by Shannon Page
Therefore, I was destined to be alone. To raise this child alone—or as alone as my coven would let me, anyway.
I would be happy to let Jeremy get to know her, to be around as much as he wanted to. It was what Gregorio wanted: for Jeremy to continue to believe this was his child. That we could someday make “another” daughter together.
“Well,” Jeremy said, after a long period where I thought these thoughts and he gazed at my baby, “I don’t mean to stay long. I know you both need your rest.”
I wanted to protest, to ask him to stay longer, but we both knew he was right. “Thank you for the gift, again.”
He leaned forward and brushed a kiss on my cheek. “No, don’t get up; I can see myself out. I’ll call you soon.”
I watched as he left the room, and then the house.
It was the dead of the night. I was sleeping, Rosemary in my arms, both of us curled in my bed.
And there was a presence in my room.
I came awake at once, on high alert yet not moving—I didn’t want to startle the baby.
I didn’t want to tip off whoever it was that I was aware of them.
How did they get past my wards? I wondered, even as I sent my senses around.
The essence was familiar—very familiar. I relaxed a little as my conscious brain came alert, found its sense.
“Gracie?”
She stepped from the shadows, somehow shy and proud and defiant all at once. She was barefoot and dressed in a simple black smock of a dress. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she whispered.
“Gracie!” I sat up, pulling Rose to my breast with one arm as I threw the other out to pull the witchlet into an awkward embrace. She endured it stoically.
“I heard you had your baby,” she said, after I finally released her.
For the second time today, tears were stinging my eyes. “Gracie!” Somehow, all I could manage was to stammer her name, again and again. “Where have you been?” I finally added.
She shrugged. “Around. It’s not important. And I’m not staying long. I just wanted to see her.” She sniffled a bit, maybe. “And you.”
“Well, thanks for that,” I tried teasing her, but it came out flat. I had too much emotion in my throat. I guess baby hormones weren’t done with me yet. “Oh, Gracie, I’m so glad you’re all right.”
“Can I hold her?”
I started to say she’s sleeping, but of course she wasn’t. Rosemary was regarding Gracie with the same calm, solemn intensity she brought to everything. “Of course.”
I was going to hand this baby to every member of witchkind in the greater Bay Area before this week was over, it looked like.
As I was quickly beginning to realize was her way, Rose accepted the new arms happily. She even deigned to drool on Gracie, which made the witchlet giggle.
Which, in turn, made her familiar, Minky, jump up onto the bed, followed in short order by Elnor.
As Gracie rocked Rose and made nonsense sounds at her, I said to Elnor, “Some watch cat you are. You didn’t even let me know we had company.”
Gracie looked up at me. “She let us in, actually.”
I just gaped back at her. “What? What are you talking about?” Cats can’t undo wards or open doors. Not even witches’ cats.
“Through the portal,” Gracie said, as though I was the one making no sense.
“What portal?” I asked. I was very calm, not shrieking or getting mad or anything. “I don’t know anything about any portal.”
“In the closet under the stairs. It’s a cat portal.” Now Gracie blinked at me and looked uncomfortable. “You don’t know about the cat portal under the stairs?”
“No, Gracie,” I said, still really calm. “Can you show me this ‘cat portal’ under the stairs?”
Gracie shrugged. “Sure.”
I pulled on my bathrobe, reclaimed my baby, and followed the witchlet down to the first floor. Indeed, the closet door was sitting ajar. “In here,” she said, pointing.
I bent down and started to crawl in before thinking better of taking a baby in there. “Here,” I said, handing her to Gracie.
When I turned back, both Elnor and Minky darted in before me. They ran to the back wall of the closet, the place that Elnor had always been so interested in. The place where the channelers had left one of their stones during their investigation after Logan had died.
The blank wall that contained exactly zero portals, of any kind.
“Very funny,” I said to Gracie, after I’d backed out of the small space.
She looked back at me, puzzled. “It was there earlier. I swear, that’s how I came in.”
I looked between her and the empty space before letting out a sigh. “I need tea.”
One reason for never, ever having another baby was pennyroyal tea. Oh Blessed Mother, how I had missed it.
I would probably realize how much I’d missed other things too, like Witch’s Mead, once I got around to it; but I’d lost my taste for all intoxicants. Pennyroyal, however, had never stopped sounding good.
Gracie sat at the kitchen table with me, sipping her own cup; Petrana held the baby, who as usual seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement. I took the opportunity to study the witchlet. She looked…calmer, somehow. All her teen angst had settled down. I could almost see the wise witch she was destined to become.
Which isn’t to say there wasn’t a sadness to her, as well.
“You really won’t tell me where you’ve been?” I asked, at last.
Gracie looked over at me. Her cat nudged her hand; she scritched her absently, exactly as I always did with Elnor. “You can’t let on that you know—or that you even saw me.”
My heart sped up a bit. “I am good at keeping secrets.” But even as I said the words, something inside me cried out in protest. Too many secrets! No more secrets!
But I had to know she was all right—and that she was going to continue being all right.
“Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma,” Rose babbled, from across the room. Startled, both Gracie and I looked over at her. She was reaching for Petrana’s wiry hair and kicking her tiny legs.
“She did not just say Mama,” Gracie breathed, stunned.
“She’s three days old,” I said. “It’s just noise.”
I told myself I believed that and refocused on Gracie.
“I’m staying with some human friends,” she blurted. “In the East Bay. You can’t tell anyone—you really can’t tell Leonora. I’m done with the coven school, done with that crap.”
“We were looking for you in L.A.,” I said.
Gracie gave a small smile. “I thought maybe you would. I wanted to throw you off the trail.” She grinned wider. “It worked.”
“So you don’t really want to be an actor?”
“I might—I didn’t lie about that part. Actually, I didn’t really lie about anything. I just…let you get the wrong impression about things and didn’t correct it.”
It would be easier to get mad at her if she didn’t remind me so much of myself. “Who are these human friends? What are you doing with them?” I shook my head. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right. I just want to know what you’re up to, and why.”
She snorted. “You know why. I told you everything straight out, at least that part of it. It’s dumb to hide our natures. Humans aren’t the enemy.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at me. “You of all witches know that.”
“Hey, hey, wait a minute.” I put my hands up in a warding-off gesture. “Just because I had a human boyfriend doesn’t mean—” And that’s when the enormity of what she had just said hit me. “Are you saying you’ve told humans that you’re a witch?”
“Sure,” she said, just a little too casually, watching me for my reaction.
I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. Even if it killed me. I forced myself to stay calm. I was getting good at this. “Gracie. Explain.”
She shrugged again. “Just that. I told my friends I’m a witch.”
“And…you
told them what that means?” I had told Raymond I was a witch the night I’d met him. In a teasing, joking way that ensured that he would have no idea what I was actually talking about. He hadn’t even blinked. In fact, that was when he’d told me that his sister was one too—a Wiccan, he’d meant.
“Yeah.” Gracie sipped her tea, not meeting my eye.
I waited her out.
Finally, she looked back up at me. “I know we’re not supposed to. That it goes against all the strictures of witchkind, blah blah blah. But Callie! Nobody cares. I promise you.”
“What do you mean by that? Are you saying that they believed you?”
“Well, not at first.”
“How did you convince them?” Though I could well imagine.
“I did some magic.”
“And nobody was frightened or alarmed?”
She squirmed a little. “Not…a whole lot. Not after the first few minutes.”
I shook my head, suddenly not wanting to hear any more.
“They’re cool now,” she hastened to add. “They think it’s no big deal.” She leaned forward, intent and serious again. “Callie, listen: witchkind is totally afraid of humans, and humans couldn’t care less. They can do so much with their technology—what we can do is like just another flavor of the same thing.”
“Gracie, you know that’s not true,” I said. “No human can teleport across town in the blink of an eye, or send thought-messages to one another, or cast zones of inattention on themselves, or—well, a thousand other things!” I glanced at Petrana, still tirelessly holding Rose. My baby seemed to be watching our conversation. I was probably projecting hard here. “Not to mention animating a golem!”
Gracie shrugged. “Well, sure, but humans can do plenty of stuff we can’t. Like fly easily in airplanes, for just one example.” She got that fierce, stubborn look on her face. The look I knew all too well. “My point is, they’re not threatened by us. They think this is interesting, and different. My…um, my friends are wondering if maybe we can’t work together. You know, join forces, be stronger if we both bring our own skills to—to whatever.”
My brain was grasping at several different threads in what she was saying. What I seized on first was, “Your ‘um friends’? Gracie, do you have a human boyfriend?”
Her face flamed up. “No.” Before I could press her—because she was so totally lying, she totally was in love with someone—she added, “Girlfriend.”
“Oh.” I caught my breath. This shouldn’t have startled me—it was not long ago, and in this very room, that Sebastian Fallon had told me that he wasn’t exactly following the Conservative Old Ways either when it came to his love life—but I hadn’t seen any hints from Gracie along these lines. In fact, I seemed to remember her giggling with the other witchlets about young warlocks. “I mean, that’s great, Gracie—” I started.
She laughed. “I know! It surprised me too. I guess I’m bi.”
“I…” I stopped, shaking my head. “No, seriously, that’s great, and it’s also not what we need to talk about right now. I need to know you’re safe—which I can see, and I’m very happy about that—and I really need to at least let Leonora, and your parents, know that you’re all right.” She was frowning, so I went on before she could interrupt me again. “Gracie, everyone has been really worried about you. Not because they want to control you, but because they care about you. We care about you. When you just vanished, after being so unhappy—can’t you see how that made us all feel? Heck, you don’t even like it when it feels like I spend too much time away from the coven house, and you know exactly where I am.”
She looked down at her teacup again, which was empty. I stifled the impulse to wave a finger and fill it up for her. If she wanted to live as a human, she could darn well get up and put a kettle on the stove. “You knew I’d be all right,” she finally said, her voice small. “You know I’m strong and capable, and that humans aren’t a threat to us.”
What was uncanny was that I’d said pretty much the same thing myself.
“It’s still not okay to do this to the people who care about you,” I insisted. “I am not telling you what to do. You can walk out of here at any moment and I won’t try to follow or stop you. I won’t even tell Leonora and your parents if you insist. But I will ask you, once more, to give me permission to let them know you were here, and that you’re safe.”
“I just wanted to see your baby,” she said, sullenly. She got up and walked over to Petrana.
“It’s all right,” I said to them both. My golem handed Rose to Gracie, who took her and sniffed the top of her head. She paced the room with her, jiggling her gently, not meeting my eye. I gave her the time. Let her think. After a few minutes, she handed Rose back to Petrana.
“She’s so cute,” Gracie said, sitting back down at the table. “And she seems…smart. Wise. I don’t know.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “And, thank you.”
After another minute, Gracie asked, “What was the birth like?”
“Awful.”
She gaped at me, and then burst out laughing, and then closed her mouth a moment later, horrified with herself. “I’m sorry! I didn’t—I didn’t expect that.”
I leaned back in my chair and rested a hand on my still weirdly diminished belly, smiling at her. “I promised not to lie to you. It was terrible. Long, and painful, and I don’t even see why it has to be that way. With as much power as we have, as much magical control over our bodies—why did I have to endure endless hours of labor like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t either!” I sighed. “Well, you asked.”
“I did want to know. And I’m sorry it was so hard.” She reached down and scratched Minky again. I could almost feel that she was getting ready to leave. “I wonder if it would be different if we could make babies with humans.”
I practically bit my tongue bloody not reacting to that. “What do you mean?” I asked, wondering how she could have hit on such an idea only moments after I had reminded her of my promise not to lie to her. “Humans have at least as hard a time in labor as we do.”
“Oh, that’s true, I guess.”
I couldn’t get her to elaborate, and I certainly didn’t want to press it. Within another minute, she’d stood up, gathered her cat, and left out the front door like a normal witch—after I’d eased the wards for her. I watched her through the æther. She walked down the front steps, looked up and down the dark street, and then vanished. She left no trace behind.
I sighed, returning my sight to the kitchen, feeling tired, and sad, and uncertain. Petrana asked, “Do you want to take the baby back?”
“No, not just yet, thank you.”
The kitchen window showed the growing light of very early morning. It was too late to go back to bed, and I’d be napping later in the day anyway. I sat by my empty teacup and thought about our conversation. Gracie hadn’t given me specific permission to tell the others she was safe, but she hadn’t forbidden it either, when I’d asked the second time.
I would take that as tacit assent.
It was too early to call anyone, though; there was always the chance they’d be sleeping. Instead, I got up and headed to the front hall—specifically, the closet.
“Come on, Elnor,” I called. “Show me what’s going on back here.”
My familiar dutifully followed me into the closet again, acting as innocent as could be. As if she’d never poked around in here herself, never showed undue interest in the place.
“Show me,” I said again.
She sniffed everywhere—the entire back wall, the side walls, the floor. As far as she could reach. Then she turned her fuzzy gaze back to me, as if to say, What?
“Foolish cat,” I muttered, and put my fingers on the back wall. A portal. Gracie said there was a cat portal here. Why hadn’t I pressed her on this? I ran my fingers lightly over the plaster, back and forth, in a slow sweeping motion. I closed my eyes to better let my energetic
vision see what was here.
Essence of cat, to be sure, and not just Elnor and Minky. “Willson,” I whispered. Logan’s cat had been here, and not all that long ago.
Beside me, Elnor held very still. Not helping. Not hindering.
What was up with this?
Then my fingers found an edge. It was just the tiniest seam, a little magical doorway, very well hidden, about cat-high.
I had just started to pull on it when Elnor bumped my elbow. The edge left my fingertips. “Cat!” I whispered. “You jerk.”
She nudged my elbow again.
“I’m going to toss you out of here if you…” I started, and then sat back on my heels. “Okay, you’re trying to tell me something.” I wished she could just open her mouth and speak to me, dang it. Or even send me thoughts. But no, cats can’t do that, even witches’ familiars. “Am I not supposed to know about this?”
Listen to the cats echoed through my mind. Great, but what were they saying?
Elnor began to purr.
I petted her back, almost without consciously deciding to. Yep, she had me trained, all right. She purred louder, arching up into my touch. “Except if I wasn’t supposed to know about it, you wouldn’t have followed me in here and then just sat there. Right?”
More purring, but of course, that didn’t tell me much.
I continued to think aloud, not pretending that Elnor was answering me, just working it through in my mind. “So I can know about it, but not how it works, or how to use it myself.”
Purr.
“Except Gracie used it. How? How did she know about it? Minky is still a kitten. She shouldn’t be anywhere near her full powers, much less know much about how the world works. She and her witch are supposed to grow together, melding their magic and their knowledge. Just as we did.”
Still purring, Elnor now bit my elbow. Just a nip, but it got my attention.
“What is it?” I asked her. “What am I getting wrong?”
Elnor turned and left the closet.
“Kitty!” I called to her, but she ignored me.
I ran my fingers along the back wall once more, slowly and carefully, but I could no longer find the seam. Frustrated, I crawled back out into the foyer. I got to my feet, unbending rather creakily, still trying to find my way back into my body after pregnancy and childbirth. I brushed off dust and looked around.
