“Good. They hurt like a mother, but they stop all magical energies.”
“How do you know they hurt?” Clara Anne asked.
Mabs winked at them both and shimmied her skinny shoulders. “I’ll try anything once. Come on. Let’s get this witch trap set.”
“Oh, dear. Age hasn’t softened you at all, has it?” Clara Anne asked.
“Nope. Hot-to-trot old cougar here. I like ’em young and don’t mind the fangy types.”
Bedelia resisted looking back at the SUV. She knew Linc was gone, despite the lack of a door opening and closing. But she didn’t look too closely at how she knew he’d melted into the night. Vampires were crafty, silent, and deadly, and Linc had always been much more than he seemed. “Let’s clip the plantings we need.”
A woman appeared out of the night with a soft popping sound. Bedelia was expecting her, but Clara Anne flinched and Mabs yelped, both dropping her hands. The vampire bowed deeply and, from that vulnerable position, held out a pillowcase. “My lady. These are the personal items found within the abode: a bra and a toothbrush. I placed them in a clean, unused pillowcase. I did not touch them.”
“Thank you,” Bedelia said. She took the items, tucking the pillowcase into her shoulder bag. The vampire walked away.
“I hope they don’t do everything that fast,” Mabs said. “That would be disappointing.”
Bedelia laughed softly, thinking,No. They most certainly do not do everything so fast…
“Let’s clip our plant focals and get this show on the road,” Clara Anne said. “Moonrise isn’t too far off and we need Mable in place.” They walked away from one another. Bedelia went toward the house and clipped a few sprigs off the rosemary she’d planted here so long ago. It was massive, taking over much of what once had been a well-tended herb garden. Mabs walked to a rowan tree and, because it had grown so tall, used her scissors to scrape and peel off a bit of bark. She picked up a few leaves from the ground. Clara Anne walked around the house, hunting, and finally came back with a mullein leaf, a stem of wilted looking sage, and a sprig of silver artemisia. They each tucked their clippings into their small bags.
Holding hands again, the witches crossed the lawn to the flat place just in front of the cliff edge, the precipice where the earth plunged down to a sharp curve of the French Broad River below. The night winds were blowing, inversion layers mixing it up, and the air currents followed the water downstream until they hit the cliff at the elbow of the river and rose fast, up the cliff face, to explode into the clearing. They stood there, silent, peaceful, the wind whipping their hair and clothing. Bedelia pulled all that air magic into her body, the blast of current into her lungs. It was a little like having a glass of wine, heady and freeing. Bedelia felt all the tension she carried in her shoulders evaporate into the air. She dropped her head back, face to the sky. Joyous.
Through their linked hands, she shared the power of the air with her closest friends. Minutes passed. “Ohhhh,” Clara Anne said. “Thanks be and glory be.”
Mabs, who no longer sounded flirty or silly, but peaceful and wise, used the cadence of ceremony and said, “Well met and well come. Blessed be, a meeting of three.”
Clara Anne and then Bedelia repeated the words of gathering. It was old school language, old cadence, unlike what the younger witches used. Comforting to them all.
They released hands, turned a hundred-eighty degrees, and walked back to the spot of the buried circle. Standing outside the buried ring, its power banked, hidden, shielded, and chained, they kicked off their shoes, their feet in contact with the Earth.
Bedelia, as the one who called this circle, said, “Let us begin.”
“When the Coraville coven died out, we buried items of power, we planted seeds and rootlings of power, and together we bound this land,” Mabs said, continuing the words of the ceremony from so many years ago. “Together we three, among a very few others, claimed this place for witches and women of power, but limited it, for the danger its unshackled might could pose to the untrained and the foolish.”
Clara Anne took up the narrative. “Together we claimed the land, this place of power, and the buried circle as sacred, sanctified, and sacrosanct, set aside for future use, for such a time when evil would need to be fought, set aside for the women warriors, the witches of this land, to use and call upon.”
Bedelia continued, “We expectedmento try and take it. Instead, those of our own sex have always been drawn here, and once again, one such has sought to use this place for evil vengeance.”
Clara Anne said, “The buried circle is a place of power for the women. But its purpose is for the good of humankind… and is under…”
Together they all said, like a pronouncement, “The Rule of Three.”
Together they stepped over the long-buried stones, a single long stride that carried them within.
Mabs said, “For the good of humankind, and beneath the Rule of Three.”
“Three women of power,” Mabel said.
“And no single power and no single user mayexploitit orfilchit orconsumeit untoevil,” Bedelia said
“The Rule of Three. So let it be,” they said together. The energies began to rise through the earth, a tingling and sense of expectancy, like the feel of lightning before a strike. The air rising up the cliff swept through the circle in a whirl of power, a strong but small tornado.
“Let us claim the circle,” Mabs said. “Who shall be north?”
“Bedelia,” Clara Anne said, “for the Everhart witch clan has been challenged.”
“Accepted,” Mabs said. “I shall be east.” Mabs went and stood at east.
