Something Wicked (21 page)

Considering that we were now well under the hill between Cumae and Lake Averno, I hoped he wouldn’t do that again.

“Apparently,” said Ben, his voice hushed, “people would come to the sibyl for advice about everything from national wars to their love lives. Ancient writings speak of the priestess being surrounded by fumes…it’s uncertain whether they meant steam, like from the volcanic activity in this area, or some form of narcotic incense. The word could even mean breath…or souls.”

Souls,
I thought firmly. I’m not sure how I knew, but I did. Maybe because Hekate seemed so connected to ghosts?

I also knew to stop where the passageway we were in intersected with two others, creating a vaulted room. Here the long, hard lines of the hexagonal tunnel rounded into more feminine curved arches. “Here,” I announced. “This is where it would happen.”

At the crossroads, of course.

Stone-slab benches had been constructed, long ago, against several walls—for the sibyl, or for her customers? Sheets of sunlight streamed into the chamber from the world above, partitioning the underground darkness. I knew this was the place….

And I knew that the actual magic happened even farther in. So I entered the next tunnel to the right and kept walking. Now I was going first, with both Ugo and Ben close behind me.

“There is little more,” protested Ugo, as I headed down more worn steps—and he was right about this route, anyway. The soft rock had caved in, cutting off the passageway completely.

I shook my head. “No, there’s more.”

And I skirted past both surprised men, heading up the stairs for the main chamber and the third passageway.

“Once, this cave connects to Lago d’Averno,” Ugo agreed. “But this was long ago. The passageway, it no longer goes through.”

And yet, as I headed down the stairs off this next tunnel, I knew it had to go a
little
farther. Because I could sense the magic of the grail, somewhere ahead of me, somewhere below me—

I stopped abruptly. The stairs vanished underwater.

“You see,” announced Ugo, coming up behind me.

But I continued down the stairs, wading into the water. Damn, it was cold!

Ugo called, “Wait! This is not safe.”

But safe or not, it also didn’t go through. By the time I’d waded bust deep, I’d reached the far wall. The only way to keep going would be to dive…and who knew how long it would continue before the passageway resurfaced to air?

Besides, my arm was in this damned cast. I couldn’t swim.

It couldn’t end like this.
It couldn’t!

“Please, Signorina Trillo,” pleaded Ugo. “Please, come to safety. You—”

He cut off abruptly, I think due to something Ben did, since Ben more quietly asked, “What are you sensing, Katie?”

I would have answered him, too.

But then came the laugh, echoing down from far above us through one of the rough-hewn skylights.

Victor’s laugh.

B
y the time we’d made our way back to the surface, Victor was long gone. Ugo got another guard to drive us back to the Villa Minerva—after laying towels down on the backseat, since I was still sloshing as I walked.

Even after a long shower, a change of clothes and a quick call to make sure Eleni was okay, I didn’t feel any better. I just stood there, alone in our room, staring out the French doors into the garden, and felt defeated.

Why did this have to be so hard?

“You expected it to be easy?”
teased Diana. But when I turned toward the spot where I’d imagined her voice, she wasn’t there. Instead, Ben was opening the door with a cautious knock.

“Signor Vecchio knows of a department store that’s still open in Pozzuoli,” he said. “He’s offered to drive us there to get you some new shoes.”

I glanced back out the doors. The sun hadn’t even set, and we were talking about stores “still open”? I suddenly wished I was back home in Chicago. “You go ahead.”

The long silence, behind me, was thick enough to drown in. I turned and faced Ben. “What?”

He looked incredulous. “You want me to go shoe shopping for you?”

“No! I just meant—if you want to go to town, go ahead. I’m fine here.”

“With these.” He picked up my wet sneaker and the soggy, mismatched brown loafer, which I’d left by the bed.

“For now, yeah.” I didn’t like the stubborn furrow of his brow. “Look, I didn’t ask you to set up a ride for us. I don’t want to go out. All I’ve been doing for over a week is going, going, going, and what good has it done?”

“You said you sensed the chalice down there.”

“Where I can’t get at it!”

Ben shrugged and dropped the shoes with two squishy thuds. “You’re a witch. Think of something.”

It would have been a great exit line, except that he stopped before opening the door to look over his shoulder. “In case there’s any confusion when I get back, Kate, the secret password is ‘Relationship.’”

Then
he left.

Before I could throw anything at him. Not that I wasn’t tempted. Had he guessed at what had happened between me and Victor? Or was he just pissed that I’d mistaken Victor for him at all?

I flopped back on the room’s one bed to sulk.

“‘When the moon is full and high,’”
warbled Diana. She never was much of a singer.

“Shut up,” I told her.

“You heard Ben. You want to find the chalice? Be a witch.”

I rolled over with a groan, face first in the pillow. Now my words were muffled. “It’s not that easy.”

“It’s what you are,”
she persisted, from somewhere behind me.
“What you were born to. Stop ignoring it.”

Rather than argue with a freaking
dead woman,
I rolled off the bed, stuffed my feet into my wet, mismatched shoes, and squished out into the garden. Turns out “garden” was another way of saying “yard.” The Villa Minerva had a huge one, distantly framed with a neat, vine-covered wall of the same buff stone that made up the house.

Yeah. I was aware that a simple low wall wouldn’t be enough to keep Victor away, if he knew where we were staying. But when the thought of going back in occurred to me, it just pissed me off. Was I supposed to stay inside, behind locked doors, for the rest of my life?

Italian sunlight fell gently across me and the lush lawn, shadows long with the day’s lateness. Lemon and orange trees sent a wonderfully clear, clean fragrance across the yard—garden—whatever. Witches celebrate mid-March as a time of renewal and growth and the return of the light.

Until that moment, I hadn’t fully realized just how much time I’d spent out at night lately…or underground. Now, wandering, I found myself appreciating the vines and flowers and butterflies and birds as if it had been years. Off to one side of the large yard, guarded by a tall hedge, a clear blue swimming pool beckoned. Back home, there might still be snow. Here in Italy, it was almost seventy degrees—certainly warm enough to swim…if I weren’t wearing this stupid cast.

One more week, I reminded myself—that’s when the nasty fiberglass tube was supposed to come off. I couldn’t wait. It itched. It felt loose. And maybe worst of all…

I’d been wearing the damned thing since Diana’s death.

My hand had been broken at the same time my old life ended.

Suddenly it felt as if my whole life was imprisoned in some hard, smelly, itchy confine…and I wanted it off. Now.
Desperately.

To know, to will, to
dare
…
I had some medical knowledge, though I’m sure my orthopedist would question that, if he knew what I was considering. I had the willpower. But did I dare…?

Damn right I did.

So I found Mrs. Vecchio and borrowed a pair of her garden shears. Then I went back to Ben’s and my room, disinfected them—and I slowly, carefully, cut my cast off by myself.

Do not try this at home!
This went against everything medical training advised. It’s unwise to stick anything into a cast because your skin is so tender that it’s easy to cause an infection. And, of course, it’s not smart to remove a cast before your bones are completely healed. But I was only a week away from my doctor’s predicted deadline. By now, the break would have pretty much knitted…it just needed a little extra protection, for a little while longer.

I could be careful. And if I couldn’t? Too late now. With the first crunching cut of the shears, I was committed.

In a few minutes, I’d freed my hand, my arm. It looked terrible—the skin too pale and ashy, the hairs too dark. But when I washed my hands with warm water, carefully sudsing up to my elbows, and then rubbed some lotion on, it felt…
new.
Fragile, maybe, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. But full of possibility, too.

Before cleaning and returning Mrs. Vecchio’s shears, I butchered the sleeves and neckline out of one of my older T-shirts, so that it fell off one shoulder. I turned one of my two pairs of jeans into cutoffs. Then I went swimming, damn it.

In Italy.

Surrounded by the butterflies and the flowers.

Stretched out on a deck chair to dry in the orange sunset, I closed my eyes with complete satisfaction. Maybe Victor
had
broken me.

But maybe I’d healed.

When the moon is full and high,

Do not seek me in the sky.

Look below, wear pads of light,

Fairy seekers from the night….

I opened my eyes, suspicious now. This was the second time today I’d thought of that—what Diana and I had called the “Fairy Seekers” song as children. It didn’t have anything to do with goddess grails or Hekate. At least, I hadn’t thought it did.

But…I sat up. Maybe I was still missing something.

Be a witch,
Diana had said. And witches celebrate holidays other than the solstices, the equinoxes and the greater sabbats.

Witches celebrate the full moon.

By the time Ben got back to our room, carrying two shopping bags by their rope handles, I’d written the whole thing down.

“Look!” I exclaimed, handing him the page of Villa Minerva stationary.

“What happened to your cast?” he asked, looking at my hand instead of at the song.

“I ditched it.”

“You can do that?”

Instead of answering, I gestured at the paper. Only then, as he began to read it, did I notice how good Ben looked in a pale green, button-down shirt. “Hey, nice threads.”

“I decided not to be so predictable,” he muttered, continuing to read, then slanted his gaze back to me. “Oh, yeah. The secret password—”

“Shut up, Ben.” But I smiled when I said it, because even with the nice shirt he was so obviously Ben. And that was such a good thing.

He smiled back, one of his here-and-gone smiles. “What is this?”

“It’s an old song Diana and I used to sing with our mom.”

“I thought you didn’t know any rhymes about goddess cups?”

“I didn’t think it
was
about a goddess cup. It’s about the full moon.”

He squinted at it. “Are you sure this is supposed to be ‘fairy,’ like Tinkerbell, and not ‘ferry,’ like a boat?”

Of course I wasn’t sure—we’d sung it, not spelled it out, and what kid thinks of boats when they can think of fairies? At my urging, Ben sat down with the song and marked places where he thought different words might fit…and damned if it didn’t make more sense.

When the Moon is full and high

Do not seek Me in the sky

Look below, where paths of light

Ferry seekers from the night.

Only when the moon is round

Can those not damned go underground

And find what those, far in your past

Did set aside so I might last.

They who foretold the future knew

That someone wicked wise like you

Could claim my treasure, hid below

Where my cold moonbeams rarely go.

I was bouncing with impatience by the time Ben raised his dark gaze to me. “It’s someplace that you can only see on the full moon?”

I nodded. “Like maybe the Cave of the Sibyl, with those openings to the surface.”

“Except the cave was a dead end. Wasn’t it?” He looked worried. “You aren’t going to suggest we break into the park, sneak into the cave and try to swim under that one place where the water comes in, are you?”

I shook my head. “Remember what Ugo said? The Cave of the Sibyl once connected all the way to Lake Averno. So…isn’t it possible that there’s an entrance on this side, too?”

Ben began to smile. “And the full moon?”

I nodded. “Tonight.”

Now he grinned. “Good thing I bought you new shoes.”

Ben looked up the time of the moonrise on his laptop computer. Together we took the path Signor Vecchio had told us about, down to Lake Averno, with about fifteen minutes to spare.

Ben insisted on going first, but his step slowed as he reached the beach. “Did you do this? You know…” He wiggled his fingers, like doing magic.

“Do what?” I looked, and grinned. “Nope. But I should have.” And hey, coincidences are a kind of magic, too.

Turns out, Villa Minerva owned a rowboat.

Ben rowed us toward the center of the lake, the oars making soft, splashy noises. For a while, I just watched him row. It showed off his shoulders, his arms, the way he gritted his teeth when he exerted himself. I’d noticed that one of the bags he brought back from Pozzuoli was a pharmacy bag, and somehow knew it held condoms…but I didn’t know if we would ever get to use them, after tonight. But I was distracting myself.

Be a witch,
Diana had said. So I spread my arms and stretched my whole being out around us, into the seemingly bottomless water, into the cloud-streaked night sky. From the center of the perfectly round crater, it was easy to see the rim of what had once been a volcano. It was harder to imagine a mountaintop where there was now air, or fiery lava where there was now water.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Nature changes, sometimes explosively. That was a kind of magic, too.

I could see the light, first a silver glow against the purple dusk over the rim of the crater—and I began to feel drunk again. Swoopy. Dizzy.
Damn it,
I started to think…

Then it occurred to me not to fight it.
I am the daughter of a witch, the granddaughter of a witch, the sister of a witch.

The moon crested over the hill, and
wham!

The power blasted right through me. I was drowning…floating…lost….

I am named for the Goddess of Witchcraft.

The power rolled me, crushed me. Not fighting it may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Opening myself to that kind of energy felt suicidal. I could no sooner step off a high cliff, no sooner inhale deeply underwater, no sooner…

But I had to. And I had magical training to help.

Words,
I remembered.
Words.
So I whispered, “I…am…Hekate.”

Suddenly, instead of pounding over me, the power was rushing through me. I could feel it streaming out of my fingertips, beaming out of my eyes, flowing off the ends of my hair. And then…

And then, I just was. Me. Katie, strong and healthy and whole. I hadn’t lost myself after all. Maybe I’d found myself.

And speaking of
finding…

The moon cast a path of silver over the rim of the lake, across its mirrored surface and to a rocky area to the west.

I pointed. “That way.”

My voice only shook a little.

Ben nodded and put his back into rowing, so casually accepting that I finally had to ask.

“Did you notice anything? A minute ago?” He’d been facing me.

He widened his eyes as he pulled on the oars. “Should I have?”

Didn’t you see me glow?
But instead of asking that, I just laughed. It didn’t matter if he’d seen it or not. That was the importance of the fourth element of magic—not just knowing, willing and daring, but keeping silent. Sometimes, it’s enough for the witch herself to understand what has happened.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” Ben was breathing hard now, and no wonder. “But have you noticed—” he glanced over his shoulder, in the direction we were headed “—that we’re on a crash course with some rocks?”

“Some rocks, and a cave entrance.” No way would I have seen the cave, if the moonlight hadn’t pointed the way. And to be honest, I still didn’t “see” it—just the possibility of it. It looked like a ledge, with shadows underneath. It was barely high enough for the rowboat to fit under the shelf, much less us.

“Lie down,” I suggested, sliding off my wooden seat into the foot well of the boat, onto my hands and knees, ready to crouch even lower.

He looked over his shoulder again. “I don’t see a cave.”

“It’s there,” I insisted.

Ben dragged the oars to slow us down, sending ripples away from us across the lake’s dark surface. “And if it isn’t?”