The Calling

  “You know better,” I said, and reached into the fridge for a Diet Coke. “Ugh,” he said. “Well, I’m off on a long day of looking for gray stone churches and westerly windows.”

  “It sounds like it could take you a week,” I said. “There must be hundreds of churches like that in the city.”

  He shrugged, looking resigned. “What else can I do? Whether Killian is hiding his own tracks or someone else is doing it for him, I’m not getting anywhere trying to find him by magick.” He picked up his jacket. “What are you going to do today?” he asked. I helped myself to one of the Pop-Tarts that Bree had thoughtfully stocked up on and tried to look nonchalant. “Robbie and I thought we’d wander around the city for a while.” It wasn’t a lie—I knew better than that with Hunter. But it wasn’t the whole truth, either. Hunter gave me a searching look but didn’t question me further. “I’ll see you this evening for our circle,” he said.

  “We’ll be the perfect young couple,” Robbie said as we walked down Forty-ninth Street. “I

  mean, you’ve got a ring and everything.” He glanced at the fake diamond ring we’d just bought at a tacky gift shop and shook his head. “Whoa. It’s a little freaky to see that thing on you.” “Yeah, well, imagine how I feel wearing it,” I said. Robbie laughed. “Just think what a promising future we’re in for, starting out in a tenement apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.”

  “That’s all Maeve and Angus started with in this country,” I said. I felt suddenly very sad. “The entries from her Book of Shadows at that time were all about how she couldn’t bear living in the city. She thought it was full of unhappy people, racing around pointlessly.” “Well, it is, sort of.” Robbie gave me a sympathetic glance. “And didn’t they come here straight after Ballynigel was destroyed? Of course she was depressed. She’d just lost her home, her family, nearly everyone she loved.”

  “And she’d given up her magick,” I added. “She said it was like living in a world suddenly stripped of all its colors. It makes me sad for her.” We reached the building. It seemed even more dilapidated today. Robbie grinned at me. “Well, Ms. Rowlands. Are you ready for your first real estate experience?” “Hey, my mom is a Realtor,” I reminded him. “I probably know more about leases than the rental agent.”

  Still, I could feel my heart race as I rang the super’s bell. I was about to see my birth parents’ apartment! What would it be like? Would I be able to find the watch? “Who is it?” asked a woman’s voice over a crackly intercom. “It’s Morgan and Robbie Rowlands,” I called back. “I spoke to the management company yesterday about the apartment for rent. They said you would show it to me today at noon.” Robbie tapped his watch. We were on time. “All right,” she said after a hesitation. “I’ll be right there.” We waited another five minutes before the steel gate was opened to reveal a short, heavyset woman in her late sixties. I could see the pink of her scalp through gray pin curls. She looked at me and Robbie, and I saw the suspicion in her eyes. “The apartment’s this way,” she grumbled. We followed her up a flight of stairs and down a narrow hallway. The paint was peeling, and the

  place reeked of urine. I hoped it hadn’t been this bad when Maeve and Angus lived here. I

  couldn’t bear the thought of my mother, who’d had such a profound love of the earth, walking into this ugliness every day.

  The woman took a ring of keys from the pocket of her housedress and opened a door with the number two on it. “The rent’s six-seventy-five a month,” she told us. “You don’t find prices like that in Manhattan anymore. Better grab it fast.” “Actually, we came to see apartment three,” I said. “The management company said it was available.”

  She gave me a look that reminded me of the look I’d gotten from the clerk in the records office. “They were wrong. I got someone living in apartment three,” she said. “It’s not for rent. This one is. Do you want to see it or not?”

  Robbie and I exchanged glances. I was fighting intense disappointment. All this for nothing. We weren’t going to get into Maeve’s apartment. I wasn’t going to find the watch after all. “We’ll look at it,” Robbie said. As the woman lumbered toward the stairs, he nudged me and whispered, “I didn’t want this woman realizing we were poseurs and calling the police or something.”

  She let us into a dark, railroad-flat apartment, not much wider than the narrow hallway. “This is your living room,” she said as we entered a small front room. She tapped the steel bars that covered the window. “Security,” she told us proudly. The kitchen had a claw-foot bathtub, a small refrigerator desperately in need of cleaning, and a family of large, healthy cockroaches living in the sink. “Just put down some boric acid,” the woman said casually.

  Then she took us into the last room, a tiny decrepit bedroom with a window the size of a phone directory.

  “You two got jobs?”

  “I work in…with computers,” Robbie said. “I waitress,” I said. That had been Maeve’s first job in America. “Well, you’ll have to put all that in the application,” the woman said. “Come down to my apartment and you can fill one out.”

  I was wondering how we were going to get out of the application process when I felt something in the tiny bedroom calling me. I studied the stained ceiling. “There used to be a leak,” the woman admitted, her gaze following mine. “But we fixed it.”

  But that wasn’t what had caught my attention. I had felt a magickal pull from the corner of the

  ceiling. Looking more closely, I saw that one of the panels of the dropped ceiling was slightly askew. Whatever I was sensing was behind that panel. The watch? Could it possibly be, after all these years? I had to find out.

  “I told you, we fixed the leak,” the woman said loudly. I bit back an irritated reply. I needed a moment of privacy. How was I going to get rid of this woman?

  Frustrated, I raised my eyebrows at Robbie and nodded toward the living room. Robbie shot me a “Who, me?” look.

  I nodded again, more emphatically.

  “Um—could I ask you a question about the living room?” Robbie said hesitantly. “It’s about the woodwork.”

  “What woodwork?” the woman demanded, but she followed him, anyway. As soon as they had left the room, I shut the door and quickly turned the lock. I had to reach that ceiling panel. There was only one way. I climbed up on the narrow window ledge and balanced precariously.

  Thank the Goddess for low ceilings! I thought as I found I could just reach the panel. With my fingertips I pushed up against it. The panel moved a fraction of an inch. I stretched and pressed harder. The magickal pull was getting stronger. I felt a faint warm current against my hand. I stretched, groaned softly, and gave another hard push. The panel lifted up and I fell off the ledge onto the floor with a thud. “Ow,” I mumbled. Quickly I climbed back up onto the ledge. I heard the superintendent’s footsteps hurrying across the apartment. Then she was twisting the doorknob, trying to open the door.

  “Hey, what’s going on in there?” she yelled, pounding on the door. “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Robbie said quickly. “Then come out of there!” the woman shouted, pounding harder. Just ignore her, I told myself, heart racing. I stuck my fingers through the open panel. Empty space and a wooden beam. Then my fingers closed on smooth fabric encasing something hard and round.

  “You come out right now or I’m calling the police!” the woman shouted.

  I didn’t hesitate. This was absolutely necessary magick. If he ever found out, Hunter would understand.

  “You will forget,” I whispered. “You never saw us. This did not happen. You will forget.” It was as simple as that. One moment the woman was screaming and threatening, the next I heard her ask Robbie, “So you want to see the apartment? You know, you’re the first one I’ve shown it to.”

  I put the panel back in place, then jumped down from the ledge, clutching the watch. Apartment three must be directly upstairs, I realized. Maeve must have hidden the wat
ch beneath her floorboards. I unfolded the green silk and felt a protective spell whispering from the material. The watch case was gold, engraved with a Celtic knot pattern. A white face, gold hands. A tiny cabochon ruby on the end of the winding stem. I stared at it, and tears rose in my eyes. It represented so many things to me, things both wonderful and horrible. But there was no time to think about that now. I tucked the watch into my pocket and unlocked the door. Then I went out to get Robbie. “You’re not going to believe what I found in there!” I said when we were about a block away from the apartment. “You’ve got to see this watch.” I started to take it from my pocket. Robbie was walking fast, his eyes on the sidewalk. “Just put it away,” he said. “What?” I was startled at his angry tone. “I don’t want to see it,” he snapped.

  I stared at him. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Is this about Bree?” Robbie turned on me, his eyes blazing. “No, Morgan. This is about you. What the hell happened back there? One minute that old lady was calling for you to get out of the bedroom. The next minute she couldn’t remember ever having seen us before.” “I did a little spell,” I said. “I made her forget.” “You did what?”

  “Robbie, it’s okay,” I said. “It was temporary. It’s already worn off.” “How do you know that?” he demanded. “How do you know that spell didn’t rewire her brain?

  How do you know she won’t think she’s going senile when she suddenly remembers the two

  people she blanked on? Elderly people find that kind of thing a little upsetting.” “I know because I made the spell,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “What are you so freaked about, anyway?”

  Robbie looked enraged. “You don’t get it, do you? You messed with someone’s mind! You’ve lucked into these amazing powers, and you’re abusing them. How do I know you won’t do something like that to me?”

  I felt like he’d knocked the wind out of me. When I found my voice, it sounded high and tinny. “Because I gave you my word that I wouldn’t. Come on, Robbie, we’ve been friends since second grade. You know I’m not like that. This was a special circumstance.” He looked at me like I was a stranger, a stranger who frightened him. “The Morgan I know wouldn’t screw around with some poor old lady. You played her like she was a puppet. And I feel like a jerk for having been part of that whole charade. I feel dirty.” I tried to calm the butterflies in my stomach. This was serious. “Robbie, I’m sorry,” I said. “I had no right to make you part of that. But this watch belonged to Maeve. I had to get it. Did you really think I could leave it there? It was my mother’s. That makes it my birthright.” “Like your power?” he asked, his voice shaking. “Yes. Exactly like my power.” Every so often words come out of your mouth with a cool, resonant certainty and you know you’ve hit a bone-deep truth. There’s no taking it back or denying it. That’s how it felt then, and Robbie and I both stood there, suspended for a moment in the awful implications of what I’d just said. Maeve had given up her magick, but there was nothing on this earth that would make me give up mine.

  “So this birthright of yours.” I could see him fighting for control, trying to keep his voice steady. “It gives you the right to manipulate some woman you don’t even know?” “I didn’t say that!”

  “No, it’s just what youdid . You were flexing your power. Well, I’m starting to think maybe your power isn’t such a great thing.”

  “Robbie, that’s not true! I—”

  “Forget it,” he said. “I’m going to see if I can get in on another chess game. If I’m going to be totally overwhelmed, at least it’s going to be by something I understand.” He stalked off down Ninth Avenue, leaving me with Maeve’s watch and a sick feeling in the pit

  of my stomach.

  Spy

  August 27, I’ve been back in Scotland almost a week now. And a bleak, colorless landscape it is. Was I ever happy here? Grania met me at the door with bawling babies clinging to her skirts and a list of complaints. It had been pouring for ten days straight, and the thatching on the roof was leaking, making the entire house reek of mildew. Oh, and little Iona was cutting a tooth and couldn’t I make a tincture for the pain? It’s a wonder she didn’t ask me to stop the rains. The thing is, Grania’s not without power of her own. Before the babies came, she was a promising witch. But now she’s the martyr, and it’s all up to me. I wasn’t home half an hour before I left for the pub, and I’ve spent most of my time there ever since. I can’t face my own home. Can’t face life without Maeve.

  Last night was the worst yet. The little ones both had a bug. Kyle was feverish. Iona couldn’t keep down anything she ate. With Greer still in Ballynigel, I was called on to lead a circle. I came back to find Grania shrieking like a harpy. How could I have left her with two sick kids? Didn’t I care about my own children? I didn’t have it in me to lie. “No,” I told her. “Nor do I care for you, you fat cow.” She struck me then, and I nearly struck her back. Instead, I told her she was a shrew and a chore just to look at. Made her cry, which of course drove me even farther round the bend. Finally I took her to bed just to get her to stop the waterworks. It was awful. All I wanted was Maeve in my arms.

  Today Grania’s playing the victim for all it’s worth, and I find myself wishing I could stop her pathetic whining once and for all. It would cost me the coven, though. She’s still Greer’s daughter, with a certain inherited position here, no matter how undeserved. I have so much rage in me that everything I see is enclosed in an aura of flaming red. I am furious with Maeve for her self-righteous rejection of me. Furious with myself for marrying Grania, when I should have known Maeve was out there, waiting for me. And furious with Grania for having the wretched luck to be who she is. She just came in to tell me that she already feels a child stirring within her from last night’s mockery of lovemaking. “It will be a boy,” she said, a sickly hope on her face. “What shall we name him?”

  “We shall call him Killian,” I answered. It means strife. —Neimhidh

  I was grateful no one else was in the apartment when I got back. I was still trying to pull myself together after Robbie’s accusations. After the shock had come anger. How could he have thought

  I’d hurt that old woman? How could he accuse me of such awful things? I’d assumed Robbie

  was strong enough not to be freaked by things he didn’t understand. Instead, he’d gotten totally hysterical. He hadn’t even listened when I’d tried to explain. Yet I couldn’t help feeling a twinge—more than a twinge—of guilt. There’d been some truth in what Robbie had said. Plus I’d broken my promise to Hunter to keep a low profile. I drew out the watch that Ciaran had given to Maeve. The gold case gleamed softly in the light coming through the living room windows. I pulled out the ruby-tipped winding stem and wound it to the right, deasil, feeling the resistance of the spring inside. Would it work after all these years? Yes, there was a soft, even ticking. Had it been worth my trouble? I wondered, thinking about the argument with Robbie. Yes. I could no more have left the watch in that awful apartment than I could have left Maeve’s Book of Shadows in Selene’s house.

  Sitting cross-legged on Bree’s father’s couch, I tried to find a way through the murk. I wasn’t going to lose Robbie, I told myself. Especially now that I’d sort of lost Bree. We both needed to calm down, and we probably both needed to apologize. And Robbie needed to realize that I was still the same Morgan he knew and trusted. But you’re not, a voice inside me said. You’re a blood witch, and no one but another blood witch will ever understand.

  Again I thought about why I’d wanted the watch so badly. Was it simply because it had been loved by Maeve? Or was I fascinated by the fact that it had been given to her by Ciaran, hermùirn beatha dàn , the man who eventually became her murderer? I felt my jaw tensing with anger as I thought of him, and I had to will myself to relax. Then my senses tingled. Hunter was approaching. I took a few deep breaths to calm my conflicted heart. I wasn’t ready to discuss this with Hunter, both because I was certain he’d side with Robbie and because I knew he w
ouldn’t approve of my having anything connected to Ciaran.

  I tucked the watch away in my pocket and went to the door. “Hey,” I said as he came in. “How was the rest of your day?” Hunter pulled me to him. “Spectacularly lousy. How was yours?” “So-so. You didn’t find that building?”

  “Not yet, no. I’m going to keep looking. I just wanted to stop in and tell you I wouldn’t be here for tonight’s circle.” Hunter arched one blond eyebrow. “Anyone else here?” “Nope. Just you and me.”

  “Thank the Goddess for that,” he said. He held me tight, and I felt that familiar shift as our

  energies aligned in perfect synchronicity. “Mmm,” I said. “This is nice. I think I’ve had enough of the group experience.”

  Hunter laughed. “You didn’t expect we’d get on each other’s nerves living in such close quarters? Try growing up in a coven where everyone’s been able to read your emotions from the day you were born. There’s a reason New York is teeming with witches run away from home.” He took off his jacket, and we went into the kitchen. I got myself a Diet Coke from the fridge. Hunter wrinkled his nose. “How can you drink that vile stuff?” “It’s delicious. And nutritious.”

  “You would think so,” he said darkly. He sighed. “I’m up against a brick wall, Morgan. Killian was here, and now he’s gone. I’ve been—what do they say? Not beating the bushes.” “Pounding the pavement?” I suggested helpfully. “Whatever. Not a trace of him anywhere. It’s almost as if he never existed.” Hunter ran himself a glass of water from the tap. “I didn’t imagine him, did I?” “If you did, then we shared the same arrogant hallucination.” A corner of Hunter’s mouth lifted. “You didn’t find him—attractive?” “No,” I said, realizing with some surprise that I was being totally honest, not trying to save Hunter’s feelings. “I liked him. I thought he was fun. But he also seemed kind of stuck on himself.”

  “Personally, I think he’s a pain, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t worth saving.” “That’s big of you,” I teased, but the worried look in Hunter’s eyes scared me. “You think Amyranth has him already, don’t you?”