Homecoming (10 page)

“Before what?” Lyse asked.

Eleanora shook her head.

“So you
made
me go to Georgia,” Lyse continued, her voice shooting up an octave. “Because why? Because you're a witch or something? I don't understand.”

“Because I knew that you were going to follow in my footsteps one day and I wanted to give you a chance to know freedom first—”

“You're nuts,” Lyse said, pushing past Eleanora and storming up the hill.

“You don't even know where you're going,” Eleanora yelled after her.

“So what!” Lyse yelled back at her. “It's not like you really want me here with you, anyway—I'm just some prodigal child come home to do your bidding! Apparently you couldn't wait to get rid of me before.”

Where the hell did that come from?
Lyse thought, surprised by the vehemence in her words.

Hot tears cut a path down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand, quickening her pace as the wine bottles frantically banged into her lower back.

I don't need this shit. I just want to go home,
she thought—but then this raised the question: Where was her home? Was it here in Echo Park with Eleanora, or was it in Athens, where she'd already built a life for herself?

Confused
was not the word for how she felt. It was worse than that. It was like two different people were trapped inside the same body, both wanting to lead entirely different lives. And as much as she thought of herself as an independent thinker, a woman who did what she wanted and listened only to her own heart, it was hard for her to admit that in this moment, she was completely without a compass.

“Lyse, wait!” Eleanora called after her.

The guilt she felt for antagonizing Eleanora took away the energy propelling her forward, and she stopped, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, breathing heavily.

It took Eleanora a few moments to catch up, but when she did she grabbed Lyse's upper arm.

“Don't you dare,” Eleanora said, eyes flashing. “Don't you dare say I don't want you. For God's sake, that's
all
I want.”

Eleanora started to cry, and Lyse felt terrible.

“Don't cry,” Lyse pleaded. “Please.”

Eleanora just shook her head, the sobs coming from deep within her chest.

“I've always wanted you. I've had my failings as your parent. I admit that. But you were the best thing that ever happened to me. I couldn't have asked for a better kid.”

Now Lyse was crying, too—and then they were laughing and crying together, holding on to each other.

“We're silly old things, aren't we?” Eleanora said, tears glistening in the wrinkles around her eyes.

“Pretty silly,” Lyse said, grinning back at her.

A security light winked on above them, bathing them in an orangey glow.

“You think someone's trying to tell us something?” Eleanora asked.

Lyse snorted.

“Yeah. They're saying: Stop blubbering in my driveway.”

“Well, thankfully, Arrabelle's is only a few houses up the way,” Eleanora said.

Holding hands like schoolgirls, they took their time climbing the hill, each one careful not to rush the other. When they reached its crest, Eleanora raised a hand to point out Arrabelle's place—a rough-hewn redwood frame clad in towering sheets of glass.

“
This
is your friend's house?” Lyse asked, staring up at what she could only term as
log cabin
meets
industrial modern
.

Eleanora nodded.

“Pretty impressive, isn't it?”

“To say the least,” Lyse replied.

“Arrabelle comes from a very wealthy family. You'll see when you meet her. She's fancy.”

To Lyse's surprise, Eleanora reached for her hand again.

“Shall we?” Eleanora said, nodding toward the house.

“After you.”

Lyse followed Eleanora up the winding driveway, eyes on the massive front door.

Eleanora rang the bell, and a moment later the porch light came on. With the front entrance illuminated, Lyse could see carvings in the wooden door: abstract patterns and strange symbols that seemed familiar—though she couldn't place them.

She opened her mouth to ask Eleanora about the carvings, but then the door creaked open. Standing in the doorway staring at them was the teenage girl from the coffee shop.

And that was when Eleanora fainted.

A
high-pitched howl tore through the calm, and Arrabelle shivered, trying to shake off the unsettled feeling the sound sparked. She froze in place, the unwieldy bag of ash twisting in her hand, and waited for the feeling to pass.

But it didn't.

Instead, it grew larger, unfurling inside her until she was unable to stop herself from looking over her shoulder, eyes darting into the dark recesses of the woods that surrounded the clearing. She saw nothing. No creature standing in the shadows waiting to devour her.

Rigid with anticipation, she waited a few minutes to see if the sound would come again, but there was only the rasp of her own breath as the tension slowly began to ooze out of her body. She reminded herself she was in the woods, that she was trespassing on the habitat of woodland animals, so of course she would hear their comings and goings. There was absolutely nothing to be frightened of.

“Just a dog,” she murmured to reassure herself, but the eerie sensation that had sneaked up her arms and the back of her neck would not be assuaged by mere words. Because fear—being honest with herself, that was what this was—is instinctual.

Arrabelle was far too old to give a shit about fear. She'd lived too long, seen too much, dealt with too many idiots
not
to have learned how to laugh in its face. She did what she wanted . . . even if it turned out to be difficult, dangerous, or otherwise ill advised—and she
hated
anyone telling her no or trying to dictate what she could and couldn't do.

She had an independent spirit, and that meant she wanted to call her own shots. Fearless. That was how she liked to think of herself.

Fearless and curious.

She was interested in absolutely everything, and this innate curiosity seemed to know no bounds. Especially when it came to the human body and medicine. This was due to both nurture
and
nature, her father being a thoracic surgeon and single dad who'd raised his daughter on his own in the urban wilds of San Francisco. Sure, there'd been a parade of clueless nannies to make sure she was fed, clothed, and sent off to school on time—not that any of them checked to make sure she actually
stayed
in class—but she hardly remembered any of their faces; they were just phantoms passing through her life.

In her memories, it was always just her and her dad.

He may have worked long hours at the hospital, but the time he did spend with her was full of love, acceptance, and amazing stories about his work. She loved listening to him talk about the surgeries he performed, and their dinner table conversation was often so rich with talk of blood and entrails that it put most guests off a second visit.

Time alone without her father was spent exploring the old Victorian row house they lived in: A hoarder's paradise, it was filled with an assortment of strange anthropological artifacts and a library full of bizarre medical tomes whose diagrams gave Arrabelle a keen insight into the secret workings of the human body. Many of these items were in her house now, left to her care after her father's passing. Being surrounded by them made his loss feel less sharp.

She shivered.

It was starting to get really chilly out. Arrabelle could feel the cold settling into her bones, burrowing deep inside her. She wished she hadn't told Devandra she could come at eight—she'd felt guilty and relented because Dev had sounded so sad about not getting to tuck her daughters into bed. But my God, wasn't that what fathers were for? Shouldn't Freddy have to bear some of the burden for their care?

Arrabelle honestly didn't see the point in having children. She was perfectly happy on her own. She couldn't imagine being tied down like Dev. The idea terrified her. She wondered if her own father had ever felt this way. Looking back now, she couldn't pinpoint even a
moment
in her childhood when her father hadn't seemed happy to have her around, so maybe she was just a selfish bitch who liked her independence too much.

She laughed at this. Not because it was funny, but because it was closer to the truth than she cared to admit. And because she was still feeling a little spooked at being out in the woods alone.

“Done.” She spoke the word aloud just to push back the darkness.

Pleased with her own handiwork, she stood up and wiped the ash from her hands, staining the sides of her coveralls. Then she surveyed the eternal circle she'd cast within the circumference of the clearing.

The coven may have called it
eternal
, but to Arrabelle it just looked like a plain old circle. Creating one was a time-consuming aspect of the ritual process—in fact, Arrabelle and Lizbeth had spent the early-morning hours drinking coffee and burning cedar planks in order to get the right consistency of ash—but it was necessary. All covens used it to create a protective energy barrier around themselves before they began any spell. It kept the good stuff in . . . and the
bad
stuff out.

Not that any of them were worried that the bad things would find them here. The clearing was hidden deep within the heart of Elysian Park, away from the miles of walking paths, the police academy, and Dodger Stadium—but not too far from the Dragon, an outcropping of rocks painted to resemble a large blue-eyed reptile whose scales were made of spray-painted pictures and gang tags. The clearing was actually no more than a little glen surrounded by a grove of eucalyptus trees, their green leaves whispering softly whenever they were tickled by the wind.

But there were protective wards around it. Burlap sachets were filled with herbs, stones, ash, and pieces of precious metal—all blessed and imbued with coven magic—and buried deep within the Earth, tucked in around the roots of the trees to create a warded circle around them. Very rarely a weary but well-intentioned hiker would chance upon the clearing, and the infusion of magic buried there would leave them lighter and happier creatures. But, try as they might, none of them ever found the clearing twice.

It was here the coven met to maintain their rituals—rituals carried out all around the world by a multitude of covens, creating a unified power that kept the Earth in balance. And when the balance was subverted, when covens were destroyed—like in the Dark Ages when the blood sisters, or “witches” as the world called them, were routed out of their homes and burned at the stake—terrible things like civil war and genocide occurred. Even Mother Nature got in on the act, conjuring droughts, wild fires, murderous heat waves and cold fronts, earthquakes, and floods.

Arrabelle opened a canvas bag full of thick white tallow candles and began to lay them out in front of her. She needed ten: four at each compass point inside the circle, five for each member of the coven, and one for the initiate—

Another howl rent the air, and this one was closer. Much closer. Arrabelle looked up, her brown eyes searching the woods, but there was only the quiet rustle of the trees and the hiss of the still-damp grass as the wind danced across it.

“Anyone out there?”

She heard the
crunch
of something treading across the grass, flattening the blades with heavy feet. This new sound startled her, immediately shifting all of her senses into high gear. She knew how vulnerable and exposed she was alone in the woods, totally on display to whatever creature was lurking in the trees, so she went on the defensive, picking up one of the white candles in case she had to lob it at a stray dog . . . or worse.

If she stayed put, she'd be safe within the confines of the circle—but then she realized that her blood sisters had to cross the woods to get to her, and who knew what the hell was out there, watching them. She slid her cell phone out of her coveralls pocket and punched in Dev's number.

A moment later she heard the opening strains to the title song from
The Sound of Music
.

“Dammit, Dev, tell me that is
not
the ringtone you use for me!” Arrabelle called out, scowling into the darkness.

“Sorry!” Dev replied, stepping through the circle of eucalyptus as she pushed back the hood of her cloak, exposing her head to the cool night air. She'd taken the long strands of her thick strawberry-blond hair and plaited them, the braids falling like burnished rope over either shoulder.

“You're the one who looks like the Swiss Miss,” Arrabelle said in a teasing tone—instantly feeling better now that she wasn't alone. “I should Julie Andrews
you
on
my
phone.”

“The girls got into my phone and changed my ringtones,” Dev said apologetically, “and I don't know how to change them back.”

She knelt beside Arrabelle, holding up the hem of her long skirts to keep them from getting damp, and picked up four of the candles.

“Let me help you,” she continued. “Two will get things done faster than one.”

“I never say no to that,” Arrabelle replied, looking up at the night sky as the clouds overhead began to shift, bathing the clearing in beams of opalescent moonlight.

“Did you hear the howling?” Dev asked, as she set a candle for each of the cardinal directions. “I think it's someone's dog over on Park. I came in that way and it was really loud.”

Arrabelle nodded as though this were just a passing topic of conversation. She didn't tell Dev how badly the dog's cries had unsettled her.

“—people just leave them out all night,” Dev continued. “That's why they cry. Locked up in a fenced-in backyard—”

“Yup,” Arrabelle said, chiming in at the appropriate moments. Her brain was distracted, wanting a logical explanation for what she'd experienced.

In the end, she chose to believe Dev's theory about neighborhood dogs trapped behind fences. It was easier and less frightening than the alternative.

“Eleanora came for a reading this afternoon—”

Arrabelle nodded.

“I know. She told me.”

Dev had finished placing the candles and was standing in the center of the eternal circle, at loose ends.

“Don't look like that,” Arrabelle said, as she caught the expression on Dev's face. “I know what you're worried about, and it's fine.”

Dev looked relieved.

“She told you?”

“She didn't have to,” Arrabelle said. “I just knew.”

She knew because Eleanora hadn't asked her. She'd waited for the day when Eleanora came to her. Told her that she would be the next in line . . . and it never happened. Eleanora's silence had been more than enough to assure her she was being passed over in favor of someone else.

She'd heard nothing until today—when Eleanora called to ask her to prepare for tonight's induction ceremony.

“I asked her why—” Dev began, but Arrabelle waved her off.

“It's fine. I don't have a problem with it,” Arrabelle said. “I trust Eleanora. She's my blood sister, and the master of my coven.”

Of course, this was all bullshit. Arrabelle had been
pissed
. It was true she did trust Eleanora and had faith in the will of the Dream Journals, but it'd still hurt like a son of a bitch to be passed over. At the moment, it was a wound she didn't dare pick at for fear it would start gushing blood, so she changed the subject.

“Will you hand me the rucksack?”

Dev turned in place, looking for Arrabelle's bag.

“It's just by cardinal north—”

“Got it,” Dev, said, grabbing the bag and bringing it over to Arrabelle.

Arrabelle loosened the tie, and the top of the rucksack fell open. Inside was an old plastic thermos, a double-edged iron Athamé with a coal-black handle, and a stone chalice shaped like the curve of a woman's belly.

She removed each of the items from the bag and set them on a piece of flat sandstone almost hidden in the thick grass. She unscrewed the top on the thermos and held it up for Dev to sniff.

“Smells like stinky tea,” Dev said, grinning. “Do you remember your induction?”

She looked like a schoolgirl when she said this, her eyes wide in the moonlight.

“The Horned God appeared to me, and he looked just like Freddy,” Dev continued, not waiting for Arrabelle's response as she jammed her hands into the pockets of her cloak. “I was worried the Horned God would come as someone else, but, nope, it was Freddy. Not that I ever told him about the ceremony. Can you imagine what he'd think about everything we do?”

Arrabelle could imagine.

“We never talk about this kind of stuff,” Dev continued. “Why is that? Being part of a coven should be like having a perpetual slumber party, but it's not.”

Arrabelle shrugged.

“Don't know.”

“Well, I like sharing with you guys. We're connected in the deepest of ways and I want to feel like we can talk about anything—”

“Had you ever been with anyone other than Freddy back then? When you joined the coven?” Arrabelle asked. She'd long ago learned that the best way to dissemble was to ask someone a question. People loved talking about themselves, and it got you out of the hot seat.