A Circle of Ashes (5 page)

“Yeah,” I said absently, trailing my finger down the page. “You have any tiger’s eyes?” I asked Racey.

“I’ll look. What else? Copper?”

“No. Gold. And give me four stones of protection, whatever you’ve got.”

“Okay, let’s see,” Racey murmured, rooting around in the cabinet. “I’ve got, well, here’s another tiger’s eye. I’ve got some agate and malachite. Jet. Citrine?”

I mentally reviewed their properties. “That should be good. Skip the second tiger’s eye. Don’t want to be unbalanced.” I turned back to
Thais while Racey started drawing a circle on the floor. “
Magie Naturelle
is like the big, general, French-based form of Wicca, in a way. Like there’s Wicca, and then there are different types of Wicca.”

Thais frowned. “There are?”

Oh,
déesse
, she had so much to learn. I was glad I wasn’t in her shoes. “Yeah, Like Pictish, Scottish, and so on. A bunch. For us, the natural religion is the umbrella religion. Our own
famille’s
branch of it we call
Bonne Magie
.”

“I’ve heard Petra call it
Chose Nous
,” added Racey. “‘Our thing.”‘

“Like the Mafia?” Thais asked faintly. “
Cosa Nostra
?”

Maybe we were giving her too much info for the moment. “Yeah,” I said. “Exactly like that. Except we’re French witches drawing on the eternal mystical energy in everything around us to work good, and they’re Italian and they kill people. Other than that, just like.”

Thais looked a little embarrassed.

I drew her into the circle and Racey closed it behind us. We sat cross-legged on the floor, facing each other.

“Okay, so what are we doing now?” Racey asked.

I realized I hadn’t gotten her caught up on the soap opera in, like, days. I let out a deep breath, wondering where to start.

“Someone’s trying to hurt me and Clio,” said Thais. “To kill us.”

Racey looked from Thais to me. “Huh?”

“Things have gotten weird,” I said, in a massive understatement.

“You mean, weirder than having a surprise identical twin and then God’s gift dating both of you at once?” Racey said bluntly.

“Yes. Weirder than that,” I said, suddenly feeling tired. “Nan hasn’t come back yet. And as it turns out, God’s gift actually belongs to a coven that Nan used to belong to. He’s a witch.”

“Wow.” Racey whistled. “Good riddance.”

“Yes,” I said, my throat feeling tight. “On top of all this, the fun just keeps coming. Both Thais and I have had, like, near-death experiences.” I filled Racey in on Thais’s nightmare with the snake, the almost stabbing that Racey had witnessed, the streetcar accident, the wasps.

“So we want to do a spell to show us who’s behind all this,” I went on. “I mean, I’m not thrilled staying in that house alone, and Thais is still living with Axelle, and Nan’s not back yet.”

“You should both come stay here,” Racey said, frowning. “Jeez. Why didn’t you come here last night?”

“I stayed up late, trying to work Nan’s cupboard spell, and then it was too late,” I said.

Racey smacked my knee. “Frickin’ idiot. It’s never too late, you know that. Tell me you’re coming here tonight.”

“I might,” I said. “If nothing’s better by then. In the meantime, let’s see if this thing works.”

The three of us formed a triangle, sitting inside the circle. I picked up the four stones of protection. “One stone for us, one stone for the problem, one stone for the past, and one stone for the future,” I said, putting them in a square around us.

“Do you have an element?” Thais asked Racey.

“Yeah, of course,” Racey said, surprised. She tugged on the chain of her necklace and showed Thais the large moonstone pendant she wore. “Earth. I use a crystal to represent it. Also, you know, it’s pretty and sets off my tan.”

I lit the candle in the center for me and Thais.

Then we all held hands, and I read the spell, translating for Thais’s benefit. It was much prettier in French, and I always like it when things rhyme. But oh, well.

Then I focused on the candle and started to sing my own personal power song, which sort of had words and sort of didn’t. Its sounds had their basis in ancient words, but though the power was still there, the words themselves had leached away, leaving pure sound, pure magick.

After a minute, Racey started twining her song in and around mine, under and over and through. We looked up at each other and smiled. We’d done this too many times to count, yet each time it was fresh and new and exciting.

I didn’t expect Thais to say anything—there was no way for her to know her personal song yet. It was something that developed over a period of years as you studied magick. But then a third voice joined in. I looked at Thais in surprise and saw that she was singing softly, watching the
candle. I didn’t recognize the form of her song, but it sounded real, not like gibberish. Racey and I exchanged glances, and then we all looked at the candle and sang.

Two voices singing are balanced, one against the other, and they can make a pure and beautiful magick. But somehow Thais’s voice centered us, the way a three-legged stool is more stable than a two-legged ladder. And while Thais’s speaking voice was incredibly similar to mine, our singing voices were different. Hers was more ethereal somehow. To my ears, mine sounded sharper and stronger, and hers was smoother and more flowy.

This was pretty much the most ambitious spell I’d ever tried without a teacher, and I had no idea what to expect. Our three voices raised and fell and joined and separated, and Thais’s voice became stronger and more sure. I felt the magick rising in and around us, felt our combined energy swell. It was really beautiful, and happiness rose in me.

And that was when we got blown across the room.

P
etra saw Richard even before she parked the car. He was leaning against the iron gate, looking up at her house. Were his lips moving? She couldn’t tell. With a deep, exhausted sigh she got out of her car, then pulled her suitcase out of the back. If he felt her coming, he didn’t show it.

“Hello, Riche,” she said, and he turned to look at her.

“Honey, you’re home,” he said. “At last. You’ve missed some excitement.”

Her gaze sharpened as she opened the gate, muttering a nulling spell so Richard could follow her in. That is, if Clio had kept up the layers of protection. “What kind of excitement?” she asked, starting up the steps.

Richard took the suitcase out of her hand and carried it up for her. He was wiry but surprisingly strong, Petra knew.

Inside the house Petra cast her senses but didn’t feel Clio. She turned to face Richard. “What kind of excitement?” she asked again. “Where’s Clio?”

He shrugged. “If she’s not here, I don’t know. Nothing’s happened to her that I’ve heard of. I mean, except the Treize.”

“What about the Treize?” Petra said, feeling her nerves quicken.

“How about some tea?” Richard said. “Iced, if you have it. And for God’s sake, turn on the air.”

Petra stepped closer to him and looked up into his brown eyes, the color of coffee with a tiny bit of milk. “Tell me what I want to know and cut the crap,” she said quietly.

He laughed. “Or you’ll what, turn me into a frog?” He shook his head. “As far as I know, both girls are fine. But while you were gone, they confronted Axelle, and she called a meeting, and everyone showed, except for monk boy and slut girl, and they basically told the twins everything.”

Petra felt a weight settle on her chest. She turned from Richard and walked back to the kitchen, where she opened the window and the back door and turned on the ceiling fan. The kitchen was messy, with unwashed dishes and glasses on the counters, the trash bag overfull, a rotten banana playing host to a happy horde of fruit flies. Yet Petra could detect the faint
signature of Clio’s presence, feel her vibrations lingering in the air. She had been here recently, like this morning. She was a slob, but alive.

Richard sat in one of the kitchen chairs, and Q-Tip ran into the room. Petra saw that his dish had food in it and his water was full. She stooped to pet him, trying to gather her thoughts.

Damn it. Her errand had taken longer than she’d thought, but she’d still hoped that the Treize hadn’t moved on the twins yet. She’d wanted to be the one who told them. Well, too late now. She stood and poured iced tea for herself and Richard, then sat down opposite him.

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He drank his tea, then shrugged. “Just what I told you. The Treize—”

“You included?”

“Hell, yeah. You think I’d miss that freak show? Yeah, so the Treize gathered and they dumped our sordid past in the twins’ pretty laps, and then we had a circle.”

Petra tried to hide the dismayed look in her eyes, with no success.

“A circle?”

Richard nodded and drank more tea. Q-Tip jumped up on his lap, and Richard petted him. “Yeah. It was very exciting. Your Thais—
elle a mordu admirablement au magie
. Like a duck to water.”

Petra felt Richard’s eyes on her. She loved Richard—she’d always loved him. It had pained her when he’d so obviously wanted Cerise. Cerise had rebuffed him, laughed and called him a little boy. Petra had seen Richard’s hurt and been sorry for it. And Marcel had looked daggers at him.

Then Cerise had died. Marcel had broken down, had been so publicly full of grief. But Richard had kept it all inside. He’d overlain his boyish demeanor with a grown-up’s cynicism and coldness.

Now, looking at him, his handsome adolescent face that would never achieve its full beauty in adulthood, she felt pangs of sorrow again, for the first time in years. Having the twins know about her past, having the Treize gathering again… It was all bringing up so many memories—memories that she’d hoped would stay buried.

“I’m sorry—” she began, then stopped, startled by the admission.

Richard raised one sardonic eyebrow at her.

Petra swallowed. “I’m sorry Cerise turned you down,” she said. “You would have been a good match in a few years. I preferred you to Marcel. But he had done so much—”

She’d never before addressed him so directly about Cerise. Everything they’d both felt had been kept to themselves all this time. Why
rub salt in the wound? And now, looking at the ice that crackled in Richard’s eyes, she wished she’d kept silent.

Q-Tip jumped down and ran out the back door, as if the room’s tension were too much for him. Petra leaned her head on her hand, looking down at the wooden grain of the kitchen table.

After a long pause, Richard shifted in his chair. “The Treize told Thais and Clio about the Source, the rite, Melita. They’ll have a lot of questions for you, I imagine.” His voice sounded distant, impersonal. “Also, it appears that Luc’s own personal brand of magick is still going strong.”

“What?”

Richard shrugged. “It came out that both girls are incredibly pissed at him, and the tension between the three of them would stop a train.”

“Damn it,” said Petra. “That fast? Both of them? I’ll have to have a talk with Luc, then.” Her lips thinned as she thought about how that conversation would go. She let out her breath, wishing she could lie down and sleep for a year. “I’d hoped for more time,” she said. “It’s all starting much too soon, too fast. Everything I’ve been dreading for so long.”

“So you dread it then, do you?” Richard asked.

Petra looked up quickly. Richard had been hanging out with Daedalus and Jules, presumably to help them, for whatever reason. It was very possible he was here today to get an idea of exactly where Petra stood.

She spoke carefully. “Richard—I’ve been protecting the twins for seventeen years. Whatever Daedalus thinks might happen with the rite, whatever the rest of us could do with it or would want it for—we’re still not sure. No one can be positive about its effects. Whether doing it is inevitable or not, yes, there are times when I absolutely dread finding out.”

He nodded calmly, looking at her, then finished his tea and stood up. “I hear you. I think it’s halfbaked myself. But it’s fun to watch the old boy run around.”

Petra followed him to the front door. He opened it and stepped through, then turned to look back at her.

“Cerise didn’t turn me down,” he said quietly. Then he was down the front steps and gone before Petra could find her voice.

I
lay on the floor next to the cabinet. The left side of my face felt like it had gotten hit with a baseball bat. Trying not to groan, I eased myself to a sitting position. It had happened
again
. I felt horrible—shaky and scared, like I’d been zapped by lightning or stuck my finger in a light socket. Gingerly I touched my cheek and pain shot into my skull. I’d hit myself even harder this time, since the garden shed/workroom was smaller than Clio’s workroom. Less room for me to get thrown.