Taking the pail of sea salt, I drew a large circle encompassing much of the room, chanting, “Where circles are cast in salt . . . there, magic is called.” Then I redrew it with my usual crystal-tipped wand. “Where cross the paths of fate . . . there, magic is made.” I drew it a third and final time with the new willow wand. “Where three pieces make one whole . . . there, magic is the soul.” A triple-cast circle always made me feel safer.
“Two wands?” Menessos asked.
“This one is new.” I laid the willow wand on the table.
“Oh?”
“A present.”
“From?”
Who? The Goddess? A tree? “My meditation.”
He thoughtfully studied where it lay on the altar.
When I spoke the quarter calls, north and the earth element came first. The coarse sea salt marking the circle shifted as if to acknowledge that presence. The second call stirred the air in the room like a sighing breath. With the third call, the candle flames flickered down low in unison, then shot up in a single blast of greeting. When I called water, the seashell on the table rocked, making ripples across the water’s surface. Most impressively, the fluid in the bottle Beau had given me swirled as if shaken, forming a tornado effect with bubbles and debris being pulled down in the center.
I nodded to Menessos. “Backatcha.”
He shook his head. “No. You will invoke deity.”
“But—”
“No buts. They like you better.”
I thought of Hecate at the Eximium. “She told you to be forgiven.”
His chin leveled. “Still, you are Her chosen.”
“And you are not?”
In one sharp, sideways glance, Menessos told me he didn’t feel comfortable discussing this around Johnny. His posture stiffened as emphasis to that point.
I took up the bottle and uncorked it. To Johnny I said, “Bare your chest, please.”
“You first.”
I smirked.
He unbuttoned his shirt. Taking a holly leaf from the altar, I allowed the mixture to drip onto the prickly leaf. It was neither water nor alcohol, but a thin oil. The fragrance was pleasant. After setting the bottle on the altar, I smeared my fingers through the oil from the leaf and I traced the pentacle tattoo on his sternum. Above it, I drew the sigil of our combined initials, MJP. I replaced the holly leaf on the table beside the onyx wolf.
Making certain I moved clockwise, deosil, around the circle, I went to Menessos and repeated the actions on him—minus the tattoo to use as a pattern. I opened his shirt a bit more to check the spot where Samson had tried to stake him. It was perfectly healed. No scar. I clasped his hand. “She forgave you. Can you not forgive yourself for whatever it was that caused the rift?”
His resolve was strong. “I want you to call Her.” He squeezed my hand for emphasis.
Having pushed as hard as my conscience would allow, I relented. We couldn’t risk negative energies tainting the sacred space we’d created. Releasing him, I shifted to the side, not resuming my former place.
“Who gets to mark you?” Johnny asked.
I removed my shirt, but remained modestly covered by my bra. They each gave a man-growl indicating their approval, then Johnny tried to outstare Menessos.
“Both,” I said. “Menessos draws the pentacle, you draw the sigil.” I moved Beau’s pendant so it hung down my back, leaving drawing room on my skin.
Menessos went first. He poured the liquid onto the holly leaf, and dipped his fingers in it. Solemnly meeting my eyes, he touched my skin.
When first he’d marked me with his own blood, he’d drawn an ankh on my sternum. It was against my will and he knew it, but I was engulfed in his power. Now, he drew not the symbol of his alchemy. He drew the symbol of my magic. Slowly.
He painted the pentacle with tenderness and burning certainty. It wasn’t innocent. It wasn’t chaste. Not because his fingers strayed—they stayed right where they were supposed to be—but because of his eyes. The gray was simmering like quicksilver.
Seven wanted me to love him. But this wasn’t the countenance of love. It was covetous. Lecherous. Hedonistic. It made my heart race. It summoned that warmth deep inside of me that only he could stir. And it beckoned to my darkest desires . . . the kind good girls never admit having.
Menessos stepped aside and held the leaf out to Johnny.
I had to take a pair of cleansing breaths.
Johnny wiped his fingers over the holly and extended his hand toward me. “Does it matter which order I draw the letters?”
“No.”
He drew the J first, and I could feel the trembling in his fingers. He covered the J with a P. I watched his face, so serious, intent on getting it right. For me. He added the M last, and nodded. His first magic circle; his first sigil.
With shoulders squared and voice strong and firm, I said, “I call upon She who is the Three and the One. The crone who has been the maiden and the mother. You have been the Past, You are the Present, and You will be the Future. Queen of Heaven, Earth, and Underworld. My Goddess.”
Taking a pause to consider that we three were, from a certain point of view, about to become one, I felt the hair on the nape of my neck rise.
A presence hovered on the periphery of reality. Observing. I had seen the darkness coalesce and become the night alive, sparkling like black diamonds. I had seen it become Her. I had felt Her touch before.
Hecate was here.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I did not call Her into me, as I would have when Drawing Down the Moon. After our last meeting, I wasn’t sure I’d have the nerve to do any such thing ever again. She’d said—
My heart skipped a beat.
She’d said She would see me when I was ready to see my own soul. That I would find Her at the crossroads. I’d said to Johnny we are at a crossroads . . . And this was all about my soul. And theirs.
From the ethereal, a hand stroked my neck, through my hair, causing it to prickle more stiffly. The hand caressed my skin so subtly, intangible but undeniably touching me.
“Hecate!” I whispered Her name, reverently, fearfully.
Her fingers trailed down my spine, nails sharp and scraping my flesh. Like a warning. It set the charm at my back swinging.
“Our purpose,” Menessos said, “is Sorsanimus, to share pieces of our souls, each with the others. For our own protection. For balance.”
When he spoke, it seemed the Goddess’s attention shifted to him. I sighed in relief. This is it.
I took Johnny’s hand in my right, and I took Menessos’s hand in my left. Then I waited. They had to work this out. Each had to come to the moment when he was ready to hold the other’s hand. But of course, they were men. While I had my suspicions that Menessos and Ninurta had been intimate, that was long, long ago. Johnny wasn’t the kind of man who held other men’s hands.
So, this was difficult for them both, but in different ways.
At once, both reached, then stopped, holding back their hands as if expecting the other to concede to the undergrip.
Then I realized it was more than I feared. Their hesitation was about more than pressing their palms together. It was about who would, literally, have the upper hand. Who got the overgrip, the undergrip.
Matter-of-factly, Menessos said, “I am the oldest.”
“It’s my people coming to save your ass.”
“And they are so motivated because of my Codex giving them the ability to retain their man-minds.”
Johnny was unimpressed and unmoved. “It’s still your life on the line, man.” He wiggled his fingers. “Show me how grateful you are for the chance to keep it.”
Menessos didn’t have a comeback for that one. Slowly, he turned his hand.
Johnny’s mouth curved up slightly.
I held my breath, waiting for the sarcastic remark that would make both release my hands as they came to blows again. But Johnny said nothing.