“That noticeable?”
“You are magic, my young mage.”
“So the man in black, did he wear a fedora?”
“Yes, and he carried a sword. One made of magic, but a sword.”
“Was his name James?”
“You know his name was James. You know much about him, and he knows much about you.”
“I actually don’t know that much about him. So, what’s the offer?”
“Can you guess?”
“You’ll protect me. At what price?”
“I already have protected you. I told him I didn’t know you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Oh, I did.” She pointed to the crystal ball on the table. “I have seen you.”
“Who is your daemon?” I asked.
“I have no daemon. I have many spirit guides.”
“Same difference.”
“No, they are not the same.”
Was I going to have another argument? I decided not to. “So the offer is to protect me?”
“Join my coven. The Rosicrucians cannot touch you there.”
“One of your twenty-one covens?”
“My Inner Circle.” She leaned forward. “If you scared the Rosicrucians, you must be a very powerful mage indeed.”
I fluffed up with the complement. Two things occurred – I could get in, get that curse undone, and get out. And I would find the source of this ley line.
“I’m in. When do I start?”
“Tonight we are having a ritual to celebrate the Eclipse.”
“There’s an Eclipse?”
“It already happened, but not many people can get the time off. We usually hold large rituals when everyone’s able to get together.”
I thought that was silly, since the power had waned by then. The world does not bend to man’s desires. I nodded and said, “Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“6:40 is when the ritual begins.”
I got up. “Sure, I’ll be there.”
“Know this, magician,” she said, and I suddenly felt power building in this room. It hit me in the stomach, like someone had thrown a medicine ball at me. I doubled over in pain and stars exploded behind my eyes. Through it I hear her say, “I am the Witch of Salem.”
======================
I went back to the house and busied myself cleaning. It was the least I could do for her. I was taking a break out on the porch – belt on firmly over my shorts – when Quintin’s car pulled into the driveway. I glanced at the clock that I could see into the kitchen – it was 4:30.
“How is she?” I asked, as he plopped into the chair next to me.
“Not good. She’s getting less and less lucid, slipping into catatonia.”
I frowned. “Think if I lift that curse, she’ll be better?”
“Mike, I don’t know if it is a curse or if it’s all in her head.”
“I have to do something.”
Suddenly, Quintin smiled. “At least you are. I feel like a helpless log.”
“Couldn’t you have gone back in time and stopped the accident?”
“My abilities don’t work that way.”
“How did you get them?”
He shrugged. “I experimented. I really don’t know how. I just knew what to do and did it.”
“You have a silent daemon.” I’d read about some kids like that.
“Or a guardian angel. Or a spirit guide. Who knows? I’m not going to question it.”
I stood up. “I can make you some dinner before I leave.”
“Leave for where?”
“Alicia’s coven. She’s going to do a post-eclipse ritual or something.”
He shook his head. “More like a reaping.”
“A what?”
“You’ll see what I mean.”
================
I couldn’t breathe. The room was hot, and full of sage and incense. Twelve of us fit in this center. I was the first one in the room, not wanting to hang out in the dressing area, especially when they saw that belt. I kept it on so it touched my skin.
I stood in the room, pulling and tugging on my robes. Though they were made of cotton, they were still heavy. Morrigan came into the room. “What are you doing here, Mike?”
“Waiting.”
“You’re supposed to wait outside. We approach the High Priestess for her blessing.”
I gave her a look. “Well, okay, whatever.” I knew I should have read Gardener’s book on witchcraft. But I wasn’t taught this way – we all went into the room and waited for the deacon to enter. I followed Morrigan back out to the waiting room.
I had also wanted to avoid the looks I was getting. Who the hell was this upstart and what makes him so important so that he can get into the inner circle, when there were so many other people who had been biding their time, waiting for this chance?
Sitting alone, I gave them all an arrogant glare, but I felt very uncomfortable.
A gong rang. I didn’t know what that meant, but everyone pulled up their hoods and started to look like monks, arms in their opposite sleeves. Eleven of us paired off, and I refused to pair. Someone stood behind me. The woman who was in front of me beckoned me forward but I refused. The guy behind me also gave me a bit of a shove. I looked back at him, walked around him, and gave him a shove into the woman, and took his place.
By then, the line started moving. The jostling for position was childish, I know now, but the entire ritual was made for children.
We went back into the hot room. I had refused to put up my hood. I watched the two people in front of me walk up to Alicia – definitely her in a black robe, white hair flowing freely – and a man holding a staff with antlers – obviously her consort. The pair walked up, bowed, and kept their heads down until she placed her hand on their heads and then they backed away.
Be the day, I thought, walking into the circle. I looked at the two of them for a minute. I realized that the only open spot was behind me, and I was meant to close the circle. I traced the line in the floor with my foot, willing it closed.
There was a gasp next to me. A man was gazing at me wide-eyed. Obviously I made a faux pas. Screw him, I thought, and turned around to face the inside of the circle.
“Your ways are different mage,” said Alicia. I felt a tug, something pulling on my soul. I made a motion across my chest, and the tugging got worse.
As she chanted, I felt the tug turn into a pull. I froze, understanding what Quintin was saying about a “reaping”. She was trying take my power from me. Everyone else, including the man with the antlered staff, murmured spells or chants, their hearts not into it.
Even into the offerings, she kept pulling, and I kept resisting. Most of my attention was on that, and on resisting the voice underlying it all saying, “Surrender, why fight?”
She did have a daemon!
Join us. Imagine the power you will have.
The ley lines weren’t natural. They were her, stealing power from everyone. Then they made me join hands, and people began to skip around the circle. This would generate more energy, more for her – but for what? I did not skip, I walked, taking things out of rhythm. Finally the person to the left of me let me go and grabbed the person to the right of me, leaving me alone inside the circle, inside the dance.
The power generated was incredible, and it was all flowing right to her. I didn’t dare reach out to grab any for myself, instead rooting myself through the floor – through the circle itself, even – forcing myself and my soul and my daemon to remain with me.
We will give you power beyond your imaginings, bend your knee to me.
“NEVER!” I yelled, and the dancing stopped, people collapsing. She did not. She dropped everyone’s hands and came walking right over to me.
“You want this, don’t you?” she asked me quietly, only so I could hear.
“Not like this.”
“They give willingly.”
“You take it for yourself!”
Again I felt the buildup of power and she began to raise her hand.
Grimalkin, help me!
Two could use the power, I thought, and knew the spell immediately for protection. She pushed the directed power right at me, and it washed over me – instead knocking over the person behind me, crashing them through the circle and breaking it.
As I felt the energy fly out, I yelled out her spell that she had used to curse Dottie, yelling it backwards, and ending it with the spilling of blood – not my own. The antlered man had gotten up, but I grabbed the athame that was on the altar and slashed at his arm with it. It wasn’t bladed, but I made it so – and a drop of blood fell to the middle of the circle.
“NO!” Alicia cried, and all the energy generated from that circle dissipated.
Without stopping, I continued the spell to release the power of the artificial ley line.
“Stop him!” she yelled, and everyone got up, dazed. Only the man with the antlers swung the staff like a club right toward my head. Ritter’s training caused me to duck, and to dart between them to the door.
I threw it open, and, scooping up my clothes, shoving feet into my sneakers, I took off into the night, howling the spell at the top of my lungs.
===================
I got to the common and stood there in the center, feeling the power of the ley lines there. One by one, I broke the dams, and one by one the power came right to me. I remembered the Star card, and as the power came, I let it go, water from the river to the earth.
Boy, was she going to be pissed.
I was making a mess now. And this meant I had The Witch Of Salem hating me, too. I didn’t care. People should be free to chose what they want, not have their power taken from them and stored away.
“Grimaulkin,” came a man’s voice from the side of me.
Power flowed through me, and I turned to see Ritter, all dressed in black. I heard the ring of a sword clearing a scabbard. “Come back peacefully and face your judgement.”
“Are you kidding?” I said, and my voice was overlaid by something else, someone else. A few someone else’s. Daemons I had set free? Or spirits? What was the difference? “We are free.”
Ritter started toward me.
I ran.
Power, magic unbound, all flowed through me and my feet left the ground. I was flying! I flew without the wind bouying me, but the spirts themselves carried me.
Ritter ran through the streets following me. If I brought him to Dottie’s he would tear that place apart looking for me.
Quintin’s car was still in the driveway and I landed – or more or less dropped – onto the hood of the car. Quintin was just walking out of the house and I rolled off the hood onto the grass.
I felt him pick me up.
“Ritter!”
Just then, Ritter turned the corner. Quintin grabbed me by the front of the shirt and dragged me up the stairs to the porch. He threw open the screen door and said, “Jump.”
In front of me was the steel door of the back door. If I jumped, I’d smash my face.
I jumped.
===================
A toilet flushed and I tumbled out of a bathroom stall, Quintin right behind me.
One minute I was looking at the back door – the next I was looking at a tile floor in the middle of a large bathroom. “What the—”
Quintin was leaning forward, hands on his knees, panting. “Sorry, I…had to get…far away.”
I sat up and saw a businessman glance back at us from washing his hands. He shook his head and left.
Quintin saw the look and started to laugh. I hauled myself up to a standing position, checking to make sure I still had my clothes.
“Better change into your clothes,” he said, motioning to them as I still held them tightly under one arm. “You’re going for a ride.”
“Where are we?”
“Delta terminal, Logan Airport.”
“Logan Airport?”
“Boston. It’s the farthest away I could think of, to get you out of here.”
He patted his back pocket. “Now, listen to me,” and he guided me out of the bathroom.
He talked as he walked. “You’re going to New Orleans. I don’t care how you get there, but you need to leave on the next flight out of here. From here I think they have direct flights to New York then New Orleans.” He glanced up at one of the flipping signs.
“There,” he said, and started walking to a gate. He stopped at an ATM and got some money from it, a small wad of twenties, handing them to me. He went over to a terminal and waited in line. I was quiet.
“Hello,” he said to the lady. “Any direct flights to New Orleans?”
The lady punched up stuff on a computer. “We have one to Atlanta and then to New Orleans, with a stopover there of an hour.”
“We’ll take it.”
“For two?”
“One.”
“When will you be returning?”
“A week.”
“Name?”
“Robert Michaels,” I said, and took out my ID. I passed a thumb over the name and address, changing it to my name and Dottie’s address. The woman took the ID and punched in the information. “How will you be paying, Mr. Michaels?”
“I got it,” he said, and handed over his credit card.
“We have three seats left,” she said, “You’re lucky.”
“I can be,” Quintin said, “When the stars align.”
As soon as she printed out my boarding pass, they called my number. I stepped out of line and went right to the gate.
“I’m going to call some people down there,” he said quietly. He shook my hand, and then gave me a hug. “Don’t come back if you can. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I said, and watched him leave. Someone jostled me to go, and I boarded the plane.
It wasn’t until I sat down and looked at the boarding pass when I realized something else had happened. It was dated June 25, 2002.
A year and a day later.
Words 2398.
I AM DONE the first draft.
Epilogue was already done.