My hands clasped, I waited as Father Hotchkiss said the wine blessing for every person in the row. I felt at peace. Already I was looking forward to going home to see Dagda, read Maeve's Book of Shadows, and do some more rune research. Last night when Cal had drawn runes in the air around our circle, it seemed to focus our energy in a whole new way. I liked runes and wanted to find out more about them.
Next to me Mary K. took a sip of wine. I caught a whiff of the fruity scent. A moment later it was my turn. Father Hotchkiss stood in front of me, wiping the large silver chalice with a linen cloth.
"This is the blood of Christ our Lord," he murmured. "Drink this in his name, that you may be saved." I tilted my head forward to sip.
With an unexpected stumble Father Hotchkiss lurched toward me. The chalice slipped from his hands. It dropped to the white marble floor with a metallic clang, and Father Hotchkiss gripped the wooden rail that separated us.
I put my hand on his, searching his face. "Are you okay, Father?" I asked.
He nodded. "I'm sorry, my dear. I slipped. Did I splash you?"
"No, no." I looked down, and sure enough, my dress was wine free. Deacon Carlson was hurrying to get another blessed chalice, and Father Hotchkiss stepped away to help him.
Mary K. was waiting for me, looking uncertain. I stayed kneeling, watching the dark red wine flow across the white marble floor. The contrast of color was mesmerizing.
"What happened?" Mary K. whispered. "Are you okay?"
That was when the thought came to me: What if I was the one who had made Father Hotchkiss stumble? I almost gasped, with my hand over my mouth. What if, in the middle of all my Wicca thoughts, a force had decreed that my taking communion was not a good idea? Quickly I stood, my eyes large. Mary K. headed back to our pew and our parents, and I followed her.
No, I thought. It was just a coincidence. It didn't mean anything.
But inside me a witchy voice said sweetly: There are no coincidences. And everything means something.
So what did it mean, exactly? That I should stop taking communion? That I should stop coming to church altogether? I glanced at my mother, who smiled at me with no awareness of the confusion that was raging inside me. I was thankful for that.
I couldn't imagine cutting church out of my life completely. Catholicism was part of the glue that held our family together; it was a part of me. But maybe I should hold off on taking communion for a while, at least until I figured out what it all meant. I could still come to church. I could still participate. Couldn't I?
I sighed as I sat back down beside Mary K. She looked at me but didn't say anything.
With every door that Wicca opened, I thought, another door seemed to shut. Somehow I had to find balance.
After lunch at the Widow's Diner we stopped at the grocery store. I bought a litter box and a scoop, a box of cat litter, and a bag of kitten food. Mom and Dad pitched in for a couple of cat toys, and Mary K. bought some kitty treats.
I was really touched, and I hugged them all, right in the pet aisle.
Of course, when we got home, we found that Dagda had peed on my down comforter. He had also eaten part of Mom's maidenhair fern and barfed it up on the carpet. Then he had apparently worked himself into a frenzy sharpening his tiny but amazingly effective claws on the armrest of my dad's favorite chair.
Now he was asleep on a pillow, curled up like a fuzzy little snail.
"God, he's so cute," I said, shaking my head.
CHAPTER 7Symbols
I had to draw a spell of protection tonight. I invoked the Goddess and drew the runes at the four points of the compass; Ur, Sigel, Eolh, and Tyr. I took iron nails and buried them at the four corners, wearing a gold ring. And from now on, I will carry a piece of malachite for protection.
A seeker is here.
But I am not afraid. The first blow has already been struck, and the Seeker is weakened by it. And as the Seeker weakens, my love grows stronger and stronger.
Sgath
On Monday, Mary K. and I were late for school. I had stayed up late reading Maeve's BOS, and Mary K. had stayed up late having a heartfelt, tortured talk with Bakkerand so we both overslept. We signed ourselves in at the office and got our tardy slips: the New York Public School System's version of the Scarlet Letter.
The halls were empty as we split up for our lockers and headed toward our respective homerooms. My mind swam with what I had been reading. Maeve had loved the herbal side of Wicca. Her BOS was filled with several long passages about magickal uses for plantsand how they're affected by time of year, amount of recent rainfall, position of stars, and phases of the moon. I wondered if I was a descendant of the Brightendale clan, the clan that farmed the earth for healing powers.
In homeroom I slithered into my desk chair. Out of habit I glanced at Bree, but she ignored me, and I felt irritated that it still caused me grief. Forget her, I thought. I'd once read somewhere that it takes about half as long to recover from a deep relationship as the relationship lasted. So in Bree's case, I would still be upset about her a good six years from now. Great.
I thought about Dagda and how Bree would adore him: she'd loved her cat Smokey and had been devastated when he died, two days after her fourteenth birthday. I'd helped her bury him in her backyard.
"Hey. Slept late?" my friend Tamara Pritchett called softly from the next desk. It seemed as if I barely saw her anymore, now that Wicca was taking up so much of my time.
I nodded and started organizing my books and notebooks for my morning classes.
"Well, you missed the big news," Tamara went on. I looked up. "Ben and Janice are officially going out. Boyfriend and girlfriend."
"Really? Oh, cool," I said. I glanced across the room at the lovebirds in question. They were sitting next to each other, talking quietly, smiling at each other. I felt happy for them. But I also felt removedthey, too, were friends I'd hardly seen in recent weeks.
My senses prickled, and I glanced across to see Bree's dark eyes on me. I was startled by their intense expression, and then we both blinked and it was gone. She turned away, and I was unsure if I had imagined it or not. I felt unsettled. Cal had said there was no dark side to Wicca. But aren't two sides of a circle opposite each other? And if one side was good, what was the other? I had disliked Sky as soon as I had met her. What was Bree doing with her?
The bell rang for first period. I felt sour, as if I shouldn't be thereand thought enviously of Dagda at home, wreaking feline havoc.
During American lit it started to drizzle outside: a depressing, steady stream that was trying hard to turn into sleet but not quite making it. My eyelids felt heavy. I hadn't even had time for a Diet Coke yet. I pictured my bed at home and for just a moment considered getting Cal, skipping out, and going home to be alone with him. We could lie in my bed, reading Maeve's BOS and talking about magick.
Major temptation. By lunchtime I was really torn, even though I never skipped school. Only the knowledge that my mom sometimes popped home in the middle of the day prevented me from bringing up the idea to Cal when I saw him.
"You bought lunch?" he asked, eyeing my tray as I slid it onto our lunch table. He met my eyes. As clear as the rainfall, I heard the words I missed you this morning inside my head.
I smiled and nodded, sitting down across from him, next to Sharon. "I overslept, so I didn't have time to make anything at home."
"Hey, Morgan," Jenna said, brushing her wheat-colored hair over her shoulder. "You know what I've been thinking about? Those words you said the other night. They were so amazing. I still can't get them out of my mind."
I shrugged. "Yeah, it's funny. I don't know where they came from," I said, popping the top off my soda. "I haven't had time to research it, either. At the time I thought it felt like a spell, calling power to me. But I don't know. The words sounded really old."
Sharon smiled tentatively. "It was kind of creepy, to tell you the truth," she murmured. She opened her container of soup and took out a crusty roll. "I mean, it was beautiful, but it's weird to have words you don't even know coming out of your mouth."
I looked up at Cal. "Did you recognize them?"
He shook his head. "Uh-uh. But later I thought about it, and I felt like I had heard them before. I wish I had taped our circle. I could play it for Mom and see if she knew what it was."
"Cool, you're speaking in tongues," Ethan joked. "Like that girl in The Exorcist."
I pursed my lips. "Great," I said, and Robbie laughed.
Cal shot me an amused glance. "Want some?" he asked, handing me a slice of his apple.
Without thinking, I took a bite. It was astonishingly delicious. I looked at it. It was just an apple slice. But it was tart and sweet, bursting with juice.
"This is a great apple," I said, amazed. "It's perfect. It's the uber-apple."
"Apples are very symbolic," said Cal. "Especially of the Goddess. Look." He took his pocketknife and cut his apple again-but across the middle instead of top to bottom. He held up a piece. "A pentacle," he said pointing to the pattern made from the seeds. It was a five-pointed star within the circle of the apple's skin.
"Whoa."I said.
"Awesome," said Matt. Jenna glanced at him, but he didn't meet her eye.
"Everything means something," said Cal lightly, taking a bite of apple. I looked up at him sharply, reminded of what had happened yesterday in church.
Across the lunchroom I saw Bree sitting with Raven, Lin Green, Chip Newton, and Beth Nielson. I wondered if Bree was enjoying hanging out with her new crowd people she had once referred to as stoners, wastoids. Her old crowdNell Norton, Alessandra Spotford, Justin Bartlett, and Suzanne Herbertwere sitting at a table near the windows. They probably thought Bree was crazy.
"I wonder how their coven's circle went on Saturday," I mumbled, half to myself. "Bree's and Raven's. Robbie, do you know? Did you talk to Bree?"
Robbie shrugged and finished his piece of pizza.
"It went really well," said Matt absently. Then he blinked and frowned a tiny bit, as if he hadn't expected to say anything. Jenna looked at him. "How do you know?" she asked.
Matt's face turned slightly pink. He shrugged, his attention on his lunch. "Uh, I talked to Raven during English," he said finally. "She said it was cool."
Jenna regarded Matt steadily. She started to gather up her tray. Once again I remembered seeing Matt's car and Raven's car on the side of the road. As I wondered what it could mean, I heard Mary K.'s laughter, a few tables away. She was sitting next to Bakker with her friend Jaycee, Jaycee's older sister, Brenda, and a bunch of their friends. Mary K. and Bakker were looking into each other's eyes. I shook my head. He had won her over. But he'd better watch his step.
"What are you doing this afternoon?" Cal asked in the parking lot after school. The rain had all but stopped, and an icy wind was blowing.
I glanced at my watch. "Besides waiting for my sister? Nothing. I have to get dinner together."
Robbie snaked his way through a few cars, heading toward us. "Hey, what's going on with Matt?" he called. "He's acting all squirrelly."
"Yeah, I thought so, too, " I said. "Almost like he wants to break up with Jenna but doesn't want to at the same time. If that makes any sense."
Cal smiled. "I don't know them as well as you guys do," he said, putting his arm around me. "Is Matt acting that different?"
Robbie nodded. "Yeah. Not that we're bosom buddies or anything, but he seems kind of off to me. Usually he's really straightforward. He's always just right there." He gestured with his hands.
"I know," I agreed. "Now he seems to have something else going on." I wanted to mention the Matt-Raven car thing but thought it would be too gossipy. I wasn't even sure if it meant anything. I suddenly wished Bree and I were still close. She would have appreciated the significance.
"Morgan!" called Jaycee. "Mary K. asked me to tell you that she was catching a ride with Bakker." Jaycee waved and trotted off, her blond ponytail bouncing.
"Damn!" I said, disengaging myself from Cal. "I have to get home."
"What's the matter? Do you want me to come with you?" Cal asked.
"I would love it," I said gratefully. It would be nice to have an ally in case Bakker needed to be kicked out of the house again.
"See you, Robbie," I called, hurrying off to my car. Damnation, Mary K., I thought. How stupid can you be?
CHAPTER 8Muirn Beatha Dan
Ostara, 1993
Aunt Shelagh told me she saw someone under a braigh before, when she was a girl, visiting her granny in Scotland. A local witch had been selling potions and charms and spells to cause harm. When Aunt Shelagh was there one summer, the Seeker came.
Shelagh says she woke in the night to screams and howls. The whole village turned out to see the Seeker take away the herbwife. In the moonlight, Shelagh saw the glint of the silver braigh around the herbwife's wrists, saw how the flesh was burned. The Seeker took her away, and no one saw her again, though they whispered she was living on the streets in Edinburgh.
Shelagh doesn't think the woman was ever able to do magick again, good or bad, so I don't know how long she would have wanted to live like that. But Shelagh also said that one sight of that herbwife under the braigh was enough to make her promise to never ever misuse her power. It was a terrible thing, she said. Terrible to see. She told me this story last month, when the Seeker was here. But he took no one away with him, and our coven is placid once more.
I am glad he's gone.
Giomanach
I drove home as quickly as I could, considering that the streets were basically one big ice slick. The temperature kept dropping, and the air was miserable with the kind of bone-drenching chill that Widow's Vale seems to specialize in.
"I thought Mary K. broke up with Bakker after what happened," said Cal.
"She did," I grumbled. "But he's been begging her to take him back, it was all a mistake, he's so sorry, it'll never happen again, blah blah blah." Anger made my voice shrill.