Spirit (23 page)

Deb offered
Steven and Jodi tea, going to make it before they had a chance to accept or
reject it. Steven glanced at Jodi when he took a seat next to her. If they
could still speak mind-to-mind, I knew they would be arguing vehemently back
and forth about who should start the conversation. One of them, probably Jodi, would
insist it was a bad idea with Jane and Sherry there now. The other, probably
Steven, would insist they might help them sway Deb to see it their way.

When Deb set the
tea in front of them, they whipped their heads around, forcing smiles, as if
they hadn’t just been in a silent argument. Deb stepped back, tilting her head
to the side as she watched them; she knew she had missed something.

“What is it?” she
asked, her hands going to her hips.

Jodi started to
say, “Oh, nothing,” but stopped when Steven kicked her under the table, making
her yelp.

“It’s not
nothing,” he said, but then Jodi kicked him back, harder than he’d kicked her.

Jodi snapped, “Don’t
kick me, damn it!” Steven bent awkwardly, rubbing the spot on his leg.

“All right, all
right,” Deb said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “Spill it.”

“Well,” Steven
said, wincing as he sat up straight in his chair, “we had a thought.”

“
You
had a thought,” Jodi grumbled into
her tea cup.

“
We
had a thought,” Steven repeated
through gritted teeth, “about Shayna.” Jane and Sherry made quiet, sympathetic
noises from their end of the kitchen at the sound of my name, but Steven
pressed on. “See, she was haunting me.”

“She was
haunting you?” Deb repeated, drawing her brows together. “Shay wouldn’t do
that.”

“Well, she did,”
he insisted. “But I didn’t realize it was her, I just thought it was a poltergeist
or something, and I banished her.”

“Wait,” Jane
said, pushing away from the counter, forgetting her cup. “How did you know it
was Shay?” With a dramatic sigh, Steven explained the events that led him to
banishing me and then hearing me scream out his name as I was rushed
unceremoniously out of Anthony’s apartment.

“That doesn’t
necessarily mean it was Shay,” Jane said, but Steven stopped her with a wave of
his hand.

“I know that,
but I believe it was Shay, with all my heart.” His voice went soft at the end,
his eyes dropping to the murky brown depths of his tea, and he let the women
stare at him while they weighed his words.

“I know it was
Shay too,” Jodi said after a few moments. She reached under the table and took
one of Steven’s hands, giving it a squeeze. He lifted his honey brown eyes to
her steely blue and smiled at her.

“All right,” Deb
said, drawing everyone’s attention to her. “Let’s just agree it was Shayna and
go from there. Steven?”

“Right, so I
banished her, accidentally on purpose.” He cleared his throat and took a breath,
as if to steel his courage against the next thing he would say.

“It’s okay,
Steven,” Jodi said with another squeeze.

“I thought,”
Steven paused, glancing at Jodi, “
we
thought, maybe we could reach her, bring her back.” The room went still,
Steven’s words hanging in the air around them as the three witches stared at
Jodi and Steven, blinking in a mixture of horror and confusion.

“Jodi, Steven,”
Deb said, “you don’t know what you’re asking. That kind of magic…” Deb trailed
off, shaking her head.

“It’s an
abomination,” Jane finished for her.

“No, no,” Jodi
said quickly, waving her free hand in front of her. “That’s not what he meant;
we know that!”

“No,” Steven
jumped in, “no, I mean we were thinking of trying to invoke the Spirit, but
with Shay as the focus.” Time seemed to speed up suddenly, the world righting
itself as the women understood them, relief plain on their faces. Sherry even
let out a nervous laugh, pressing her hand to her chest.

“Right,” Jodi
continued, “we know what evil it is to bring someone back from the dead. That
isn’t what we want; we want Shay back, not some monster.”

“Yeah,” Steven
said, inching forward on his chair, “but if we do an invocation focused on Shay,
then we can bring her spirit back, the real Shay.”

“Kids,” Deb said
softly, turning her deep brown eyes on them, “I know it’s hard to let her go,
believe me I do. We just lost a sister last week. She was hit by a car.” Deb’s
words nearly pulled me out of the trance, disturbing the surface of the looking
glass as my concentration wavered. I remembered seeing Death looming over one
of Deb’s coven sisters, seeing her step off that curb while searching through
her purse.

Gritting my
teeth, I forced my mind to concentrate on the looking glass. At least I now
knew how much time had passed on Earth while I’d been the Outlands.

When I came back
to the vision, they were exchanging words of condolences and the empty things people
say when death comes to the young. As if there is ever a right time for someone
to die, suddenly or otherwise. At least it explained why the three witches were
all dressed in dark, somber colors. I didn’t think they would still be in
mourning for me, maybe Deb, but not the others.

“But, Deb,”
Steven said, bringing mine and everyone else’s attention back to him, “Shay
shouldn’t have died, and I don’t mean in the sense that no one should die. Shay
just shouldn’t have.”

“Why?” Sherry
asked even though Steven had been talking to Deb.

“Because she was
warned,” Jodi said. When the three women looked at her like she’d grown a
second head, she continued, “Shayna got her prophetic powers from her mother,
and just before the fire, Shayna’s mom had a vision of Shayna…” Still she
couldn’t manage that one word.

“Oh.” Sherry saved
Jodi from finishing her sentence.

“That still
doesn’t mean…” Jane started to say, but Steven cut her off.

“Yes, it does.” His
voice pitched and he had to stop himself from yelling. “What was the point of
her and her mother having these dreams if they weren’t warnings to save her?
Can you tell me that?” No one replied, and when Steven fixed them with his
angry stare, each woman dropped her eyes.

“I think he’s
right,” Jodi said, earning a look of pure love from Steven. “Shay’s mom doesn’t
have prophetic dreams, so I can’t understand why she would suddenly have one so
vivid and accurate if it wasn’t to warn Shayna off.”

“Warn, yes,” Deb
said, “but not save. Shayna chose to go into that house knowing the risk.”

“So what?”
Steven demanded, not watching his volume this time. “She went in there to save
me and a total stranger; doesn’t that give her a second chance?”

“But you said
you wanted to invoke her spirit, not bring her back. You understand there is a
difference, right?” Jane asked.

“Yes, we do,”
Jodi answered for both of them.

“Usually, when
one invokes the Spirit,” Sherry said, stepping forward, “they intend to draw the
power of the Spirit into them. It doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re
planning.”

“No, it’s not,”
Jodi said.

“I banished
her,” Steven said, his voice breaking. “She was trying to make contact with me,
and I banished her to who knows where. I want to try to help her get back here
so we can figure out what she was trying to tell me.”

The kitchen went
quiet then. Steven and Jodi held hands hard enough to make even Steven’s golden
skin run white. The three witches glanced back and forth between each of them.

“I have a
question,” Sherry said, breaking the silence.

“Okay,” Steven
said, nodding toward her.

“Why are you
even asking us? I mean, you guys have always been able to do magic on your own.
Why do you need our help this time?”

“They needed our
help over the summer,” Jane reminded Sherry.

“Sure, one time
out of what?” She glanced back at Jodi and Steven, shrugging her shoulders. “A
hundred?”

“Well…” Steven
started, pausing to lick his lips before glancing sidelong at Jodi, who was
staring at their intertwined hands.

“Yes?” Deb asked,
but something in her face told me she had an idea what was wrong.

“Since Shay,”
Steven paused on the word only briefly, nodding his head to the side before
continuing after a beat, “Jodi and I have lost most of our powers.”

“Really?” Sherry
said, curiosity getting the best of her. After another moment, she had the
grace to look embarrassed, heat rushing to her cheeks before she whispered an
apology.

Jodi snapped, “Yes,
really. We still have some powers, but not like it was.”

“I don’t
understand,” Deb said, her voice soft and soothing as she leaned toward them. “You
three have always had power, not just when you came together in your little triumvirate.
Why would losing Shay change that?”

“Jodi?” Steven
prompted her.

“Takotsubo cardiomyopathy,”
Jodi said flatly.

“Broken heart
syndrome?” Sherry asked, surprising us all. “I’m a psychiatrist,” she explained
when Jodi and Steven stared at her.

“Yeah, that,”
Steven said, “but not.”

Sherry said, a
little too enthusiastically, “Very interesting. Have you had any physical
symptoms or just metaphysical? Forgive me, I’m not trying to belittle it, but
it’s not something doctors would have many case studies on, you know?”

“Yeah,” Jodi
said quietly, dropping her eyes before she rested her head on Steven’s shoulder.

“So now you know
why we need your help,” Steven said. “Will you help us?”

“Steven, Jodi,”
Deb said, and the note in her voice was all any of us needed to hear to know
her answer. Steven pressed his lips into a hard line before nodding, as if he
wasn’t the least bit surprised, but still disappointed. He patted Jodi’s knee
and they stood up, sliding out from their chairs and the table.

“Thanks anyway,”
Steven said, surprising Deb with the abrupt actions.

“Wait, kids, you
don’t understand.” Deb got to her feet quickly.

“Yes, we do,”
Jodi said. The lack of heat in her voice surprised me. “I told Steven you
wouldn’t help us. We understand why; it’s fine, really.” In any other tone, she
would have sounded like a snippy, sullen teenager, but she only sounded tired
and older than her eighteen years.

“We’re so sorry
for your loss,” Steven said politely before leading Jodi out of the kitchen and
to the front door. Their abrupt departure left the three women staring after
them, slack jawed and speechless.

Steven was
pulling the front door closed behind him when Sherry caught up to them. She
pulled the door open, out of Steven’s hand.

“Steven, Jodi,
please wait,” Sherry said, holding one hand out in front of her.

Jodi started to talk,
shaking her head slowly. Her hair barely shifted with the movement. Watching
Jodi move without air swirling around her like a perfectly tuned in dance
partner was so strange.

“No, no,” she
said softly, stopping Jodi. “Just wait out here for a few minutes, okay?”

Steven and Jodi
shared a look, but when Steven shrugged at her, Jodi said, “All right, sure.”

“I’ll be right
back, just a couple of minutes,” she whispered before slipping back inside,
shutting the door softly behind her. Steven led Jodi over to the wooden bench
on the porch and pulled her down next to him, wrapping one arm around her
shoulder to tuck her close to his side.

“What do you
suppose she’s doing?” he asked.

“No idea,” she
replied.

“Think she wants
to help us and is trying to convince Deb?”

“Maybe.”

“She seemed
super interested when you told her why our powers are fading.”

“She did,” Jodi
agreed, nodding her head against him.

It was more than
a couple of minutes before Sherry came out again. Jodi had even started to doze
off under Steven’s arm with his hand stroking her arm slowly, giving her some feeble
warmth. The sound of the door opening startled Jodi awake. She jerked up,
blinking rapidly.

“Sorry,” Sherry
said, her face pinched in a grimace.

“It’s fine.”
Jodi waved her apology off. “So what’s up?”

“Well, I told
Deb making this kind of decision without putting it to a coven vote wasn’t
really fair. I mean, we’ve all met you, helped you, in the past, so we should
all get a say in whether or not we help you again.” Sherry spoke rapidly, her
words running together in her excitement, but Jodi and Steven seemed to be
following just fine.

“And?” Steven
said when she paused to catch her breath.

“Well, she
argued, a lot,” a small laugh escaped her, “but then Jane agreed. Jane is her
Second, so she had to listen to her. So,” she took a deep breath, “we are going
to put it to a coven vote. Majority rules, so we may be able to help you.”

“It’s something,
I guess,” Jodi said, but not as though she believed that vote would come out
any differently than the conversation they had with Deb. Jodi stood, stretching
her arms above her head, and said, “C’mon, Steven, let’s go.”