by Jessica King
Oliver excused himself to the restroom nearby.
“So, who will be in here?” Aline asked, looking around the room, mentally filling it with her idols, Emily imagined.
Stacey skimmed her notes with a polished fingernail. “The other nominees for best actress and actor, best actor and actress in a supporting role, and the nominees for best score and costume design, I believe,” she said. “But I will let you know if any of that changes.”
Emily typed out the list furiously on her phone.
“The soaps in there smell absolutely divine,” Oliver said, returning to the group. “They’re shaped like little seashells, it’s adorable,” Oliver said, specifically to Aline, who looked inclined to run into the bathroom and see for herself.
“Can Inga and Marcus come back here?” Emily asked, gesturing to the room.
“Of course,” the house manager said. “It might be a bit of a tight squeeze, so if it seems too close, one is welcome to stand in the hall with several of our own security, and the other one in here?” she said it as a question, though she nodded at the security guards as if this were a concrete plan.
Emily typed away for at least Inga to stay inside with Aline if there were too many people to warrant more than one bodyguard per person. Aline tended to drop back into French when she got nervous, and Inga was fluent in the language.
Emily saw Aline’s fingers fidgeting at her side, dropping some sort of nearly invisible powder onto the ground before she spread it with the sole of her shoe into the carpet, all without looking away from the house manager. She smiled and nodded, giggled when it seemed appropriate. A sneaky little thing, but they were likely to vacuum that up before she got back to this room—something Aline likely knew. The fact reminded Emily of the picture of the coffin. Aline was scared, even if she wasn’t saying it aloud.
The house manager led them back to their car and gave Emily her personal phone number in case she had any questions. Emily suddenly felt insufficient in her role. Shouldn’t she have more questions? Shouldn’t she know more about how to protect Aline?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Wednesday, February 22, 2017, 1:26 a.m.
“And the award for best actress goes to …”
Leonardo DiCaprio opened the envelope, and Aline fidgeted, sitting on her hands. She’d nearly bitten clear through her lip, an issue she’d been worrying about since the moment she had heard she was a nominee. She bit down terribly hard on her lower lip when she was nervous, enough that she’d needed stitches twice from it (the day she’d auditioned for Truly Twenties and the day she’d had her first on-screen kiss, which ended up making each and every take incredibly painful), and now had a light scar tucked under her lush lower lip.
“Aline Rousseau!” The audience roared with applause, and a swell of the musical score of Truly Twenties filled the Dolby Theatre. Aline suddenly wished she was wearing flats as she approached the staircase up to the stage, suddenly fearful of falling onto the stage, landing right in front of one of her acting idols for the world’s most horrible photo op.
She took deep breaths, trying to keep the dizziness at bay and walked up the red-carpeted steps. The rest of the Truly Twenties cast was screaming her name, their 1920s attire a perfect complement to her dress onstage. She adjusted the hairpiece that held her curls and wrapped her fingers around the Oscar, the tiny golden figure still warm from Leo’s own grasp.
She made her way to the microphone, her hands shaking as she tried her best to remember the acceptance speech she’d rehearsed a million times over the phone to her mother.
“I-I’d like to thank the Academy and everyone who made this possible,” she said, trying to keep her tears in her eyes. She hated watery actresses. “I’d like to thank my mother and the entire cast and crew of Truly Twenties.”
And then, as if her mouth had been taken over by some strange force, she heard her own voice saying, “And in particular, I’d like to thank Amber Woodward, Nancy Caughman, Ethel Miller, Harriet Wilson, Rebecca Simpers, and Sarah Pepper.”
She looked down at the microphone, confused, and found that what had been amplifying her voice was now a gun, pointed right at her throat. The gun clicked.
Aline shot up in her bed, grasping at the neckline of her nightgown. Inga was bursting through her door, and her throat felt scratchy as if she’d just been screaming.
“Oh!” she said, trying to play off the situation, even as her throat closed up. “I-I must have had a bad dream.” She forced a high, trilling laugh that sounded wobbly to her own ears. “I’m so sorry, Inga.” She dropped her hand from her throat down to her silken sheets.
The crease between Inga’s eyes smoothed out, and he nodded. “Not a problem, Miss Rousseau,” he said, closing the door behind him as he exited.
Aline flopped back onto the bed and flipped, pressing her face into a pillow. She breathed in the coolness of it and tried not to scream again, even though her throat still felt the phantom of a bullet.
She turned to her bedside table and drank the tea she hadn’t finished the night before. Herbal tea was terrible cold, but nothing felt better to Aline at that moment than to swallow and find that all the pieces needed to do so still worked perfectly. She looked up at the dreamcatcher above her, betrayed. She’d placed the same spell on it as last night—when she’d had lovely dreams despite her daytime worries. She stood on her mattress and pulled the dreamcatcher down, walking the large, feathered thing out of her bedroom and into her temple.
“I think I did it wrong,” she said to Inga, who bowed his head as she passed without offering his opinion on the subject. “I will try it again.”
The dreamcatcher was so large that several of the feathers dragged along the ground as she made her way into the temple. It still smelled of burnt leaves from the last spell she’d done.
“What did I do wrong?” she muttered. She placed the dreamcatcher in the middle of the wooden floor and decided it looked picturesque to leave it in the middle for a moment, beneath the arched ceiling of her temple. The only lights were the candles, so she lit them all one at a time until the light filled the space, and their warmth touched her skin, cold after such a terrible dream.
She sat down next to the table, crossing her legs beneath her and pulled a binder from the crate she kept beneath the table. She knew there was a Los Angeles coven of witches, but she also knew she could never visit. Showing up to something like that could mean disaster for her reputation, for the other witches if they were trying to hide from the public eye, no matter how much she wished for their community and their knowledge.
All she had were these printed pages from Pinterest and Google and a collection of websites that promised to be created by real witches. Aline’s favorite pages were written by a woman named Ruby Castle. Her writing was clear, and it was the closest to a witch community that she’d ever gotten. Ruby wrote conversationally saying “you” and “me” and “us.” Aline had recently been wondering if she’d ever meet Ruby. If maybe the woman was part of the Los Angeles coven.
She sighed. It didn’t matter. She loved her life, but she’d never be someone who could go visit a collection of witch friends for a blessing or spell.
She re-read the blessing for the dream catcher, practicing the Latin words, which was the part of the spell that she’d believed she’d gotten wrong. Her eyelids drooped as she read, and she pushed her back against the wall.
Her words turned to mumbles until she fell asleep, curled against the wall of her temple, the only place she felt safe from the world—both from the crowds and from the complete loneliness of being a witch without a coven.
+++
Wednesday, February 22, 2017, 6:45 p.m.
Ivy paced the floor of her apartment. Maybe she was going insane. The cutesy alarm clock she’d kept from childhood ticked loudly, and she pulled the batteries out. She took a heaping bite out of the burrito she’d microwaved—the biggest meal she’d had in the past two days.
I can just call. Does
n’t make me crazy. Doesn’t mean I believe what they’re doing. I just want to…
She just wanted to what? To understand her mother? To see what types of things she did that Ivy had never picked up on, had never even believed her mother was interested in, even when she first heard that her mother was some sort of suspected witch? She dialed the number and downed a glass of water.
Ivy pressed the call button and hoped for voicemail.
It only rang once.
“Hello?”
“Hi! Ah, Cassiopeia? It’s Detective—ah, it’s Ivy? Ivy Hart.” Ivy walked in circles around the kitchen island, plucking fruit that had gone bad out of the basket she kept it in and tossing it into the trash.
“Oh, hi! Is there anything I can help you with? Did you find something out?”
“Actually, this isn’t exactly about the investigation, per se,” Ivy said. “I was just wondering if there was a way I could kind of see…the extent of what you do? My mother was in the Los Angeles coven, and if she kind of, you know made the whole Female Goddesses thing, I’d just want to, like, see it, I guess?” She hated how it sounded. Like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know. She stood up on her tiptoes and stepped on every third tiny tile of the linoleum.
“Oh, of course, of course!” the woman said. “We do have an actual meeting of the L.A. coven in an hour, and almost all those members consider themselves to be part of The Protection anyway, so you’re welcome to just come and take a look! Does that sound good?”
“That would be great,” Ivy said, running her finger around the lip of her glass.
Cassiopeia hung up, and Ivy shook the tension from her arms. If she didn’t go, she’d just remain curious. It can’t hurt anything to go.
Ivy was sure she’d made a mistake the moment she’d shown up. She was in what she would have considered to be church clothes, and most of the women were very dressed down. Running shorts and leggings seemed to be the general attire, which was not what Ivy had in her mind as a picture of a witch at all.
There were a few who matched the description she’d made in her mind of a modern witch. Flowing gypsy skirts and lace and those floppy hats hipsters wore solely for the purpose of social media.
The woman packed every spare inch of the home, greeting one another, exchanging small bottles and herbs in bags and DVDs and parenting magazines. Ivy stayed close to the edge of the room, sliding her back down against the wall when she noticed all the women quieting and finding a space to sit, whether on the couch or on one of the many rugs. One of the young witches in a hipster hat helped an elderly woman, hunched and dripping with beads and tassels to a padded kitchen chair.
“Thanks, everyone, for coming,” Cassiopeia said as she made her way to the front of the room toward the standing piano. She wove her fingers together in front of herself. “As you all know, Erin Preston was not associated with any organized covens, but we are still sad to lose her all the same.” There was a general murmur of agreement. “And we have a visitor with us,” she said, pointing to Jennings, who smiled. “You wish to remain anonymous, though?” Cassiopeia asked, and Jennings nodded. No questioning. No protesting.
Ivy couldn’t decide if this was one of the most supportive groups of people she’d ever seen, or if Cassiopeia was simply leading a cult. She picked at the edges of the rug, the dense, floral design that reminded her of her grandmother’s house. She shifted so that her legs were no longer beneath her and instead crossed them in front of her, running the heel of her shoe across the dull blues and pinks of the fabric.
“So, today, I’ve asked you to bring what you need to perform the protection spell for our sisters in danger,” she said, motioning to the crowd. “As well as the Blessing of Wisdom. I have personally requested this one of you for another friend who could use an extra boost to her figuring powers.”
Ivy somehow knew that the blessing was meant for her. That Cassiopeia wanted her to figure this out. Badly.
“I hope that this close concentration of our magic in this location will allow us to expel a strong dose of power,” Cassiopeia said.
The women gathered into small groups where they sat, pulling out small plastic bags or containers and candles of all sizes. The natural light through the window was slowly dying, casting the room into all shades of blue and orange as the candles flickered to life. No one tried to get her to join or make her uncomfortable about her staying glued to the wall, and she noticed there were two other women who were doing the same. Watching. Judging. Deciding.
Lilac and lavender and vanilla and a series of other, more complicated perfumed candle smells filled the room, as though Ivy had just entered a shop dedicated solely to body wash and bath scrubs. Different items were placed over the flames. Cinnamon sticks and leaves and flower petals. A woman with tattoo sleeves on each arm showed a girl who couldn’t have been out of high school yet how to crush lavender between her hands in swift movements before spreading it out along the floor. Ivy couldn’t hear her, but she could see her lips explaining the meaning behind why lavender and why rosemary and why salt was spread around the candle in a careful circle. She drew lines against the rug she was sitting on (white with different colored pom-poms stitched onto the edges of the rug every few inches) as if there were a specific distance from candle to ingredients that were most important.
Murmuring filled the room as the women joined hands or held gemstones suspended on necklaces, swinging like pendulums over the flames. Their words sounded old and worn as they whispered.
The older witch Ivy had seen earlier was swinging a necklace holding a large rose quartz stone with a copper string over the flames of a collection of tea lights of different colors. Her eyes were closed as she chanted the spell, and she moved the fingers of her other hand in quick, precise movements. The women all around started to do the same thing, the same exact movements, and the tattooed witch began showing her mentee how to make each hand signal, the words that went with each one.
Ivy found her fingers playing at her sides, her fingers itching to repeat the elegant motions. Had her mother done this during her soccer games? Before she drove? Was that even how it worked? Ivy swallowed; she didn’t want to ask Cassiopeia.
The murmuring eventually died out, along with the blown-out candles and the sunlight whose absence left the piles of women indistinguishable and cast in shades of gray. The strike of the piano was the only warning before voices lifted in a haunting melody, continuing on a cappella. Somehow, the women had known to split into different groups, and sing in a complicated canon. They repeated over and over, round after round whatever ancient words they had decided represented wisdom.
They repeated the same hand motions in canon as well, each woman holding up her hands, pressing their thumbs and forefingers together. When their voices dipped, they brought their ring fingers down to their thumbs, and held the diamond shapes they’d created to their foreheads, and then repeated. Ivy couldn’t imagine her mother doing such a thing, a woman who had told her not to play around with Ouija boards.
Eventually, each group died out, and the room was filled with an echoing silence for a full moment. Ivy caught whispers of prayers to the Female Goddess, to God, to Allah, to ancestors and witches of old. But when the lights turned on, the room was once again filled with women, talking and laughing and complaining about work. The juxtaposition was jarring.
It made it easier to see how her mother might have hidden spells and potions and this strange world of chanting.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Cassiopeia asked, coming to lean against the wall next to Ivy.
“It is,” Ivy said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Cassiopeia said, smiling. “It’s very similar to other religions, you know. Witchcraft.”
Ivy took the idea in for a moment without responding.
“It’s not mainstream or accepted because women and minorities were the origins of it all,” Cassiopeia said. “But no one says anything about an old white man in a hat with a crucifix. Or a m
onk in a diaper that founded one of the world’s largest religions.”
Ivy couldn’t hold in her laugh, no longer worried that she’d somehow insulted the woman.
Cassiopeia raised her hands. “Nothing against them. I’m just saying.”
“The Blessing of Wisdom was for me, right?” Ivy asked.
“Yes.” Cassiopeia brushed a mass of curls away from her eyes with bright azure nails manicured to a point. “Can’t hurt,” she said before looking at Ivy, capturing her eyes with a desperate look. Ivy knew this look. “Do you think you’ll find him?” she asked. Her gaze quickly flew across the crowd bustling around in her home, wishing each other goodbye. She looked back at Ivy, green eyes nearly glowing. “They’re my family, you know?” Cassiopeia blinked as if she’d suddenly realized she made a mistake. “Sorry, I know your mother was your actual family.” She pressed her lips together.
Ivy shook her head. “It’s okay, I understand that.” She put on her best detective face. “I’m going to find him.”
Cassiopeia nodded, tilting her head back against the wall. It was then that Ivy could really see the deep shadows beneath the woman’s eyes. The premature wrinkles gathering at the edges of her eyes from sleepless nights and stress.
“Did—” Ivy had been debating the question all day. “Did you know my mom?”
Cassiopeia opened her resting eyes. “Oh, ah, I did actually.” She smiled. “I called her Miss Bethany. But I didn’t know her incredibly well or anything. I’d only known her about a year when she—” She paused, searching for the right word.
“Was killed,” Ivy said. She’d become comfortable with the words over the years in ways the people around her hadn’t.
“Passed, yeah,” Cassiopeia said. “I was about fifteen, I think, when I knew her. I’d been a runaway; my parents threw me out when they saw me casting some beginner spell. Don’t even remember which one it was. But the L.A. coven took me in, and I eventually started heading most of it up. But I had always really liked your mother’s ideas about The Protection, so I tried to make sure it got stronger and didn’t phase out, you know?”
