The Parting Glass (Caitlin Ross Book 4) (15 page)

“What’s wrong?”

“This place. This is where it came from.”

“How do you know?” I asked, intrigued. He’d never made any claim to my kind of sensitivity. Back at the studio, he’d had to Journey to get a sense of what I found all too obvious.

“It whispers to me.” He touched his Soul Catcher and shuddered.

“What does it say?”

“It wants to be back where it belongs.”

“Here?” I didn’t much like the idea of loosing the shadow thing to take up residence.

“No. Not here. But it knows the place of its birth.” Timber ground the heels of his hands into his head, as if he wanted to crack it open, like a stubborn nut. “It thinks, perhaps from here it can find its way.”

“Where to?”

He declined to answer. “See if you can hunt up some light. Not too much. I meant to bring a torch, but with Spruce after me… I forgot.” I couldn’t see his face, of course. But I heard the embarrassment in his voice. I refrained from making a comment on his fallible humanity.

“There should be some candles or something around. I’ll look.”

I searched the living room, trying not to bump into furniture. The room held little enough of it. A couch. Two chairs, one a rocker with a blanket over its back. A pair of end tables. No candles.

At length, I did locate a pair on the mantel surmounting the fireplace on the west wall. They’d been used, but more than half remained. I picked one up and set it down again right away. Lighting these would not be a good idea. I could feel the remains of magic in them, and I didn’t like it, not at all.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Timber, and returned to the kitchen. It was even darker in there than in the living room, though not quite as dark as the hall. The kitchen had a very small window over the sink, and no convenient street lamp shone in. But I rummaged in the drawers and cupboards, and finally unearthed a box of plumber’s candles no more than half empty. Those would work. I grabbed the box of kitchen matches from the back of the stove and headed for the living room again.

Timber still knelt right where I had left him, only now he had straightened his back and his hands rested on his knees. I puttered about, distributing candles on flat surfaces and lighting them, trying not to disturb him. Six small flames brought a warm glow to the space. I decided it was enough.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ve got light.”

My companion opened his eyes and stood up, bit by slow bit, like a man laboring under an oppressive burden. He swayed a little on his feet, adjusting to the weight.

“Very well. Let’s see what there is to see.”

As I had already discovered during my quest for candles, what little furniture Stonefeather possessed had been pushed back to the walls, leaving the better part of the floor clear. Now I saw that this had been circumscribed with a large circle comprised of what appeared to be rock salt. And something else. Something pointy.

“What are those?”

Timber squatted and picked one up, testing the end with a fingertip. “Cactus spine, I think. Good for protection. Asafoetida is, too. Protection and exorcism.”

“Exorcism?” I didn’t think John Stonefeather dealt in exorcism. But what did I know?

The circle had been broken in several places. No telling when.

“Aye,” said Timber when I pointed it out. “One of us might have done it. Or Stonefeather. Or something else.”

In the center of the circle, an image made up of grains of colored sand had been painstakingly sprinkled into a pattern about two feet in diameter. I saw two shapes that might have been meant to represent people, linked by something picked out in black sand. A rope of some kind. Maybe a chain. A broken chain, I saw, peering closer. Both the larger shapes had auras. One light. One dark. There were more symbols I didn’t understand.

“That’s not Lakota,” I glanced around. “For that matter, neither is the circle.”

“It wouldn’t be,” Timber replied, sounding more distressed than ever. “He’ll have needed to draw from many traditions. He’ll have needed to improvise.”

I shot him a sharp glance. Even in the bad light I could see his face had gone quite pale. His cheekbones seemed to stand out from the skin like bare bone.

“Do you know what’s going on here?” I asked, point blank.

“I hope not.”

At each of the four cardinal points of the circle, we found a quart glass jar stuffed with drying plant matter. I recognized chrysanthemums. The other two seemed familiar. One was stick-like, with scant leaves and faded blue blossoms. Chicory. The second had a leaf almost like a spear attached to a single, papery, bell-shaped flower.

“Yucca,” Timber said. “Shite.”

“I’m not a great herbalist. I know chrysanthemums are associated with death, but nothing about the other two.”

“Chicory removes obstacles,” he instructed me. “Yucca is supposed to aid in transmutation.”

“Transmutation?” I stared at him. “Of what?”

Timber just shook his head and continued his inspection.

“Whatever happened here happened fast,” I remarked. “I can’t imagine John Stonefeather leaving such a mess after he’d completed his ritual. I guess that’s lucky for us.”

“Lucky,” Timber echoed in bleak tones. “Aye. He’d hae got out in a hurry. It would hae been a shock.”

But he still wouldn’t tell me what was on his mind. That was beginning to bother me.

Several items lay within the circle, ranged around the sand painting. A sage and sweetgrass smudge stick, half burned. A flint knife with a bone handle. A small cast iron pot full of charcoal ash, and a jar of some herbal compound: the incense for the charcoal, I assumed. This last, Timber picked up and sniffed, making a face.

“There’s the asafoetida. But there’s something else as well.” Frowning, he shook the jar. “Something greenish.”

He dipped a tentative finger into the jar and touched its tip to his tongue. Almost at once, he spat onto the floor, and hawked and spat again, several times.

“Fuck. There’s hemlock in this. It’s a wonder he didna kill himself.”

“Hemlock!” It grew wild wherever a little water seeped to the surface of the ground. I tried to stay away from it.

“Aids in astral projection,” Timber said, spitting again.

“I imagine it would. You’re not going to die on me, are you?” Please, gods, no.

He shook his head. “I didna get much. Only enough to numb my mouth.”

I let out my breath.

One more item we had yet to examine: a porcelain rice bowl containing a few leathery green discs. Some kind of dried vegetable.

“Peyote,” Timber said. He didn’t need to enlighten me further. I’d never done peyote, but I knew people who had. Undoubtedly one of them stood right next to me.

Leaving the confines of the circle, Timber crossed over to the hearth. On the stone shelf in front of it lay something resembling a large, two-pronged ginger root. At least, that’s what it would have resembled, had it not been split and torn. It looked as if something had burst out of it with the force of a grenade. On closer inspection, I saw fibrous bits of plant matter strewn all over the place, as if flung by an explosion.

“Hmmm.” Timber squatted down to inspect the thing, not touching it. “Unless I miss my guess, this is a mandrake root.”

“Where in the world did Stonefeather get that?” It must’ve been a foot long or better; I’d never seen one so large. Just pieces, available at exorbitant prices in some obscure magic shops. “And what for?”

“That would account for the plant material in the sludge on Gina’s chair,” he muttered, staring at the root with sick fascination.

I sat on the floor, back to the hearth, legs crossed beneath me. “So Stonefeather cast some kind of circle.” I waved my hand at it. “He made a sand painting as a statement of intent, with the flowers at the four quarters to give it extra oomph, I’d guess. And then he got unbelievably fucked up on peyote and nasty incense and did…what?”

Something bad bumped at my mind. Mandrake root.
Get with child a mandrake root.
Mandrake had a reputation for being extremely effective when used in the construction of manikins and poppets. Some said it could bring things to life.

“There’s the hearth itself yet,” Timber said, bringing me out of my reverie.

I glanced over my shoulder. The hearth held the ashes of what must have been a large fire. From what I could see, there were still some chunky bits in there. Pieces of log and such.

“Looks like it burned itself out.”

“Aye. Hand me the poker, will you? And fetch a light closer.”

I did as he bade me. When I had gathered up most of the candles and arranged them on either side of the hearth, I knelt beside him. He still grasped the poker in both hands, angled across his body. His face held no expression at all, and that disturbed me more than anything.

He murmured something that might have been a prayer, and adjusted his grip.

“Right.” Wielding the poker with great care, he commenced to sort through the ashes, using the point to separate the detritus and the hook to snag out the larger chunks. Before much time had passed, he had a selection of charred remains spread before him on the hearthstone.

“Bone.” He prodded something blackened and flat. “Horn. More bone. Fiber, perhaps from a blanket. No, too thin. A shirt. One with quill work. Here’s another scrap.” His voice got deader and deader. “Wood, carved. Perhaps a picture frame. Aye, here’s a fragment of a photo. This.” He nudged something thin and curved, with shriveled strands of what might have been sinew attached. “This was a Dream Catcher.”

I knew with sudden, sinking certainty what had happened to the decorations from John Stonefeather’s walls.

“Rawhide,” Timber went on, inexorable. “Looks like it had a pattern on it. Or a picture. I think… Aye, I think he burned his drum. There’s none of the frame, but if he’d varnished it, it would have gone up fast.”

The poker clattered to the hearthstones. Timber covered his face with his hands. His hair fell forward like a curtain, hiding him.

“Fuck. He did it. I’d hoped tae be wrong.”

He looked broken. The sight alarmed me.

“What? Timber, what?”

He shook his head without raising his face. “And that’s why Mitch sent me. And why he didna tell me more. I needed tae see it. I needed tae discover it for me ain self.”

“Timber!” I no longer cared about John Stonefeather or what he had done. I only wanted some response from the man in front of me. But he seemed not even to know I was there.

“And I dinna ken what tae do. I canna turn it loose and I canna keep it. But if I put it back, there may not be enough of him left tae hold it. Not and live.” His shoulders shuddered, and I realized with a hopeless sense of shock that he was struggling against tears. “Ah, gods. I canna do it. It’s too hard.”

I saw the moment he lost the fight. He seemed to crumple in on himself. His hands left his face and flexed. His arms wound themselves around his torso in some kind of attempt to contain the pain wracking him, and he rocked with silent sobs. Wrecked.

All hesitation left me. All my uncertainties fled. I scooted forward on my knees and wrapped my arms around him, pressing my body as close as I could. I loved him, and he was suffering. Nothing else mattered.

I held him for a long time.

Chapter Thirteen

A
t length, Timber’s sobs eased. He’d let himself lean against me for a time; now he shifted his weight and drew away.

“Caitlin,” he said, his voice showing no trace of the internal battle he’d just fought. “Let me go now. Please.”

I released him and moved back to give him space. We sat quiet for a while.

“I would like nothing better,” he said at last, not looking at me, “than to lose myself in your body right now.”

“Would it help?”

I glimpsed the twitch of a lip in his candlelit profile.

“Sometimes it does. Sometimes making…” He caught himself. “Sometimes fucking can be potent healing. I feel sore in need of healing.” He stared at the burnt scraps of John Stonefeather’s life with a grief so keen it broke my heart.

“Well?” I prompted. If fucking me would give Timber some relief from whatever troubled him, I was willing. Even if it never signified anything more.

He did smile, then. But he still didn’t look at me.

“You’re a rare creature, Caitlin Ross.” He paused, considering. “All the same, I think I’ll decline. This is not a healing place. There’s been a great wrongness done here.”

“Will you tell me?”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

I bit back a harsh response. I was sick to death of the secrecy around this matter. If Timber’s precious teacher had just told him what to expect, finding it wouldn’t have ravaged him the way it had. Of course, I knew how these initiatory experiences worked. Something in what Stonefeather had done touched on Timber in particular. He had to face it and get past it in his own way, under his own steam. That didn’t mean I had to like it.

“Come on.” Timber started pinching out the candles. “We’re done here.”

With a single candle I had left on an end table showing our way, we started for the front door; we both understood the need for caution had passed. I moved to snuff the last candle, too, when Timber spoke from behind me.

“Wait.”

I turned around to see he had halted in the middle of the room, where he was staring down at the sand painting, seeming deep in thought.

“I saw a broom over by the hearth,” he said after several minutes of reflection. “Bring it here, will you?”

I found it leaning up against the wall with the other fireplace tools: a twig broom with a handle that looked like willow. When I handed it to Timber, he held it for a long moment. I felt his energy draw in to his center, creating a reservoir of powerful intent.

“
Hókhahé,
” he murmured, and swept the broom through the sand painting, destroying it. Grains of colored sand flew up as if caught in a whirlwind, glittering in the light of the single candle.

“That’s a beginning.” Timber passed the broom back to me and I restored it to its place. He offered me no explanation for what he had done, but then, I didn’t need one. If, as I supposed, the sand painting had been functioning as Stonefeather’s statement of intent, while it lasted the intent still exerted its influence in the world. Destroying the painting would disrupt the intent, allowing it to dissipate. So the energy of this house would start to return to normal.

“I’ll need to come back here and do a proper cleansing,” Timber said when I returned. He brushed that recalcitrant lock of hair out of his eyes, exhaustion evident in every gesture. “The studio too. In time. Not now.”

Outside, the night breeze caressed my skin with cool fingers. It felt good, reviving me a little; the house had been stuffy with stagnant air and psychic goo. I released my shield and let the consciousness of renewal wash over me, breathing in freshness. But Timber looked done in. His feet dragged on the front walk and his broad shoulders slumped. I wanted to lend him an arm, and knew he wouldn’t allow it now.

We reached the car and got in. For a time, Timber just sat, hands on the wheel, staring out at the street. I waited.

“I need you to read for me,” he said eventually.

“Read?” I repeated, stupid with sudden weariness. The energy I’d got from the night air had worn off all too soon.

“The cards. It is what you do, aye? And I need advice.”

I mulled it over. Could I act in a Priestess capacity for Timber MacDuff? More to the point, could I act in
that
Priestess capacity? I’d already been several others. The Lover. The Mother. Not the Oracle, though. It would be difficult to find the detachment. And didn’t he have his own sources of wisdom? Why approach mine?

“I don’t know, Timber,” I said. “I may be too close to you to pull it off. I know lots of other readers, though.”

“I’d like it to be you.”

I sank into the denim seat with a sigh. “Let me think about it some more.”

He nodded acquiescence. “May I take you home?”

“Please.”

We drove downtown without speaking any more. When we pulled up in front of Beljoxa’s Eye, I turned to him.

“Meet me at the Trident Coffeehouse at noon. I’ll have an answer for you then.”

I made my way up the walk and into the shop. When I turned around to lock the door behind me, he was still sitting there in the dark car. I didn’t wait to see him drive away.

I lay awake for a long time, considering Timber’s request. I wanted to do it, no question of that. But could I? Would it be possible for me to take a step back from my feelings for the man and receive him as a client? It could go either way. Sometimes being involved with the querent helped. Sometimes it made reading impossible.

I’d have to bring him back to the shop. No way was I going to undertake such an important and charged job in public; it just wouldn’t be safe. I thought having him in the shop would be okay, though. The energy had shifted. Since the Solstice, our night together had lain between us like some rotten thing neither one of us wanted to acknowledge. That had changed. I had admitted I loved him, at least to myself, and acted on it. He, in turn, had admitted his desire for me, if in a sideways fashion. It made things easier. Besides, he’d never been in the reading parlor, and if I had a place of power in the World-That-Is, the parlor was it.

So. I’d need some other safeguards. Things to remind me of my place and purpose. I chewed it over a little while longer, making a list in my head. Yes. I could do this.

I rolled over and went to sleep.

Waking a little before ten in the morning, I made coffee and set to work. Bath first. Not a long one, just enough to get me centered. Nothing in the water but sea salt and a pinch of sage. Nothing too powerful. Nothing the least bit alluring.

After the bath, I dressed in what I thought of as my “Professional Priestess” outfit, an ivory shift dress with Celtic knotwork in white around the neck, arm openings, and hem. I’d embroidered the knotwork myself. It had taken forever, but the effect made the effort worth it. I put on my amber and jet necklace and earrings. Those had given me a bit of a pause, since I’d worn them on the Solstice, but they were part of the regalia. Forsaking my usual chunky sandals, I slipped my feet into a pair of soft ivory flats with satin ribbons that wound around my ankles. I left my hair loose to my waist and brushed it until it shone.

Downstairs, I opened the reading parlor. It seemed like forever since I’d been in there. Not, in fact, since Timber and I had started on this business; I’d seen my last real client the same day he’d come over for the first time. The room needed airing out, so I opened the louvered windows.

I changed out the candles on the sideboard, replacing the old stubs with fresh beeswax tapers. A red pillar went on the table. I lingered over the selection of incense, settling in the end on a cedar and copal stick, which I stuck into the burner in readiness. I spread out my red velvet reading cloth, adjusting the pillar candle to accommodate it. I picked out a deck.

I had about twenty of these, all in identical purple velvet pouches. Under ordinary circumstances, I gave my clients a choice of three, allowing them to examine the cards and find the images that called to them. Timber wasn’t getting an option. For this reading, only one deck would do: a newer one, with pictures and symbols drawn from pre-Christian Celtic shamanic tradition. Or the creator’s notion of it; it made no difference.

I set the deck in its purple pouch in the center of the reading cloth. There. All set. Time to go state my terms.

Timber was waiting for me on a bench outside the coffeehouse, thumbing through a tattered paperback copy of
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
by Joseph Campbell. I wondered if it were his own or if he’d picked it up inside; the Trident doubled as a used book store. At my approach, he glanced up as if sensing me. At first, his face brightened with pure joy, making my heart pound. Then, as the details of my appearance sank in and he grasped their meaning, he began to look rather more solemn and even a little afraid.

When I reached him, he stood up, curling the book in one hand. I decided it was his, an old, familiar friend.

“So.” He cleared his throat. “I take it you’ve decided in my favor.”

“Let’s go inside,” I said.

We got a couple of lattes and a couple of pastries and found an unoccupied table at the back. I allowed Timber to pull out my chair for me. When he sat opposite me, arms crossed on the table in front of him, I gazed at him for a long while, drinking him in. He was beautiful, already familiar to me in every way, and I loved and desired him.

I put it all away.

“Yes. I’ll read for you,” I told him. He relaxed infinitesimally; in spite of his greeting, he hadn’t been quite sure. I went on, “I have a few conditions.”

“Aye, I expect you do. What are they?”

“This is a one shot deal.” I sipped my latte and picked a bite off my pastry. “I’ll give you as much as I can, but if you don’t like the information, there’s no second chance. No begging for another try.” This was standard. I’d learned early that clients could wear you out, asking you to draw card after card, hoping to hear something more, something different. Of course, a local could always make another appointment. Later. Not Timber. I could manage this once.

“I’ll accept that.” He gave me a grave nod. “What else?”

“You need to tell me what this is about.”

He didn’t like it. “Why?”

“Because I’m involved.” Another sip, another bite. “I don’t have to have the information to do the reading. Most people prefer to give me as little as possible to begin with. I get it out of them along the way, all the same.” I flashed him a brief, feral smile. “But in this case… I’m tired of the secrecy. And you’ve been using me for my powers without giving anything back. Not only is that kind of thing rude, it comes back to you. Frequently in ways you don’t like.”

That got to him, especially the part about using me. I saw him flinch. Still, he hesitated.

“May I tell you afterward?”

“After would be fine,” I conceded. “One more.”

“The traditional three, I see,” he remarked with a wry grin.

I chose to ignore him. If it made him feel better to show off his knowledge, it didn’t matter to me.

“You have to pay me. Not in money,” I added when his hand went to the pocket where I knew he kept his cash. “In gravity.”

“Gravity?” He raised an eyebrow, confused.