Book of Shadows s-1

by Cate Tiernan

  "This sucks," Mary K. said. "What should I do if they ask me?"

  "Whatever you need to say is all right," I said. "I won't ask you to lie."

  "Crap," she said. She shook her head, then rinsed out her mug and put it in the sink. "We're going to dinner at Aunt Margaret's, you know. She called this morning before you were up."

  "Oh, no, I don't think I can," I said, thinking of tonight's circle. I couldn't miss another one.

  "Hi, sweetie. How are you feeling?" my mom asked, coming into the kitchen with a basket of laundry balanced on her hip.

  "Much better. Listen, Mom, I can't go to dinner at Aunt Margaret's tonight," I said. "I promised Bree I would go to her place." The lie slipped out of my mouth as easily as that.

  "Oh," my mom said. "Can you call Bree and cancel it? I know Margaret loves seeing you."

  "I want to see her, too," I said. "But I already told Bree I'd help her with her calculus." When in doubt, pull out school-work.

  "Oh. Well." She looked like she was having trouble deciding whether to push it. "I guess that's all right. You're sixteen, after all. I suppose you can't go to every family thing."

  Now I felt like crap.

  "I just promised Bree," I said lamely. "She got a D on her last exam, and she freaked." I was very aware of Mary K watching this exchange and wished she weren't there.

  "Okay," Mom said again. "Some other time."

  "Okay," I said. With Mary K.'s gaze following me out of the room, I headed upstairs and flopped onto my bed, cradling my pillow.

  CHAPTER 20 Broken

  "Men are natural warriors, but a woman in battle is truly bloodthirsty."

  — Old Scottish saying

  The night surrounded Bree and me in the comfy interior of her car. Matt's house, where the circle would be, was about ten miles out of town. As soon as Bree picked me up, I sensed that she had a lot on her mind. So did I. After my dream last night I was actually relieved to see her safe and sound and, apart from her quietness, normal.

  I thought about the thousands of hours we had spent in cars with each other, first with our parents or Bree's older brother, Ty, driving us, then, for the past year, driving ourselves. We'd had some of our best talks in cars, when it was just the two of us. It felt different tonight.

  "Why didn't you tell me about the spell you put on Robbie?" Bree asked.

  "I put a spell on the potion, not on Robbie," I clarified. "And I didn't tell anyone. I thought the whole thing was pointless. I was sure it wasn't going to work, and I didn't want to be embarrassed."

  "Do you really believe that it worked?" she asked. Her dark eyes were on the road ahead, and Breezy's high beams cut through the night.

  "I… I guess so," I said. "I mean, mostly because I can't think of what else could have done it. On Monday he had awful skin; now he looks great. I don't know what else to think."

  "Do you think you're a blood witch?" she asked. I was starting to feel interrogated.

  I laughed to relieve the tension. "Oh, please. Yeah, that's it. I'm a blood witch. Have you seen Sean and Mary Grace lately? They just bought a new pentacle to hang over out living-room mantelpiece."

  Bree was silent. I felt rough waves of tension and anger coming from her but couldn't pinpoint their source.

  "What?" I said. "Bree, what are you thinking?"

  "I don't know what to think," she said, and I noticed her knuckles were white on the leather-wrapped steering wheel. To my surprise, she pulled her car over onto the wide shoulder of Wheeler Road. She turned off the engine and shifter in her seat to look at me.

  "I'm having trouble believing how two-faced you are."

  I stared at her.

  "You say you don't like Cal. It's okay for me to go after Cal. But the two of you are always talking, staring at each other like there's nobody else around."

  I opened my mouth to reply, but she went on.

  "He never looks at me like that," she added quietly, and the hurt in her face was plain."I just don't get you," she went on. "You won't come to circles, but then you do spells behind everyone's back! Do you think you're better than we are? Do you think you're so special?"

  Shock made me tongue-tied. "I'm coming to the circle tonight," I said. "And you know exactly why I didn't come for a couple of weeks—you know how freaked my parents were. That spell was just experimenting, playing. I had no idea how it would turn out."

  "You experimented by doing something to Robbie?" Bree asked.

  "Yes, I did! And that was wrong!" I practically shouted. "But I made him look a million times better than he did before. Why is that such a crime? Why isn't that a favor?"

  We sat there in silence, Bree's anger coming off her in rays.

  "Look," I said after a minute. "Even though it turned out well for him, I know I shouldn't have done the spell on Robbie. Cal said it wasn't allowed, and I understand why. It was a stupid mistake," I went on. "I've been confused and freaked out, and I just… I just wanted to… to know."

  "Know what?" she spat.

  "If I'm… special. If I have some special gift."

  She looked out the window, silent.

  "I mean, I see people's auras. Jesus, Bree, I healed Robbie's skin! Don't you think that's a big thing?"

  She shook her head, clenching her teeth. "You are out of your mind," she muttered.

  This was not the Bree I knew. "What is it, Bree?" I asked, trying not to burst into angry tears. "Why are you so mad at me?"

  She shrugged abruptly. "I feel like you're not being honest with me," she said, looking out the window again. "It's like I don't even know you anymore."

  I didn't know what to say. "Bree, I told you before. I think you and Cal would be a good couple. I'm not flirting with him. I never call him. I never sit next to him."

  "You don't need to. He always does those things to you," she said. "But why?"

  "Because he wants me to be a witch."

  "And why is that?" Bree asked. "He could care less if Robbie or I became witches. Why is he playing guessing games with you, carrying you into pools, telling you that you have a gift for this? Why are you doing spells? You're not even an official coven student, much less a witch."

  "I don't know," I answered in frustration. "It's like something seems to be… waking up inside me. Something I didn't know was there. And I want to understand what it is… what I am."

  Bree was quiet for several minutes. In the dark small sounds came to me: the faint ticking of my watch, Bree's breathing, the clicks of Breezy's metal as the car cooled. There was a black shadow rolling toward me, toward the car, and instinctively I braced myself. Then it hit.

  "I don't want you to come tonight," Bree said.

  I felt my throat close.

  Bree picked a piece of lint off her silky blue pants and examined her fingernails. "I thought I wanted us to do this together;" she said. "But I was wrong. What I really want is for Wicca to be something I do. I'm the one who's gone to every circle. I'm the one who found Practical Magick. I want Wicca to be for me and Cal. With you around, he gets distracted. Especially since you made it look like you can do spells. I don't know how you really did it. But it's all Cal can talk about."

  "I don't believe this," I whispered. "Jesus, Bree! Are you choosing Cal over me? Over our friendship?" Hot tears welled up in my eyes. Angrily I dashed them away, refusing to cry in front of her.

  Bree seemed less upset than I was. "You would do the same thing if you loved Cal," she informed me.

  "Bullshit!" I yelled as she started the car again. "That's bullshit! I wouldn't."

  Bree made a U-turn in the middle of Wheeler Road.

  "You know, you're going to realize how stupid you're being," I said bitterly. "When it comes to guys, you have the attention span of a gnat. Cal is just another in a long line. When you get tired of him and dump him, you'll miss me. And I won't be there."

  This idea seemed to make Bree pause. Then she nodded firmly. "You'll get over it," she said. "After Cal and I are really going out and
everything calms down, it'll be a whole different picture."

  I stared at her."You are delusional," I said hotly."Where are we going?"

  "I'm taking you home."

  "To hell with that," I said, popping open my door. Bree, startled, slammed on the brakes, and I lurched forward, almost whacking my head on the dashboard. Quickly I un-snapped my seat belt and jumped out onto the road. "Thanks for the lift, Bree." I slammed the door as hard as I could. Bree roared off, spinning a fast doughnut twenty yards down, then whizzing past me again on her way to Matt's. I stood alone by the side of the road, shaking with anger and hurt.

  In the eleven years of best friendship that Bree and I'd gone through, we'd had our ups and downs. In first grade she'd had three chocolate cookies in her lunch, and I'd had two Fig Newtons. She rejected my offer of my Fig Newtons for her chocolate cookies, so I had just reached out and snatched them, cramming them into my mouth. I don't know who had been more appalled, me or her. We hadn't spoken for a whole, agonizing week but finally made up when I presented her with six sheets of handmade stationery, each of which I had monogrammed with a B in colored pencils.

  In sixth grade she had wanted to cheat on my math test, and I had said no. We didn't speak for two days. She cheated off of Robbie's test, and it was never mentioned again.

  Last year, in tenth grade, we'd gotten into our worst fight ever, over whether photography counted as a valid art form or whether any idiot with a camera could capture a stunning image every once in a while. I won't tell who took what position, but I will say it culminated in a horrible, screaming fight in my backyard until my mom came out and shouted at us to stop.

  That time we didn't speak for two and a half weeks, until we finally each signed a document saying that on this issue, we would agree to disagree. I still have my copy of our promise.

  It was cold. I zipped my jacket up to my chin and pulled up the hood. I started walking toward Matt's house but then realized that it was too far away. The tears began to run down my face, and I couldn't stop them. Why was Bree doing this to me? In frustration, I turned around and started the long walk home.

  The sharp-edged moon was so close, I could see its craters. I listened to the sounds of the night insects, animals, birds. My eyes and ears became still more attuned, and I let them. I could make out insects on trees twenty feet away in the darkness. I saw birds' nests high on branches with the soft, rounded heads of sleeping birds visible at the edge. I became aware of the fast-paced fluttery thumping of the baby birds' hearts in syncopated rhythm with the much slower, heavier thud of my own.

  I turned the volume of my senses down. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the tears kept coming.

  I didn't see how Bree and I would ever recover from this, and I cried about that. I cried because I knew this meant she and Cal would really get together; she would make it happen. And I really cried, my stomach hurting, because I thought this meant I had to close all the doors inside me that had so recently opened.

  CHAPTER 21 The Thin Line

  "Anytime you feel love for anything, be it stone, tree, lover, or child, you are touched by the Goddess's magick."

  — Sabine Falconwing,

  in a San Francisco coffee shop, 1980

  Early the next morning the phone rang. It was Robbie.

  "What's going on?" he asked. "Last night Bree said you weren't going to come to circles anymore."

  Bree's assumption that I would give in to her so easily filled me with fury. I swallowed it and said, "That isn't true. That's what she wants. It isn't what I want. Samhain is next Saturday, and I'll be there."

  Robbie paused for a few seconds. "What's going on between you two? You're best friends."

  "You don't want to know," I said tersely.

  "You're right," he said. "I probably don't want to know. Anyway, we're meeting in the cornfields to the north of town, on the other side of the road from where Mabon was. We're going to meet at eleven-thirty, and if we decide we want to be initiated as students into a new coven, that will happen at midnight."

  "Wow, okay. Are you… are you going to do it?"

  "We're not really supposed to talk about it or decide yet," Robbie explained. "Cal said to just think about it in a completely personal way. Oh, and everyone has to bring stuff. I volunteered you for flowers and apples."

  "Thanks, Robbie," I said sincerely. "Do we have to wear anything special?"

  "Black or orange," he said. "See you tomorrow."

  "Okay, thanks."

  Church that day was much as usual. Father Hotchkiss noted that it was best to have a defensive line without gaps so that evil would have no place to gain access to your soul.

  I leaned across my mom to Mary K. "Note to self," I whispered. "No gaps for evil."

  She hid her grin behind her program.

  That day I felt hyper-tuned in to the service, despite Father Hotchkiss. I wondered if following Wicca meant I really, truly couldn't ever come to church again. I decided it wouldn't. I knew that I would miss church if I stopped coming, and I also knew that my parents would kill me. Later on in my life, if I had to choose between one or the other, I could do it then. I thought about what Paula Steen had said, about it's what you brought to something that mattered.

  Today I listened to the hymns and to the massive European organ played by Mrs. Lavender, as it had been since my mom was a child. I loved the candles and the incense and the formal procession of gold-robed priests and white-clothed altar boys and girls. I had been an altar girl for a couple of years, and so had Mary K. It was all so comforting, so familiar.

  After church and brunch at the Widow's Diner, I went to the grocery store with that week's shopping list. On my way, I hopped up to Red Kill, to Practical Magick. I didn't plan to buy anything and didn't see anyone I knew, but I stood in the book section, reading up about Samhain for a while. I decided to bring a black candle next Saturday since black is the color that helps ward off negativity. Meanly I was tempted to buy Bree a roomful of black candles.

  My anger at her was still white-hot. I couldn't believe her incredibly arrogant notion that she could kick me out of the circle. It only highlighted the harsh fact that in our relationship, she had always been the leader. I had always been the follower. I saw that now, and it made me angry with myself, too.

  I dreaded going to school the next day.

  "May I help you?" A pleasant-faced older woman, inches shorter than me, stood smiling at me as I looked at candles.

  I decided to jump in headfirst. "Urn, yes. I need a black candle for Samhain," I said.

  "Certainly." She nodded and reached for the black candle section. "You're lucky we still have some left. People have been snapping these up all week." She held up two different black candles: one a thick pillar about a foot tall, the other a long, slim taper about fourteen inches tall.

  "Both of these would be appropriate," she said. "The pillar lasts longer, but the taper is very elegant, too."

  The pillar was much more expensive.

  "Um, I guess I'll take the… pillar," I said. I had meant to say taper, but it hadn't come out that way. The woman nodded knowingly.

  "I think the pillar wants to go home with you," she said, as if it was normal for a candle to choose its owner. "Will this be all for you?"

  "Yes." I followed her to the checkout, thinking how un-creepy she was and how much more I liked her than the other clerk.

  "If I brought flowers on Samhain, what kind should I bring?" I asked her a little self-consciously.

  She smiled as she rang up my purchase."Whichever ones want you to buy them," she said cheerfully. Then she looked closely into my eyes, as if searching for something.

  "Are you-" she began. "You must be the girl David was telling me about," she said thoughtfully.

  "Who's David?"

  "The other clerk here," she explained. "He said a young witch comes in here who pretends not to be a witch. It's you, isn't it? You're a friend of Cal's."

  I was stunned. "Um…"

&nb
sp; She smiled broadly. "Yep, it's you, all right. How nice to meet you. My name's Alyce. If you ever need anything, you just let me know. You're going to walk a difficult road for a while."

  "How do you know that?" I blurted out.

  She looked surprised as she put my candle into a bag. "I just do," she said. "The way you know things. You understand what I'm talking about."

  I didn't say anything. I took my bag and practically flew from the store, equally fascinated and unnerved.

  On Monday morning I went defiantly to the benches where the Wicca group gathered and sat down, dropping my backpack at my feet. Beyond looking surprised to see me, Bree ignored me.

  "We missed you Saturday night," Jenna said.

  "Bree said you weren't coming anymore," Ethan put in.

  There. It was right out in the open. I felt Cat's eyes on me.

  "No, I am coming. I want to be a witch," I said clearly. "I think I'm supposed to be."

  Jenna giggled nervously. Cal smiled, and I smiled back at him, aware of how Bree's jaw tightened.

  "That's cool," Ethan said. "Here, push over," he said to Sharon, nudging her thigh with his knee.

  With a put-upon sigh Sharon made room, and Ethan grinned. I watched them, suddenly recognizing a certain awareness between them. It blew my mind: Sharon and Ethan? Could they be interested in each other?

  "Uh-oh, an outlander," Matt muttered jokingly, and Raven smirked.

  Tamara walked up.

  "Hi," I said, genuinely pleased to see her.

  "Hi," Tamara said, looking around at the group. "Hey, Morgan, did you do all the functions homework last weekend? I really got stuck on number three."

  I thought back. "Yeah, I did it. You want to go over it?"

  "That'd be great," she said.

  I grabbed my backpack. "No problem. See you all later?" I said to the group, and followed Tamara inside to the school library. For the next ten minutes we worked on the problem, me and Tamara, and it was so nice. I felt almost normal.