The Darkness of Ivy

by Jessica King

  Ivy choked on her spit, and Vince hit her back. Cassiopeia’s blue eyes sparked with confusion. Ivy held up her hands and tried to say that she was fine, though that caused a new round of coughing.

  “I’m sorry. Continue,” Ivy said, swallowing her mother’s name.

  Cassiopeia looked like she wanted to stop, but she continued, speaking more slowly. “She and the other women in her local coven were getting death threats, and when she realized that there was this website with her name and a few of the other women in her coven, she started to gather the women to perform protection rituals.”

  Ivy could not believe her ears. She tried to picture her mother in business slacks and a cardigan dancing in a circle, flinging rose petals or whatever witches did to cast spells and could not manage to form the image.

  “And she started contacting the other women listed on the website who she could track down, offering support. Essentially, this all began as a sort of pen pal system of women who believed they had magic or women who were being tracked down because they happened to look like another. Eventually, we had some men join. None are listed as witches on the site, but we have several magically gifted and truly supportive male members.”

  Ivy stood. “Thank you, this was helpful.” She tried to remember the things she was supposed to say to a source she was done talking with. “We’ll be in touch,” was all she managed. She grabbed Vince’s arm and hauled him out of the house.

  Ivy tore through her mother’s journals. She’d kept them all these years, enjoying the feel of their leather and the smell of her mother’s perfume, which still seemed to linger in the pages.

  She’d never read them. Had always thought it’d be too painful. But now, she cracked open the most recent one. The entry before her death made Ivy sick to her stomach.

  I mostly just fear for my life now. I’ve thought about leaving Ivy and Roger. I don’t want to turn up dead and one of them find me.

  I wish I’d had another child, so it wouldn’t just have to be the two of them. Roger loves Ivy more than life, as do I. But he has no clue how to care for a teenage girl.

  I fear death. I fear the Kings. I fear justice.

  The Kings would mean the Kingsmen, Ivy thought. But justice? What had her mother done that would make her fear justice?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Monday, February 20, 2017, 7:13 p.m.

  Ivy’s wine was too sweet.

  She and her father both liked fine dining, but they didn’t often have time for it. Ivy had worn a dress for the occasion, but the white tablecloth was just the perfect length to tickle her knees, and she itched at them.

  “What do you want to ask me, Ivy?” her father asked. He shifted in his seat.

  She felt awful for making him uncomfortable. But she figured her next questions would make him feel worse. She’d called him in a panic after reading her mother’s last journal entries. She’d been so worked up, he thought she’d been in a car accident.

  “Did Mom ever do anything, like—” Ivy searched for the words “—really wrong?”

  Her father’s graying brows knit together. “Ivy, if this is about her death—”

  “It is.”

  “We’ve talked about this, Ivy,” he said, laying his fork down.

  He looked so tired. It was something that had taken her by surprise, his aging. She knew that people got older. That people got just plain old. But some part of her had frozen her father at the age he’d been when she had left for college, and ever since then had simply been confused every time she’d really taken a long hard look at him. He was going gray at his temples, and the lines that used to only show themselves when he was focused had become a permanent fixture on his forehead. He moved slowly, blowing out long breaths whenever he moved or sat down.

  Sandra’s fork clinked against her plate. Ivy liked Sandra, her stepmother, though she never called her by a maternal name. She’d been too old when her father had remarried to reprogram her brain into calling another person by a parental accolade. So, she called her Sandra Dee most of the time, which they both enjoyed. Sandra was kind and supportive. But she always got quiet around mentions of Ivy’s mother. The first conversation she’d had with Ivy alone—after Ivy had returned from her first year of college—Sandra had told her that she didn’t want to replace Ivy’s mother. Ivy already knew no one could, but it was nice of her to say so out loud.

  Mostly Ivy liked Sandra at first just because she didn’t have to feel guilty about leaving her father alone in their house anymore.

  Sandra had aged well. Her red hair had a few white strands, but for the most part, she did a good job of keeping up with coloring it, and most of the lines on her face were from where her skin dipped and curved from smiling. Unlike her father, she could imagine Sandra as old as one hundred, curved over a cane, and still smiling around her sparkly teeth.

  Ivy wondered what her mother would have looked like if she’d aged, but she couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t even imagine her mother at her father’s age. They’d be the same age in five years.

  “I know,” Ivy finally said, unsure how to say the next words. “But he’s killing again.”

  Her father’s head snapped up. Angry brown eyes stared at her.

  “It’s my case, and—”

  “No, it’s not,” her father said, his voice between a plea and a command. “Ivy, I don’t want you around that.” His fingers fiddled with the ends of the tablecloth, uninterested in his food.

  “It’s my job,” Ivy said, shrugging. “It’s why I wanted this job.”

  Her father looked sadly at his plate.

  “I’m going to find him, Dad,” Ivy said. She wondered if age worked the other way, too. If, when her father looked at her, he was surprised to see she’d gained a wrinkle or two of her own. Surprised to see that she was a police officer and not a little girl with a connected web of names drawn on the back of her door. She wondered what age he’d frozen her at. Twelve? Eighteen?

  He looked up at her. “I know you will. But I’m worried about what happens when you do.”

  Ivy shook her head and smiled, trying to diffuse the tension. “I put him away for the rest of his sorry life.”

  “I’ll cheer to that,” Sandra said, holding up her wine glass.

  The three of them clinked, and with the sound, much of the string that was drawn tight between her and her father relaxed.

  “But I found something in one of mom’s journals that made me think she’d done something bad. And if I can figure out what it was, then maybe I’d have some sort of next step,” Ivy said.

  Her father shook his head. “She’d always been very upright, you know that.” He looked to the ceiling as though he was thinking. “I assume if you found the journals, you know about the witchcraft,” he said.

  “Yes,” Ivy said.

  “Yeah,” her father said. “I mean, that might have just been it, to be frank. She was a Catholic woman her whole life. Even when she started to believe in the magical, she still went to church, took you there. She always seemed to wonder if the supernatural feeling she felt was sent from God or the devil. She dealt with a lot of guilt that way. But no, as far as doing something horrible, she was always very moral,” he said.

  Ivy considered. Maybe that’s what her mother meant by justice. The justice after death, not the justice served in a jail cell. But then her father cleared his throat.

  “She had an alias, at times. For things she did with…witches,” he said.

  “Are you embarrassed by it?” Ivy asked, watching the discomfort on his face. His hands gripped the edge of the table, and when Sandra placed her hand on top of his, he seemed to notice. He relaxed and loosened his tie a fraction.

  “I’m not embarrassed,” he said. “But it was a surprise.”

  “Yeah,” Ivy said. “That makes sense.” It had definitely been a surprise to her. She didn’t want to ask him. Almost didn’t want to know.

  “Ruby Castle.”

  I’ve been thin
king about making something for the coven to help them connect with the other covens. I realize that there are some women on that list who would never join a coven, and who would never join a group that had women in it that had joined a coven. But maybe there’s something there?

  I’ve asked God for help. I’ve found myself repeating that age-old phrase, “Only God can save me now,” and I’ve never felt it to be so true before. I know that most people don’t mean their actual lives when they say it. But I do. And I wonder how many other women out there are saying that phrase to themselves, knowing they’re on the hitlist of the Kingsmen who pretend to act in the name of the same God I beg for my life from every night. It’s quite twisted to me. I know that my daughter, when she kneels by her bed at night, is not talking to the same spiritual being who those monsters claim to work for. It could not be.

  But I also know that there must be some sort of power in community. Because when I find myself moving forward, when I find myself leaving the house every day despite the fear I feel from seeing my name on that website every morning—never changing, never calling me anything but a “WIP,” whatever that might mean—Work in Progress? Worshipper of Paganism?—I realize that I’m being held up by others.

  Not my husband. I know he doesn’t understand my coven. That he doesn’t understand the potions I make or the spells I say over our home, our food, our daughter. He would hold me up if he could, but I have the feeling that when he tries to talk to me these days, I feel like sand slipping through his fingers. A material he doesn’t know how to hold onto. I wish it wasn’t like that. I used to be a whole woman. Now I just feel like a ghost.

  It’s not my daughter, who I’ve kept in the dark and who is too young to bear the load of holding me up, though she is the reason I would fight anyone who might try to take me from her.

  It’s my coven. The women who know why I’m targeted. The women who would protect me every day with their spells and their prayers and their words.

  Some of them pray to the Female Goddess. Some of them pray to God. Some of them pray to names of gods I cannot pronounce. I feel as though they all count, though. They hold me up as I soldier on. And if I can make some sort of way for all the other women targeted to feel like that, then that is what I want to do.

  I’ve decided to start with the covens. I went to meet with the Sacramento coven. One of their women has already been killed. One of their women is on the Kingsmen hitlist. Meeting her (her name was Cara) was one of the most…solidifying experiences of my life, if that makes any type of sense. Like there was someone else just like me, even though she leads a very different life than I do.

  So, I’ll reach out to the covens. And then we’ll try to find the women on the hit list. Offer them our support, if nothing else.

  I don’t know if this will make much of a difference. But it’s at least made a difference to me. It’s given me some sort of purpose in this world of magic that I have not had since joining. And even though it may all just be smoke and mirrors, just placebos and hopes, it feels like one of the most important things I’ve ever done.

  Ivy didn’t know how to feel about her mother’s writing. How had she not noticed her mother organizing a nation-wide network of witches? It seemed like someone she—even the twelve-year-old version of herself—would have noticed. How well did she know her mother before she had died? The thought didn’t sit well with her.

  The pages after the journal entry were filled with lists of cities and names of covens. Names of women that looked familiar from the Kingsmen website. Each had a check, an X, or a question mark next to it. Stray lines of addresses and phone numbers littered the margins.

  The cursor blinked behind her mother’s name in the search bar. Well, not really her mother’s name. Mostly what had come up about her mother—as Bethany Hart—on the internet was about her possible entanglement with witches and her previous professional achievements, and of course, her murder, which was the first, second, and fourth search result.

  She hadn’t known her mother had an alias. Ruby Castle was such a strange name to connect with her mother’s face. She pressed enter, and a string of news stories flowed down the screen. A waterfall of images—her mother, face twisted with passion, at some sort of rally. An article listing Ruby Castle’s guide to online Wiccan resources. There were a few inflammatory phrases of Ruby’s that were used as inspiration on the websites of several covens or Wiccan books. But nothing so bad that should make her “fear justice.”

  Her hands shook when she found a video of Ruby Castle’s vision for The Protection of Female Goddesses.

  Ivy swallowed and clicked the video.

  Her mother was on a stage, being cheered on by a crowd. She walked back and forth across the stage, looking enchanting and strong in a pair of heels and a flowing skirt. Her hair was curled. It was a persona her mother adopted, Ruby. Her mother either wore smart business clothes or high waisted jeans and sweatshirts from her alma mater.

  She was explaining her vision for The Protection, some of her phrases exactly what she’d written in her journal. And maybe the crowd that loved her so much really thought she was Ruby Castle. But the smile was all Bethany.

  And even though people cheered for Ruby whenever the woman on stage made a good point—that being Wiccan was not illegal, that practicing witchcraft was how some people dealt with trauma and anger and sadness because it restored their sense of power over their lives—it was her mother’s voice, not the words, that made her nose prickle and her eyes tear. Her mother’s voice that had her laying her head on her desk, falling asleep to the lilting, enthusiastic voice that she’d longed to hear for over fifteen years.

  +++

  Tuesday, February 21, 2017, 10:03 a.m.

  Emily knew that Aline and Oliver were taking a separate security tour from the detectives because no one wanted to freak the two of them out. Emily didn’t know how candid Aline had been with Oliver about why someone might possibly have their sights set on killing her, but she decided to let the girl take charge on that one. It was her job today to keep her mouth shut about Aline’s witchcraft and to take detailed notes so that she could review with Aline before she made her Oscar debut. Without any bumps in the road, please.

  The house manager of the Dolby, Stacey, had walked them in through the back door. There were too many people already taking pictures in front of the theatre, despite the fact that the awards were still two days away.

  She’d merely pointed out the tinted front doors and said, “The red carpet will be out there, covering the middle of the streets, and there will be fans on both sides.” She’d pretended to draw the space in the air and pointed five fingers as if setting up pieces on a game board. “We’ll have five of our security men there, and then you’ll have your own personal security with you on the carpet.”

  She indicated a few more places. “You’ll see that these areas have specific places for you to stop and get pictures. Just smile at the camera for a few seconds and then keep moving.”

  “I know you’ve seen stars break from their security to say hello to the fans,” Emily said to Aline, but more so to Oliver, who she had decided would need to be trusted to keep Aline away from such impulses, no matter how well-intended, “but you’ll have to resist the urge to do that because of the security concern.” She looked to Stacey for confirmation. “It’s far more likely that if someone is intending to hurt you, that they’re going to be outside because getting in is nearly impossible.”

  “Exactly,” the house manager said. “We can help you best when we aren’t surprised.”

  They walked through the theater, and Emily tried not to marvel. She’d have a spot in the audience. It was going to be much farther back than Aline and Oliver’s, but she couldn’t wait to get to her seat, covered in a gorgeous, simple black gown.

  “I’ve never been one to be starstruck,” Emily said to Stacey as they walked to the front of the seats draped in velvet, “but this is magnificent.”

  “Oh, it is,�
� Aline said, joy shining brightly across her face. It was moments like these that reminded Emily why she wanted to work for Aline and no one else. Most stars didn’t have this joy after they’d made it to the big leagues. “I’ll never tire of looking,” Aline continued.

  And that’s the other reason, Emily thought, containing her laughter. She sounds like she just walked out of a children’s fairytale.

  The house manager pointed out their seats and the exits and how Aline would walk up on stage if she won and where to go if someone started shooting at her. It was a lot of movement, and Emily kept checking to make sure that Aline and Oliver were paying attention and not daydreaming about the Oscars they might collect over their careers.

  “That’s the bit I’m nervous about,” Aline said, trying to laugh it off. “Though I might be more scared of an acceptance speech!”

  Stacey laughed, too, as if they were all just here as part of a funny nightmare that Emily might wake up from, laughing at how ridiculous it was that someone would want to kill Aline. How ridiculous it was that she might be burying Aline within the week if the detectives couldn’t find the killer.

  Emily had thought Aline hadn’t been taking the threat against her life seriously at all until Aline had presented her with a plan to use her fortune to support her mother and the coffin she would want if she died. Emily’s hair stood on end.

  Inga and Marcus acquainted themselves with the space, murmuring to each other as they went, pointing at different vantage points, even as the group made their way back to the lobby.

  “This will be where you can stay before the festivities really start,” the house manager said. The space was filled with modern-looking lights and chairs that seemed too far off the ground with not nearly enough back support. “A bartender there,” she said, pointing behind a counter where several of the chairs were cozied up.

  Emily typed a note to make sure that Aline had plenty to eat and drink before they left. She didn’t want her accepting anything that night.