Part 18 (2/2)
”How about when she breaks mine, Roy?” Jack interrupted bitterly. ”What are you going to do for me in that case?”
Roy took one look at the deep grooves carved beside Jack's mouth and saw in his face something too, too familiar. ”I'll buy you a drink,” he said.
Once, on a Girl Scout campout, Gillian had built a fire. While the other kids were busy making their s'mores and singing ”k.u.m ba Yah,” Gilly had fed things to the flame: sticks and pine needles and shoelaces, bits of bread and pennies and even a hapless toad. She had been mesmerized by its greed, by the way it devoured everything in its path. She'd stared at the bonfire and thought: I don't have a heart. I have one of these inside of me. I don't have a heart. I have one of these inside of me.
Tonight's bonfire was smaller ... or maybe she was bigger. She stood holding hands with the others around it. But they were no longer Gillian, Chelsea, Whitney, and Meg. G.o.ddesses all, they were a coven. And she was their high priestess.
The wind, ripe with spring, slipped between Gillian's thighs like a lover. It was her only covering; her clothes lay in a pile by the dogwood. When she'd said that she wanted to be as pure as possible, the others had been surprised. But Whitney had whipped off her s.h.i.+rt. Chelsea s.h.i.+vered in her bra and panties. Only Meg, self-conscious, was fully dressed.
Gilly met the eyes of each of the others. Did they feel it? Never had her body buzzed like this. She tilted her head back, casting her voice into the night sky. ”Guardians of the watchtowers of the east, where sun, moon, and stars are born, I do summon, stir, and call you up!”
The words wrote themselves, drawn from her heart like a ribbon, and for the first time Gilly understood what Stars.h.i.+ne had meant about the power of writing your own spells. ”Travel over our skin like a whisper, caress us. Bring us imagination; teach us to dance. Blessed be.”
The others swayed slightly. ”Blessed be,” they repeated.
Whitney turned, her face glowing. ”Guardians of the watchtowers of the south, pa.s.sionate and hot, I do summon, stir, and call you up. Share your heat with us; make us burn inside. Blessed be!”
”Blessed be!”
”Guardians of the watchtowers of the west,” Chelsea continued, ”the blood of the earth, I do summon, stir, and call you up. Let your mystery flow over us. Blessed be!”
”Blessed be!”
Finally, Meg spoke. ”Guardians of the watchtowers of the north, night of cool magick, I do summon, stir, and call you up. Bury us deep in your soil; give us the power of earth and stone. Blessed be!”
”Blessed be!”
”Spirit,” Gilly cried, ”come play with us as we weave our ribbons; sing with us as we light the fire. Take us to a world without words. Make this night magick ... blessed be!”
”Blessed be!”
She knelt before the altar, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s swaying, and touched the incense burner, the water, the earth, and then sliced her hand through the flames of the bonfire. ”I do cast out any and all impurities both of the spirit and the world. As I will it, so mote it be.” Gillian cast the circle three times-with water and earth, with incense, and finally with energy. Then she smiled. ”The circle is perfect.”
Gillian brushed a branch of the dogwood tree, and a festival of delicate white petals rained over her shoulders. She raised her hands, her body slender and blued by the moon. ”Mother G.o.ddess, Queen of the night, Father G.o.d, King of the day, we celebrate your union. Accept these gifts.” Digging into the L.L. Bean canvas bag, she pulled out a sachet filled with the herbs she'd bought at the Wiccan Read. There were twenty in there, all crafted by Whitney. ”You do it,” Gilly suggested, and she handed the sachet to her friend.
Whitney strung it on a branch, a poppy red ornament. She reached into the bag and handed out the rest of the sachets to the others, who began to trim the tree. Their gifts winked out from the thick profusion of blooms, a rainbow of offerings.
”Ouch!” Whit said, jumping. ”I got nailed by a twig.”
”See, there's a reason we wear clothes,” Meg said.
Chelsea sank down on the ground. ”Well, nudity aside, it seems to me that the G.o.d and G.o.ddess have all the fun.”
”What do you mean?”
”Beltane's all about s.e.x, right? But I don't see Freddie Prinze Jr. hanging with our coven. No offense, Gill, but you don't have the right equipment.”
Gillian turned. ”But that little geek Thomas McAfee does?”
Chelsea's cheeks flamed. ”He's not like that-”
”No? Then tell us what he is is like. You've been hanging out with him so much I thought you might bring him along. You have to do that when you're training a puppy, right? Keep a close eye on them?” like. You've been hanging out with him so much I thought you might bring him along. You have to do that when you're training a puppy, right? Keep a close eye on them?”
”Gilly-” Meg said, trying to keep the peace.
”Let's conjure a man,” Whitney suggested. ”We're all just jealous. Right, Gill?”
But Gillian didn't answer. The other girls exchanged glances, unsure of what to do, what to say. ”We'd never agree on what to call up,” Whitney hastily continued. ”You know, like I have a thing for redheaded guys, but Meg likes those squat, stubby bull types.”
”Italian,” Meg corrected. ”And they're not stubby.”
Finally, Gillian smiled. The others were careful not to show it, but inwardly, they all relaxed. This was the Gilly they knew, the Gilly they loved. ”Maybe if we're really good little pagans, the G.o.d and G.o.ddess will give us a gift, too.”
She walked to the tree beside the dogwood, a pillar of a pine. G.o.d knew how, but Chelsea had managed to affix long streamers of ribbon from a branch nine feet off the ground. Gilly picked up a silver ribbon and smoothed it between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, over her belly and thigh. She arched her back, and the other girls were transfixed-channeling a spirit was one thing, but here Gilly was s.h.i.+fting shape, turning into a siren as if she had done this a hundred times before. ”Now,” she said softly, ”we celebrate.”
Addie woke up, her cheek flush against Chloe's pillow. It was so easy to see her daughter's little face, her flyaway hair. She touched her hand to the worn cotton, pretending that it was Chloe's soft skin beneath her fingers.
It isn't.
She heard the words as clearly as if Jack had spoken them, a thought that dropped like a grenade, and was just as devastating. Even more upsetting was the intrusion of Jack into her mind when she was stubbornly trying to think about Chloe. She tried to force her memories to the surface but kept seeing more recent ones: Jack sliding his arms around her waist; Jack looking up at her as he chopped peppers in the kitchen, Jack's slow smile. The truth was that although she found it hard to believe and had no idea how it had happened, she could no more picture her life without Jack than she could without Chloe.
Frustrated, she threw back the covers of the bed and began to pace through the house. At the bottom of the stairs, she automatically touched the small picture of Chloe that hung there, the same way she did every time she came up and down, as if it were a mezuzah. And that was the moment she realized she'd lied.
Jack might never mean more to her than Chloe. But G.o.d, he meant just as much.
Addie sank down onto the bottom step and rested her forehead on her knees. The last person she'd loved had been taken away. This time around, her second chance, she should have been holding onto him tightly, with both hands.
”I love him,” she murmured out loud, the words bright as a handful of new coins. ”I love love him. him. I I love him.” love him.”
Addie stood suddenly, giddy and dazed, like a cancer patient who'd just been told that the disease had disappeared. And in a way, it was not all that different-to find out a heart she'd believed irrevocably broken had somewhere along the way been fixed. She took a deep breath and felt it: every s.p.a.ce in her soul that had been left empty when she lost Chloe was now swelling with the very thought of Jack.
She had to find him. She had to apologize. Addie slipped on her clogs and shrugged into a coat. She was halfway to the door when she hesitated. With the resignation of a man walking to the execution chamber, she started back up the stairs.
In Chloe's room, she stripped the bed. She carried the linens downstairs in a bundle, remembering what it had been like to hold her newborn just like this in her arms and walk her through her colic at night. She threw the sheets and pillowcases into the was.h.i.+ng machine, added soap, and turned the dial.
The fresh scent of Tide rose from the bowl of the machine. ”Good-bye,” Addie whispered.
Amos Duncan couldn't sleep.
He sat up in bed and turned on the light, finally giving in to his insomnia. He was being ridiculous, he knew. As a parent, he was overprotective; more than a few times he'd heard town matrons talking about the tragedy it was that he'd not married again, for Gilly's sake. But Amos had never found anyone who meant more to him than his daughter. Where was the tragedy in that?
It was 11 P.M P.M.; the movie she'd gone to see would probably let out in half an hour. It made sense to have Gilly stay over at the Saxtons' because the movie theater and, well, just about everything else was on the other side of town. Plus, Charlie probably slept with a gun next to his bed. For all Amos knew, so did his wife. And not even Jack St. Bride would be stupid enough to tangle with the detective's family.
Gilly would be in good hands.
Which didn't explain why, at 11:30 P.M P.M., Amos got dressed and drove to the Saxtons' house to take his daughter home.
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