Seeker

  “Morgan, Morgan,” I said, looking desperately around the floor. “This isn’t my decision alone. We need to agree on this. I mean, Ihatethis. All I want to do is make love with you. But can you try to see where I’m coming from, a little bit?” The look she gave me was distant, and my heart dropped down to my bare knees. She shrugged and sat on the bed to pull on her socks. “I don’t get it. You want to, but you won’t. You love me, but you won’t sleep with me. I feel like a leper.” I ditched all thoughts of underwear and pulled on my jeans, being careful with the zipper. “Morgan, I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone in my whole life. And I’m ecstatic that you feel ready for us to go to bed. That’s what I’ve wanted ever since I met you.” I knelt down in front of her and looked up into her eyes, her shuttered face. “I love you. I’m so attracted to you. Please believe me. I mean, youfeltit. This has nothing,nothingto do with how much I want you or how sexy you are. It’s just about timing.” “Timing.” She sighed and lifted her long hair away from her neck, then let it fall. I thought of it spread over my sheets, over my pillows, and began to think I was completely mad. “Morgan, I don’t want to hurt you. But either option is bad: if I ask you to wait for the next time we can be together, it hurts your feelings and makes you think I don’t want you. Which isn’t true. But if we go to bed tonight and then something happens and we’re apart for a long time, would that be better?”

  She glanced away, seeming for the first time to examine the state of my room. Great. I saw her gaze trace the bare floor, the gutted candles on my desk, the boxes still unpacked. With no warning, an image of Cal Blaire’s bedroom came to mind. I had seen it when I’d been in Selene’s house, undoing spells, setting other spells. Cal’s bedroom had been huge, quirky, and romantic. His bed had been an antique, hung with mosquito netting. Everything in that room had

  been beautiful, luxurious, interesting, seductive. Feeling bleak, I rested my face on my

  outstretched arm, wondering if I had just buggered things up in a really huge way. “Morgan, please,” I said. When I raised my head, she was examining me calmly, and I damned her ability to rein in her strongest emotions. I covered her hand with one of mine, and she didn’t flinch. “Please don’t be angry with me or hurt. Please don’t leave like this. Please let’s have tonight be a good thing for both of us. I don’t want this to be the moment we both look back on while I’m gone.”

  My words seemed to reach her, and I felt the sharp edges of her anger soften. A tiny bit. Then her face crumpled, and she said, “Hunter, you’re leaving tomorrow. I want us to be joined together in a real way before you go. Here I am, I’m seventeen”—she threw out her arm in a disgusted, disbelieving gesture—“and you’renineteen and can be with anyone you want, and I want you to feel connected to me!” Her voice broke and she clenched her fists, looking embarrassed and angry with herself for seeming weak. Her words completely threw me, and I gaped at her. One of my favorite Tynan Flannery quotes came back to me: “Women are impossible, witches are worse, and women who are powerful witches are going to be the death of me.” I reached up and enfolded her in my arms, resting my head against her chest just under her chin. “Love, wearejoined together in a real way because I love you, and you love me. We’remùirn beatha dàns,” I said quietly. “You say I can be with anyone I want—well, you can be with

  anyone you want, too. I choose to be with you. Who do you choose?” I tilted my head back and looked up at her.

  “I choose you,” she muttered ungraciously, and I wanted to laugh but had enough sense left not to.

  “I feel connected to you,” I went on. “And it doesn’t have anything to do with us having sex. Not that I don’t want to have sex!” I added hastily. “I definitely want to have sex! Make no mistake! The second I come back, I’m going to jump you, wherever you are, and initiate you into the sublime joys of womanhood.”

  She burst into laughter, and I grinned. “My mother will be thrilled,” she said dryly. “Me too,” I promised with intense sincerity, and she laughed again. We sat there, hugging, for a long time. I hoped that we had somewhat mended our earlier rift, and I again started to question whether or not I should just go for it. Hell, Morgan wanted to, I wanted to, it would make us happy . . . for the next couple of hours. What about after that? I was conducting a debate within myself when Morgan gently disengaged from me. “It’s late. I better go.”

  “Uh . . .”

  She kissed me, holding my face in her strong hands. “Drive carefully tomorrow. Call me when you can. I’ll be thinking about you.”

  Then she stood up and left, her clogs loud on the stairs. I trotted after her, still trying to figure out what I wanted. She turned and gave me a last, wistful smile, and then she was gone. I sat down on the steps, unsure of what had happened between us, unsure if I had done the right thing, unsure about everything.

  The Journey

  After Morgan left, I felt sad and wished I could have the whole evening to live over again. When

  would I ever learn?

  I awoke at six in the morning, in the dark and inhospitable dawn. The house seemed empty and too quiet, and once again I missed Sky’s presence. I hoped she was feeling better in France. A hot shower revived me, and I finished loading the car, seeing my breath come out in dragon puffs. I decided to have breakfast on the road and set off for the highway. Just before leaving Widow’s Vale, I pulled over and performed one last spell, sending it out into the world, knowing it would come to fruition about twenty-four hours from now. Then I headed north, toward Canada and my parents. “A room!” I bellowed into the barely functional intercom. “Do you have a room!” I rubbed my bleary eyes and waited for the crackly response, hoping they spoke English. For the last sixty miles every sign had been in French. I don’t speak French—not well, anyway. I was forty minutes away from Quebec City, had been driving for hours, and was starting to nod with tiredness, though it wasn’t much past seven. I needed food, another hot shower, and a bed. My parents’ town, Saint Jérôme du Lac, was only about four hours away, and the temptation to press on was strong. But that would involve crafting wake-up spells for myself or drinking a hell of a lot of coffee, and it meant I would get to my parents’ house after ten o’clock at night. A worrying thing—I had been unable to reach them by phone or scrying or witch message. I doubted they knew I was coming. If I was going to show up unannounced after eleven years, it

  should probably be in the daytime.

  The intercom crackled back at me, and I took the garbled response to be an affirmative. Twenty minutes later I was tucking into somejambonandoeufs,washing them down withbière,in the tiny restaurant next door. Half an hour after that, I was facedown on the bedspread in my small, cinder-block room, dead out. I didn’t wake up till nine the next morning. On Sunday the first thought I had, after “Where the hell am I?,” was about Morgan. I pictured her slowly coming to recognize the spell I’d crafted before I left. I pictured her eyes widening, a smile softening her mouth. It had been hardly more than a day, but I missed her, ached for her, and felt lonely without her.

  But today was the day. I was within four hours of seeing my parents, and the thought shook me to my very bones. This was the day I had been waiting for for more than eleven years. My heart sped up in anticipation.

  I leaped up, showered, and hit the road by ten. I’d bought a road map of Quebec Province back in New York. Now it led me up Highway 40, around Quebec City, then off to a smaller, two-lane highway, number 175, that would take me north to Lac Saint Jean, a big lake. Saint Jérôme du Lac was about forty minutes from there, from what I could tell. This far north, any signs of approaching spring were wiped out. Trees were still bare and skeletal, patches of crusted snow lay everywhere in shade; no crocuses or snowdrops bloomed anywhere. Spring’s warm tendrils had not yet touched this country and wouldn’t for some weeks, it appeared.

  Following my map carefully, I turned off onto Highway 169, still heading north. I knew I had to go about 120 kilometers to reach Saint J
érôme du Lac and, with any luck, could do it in about an hour. Now that I was so close to my parents’ home, a strange, quivery feeling was beginning in my stomach. My hands felt sweaty on the steering wheel; my pulse quickened; my gaze darted around the scenery surrounding me, attuned to any movement. I was nervous. I hadn’t seen my parents in eleven years. What would they be like? Eleven years ago, I had barely come up to my da’s breastbone. Now I was probably as tall as he. The last image I had of my father was that he was big, stern, and invincible. He hadn’t been scared of anything. Sometimes I had seen a deep sadness in his eyes, and when I had asked about it, he’d replied that he’d been thinking about the past. I didn’t understand it then but now knew that he’d probably been thinking about his life before he married Fiona, my mum. He’d been married before, to Selene Belltower, a fact that still stunned me. He’d had another son, a few months older than I, whom he’d abandoned. That had been Cal Blaire. Now both Cal and Selene were dead, and people were glad of it. I wondered if Da knew. Probably not. My mum was Da’s perfect counterpart: soft, smiling, feminine, with a ready laugh, a sense of mischief that delighted us kids, and an easy, immediate ability to show emotion. It was Mum who explained Da’s moods, Mum who comforted us, cheered us on, encouraged us, loved us openly. I had been desperate to please both of them, for different reasons. Childishly, as I drove closer to them with every mile, I felt a barrage of different emotions—loss, anger that they had been gone, a quickening sense of anticipation. Would I, when I saw them, be once again able to lean on my da, to rely on his strength? Would I feel that he would protect me still, though I was now grown and come into my full powers? Hell, I was a Seeker for the council—the youngest ever. Yet I was still a nineteen-year-old kid, and the thought that I could abandon the weight of being a Seeker, even if just for a short while, was very seductive. They would have changed in the past eleven years, I knew. Of course I knew it. I had changed, too. But we were still family, blood family, still father and mother and son. Somehow we would

  make those relationships fit us once more. And soon I would contact Alwyn, too, and the four of

  us could be a true family again.

  The small turnoff road to Saint Jérôme du Lac was clearly marked. Suddenly I was bumping down a road that hadn’t been retarmacked in what looked like twenty years. Huge potholes caught me off guard, and I bottomed out twice before I wised up, dropped down to about twenty miles an hour, and drove like an old lady. The farther off the main road I got, the less prosperous the land felt. I went through several tiny, poor-looking towns, each with a petrol station that might or might not function. I also saw a lot of Canadian Indians, who called themselves First Nations people, and signs for First Nations crafts and displays.

  I had no idea how far down this road I was supposed to go; after that first sign, I hadn’t seen any more indications that I was heading in the right direction. Finally, when it seemed that I had gone impossibly far, I gave up and pulled over to get petrol. After I had filled the tank, I went into the small store attached to the station to pay. The storekeeper had his back to me; he was on a small wooden ladder, stocking packages of sandpaper. I hoped he spoke English. “Excuse me,” I said, and, when he turned around, I saw that he must be part Indian. “Yes?”

  “I put in ten dollars of regular petrol,” I said, laying the Canadian money on the counter. “Okay.” The cash register was beautiful: an old, manually operated one. A sudden thought struck me, and in desperation I said, “Do you by any chance know of any English or Irish people who live around here?” He thought for a moment. “You mean the witch?” he said, and I gaped at him. "Uh . . .”

  “The only English I know around here is the witch,” he said helpfully. “He moved here two, three months ago.”

  “Um, all right.” My mind was spinning. It was unheard of to be known so casually in a community. Even witches who weren’t hiding from Amyranth were always very circumspect, very private. We never would have identified ourselves as witches to anyone. Why did this man know? What did that mean? And why did he only mention a “he”? “Could you tell me where they live?” I asked, with a sense of dread. Surely if this man knew about them, knew where they lived, then Amyranth did, too. What would I find when I got there? “Sure. Let me draw you a map.”

  I watched in a daze as the man quickly sketched a rough map. I thanked him and headed back to my car. I didn’t know what to think, so I started the engine and set off. The crude but accurate map led me down back roads that were even more bumpy and ill kept than the access road had been. I wished I had rented an SUV and hated the thought of what my car’s undercarriage must look like.

  I was hungry, thirsty, and exhausted. I began to wonder if this whole trip had been an unworkable spell. Then I came upon a little wooden shack, the first building I’d seen in ten minutes, set back from the road. A battered Ford Escort minus its wheels stood on cinder blocks in the yard. Dead ivy vines clung to it. The yard was a wintry mess—untidy, overgrown, littered with trash. It didn’t look like anyone lived here. Obviously this wasn’t my parents’ house, though it seemed to be in the correct place on the map. I must have gotten it wrong. No witch would live in a house in this condition, with this kind of general air of neglect and poverty. A glance around the back confirmed my suspicions: Even in Canada, in winter, I should have been able to detect a cleared plot for an herb garden. But there was nothing, no sign of one. I sighed and rubbed my

  cold hands together.

  Finally I decided to at least knock and try to get directions. I climbed up onto the porch, pulling my coat around me. This close, I felt I could detect the presence of a person, though it wasn’t strong or clear, which was unusual. I knocked on the rough, unpainted door, wincing as my cold bare knuckles rasped the wood.

  Inside, there was a slight shuffling, then silence, and I knocked again. Come on, I thought. I just want directions. With no warning I felt something touch my presence, as if someone had cast their senses to identify me. My eyes widened in surprise, and then the door slowly creaked open, admitting dim light into the dark interior. My eyes instantly adjusted, and I saw that I was standing before Daniel Niall, my father, for the first time in eleven years. Grief

  I’ve read books where people are “struck speechless,” and to me it always sounded like they just

  couldn’t think on their feet. The ability to think on my feet has always been one of my strengths, but it deserted me now as I gazed at the man before me. I knew what my father looked like: Though I had brought no photographs with me to America, I had my memories, and they had always seemed accurate and consistent and full. But they didn’t match this person in the doorway. This couldn’t be Da. It was an incredibly bad Da imitation, a hollowed -out husk of what once had been my father. My gaze darted restlessly over him, taking in the sparse gray hair, the hollow cheeks with their deep lines, the thin, almost emaciated body. His clothes were shabby, his face unshaven, and there was a dank smell of stale air emanating from the dark house. My father is only forty-six. This person looked about sixty. He frowned at me consideringly but without wonder: He didn’t recognize me. I had a sudden, irrational urge to turn and run—something in me didn’t want to know how he had come to be in this state. I was afraid. Then, slowly, as I stood there, a dim light entered his eyes; he looked at me more closely; he measured me up and down, trying to calculate how much his son would have grown in eleven years.

  A vague disbelief replaced the suspicion in his eyes, and then we were hugging wordlessly, enfolded in each other’s lanky arms like tall spiders. In my memories, my father was tall, huge. In real life I had an inch or two on him and outweighed him by maybe two stone. And I’m not hefty.

  My father pulled back and held me at arm’s length, his hands on my shoulders. His eyes seemed to memorize me, to memorize my pattern, my imprint. Then he said, “Oh, Gìomanach. My son.” His voice sounded like a thin, sharp piece of slate. “Yes,” I said, looking behind him for Mum. Goddess, if Da looked like this, w
hat wouldshelook like? Again I was afraid. In all my thoughts and wishes and dreams and hopes and expectations about this meeting, it had never occurred to me that I would be hurt emotionally. Physically, yes, depending on what happened with Amyranth. But not emotionally. Not feeling pain because of who my parents had become.

  “You’re here alone?” Da rasped, and looked around me to examine the yard.

  “Yes,” I said, feeling incapable of intelligent speech. “Come in, then.”

  I stepped through the doorway into the darkness. It was daylight outside, but every window was shuttered or curtained. The air was stale and unpleasant. I saw dusty herbs hanging from nails on the wall, a cloth that looked like an altar cloth, and candles everywhere, their wax spilling over, their wicks guttered and untrimmed. Those were the only signs I could see that a witch lived in this house.

  It was filthy. Old newspapers littered the floor, which was black with dirt. Dust was thick on everything. The furniture was old, shabby, all castoffs, put out on the junk heap and rescued—but not fixed up. The one table I saw was covered with piles of paper, dried and crumbling plants, some Canadian coins, and unsteady stacks of plates with bits of crusts and dried food.

  This house was shocking. It would have been shocking to find anyone living in it, but to find a witch living in it was almost unfathomable. Though witches are notorious pack rats—mostly related to their ongoing studies of the craft— just about all of us instinctively create order and cleanliness around us. It’s easier to make magick in an ordered, purified environment. I looked around to find Da shuffling his feet awkwardly, glancing down as if embarrassed for me to be seeing this.