The Hierophant (Book 1 in The Arcana Series) (3 page)

— 7 —

Later that night, I stretch out on Kyla’s bedroom floor, staring up at the ceiling where a spray of glow-in-the-dark plastic stars cling to the stucco.

“Four of them?” Kyla asks, sitting on her bed and shuffling my tarot deck. “And they were just hanging around outside the school? Isn’t that unusual?”

“Yeah. I was under the impression most Sura are nocturnal, but maybe not.” I sit up on my elbow and look at her. “They didn’t do anything though. They just kind of…watched.”

“But they looked
directly
at you?” Kyla’s voice is lower this time.

I think back on the slow-spreading grin of the tall, shadowy demon, and the piercing glow of his pinhole eyes. “Just the tall one.”

“Shit, that doesn’t sound good. What if they’re watching you?” Kyla’s eyes shine with an internal luminescence, her spirit coming alive at the thought of some kind of intrigue, some kind of adventure, no matter how insane it sounds. Typical Kyla. “What if they’re watching you now?” She climbs down to the floor and places the tarot deck in front of me.

“They aren’t,” I mutter. “I don’t think. But…” I sit up straight, cut the deck into two piles, and look into her eyes. “I think they might be onto me.”

Kyla gazes back, considering. She can’t see the Sura on her own. Sometimes when I focus really hard and she’s touching my arm or my hand, she can get a glimpse of a shadow, an approximation of their shape and form, like a hazy memory of what she should be seeing. But for some reason she can’t quite open the door in her mind that lets her see them on her own. For me, that door has been ripped off its hinges.

She takes the pile of cards on her right and fans them out on the carpet. “You go this time.”

I cock my head. “I can’t read for myself, you know that.”

“I know, that’s okay.” Kyla half smiles, tucking a bleached-blond dreadlock behind her ear. “I’ve been practicing.”

I oblige her by drawing three cards from the spread, and leaving them face down. Kyla flips the first card—past affecting present—Three of Swords. Three swords pierce a large red heart. The meaning is obvious—pain and loss—but Kyla narrows her eyes at the card, squeezing it for information.

“Okay so, mega-obvious: you’ve experienced pain in the past. But beyond that—you refused to give in to the pain. You didn’t even wince. You let these swords cut you open and rip you apart. In fact, you’ve been so certain of your own ability to withstand the pain that you’ve left the weapon in the wound.” She swallows, glances up at me. “I mean, I’m not judging or anything. That’s really what the card is saying to me.”

I nod, and try not to look upset. “I understand. I know how it goes.” The cards speak in suggestions, echoes of arcane wisdom, calling out to the reader with specific feelings, words, ideas. The same card a hundred times can mean two hundred different things. It’s all in the moment, the reader, and the querent—the person for whom the cards are being read.

She flips the second card—present circumstances—The Hermit. A wizened old man leans on a staff, holding out a lantern to light the way. “You’re going inwards,” Kyla tells me. “Relying on intuition, and thinking things over, and searching for some kind of wisdom you don’t trust to find in others. You may even believe you know something, or feel like you have a secret—something you’re ashamed of? Or maybe something that separates you from the rest of the world?” She shakes her head. “But what you really need is to stop trying to be this lone wise-woman, and find someone who has already walked a similar path. Someone who can give you answers, but also give you the tools to find answers on your own.”

I watch the expression on Kyla’s face as she reads the cards, see the moment when the mysterious and unnamed finds itself in the language of her mind. Her eyes widen and deepen, cavernous dark brown and copper-red swallowing the information of the tarot cards. I don’t understand why those eyes can’t see the same shadows and fangs that I see, when they already seem to see so much else that others don’t.

Kyla flips the last card—future outcome—The Hierophant. A holy man in red robes sits upon a throne, giving blessing to two genuflecting monks. A pair of keys—one silver, one gold—are crossed at his feet, representing knowledge and wisdom. “Answers are on their way. A teacher is coming to you, someone who will help you make sense of the things you’ve seen. But he’ll also make you question everything you believe in.” Kyla looks up at me, brow furrowed. “This shit’s getting intense. Okay, one more card. Draw for the querent.”

I swallow, and pull another card: The Hanged Man. A man hangs upside down from a tree, his arms tied behind his back and a halo of light around his head.

Kyla nods. “You have to let go. You can accept what you thought was unacceptable. You’ll have to fight for your wisdom, but you’re only going to get it if you let yourself be vulnerable, and open to the will of something bigger than you. Than all of us.” Kyla blinks, and exhales. Her brow furrows, and she mutters something under her breath.

“Ky?” I ask.

She looks at me, smiles slightly. “Was that helpful at all?”

I nod. “Yeah. It made a lot of sense.” I play with the carpet under my fingers, biting my lip, trying not to look too sullen.

“Come on,” Kyla whines, gathering up the deck into a single pile. “That was a good one. Just go with it.”

“Yeah. Thing about tarot is, most days it’s a lot easier to be the reader than the querent.” I sigh. “Anyway. Are we going to recast those protection circles tonight, or what?”

Kyla smiles and stands, clapping her hands together. “But of course!” She pulls a box out from under her bed, filled with candles and incense and smudge sticks—dried and string-wrapped bundles of sage and lavender. Shrugging on a sweatshirt, she pulls her dreads back and tucks them under a black knit hat that bulges with the mass of her hair.

“You think your mom knows what we do out there while she’s gone?” I wonder, selecting the right tools for the job tonight.

“Hell no. She’d freak out. You know how she gets about
the occult
.” She finger-quotes the topic. “She doesn’t believe in magic, but boy does she believe in demons. I don’t know why. Your mom was always so chill about New Age stuff. She never even seemed afraid of Sura. I mean, she didn’t actually see them—that we know of—but still.”

I nod, climb to my feet, think of my mother’s face when she spoke of the Sura—mysterious, coy, and yes, even brave. “I’m not afraid either,” I decide. “Not really.”

Kyla hands me a lighter and cocks an eyebrow at me.

“What? I mean, they just kind of hang out in shadows, don’t they? Maybe that’s all they can do, unless you invite them in or something.” Even I’m not convinced by my reasoning.

“If you’re not afraid, then why are we doing this protection circle?”

“Well, I said I’m not afraid—I didn’t say I’m brave.” I stick my tongue out at her. “Besides, if you’re forcing me to come to your party Saturday night, I want to make sure I don’t have to keep my guard up all night long.”

Kyla grins. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll make sure you let your guard down.” She laughs.

“Whoa, are you hitting on me?” I jest. “I thought you and Vanessa were getting serious…”

She throws my jacket at me, sighing dramatically. “I mean I’m getting you
drunk
. You have been so uptight the past few months—” She gives me a hesitant look. “Not that I can blame you. But. As your best friend, it’s my duty to get you to relax now and then.”

I roll my eyes. “Thanks, buddy.”

— 8 —

Outside, we light the smudge sticks until they’re burning at a steady smolder, hot embers releasing an earthy, spicy smoke meant to cleanse the space and project a boundary. We walk clockwise around Kyla’s property, tromping through mud and slush in our snow boots, visualizing the wall of energy we’re leaving in our wake: a bright blue shield climbing as tall as the heavens, plunging into the earth. We chant simple, sacred words:
Shama Irin. Shama Iritz. Shama Naghim
.

It’s a protection ritual, the kind that has been done for thousands of years. There’s something about the right herbs and incense—the clarifying shock of sage, or the astringent tang of burnt lavender—that can drive a wall between us and the dark entities that prowl the liminal spaces between worlds. I’m not sure how it works, but it does. A clockwise circle, three times round, with purifying herbs burning at hand—this is the recipe for a circle of protection. The basic ritual can be found in almost any New Age or Wicca book, but the sacred words belong to my mother’s clan.

I’m not sure what all of the words mean, but I know
Irin
were a kind of mythical guardian—
Watchers
, my mother sometimes called them. In some tribes, the legends say the Irin were of faerie blood, and that they were even older than the angels. But in most stories, my mother had said, the Irin were made by angels, crafted to look just like us so that they could walk among humans and protect us from the whims of the Sura. The Irin had what humans had lost a long time ago: real magic.

But that was before the Irin
Fell
. Poisoned by their nearness to humanity, they fell victim to their own lust, anger, and hate, making their magic too dangerous of a weapon to be wielded. According to some legends, the angels banished them to another world. In other legends, the angels trapped them in a cavern at the center of the earth, where they starved to death.

She was full of stories like that: the old stories, legends that her clan had passed down for centuries, of angels and demons and far away worlds. But so far, only the demons appear to be real.

I don’t know where in the world the legends of her clan come from. To look at my mother, it wouldn’t be obvious. She might have been Irish, Russian, or Slavic—who knows? And her people have gone by many names, worn many stories to cloak the truth of their history as they traveled from place to place, selling their crafts and wares, telling fortunes, performing music. Most people just called them “gypsies,” but they are not Romani, or any other known race that claims that word. Even my mother did not know where they came from.

And for some reason, my mother chose to leave her clan and settle down in suburbia, instead of continuing on with the nomadic lifestyle bred into her bones. I know it’s there, because I feel it in my own. Even though I’m only half of what my mother was, I feel the need to sleep beneath the stars, to move with the season, to live without the confinement of possessions, my whole life able to fit into a backpack. I feel the pull of
elsewhere
as strongly as I feel my own blood, coursing through me.

Visualizing, chanting, calling on the old words and the old ways, summons a ghost inside of me.
Shama Irin. Shama Iritz. Shama Naghim
. I may not know that language, but I feel its power in my lungs as I inhale the pungent smoke, and I feel it in my skin when the cool, early spring breeze caresses my face. It calls up a thrumming from deep inside, like a churning of the sea. Unlike earlier today, the thrumming feels good—almost intoxicating.

When we finish, I snuff the smudge stick in the wet grass and lay down on a rock by the creek that cuts through Kyla’s back yard. Kyla stands beside me, alert to the strange energy electrifying the night. “That’s outside the protection circle, you know,” she half-jokingly scolds.

“Meh,” I reply, watching the stars through the still-bare branches overhead. I breathe deeply, feeling more calm and empowered than I have in a long time. “Maybe they’ll come. Don’t you want to see one?”

“I can’t.” Kyla’s voice is like a shrug. “And besides, what if they
are
watching you? What will happen if they know you can see them?” She leans over me, obscuring the sky, tugging a lock of long red hair out from under my head.

“Maybe they’ll drag me down to Sheol,” I tease, raising my eyebrows. “And make me their
dark queen of the Fallen
.”

Kyla scoffs and sits next to me on the rock. “Dark queen? Last I checked I’m the brown one. You’re about as dark as skim milk.”

“Racist.” I sit up and lean into her shoulder.

She’s curiously quiet.

“You okay?” I ask after a minute.

“Just thinking.” Kyla stares into the creek rushing past us, swollen with runoff and melted snow. “About that reading I gave you…and the Hermit card. I know sometimes we all need to be a little introspective, A, but you know you can talk to me about things, right? About anything.”

“I know,” I assure her, brow furrowed. “Kyla, I tell you everything. I told you about seeing demons
and
kissing Matt Sharpe. Two very frightening things to tell a person.” But I didn’t tell her about the man at the cemetery. And why not?

I don’t know. Maybe because it was too vulnerable of an experience. Maybe because I’m still not sure it happened at all.

Kyla gives me a crooked smile. “Good. It’s just…I worry about you sometimes. I know you have a lot on your mind most days…and I know it’s rough around your house still…and I know life isn’t always fabulous…”

“Ky—” I try to stop her.

“But I want you to be happy, Ana. That’s all. And maybe that means letting your guard down now and then—even when you’re not sloppy drunk.”

“Hey, I don’t get sloppy.” I frown. “And I do let my guard down, all the time.”

“Not with anyone else but me.”

“So? I’m a private person. And enough of my private life has been on display for this town over the past four years. I’m owed the luxury of a few secrets.”

Kyla tilts her head. “What are you going to do when I’m gone next year at college?”

I look at the creek and shrug. “I’m not worried about it. Don’t you worry about it. I do have a life besides hanging out with you.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve got my violin, and I’ve got my tarot cards, and I’ve got school, and the
ever deepening mystery of the Sura
…I’ll be too busy to even notice you’re gone.”

She frowns. “I’ll miss you, you know.”

“You know I’ll miss you. I was just saying—”

Snap.

A stick breaks somewhere to our left, in the woods, and we both whip around to see. Shadows obscure the shape of the beast, but I can see that it’s large, with forked horns rising from its head, eyes shimmering in the dark, catching the moon as it moves forward—

“Oh,” Kyla breathes. “It’s just a deer.”

It cocks its head at us, snorts, and gallops off into the night, antlers bouncing.

Kyla laughs at herself.

I grimace and try not to alarm her, because there
is
something out there. I can feel it watching us, eyes like tiny hands running along my skin. I can’t tell if whatever is watching is good or bad, but what’s more strange is that I swear it feels…
scared
.