The Amber Lee Boxed Set

  “Don’t tell me that’s—” I started to say.

  “This is it, Amber,” Eliza said, cutting me off. “Proof that tonight the Dark Mother comes. We have to prepare.”

  I smiled. “Blessed be, huh?”

  “I’ll go set up the altar for tonight.” Eliza handed me the pomegranate. “You wash fruits and make sure this doesn’t break.”

  Eliza spent the remainder of the morning buzzing around the house while the rest of us handled things in the kitchen. Damien was in charge of washing the reddest and ripest tomatoes you ever saw. Next to him, in the same long sink, I washed equally delicious looking lettuce heads while Evan took stock of exactly how much of what kind of vegetables we had. The idea was that we’d give away what we didn’t eat, but we wanted to distribute the crop evenly and also feed ourselves tonight.

  “So, I never asked you,” Damien said as he washed tomatoes.

  “Hmm?” I asked, cocking my head.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  He seemed to have cheered up, so I decided to open up to him. “No,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Surprised?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “And why’s that?”

  Damien smiled, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t want to answer that?” I asked.

  “I don’t think I have to.”

  “Is that so?” I smiled too.

  “An intelligent, beautiful girl with a sick sense of humor and a natural redhead? A girl like you wouldn’t be single in San Francisco for long.”

  A lettuce head slipped out of my hands and into the sink, then it decided to bounce around and splash around like a fish. Water got all over my shirt and arms.

  “Sorry, shit, did I get you?” I said.

  “No,” Damien said with the cheekiest grin.

  I hid my rosy red cheeks behind my hair and smiled as my composure returned.

  “That’s what happens when cheesy lines get thrown at me,” I said, grabbing the broken lettuce and continuing to wash it.

  “Cheesy? What was so cheesy about it?”

  “Nothing,” I said, smiling. “Anyway, I used to have a boyfriend.”

  “Used to? What happened?”

  “He cheated on me,” I said, point-blank. “More than once.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “I’m worse.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I took a deep breath. “His name was Kyle,” I started, “We had been going out since high school. It started with an alright scene, y’know? But then I came into my whole introvert thing, stopped going out with his friends, and kind of retreated into myself. He cheated on me during this funk I was in.”

  “You know that?”

  “I suspected,” I said. “Then I went to Europe after college. I asked him to come with me but he told me he didn’t have the money to go. A lie, since a few days after I left I heard he’d bought himself a car he wanted to fix up for about as much as his plane tickets would’ve cost. We still kept the relationship going while I was away. I’d call him whenever I had Wi-Fi access and stuff. I could have hooked up with European guys but I decided to be good, you know?”

  Damien swallowed, but nodded.

  “When I got back,” I continued, “I started to hear rumors about Kyle, his car, and some girls. Things got weird between us. We were together for six years, but when my parents left me my house Kyle didn’t want to move in with me because he said he liked his space.”

  I wasn’t sure whether Damien’s sigh was sympathetic or whether he thought I was a moron for believing in Kyle. Both would have been acceptable.

  “The final straw was one night about eight months ago,” I said, “I went out with Eliza and he went out drinking with his buddies. About half way into the night I got a text message from a friend of mine telling me he had been seen disappearing into the toilets with a girl I used to babysit.”

  “Babysit?”

  “She was seventeen. She was young and pretty and I was weird. When I got the message my heart dropped. So I made an excuse, ran home, and put a curse on him—because that was totally the right, mature way to deal with the problem.”

  Damien stared on, glued to my words.

  “I had terrible dreams that night,” I said, “And for two more nights after; dreams of some… thing stealing Kyle’s life force bit by bit. I heard from a friend of his about a week later that Kyle hadn’t left his apartment, and when he was last seen he looked sick. I realized the gravity of what I’d done.”

  “What happened to him?” Damien asked.

  He skipped town about two weeks after. It wasn’t until then I realized what kind of damage I had truly caused to his life.”

  The lettuce head crumbled beneath my angry, guilty hands. Talking about what I had done was harder than I thought it would have been. I sent a succubus after my ex-boyfriend like a farmer sets his dog on a trespasser. I wanted him to pay, but I didn’t think anything would actually happen.

  And definitely not to that extent.

  When I laid a curse on Kyle I didn’t do it because I thought it would work, I did it because it made me feel better. Although in retrospect maybe I should have just keyed his car, or gone to the girl’s ex-military father and told him what was going on in that bathroom with his underage daughter. Hindsight is a bitch.

  “Were you worried?” Damien asked.

  Ever mind the Rule of Three, I thought. “I worry every day.”

  But I regret nothing.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As soon as the confession—long though it had been—left my lips, a huge rock lifted from off my chest. I hadn’t told anyone about what I did to Kyle. Not even Eliza. And we tell each other everything, or at least we used to.

  Aaron.

  After finishing with the fruits I headed up to my room with Damien behind me, though he went to his room and left me to my own devices; which I was grateful for. My hands were sore and wrinkled and I smelled like a builder, so I hurried myself into a steamy shower and washed the dirt and sweat off me before settling on my bed with a brand new book. A black, leather-bound book with thick pages and a pentagram embossed into the dust jacket.

  On the first page I wrote:

  A Book of Shadows

  By…

  Dilemma; I didn’t know what to call myself. I needed a pen name by which to scribble down my thoughts, experiences, and spells. A name other Witches would recognize me by. Every Witch had one, and if I was a True Witch I guessed I needed one more than most, right? But after twenty minutes I still wasn’t any closer to a name I liked and my progress was stunted.

  A light, quick rapping at the door caught my attention. I closed the book and sat up straight, cross-legged on the bed. “Come in.” I said.

  Damien pushed the door open and stood by the hall. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I smiled. “What’s up?”

  “Mind if I come in?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He came into the room and closed the door behind him. I noticed the backpack on his shoulder.

  “Going someplace?” I asked.

  “No, I’ve just got a few things for you.”

  He sat his backpack down on a rocking chair in the corner of the room and walked up to my bed. For a reason I couldn’t fathom my heart decided to pick up speed and start running. A warm tingle radiated outward and upward from my stomach, into my chest, shoulders, and cheeks.

  “Sit down,” I said, patting the bed.

  Damien put a knee on the bed first and then sat down. He wasn’t wearing shoes, his hair was wet, and I noted a few damp patches darkening his long-sleeved black top. Clearly he’d just been in the shower too and he’d forgotten to dry up. But the wetness made the fabric stick to him and accentuated the shape of his body. I had to turn my face away and bite my lower lip to keep from staring.

  “Some day, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah, maybe next time you’ll think twice a
bout accepting an invite from me… anywhere… there’s usually a fair amount of heavy lifting involved.”

  “I’m sure you’re not that heavy,” he said, smiling at me from the corner of his mouth.

  A joke? Gods, I didn’t know!

  “So,” I said, “Already bored of not having access to the internet?”

  “No, I just, I figured since you’d read the books I gave you, maybe you wanted some tutelage?”

  “You want to make Magick with me, Damien?” I asked. What? He cracked a joke, so why couldn’t I?

  A stray moan sailed through the hall just loud enough for us to hear even from behind the closed door to my room. I had sensed a little awkwardness in Damien the moment he entered the room, and also noticed that he’d showered in a hurry. Now, as Eliza’s voice gave away what she was up to, everything fell into place.

  “Awh fuck,” I grumbled.

  “Don’t even worry about it,” Damien said.

  “I swear, I told them to cut it out this time.”

  “It’s okay. They’re clearly really into each other.”

  “Yeah, but they can be into each other more quietly. I’ve got half a mind to go in there and say something.”

  “No, don’t,” Damien took my hand. “Amber, there’s no problem. Really. I used to live with roommates. I’m used to this.”

  I stared at my hand in his, horrified and excited at the same time. We slipped apart and I didn’t know what to do with my arms. Let them hang by my side? Fold them? Put them on my hips? Oh Gods, I wasn’t wearing a bra! Damn me and my love for the nineties!

  I folded my arms.

  “I don’t blame you,” I finally said.

  “Blame me?” he asked, “For what?”

  “For coming here. I wouldn’t want to have to listen to that on my own either.”

  “You two seem pretty close.”

  “We are. She’s like the sister I never had. My real sister moved out East a while ago. We don’t talk much.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “It’s alright. I’m over it.”

  Damien smiled. “So? What do you say?”

  “Well… I have had questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  I scanned his eyes, conscious of where they were in relation to my braless chest. My hands were in the way, though, so he wouldn’t have seen much. “The books you gave me,” I said, “They described Magick as a kind of old religion; the oldest.”

  Damien nodded.

  “It also said Witches diluted their knowledge and passed it down to humans for them to form the basis of their religions. Why would Witches keep the real truth away from humans?”

  Damien considered my question. “Alright, take this as an example. The book Eliza has, the one James sent you.”

  “Right?”

  “Eliza can’t read it. She said she couldn’t understand the words.”

  “I’ve seen the words and understood them. I’ve developed the ability to read Finnish; the words in that book are in English.”

  “They’re English, but Eliza isn’t a True Witch.”

  “So, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that the human mind throws up a bulwark against the truth about the universe. They weren’t meant to know how things work.”

  “And we, Witches, are?”

  Damien nodded. I loved the enthusiasm he showed when he talked about Magick. He’d bob his head and give me this sly, knowing smile. He enjoyed bringing me into his world, and I wasn’t about to complain.

  “But… why us?” I asked.

  “Because every herd needs a wolf,” he said.

  “I don’t understand. So we herd humans?”

  “No. Well yes, in a way. It’s like, humans are children. We’re the adults. We deal with the problems they can’t understand so that they can live as they were meant to.”

  “That seems unfair.”

  “Is it?”

  “I guess not. But I still haven’t—”

  “Done any real Magick?” he said, cutting me off with a wry smile. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Oh? And why is that?”

  “I didn’t know where to start either. I had all this power, the kind of thing people only dream of, and I shied away from it.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t want to do that.”

  “Do you want me to show you more Magick?”

  Oh god yes. But play it cool, Amber. “I don’t want you to show me. I want you to teach me how to do it myself.”

  “Alright, that’s your altar isn’t it?” he asked, gesturing toward the dresser on the side of the room.

  I nodded.

  Damien stood and walked to it, examining the crystals and the decorations. Distant grunting and moaning filled the silence.

  “This is pretty cool,” he said, ignoring the sounds.

  I followed him, arms still folded. “Thanks, it’s nothing really.”

  “No, it’s good. It’ll help you with the transition.”

  “Transition?”

  He turned to me. “You’ve been Wiccan for a while. Now it’s time to become a Witch.”

  “Ominous. So, what do I do?”

  Damien pondered, scanning the room. “Okay, well, the first thing to do is to re-enact what you’d normally do when casting a spell.”

  “I guess it depends on the spell… normally I lay a bunch of pillows down on the floor in my attic first.”

  “For comfort?”

  I nodded. “We have a bed, though,” I said, walking toward it and sitting on the mattress.

  Damien followed and made himself comfortable behind me. I became aware that he had parked behind me, cross-legged, so close he could breathe on my neck if he wanted to.

  “And just what are you doing?” I asked over my shoulder, eyes narrow.

  “I’m going to teach you how to cast a circle. Face forward.”

  I smiled and directed my attention to the foot of the bed. My heart was starting to really hit hard now. I could feel it in my temples, and when Damien took both my hands in his I couldn’t even hear myself think. He shuffled closer to me. I could feel the warmth of his cheek on the nape of my neck.

  “Comfortable?”

  No. “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “What you’re going to do is invoke the Watchtower of the East,” Damien said, “But you’re going to do it quietly; in your mind.”

  How the hell was I supposed to call the quarters with this kind of distraction? My cheeks were red hot, my heart was pounding, and I was sure my hands were sweating. All of that, and I still wasn’t wearing a bra! I shook the thought out of my head and took a deep breath in, and out, in and out.

  “Imagine the Currents,” Damien said, “Feel them with your mind, and then call the Watchtower.”

  “What do I want the Magick to do?” I asked.

  “I want you to blow all the candles out.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Imagine it. Call the Watchtower. And do it.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes. Damien, controlling my right hand, started to draw lines in the air. Hail unto you, I thought, O’ Guardians of the Watchtower of the East, powers of air and inspiration. I invoke thee.

  I imagined a steady wind kicking up inside the bedroom, swirling around in a circular motion. My hand, with Damien acting as puppeteer, mimicked the motion of the wind currents in my mind. Astonished at our synchronicity, I continued to repeat the invocation, over and over again.

  Damien’s nose nuzzled into my hair, his breath so close to my skin he could’ve puckered his lips and made contact. But my head was starting to grow lighter, the beating of my heart sound more distant. A strange chill materialized from out of nowhere and surrounded me. I opened my eyes to see the candles flickering in a phantom breeze for which there was no explanation.

  The window was closed. The door was closed.

  Yes, I was doing this with my mind.

  My breaths became quick and short. Damie
n extended my hands and my fingers and urged me to open my palms to feel the air between them. I invoke thee, I thought, I invoke thee. I invoke thee. I closed my eyes again, losing myself in the steady gush of air.

  Damien’s hands crawled up my arms. His lips closed the gap between them and my neck and made contact. He was warm against my skin and I could do nothing but lean into the sensation as my heart pounded so hard I thought it would explode at any second. Then Damien’s palms reached my shoulders and slid beneath my underarms, his fingertips grazing the sides of my breasts and crawling down my ribs. I was beginning to sigh with the rhythm of my invocations, alternating every second between taking a breath and exhaling.

  Like a climax, the Currents of Magick came surging through me and into the room. I opened my eyes, threw my chest up and clasped my hands together. In that moment the candles snuffed out and the wind disappeared leaving the purple fabric on my dresser and the white curtains gently swaying—and Damien’s lips on my neck.

  I arched into him again in the dark, again sighing. He kissed my neck once, then a second time. I reached for his hands and urged them to climb up my ribs until his fingers reached the underside of my breasts leaving trails of static electricity wherever they went. A steady hum of energy buzzed inside of me, a high I didn’t want to come down from.

  But a loud knocking at my door snapped me out of the moment. Damien instantly recoiled and I sprang off the bed to answer the door. Eliza.

  “Hey,” she said. Her hair was a mess and her cheeks glowed like the sun. “We’re gonna get started downstairs pretty soon. You guys ready?” Clearly she didn’t have time to comment on what, perhaps, Damien and I were doing in a dark bedroom stinking of burnt candles.

  “Yeah,” I said, breathing rapidly, “We’ll be down in five.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The feel of Damien’s lips on my neck and his hands on my skin lingered on my body far into the evening. By the time I arrived at the clearing to the west of the house, Eliza had set up a beautiful altar and ritual space for us to pray to the Dark Mother in. But I wasn’t able to concentrate on that. My mind went to Damien, and that awkward—possibly friendship-ending—conversation we would need to have about what just happened and how it wouldn’t happen again.