Soulbound: A Lone Star Witch Novel (7 page)

My knees tremble and I’m shaking so badly that I slosh my drink over the rim of the highball glass. It’s the cold wet on my hand that brings me back. I glance around to see if anyone noticed—after all, I’m not exactly inconspicuous in this getup. But everyone seems to be doing their studious best to ignore me, as usual, and for once, I’m grateful for the anonymity.

Still, as I slam my drink back in one long swallow, I can’t help but wonder.
What the hell was that?

After dodging Micah for the third time in as many hours, I duck out of the house and into my mother’s garden. She and my father are already out here, preparing for the most important celebration of the year, and while I’m not keen on running into either one of them I figure being outside is a million times better than staying in the house and trying to avoid Micah, Salima and anything else my mother has cooked up for me.

I cut through the garden to the fence, and as I walk along it, I’m overwhelmed by the peacefulness of the night. The storm from earlier passed by a couple of hours ago, leaving the sky clear and the night glistening with the residue of leftover raindrops. Standing out here, surrounded by this tranquility as I watch the final preparations for the Solstice, I can almost pretend those terrifying moments earlier in the parlor never happened. After all, with my track record, it’s hard to imagine they could mean anything—except that being at home completely stresses me out.

It’s the only explanation, unless, of course, that belladonna my mother slipped me actually did the impossible. Which it didn’t. I lock the thought away as soon as it comes to me. Of all the places I’ve been—or want to go in my life—that is definitely not on the destination list.

I glance over at where my family is setting the altar. Normally, I’d be in the middle of the preparations, helping my family and our advisors with any nonmagical tasks, but right now it seems wiser to keep the length of the garden between us. Especially with the fulminating looks my father keeps giving me. So, instead of joining the others, I content myself with watching from behind the rows upon rows of plants. Besides being queen, my mother is one of the great potion-makers of our time, and there are few natural ingredients she doesn’t grow somewhere on the property.

Here, in her garden, it’s all flowering bushes, vines,
and a few trees, along with a variety of stand-alone flowers that she harvests whenever she needs them.

Bright and happy marigolds to cleanse and foretell.

Soft and sweet peonies for protection and prosperity.

Wide-open primrose for truth-telling.

Delicate and lacy rue for healing.

Daisies for lust. Laurel for love. Lilies and mugwort and patchouli for fertility and row upon row of hydrangea for fidelity.

People are nothing if not predictable in what they want.

I turn to the right, watch as my mother clips some clover and dragon’s blood. She’ll use the clover for cleansing her tools while the dragon’s blood will amp up the power of her spells. Not that her magic needs any help, but there are a lot of people here and the magic she generates will need to touch them all.

Just beyond the garden, a crowd has gathered. Though many of our coven will do their own Solstice ritual later, gathering here at my house—sharing this holiday with my family and so many others—is a tradition few who live in Ipswitch choose to ignore. Anticipation lights up the air around me, their excitement and exuberance nearly tangible as the clock creeps a little closer to midnight. It’s hard not to get caught up in it, even for someone who has no power. Especially since tonight is perfect for the Solstice
Seshaw
, or prayer ritual.

The air is crisp but not too cold, while the fence and the forest shield us from the shadowy presence of the wind that moans through the wild, untamed forest that lies a few hundred feet beyond the boundaries of the garden.

Stars twinkle against the ebony backdrop of the sky above and a full, vanilla moon hangs invitingly in the center of the display. For a moment, just one moment, I wish for a tiny drop of the power that pulses all around
me. I would love to draw down the moon, just for a moment. It’s a simple spell and one I’ve seen performed hundreds of times, but it’s one of my mother’s least favorites so I know it will not be cast tonight. Which is a shame because I can almost feel the energy boost now.

In the center of the garden, my father and siblings have joined my mother to finish preparations for the ritual. Spells are murmured as they place nine candles to mark the boundaries of the circle.

One for each of the shares of magic that fell to Egypt over four thousand years ago.

One for each member of my family—except for me.

It’s not a deliberate oversight, simply the way things have always been. Which is fine by me—especially as I don’t have the magic necessary to hold what would be my part of the circle if they ever decided to give me the chance anyway.

Besides, I’m not exactly dressed for it. Every one of my family members wears a long emerald robe that skims the ground. My mother and sisters are also draped in charms and amulets meant to both honor and release the ancient magic, while Donovan and my dad each wear a crystal pendant big as a baby’s fist.

They are the protectors, and the enforcers, of the circle. My mother is the caster, my sisters the binders. And I, along with the rest of the coven who have turned out for the ceremony, am the observer.

But not yet. It is not quite midnight and there is still work to be done, traditions to be observed.

My mother walks to the altar set up in the center of the circle. On it she places the Rw, a heavily embossed book with covers made of pure Egyptian gold and pages of the most fragile papyrus. It has been passed down to my mother from the women in her family—mother, grandmother, great-grandmother—for well over a thousand years and it contains the most sacred texts and
spells of Heka. Though it is my mother’s, she won’t touch it again until the ceremony is over. First and foremost because it contains the energy of ages, energy that can bleed into and color her own
Seshaw
, and secondly, because she doesn’t have to. She has the entire book, and all of its spells, memorized.

As do I. Not that I’ll ever have a chance to use that knowledge. But the girl I once was—the girl who had hoped to be a different kind of woman—had spent months and years memorizing every spell so that one day she’d be ready to take her mother’s place. Ready to be a conduit between the sacred and the mundane.

I feel someone watching me and suddenly I’m as disgusted by the costume I’m wearing as my mother is. Not because I’m ashamed of my lack of power—as she is—but because I’ve made something special into something profane. I can blame my mother if I like, but if I’m honest, the onus for this is all on me. Lacking power or not, I can’t stand before the goddess in this mockery of ceremonial dress.

I glance at my watch. I have ten minutes before the ritual starts.

I slip into my room, clean the green gunk off my face and get dressed in the outfit I had planned to wear all along—a flowing emerald green skirt and jacket made of the softest velvet. It’s not a robe, and I don’t want it to be, but it’s a beautiful outfit, one that even my mother can’t find fault with.

I make it back to the garden just as the ceremony is starting.

My mother stands in the middle of the circle, next to a tall, gold-colored candle. Positioned equidistant around her are my father and siblings.

Rachael, the healer, stands due North, a green candle in her hand and chains with the sacred Eye of Horus around her neck. Bold, determined, protective, she is Earth.

Next to her, halfway between North and East is my father, a purple candle in one hand and a sacred ceremonial athame in the other. He is strength and unparalleled knowledge.

To the East is Nadia. Ankhs make up each loop of the gold chain-link belt that rests low on her hips. A yellow candle floats directly in front of her. Compassionate and kind, she is Air.

Beside her, holding the position of Southeast, is Donovan. His candle is black, his tool a long and wickedly curved sword. He is the silent and omnipresent eternity.

South is Noora. With a crimson candle in her hand, the knot of Isis decorating her robe and her red hair dancing in the wind, she is Fire. Bright, inviting and too often explosive.

To her left is Willow. Her candle is silver, her tool a wand made of cedar. She wears amulets of the lotus flower to signify transformation. She is strong, unbending will.

Standing due West is Hannah. She holds a half-full chalice in her right hand, a blue candle in her left. She is Water, cool and indispensable.

And finally, completing the circle is my favorite sister, Sophia. She wears a headdress with the sacred symbol of Djed. Her candle is orange and she is wild, unpredictable, determined action.

My mother lights her candle with a flick of her wrist and a prayer in the ancient Egyptian tongue. Then she lifts her arms and fire sizzles along her fingertips before leaping straight to Noora. Noora’s candle alights followed by the other eight and then, urged on by my mother, flames race around the sacred circle growing higher and higher until they nearly eclipse my view of my family.

My sisters’ voices join my mother’s and an ancient prayer of thanksgiving fills the air around us all. It is burned into the earth by the fire, carried to the heavens on the curls of smoke that rise and rise and rise.

As the prayer ends, Hannah reaches into her chalice and flicks water from her fingertips onto the surrounding fire. It spits and hisses, grows even taller for one breathtaking moment and then dies in an instant.

The circle has been cast.

Though the crowd all around me is silent, energy throbs between us. It’s always like this at the Winter Solstice when, on the longest night of the year, we celebrate the rebirth of the sun.

I know this ceremony by heart, have witnessed it twenty-six times now, and still the prayer and the power of it take my breath away. Inside the circle, my mother starts a new fire—a living symbol of the bonfire of old—and above us the moon burns bloodred.

Another prayer and seven stars shoot across the sky just as my mother reaches for the dragon’s blood she cut earlier. She casts it into the flame and my father follows suit with mint and myrrh. The smoke mingles, curls, begins to drift outside the circle and into the crowd.

I have no magic, no power, and yet as the smoke reaches me I feel something quicken deep inside of me. It’s happened to me before, when I’m in the presence of spectacular magic but never to this degree. Never this strongly.

I know it’s the herbs, understand that they are used to strengthen the pull of the ancient Heka, but it doesn’t matter. The blood in my veins starts to thrum, to vibrate, electricity sparking along every nerve ending. It scares me a little, has me pulling back as Willow approaches the fire and, with a few murmured words that I have no hope of hearing, casts her own plant into the flames.

The smoke swirls and seethes, spiraling up, up, up to the sky. She has tossed in her namesake, willow, for help in divining the stars.

Then it’s Donovan’s turn. He approaches the fire with arms full of bayberry and cedar—always the protector.
But before he can do more than invoke the favor of Sekhmet, a scream rends the air.

It’s followed by a second scream and then a third one, and my nerves catch fire. By the time a fourth shriek rips through the empty field behind me, I’m running straight for the forest and the unmistakable sound of distress.

O
thers follow me. I can hear their footsteps pounding along the ground behind me. But I’m quick and agile—as the eighth child, I had to be if I had any hope of getting out of my elementary school years alive—and I keep the lead.

I know Donovan will yell at me later about running off when he couldn’t protect me—you can’t break a circle like the one my family formed without observing certain rituals—but it sounds like someone is dying. Every second could count.

Panicked, I remember the vision from earlier, the one I’ve tried so hard to convince myself was a dream. I hit the forest at a dead run, dodging around trees and jumping over roots by memory alone. Thank goddess I ditched the boots along with the witch costume.

The people behind me slow down as they try to find their way in the darkness, but this is my forest. I know every inch of it.

Even so, I pull my cell phone out of my pocket, hit the flash light app so I have a better chance of finding the person who’s screaming. She’s still yelling, so I’m following that sound, but the last thing I want to do is plow right into her because I couldn’t see her.

As I run, I try to figure out what’s wrong. She sounds like a young girl, and I’m hoping she’s just lost. Maybe she got bored at the ceremony and wandered off, then lost her
way. Or maybe her flashlight went out. There are a million different reasons for her to be this upset—it doesn’t have to be the one my mind automatically goes to. The one I faced when I was barely more than a girl myself.

Within a couple of minutes, Micah, who knows these woods almost as well as I do, catches up to me via his own flashlight app—who knew there’d be a circumstance when I’m actually glad to see him—and we run side by side until we stumble upon her about five hundred yards into the forest. A young girl about sixteen or seventeen, she is kneeling at the foot of a huge oak tree and trembling uncontrollably.

“Are you all right?” I ask, crouching next to her. “What’s happened?”

“I…she…can’t—” She says more, but she’s crying so hard that those are the only words I can make out.

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Micah speaks soothingly as he, too, squats down beside her. He takes her hand in his, strokes it softly even as he uses his index and middle finger to take her pulse. “Let’s take a couple of deep breaths together and then you can tell me what has you so upset.”

I pull back a little, let Micah do his thing. Though he was a lousy boyfriend, he’s a hell of a doctor and within three minutes he has the girl significantly more calm. He’s also checked her over well enough to ascertain that she’s not the one who’s hurt and learned that her name is Brenda and that she’s nineteen years old.