I tried to quell the flutters in my stomach. What was my problem? Hunter hadn't done anything unusual so far.
"Did everyone bring the stones Cal gave out?" Hunter asked. When people nodded, he added, "Toss them into the middle of the circle, please."
Everyone but me pulled their stones out of their pockets. When they were all in a heap in the center of the chalk ring, Hunter drew a pentagram around them. At each of the five points he drew a symbol I didn't recognize.
"These sigils are from an older runic alphabet than the one we usually work with," he explained. "They're for protection and purification and will help strengthen our spell. We're going to use the circle itself to purify these stones. Now, have you all done the basic breathing exercises?"
Matt spoke up. "Cal taught us that."
"Then let's begin there," Hunter said. "May the circle of Cirrus always be strong."
We all joined hands, and I heard the familiar sound of Sharon's bracelets jingling against each other. I began to concentrate on my breathing, on pulling each inhalation deep into my stomach and then releasing it. Gradually I felt myself relax and become aware of the pattern of breathing within the circle. Hunter had the deepest, slowest breaths. Jenna, who was asthmatic, had the shallowest.
Hunter began to sing in a low voice. It was a simple chant in English, praising moon and sun, Goddess and God, asking them to be with us in our circle, to protect us from all evil intent and to guide us through the cycle of the seasons, the cycle of life. His voice was lilting, smooth and soft, yet with a core of strength. It resonated beautifully in the space. I never would have imagined that he could sing with such passion and simplicity. But for some reason, I couldn't hold on to the words. The others did, though, and as they sang together and we all moved widdershins, I saw their faces change. They were feeling something that I wasn't, a connection. Their voices gained power as some kind of energy surged through them. And I, the blood witch, the prodigy of Cirrus coven, felt nothing.
I became aware of Hunter's gaze on me. I closed my eyes, trying futilely to deepen my concentration, to snatch at the ethereal thread of magick that seemed to dance just out of reach. But I couldn't touch it, and finally, when I was almost weeping with frustration, Hunter slowed the circle and brought the song to an end. "Don't break the circle," he told us. "But everyone sit down."
We sat in place, our legs crossed.
"That was really good, everyone," Hunter said. His face glowed, his features relaxed in a way that I rarely saw, as if the circle was the place he felt most comfortable. It upset me that he could feel so at ease here in my coven while I, for the first time, felt like an outsider. He looked at each one of us in turn and then asked, "Do you want to share your thoughts?"
Ethan said, "That was. . intense. The Wicca books talk about the Wheel of the Year. This time I felt like I could sort of. . feel all of us traveling on it, our whole lives."
"Yeah," Matt said. "It was like I was both in this room and out there in the ravine."
"Me too." Robbie looked awestruck. "I felt like I was the wind in the trees."
Hunter looked at Sharon. "I didn't get anything cosmic," she admitted, sounding embarrassed. "I just felt how much my family cares about me. It was like I got this blast of mother-father love that I haven't been paying attention to lately."
Hunter smiled. "What makes you think that isn't cosmic?"
Robbie said, "What about you, Jenna?"
Jenna laughed softly. "I had a vision of myself being really strong."
It was my turn next, and I was dreading it. What had gone wrong? I wondered. Maybe Hunter was just the wrong person for me to be working with. Now I was going to have to say I hadn't felt anything, and everyone was going to wonder what was wrong with me, if I could only reach my power with Cal. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down.
"All right, then." Hunter got to his feet. "That was good work, everyone. Let's call it a night and meet again on Saturday."
I looked up, startled. He had skipped me!
When he walked over to blow out the altar candles, I followed him. "Do I not count?" I asked in a low voice. "Doesn't it matter what I felt?"
He glanced at me in surprise. "I could tell you didn't connect," he replied softly. "I thought you'd rather not talk about it. I'm sorry if I made the wrong assumption."
I couldn't think of a reply to that. It was the right assumption, in fact. It just bothered me, the way he could read me. I found it incredibly disconcerting.
He turned back to the others. "On Saturday we'll work with the pentagram," he said. "Read up on it and spend some time visualizing it. See what it tells you."
I thought of Cal's pentacle necklace, and a shudder went through me.
"We can meet at my house," Jenna volunteered.
"Perfect," Hunter said. "Thank you all."
I knew I should seize the moment and tell him I needed to speak to him privately, but I just couldn't do it. I felt too off balance, too out of sorts. Before I'd made up my mind to do anything, Robbie came up and handed me my coat.
"So do you have a good book about pentagrams?" he asked as we walked out toward the cars.
"No," I said tiredly. "I don't seem to have anything right now."
7. Intruder
April, 1986
Today I found Giomanach, all of three-and-a-half years old, hunched over a bowl of water, staring into it so intently that his eyes were almost crossing. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me was scrying for his sister. Goddess. I was startled. We'd not told him that Fiona is carrying another child, yet he knew. He's amazingly quick.
I asked him if he'd seem anything, expecting him to say he hadn't. He's too young to scry. But he said he'd seen a little girl with dark hair and eyes. I smiled and told him we'd have to wait and see. But my leug told me our Alwyn will have red hair and green eyes like Fiona's, so I'm afraid the water lied to my boy. Unless it showed him its own riddling truth.
Then Giomanach smacked his hand down so the water spilled out of the bowl. I opened my mouth to scold him, but he looked up at me with that little mischievous smile, and I hadn't the heart. He's like sunshine to me. After looking over my shoulder for two years, I'm finally beginning to accept that nothing is going to happen, that life can actually be this good.
Maghach
I sat in Das Boot on Wednesday morning, thinking again about last night's circle. The truth was, part of me loved being the star pupil, the one who had off-the-charts power. In our coven, right from the start, I'd been the gifted one. It had made me feel special for the first time in my life. Was that over, too?
"Morgan?" a muffled voice called. "Morgan!"
I blinked and glanced up. My friend Tamara Pritchett was tapping on the window, her breath coming out in white puffs. "You're going to be late," she said as I rolled down the window. "Didn't you hear the bell?"
"Um. ." I mumbled. "Sorry. I was just thinking."
We walked to class together, and all the way there I was aware of the curious looks Tamara kept giving me. By now everyone knew that Cal was gone, that there had been a fire at his house. I'd told everyone who asked the standard story: that we'd broken up and I didn't know anything about the fire or where he was. But the people I'd been good friends with before Wicca came into my life, people like Tamara and Janice Yutoh, could tell there was a lot I wasn't saying.
I got through my morning classes, and then at lunch period I left school. I had an appointment for Das Boot at the body shop to get an estimate for the repairs. Unser's Auto Repair was off the highway on the outskirts of Widow's Vale. It was a big fenced lot, filled with cars, with a garage in the middle of it. With the exception of the Afton Enterprises gravel pit, which I passed about a quarter of a mile before Unser's, the road stretched out bleak and empty. I gave the gravel pit a glare as I drove past it, thinking of Practical Magick.
I pulled into the garage. Bob Unser, a gruff, gray-haired man in coveralls, wiped his hands on a rag and came over to the car as I got out. His big German shepherd, Max, bounded over, shoved his wet nose into my palm and licked it, then bounded away again. Max was technically a guard dog, but he was a total sweetheart. He and Bob both knew me pretty well. Being a genuine antique, Das Boot had had its share of problems, though nothing as major as this before.
Bob squinted at Das Boot's crumpled, scorched nose and smashed headlight. "What happened?"
"It kind of. . collided with a building that was on fire."
He grunted. "That's original."
I huddled in my coat while he looked over Das Boot and made notes on a clipboard. "Let me call and get an estimate on the parts," he said. "Then I'll give you a total."
"Great." I had a feeling this repair was going to cost a fortune, and I wasn't sure how I was going to pay for it. I didn't want to put it on my parents' insurance and risk raising their rates.
Bob went into the little office, and I stayed in the garage. Max trotted back to my side, and I ran my hand through his thick coat. Then I felt the fur near his neck start to rise, and a low, rumbling growl filled the garage. I let go of him at once, wondering what was wrong.
Max swung his head toward the entrance of the garage. His growl deepened, and he loped outside. Then my own senses prickled. Something was out there. Something magickal.
My pulse rate picked up. I stood still, trying to get a better sense of the presence. It didn't feel human. Cautiously I stepped outside. Max stood on an icy patch of gravel a short distance from the garage, fur bristling and teeth bared. Then he began to race around the perimeter of the lot, barking furiously.
I cast out my senses and got feelings of stealth, concealment, malevolent power. Cold fear coursed through me, and my breath came fast as I traced the shape of Peorth in the air, the rune for revealing what is hidden. I visualized the rune, tracing it in my mind in bright red light until I felt its shape become a three-dimensional entity. Instinctively I began saying my power chant. "An di allaigh. ."
There was a weird, whooshing noise, as if a whole flock of birds had started up from the ground at once. Something that felt like an ill wind brushed past me, making the tiny hairs on my arms stand up. I gasped. Max raced over to me, barking frantically. I saw nothing, but the air felt lighter, and I knew that the intruder was gone.
Bob walked out of the shop. "What's going on out here?" He frowned at Max, then at me. "What was all that noise about?"
I leaned against the car so he wouldn't see how I was shaking. "I guess Max heard something."
Max sat down in front of Bob and elaborated with short, eloquent barks.
"Okay, boy, okay." Bob was petting him now, comforting him. "We'll lock up good tonight."
We went back inside, and he handed me a written estimate for $750. That made me gasp again. "I'll have to special-order you a bumper and hood," he explained. "They don't make parts for this model anymore. I'll have to get them from a used-parts dealer in Pennsylvania. You call me and let me know when you're ready to go ahead."
I thanked him, barely even listening. Before I left I traced the rune Eolh on Max's forehead for protection. What had that mysterious presence been? Was it after me? Was it connected to the dark force I had felt the other night? Was it Cal or Selene?
Though the sun was shining brightly, I felt like a black veil had been pulled across the sky. Shivering, I got into my car and drove back to school.
Mary K. went to Jaycee's house after school, as she often did, so I drove straight home. I was still shaken up from the incident at the garage. I had no idea what it had been, but I didn't want to take any chances. I had felt something evil. If it was after me, I'd better start protecting myself fast.
In the empty house I went upstairs and took my birth mother's athame from its hiding place in the HVAC vent. Then I walked around the outside of my house, running the athame lightly over the clapboard siding. Hunter and Sky had placed runes of protection all around the house about two weeks ago. The athame revealed the magick signs to me, and I breathed a sigh of relief. They were still there and still glowing with potency.
Next I went up to my room and closed the door. I'd been planning to make an altar for some time, but now it seemed doubly urgent. If there really was someone or something after me, I needed to be as strong and sure in my magick as possible.
The problem was, the altar had to be somewhere my family wouldn't notice. Although my parents now seemed to realize that they couldn't prevent me from being a witch, there was no point in setting up an altar where they would see it and get upset.
I looked around my room. It wasn't big. There was no obvious place to set up an altarcertainly none that wouldn't be totally noticeable. I thought a moment and opened the door to my closet. It was a deep walk-in, with a long hanging rod running the length of it. I began taking clothes off the rod, laying shirts, dresses, jackets, and skirts on my bed. "Yuck," I said as a sundress with an enormous tropical flower print surfaced. It was time to give some things away.
When the closet was empty, I stared at the back of it. A small footlocker from when I went to summer camp sat on the floor. It had potential.
I rummaged in my dresser drawer for the length of plum-colored Irish linen that Aunt Eileen had brought back from her trip to Ireland. It covered the trunk perfectly, as if that's exactly what it had been woven for. Voila. One altar.
Next I opened the junk drawer of my desk. I sorted through the crap until I found a small, perfect, pink-and-white scallop shell. I set it on one corner of the altar to represent water. On another I put a chunk of amethyst that had been among the crystals in Maeve's box of tools. That was for earth. On the remaining corners I set a candle for fire and a stick of incense for air. Of course, I wouldn't actually be able to light the candle or incense inside the closet. For that the altar would have to come out into my room. But I liked having all four elements in place.
I sat before my altar. It was pretty simple, as basic as you can get. Yet it felt right.