Homecoming (3 page)

Lyse nodded, but inside she was still kicking herself for her slip of the tongue.

“But here we are,” Eleanora said, turning her cart into the doorway of the tiny neighborhood bodega.

“
Hola
, Eleanora,” the birdlike woman behind the cash register sang brightly as Lyse followed Eleanora inside.

Together, they made their way to the back of the store, where the refrigerator case sat humming, cold bottles of red-labeled organic milk stacked neatly inside it.

“
Hola
yourself, Juana,” Eleanora replied, raising a skeletal hand in the bird woman's direction as she opened the refrigerator, seeming to pause as she caught sight of her reflection in the glass-fronted case.

Lyse wondered if her great-aunt saw what she saw: sunken cheeks and bruised skin stretched taut over orbital bones. A wraith. The walking dead.

“Is that all today, Eleanora?” Juana asked, the question cutting through Lyse's thoughts like a freshly sharpened knife.

Eleanora had already moved to the checkout. Lyse joined her and was surprised to see an iPad on the Formica countertop instead of a more traditional cash register. It was a surreal hint of technology in an otherwise old-fashioned setting.

“That's all,” Eleanora said, retrieving a five-dollar bill from her wallet as Juana tapped the price into the iPad screen. “And you remember Lyse, my grandniece?”

Juana smiled, her face taking on a beatific glow. “Of course. It's been a long time. But yes.”

Juana was right. It
had
been a long time, Lyse realized. At least five years since she'd last been home to visit. For some reason, Eleanora had always made the biyearly trek to see Lyse in Georgia, but never the other way around.

Setting the brown paper–wrapped jar of milk inside the basket of her metal rolling cart, Eleanora headed for the door.

“See you in a few days,” she called back to Juana, the
whoosh
of the air curtain above the entrance ruffling her short gray hair as she stepped outside.

“Little one,” Juana said, just as Lyse turned to follow Eleanora out the door. “Wait a moment.”

Lyse nodded, uncertain as to what the birdlike woman wanted. She watched as Juana stepped away from the counter, then picked her way through to the back of the store, disappearing into the stockroom. Through the plate-glass window, Lyse kept one eye on Eleanora, who was standing on the sidewalk, adjusting her Windbreaker.

“Here. For you.”

Juana was back, thrusting a cylindrical brown-wrapped package into her hands.

“I don't—” Lyse started to say, but Juana shook her head.

“It's a gift. Burn it in the house.”

She smiled at Lyse, her tan skin surprisingly soft and wrinkled under the fluorescent lighting.

“Thank you,” Lyse said.

The package felt awkward in her hands as she left the bodega and stepped out into the heat of the day.

“What did she give you?” Eleanora asked, her sharp eyes glued to the package.

“Don't know,” Lyse said, shaking her head. “She said to burn it.”

“Hmmph,” Eleanora replied as they continued up Echo Park Avenue, the cart rattling softly as it hit each crack in the sidewalk, the sound lulling in its consistency.

Lyse began to unwrap the package, peeling away the stiff brown paper to reveal the contents nestled inside.

“Interesting,” she said, as she pulled out the long, cylindrical saint's candle, its smooth glass surface etched with the blue outline of a young woman in a headscarf. A small child sat upon the woman's lap, its head bowed under the weight of a spiked crown.

“Mother of the Virgin Mary,” Eleanora said, glancing over at the candle.

“You mean Saint Anne?” Lyse murmured, reading the thick block lettering just below the image. “She was the mother of the Virgin Mary? I didn't know that.”

“She's also the patroness of unmarried women,” Eleanora snorted. “I think Juana's trying to tell you something.”

Lyse groaned.

“Great.”

Eleanora smiled as she took Lyse's arm, leaning on her as they walked.

“Watch out, or you'll end up an old spinster like me.”

“You're not that old,” Lyse said, then paused—because this made her think of other things . . . like the fact that Eleanora was too young to be dying.

“You're sweet,” Eleanora said, patting Lyse's hand.

They walked on in silence after that, the sun bright above them, Lyse enjoying the exotic smell of the Spanish jasmine that clung from the gates and fences of the houses on Echo Park Avenue.

“Well, should I burn it tonight, then?” Lyse asked suddenly, holding the candle up, surprised at how heavy it felt in her hand.

“Yes, burn it,” Eleanora said, her voice strangely earnest. “Burn it down until there's nothing left.”

They reached the front entrance to the old bungalow on Curran, the house Lyse had called home the whole of her teenage years, and Eleanora pulled a set of keys from the pocket of her red Windbreaker—even in the heat, her great-aunt professed to being cold.

“I have some business to take care of,” Eleanora said, tucking the keys into Lyse's hand, their warmth making her palm sweat. “Go inside and take a nap—you look beat.”

Lyse didn't argue with her great-aunt. She suddenly felt so exhausted she could hardly keep her eyes open. Impulsively, she leaned over and kissed Eleanora's powdery cheek.

“We need to talk when you get back,” Lyse said, as a yawn escaped her lips.

“Yes, we do,” her great-aunt agreed. “There's so much to discuss—and so little time left to us.”

“Please, don't say it like that. I can't bear it,” Lyse said, pushing back a wave of panic at the thought of her great-aunt's approaching death. “I just . . . We'll talk when you get back, okay? About doctors and second opinions . . .”

Eleanora nodded as Lyse trailed off.

“Sleep as much as you can, Bear. I need you at your sharpest tonight.”

Lyse gave her great-aunt a funny look.

“What does that mean?”

“It's nothing terrible,” Eleanora said, offering Lyse the handle of the metal rolling cart. “It's good, actually. And I promise we'll talk about it more when I get back.”

With a forced smile, Lyse took the cart, dragging it with her up the stairs. At the top, she turned back around, but Eleanora was already hurrying down the street, her Windbreaker flashing bloodred in the sparkling light.

From her perch high atop Eleanora's patio stairs, Lyse was able to look out over Curran Street, at the bungalows and Craftsman homes, the foliage and greenery that peeked out from every garden. Being home after so long made her feel like a teenager again.

I'd forgotten how glorious this place is,
she thought—then shivered when something wet landed on the tip of her nose.

Inexplicably, her first thought was
blood
, but when she looked up at the once-blue sky, she saw it was now a foreboding steel gray—and the splash of wetness was merely a drop of rain. She laughed at her own morbid imagination, then yawned as she rolled the cart toward the front door of Eleanora's bungalow.

Sleep sounded like the greatest thing in the world.

D
evandra Montrose woke from an oddly restless slumber knowing that Eleanora was going to call on her. This meant she would definitely do her receiving in the kitchen, where it was more comfortable, and where she could enjoy the aroma of freshly baking candied gingerbread (for her younger daughter's school bake sale) while she met with the master of the Echo Park coven—of which Dev was a member.

Usually when she was going to do a reading, she set up shop in the converted garage, aka The Mucho Man Cave, that her partner, Freddy, used to host their popular Echo Park Weekend Bar—and the occasional weeknight poker game for his crew of guy friends—but today was different. Today would be about coven business, and, with its cedar-lined walls and industrial-grade forest-green carpeting that stank of peanuts, cigar smoke, and stale beer, The Mucho Man Cave was not the most appropriate setting for that.

Besides, The Mucho Man Cave always seemed a little sad during the week when there were no neighbors crowding around its homemade tiki bar, sipping cold beer as they discussed neighborhood gossip and flirted with one another.

Of course, the old garage always perked up when Dev used it for one of her readings, her saints' candles and burnished iron censer of smoky sandalwood incense giving the space a rich honey glow and transforming it from a part-time bar and den of poker-playing iniquity into a mysterious world of magical tarot. Though there was always a faint tinge of stale beer underneath the earthy sandalwood, if you knew to smell for it.

Well, if she'd guessed correctly, then The Mucho Man Cave was safe from her machinations today. Eleanora was already more than well acquainted with the spirit world and would have no need for the trappings of the trade, the things she normally employed to make her clientele feel as though they were magically slipping beyond the veil.

But first there were two children to get to school, a client to consult with on strawberry icing, and a dog that needed a walk before Dev was finally free to get out her well-worn Rider-Waites—the slick yellow cards and their whimsical figures more appealing to her than some of the darker, edgier decks—and prepare herself mentally for the surprise reading.

Everyone knew face value was not what you got with tarot cards. Intuition was the name of the game when it came to fortune-telling—Dev's specialty—and either you were born with the chops or you weren't. Nothing analytical or logical about what she did; it was all in the old gut.

Though her children swore up and down that Dev possessed untold psychic abilities, she was not gifted with telepathy, clairvoyance, or any of the other psychic phenomena they ascribed to her. Not that she let them in on this secret. She needed all the help she could get raising two wily, intelligent little girls—and allowing them to believe their mother had eyes in the back of her head could only help her cause. Sadly, divination was her only gift—which meant she was forced to use good old-fashioned logic to make educated guesses about everything else. In point of fact, she expected her visitor was going to be Eleanora Eames, not because she'd had any portent-bearing dreams but because Eleanora had called Dev's number twice the day before, refusing to leave a message on either attempt. She assumed her friend was well aware of the caller ID feature and just didn't give a damn about leaving hang-ups on people's answering machines—which made Dev think a lecture on the finer points of twenty-first-century telephone etiquette might be in order.

While she waited for her visitor to arrive, Dev set a battered copper kettle on the front eye of the white porcelain O'Keefe and Merritt stove and turned the flame to high, spooning Russian tea into two of her favorite lapis-blue earthenware mugs. The day before, in an attempt to get herself into an autumnal mood, she'd made the first batch of the family favorite fall/winter tea, but now the little potbellied jar full of sugar, Tang, cinnamon, clove, and instant tea mixture sat on the butcher-block countertop looking lost and forlorn in its spot between the aluminum mixer and a vintage owl-shaped cookie jar.

Maybe she wasn't getting the spooky October vibe yet because the house still felt light and airy from its summer incarnation. Spying the row of beige seashells up on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, the ones the girls had collected during a family trip to Laguna Beach in June, Dev decided clearing out the summer bits and bobs would go a long way to getting her into a fall state of mind. Tonight when Freddy got home from work, she'd ask him to drag down the boxes of autumn-themed decorations from the attic, so she could get the house ready for Halloween. She knew her daughters, Marji and Ginny, would fall all over themselves to help her turn the house over—and Freddy was always down for getting into the spooky spirit, setting up a life-size replica of a human skeleton (bought at the yard sale of one of their neighbors, who was a retired biology professor) to sit at the tiki bar and scare the guests who frequented The Mucho Man Cave.

She would personally oversee the hanging of the Halloween pièce de résistance: her great-great-grandmother Lucretia's mourning wreath.

When placed above the mantelpiece of the sitting room fireplace, the horseshoe-shaped wreath—mounted to a disc of muted mother-of-pearl and set behind glass—was a real showstopper. Fashioned by Lucretia's daughters when she died in 1891, it was an eerie sight: one large six-petal flower and four smaller three-petal flowers intricately woven from the strands of Lucretia's own famous raven hair.

Over the years, the mourning wreath had been handed down through the Montrose family from eldest daughter to eldest daughter—with Dev being the latest in the line of succession. When Dev's older daughter, Marjoram, came of age at eighteen, the wreath would pass into her keeping and Dev would no longer be responsible for it. Though she'd be sad to see it go—handling the memento mori always gave her a visceral thrill—she was proud of the keepsake's lineage and pleased that her daughter would be part of the long line of women who'd looked after it.

Startled by the near-simultaneous
yip
of the teakettle and the ring of the doorbell, Dev turned off the gas and trundled over to the mudroom, gratified to see Eleanora's silhouette shifting behind the café-curtained window. She'd been right about the identity of her visitor.

“I thought you might be dropping by,” Dev said, holding the back door open so her friend could enter.

There was a
whoosh
as the wind tried to follow Eleanora inside, but Dev closed the door firmly behind them, leaving the wind no recourse but to bang the storm door open and shut in protest.

“Wicked wind. Just started up out of the blue as I was walking over,” Eleanora said, shrugging off her scarlet Windbreaker and hanging it up on one of the wooden pegs that protruded from the beadboard wall.

Dev frowned as a sense of dread so palpable she could taste it washed over her. The short strawberry-blond hairs on the back of her neck prickled to life, and her legs felt unreliable beneath her as the room began to spin. She leaned against the wall, using it to hold herself up, her stomach lurching. She bit her lip hard, the abruptness of the pain taking the edge off her nausea, but even when she closed her eyes, the spinning sensation continued.

Get hold of yourself,
she thought, tasting blood on her tongue.
You control your body, not the other way around.

Mustering her strength, she pushed the bad feeling away and forced her eyes open. As she did, she found her gaze settling on Eleanora's scarlet Windbreaker where it hung twisted on its peg in between the shiny primary yellow of Marji and Ginny's raincoats.

“I see you already have the cards out,” she heard Eleanora saying as she strode past Dev into the kitchen.

As soon as Eleanora crossed the threshold separating the mudroom from the rest of the house, the hum of ambient noise dropped out, replaced by a weighty silence interrupted only by the rise and fall of Dev's own shallow breathing. A halo of darkness encircled her peripheral vision, limiting her view until all she could see was the scarlet of Eleanora's Windbreaker, so deep and red and pulsing with life it resembled the ragged flesh of a still-beating heart. Confused, she tried to tear her eyes away from the sight, but her gaze merely slid down to the jacket's cuff. There she spied a single droplet of glistening liquid, suspended from the cuff's edge like a translucent red jewel.

Dev watched as it grew in size, liquid from the sodden jacket sluicing down like dozens of small tributaries heading toward the ocean, feeding the droplet until it was so heavy that gravity couldn't hold it anymore, and it plummeted to Earth.

Strange,
Dev thought, her eyes free now to drift over to the window,
I didn't realize it was raining
.

But it
wasn't
raining—at least not yet. Outside, the sky had grown gray and swollen with the
promise
of rain, but this promise had not yet been kept.

It's in the blood.

The phrase resonated in her brain, unbidden, and she shivered.

She returned her gaze to the nylon Windbreaker but was unsurprised to find it no longer nestled in between the shiny yellow raincoats. In its place, a scarlet arc of arterial blood had been splashed across the mudroom wall, the viscous liquid dripping down the beadboard and onto the floor, where it pooled in a thick circle. Dev swallowed, her mouth dry as old bone, but she didn't panic, just lifted her eyes from the circle of dark liquid on the floor and once more saw the twisted folds of Eleanora's now-dry Windbreaker.

She blinked—sure her eyes were playing tricks on her . . . or were they? She shuddered, realizing the vision for what it was: an omen of very, very bad things to come.

“Are you all right?”

Eleanora's voice startled Dev, and she jumped.

“I just saw . . .” she said, her words trailing off as she turned around to face the older woman, who was standing in the doorway, leaning her gaunt body against the polished white doorframe.

“What did you see?” Eleanora asked, her bloodless lips compressed into a thin line.

“I . . .” Dev began, but faltered as her words failed her. She shrugged helplessly. “I don't know. It was . . . bad, whatever it was. Blood—”

“You saw blood?” Eleanora asked, and Dev nodded.

“Blood, on the wall, by the kids' raincoats. I felt it, too, inside me—and this phrase keeps repeating in my head:
It's in the blood.
”

Eleanora took a deep breath and visibly relaxed.

“What?” Dev asked. “What does it mean?”

“I've told Lyse that I'm dying, and she's come home. That's what you were seeing. The die is cast.”

“I'm glad you've done it,” Dev said. “Does she know anything about us yet, about the coven—”

“Not a thing,” Eleanora said. “I've kept all of it from her for so long that it feels strange to finally tell her. I wanted to give her the freedom to go live her own life for as long as I could, but now I need her. The time has come for Lyse to learn who and what we are. I've already spoken to Arrabelle and we'll perform the induction ritual tonight. She's going to let the others know.”

Dev was surprised.

“Tonight?”

“We're running out of time, Devandra.” Eleanora sighed. “You read Marie-Faith's last letter. You know what it means. Why she sent Daniela to us. Things are speeding up and when I die, you will need the fifth. You'll need Lyse's help.”

“Yes, of course,” Dev said. “Freddy has a poker game tonight, but I'll see if he can feed the girls first . . .”

“It's not a question of
if
, Devandra,” Eleanora said, “but
when
. Those who betrayed Marie-Faith
will
come after us and anyone else who stands in their way. They want what we are protecting, and they will do anything to get it.”

As if this answered everything and left no need for further explanation, Eleanora turned on her heel and made her way back to the kitchen. Dev stood alone in the mudroom pondering her friend's last words. She knew Eleanora was right—even if she didn't want to believe it.

It's in the blood.

The phrase sang in her brain again, and Dev found herself repeating it under her breath as she returned to the kitchen, where she found Eleanora standing by the stove, looking expectantly at the teakettle.

“The kettle's hot. Shall I pour us a cup?”

“I'll do it,” Dev said, taking the kettle and adding hot water to the mugs before transferring them to the table. “Hope Russian tea is all right?”

“Fine,” Eleanora said, carefully settling herself into one of the yellow linen spindle-backed chairs and gently resting her bony elbows on the damask tablecloth.

Dev opened a cabinet and took down a tin of homemade sugar cookies, setting the tin along with two chipped blue plates onto the table. Then she took her seat opposite Eleanora.