A Circle of Ashes (19 page)

Petra didn’t say anything, thinking it through. She looked very solemn, her long fingers wrapped around her mug. I ate another cookie.

“It’s lucky he only fainted,” said Clio. “You guys both should have been killed.”

“That’s what some guy said at the fountain,” I said. “But I mean, I think my magick actually worked somehow. It felt… smooth. Usually it feels like something extra, like a cloak that I’m shrugging off or pushing off, you know? But this felt so… light and easy, but really strong and smooth. It’s hard to describe. It felt right, like… like I was a flower and the magick was a scent. Part of me, but going out into the world. But I made it.” I realized how stupid that sounded and shook my head, embarrassed. And still Petra was looking at me. “Isn’t this good? Isn’t this what it’s supposed to be? I didn’t blow anything up.”

“It’s good,” said Petra.

“I know what you mean,” Clio said, surprising me, and Petra nodded.

“That’s what it’s supposed to feel like,” she said. “It hasn’t felt like that before?”

“No, not really,” I said. Then I remembered something. “Oh, one other time. I was at the coffee shop with Kevin, and all of a sudden a little rhyme came into my mind. I said it, and it felt like that, smooth and easy and part of me, but going out.”

Petra frowned. “What were you doing in the coffee shop?”

“Um, just getting coffee?”

She smiled briefly and shook her head. “No, I meant, what exactly were you doing at the exact moment the rhyme came to you?”

“You were with Kevin that time too,” said Clio. “Like he helps your magick somehow. Interesting.”

“Was there a tea light on the table? Were you playing with it?” Petra asked.

I thought. “No. Oh, but you know, there was a little electric fountain in the window, a little tabletop one. I remember I was playing with it, dipping my fingers in it.”

“Hmm.” Petra sat back, looking both satisfied and thoughtful at the same time.

“What?” I asked.

“I think I understand something now, something I didn’t see before,” said Petra. “I’m surprised, but of course now it makes perfect sense.”

“What?” I said again.

“Yeah,
what?
” said Clio.

“Your element,” said Petra. “We’ve assumed that it was fire because Clio’s is, and actually mine is too. But it seems clear now—that protection spell worked so well, and felt so right, because you were surrounded by your true element—water.”

Clio and I just sat there, speechless for a moment. Finally I found my voice.

“Water! But why would water be my element?”

“It’s the opposite of fire,” said Petra. “You two are
mirrors
of each other, not clones.”

“That explains your fashion sense,” Clio said brightly, and I kicked her. “Ow!”

“Huh. Water.” I was having trouble taking it in. I hadn’t been doing magick long, but what I’d done had been focused around fire. “But what does this mean?”

“It’s probably why the magick you’ve been trying to make has backfired,” said Petra. “And why it’s felt hard and unnatural.”

“I thought it was just because making magick is hard and unnatural,” I said.

Petra smiled bigger. “Is that still what you think?”

I thought back to when I’d cried out the protection spell, how exhilarated I’d felt, how simple everything had seemed. In that one moment, it was as if the whole world had fallen into place, and everything had made sense, if only for a second. My magick had worked perfectly, flowing seamlessly out from me into the world. Tears came to my eyes as I remembered that beautiful, ecstatic feeling.

“No.” I smiled. Now I knew. My element was water. If I worked with my true element, magick felt like nothing else in the world, like perfection. And it was within my grasp.

Petra reached across the table and took my hand in hers, lightly patting it. “Water,” she murmured, looking at me. “I never would have thought….”

“W
e’re doing what now?” Thais asked. “Today is what?”

“Récolte,” I said. I straightened from where I was dribbling seed on the ground in a pattern. The backyard still looked like a demilitarized zone, with scorched plants, cracked flowerpots, and leftover building material from where some of the weather-boards had been replaced. We were due to go to our circle pretty soon—because it had to be outside, it was being held over in Covington, across the lake. It would take about forty minutes to get there.

“The autumn equinox,” Nan said. “In our religion there are eight
jours sacrés.
Eight holy days, remember, I told you about them? The four main ones and four minor ones?”

Thais looked embarrassed. “I don’t remember them too well.”

“Well, Récolte is one of the minor ones,” Nan said. “It’s the second of three traditional harvest festivals, and it takes place on the autumn equinox every year.”

“Today the length of the night and the day are exactly the same,” I explained. “All the days after this will be shorter, and the nights longer, until spring. It’s sort of about getting the harvest in, getting ready for winter.”

“So what’s with the seeds?” Thais asked.

“I’m making the rune
seige
with seeds,” I said, kneeling down to finish it. “The rune for the sun. Today the sun is going underground for winter, and we’ll see him again in the spring.”

“Uh-huh.” Thais sounded unconvinced.

“You’ll understand more at the circle,” Nan said, brushing off her hands. She glanced at her watch. “Actually, we better get moving. We need to be there before dusk.”

Covington was directly across the lake, so we took the causeway, the longest bridge in the world, to get there.

“Why do we have to do the circle outside?” Thais looked out her window. We were at the middle part of the causeway, where you couldn’t see land on either side—only water all around. Little whitecaps kicked up here and there, and gulls circled overhead, occasionally dipping down to snatch a fish.

“Because it’s about celebrating nature,” Nan said, keeping her eyes on the road. “It’s about thanking the earth for the bounty we’ve harvested and honoring her as a life giver. After the circle, we’ll have a feast, with lots of fresh-baked breads and wine and seed cakes.”

“You usually do this with your other coven?” Thais asked.

Nan nodded. “Yes. But they understand that I need to do some things with the Treize right now. I need to find out more about what they’re gathering for and find out how they all feel about it.”

“You know what they’ve gathered for,” I said from the backseat. “They want to do the rite that’ll find their fountain of youth again and get them even more power.”

“Yes.” Nan met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “But I think there are other layers to what’s going on. I want you two to be extra careful and keep your eyes open. Don’t wander off, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and Thais nodded, looking less than thrilled.

I was concerned myself: tonight I would see Luc in person for the first time since the night I’d kicked him out of the house. So much had happened since then. I smoothed my thin linen
bouvre
over my knees. Thais had started off wearing a blue T-shirt and a jeans skirt, but Nan had asked her to borrow a
bouvre
from me. “A what?” she’d asked, and Nan had explained that usually at circles and always on holidays, witches wore the long, loose gown. Nan’s was almost always a sky blue silk, but she had a gold one for the harvest festivals. I’d lent Thais a flowy, thin cotton one in a russet that looked pretty with our coloring. It had a gathered neck and loose sleeves that wouldn’t be too hot. I hadn’t been able to get her out of her Tevas.

I, on the other hand, was stretching the definition of
bouvre
. Yes, it was long and a little loose and flowy, but it was also a halter top and made out of scarlet linen. Racey always said it looked like it came from “Tarts R Us,” but I loved it and knew I looked incredibly hot in it. And I needed to look incredibly hot tonight. I wanted Luc to see exactly what he had lost. Maybe he thought he loved Thais, but he’d felt something for me. Maybe not love, maybe only desire, but something, and I wanted to rub it in.

“It will be interesting, seeing if you feel this circle any differently now that you know your true element,” Nan went on to Thais.

“Yeah. I want to try to work some magick again, like with Clio,” she said.

“That’s fine, but I’d like you to make sure I’m around when you do,” said Nan.

“Why?” Thais looked surprised, but just then Nan reached the end of the causeway. She took the first left, following a small road that wound around the lake.

She never did answer.

Five minutes later Nan turned and drove through an open wooden gate marked Private Property.

“This belongs to one of my friends,” she explained, heading down a winding, overgrown road. “I like being on familiar territory. We’ve had circles here before.”

I’d
never been here, so I wasn’t sure what circles she was talking about. I knew she and about five other women met sometimes to deepen their study of magick—maybe that had been it.

There was no visible house, but we saw several other cars under a row of live oaks, and Nan pulled up next to one. “Can you two get our things from the trunk? I’d like to find Ouida,” she said, turning off the engine.

“Sure,” said Thais, and Nan got out, leaving us in the car.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

Thais turned around to look at me. “Nervous. I don’t want to see him.”

I liked how we were so often in tune with what the other was thinking. One of our twin things. Racey and I were like that, but Thais and I didn’t even really know each other that well yet.

“I know,” I said. “But I also want to show him that I’m perfectly fine and not all torn up, you know? I want to look totally normal, like I don’t care. Like it didn’t affect me.”

Thais nodded. “It’s going to be hard.”

“Yeah.” I was also going to face Richard. Every time I remembered that I’d let him kiss me, I felt weird all over again.

“Plus, you know, the whole someone’s-trying-to-kill-us thing,” said Thais, leaning her head against her window. “Probably someone here.”

I sighed. “Well, we can’t stay in the car all night. The circle has to start right before dusk. They’ll come get us in a minute.”

Thais sighed too, sounding exactly like me. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Right through the trees was a large natural clearing. Wild grass grew halfway to my knees. At one end, tables had been set up, and several members of the Treize were there, putting out platters and glasses.

“I’m not eating or drinking anything until I see someone else try it first,” Thais muttered as we brought Nan’s bread over.

I smiled grimly and nodded. Nan was standing next to Ouida. I saw Sophie and the little-girl-looking witch, Manon, standing by themselves talking, not far away. Sophie was always so solemn—it made her seem much older than she looked.

Oh, right, God, the whole immortal thing was still really hard to deal with.

“Here’s the quinoa salad,” said Thais, placing it on the table.

“Thanks,” said Nan.

“And bread.” I put it on a wooden cutting board that had already been set out.

“How have you two been?” Ouida asked sympathetically.

“Okay,” I said. “Better, now that Nan’s back.”

“I bet. Has anything else dangerous happened?”

“You mean, besides us setting the house on fire?” I said dryly. “No. Oh, except Thais got hit by lightning.”

“I wanted to tell you about that,” Nan said as Ouida’s eyes widened. She started to tell the story about Thais’s true element.

“Did you bring the wine?” I asked Thais, looking at the table.

“No—there’s already some here.”

“Nan brought some too. You know, I think it’s in the backseat.” I hoped Thais would offer to get it, but she didn’t, so I headed back to the car myself. It was within full view of where we were, fortunately.

I was headfirst into the car’s backseat when I suddenly felt someone watching me. I grabbed Nan’s two bottles of wine and stood up quickly, thinking,
Luc
.

But it was Richard who leaned against the next car, Richard who was watching me with those dark brown eyes. “Hello,” he said. “Nice
bouvre
.” He was wearing beat-up green fatigue pants and a white T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off.

“Do any of your shirts have sleeves?” I asked.

He gave me a little grin. “In the winter.” He grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head so he was naked from the waist up. I saw he had another thorny tribal tattoo on his smooth chest. Then he leaned through an open car window and pulled out his own
bouvre
, which was raw silk, streaky brown and gold, like his hair. He pulled it on and it settled lovingly around him. Then, as if I wasn’t even there, he reached
under it and I heard his pants unsnap. Immediately I turned and started walking away.

“Wait,” he said.

I turned to him, glad I was wearing two-inch wedge espadrilles. He was only an inch or two taller than me now. I stood there stone-faced as he kicked out of his fatigues and picked them up off the ground.

“If you’re trying to make me go mad with lust, you’re failing,” I said in a bored tone.