closed her eyes. Every lamp in the room blinked off. The candles cast eerie glows over each of the thirteen female faces, etching chins, noses and hollowed eye sockets in a ghostly light. Gran’s voice spoke out of the near darkness.
“We ask the holy Goddess to bless and guide the work we do here this night.”
Thirteen voices spoke as one. “Bless us. Guide us.”
Lily heard Nila’s voice added to the others and shivered as she saw magic shimmering at the edge of each ritual knife before it began to drift, pulled in individual strands like colored thread by Gran, who gathered up the strands. She began to weave them into a complex ball of power.
“This coven takes action only to protect and to heal,” Gran intoned again.
“To protect. To heal,” the voices echoed.
“And do no harm,” Madame spoke firmly from outside the circle. Not one of the coven members echoed her words. Nila’s eyes snapped opened as if she’d been slapped. Her gaze sought Madame’s in the dark. Nila muttered a hasty spell under her breath and hearing it, Lily panicked. And ran. She dashed three steps before slamming into the circle’s magic barrier as if it were a solid wall.
“You cannot leave the protective circle,” Gran said, her voice matter of fact.
Lily picked herself up off the floor and leaped again at the wall only to fall once more. Dazed, she lay looking up at the curtain of power, woven with the colors of each witch, vibrant and beautiful and alive. At another time she might have been fascinated by this tapestry of different magics tangled together into one. Now she scrambled back from it in terror.
Inside her head, Daniel’s attention sharpened. She felt a surge of his empathic energy sweep through their link, a wary protection she clung to. Nila reached down to help her up and as they touched, a spark jumped between them. Magic flowed beneath Nila’s skin. Lily could see it, a sunny gold not part of the power Gran worked with the nimble fingers of a master weaver.
“The colors … ” Lily gasped.
Nila’s grip on her arm tightened. “Lily, there are no colors.”
Only then did Lily realize none of these powerful women could see magic. Only her vision revealed which strands belonged to which witch. It steadied her, gave her a sense of her own autonomy at last. Still, she watched in growing dread as the weave thickened between Gran’s hands into a dark, brooding red. The brilliant threads, stained and turgid, no longer shone with beauty.
As the magic darkened, each strand twisted tighter around the next until they swarmed together like a nest of writhing snakes. Lifting her hands, Gran threw the spell at Lily. It struck with a force that arched the girl’s back and tore a scream from her throat. Then Lily couldn’t cry at all, couldn’t move as the thick band of dark magic whipped around her, tighter and tighter, squeezing her heart, her organs, her ribs, binding her like rope.
Lily struggled in claustrophobic terror as the binding became as rigid as cold steel.
“Magdaline.” Madame’s voice was livid with rage. “You will not shackle her!”
“It is done,” Gran spoke with an odd note of sadness. Then she crossed the circle to where Lily stood stiffly immobile and laid her Reader’s hands on her shoulders. Lily felt again the alien force of another in her mind, very briefly and this time, gently.
“The Rogue magic is bound.” Gran turned back to resume her place at the head of the pentacle. Lily felt the steely grasp of the shackling spell like iron, heavy, ice cold. Her blood thickened, slowed. Her heart beat harder, struggling to pump warmth to her limbs. Colors dimmed, outlines faded and she felt her happy, impulsive magic curling in on itself like a dying leaf.
Closing her eyes, Lily tried to visualize it back to life. She tried whipping it with anger, inspiring it with creative excitement and dizzying ideas. When even Daniel’s power, raging like a furious storm down the link, proved unable to draw even a spark from her dying power, Lily sank to her knees in despair. Her sobs filled the stunned, silent room, a heartbreaking death knell that had the rest of the coven keening in sorrow and wiping tears falling down their faces.
Nila, her face a ghastly white, turned on Gran. She had never raised magic against this woman who taught her but a need to retaliate had her hands lifted and her voice calling up vengeful power.
“No, Nila.” Madame’s disembodied voice came out of the flickering dark. “Enough harm has been done this night. But know this, Magdaline Gilmore, there will be repercussions.”
“As head of the Cohort I have the authority — ”
“No!” Madame snapped back. “As a Reader you have the skill. But you used the power of these twelve women.” She glanced at the stricken faces of the other witches inside the circle. “Did they agree to help Shackle another’s magic? You know it is what each of us fears above all things, Maggie. How could you? Your actions were premature and selfish, to say the lea
st. Now finish this travesty, create your damned talisman, and let the girl be.”
Only Gran’s unflappable force of will gathered the witches back to order. Only her skill as a Reader drew their magic into a unifying force once more. The chanting restarted, grew louder, faster. Lily sat curled on the floor, silently crying. She no longer cared what they did to her.
“Grab her arm,” Gran commanded Nila, who hesitated for a defiant moment before plucking up Lily’s limp arm to hold above the wooden bowl on the altar. The chanting quickened, the power recharged. When the voices suddenly stopped, Lily felt an unbearable pressure inside her head like nails being hammered through her skull.
“Do you offer your blood willingly to bind this protective talisman?” the coven recited in unison.
Nothing on earth would drag acceptance of this travesty from Lily now … nothing but the knowledge that Daniel would stand by her and all would be well. That knowledge held more power than all the magic in the world.
“I offer it willingly,” Lily whispered through stiff lips. Nila made the slash quick and shallow across Lily’s lower arm. Blood bright as rubies swelled from the wound to drip into the waiting bowl. Lily felt nothing, not the blade’s edge, not the painful cut. She’d disappeared into Daniel’s drunken tenderness, singing through their link like an angel inside her head.
The bowl filled quickly. Nila pressed a gauze bandage tight to the wound. Still on the floor, Lily looked up to see Daniel’s grandmother lift the talisman above the bowl. Her voice cried out, “Healing grace infuse this charm, protect the wearer from passion’s harm!”
Lily felt the brush of a phantom kiss tasting of scotch, felt each witch’s power coalesce above her before diving into the wooden bowl. Gran dropped the talisman into the pooled blood. Lily screamed as her link with Daniel was abruptly severed.
Not a soul moved in the terrible silence that followed that scream. Power still raged inside the circle. On Lily’s lap the geode blazed to fiery life. Arrows of angry light shot out of its crystal heart in every direction. From the roosting corners of the room birds rose in shrieking flight. Nila threw herself across Lily’s body as the protective circle shattered. Magic gone wild ricocheted like bolts of lightning around the room, knocking three women to the floor. In a panic, Gran tried to harness the violent energy and was tossed like a rag doll across the room.
