Cate Tiernan - Changeling

“Remember, I told you about my folks going on a cruise? They left today.”

“Where’s Mary K.?”

“Jaycee’s.”

His face took a speculative expression, and I braced myself.

“You’re saying you are alone in the house,” he said.

“Yes.”

“That cruise was for… eleven days?”

“Yes.” I sighed.

“So you’re alone in the house. All by yourself.”

“Yes.” I couldn’t look at him—his voice was softened, and the anger was gone. Oh, Goddess, he was so attractive to me. Everything in me responded to him.

“So let’s go in.” He sounded much calmer then when he had arrived.

I almost whimpered from wanting him. If he came in the house, if we were alone together, how could I keep my hands off him? How could I stop him from putting his hands on me? I wouldn’t want to. And what would that do? Making out wouldn’t change anything: not my heritage, not my fears, not the possibility that I was going to end up more Ciaran’s daughter than Maeve’s.

“No, that’s not a good idea.”

“Got some other guy in there, have you?” His tone was light, but I felt tension coming off him like heat.

“No,” I said, looking at my feet. “Look, I just don’t want to be alone with you, okay?”

“Then how about my house? We wouldn’t be alone there.” Hunter lived with his cousin, Sky Eventide.

I gave him my long-suffering look. “I don’t think so. We broke up, remember?”

“We should talk about that,” he said, frowning. “Speaking of bad idea’s.”

Tell me about it, I thought. I wanted to be with Hunter more than anything. But I knew—and I had to make myself remember—how terrible it would be to hurt him later. I shook my head to clear it, trying to get back to the subject at hand.

“We should talk about your trying to control the decisions I make.”

Hunter frowned as he seemed to remember why he had come. “I’m not trying to control your decision,” he said. “I’m trying to help you not make irresponsible ones.”

“You think I’m irresponsible?”

“You know I don’t. I think you made this decision without having all the facts. Like about exactly how dangerous Ciaran and Amyranth can be. How many deaths they’re responsible for. How much power and knowledge they have at their disposal. Pitted against you, a seventeen-year-old uninitiated witch who’s been studying Wicca for a grand total of three months.”

I knew all that, but hearing him state it so baldly made me cringe. “Yes, I know,” I said. “I still think I need to try.” I need to know if I’m good or bad, I added to myself. I need to know who my father is, what my heritage is. I need to know that I can choose good. If I don’t know these things, we can never be together.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said, his voice sounding frayed. “It’s not your job to save the world.”

“I’m not trying to save the world,” I said. “Just my little part of it. I mean, today it’s Starlocket—and Alyce, remember? Tomorrow it’s us. Don’t you see that?”

Hunter looked around, thinking, deciding on another plan of approach. He was well acquainted with how stubborn I could be, and I could see him weighing his chances of getting through and changing my mind.

He pushed himself off the house and stood before me.

“Tell me the instant you hear from Killian,” he said.

I tried not to show my surprise. “Okay.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I know.”

“I hate this.”

“I know.”

“Right. So call me.”

“I will.” After he left, I went back inside, shivering with cold. I sat down in front of the fire and rested my head against the couch. I would have given a lot to have Hunter with me right then. I sighed, wondering if love was always this hard.

I am glad to hear your cough is better, Brother.

As I recounted, the siege (I can only call it thus) has continued against the abbey. Our poor milk cow has gone dry, our kitchen garden has withered, and the mice are keeping our one cat constantly at work. Our daily offices are ever more sparsely attended.

It is the villagers, the Wodebaynes. I know this, though I have not seen it. We are now obliged to buy milk and cheese from a neighboring farm. Various illnesses have beset us; we cannot shake colds, aches, fevers, etc. It is a desperate time, and I will resort to desperate measures.

—Brother Sinestus Tor, to Colin, may 1768

On Monday morning I saw my sister heading toward our school, followed by some of the Mary K. fan club. I waved at her.

“Mary K.!”

She trotted over, her shiny hair bouncing. I was glad to see her looking more like herself. She’d had a horrible autumn. Twice I stopped her boyfriend, Bakker Blackburn, from practically raping her. After the second time I told my parents, who lowered the boom on Mary K. I also told Bakker he’d regret being born if he ever looked at my sister again. I knew we weren’t supposed to use magick to harm, but I was absolutely ready to put some serious hurt on Bakker if he hurt Mary K.

But now Mary K. looked happy.

“Hey!” she said.

“Hi,” I said, rubbing my eyes. I’d gotten about three hours sleep total. All the little creaks and groans and windows shaking in the wind that I’d never noticed before had been magnified tremendously and made it impossible for me too sleep deeply. “Everything okay?”

“Yep! How about you?”

“Fine. Okay, um, yell if you need anything.”

“Sure—thanks.” She headed back to the gaggle of freshman friends who were waiting for her. Among them I was surprised to see Alisa Soto, who seemed to be a friend of Jaycee’s. Alisa was a sophomore who’d transferred to Widow’s Vale High around Christmas, but I had actually hardly seen her at school until today. I knew her because she was in my coven Kithic—the youngest member. She was one of the people recruited by Bree when Bree had formed a new coven to rival mine and Cal’s. When Cal was gone, our two covens had combined to form Kithic, and we were now led by Hunter and Sky.

Most of my coven went to my school: Bree Warren and Robbie Gurevitch, my two best childhood friends, who had recently become a couple; Raven Meltzer, local bad girl and resident goth, who happened to be dating Hunter’s cousin, Sky Eventide; Jenna Ruiz; Matt Adler; Ethan Sharp; and Sharon Goodfine. The last two were a couple, and Jenna and Matt had once been a couple, too, but had broken up.

I was dreading seeing my friends. I didn’t know if any of them, aside from Bree and Robbie, knew about me and Hunter. I hadn’t wanted to see them Saturday, and I still didn’t want to see them. But I had no choice.

All of them, except for Alisa, were sitting, as usual, on the back stairs that led to the school’s basement. “Morgan,” Robbie greeted me. During our New York trip Robbie had come down on me about my casual misuse of magick. We had made up, bun things weren’t totally normal yet.

“Hey.” My nod included everyone. I popped the top on the Diet Coke I’d bought on my way to school and took a deep slurp. Act casual.

“So, how’s the bachelorette pad?” Bree asked with a smile.

“Fine. My folks went on a cruise, so I’ve got the place to myself,” I explained to the others. For an instant I thought of Hunter saying, “Let’s go in,” and my heart contracted.

“Party at Morgan’s house,” Jenna said, laughing; then her laugh turned into a cough. Bree patted her on the back and looked at me. This cold, damp weather made Jenna’s asthma worse.

“No, no party,” I said, starting to wake up as the caffeine coursed through my veins. “I can’t face the cleanup job after.”

Plus Mom would have a cow, I thought.

They laughed, and Bree wrapped her arms around Robbie’s knee. He looked cautiously pleased. He was crazy about Bree she seemed to care about him, and they’d been trying to hash out some kind of relationship for a while now. During our trip to New York, they seemed to have made some degree of progress.

“Sky missed you at Saturday’s circle,” said Sharon Her black hair swung in a thick curtain just past her shoulders. It was still a little odd to see her all cozy with Ethan, who had been one of the school’s biggest potheads until he’d found Wicca. Now he was clean and sober and in love with Sharon.

Raven snorted. “Sky takes everything too seriously.” Raven and Sky had been sort of a couple for the last few weeks, but Raven’s wandering eye had gotten her into trouble more than once.

Jenna coughed again, and I winced at the sound of her rattly indrawn breath. She looked at me hopefully. I had helped her before, but now I knew that even that kind of magick was forbidden to uninitiated witches. But how could I not help a friend? It seemed so harmless. I hesitated just a minute, then scooted closer to Jenna. She sat up straighter, already anticipating being able to breathe freely again.

I closed my eyes and sank quickly into a deep meditation. I focused in a healing white light and imagined myself grabbing a ribbon of this light out of the air. Then, opening my eyes, I brought my hand to Jenna’s back and pressed my palm flat against her thin amethyst sweater. I breathed out, willing the light into Jenna, letting it flow into her lungs, feeling her constricted airways relaxing and opening, all her thirsty cells soaking up the oxygen. After just a minute I took my hand away.

“Thanks, Morgan,” Jenna said, breathing deeply. “That works so much better than my inhaler.”

“You could also wear an amber bead on a silver chain around your neck,” Matt surprised us by saying. Seven heads swiveled to look at him. Since he’d cheated on Jenna with Raven, he’d been very quiet and kept a low profile. He always came to circles, always completed the assignments Hunter gave us, but he never participated beyond what was required. He looked embarrassed by the attention. “I’ve been doing some reading,” he mumbled. “Amber is good for breathing. So’s silver.”

Jenna looked at him solemnly, at the boy she’s loved for four years until he’s betrayed her. She gave a little nod, and then the morning bell rang. Time to get to class.

I sucked down the last of my Diet Coke an pitched the can into the recycling bin. Our group split up, and Bree and I headed toward our eleventh-grade homeroom. I wished I could tell her about Eoife McNabb and Ciaran and Hunter and everything I was facing. But thought I hadn’t been officially sworn to secrecy, I knew there was too much at stake to tell anyone who wasn’t involved. Not even Bree or Robbie.

“Have you been doing any readings lately?” I asked. Bree had been studying the tarot.

“Uh-huh.” Gracefully she swung her black leather backpack onto her shoulder. Bree was gorgeous. That was the first—and sometimes the only—thing anyone noticed about her. She was taller than me, slender, with a perfect figure. No zit ever dared to mar her skin, her eyes were large, coffee colored, and expressive, and she’s been born with a gift for choosing prefect clothes and makeup. Next to her I usually looked like I ought to have a tool belt strapped around my waist.

“Alyce helped me find another book at Practical Magick that has variant readings of some of the cards. It’s so interesting, the whole history of the cards and what they’ve meant according to what time period they were being read in. It’s the first thing in Wicca that I feel I can really relate to.”

“That’s great,” I said. Bree wasn’t a blood witch, so while Wicca and magick flowed so naturally to me, it didn’t always make it to her. I was glad she’d found something that felt meaningful.