A Circle of Ashes (11 page)

Out in the backyard, Clio cleared a little space on the brick walkway that wound through the foliage, much like Racey’s backyard. There were six-foot wooden fences on both sides and a brick one in the back.

It had taken Clio almost half an hour to find the spell and assemble what we needed. Now she set up a brass bowl the size of a cantaloupe and kindled a small fire in it. I was worried that Petra would come home and be mad about this, but she hadn’t returned yet. Clio told me that it wasn’t unusual for Petra to miss a meal if she was at a birthing.

Clio drew a circle around us with salt, then took a chunk of broken red-clay brick and drew different symbols on the walkways around us. “This is é
pine,”
she said, drawing a vertical line with a little triangle on one side. “It’s to help us achieve our goal. This is
ouine
.” She drew what looked like a pointy letter
p
. “It’s for success and happiness.
Porte
is for revealing hidden things.”

I recognized that one from the spell we had done at Racey’s house.

“
Ôte
is all about one’s ancestral birthright,” Clio explained, drawing the symbol on the ground. “It’s about what you’ve inherited, and it can mean personal or material things. Okay, I think we’re about ready?

“No candles? No incense? What about those four little cups?”

“We don’t always use those,” Clio said, sitting down across from me. “This one is aimed differently.”

“Okay.”

As with the other spells we’d ever done, we sat facing each other, holding hands on either side of the little fire bowl. The sun was setting. It was hot and humid.

I was afraid to do this. I didn’t know what would happen, and I dreaded feeling that blast of magick in my chest like before. And even the smaller spells we’d done had spiraled out of control and been scary. I was tentatively getting used to feeling the spark of magick in me and even kind
of liking it. But actually doing something with it was so much scarier. What was I doing?

“It’ll be okay,” Clio said confidently, as if she could read my mind. “But this time, don’t say anything, or sing, or do anything, okay? I’ll do it.”

“Okay.” I tried to calm my breathing and relax, but it was hard. It seemed to take forever before I felt myself unwind. I closed my eyes. I tried to open myself to the world, like Clio had said, but I didn’t even know what that felt like.

And then I did. I felt the “magickal” essence rising in me, as if a peony were blooming, unfolding inside my chest. I felt happy, peaceful—calm and excited at the same time. I was part of everything, and everything was part of me. Clio and I were connected, and I’d never felt so whole or complete. Was this because we’d done the joining spell?

I vaguely heard Clio chanting, singing a spell in a soft voice. My hands and knees were a little warm from the tiny fire kindled in the brass pot. Clio’s fingers tightened on mine, and just like that, we were off.

Suddenly I felt like I was trapped on a roller coaster that was speeding recklessly around a track that I couldn’t see ahead of me. My eyes popped open and all I saw was Clio’s face,
my
face, looking scared. Was she seeing my soul, my aura? Could she tell what was wrong with me?

Then we were seeing images, flashed in front of us like before, when we’d had the swamp vision. This was very similar—only this time, I knew who most of the people were. We saw Petra, looking younger than she did now, arguing with a black-haired man. He turned and stormed away from her, and we saw that he had our birthmark on one cheek. We saw Richard, not tattooed and pierced and gothicky, but looking happier, more innocent, and dressed like he was in a colonial movie. He was chasing a girl through a meadow, and she fell, laughing. Richard fell next to her, and then they were rolling through the tall grass, kissing wildly, her hair flying bright against the birthmark on her cheek. With a gasp I recognized her. This happy, laughing girl, so full of life, was the same girl from our other vision—the one who had died in childbirth at the witches’ circle. I could see her face still and gray in the rain, the ground beneath her running scarlet. It was only then that I realized she looked almost exactly like Clio. Like me.

The scene shifted abruptly, making me almost motion sick. None of this seemed to be about the spell Clio had cast. I didn’t know why we were seeing any of this. We saw another woman, dark-haired, running through a moonless swamp. Her face was beautiful and cruel, her eyes
black. She looked behind her, and then we saw her lying facedown in the shallow water, her bare feet stained with mud. There was a dark figure over her, a man, holding something in one hand. A tool? A scythe or an ax? Had he killed her?

Then once again we saw a huge multi-forked bolt of lightning split a huge tree. The witches in the circle were almost knocked off their feet, and the tree was on fire, burning brightly. I could hear the hissing as the rain hit the fire, sending up tiny jets of smoke.

The tree’s fire was so hot I felt it on my face, uncomfortably warm and too bright to watch. I tried to pull back, but Clio was gripping my hands tightly. I blinked and saw her face red with heat, flames dancing all around her. Her eyes were wide and still, unfocused, and somehow that made me more afraid than anything.

“Clio!” I yelled, shaking my hands, locked in hers. “Clio!” I pulled back as hard as I could, knocking us both to one side, and all of a sudden we were lying on the ground in Clio’s backyard. I’d broken the spell. It was nighttime, the sky above me dark and speckled with stars and … sparks, flying upward? I jumped to my feet.

“Oh God, Clio!” I yelled, looking past her. I grabbed her shoulder and shook her—she hadn’t sat up yet. Now she blinked slowly, looking at me like I was a stranger.

“Clio! Get up! The house is on fire!” I shouted, shaking her hard enough to rattle her bones. With the next breath she seemed to awaken, sitting up quickly and looking around her. She gasped and put her hand over her mouth, as horrified as I was.

This time we hadn’t gotten thrown across a room.

We’d started a fire that had leaped away from us, and our house, my new home, was ablaze.

F
irst Thais was shaking me, her face pale but brightly lit. She was yelling something, but I couldn’t hear it. She shook my shoulders hard, and then I made out the word
fire
!

That woke me up, and I was back in the now. I jumped to my feet and stared, horrified—the whole back half of our house was engulfed in flames.

“Oh, holy sh—where’s a phone?” I cried, my brain feeling scrambled. I had to think, get two thoughts together—

Just then, one of the back windows burst from the heat. We were ten feet away but felt crystalline shards of window hissing against us.

“Thais! Go next door! Call 911!” I shouted. I was amazed the fire trucks weren’t already here—the fire was huge and must have been burning for at least twenty minutes. It was night; I had no idea what time.

“I can’t!” Thais cried, pointing. “The fire!” I looked and saw that she was right—like many New Orleans houses, ours was on a tiny plot of land. The fences separating us from our neighbors were only about six feet from each side of the house. The flames were already billowing out on the sides—you couldn’t get past them. The wooden fences had just caught on fire too.

I spun, thinking. Six-foot wooden fences, six-foot brick fences. I’d never climbed over them, and it looked like it would be a bitch to try. Thais was watching me anxiously: her fearless leader.

“Under the house,” I said.

“What?”

I was already moving forward. “We have to go under the house,” I explained quickly, dropping to my knees. Our house was built up on brick pilings, maybe three feet up, in case the river flooded. Most houses were. So there was a crawl space beneath it.

“The fire is mostly higher,” I said, crawling toward the house. “Under the house isn’t on fire yet. We have to get through out to the street, and then we can call 911.”

“What if it collapses?” Thais almost shrieked.

“Move fast,” I said through gritted teeth. This close to the house, the fire was so hot it felt like it was scalding my skin. I hunkered down lower and bellied under the house, having to crawl over a water pipe and a natural-gas pipe that went to our stove.
Oh, crap
, I thought.
If the fire gets to the gas pipe
—

“Come on!” I yelled back to Thais, and saw that she was biting her lip and creeping low to the ground, right behind me. Quickly I muttered an all-purpose protection spell. Oddly, my studies hadn’t included a specific spell for keeping a burning house from falling on you.

I hadn’t been under here since I was eight, when I had been hiding and found a rat skeleton. And I wished I hadn’t thought of that just now.

Above me, I heard the hungry crackling and roaring of the fire as it happily, eagerly consumed our walls. More glass broke and I winced, though it couldn’t reach us under here. I was crawling as fast as I could through the fine, cool dust under the house, inhaling it up my nose, smelling smoke everywhere. Every couple of feet we had to crawl around pipes or wiring. I felt Thais following me, and then I saw the light of the front yard just ahead.

“We’re almost there,” I shouted, and scrabbled right out next to the front steps, through the holly bush. I knelt and waited for Thais, and she crawled out a second later, her pale skin showing whitely through her grime.

“Okay, you go next door and call 911,” I said. “I’m going to call Nan and Melysa and anyone else who can help!”

Thais nodded and turned to run—then we both heard an anguished howling coming from inside the house.

“Q-Tip!” Thais gasped.

“Holy mother—he’s inside the house!” I said. “Wait!”

But Thais had already run down the narrow alley between the house and fence. The fire was still mostly toward the back third of the house, but windows were breaking and I feared an explosion at any second.

“Thais!” I yelled again, but she was running along, looking up at the side windows. At the third window in, the one in the workroom, she stopped. I saw the dim whiteness of Q-Tip’s fur pressed against the screen in the open window. Before I could think of what to do, Thais jumped up and punched a hole right through the window screen. Q-Tip shot out and raced down the alley toward the street. He streaked through our front fence.

“He’ll be okay,” I said, grabbing Thais’s arm. “Let’s go!”

As we were running through the front gate, I heard the droning of sirens, coming nearer. Thank the goddess, someone had called the fire department.

The huge red fire engine stopped abruptly in front of our house. I noticed that neighbors were starting to come out of their houses to see what was happening. Thais and I were on the front sidewalk, and I realized I was shaking. I put my arm around Thais, and she put hers around me.

“Out of the way, miss!” shouted a firefighter as he started pulling loops of flat canvas hose off the truck.

Then it was like watching a movie. Thais and I had to move out of the way as several firefighters surged past us, the hose on their shoulders.

“Is anyone inside?” one yelled to me, and I shook my head. “No!” I was so thankful Q-Tip was safe. He was probably under the house across the street. Then I had a paralyzing thought.

“Nan’s books!” I gasped. “Her tools!”

“Oh no!” Thais said, her face dismayed. “She’s going to kill us! Maybe we can—” She looked up at the front porch.

“The fire probably hasn’t reached the workroom inside,” I said slowly. “Maybe if I run in and you catch them as I toss them out the window …”

“Girls! Please!” said a firefighter, making us jump. “Get across the street! Now!”

Thais and I looked at each other, then reluctantly moved across the street. I could throw a glamour so that they wouldn’t notice me going up the front steps. I could—no. It was stupid. Nan would kill me for taking the chance. And if I happened to blow myself up doing it—I would be grounded forever.

Then I heard the hissing spray of fire hoses and saw great clouds of billowing smoke rising as they began to extinguish the flames. Nan’s beautiful garden in front had been trampled, her tomato stakes knocked over, her herbs crushed by the heavy water hoses.

“How did this happen?” I asked, my throat closing. Tears burned my eyes, which were full of smoke and ash.

“I don’t know,” said Thais, her voice trembling. “But I guess—I guess it was me,” she said so softly I could hardly hear her.

I looked at her. “Oh no,” I said. “It was just—I’m sure it was—” But the truth was, I couldn’t reassure her. I actually couldn’t be sure it
wasn’t
Thais. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before she came.

I don’t know how long we stayed there, watching our fire slowly be vanquished. There were two fire trucks and three hoses hooked up to
the fire hydrant down the block. The street was full of our neighbors, who kept coming over to see if we were okay or needed anything or when Nan would be home. Someone brought us glasses of iced tea, which felt incredibly good on our scorched throats.

Finally the fire was out. The firefighters began coiling their hoses. Thais and I stared numbly at our house. Just from the front, it looked okay, except for the ruined garden. But in back—the whole back half of the house was scorched, and at least four windows were broken. We had no idea what the inside would be like.