My revery was interrupted by a voice over the PA System that I didn’t even know was there. Perhaps it was a magical trick.
In any event, someone said, “Attention!”, in a voice so amplified that everyone could hear it. “At this time, we would ask that the Houses make their way to the dining hall, clearly outlined on your maps.”
It was repeated in several languages.
“Please drop what you are doing and join us for the afternoon luncheon,” said a bright female voice. “The Welcoming Ceremony is about to begin... Thank you...”
It shut off. I looked at Lia. “I guess that means us,” she said. She had been in a debate with one of the werewolves I seemed to recall was named Sofia, about what was preferable, a monkey wrench or a sledgehammer, when it came to turning over an irksome engine that refused to start.
“Just as long as it does what I say, when I tell it to, we won’t have a problem,” said Lia, which I guessed made her an Alpha. What happened when two Alphas got together? Obviously, they ruled the Pack. I wondered where Ballard was and what he was up to? He and I would likely be going our separate ways. At least until the Gathering was over.
He was a werewolf and I was a witch. But then I wondered what exactly was the point of getting us all together, if we were just going to be separated, and do whatever we were going to be doing independently? There must be more to the Gathering than I knew about. Hopefully this little snack break would fuel more than my hunger. It would satiate my ravenous desire, by telling me what I was doing here.
* * *
We went single file through the tight-fitting corridors, until they opened into an expansive concourse. The design was not unlike the Colosseum––except it was buried way underground. Everyone was hurrying to the first open gathering. Many of the werewolves had changed into simple russet-colored robes. These were woolen. It was like wearing giant burlap sacks.
Lia and I had changed into black robes which were to be worn by the initiates. They had been waiting for us in our closet along with a note pinned to each. “Blessed be, Halsey Rookmaaker,” and all that.
They had thick hoods. I wore mine down. My pale skin contrasting with the darkness of the robes was like fire and ice. My hair was wrapped sleekly around my neck and down one shoulder.
Lia and I stood out. Ballard waved. He gave me the double thumbs-up and then the universal Italian I took to mean: “Wow. Nice.” His fingers wiggling at the corner of his mouth.
I beamed.
We followed the long, sloping corridor until it opened further. Suddenly more people were there. Different. Of a kind I had not seen since I had left New England and the confines of my Academy for all girls.
They were witches and wizards, and in among them, Dallace and Camille. I couldn’t believe it! They were watching the arrival of the werewolves for signs of me. “There you are!” said Dallace. He waved me over, excusing himself through werewolves. Camille followed. She looked reticent to be among so many members of the pack.
“This is Lia,” I said, introducing her when I finally pulled away from Dallace’s cold embrace, which had nothing to do with any kind of apathy on his part. Even through his vampire getup I could feel his obsidian-hard washboard abs. His smile was intoxicating.
“Pleasure,” said Dallace.
Lia smiled weakly, before becoming more comfortably herself.
“Halsey Rookmaaker,” said Camille, and let it go at that.
Between Camille’s staring and Dallace’s joviality, I felt like I was meeting the in-laws all over again, except there was no Lennox with me this time. “I have still not heard from him,” whispered Dallace.
“Is that unusual?” I asked.
He shrugged, being absolutely no help. We were creating a bottleneck. The other werewolves continued to squeeze past us. I could see Ballard up ahead keeping his eyes fixed firmly on Dallace and Camille, whom he seemed to regard as a little bit crazy, just to make sure that I was still okay. I wasn’t a baby. I could take care of myself.
We began walking again, headed to the Ceremony.
“Did you just get here?” I asked Dallace. “When did you arrive? How long are you going to stay? What have you been doing for three days in Rome? Are you all right?”
I continued to jabber on unnecessarily.
“We’re fine, fine. We stayed at a lovely little bed and breakfast. The food was superb.”
At this Lia stiffened. But Dallace was joking––joking...
“I hope so,” said Lia so that only I could hear.
There are certain lovely noises. Hearing a full orchestra tuning its instruments, all simultaneously, before the start of a big show, is one of them. The Meadpalace sounded just like that. Full and throaty.
Everyone was there. Talking. Laughing. One look around and I could see them all. The werewolves continued to seat themselves. But there were also the Wiccans, some of whom were in high seriousness, but others looked like they knew how to have a good time. And, of course, the vampires.
They had come with a retinue of servants. “It is always the same,” whispered Dallace. He wished me good luck, and went to find his seat. Camille went with him. She continued to look straight through me, like a child that has been carried away.
I felt like she knew what I was going to do before I did it. She was just waiting for me to trip up. Then she could offer me advice.
Meadpalace had high roofs disappearing into infinity, belying the fact that we were entombed within rock, deep underground, and multilevel pews, running down both sides and around the back.
In the center, a long table sat, upon which there was a feast of food, and around which were the more important members of the Gathering. I recognized Gaven at once. He witnessed us entering with a solemn expression on his face.
There was also a group of black robes, like me.
This was the smallest section, a single row, midway to one side. It was to here, Lia and I were directed, to take our places nervously alongside the other initiates. I looked at them. There were twelve in total, once Lia sat down. I made thirteen. Most of them had snotty looks upon their faces. Like they were too good to be here. I wondered what that was all about? Then I realized they must know the other wizards and witches. It was a little known fact that you could tell the master by the servant. Lia and I were, I thought, purer initiates, and Lia moreso. She had no idea what to expect. I at least had gone to St. Martley’s Academy for the Gifted. I took my seat.
A tinkling glass interrupted the oboes and clarinets and the loudmouth bassoons. To end that metaphor.
I looked for the source of the noise. “Shall we?” said Gaven. He stood up along with the others seated at the long table. He was in white robes with red stripes at the sleeves. I noticed Wiccans: three to be exact, standing at other places around the table. One was a woman with candybright blue hair; she had an angular, smart face. Chin upraised. A little like Mistress Genevieve. The other two were wizards. One looked affable, the life of the party, a great guy. Almost, dare one say it, a TV personality. With a rub-on smile and an overtly cheerful personality. The other looked dire, self-important, like he wouldn’t know a joke––or might possibly instruct us in craft laws, otherwise known as ardanes. I groaned. Hopefully this wasn’t going to be a chore.
There were two vampires and another individual who looked by far the most interesting––but it was one of the vampires who caught my eye, mainly because she was staring at me.
I wouldn’t have noticed her unless I had noticed her. Which is the verbal equivalent of a set of never-ending stairs. If by some trick of the eye she meant to put me on my guard, she had succeeded. I withdrew my gaze, to study her with more leisure within my own mind, one of those happy facilities where time stands still while you peruse a particularly unnerving face.
By her eyes alone, which were dark and subdued in shadow, I would say I had met someone wholly without goodness. Her look was pure evil. It gave me the chills. But this was nothing compared to the rest of her.
r /> Where Camille was childlike, this vampire was predatory, almost pure mind. A wave of intelligence unlike any I had encountered radiated from her, and those eyes. Those absolute evil eyes. They had sized me up cool as you please.
I looked again, but her attention was directed elsewhere, to Gaven: she continued to take interest in things, revealing nothing, but I had seen her eyes. Her interest waned and she looked at me again, locking eyes. I refused to look away. I didn’t know where this power came from. But something inside me refused to allow her to win. I was having a staring contest with a vampire.
“...My pleasure to introduce Maria... From the Lenoir...”
I came out of it. The dark-haired female vampire was acknowledging Gaven graciously. In fact, she unleashed a radiant smile––and took a bow like this was all an act in a play acknowledging the enthusiastic applause of the audience.
Sound returned. I could feel my heart thumping. She didn’t look back. The introductions continued on––and I felt I had seen something no one else had.
Whoever the other vampire was was forgotten. I continued to catch my breath. Nobody had noticed anything. My heart continued to flutter.
It was only then that I noticed the third individual––the one who was so intriguing-looking, but whose perusal had been cut short by the little tête-à-tête between myself and Maria Lenoir.
He was not so oblivious after all. In fact he looked at me almost as though he was concerned for my safety.
But this was a Ceremony––and it was their duty, at the table, to drown out any protests I might have with speechmaking, and toasts, and Get along, and For the benefit of all, Forgive and forget, blah, blah, blah.
I could’ve learned a lot, had I cared to listen. But it was her eyes that got me. Staring out of a porcelain face. Almost like a mask.
* * *
After lunch, which consisted of tiramisù and various other delicious oddments––my cheeseburger diet was being compromised by Italian cuisine––there was a little commingling and whatnot, where a few of us intermingled, and so I learned a few of the names of the Initiates, which I promptly forgot, and pretty soon Lia and I were making our way towards Gaven. Quite a few of us made that mistake. The center table drew us like flies. Everywhere I looked were people and were-people in various-colored robes. It was by far the most cosmopolitan of the after-meal crowds.
“Your speech was excellent,” said Lia, giving Gaven a hug before kissing him discreetly on the mouth.
“I was afraid it was a little heavy-handed. You know, about The One, and all of that.”
“No it was perfect. Very practical,” said Lia.
Any time I stood in their presence it was like finding two impossibly compatible people who knew what they had and were not afraid to show it. I was beginning to gather Gaven was something of a Romeo and I determined Lia should tell me the story of how the two of them had met at the first possible convenience. I could use a little vicarious hot talk. N’est-ce pas?
These Frenchisms were impossible to stop once the Lenoir had arrived. Why, oh why, if vampires were all French, was the Venice Coven allowed to exist? Another little mystery certainly. Maybe I could ask Dallace whenever I saw him again.
I was just about to say something to Gaven, when someone cleared her throat, waiting to be introduced. Gaven turned to look.
Maria Lenoir had arrived, together with her retinue––it included the peculiar-looking individual, who made up the third member of her group. He wore spotted leather pants and a matching indigo-colored vest. A silver chain was around his neck, and he had dreadlocks. To top it off was an animal skin––it went daringly down his back.
“My psychic wereleopard Asher,” said Maria Lenoir. I had a feeling she had said it directly to me––everyone else was forgotten about.
“What did I miss?” said someone behind me. I turned around and Ballard was standing there. He and Asher eyed one another inscrutably.
“You’re that American girl who has been running around all of Europe––trying to find Magic,” said Maria Lenoir to me, very slowly and deliberately. She said it like it was the most ridiculous thing ever; the lilt of her tongue included an invitation for others to join in and mock me. “I’ve heard about you.”
“It’s true. I didn’t just land in Italy,” I said. “But once I got here I wouldn’t live anyplace else.”
I hoped she got the tenor of what I had just said. That if it was a choice between her and the Lenoir, versus the werewolves, I would choose sides with the werewolves.
It rolled off her with an infinitesimal blink.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Asher,” I said. “My name is––”
“I know who you are.” He bowed. “The honor is mine, Halsey Rookmaaker.”
“Lovely,” said Maria. She looked like my evil doppelgänger. We could be twins.
“So there’s that,” said Gaven, smiling once more. “We will see you later,” he said to Maria.
She blinked.
“Shall we?” he said. “Come on, gang.”
Reluctantly, I followed with the rest of them. The Meadpalace was by now almost entirely empty. When I looked back Maria Lenoir was staring after me, with Asher, the psychic wereleopard, still at her side.
* * *
Lia effused, extolling Asher’s virtues. “Have you ever seen so many hot guys? That Asher. Makes me want to die young, live forever.”
That was the second time I had heard that phrase. Marek had used it once upon a time.
“I heard your ‘friends’––” she put the word in finger quotes “––saying that to one another. It must be vampire lingo for howya doin’?”
“Dallace and Camille were talking to Maria?” I said. “When?”
“And the other one. She had a little tiff, did Maria,” said Lia.
“What did she say?” I asked, suddenly interested.
“Oh, something about ailuranthropes or something, and how she was perfectly within her rights. That’s a cat, remember? Someone who shifts into one. We’re cyanthropes. Apparently Asher can transform himself into a cat. Psychic wereleopard; three guesses which.”
I wanted to go back to the psychic part. I looked at the clock on the wall. Time ceased to matter at the Gathering.
We were in our room. Lia was chatting from her overhead bunk. Something about if she and Gaven weren’t so close that Asher would have to look out. “But I don’t think that’s his problem. He couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?” I said.
“Oh, come on! You can’t have failed to notice. He was practically drooling. And that nice to meet you, Halsey Rookmaaker, bit...” She said my name slavishly. “It was like he was practically proposing.”
Heat rushed up my face.
“I tell you. I’d look out for him,” she said. She got lost in her own mind for a while.
Was Asher drooling over me? It didn’t make sense. That was impossible. And that was another thing...
He didn’t know me from Eve. What was going on?
“My brother certainly made an ass of himself,” said Lia. “I wonder what we’ll do tomorrow? These trials last a few days.”
Trials. I had been so busy staring at Maria I hadn’t paid attention. Witch Trials. They used to burn them, or else drown them, or throw rocks at them. And that was only if they showed. I wondered what happened to a witch who was supposed to show, but for whatever reasons couldn’t.
“Do you think you’ll be able to craft?” I asked Lia.
She contemplated it for a while, and it got very quiet.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”
I took out my diary and berated it for a while.
Chapter 11 – The Rota
I could hear Lia snoring above me. She didn’t talk in her sleep, did she? No the voices were real. The only question was who they were after. There were twelve other Initiates.
Had they also been visited by the disembodied voices,
as I had? Even underground I could feel the dawn arrive.
This was it.
I looked around my surroundings. When I was a girl I used to have truly nightmarish dreams, of being chased, whathaveyou. As I got older I learned to control them. But I remembered as a child––so powerful were they––that sometimes my dreams would come into reality; that is, the specters, which used to haunt me, would seem to come out of the dark, as I opened my eyes and cringed beneath my covers, and I would peek up, and they would come at me... as ghosts... the remnants of my dreams, reaching out their dark hands... They would seem to dissipate, and I would be left shivering at what I had seen.
That was like these voices. They rang in my head just long enough for me to find the candles, in the candle-niche, at what should’ve been my headboard. I lit them, so that only I could see, and hurriedly jotted down the conversation I had just heard.
“It’s just a gathering to discuss Rome. She isn’t the Chosen One yet.”
“The Lenoir will want to test her––and so other magicals have come as well. I don’t trust that Half Lighter. Watch him. Watch them all.”
“Free as yet is her decision to make. She must choose carefully. They will want to claim her as their own. The doges have already made that mistake....”
“She must die when we say she does.”
“She will...”
I wondered if it had happened in ‘real’ time? If... where I was, and they were... we had linked up?
Somebody was out there––somebody dangerous; and, either they were at the Gathering, or they wanted in. And if I couldn’t even keep them out of my own head....
Maybe I was the Protector. Maybe I was overhearing them for a reason. To protect someone...
I hadn’t thought of that.
There were twelve other Initiates at the Gathering besides myself.