The Coven Page 5

  burned witch.

  Of course Belwicket met before dawn. We hung blankets

  over the shutters inside and gathered around my folks' kitchen

  table. The thing is, Ma and I had out that powerful protection

  on Morag last year, and since then nothing had gone amiss with

  her. All was right as rain.

  “You know what this means,”said Paddy McTauish. “No

  human could have got close to her, not with that spell on her

  and all the ward—evil spells she was doing herself.”

  “What are you saying?”Ma asked.

  “I'm saying she was killed by a witch,”Paddy answered.

  When he said that, of course it seemed obvious. Morag

  was killed by a witch. One of us? Surly not. Then is there

  someone in the neighborhood, someone we don't know about?

  Someone from a different coven?

  It makes me cold to think of such evil.

  Next circle we're going to scry. Until then I'm keeping a

  weather eye on everybody and everything.

  --

  Bradhadair.

  The first chance I had to tell Cal about my research was

  after school. He walked with me to Das Boot, and we stood by

  my car and talked. "I found out about Maeve Riordan," I said

  bluntly. "A little bit, anyway."

  “Tell me about it," he said, but I saw him glance at his

  watch.

  "Do you need to go?" I asked.

  "In a minute," he said apologetically. "My mom needs me

  to help her this afternoon. One of her coven members is sick,

  and we're going to do some healing."

  "You can do that?" It seemed every day I learned of new

  magickal possibilities.

  "Sure," Cal said. "I'm not saying we'll definitely cure him,

  but he'll do a lot better than if we weren't working for him. But

  tell me what you found out.”

  "I ran a search on the computer,” I said. "I hit a lot of

  dead ends. But I found her name on a genealogy site, which led

  me to a small article from the Meshomah Falls Herald. So I

  looked it up at the library.”

  "Where's Meshomah Falls?" asked Cal.

  "Just a few hours from here. Anyway, the article said that

  a burned body had been identified as Maeve Riordan, formerly

  of Ballynigel, Ireland. She was twenty-three."

  Cal wrinkled his brow. "Do you think that's her?" he asked.

  I nodded. "I think it must be. I mean, there were other

  Maeve Riordans. But this one was close to here, and the

  timing's right . . . When she died, I would have been about

  seven months old."

  "Did the article mention a baby?" asked Cal.

  I shook my head.

  "Huh." He stroked my hair. I wonder if there's somewhere

  else we could get more information. Let me think about it. Will

  you be okay? I don't want to leave, but I kind of have to."

  “I'm okay," I said, looking up into his face, relishing the

  fact that he cared about me. And it wasn't just because I was a

  blood witch like him. Raven and Bree were just jealous--they

  didn't know what they were talking about.

  We kissed gently, then Cal headed toward his car. I

  watched him drive off.

  Motion caught my eye, and I glanced over to see Tamara

  and Janice about to get into Tamara's car. They grinned at me

  and raised their eyebrows suggestively. Tamara gave me a

  thumbs-up. I grinned back, embarrassed but pleased. As they

  drove off, it occurred to me that the three of us should try to

  see a movie soon.

  "Skipping chess club?" came Robbie's voice.

  I blinked and looked around to see Robbie loping toward

  me, sunlight flashing from his glasses. His choppy brown hair

  that only last month had looked so awful now seemed to I have

  a rakish trendiness.

  I considered for a moment "Yeah. I am," I said. "I don't

  know—chess seems kind of pointless now.”

  "Not chess itself," Robbie said, his blue-gray eyes serious

  I behind his ugly glasses. "Chess itself is still really awesome.

  It's beautiful, like a crystal."

  I braced myself for one of Robbie's chess rants. He's

  almost in love with the game. But he just said, "It's just the

  club thing that's pointless now. The school thing." He looked at

  me. "After you've seen a friend of yours make a flower bloom,

  school and clubs and all of that seem kind of silly."

  I felt proud and self-conscious at the same time. I loved

  the Idea that I was gifted, that my heritage was showing in

  my ability. But I was also so used to blending in with the

  woodwork, not making waves, standing happily in Bree's

  shadow, it was hard to get used to being noticed so much.

  "Are you going home?" Robbie asked. "I don't know. I

  don't really feel like it," I said. In fact, the thought of facing my

  parents made my stomach knot up. Then I had a better idea.

  "Hey, do you want to go to Practical Magick?" I felt a mixture

  of guilt and pleasure as I suggested it. My mom definitely

  wouldn't approve of my going to a Wicca store. But so what? It

  wasn't my problem.

  "Cool," said Robbie. "Then we'll hit Baskin-Robbins. Leave

  your car here, and I'll bring you back to it"

  "Let's do it" As I was walking up the street to Robbie's

  car, I caught a flash of Mary K.'s straight auburn hair.

  Glancing over, my eyes locked on Mary K. and Bakker

  plastered together against the side of the life sciences building.

  My eyes narrowed. It was the most bizarre feeling, seeing my

  fourteen-year-old sister making out with someone.

  "Go, Bakker," Robbie murmured, and I punched his arm.

  I couldn't help looking at them as we approached

  Robbie's dark red VW Beetle. I saw Mary K., laughing,

  squirming out of Bakker's arms. He followed her and caught

  her again.

  "Bakker!" Mary K. squealed, her hair flying.

  "Mary K.!" I called suddenly, without knowing why.

  She looked up, still caught in his arms. "Hey"

  "I'm getting a ride with Robbie," I said, gesturing to him.

  Nodding, she motioned toward Bakker. "Bakker will take

  me home. Right?" she asked him.

  He nuzzled her neck. "Whatever you say."

  Suppressing a feeling of unease, I got into Robbie's car.

  The drive north to Red Kill took only about twenty-five

  minutes. After Das Boot, Robbie's car felt small and intimate. I

  noticed Robbie squinting and rubbing his eyes. "You've been

  doing that a lot lately," I said. "My eyes are killing me. I need

  new glasses," he said. "My mom made an appointment for

  tomorrow."

  "Good."

  "What was Bree talking about this morning?" he asked.

  "About your parents' new reading material?"

  I wrinkled my nose and sighed. "Well, Bree is really angry

  at me," I said, stating the obvious. "It's all about Cal—she

  wanted to go out with him, and he wanted to go out with me.

  So now she hates me, I guess. Anyway—you know I was

  keeping my Wicca books at her house?"

  Robbie nodded, his eyes on the road.

  "She dumped them all on my porch yesterday morning," I

  explained. "My mom went ballistic, it's all a big me
ss," I

  summed up inadequately. "Oh," said Robbie. "Yeah."

  "I knew Bree liked Cal," said Robbie. "I didn't think they

  would be a good couple."

  I smiled at him, amused. "Bree would make anyone into a

  good couple. Anyway, let's not talk about it. Things have been

  kind of... awful. The only good thing is that Cal and I got

  together, and it's really great"

  Robbie glanced over at me and nodded. "Hmmm," he said

  "Hmmm, what?" I asked. "Do you mean, hmmm, that's I

  great? Or hmmm, I'm not so sure?"

  "More like—hmmm, it's complicated, I guess," Robbie 1

  told me. "You know, because of Bree and everything."

  I stared at him, but he was watching the road again, and I

  couldn't read his profile.

  I looked out the window. I wanted to talk about

  something that we hadn't really hashed out. "Robbie, I really

  am sorry about that spell. You know. The one about your skin."

  He shifted gears without saying anything. "I won't ever

  do it again," I promised once more.

  "Don't say that. Just promise you won't do it without

  telling me," he said as he parked his Beetle in a tiny space. He

  turned to me. "I was mad that you did it without telling me,"

  he said. "But I mean,Jesus, look at me" He gestured to his

  newly smooth face. "I never thought I'd look like this. Thought

  I'd be a pizza face forever. Then have awful scars my whole

  fife." He glanced out over the steering wheel. "Now I look in

  the mirror and I'm happy. Girls look at me—girls who used to

  ignore me or feel sorry for me." He shrugged. "How could I be

  upset about that?"

  I reached out and touched his arm. "Thanks."

  He grinned at me and swung open his door. "Let's go get

  in touch with our inner witches."

  As usual, Practical Magick was dim and scented with

  herbs, oils, and incense. After the chilly November sunshine,

  the store felt warm and welcoming. Inside, it was divided in

  two, one half floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and the other half

  shelves covered with candles, herbs, essential oils, altar items

  and magical symbols, ritual daggers called athames, robes,

  posters, even Wiccan fridge magnets.

  I left Robbie looking at books and went over to the herb

  section. Learning about working with them could take my

  whole life and then some, I thought The idea was daunting but

  also thrilling. I had used herbs in the spell that had cured

  Robbie's acne, and I had felt almost transported in the herb

  garden of the Killburn Abbey, when I'd gone there on a church

  trip. I was looking through a guide to magickal plants of the

  northeast when I felt a tingling sensation. Glancing up, I saw

  David, one of the store's clerks. I tensed. He always put me on

  edge, and I could never pinpoint why.

  I remembered how he had asked me what clan I was in

  and how he had told Alyce, the other clerk, that I was a witch

  who pretended not to be a witch.

  Now I watched him warily as he walked toward me, hit

  short, gray hair looking silver in the store's fluorescent light.”

  "Something about you has changed" he said in his soft

  voice, his brown eyes on me.

  I thought about Samhain, when the night had exploded

  around me, and about Sunday, when my family had blown

  apart I didn't say anything.

  "You're a blood witch,”he stated, nodding as if he were

  simply confirming something I'd said. "And now you know it"

  How can he tell? I wondered with a tinge of fear.

  "Were you really surprised?" he asked me. I looked

  around for Robbie. He was still over by the books.

  "Yes, I was kind of surprised,” I admitted. "Do you have

  your BOS?" he asked. "Book of Shadows?"

  "I've started one," I said, thinking of the beautiful blank

  book with marbled paper that I had bought a couple of weeks

  before. In it I had written down the spell I had done for Robbie

  and also about my experiences on Samhain. But why did David

  want to know?

  "Do you have your clan's, your coven's?" he asked. “Your

  mother's?"

  "No," I said shortly. "No chance of that"

  “I'm sorry," he said, after a pause. Then a bell tinkled,

  and he moved off to help another customer choose some

  jewelry.

  Glancing down the aisle, I saw that the other clerk, Alyce,

  was on the floor way at the end, arranging some candleholders

  on a low shelf. She was older than David, a round, motherly

  woman with beautiful gray hair in a loose bun on top of her

  head. I had liked her the first moment I had seen her. Still

  holding my herb book, I wandered down the aisle closer to her.

  She looked up and smiled briefly, as if she had been

  waiting for me. "How are you, dear?" There was a world of

  meaning in her words, and for a moment I felt like she knew

  about everything that had happened since she had helped me

  pick out a candle, a week before Samhain.

  I didn't know what to say. "Awful," I blurted out "I just

  found out I'm a blood witch. My parents have lied to me all my

  life." Alyce nodded knowingly. "So David was right" she said,

  her voice reaching me alone. "I thought you were, too."

  "How did you know?"

  "We can recognize them," she said matter-of-factly.

  "We're blood witches ourselves, though we don't know our

  clans." I stared at her.

  "David in particular is quite powerful," Alyce went on. Her

  plump hands made neat rows of candleholders shaped like

  stars, like moons, like pentacles.

  "Do you have a coven?" I whispered.

  "Starlocket," said Alyce. "With Selene Belltower."

  Cal's mother.

  Robbie appeared at the end of the aisle, thirty feet away.

  He was talking to a young woman, who was smiling at him

  flirtatiously. Robbie pushed his glasses aside, rubbed his eyes,

  then answered her. She laughed, and they drifted back over to

  the book aisle. I heard the murmur of their voices. For a

  moment curiosity made me want to concentrate on hearing

  their words, but then I realized that just because I could didn't

  mean I should.

  A sudden idea sparked in my head. "Alyce, do you know

  anything about Meshomah Falls?" I asked.

  It was as if a snake had bitten her. She literally drew back,

  anguish crossing her round face. Frowning, she got slowly to

  her feet, as if troubled by a great weight

  She looked into my eyes. "Why do you ask?" she said.

  "I wanted to know more about ... a woman named Maeve

  Riordan," I said. "I need to know more." For long moments

  Alyce's gaze held mine.

  "I know that name," she said.

  7. Burned

  May 8, 1980

  Angus asked me to marry him at Beltane. I told him no.

  I'm only eighteen and have hardly ever bee out of Ballynigel. I

  was thinking of doing one of those tours, you know, with a bus

  and going through Europe for a month. I do love Angus. And I

  know he's good. He might even be my muirn beatha dan, my

  soul mate, but who knows? He might not! Sometimes I
feel

  like he is, sometimes I don't. The thing is: How would I know?

  I've met precious few witches in my life that I'm not related to.

  I need to be sure. I need to know more before I can decide to

  stay with him forever.

  “Where will you go?”he asks me. “Who will you be with?

  Someone not your kind, like David O'Hearn? A human?

  Of course not. If I want children, I can't be with a human.

  But maybe I don't want children. I don't know. There aren't

  that many of our clan. To go outside our clan to another would

  be disloyal. But to seal my fate at eighteen seems disloyal too—

  disloyal to me.

  And after all that's been happening—Morag's murder, the

  bad luck spells, the bespelled runes (Mathair calls them sigils)

  we've found—I just don't know. I want to get away. Only three

  more weeks and I'll take my A levels and be done with school. I

  can't wait.

  Now it's late, and I have to do a warding spell before I

  sleep, to keep away evil. We all do, nowadays.

  --

  Bradhadair

  I waited while Alyce cast back her mind. There was a tall

  stool nearby, battered and blotched with multicolored paint

  spills. I perched on it, my eyes on Alyce's face.

  "I never knew Maeve Riordan," Alyce said at last "I never

  met her. I was living in Manhattan at the time all of this

  happened. I really only learned of it years later, when I moved

  here. But it was big news in the Wiccan community, and most

  witches around here know about it.”

  It was shocking to me that many people knew the story of

  what had happened to my mother while I knew virtually

  nothing. I waited, not wanting to disturb Alyce's thoughts.

  “The way I heard the story is this," Alyce said, and it was

  as if her voice were coming to me from a distance. "Maeve

  Riordan was a blood witch, from one of the Seven Great Clans,

  but we aren't sure which one. Her local coven was called

  Belwicket, and she was from Ballynigel, Ireland."

  I nodded. I had seen the words Belwicket and Ballynigel

  on Maeve's genealogy site, the one that had shut down.

  "Belwicket was very insular and didn't interact with other

  clans or covens much," Alyce continued. They were quite

  secretive, and maybe they had cause to be. Anyway, back in

  the late seventies, early eighties, as I understand it, Belwicket

  was persecuted. The members were taunted in the streets by

  the townspeople; their children were ostracized at school.