I took the robe and closed the door, feeling suddenly self-conscious. I turned and dared a look in the mirror. My nose was red and swollen, my eyes puffy, and my long dark hair matted and flecked with ash. Soot streaked my face and clothes.
I'm hideous, I thought, as Cal's face rose in my mind again. He'd been so incredibly beautiful. How could I ever have believed he could really love someone like me? How could I have been so blind? I was such an idiot.
Clenching my jaw, I stripped down. I opened the door a crack and dropped my clothes in a heap on the hall floor. Then I got into the shower and scrubbed my body and my hair hard, as if the water could wash away more than dirt and smoke, as if it could take my sorrow and terror and rage and sluice them down the drain.
Afterward I dried off and put on the robe. Sky was taller than I was, and the robe bunched at my feet, looking shapeless and drab. I pulled a comb through my wet hair and went back downstairs.
Sky was sitting in one of the armchairs, but as I came down, she rose gracefully to her feet and went up to her room. As she passed me, she let her hand rest briefly on my shoulder.
Hunter stood at the fireplace, feeding a log to the fire. A small ceramic teapot and two mugs sat on the coffee table. He turned to face me, and I was keenly aware of how good-looking he was.
I settled myself on the sofa, and Hunter sat in a worn armchair. "Better?" he asked.
"A little." My chest and throat weren't quite as sore, and my eyes had stopped stinging.
Hunter's green eyes were locked on me. "I need you to tell me what happened."
I took a deep breath; then I told him how Sky and I had scryed together. How she'd helped me to spy on Cal and his mother in their spell-guarded house as they talked to their coconspirators about killing me if I refused to join them. How I saw that Cal had been assigned to seduce me, to get me onto their side so that my power could be joined with theirs. How I'd learned that they were also after my birth mother's coven tools, objects of enormous power that they wanted to add to their arsenal of magickal weapons. How I'd gone to talk to Cal, how he'd overpowered me with magick and taken me back to his house.
"He put me in a seomar in the back of the pool house," I said, a vivid picture of the horrible little secret room rising in my mind. "The walls were covered with dark runes. He must have knocked me unconscious. When I came to, I heard Selene arguing with him outside. She was telling him not to do it, not to set it on fire. But Cal said" my voice broke again"he said he was solving the problem. He meant me. I was the p-p-problem."
"Shhh," Hunter said softly. Reaching out, he laid his palm flat against my forehead. I felt a tingling warmth spread outward from the spot, like a thousand little bubbles. His eyes held mine as the sensation washed over me, dulling the edge of my pain to the point where I could just bear it.
"Thanks," I said, awed.
He smiled briefly, his face transforming for a moment. Then he said, "Morgan, I'm sorry to press you, but this is important. Did they get your birth mother's tools?"
Maeve had fled her native Ireland after her coven, Belwicket had been decimated. I had recently found her tools, the ancient tools of her coven. Selene had wanted them badly. "No," I told Hunter. "They're safe. I'd know if they weren'tthey're bound to me. Anyway, I hid them."
Hunter poured us each a cup of tea. "Where?"
"Umunder Bree's house. I put them there right before I went to see Cal," I said. It sounded so lame as I said it that I cringed, waiting for Hunter to yell at me.
But he just nodded. "All right I suppose they'll be safe enough for now, since Cal and Selene have fled. But get them back as soon as you can."
"What can they do with them?" I asked. "Why are they so dangerous?"
"I'm not sure exactly what they could do," Hunter said. "But Selene is very powerful and very skilled in magick, as you know. And some of the tools, the athame and the wand in particular, were made long ago, back before Belwicket renounced the blackness. They've since been purified, of course, but they were made to channel and focus dark energies. I'm sure Selene could find a way to return them to their original state. I imagine, for example, that Maeve's wand in Selene's hands could be used to magnify the power of the dark wave."
The dark wave. I felt a coldness in the pit of my stomach. The dark wave was the thing that had wiped out Maeve's coven. It had also destroyed Hunter's parents' coven and had forced his mother and father into hiding ten years ago. They were still missing.
No one seemed to know exactly what the dark wave waswhether it was an entity with a will of its own or a force of mindless destruction, like a tornado. All we did know was that where it passed, it left death and horror behind it, entire towns turned to ash. Hunter believed that Selene was somehow connected to the dark wave. But he didn't know how.
I put my head in my hands. "Is all of this happening because Cal and Selene are Woodbane?" I asked in a small voice. Woodbane was the family name of one of the Seven Great Clans of Wicca. To be Woodbane meant, traditionally, to be without a moral compass. Woodbanes throughout history had used any means at their disposal, including calling on dark spirits or dark energy, to become more powerful. Supposedly this had all changed when the International Council of Witches had come into being and made laws to govern the use of magick. But as I was learning, the world of Wicca was as fractured and divided as the everyday world I'd known for the first sixteen years of my life. And there were many Woodbanes who didn't live by the council's laws.
I happened to be Woodbane, too. I hadn't wanted to believe it when I first found out, but the small, red, dagger-shaped birthmark on the inside of my arm was proof of it. Many, if not most, Woodbanes had one somewhere. It was known as the Woodbane athame, because it looked like the ceremonial dagger that was part of any witch's set of tools.
Hunter sighed, and I was reminded that he was half Woodbane himself. "That's the question, isn't it? I don't honestly know what it means to be Woodbane. I don't know what's nature and what's nurture."
He set down his mug and rose. "I'll see if your clothes are dry. Then I'll run you home."
Sky followed us to my house in her car so that she could drive Hunter home. He and I didn't talk on the way. Whatever calming effect his touch had had on me was entirely gone now, and my mind kept replaying Cal lying to me, shouting at me, using his magick to nearly kill me. How could something that had been so sweet, that felt so good, have turned into this? How could I have been so blind? And why, even now, was some shameful part of me wanting to call to him? Cal, don't leave me. Cal, come back. Oh, God. I swallowed as bile rushed up into my throat.
"Morgan," Hunter said as he pulled up in front of my house. "You do understand, don't you, that you can't let your guard down? Cal may be gone, but it's likely he'll come back."
Come back? Hope, fear, rage, confusion swept over me. "Oh, God." I doubled over in my seat, hugging myself. "Oh, God. I loved him. I feel so stupid."
"Don't," Hunter said quietly. I looked up. His face was turned away from me. I saw the plane of his cheek, pale and smooth in the milky starlight that filtered in through Das Boot's windshield.
"I know how much you loved Cal," Hunter said. "And I understand why. There's a lot in him that's truly beautiful. Andand I believe that he loved you, too, in his own way. You didn't imagine that. Even though I was one of the ones telling you otherwise."
He turned to face me then, and we stared at each other. "Look. I know you feel like you'll never get past this. But you will. It won't ever go away, but it will stop hurting quite so much. Trust me. I know what I'm talking about."
I was reminded of the time he and I had joined our minds, and I'd seen that he had lost not only his parents but also his brother to dark magick. He'd suffered so much that I felt I could believe him.
He made a movement as if he were going to touch my face with his hand. But he seemed to stop himself and pulled his hand back. "You'd better go in before your parents come out here," he said.
I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn't start crying all over again. "Okay," I whispered. I sniffed and looked at my house. The lights were on in the living room.
I felt suddenly awkward. After that moment of connection, should I shake Hunter's hand? Kiss his cheek? In the end I just said, "Thanks for everything."
We both got out of the car. Hunter gave me my keys and headed down the dark street to where Sky waited in her car. I walked up the drive, my body on autopilot. I hesitated at the door. How was I going to act normal around my parents when I felt like I'd been ripped apart?
I opened the front door. The living room was empty, and the house smelled of chocolate chip cookies and wood smoke. There were still embers in the fireplace, and I could smell a faint tinge of the lemon oil that my mom used on the furniture. I heard my parents' voices in the kitchen and the sound of the dishwasher being unloaded.
"Mom? Dad?" I called nervously.
My parents, Sean and Mary Grace Rowlands, came into the living room. "Morgan, you look like you've been crying," my mom said when she caught sight of me. "Was the fight with Cal very bad?"
"II broke up with Cal." It wasn't exactly true, but it wasn't the falsehood that shocked me as much as the truth of my situation. Cal and I were no longer together. We were not a couple. We were not going to love each other forever. We were not going to be together again. Ever.
"Oh, honey," said my mom. The sympathy in her voice made me want to cry for the hundredth time that awful night.
"That's too bad," my dad chimed in.
"Um, I also had a little accident in Das Boot," I said. The lie slipped out before I'd even fully formulated it. I just knew I had to explain the crumpled hood of my car somehow.
"An accident?" my dad exclaimed. "What happened? Are you all right? Was anyone else hurt?"
"No one got hurt. I was pulling out of Cal's driveway and I hit a light pole. I kind of messed up the hood of my car." I swallowed. "I guess I was pretty upset."
"Oh my God," Mom said. "That sounds serious! Are you sure you're all right? Maybe we should run you over to the ER and have them take a look at you."
"Mom, I didn't hit my head or anything." I smothered a cough.
"But" my dad began.
"I'm fine." I cut him off. I had to get to my room before I had a nervous breakdown right in front of them. "I'm just beat, that's all. I really just want to go to bed."
Then, before they could ask any more questions, I fled up the stairs. I was relieved to see that the door to my sister's room was closed. I couldn't handle another explanation. Or even another syllable.
In my room I paused briefly to pet Dagda, my little gray kitten, who was curled up on my desk chair. He mewed a sleepy hello. I went over to my dresser to get out my softest flannel pajamas. But I paused, staring at a tiny gift box on top of my dresser. It was one of the birthday gifts Cal had given me last week: a pair of earrings, golden tiger-eyes set in silver. I couldn't stop myself from opening the box to look at them again. They were as beautiful as I remembered: the silver swirling in delicate Celtic knots and the stones that were the same color as Cal's eyes. I could still see him, his dark, raggedly shorn hair, his sensual mouth, the golden eyes that seemed to see right into me. The way he used to laugh. The way he had felt like a soul mate from the start.
I laid the earrings on my palm. They gave off a little pool of heat. They're spelled, I realized with a rush of nausea. Goddess, they're just another tool to control me, to spy on me. I remembered thinking, when he gave them to me, that these gifts were wrapped in his love. But the fact was, they were wrapped in his magick.
I couldn't keep them anywhere near me, I realized. I would have to find a safe way to dispose of everything Cal had given me. But not tonight. I stashed the earrings in the back of my closet, together with his other gifts. Then I put on my pajamas.
As I was pulling back my covers, there was a soft knock at my door. A moment later my mom stepped in. "Are you going to be all right?" she asked. Her voice was quiet.
And then the tears were flooding down my cheeks, my defenses completely overwhelmed. I sobbed so hard, my whole body shook.
I felt my mom beside me, her arms encircling me, and I clung to her as I hadn't in years. "My darling," she said into my hair. "My daughter. I'm so sorry. I know how much you must be hurting. Do you want to talk about it?"
I raised my head and met her eyes. I cant. .. I whispered, gasping. "I can't. .."
She nodded. "All right," she said. "When you're ready."
When I'd crawled into bed, she pulled the comforter up to my chin and kissed my forehead as if I were six. Reaching over, she turned off my light. "I'm here," she murmured, taking my hand in hers. "It'll be all right."
And so clutching her hand tightly, I fell asleep.
2. Changes
I went to Selene's house tonight after I drove Morgan home. I waited until the police and firefighters were all gone, and then I spent an hour trying to get in, but I couldn't break though the thickest of spells she put round the place. It's bloody frustrating. I felt like chucking a rock through one of those big plate glass windows.
I wonder if Morgan could do it? I know she got into Selene's hidden library without even trying. She is incredibly strong, though incredibly untutored, too.
No. I can't ask her. Not after what she went though at that place. Goddess, the pain in her face tonightand all over that bastard Cal. It made me sick to see it.
Giomanach
I drifted awake on Monday, aware that the house was awfully quiet. Was I actually up before my parents or my sister? It didn't seem possible. They were all morning people, insanely perky long before noon, a trait I could not fathom. It should have been the great tip-off that I was adopted.
I squinted at my clock. Nine forty-eight?
I bolted upright. "Mary K.!" I yelled.
No answer from my sister's room. I cast my senses out and realized I was alone in the house. What is going on? I wondered, sitting up.