Homecoming (4 page)

She's lost more weight,
Dev thought as she watched Eleanora retrieve a cookie—a heart-shaped one with white icing—and hold it in her palm, surveying it. She doubted her friend would eat it. These days Eleanora's appetite was small to the point of being nonexistent, but at least she made a show of trying to eat. It meant she was still fighting the good fight.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Eleanora said, raising a silvery eyebrow. “I'm not one of those old cats you keep. I'm not gonna go disappearing under the house just because my appetite's a bit off.”

“You're the most blunt person I've ever known,” Dev replied. “And how would you know what I was thinking, anyway?”

“Oh, I know exactly what you're thinking. You're an open book as far as I'm concerned,” Eleanora said, taking a tentative sip of her tea. “And I may be dying, but I'm not ready to be fitted for my coffin
just
yet. Lots of things to do before then.”

“Well, I wouldn't dream of burying an old bitch before her time,” Dev said, grinning at the tartness of her words. Eleanora always brought out her snarky side. One of the things she enjoyed best about their relationship.

“You may think you have a calling for the cards, Devandra, but this is where your true talent lies,” Eleanora said, indicating the tea and iced sugar cookies.

Eleanora was right. Dev definitely wasn't your traditional fortune-teller—as evidenced by the fact that she didn't make her living sowing the seeds of fate but by running a small wedding cake business out of her backyard guesthouse/bakery.

“Don't tell Freddy and the kids,” Dev said, laughing. “They think I'm Carrie come to life.”

“Ha!” Eleanora cackled, setting her tea down. “I bet they do. I bet they do.”

Eleanora was a fan of Dev's daughters, Marji and Ginny, and never acted put upon (like a few others Dev could name) when Dev told anecdotes about her family life. For their part, the girls loved their prickly old Great-Auntie E dearly. They were forever asking to visit Great-Auntie E's magic house where “the big goldfish” lived. The koi pond and red-lacquered wooden footbridge that spanned it made up the vast majority of Eleanora's front yard, along with a well-tended garden filled with fruit and vegetables the whole year long. All these things together meant her house was a lightning rod for the neighborhood children, including Dev's girls.

“Speaking of the cards,” Dev said, picking up the deck from the table, her touch instantly warming the cards.

“Let's not speak of them. Let's let them speak to us,” Eleanora replied.

“Isn't that what we always do?” Dev said, and then, more circumspect: “And would you like a straight reading? See what the cards say of their own volition, or are we shaping things by asking a few questions?”

“Only one question,” Eleanora said, and with a press of her thumb, she broke her cookie into pieces, shards of iced sugar and flour skidding across her plate.

“A simple five-card spread should be pretty elucidating,” Dev said, and began to separate out the Major Arcana from the rest of the deck, shuffling only these cards before setting them on the table in front of Eleanora.

“Do you have the question in your mind?” Dev asked.

Eleanora nodded, the light hitting her head in such a way that Dev could see pale pink scalp through the thinning salt and pepper of her friend's pixie cut—a haircut that should only have worked on a younger woman but somehow suited her better than long hair ever had. Dev wanted to cry at her frailness. But since death was not something Dev enjoyed thinking about, she quickly turned to the task at hand:

“Okeydoke, now hold the question in the front of your mind and think of a number between one and twenty-two—”

“Wait,” Eleanora said, holding up her hand for Dev to stop. “Don't you want to know my question?”

Dev pursed her lips.

“There's no need—”

“But I
want
to tell you,” Eleanora said, reaching over and squeezing Dev's wrist. “Is that a better way of saying that I trust you and that your input is important to me?”

The statement startled Dev. Eleanora had never shared anything so intimate with her before—and especially nothing about their own relationship.

“I know I get tetchy and short-tempered, but I don't want you to think it ever has anything to do with you personally. You know that, don't you?”

“I, well . . .” Dev said, not sure what she felt.

“Arrabelle tells me I'm too hard on you, that I expect too much,” Eleanora continued. “If I get impatient, it's only because I feel safe with you. That the love I feel for you and the rest of our blood sisters transcends friendship. That you are
family
to me.”

Dev was too stunned to say a word, but she did feel her eyes getting moist. “Oh, stop it,” she said, trying not to get so overemotional that she scared Eleanora away. “You've got me tearing up like a baby.”

“I didn't mean . . . I just wanted you to know before—” Eleanora began, stricken.

“Stop, it's lovely,” Dev said, waving Eleanora's words away. “Now tell me your question before I really start sobbing.”

Eleanora nodded, looking a tad uncomfortable with Dev's excess of emotion. She took a long breath, as if she were nervous about saying the words out loud.

“Will Lyse succeed me as master of the Echo Park coven? Is she the next in line, as Hessika foretold?”

Dev froze, her hands reaching for the cards. Hessika had been the Echo Park coven's last Dream Keeper, and upon her death, there hadn't been another to fill her place. The art of Dream Keeping was a dying one—and soon it would be as though the talent had never existed, at all. Not a single Dream Keeper had been born during the last fifty years, and the few who remained were long past their prime.

But what a Dream Keeper dreamed was law, and if Hessika had written of this succession in the coven's Dream Journal, then Lyse
would
follow Eleanora. No matter how hard Arrabelle and the others protested it.

“But I thought Arrabelle . . . ?” Dev asked before she could stop herself.

Eleanora shook her head. “It was never Arrabelle. Whatever she thought, the right was never hers.”

Dev tried to remove her own personal feelings from the next question, but Arrabelle was her friend and no matter what Eleanora said now, the others had always taken it for granted that Arrabelle would be the one to succeed her.

“Why was it never hers? She's always been the one you relied on most—”

“I don't make the rules—but I am compelled to follow them,” Eleanora said, before adding more pointedly: “Just as you are.”

Continuing down this line of questioning was moot. Dev would just have to see what the cards had to say.

“A number, please,” Dev said. “Whatever first comes to mind.”

“Seven,” Eleanora replied, without hesitation.

Dev counted out seven cards and placed The Fool—one of her favorites—into the first position of the spread. There was something poignant about the naïveté of The Fool's golden face, the way the sun hung above him, without judgment, even though it could see how precariously close its charge stood to the cliff's edge.

“The Fool, eh?” Eleanora murmured to herself. Then she said to Dev: “The cards have a will of their own today.”

“What do you mean?” Dev said, furrowing her brow.

“I don't think you're interested in my question, are you?” Eleanora said to the cards. She looked at Dev and continued, “The Fool is not Lyse, and they know that I know this.”

“How can you—we've barely begun,” Dev said, her palms already slick with sweat.

“I wanted to know about Hessika's dreams. I wanted the cards to confirm them. That's not what's happening here.”

“I believe you,” Dev said. “Shall we continue?”

Eleanora nodded, eyes locked on The Fool, whose borders blended with the yellow of the tablecloth, so the card appeared printed onto the lemon damask.

“Another number, please.”

“Seven,” Eleanora said.

Six cards were disregarded before Dev came to the seventh, which she flipped over to reveal The Devil. She knew this wasn't a reference to the literal Devil, but the instinctual repulsion she felt whenever this card cropped up in one of her readings was hard to ignore.

“Another number—” Dev said.

“Seven,” Eleanora replied, interrupting Dev. “And seven again for the fourth card.”

Dev stayed her hand, uncertain.

“Are you sure?”

Eleanora nodded with vigor, but the action seemed to wear her out and she rested her head in the crook of her left arm, breathing heavily.

“Just read the cards,” Eleanora said, her voice hard. “There's something strange going on here and I need you to do as I ask.”

Dev didn't appreciate being snapped at, but Eleanora looked so pathetic, her pale cream blouse barely concealing her excavated collarbones and sharpened shoulder blades, that Dev let it pass without argument. Flipping over Eleanora's next card, she set The Hierophant down on the table above The Fool and The Devil.

“Hmm,” Eleanora murmured, then watched as Dev drew the last of the chosen cards.

“The Magician,” Dev said, holding up this fourth card for Eleanora to see before laying it down on the table beneath the other three cards.

As seen from above, the cards now formed a truncated Christian cross, but one that held an empty space in its middle. This was where Dev would place the final card: a card Eleanora hadn't consciously chosen but was a synthesis of the other four—and would be the card upon which the rest of the spread depended.

In her head, Dev totaled the number values for The Fool, The Devil, The Heirophant, and The Magician, and with this knowledge laid down the fifth and final card of the spread:

The World.

Eleanora seemed to glean the spread's meaning instinctively, shaking her head as if she could hardly believe the audacity of the cards. Dev, on the other hand, had barely processed what she was seeing, let alone come to any conclusions.

“Well, now, isn't that the darnedest thing,” Eleanora said, slapping the top of the table with the heel of her hand before shaking her head one more time in disbelief: “Looks as though someone has hijacked my spread.”

She sat back in her chair, her sharp eyes scanning the kitchen, looking—it seemed to Dev—for something . . . or
someone
.

“We're not alone,” Eleanora said suddenly, her eyes returning to Dev's face. “Do you feel it? Someone else is here. They won't show themselves to me, but they're here.”

Dev shivered. The Victorian was old and drafty, but that wasn't what she was feeling. Eleanora was right. There was something else in the kitchen with them.

Without warning, the light outside shifted, and the room dipped into shadow. Underneath Dev's hands, the table began to shake.

“Earthquake,” Dev said, starting to stand up—but the tremors ceased before she was fully on her feet.

Almost as abruptly as it had disappeared, sunlight flooded the kitchen again, and the room returned to normal.

“She's left,” Eleanora said, a secret smile playing across her taut lips. “She didn't want to be seen.”

And Dev realized she was right: Whatever spirit had been there was gone.

“Tell me what the cards say, Devandra.”

The older woman's dark eyes bored into her own, and Dev shivered.

“Only the Innocent stands in the way of the Devil's dominion over the World,” she began, staring down at the cards, “and the Teacher will be the one whose balance decides all of our fates.”

Dev looked up, and from the smile playing on Eleanora's lips, it was clear the master of the Echo Park coven was well pleased with her hijacked reading.

L
yse lit the Saint Anne candle with a match she'd found in the kitchen, the flame flaring to life beneath her fingertips. The glowing wick cast flickering shadows across the white walls of the hallway as she headed toward her old bedroom. Outside, the sky had grown even darker, and the light that came in through the windows was a dusky shade of charcoal gray, giving the glow from Saint Anne a surreal quality—as if Lyse were a ghost moving through the murky underworld, the candle her only touchstone to human reality.

Lyse stood in the doorway for a few moments, her eyes scanning the room's contents. It was the first time Lyse had been back in her old bedroom in years, and she felt all the awkwardness and angst of adolescence fighting to recapture her—as if they didn't realize she was an adult now and relatively immune to them.

She crossed to the solid oak dresser, the heavy piece of furniture pressed up against the wall by the half-open bedroom window. Outside, she could see that the heavens were threatening to open, and soon rivulets of water would condense against the windowpane like teardrops.

She grimaced as she caught sight of her reflection in the “dead mirror” hanging across the room. She'd given the antique wall mirror this name because once upon a time, magazine tearaways of Vivien Leigh and River Phoenix had been nestled in between the silvered glass and wooden frame, the dead keeping Lyse company during the long, dark purgatory of her adolescence.

After a moment, she looked away from her reflection, absently picking at the forgotten tchotchkes still littering the top of the dresser, the detritus of her teenage years gathering dust: the June bug preserved in pale green glass, the tiny porcelain ballerina fixing her bun, the steel artist's rendering of a skeletal hand.

She sighed and walked over to the edge of the antique brass three-quarter bed, its brown duvet cover still spotted with pale stains from her one attempt at bleaching her hair. She set Saint Anne down on the small side table next to the bed, careful not to get it too close to the lamp and its pale yellow shade.

No house fires needed, thank you very much,
she thought.

She was overtired from her trip and totally hungover. The stress and alcohol might have blotted out her feelings for a little while, but now the fear and worry were returning with a vengeance—and she felt unsettled by an odd feeling that'd been growing inside her ever since she'd gotten Eleanora's call. The only way she could describe it was like someone was keeping tabs on her, biding their time until they could pluck her like a ripe fruit.

Paranoia is a sign of exhaustion, right?
she thought.
I'm just so damn tired, I can't think straight.

She lay down across the mattress, stretching out like a cat, her head sinking into the welcoming heft of the overstuffed pillow. Above her was the Cure poster she'd taped to the ceiling when she was fifteen, the carnival of pink-and-orange-swirled Tim Burton–esque lettering spelling out the word
Lullaby
. She stared up at the poster as the candlelight from Saint Anne made squiggly shadows dance across the ceiling.

She felt her eyelids grow heavy with exhaustion, her body tingling as sleep fought to overwhelm her, until finally she gave up and let her eyes close. She began to drift, and, before she was even aware she'd fallen, she was dreaming—

It seemed impossible she could've ever forgotten the nightmare she'd had all throughout her adolescence, but not once since she left Echo Park had the dream come to her. In the recesses of her mind, it was a faded thing. Like an upholstered chair left in view of a window until it became threadbare and bleached from time and sunlight, and was banished to the attic.

The dream never varied: It was October—Indian summer—but windy and chilly and crisp once the sun had set. It was a few minutes before the witching hour, but how she knew this was unclear—though she didn't question it.

She was in a clearing in the woods, a place she'd never been in real life, but during the dream it felt familiar, and she intuitively sensed it was a safe place, consecrated to protect those in search of sanctuary from the darkness—just thinking the word
darkness
left her numb and scared. It was more frightening than any spoken word had a right to be.

She looked up and saw the pumpkin-orange harvest moon sitting low on the horizon, a runny egg yolk melting into the dusky, cloud-filled sky just above the tree line. Outside the clearing—where it was definitely not safe—the tree trunks grew in a dense pack, their shadows crisscrossing one another in the moonlight.

She heard the crunch of dead leaves under fast-moving feet, the sound echoing in the air and overpowering the hollow rustle of the wind as it streaked through the naked tree branches. The sound intensified—whatever was out there in the darkness was getting closer—and the temperature dropped in response, turning the air arctic. A chorus of dead leaves somersaulted across the ground, the wind blowing them helter-skelter until they disappeared inside the shadows, their desiccated brown bodies smashed into smithereens by unseen feet.

The crushing footfalls gained speed as the thing—she knew it wasn't human—crashed through the underbrush, moving faster and faster as it closed the distance between them, its breathing ragged. It was running now, moving at an inhuman speed, snarling toward her, its movements building to a heart-throbbing crescendo that stopped just shy of the edge of the clearing. Whatever had come tonight was afraid to cross the boundary the tree line had created.

And then the creature burst through the boundary line, the protective spell broken. The beast, all smoke and darkness and dread, descended on her, ripping at her torso and burying its cold teeth into her gut with feral intent, tearing away the flesh from her body in bloody chunks—

—and she woke up.

Only she was not in her old bedroom anymore. She was in her great-aunt's room, but Eleanora wasn't there. Instead, she saw Saint Anne, the woman from the candle, but then the image dissolved and another woman—a giantess, really—stood at the foot of the long, quilt-covered bed. She was smiling down at Lyse, whose body lay on top of the mattress, stiff as a board, hands crossed over her chest.

But Lyse wasn't in the body on the bed. She was a spirit, and she drifted by the door, close to the doorjamb, gazing at the scene: the giant woman at the foot of the bed and her own body there on the mattress, lying in state.

“Am I dead?” she asked, but the woman shook her head, and Lyse looked closer and could see that yes, the woman was right—the body on the bed was still breathing, the gentle rise and fall of its chest marking it among the living.

“Not dead,
ma belle
, merely dreaming.”

The woman smiled then, and suddenly she held a smoldering cigarette in her hand. She took a long puff, then released the smoke so it poured from her nostrils like steam.

“Ah, I miss that,” she said, indicating the smoke wrapping in curlicues around her head.

“Who are you?” Lyse asked, once she'd understood her body was okay.

“Humans call us ghosts, but Dream Walker is the name we witches give to souls who do not move on to the next plane after death. I am one of those who chose to stay on Earth after my passing. To help those that I've loved.”

“Wait,
witches
?” Lyse said, almost spitting out the word.

“Eleanora never spoke about me or the coven to you,” the woman said, “but once, a long time ago, we were very close.”

Lyse felt her spirit float away from the door and come to hover next to the giantess.

“There is so little time,
ma belle
. So very little time,” the woman continued. “It's coming. It'll arrive unheralded, and only you will know it for its true self. The coven will need your strength then—”

“The coven?” she said, interrupting the giant woman. “What're you talking about?”

On the bed, the body grew restless. It opened its mouth and screamed, but the sound couldn't be heard here in this dream world.

“Damn,” the woman said, puffing away on her cigarette, though the ash tip never seemed to grow, “you sure channeled Elsa Lanchester with that scream, baby.”

“I don't understand—”

The body on the bed opened its eyes, twisting and turning as it struggled with unseen hands.

“The time's coming for that,” the woman said. “All will be revealed soon.”

She exhaled a plume of gray-green smoke, like something you would expect from the bellows of a dragon, and this time the smoke didn't dissipate; it filled the room—

—and Lyse was looking at the candle. The flame had gone out while she slept, and a plume of smoke rose from the extinguished wick.

She inhaled sharply as she stared at the face of Saint Anne—and the single tear that slid down the picture's cheek. Lyse crawled over to the candle and, ignoring her fear, pushed her face close to the glass, then sat back, smiling at her own idiocy. Upon closer inspection, it was apparent that what looked like a tear from farther away was actually a dollop of hot wax that'd somehow slipped over the edge and wound its way down the outside of the glass.

The dream—or whatever it was—had left a bitter taste in her mouth, and the crying candle was just a symptom of this. Now she understood why she didn't come back to Echo Park often: Things were always a little wonky at Eleanora's house. She'd just assumed this was because she was a teenager and everything seemed dramatic when your hormones were racing out of control, but she was in her twenties now and the same things were happening again. Strange dreams that were more lucid than any of the ones she'd ever had in Georgia: crying candles, giantesses, and witches . . . It was all just too much to deal with. Especially when her focus should be on Eleanora's illness, on making sure there weren't any other treatment options, that there wasn't a way to stave the disease off or at least stop it from being a death sentence.

A neighborhood dog let out an anxious howl, the unexpected sound reverberating through her old bedroom with enough intensity to make it feel like the animal was standing right outside her window. She scurried backward like a crab, slamming the meat of her palm into the thick brass bed frame, and pain ratcheted up her wrist.

Dammit,
she mouthed—then froze as she felt someone's gaze riveted on her back. It was unmistakable, this uncanny feeling of one's privacy being invaded, of having someone unwittingly observe you in an intimate moment. She was not alone, and the knowledge ran through her body like an electric current.

“Who's here?” Lyse heard herself saying, never having felt so unnerved in Eleanora's house before.

No reply.

“Okay, I'm gone,” Lyse said—as if there were someone in the room listening to her. “You've spooked me enough for one day.”

She jumped off the bed and quickly made for the door. She wanted outside and fast.

The paranoia was back.

*   *   *

Lyse pulled the hood of the shawl she'd grabbed from the kitchen up and over her dark hair, shoving her bangs out of the way so she could see where she was going. It had started drizzling outside, but the dark clouds seemed to be abating. It looked as though she was going to have a nice, sane walk down to the bottom of Echo Park Avenue and across Sunset to Echo Park Lake.

She'd decided that taking a walk was the perfect antidote to being scared all alone up in Eleanora's house. It felt like the specter of death had taken up residence in the bungalow on Curran, and the less time spent there without Eleanora, the better. Besides, she knew it would be good to get outside and clear her head, then make a much-needed call to Carole, whom she should've phoned hours ago.

Instead, she'd procrastinated, telling herself the cell reception was terrible up in the hills, that she'd call Carole later—but she knew this was bullshit; she could've just used Eleanora's landline. The truth was she didn't want to talk to anyone, wasn't interested in regurgitating the events that'd led to her wandering the hills of Echo Park on this wet October afternoon, unable to shake off the horrible dream and the weird feeling of being watched.

How could I have forgotten it?
she wondered, remembering the dream that'd dogged her for the entirety of her adolescence.

Not the part with the
giantess
—that was new—but the sacred grove, the creature wanting to eat her, so it could taste her death on its tongue . . . this dream had recurred night after night for weeks at a time when she was a teenager. It had wreaked havoc on her sleep, exhausted her so she fell asleep during classes at school. More than anything, she'd hated the sense of vulnerability she felt when she was in the dream. It reminded her too much of the time after her parents' deaths.

Nope, not going there,
Lyse thought, not wanting to think about her parents' double funeral, of her standing alone at the grave site wishing she had joined them.