“Once we have the personal item, we can call the witch. You will have to tackle her and put them on her. Fast.”
“Them?” he asked, the word nearly silky, making her say it.
“Null cuffs,” she groused. “No, they aren’t legal for me to have. No, the witch council didn’t authorize them. Yes, they’re dangerous for me to have. Will you put them on the witch when she shows or not?”
Linc took the box. “You know I will. Bee, I understand that Asheville is Everhart territory, but you seemed to know this place the moment I mentioned it. You seemed unsurprised she would come to this exact spot. You seem to know something about this place that I do not. How did you know that your enemy would be here?”
“This is a calling ground. Something like... like a myth of power. Likea treasure map. Or King Arthur’s round table. When witches move into the area, they always come here, looking for the Coraville witch circle. Looking for power to accomplish some aim.”
“So it wasn’t a coincidence that she came here, to a place you know about?”
That silky voice. It had once sent shivers up her spine.
“No. Not coincidence. The Coraville circle is buried and locked into a ley line. Most young witches come here on the full moon and try to find the circle, but they can’t find it in one night, on one try. It takes patience and weeks, which most witches don’t have. Mayhew simply had more resources than most. Sherentedthe place.”
“I see.”
Linc said nothing else and Bedelia pulled her cell and called her cohorts. She told each that the coast was clear. Moments later the witches pulled up behind Linc’s SUV. Bedelia got out, slung her bag and the ugly sweater over a shoulder, and met the two witches in the dark of the currently moonless night. The others each carried a blanket and a small bag, and each was wearing her amulet necklace. When they reached one another, they took hands. Together they all said, “Well met and well come. Blessed be, a meeting of three.”
“How do we catch this bitch?” Mabs asked.
“You won’t like it. We call her. Lincoln Shaddock has a set of null cuffs,” Bedelia said, knowing Mable would object, but her old friend surprised her.
“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, moving so fast that air was displaced. 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.”
It had been a long time since a vampire bowed to her. It was disconcerting. “Thank you,” Bedelia said. She took the items, tucking the pillowcase into her shoulder bag. The vampire popped 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 that 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 one 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.”
