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  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 CaFs 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,

  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 outwitch, outbeauty, outpower 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 nave 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 weild 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. "How about Hunter?" Mary K. asked, looking down at me thoughtfully from her ladder.

  "What about him?" I tried to sound careless, but I couldn't quite pull it off.

  "Do you think you'll go to bed with him?" "Mary K.," I said, feeling my cheeks heat up. "We're not even dating. Sometimes we don't even get along.” “That's the way it always starts," Mary K. said with fourteen- year-old wisdom.

  We'd started early; so we finished the walls around lunchtime. While i cleaned up the painting equipment, Mary k. went down to the kitchen and made us some sandwiches. Recently she'd gotten into eating healthy food, so the sandwiches were peanut-butter and banana on seven-grain bread. Surprisingly, they were good. I polished off my sandwich, then took a sip of Diet Coke. "Ah, that hits the spot," I said.

  "All that artificial stuff is bad for you," Mary K. said, but her voice was listless. I regarded her with concern. It really was taking her a while to come out of her depression over Bakker. "Hey. What are you doing this afternoon?" I asked, thinking maybe we could hit the mall, or go to a matinee movie, or do some other sisterly activity.

  "Not much. I thought maybe I'd go to the three o'clock mass," she said.

  I laughed, startled. "Church on a Monday? What's going on?" I asked. "You becoming a nun?"

  Mary K. smiled slightly. "I just feel . . . you know, with everything going on—I just need extra help. Extra support. I can get that at church. I want to be more in touch with my faith." I sipped my Diet Coke and couldn't think of anything constructive to say. In the silence I suddenly thought, Hunter, and then the phone rang.

  I lunged for it. "Hey, Hunter," I said.

  "I want to see you," Hunter said with his usual lack of greeting.

  "There's an antiques fair half an hour from here. I was wondering if you wanted to go."

  Mary K. was looking at me, and I raised my eyebrows at her. "An antiques fair?" was my scintillating reply. "Yes. It could be interesting. It's nearby, in Kaaterskill." Mary K. was watching the expressions cross my face, and I pantomimed my jaw dropping. "Hunter, is this a date?" I asked for Mary K.'s benefit, and she sat up straighten looking intri
gued. Silence. I smiled into the phone. "You know, this sort of sounds like a date," I pressed him. "I mean, are we meeting for business reasons?"

  Mary K. started snickering quietly. "We're two friends getting together," Hunter said, sounding very British. "I don't know why you feel compelled to label it"

  "Anyone else coming?"

  "Well, no."

  "And you're not calling it a date?"

  "Would you like to come or not?" he asked stiffly. I bit my lip to keep from laughing.

  "I'll come," I said, and hung up. "I think Hunter just asked me out" I told Mary K. "Wow," she said, grinning. I skipped upstairs to take a shower, wondering how, when my life was so stressful and scary, I could feel so happy. Hunter picked me up in Sky's car twenty minutes later. My wet hair hung in a long, heavy braid down my back. I offered him a Diet Coke and he shuddered; then we were on our way to Kaaterskill. "Why did you care if this was a date or not?" he asked suddenly. I was startled into an honest reply. "I wanted to know where we stand."

  He glanced at me. He was really good-looking, and my brain was suddenly bombarded with images of how he had been when we were kissing, how intense and passionate he'd seemed. I looked out my window.

  "And where do we stand?" he asked softly. "Do you want this to be a date?"

  Now I was embarrassed. "Oh, I don't know." Then Hunter took my hand in his and brought it to his mouth and kissed it, and my breathing went shallow. "I want it to be what you want," he said, driving with one hand and not looking at me.

  “I'll let you know when I figure it out," I said shakily.

  The antiques fair took place in a huge warehouse-like barn in the

  middle of rural New York. There weren't many people there—it was the last day. Everything looked kind of picked through, but still,l enjoyed the time with Hunter, the time without magick involved. My mood got even better when I found a little carved box that would be perfect for my mom and an old brass barometer that my dad would love. Two Christmas gifts that I could cross off my list I was woefully behind on my holiday shopping. Christmas was coming up fast and I'd barely thought about it Our coven was planning a Yule celebration, too, but fortunately that didn't involve any gift-giving. I was engrossed in the contents of an old dentist's cabinet when Hunter called me over. "Look at these," he saA, pointing to a selection of Amish-type quilts. I'd always liked Amish quilts, with their bright, solid colors and comforting geometry of design. The one Hunter was pointing to was unusual in that it had a circular motif. "It's a pentacle," I said softly, touching the cotton with my fingertips. "A circle with a star inside." The background was black, with a nine-patch design in each corner in shades of teal, red, and purple. The large circle touched each of the four sides and was of purple cotton. A red five-pointed star filled the circle, and a nine-patch square was centered in the star. It was gorgeous. I glanced at the middle-aged woman selling the quilts and cast my senses quickly to see if she was a witch. I picked up nothing. "Is it Wiccan?" I asked so only Hunter could hear. He shook his head. "More likely just a Pennsylvania Dutch hex design. It's pretty, though."

  "Beautiful." Again I ran my fingers gently across the cotton. The next thing I knew, Hunter had pulled out his wallet and was counting out bills into the woman's hand, and she was smiling and thanking him. She took the small quilt, barely more than four feet square, and wrapped it in tissue before putting it into a brown paper bag. We headed back to Hunter's car. "That's really beautiful," I said. "I'm glad you bought it. Where will you put it?" We climbed into his car, and he turned to me and handed me the bag. "It's for you," he said. "I bought it because I wanted you to have it."

  The air around us crackled, and I wondered if it was I magick or attraction or something else. I took the bag and I reached my hand inside to feel the cool folds of the quilt "Are you sure?" I knew neither he nor Sky had much income—this quilt must have put a huge dent in his budget

  "Yes," he said. "I'm quite sure."

  "Thank you," I said softly.

  He started the car's engine, and we didn't say anything until he

  dropped me at my house. I climbed out of the car, feeling uncertain all over again. He got out, too, and coming around to the sidewalk, he kissed me, a soft, quick meeting of the lips. Then he climbed back in Sky's car and drove off before I could say good-bye. 5. Flicker

  May 17, Spring has finally sprung in Wales. Here in Albertswyth the hills are a new bright green. The women of the village are in their hands and knees, setting plants in their gardens. Clyda and I have been walking over the hills and among the rocks, and she's been teaching me the local herd lore and the properties of the local stone, earth, water, and air. I've been here six months now, on one of life's detours. Since I found out about Clyda Rockpel from one of Patrick's spelled books, I was determined to find her, to learn from her. It took two weeks of camping on her doorstep, eating bread and cheese, sleeping with my coat pulled over my head before she would speak to me. Now I'm her student, taking knowledge from her like a sea sponge absorbs ocean water.

  She's deep, dark, terrifying sometimes, yet the glimmers of her power, the breadth of her learning, her strength and guile in dealing with the dark forces fill me with a giddy exhilaration. I want to know what she knows, have the power to do what she does, have control over what she controls. I want to become her. —SB

  On Tuesday, Mary K. and I once again spent the morning working on my room, touching up messy spots on the walls and painting the woodwork. In the afternoon I persuaded my sister to come shopping with Bree and me. The lure of hanging out with us had outweighed her disapproval of our destination: Practical Magick, an occult store up in Red Kill, ten miles north. "The good thing about Christmas break," Bree said as she drove through downtown Widow's Vale, "is seeing all the poor saps who have to go to work."

  "We're going to be poor working saps one day," I reminded her, watching people weaving in and out of the shops on Main Street. I picked at some speckles of paint on the back of my hand and adjusted the heater vent of Breezy, Bree's BMW.

  "Not me," Bree said cheerfully. "I'm going to marry rich and be a lady who lunches."

  "Gross!" Mary K. protested from the backseat Bree laughed. "Not PC enough for you?"

  "Don't you want more than that?" Mary K. asked. "You could do anything you want."

  "Well, I was kind of kidding," said Bree, not taking

  offense. "I mean, I haven't figured out what my life calling is yet. But

  it wouldn't be the worst thing to be a housewife." "Bree, please," I said, feeling a shade of our old familiarity. "You would last about two weeks. Then you'd go crazy and become an ax murderer."

  She laughed. "Maybe so. Neither of you wants to be a housewife? It's a noble profession, you know." I snorted. I had no concrete idea what to do with my life—I'd always thought vaguely about doing something with math or science— but I knew now without a doubt that the majority of my life would center on Wicca and my own studies in magick. Everything else was optional.

  "No," said my sister. "I never want to get married." Something in her tone made me crane around from the front seat to look at her. Her face looked drawn, almost haunted, in the gray winter light, and her eyes were sad. I glanced across at Bree and was touched by the instant understanding that passed between us. "I hear you dumped Bakker in a big way," Bree said, looking at Mary K. in the rearview mirror. "Good for you. He's an ass." Mary K. didn't say anything.

  "You know who's cute in your class?" Bree went on. "That Hales kid. What's his name? Randy?"

  "Just plain Rand," said Mary K.

  "Yeah, him," said Bree. "He's adorable." I rolled my eyes. Trust Bree to have scoped out the freshman boys.

  Mary K. shrugged, and Bree decided not to press it. Then she pulled Breezy into a parking spot in front of Practical Magick, and we piled out into the chilly December air.

  Mary K. looked at the storefront with only faintly disguised suspicion. Like my parents, she strongly disapproved of my involvement with Wicca, t
hough I'd talked her into coming to a party here recently, and she'd enjoyed it.

  "Relax," I said, taking her by the arm and pulling her into the store. "You're not going to have your soul sucked out just by looking at candles."

  "What if Father Hotchkiss saw us?" she grumbled, naming our church's priest.

  "Then we'd have to ask him what he was doing in a Wicca shop, wouldn't we?" I answered, grinning. Inside, I let go of my sister's arm and took a moment to get my bearings. I hadn't been to Practical Magick since I'd come with Hunter to confront David Redstone, the owner, about using dark magick. It had been profoundly horrible, and being in the store brought back the memories in a wave: Hunter

  questioning David; David's admission of guilt, wrenched from him

  against his will.

  It hurt to associate those memories with this place, the place I had come to think of as my refuge, a lovely, scent-filled shop full of magickal books, essential oils, crystals, herbs, candles, and the deep, abiding peace of Wicca, permeating everything. Looking up, I saw Alyce, a gentle sorrow still showing on her face. David had been a dear friend of hers. He had turned over the shop to her, a Brightendale blood witch, when he'd had his power stripped from him. She owned the shop now. She walked toward me, and we embraced: I was taller than she, and I felt bony and immature next to her womanly roundness. We looked into each other's eyes for a moment, not needing to speak. Then I stepped back to include Bree and Mary K. "Hi, Alyce," Bree said.

  "Nice to see you, Bree," Alyce replied.

  "You remember my sister, Mary K.?" I asked. "Certainly," said Alyce, smiling warmly. "The one who was so taken with The Fianna." The Fianna was a Celtic band that Mary K. and I both loved. Alyce's nephew, Diarmuid, played in it The only way I'd gotten Mary K. to come to the party here was by luring her with promises of The Fianna playing.