Everyone started speaking then, and after another twenty minutes of discussion we voted and it was agreed: the two covens would merge. We would be thirteen members strong, and we would call ourselves Kithic. I hoped the end of Cirrus would help me cope with the traumatic end of Cal's and my relationship. And I tried not to be overwhelmed by all the new beginnings in my life.
We had what I thought of as a «baby» circle: we didn't actually go through the whole ritual, but we did stand in a circle, holding hands, while Hunter and Sky led us through some breathing exercises.
Then Hunter said, "As some of you have already discovered, Wicca has its frightening side." He cast a swift look in my direction. "It's not so surprising, perhaps, when you think that all of us have within us the capacity for both bright and I dark. Wicca is part of the world, and the world can be a dark place, too. But one of the things this coven can do for you is support you and help you to conquer your personal fears. The fewer unexplored places you have within you, the easier it will be to connect with your own magick."
"We're going to go around the circle," Sky said, picking up where Hunter left off, "and each of us is going to tell the group one of our great fears. Thalia, you start."
Thalia was tall and earth-motherly looking, with long, ringlety hair and a pretty Madonna face (the saint, not the singer).
"I'm afraid of boats," she said, her cheeks turning slightly pink. "Every time I get in a boat, I panic, and I think a whale is going to come up under it and knock me into the sea and I'll drown. Even if it's just a rowboat on a duck pond."
I heard Matt stifle a snicker, and felt a twinge of irritation.
Robbie was next. He looked at Bree, then said. "I'm afraid I won't be patient enough to wait for the things I really want." Robbie and Bree had recently begun seeing each other, in a very cautious, uncommitted way. He was in love with her and wanted a real relationship, but so far she had shied away from anything more than fooling around.
I watched as Bree's gaze dropped from his, and I also noticed the interested gleam in Thalia's eyes. Weeks ago I had heard gossip that Thalia was hot for Robbie. If Bree's not careful, Thalia will steal Robbie from her, I thought.
Ethan spoke next, with none of his usual joking around. "I'm afraid I'll be weak and lose a really great person in my life." I guessed he was talking about his pot smoking. Around the time he and Sharon had started seeing each other, he'd more or less given up pot, in part because he knew she didn't like it when he smoked.
Sharon, who held Ethan's left hand, looked at him with open affection. "I'm not," she said simply. Then she looked at the rest of us. "I'm terrified of dying," she said.
We kept going around the circle. Jenna was afraid she wouldn't be brave. Raven was afraid of being tied down. Matt was afraid no one would ever understand him. I thought of telling him he should start by trying to understand himself, but I realized this wasn't the right time or place.
"I'm afraid I'll never be able to have what I really want," Bree said in a small voice, looking at the floor.
"I'm afraid of unrequited love," Sky said, her dark eyes as enigmatic as ever.
"I'm afraid of fire," Simon said, and I jerked, startled. My birth parents had burned to death in a barn, and Cal had tried to kill me with fire when I'd refused to join the conspiracy he and his mother were part of. I, too, was afraid of fire.
"I'm afraid of my anger," Alisa said. That surprised me. She looked so sweet.
Then it was my turn. I opened my mouth, intending to say I was afraid of fire, but something stopped me. I felt Hunter's gaze on me, and it was as if he were shining a spotlight on the darkest recesses of my mind, urging me to dredge up my deepest fear.
"I'm afraid I'll never know who I am," I said, and as I said it, I knew it was true.
Hunter was last. In a clear voice he said, "I'm afraid of losing any more people I love."
My heart ached for him. His brother had died at the age of fifteen, murdered by a dark spirit called a taibhs. And his father and mother had disappeared ten years ago, driven into hiding by the dark wave, a cloud of evil and destruction that had wiped out many covens, including my own birth parents'. He had a younger sister, I knew, and it occurred to me that he must worry about her all the time.
Then I looked at him and found his gaze locked on me, and my skin prickled as if the air were suddenly full of electricity.
A moment later we dropped hands and it was over. I guessed a lot of people would stay to hang out, but I felt oddly antisocial, and I went to snag my coat. The events of the last week had shaken me more than I had admitted to anyone. As of the day before, school was out officially for winter break, and it was a huge relief to finally have hours of free time in front of me so that I could try to begin processing the myriad ways my life had changed in the last three months.
"Robbie?" I said, interrupting his conversation with Bree. They were huddled close, and I thought I heard Robbie cajoling and Bree playfully resisting.
"Oh, hey, Morgan," Robbie said, looking up reluctantly, and then Hunter's voice was at my ear, sending a shiver down my spine as he said, "Can I give you a ride home?"
Seeing the relief on Robbie's face, I nodded and said, "Yeah. Thanks."
Hunter put on his leather jacket and his hat, and I followed him out into the darkness.
2. Spin
August 7, 1968 San, Francisco
I've been packing up Patrick's things. Last week we had his memorial serviceall of Catspaw and some folks from Waterwind were there. I can't believe he's gone. Sometimes I'm sure he's not gonethat he's about to start up the stairs, he's about to call, he'll walk though the door, holding some new book, some new find.
My friend Nancy asked if it had bothered me that he was nearly forty years older than me. It never did. He was a beautiful man, no matter what his age. And even more important, he loved me, he shared his knowledge, he let me learn anything I could. My powers are ten times stronger now than they were when we first met.
Now Patrick's gone. The house is mine, all his things are mine. I'm looking though his books and finding so many things I never knew he had. There are books hundreds of years old that I can't even decipher. Books written in code. Spelled books that I can't even open. I'm going to ask Stella for help with these. Since she became Catspaw's leader, I've trusted her more and more.
Without Patrick here to distract me, so many things are becoming clearer. I'm not sure, but I think he worked with dark magick sometimes. I think some of the people who came here worked with darkness. At the time I didn't pay much attention to them. Now I think Patrick often had me spelled so I wouldn't question things. I guess I understand, but I wish he'd trusted me to accept what he was doing and not automatically condemn it.
I managed to open one book, breaking though it's privacy charm with a counter spell that took me almost two hours to weave. Inside were things that Patrick never showed me: spells about calling on animals, spells for transporting your energy somewhere, spells to effect change from far away. Not dark magick per se, but proscribed nonetheless; the council says spells to manipulate should never be used lightly. No one in Catspaw would touch a book like this, even though they're Woodbane. But I would. Why shouldn't I learn all there is to know? If the knowledge exists, why should I blind myself to it?
This book it mine now. And I will study it.
SB
There's something about being with someone in a car at night that makes you feel like you're the only people in the world. I had felt that way three weeks ago, when Cal kidnapped me, spelled me so I couldn't move, and drove me to his house. That night, alone in the car with Cal, it had been unspeakably bad: pure panic, fear, anger, desperation.
I felt differently tonight, with Hunter by my side. Recently, when it became clear that he might have to stay in Widow's Vale for a while, he'd bought a tiny, battered Honda to replace the rental car he'd been driving. The small space inside felt cozy, intimate.
"Thanks for backing us up about joining the two covens," he said, breaking the silence.
"I think it's a good idea. I'd rather know where everyone is and what they're doing."
He gave a short laugh and shook his head. "That's harsh," he said. "I hope someday soon you'll be able to trust other people again."
I tried not to flinch at the thought. I had trusted Cal, and it had almost cost me my life. I had trusted David, and he'd turned out to have a dark side, too. What was it about me that blinded me to evil? Was it my Woodbane blood?
And yet. . "I trust you," I said honestly, uncomfortable with the feeling of vulnerability those words awoke in me.
Hunter glanced at me, his eyes an unfathomable shade of gray in the darkness. Without speaking he reached across the seat and took my hand. His skin was cool, and my fingers brushed against a callus on his palm. Holding hands with him felt daring, strange. Holding hands with Cal had been so natural, so welcome.
I was seventeen and had had only one boyfriend. I'd known since that remarkable kiss that Hunter and I had a definite connection, but he wasn't my boyfriend, and we'd never been on an official date.
I breathed deeply, willing my pulse to slow down. "I know magick is all about achieving clarity," I said. "But I feel so confused."
"Magick itself is about clarity," Hunter agreed. "But people aren't. Magick is perfect; people are imperfect. When you put the two together, it's bound to get cloudy sometimes. When it's just you and magick, how does it feel?"
I thought back to when I had worked spells, had circles by myself, scryed in fire, used my birth mother's tools. "It feels like heaven," I said quietly. "Like perfection."
"Right," Hunter said, squeezing my hand and turning the steering wheel with the other. His headlights sliced through the night on this winding road toward downtown Widow's Vale. "That's pure magick and only you. But as soon as you add other people into the mix, especially if they aren't totally clear themselves, you get confusion."
"It's not just magick," I said, looking out the window, trying to ignore the exciting feeling of his hand on mine. I didn't know how to put itdespite my two months with Cal, I was still a relative newcomer to the guy-girl thing. I thought that Hunter liked me, and I thought I liked him. But it was so different. Cal had been obvious and persistent in his pursuit of me. What kind of a person was I, liking Hunter, finding him attractive, when until just a few weeks ago I'd thought I was madly in love with Cal? Yet here Hunter was, holding my hand, taking me home, possibly kissing me later. A little shiver went down my spine.
Hunter zoomed around a tight corner, making me lean toward him.
Then he pulled his hand from mine and put it on the steering wheel.
"Whoa," I said, covering my disappointment. "Going a little fast, huh?"
"I can't help it," he said in his crisp English accent. "The brakes don't seem to be working."
"What?" Confused, I glanced over to see his jaw set, his face tense with concentration.
"The brakes aren't working," he repeated, and my eyes widened as I understood the words.
In alarm I looked aheadwe were going downhill, toward the curviest parts of this road, where signs recommended going no more than twenty miles an hour. The speedometer said fifty.
My heart thudded hard, once. "Crap. Downshift?" I said faintly, not wanting to distract him.
"Yes. But I don't want to make us skid. I could turn off the engine."
"You'd lose the steering," I murmured.
"Yes," he said grimly.
Time slowed. The factsthat the road was icy, that we were wearing seat belts, that the car was small and would crumple like a tin can, that my heart was thudding against my ribs, that my blood was like ice water in my veinsall these things registered as Hunter downshifted forcefully, making the engine buck and groan. The whole car shuddered. I gripped the door handle tightly, my foot pressing a nonexistent brake pedal on the floor. I'm too young to die, I thought I don't want to die.
We were in third gear, going about forty miles an hour downhill. The engine whined, straining uselessly against the gravity and inertia that pulled the car forward, and we began to pick up speed again. I glanced at Hunter, hardly breathing. His face looked bleached in the dim dashboard light, as if he were carved from bone. I heard the squeal of the wheels and felt the sickening lurch of the car as we skidded around another curve, then another.
Hunter downshifted once more, and the whole car jumped with an annoyed sound. My back hit my seat, and the car seemed to dance sideways, like a spooked horse. Hunter grabbed the parking brake and slowly eased it upward. I didn't feel any effect. Then with a hard jerk Hunter popped it into place, and the car jolted again and started skidding sideways, toward a tree-lined ditch. If the car rolled, we would be crushed. I quit breathing and sat frozen.
He shifted into first gear and simultaneously turned into the skid so we did an endless, semi controlled fishtail right in the middle of Picketts Road. Hunter let us skid, and when we had slowed enough, he cut the engine. The steering wheel locked, but it was okaywe were still headed into the spin, and finally we scraped to a noisy halt at the side of the road, not six inches from a massive, gnarled sycamore that would have flattened us if we'd hit it.
After the grinding screeches of the tortured engine and tires, the silence of the night was broken only by our shallow panting. I swallowed hard, feeling like my seat belt was the only thing holding me upright. My eyes felt searched Hunter's face.
"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice slightly shaky.
I nodded. "You?"
"Yes. That could have been bad."
"You have a knack for understatement," I said weakly. "That was bad, and it could have been deadly. What happened to the brakes?"
"Good question," Hunter said. He peered through his window at the dark woods.
I looked around, too. "Oh. We're near Riverdale Road," I said, recognizing this bend in the road. "We're about a mile and a half from my house. This isn't far from where I put Das Boot into a ditch."