I nodded. "I wish I knew where they were," I said. "I'm afraid to look over my shoulder. I keep expecting to see Cal or Selene."
"I feel the same way sometimes. Not about them specifically, but I've made enough enemies in my job as a Seeker to have an assortment of witches who would love to see me dead. Which, by the way, is something I've been thinking about in regard to the cut brake line. I'd be stupid if I didn't take every possibility into account." He shifted in his seat. "Really, all I'm trying to say is that we both have to be extra careful from now on. We need to strengthen the protection spells on your car and your house, and my car and house, and Sky's car. We have to be vigilant and prudent. I don't want anything to happen to. . either of us."
For several minutes we sat quietly, thinking things through. I was worried, but Hunter's presence made me feel safer. Knowing he was in Widow's Vale made me feel protected. How long would I have that feeling? How long before he would have to leave?
"I don't know how much time I'll have here," he said, unnerving me with the accuracy of his response to my thoughts. "It could be another month, or it could be a year or more."
I hated the thought of his leaving and didn't want to examine why. Then his strong hand was brushing back a tendril of hair off my cheek, and my breath caught in my throat We were alone in my car, and when he leaned closer to me, I could feel the warmth of his breath. I closed my eyes and let my head rest against my seat.
"While I'm here," he said softly, "I'll help and protect you in any way I can. But you need to be strong with or without me. Promise me you'll work toward that."
I nodded slightly, my eyes still closed, thinking, Just kiss me, kiss me.
Then he did, and his lips were warm on mine and I coiled my hand up to hold his neck. The barest wisp of Cals image brushed across my consciousness and was gone, and I was drawn into Hunter's light, the pressure of his mouth, his breathing, the hard warmth of his chest as he pressed closer. I felt something else, too—a feathery touch deep inside me, like delicate wings brushing against my very heart. I knew without words, without doubt, that I was feeling Hunter's essence, that our souls were touching. And I thought, Oh, the beauty of Wicca.
4. Begin
May 2, 1969
My skin is shriveled, and me hair is sticky and stiff with salt. I soaked in the purifying bath for two hours, with handfuls of sea salt and surrounded be crystals and sage candles. But thought I can dispel the negative energy from my body, I can't erase the images from my mind.
Last night I saw my first taibhs, and when I think of it, I start shaking. Every Catspaw child hears of them, of course, and we're told scary stories about evil taibhs that steal the souls of Wiccan children who don't listen to their parents and teachers. I never thought they really existed. I guess I thought they were just holdovers from the Dark Ages, along with witches riding brooms, black cats, warts or noses: nothing to do with us today, really.
But Turneval taught me differently last night. I had dressed so carefully for the rite, wanting to out witch, out beauty, out power every other woman there. They had promised me something special, something I deserved after my months of training and apprenticeship. Something I needed to go though before I could join Turneval as a full member.
Now, thinking back, I'm ashamed at how naïve I was. I strode in, secure in my beauty, my strength and ruthlessness, only to find by the end of the evening that I was weak, untaught, and unworthy of Turneval's offering.
What happened wasn't my fault. I was just a witness. The ones leading the rite made mistakes in their limitations, in the writing of the spells, the circles of protection—it was the first time Timothy Cornwell had called a taibhs, and he called it badly. And it killed him.
A taibhs! I still can't believe it. It was a being and not a being, a spirit and not a spirit: a dark gathering of power and hunger with a human face and hands and the appetite of a demon. I was standing there in the circle, all eager anticipation, and suddenly the room went cold, icy, like the North wind had joined us. Shivering, I looked around and saw the others had their heads bowed, their eyes closed. The I saw it, taking form in the corner. It was like a miniature tornado, vapor and smoke boiling and coiling in on itself, becoming more solid. It wasn't supposed to do anything: we were just calling if for practice. But Timothy had done it wrong, and the thing turned on him, broke though our circles of protection, and there was nothing any of us could do.
Death by a taibhs is horrible to watch and sickening to remember. I just want to blank it all out: Tim's screams. The wrenching of his soul from his body. I'm shaking now, just thinking of it. That idiot! He wasn't worthy to wield the power he was offered.
For the first time I understand why my parents, limited and dull as they were, chose to work the gentle kind of magick they did. They couldn't have controlled the dark forces any more than a child can hold back a flood by stuffing a rag in a dike.
Now I'm curled up on my bed, my wet hair flowing down my back like rain, and wondering which was I will choose: the safe, gentle, boring way of my parents or the way of Turneval, with its power and its evil twined together like a cord. Which path holds more terror for me?
— SB
"Open a window. This smell is making me sick," Mary K. complained.
I put down my paint roller and flung open one of my bedroom windows. Instantly frigid air rolled in, dispelling the sour, chemical smell of the wall paint I stepped back to admire what my sister and I had already done. Two walls of my room were now a pale coffee-with-cream color. The other two walls were still covered by the childish pink stripes I was trying to obliterate. I grinned, already pleased with the transformation. I was changing, and my room was changing to keep up.
"You're only going to live here for another year," Mary K. pointed out, carefully edging a line by the ceiling. A paint-spattered bandanna covered her hair, and though she was in sweatpants and a ratty old sweater, she looked like a fresh-faced teen singer. "Unless you go to Vassar or SUNY New Paltz or something and just commute."
"Well, I don't have to decide about that for a while," I said.
"But why worry about your room now?" Mary K. asked.
"I can't take this pink anymore," I said, rolling a swath of paint over the wallpaper.
"Remember when I asked you if you'd had sex?" Mary K. suddenly said, almost making me drop my roller. "With Cal?"
There it was, the familiar wince and stomach clench I felt whenever that name was mentioned.
"Yeah?" I said warily.
"So, did you guys ever do it? After we talked?"
I took a breath and slowly released it to the count of ten. I focused on rolling a smooth, broad line of paint across the wall, feathering the edges and rolling over any drips. "No," I managed to say calmly. "No, we never did." A bad thought occurred to me. "You and Bakker. ."
"No," she said. "That was why he always got so mad."
She was only fourteen, though a mature and curvy fourteen. I felt incredibly thankful that Bakker hadn't managed to push her further than she was ready to go.
I, on the other hand, was seventeen. I'd always assumed that Cal and I would make love someday, when I was ready—but the times he'd tried, I said no. I wasn't sure why, though now I wondered if my subconscious had picked up on the fact that I wasn't in a safe situation, that I couldn't trust Cal the way I would need to trust him to go to bed with him. Yet I had loved the other things we had done: the intense making out, how we had touched each other, the way magick had added a whole other dimension to our closeness. Now I would never know what it felt like to make love with Cal.