Eye of the Witch (31 page)

“
You’re not upset, are you?”

“
Upset? No! Of course not.”

“
Oh, it’s just that some old fogies can’t wait to die. I didn’t think you were one of them.”

“
Are you saying I’ll never die?”

She laughed robustly, even snorted. “No, you’ll die…someday, just not as soon as you thought. Unless I kill you, that is.”

I knew she was kidding, but still, I let the comment go unchallenged, considering her questionable past with the Lieberman workshop. “So, what now?” I asked. “Where do I go from here?”

She stepped toward me. “Where do you want to go?”

I put my arms around her and pulled her in closer. “I want to go where ever you go. If that’s all right.”

I leaned in to kiss her. “Wait,” she said, and pulled away. “This is not why I did this. I included you in my rite of passage because I thought you had lost yourself. I wanted to help.”

“
And you have. I truly was lost. If not for you, I don’t know what I would have done.”

“
But it’s different now. You know that.”

“
Yes. I see. We’re nearly the same age now.”

“
Hardly,” she said, in her typical sarcastic breath. “I’m still thrice your age.”

“
Funny, you don’t look a day over twenty.”

The lights and sirens coming around the corner let us know that the ambulance and fire trucks were almost there. Lilith took me by the hand and led me off to the side of the yard where we melted into the crowd of onlookers that had spilled out of neighboring homes. Behind the fire trucks and ambulance came more police cars, one of which carried Carlos and Spinelli to the scene. We faded back further behind the crowd, taking a seat on a rock wall partitioning her yard from the neighbor’s, and disappearing into the shadows.

“
I’ll have to tell them,” I said. “They’ll think we died in the tornado if I don’t.”

She shook her head. “Tell them what you will about yourself, but leave me out of it.”

“
But, why?”

“
Because, don’t you see? Every once in a while I have to make it look like I died. How else can I explain my age?”

“
You mean you’ve done this before?”

She raised her right shoulder to her ear and dropped it. “Eh, a few times.”

“
How many?”

“
Well, you have to figure that witches only age about a year to every three that mortals age. After ten or fifteen years, people start asking questions. You can’t just go around telling them you look so damn great because you eat right and exercise. Why do you think we used to get burned at the stake so often? People back in those days looked like shit at thirty. At least now it’s getting so that a careful witch can wait a decade or two before she renews her rite of passage.”

“
So, you have to renew it from time-to-time?”

“
I don’t have to,” she scoffed. “Not if I want to become an old hag like my grandmother.”

“
Is she a witch, too?”

“
Detective, all the women in my family have been witches. We came over on the Mayflower.”

“
Huh.” I looked out over the crowd of people that ventured closer to the spot where Lilith’s house once stood. The police did little to keep them away, seeing there wasn’t much more than a slab left for them to look at. I turned to Lilith, who seemed the least bit concerned about losing her house, and I asked her, “How does that work again? The ceremony, I mean. I look forty years younger, while you, forgive me for saying, have changed little, relatively speaking.”

She laughed, which made me feel silly for asking. But it really didn’t make sense to me. “It’s your prime,” she said, and I nodded as if I knew what she was talking about. “The rite of passage restores the body to its biological prime. For women, that’s usually about age twenty, for men, about twenty-five, regardless of where you start from. I last renewed my rite of passage eighteen years ago. That reset my clock back to what you see now. If you knew me then you would have expected to see me as a thirty-eight-year-old last night. And you saw me. I mean, let’s face it. Did I look pretty damn good for thirty-eight, or what?”

“
Shah! You looked smokin`.”

“
I know!”

“
Right, then. I see what you mean. Another couple of years and someone would have started asking questions.”

“
Exactly.”

“
But you could help yourself look older if you wanted to. You could do something funky with your hair, baggy up on the pants….”

“
What! And deny an ass like this?” She hopped off the wall and modeled her rear end for me. “No way!”

“
All right. I get it,” I said. She did have a fine ass, witchcraft notwithstanding; the girl had earned the bragging rights and then some.

“
Besides,” she added, and I thought she sounded a little disappointed. “There’s been a major shift in the celestial alignment that facilitates the passage. I won’t have the opportunity to renew my vows again for another ninety-nine years. I’ll be two hundred and seventy one by then. Even for a witch, that’s old. If I couldn’t have completed the ceremony tonight, I don’t think I would have made it to another one.”

“
Really?” I said, and my mind drifted off somewhere, wondering what might happen to me in the meantime. If my biological clock slowed to the pace of hers, then ninety-nine years might only add thirty-three to my now twenty-five. In that case, I’d still look only fifty-eight. Perhaps then, she and I could renew the vows again. I leaned back on the wall and nearly fell off it. Lilith laughed, but it brought home her point. Nothing she or I did anymore could ever seem so simple. How does one keep reinventing one’s self in the face of near immortality? How does one carry on a normal life? I turned to her, hoping to find answers in the subtleties of her mood.

“
Lilith? May I ask you a question?”

“
No.”

“
No, what? I can’t ask you a question?”

“
No. That’s the answer to the question you were going to ask. Actually, your question was a two-part question. Wasn’t it?”

I hated that she could still do that. “Yes.”

“
Then the answer is the same for both.”

“
Oh. I see.” I sat on the wall, stewing over the matter, unsure if I shouldn’t ask her anyway just to clarify things. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I turned to her again and said, “So, you were never married?”

She kept her gaze straight ahead. For all the people and equipment picking around at the tornado site, it seemed remarkably quiet. “No, I never married.”

I nodded. “Yeah, me neither. And no children?”

“
Uh-uh.”

“
Right. Same here.” I reached out and took her hand. “So do you—”

“
No, Tony, I don’t. So, don’t ask.”

“
Okay. I won’t ask.” I let go of her hand. She turned around to face the crowd again, but then stepped back, settling against the wall between my knees. I pulled her in closer, wrapping my arms around her waist and setting my chin upon her shoulder. Her hair smelled so very fine and her cheek so smooth against mine. I know she wanted me to think I knew that she knew what I wanted to ask her, but I’m banking on the hope that she didn’t. After all, Lilith is a complicated woman. But she knows what she wants, and I’m sure she gets what she wants when she wants it. Me, I’m not so complicated, and I’m a pretty patient guy. Add to that the real possibility that I may have another hundred or so years to get what I want.

Earlier, I set my hand upon the obsidian in my pocket and made a wish that I might start my life over, that I might know then what I know now. I prayed that the powers of witchcraft bestowed on the granitic glass through Lilith’s spell might somehow bend to my will, if only I believed hard enough. She later told me that the obsidian wasn’t the true eye of the witch, but at the time, I didn’t know that. I cannot say with certainty whether or not the obsidian had anything to do with what took place since then, or if the evening’s events were all part of Lilith’s original grand scheme. Either way, I believe that any given circumstance comes with its own built-in variables.

I listened to the words of Lilith’s rite of passage ceremony. She invoked the powers of the coven, ‘
…Invoke thy magick, and essence grant
,’ she said. I know I heard it. Towards the end, she added, ‘…
by Rite of Passage this night begun, bestow upon thy soul plus one.
‘ Now, I’m no expert on the ways of witchcraft, but seeing that I’m now some forty years younger, I’m thinking that ‘
plus one
‘ means that I, like Lilith, have been granted the secrets and essence of magick. I still have a way to go before I catch up with her. I mean, I won’t be casting spells anytime soon, but I can wait. Besides, I think it will be worth it. And it should be fun, too. After all, Lilith is not the only one who can stare into the Eye of the Witch without blinking.