"Ah, Tilly Nguyen," a low feminine voice said.
She frowned as her head felt a rumble inside of her. What was this?
Then a strong hand lay on her shoulder, that darkness doubled and she looked up into Astra's dark eyes.
"Let's have a chat."
15. Dark Conversations
Tilly woke up somewhere cooler, the air was filled with brine and wet wood. When she looked around, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, she recognized only that she was staring up at trees hanging over her. They bent like friends anxiously waiting for her to wake up.
"Sorry about the headache," a familiar voice cooed.
And then she realized she did in fact have a headache. She reached up, feeling with tentative fingers, hoping not to find a bump or gash. Her hair was matted, and she felt mud where her head had lain heavy before waking.
"What is going on?"
Three women sat on a log, watching carefully through the fog.
It was the setup of a dark fairytale nursery rhyme.
"We're here in Salem to look into strange happenings."
Her eyes finally reset to this dark stage, to Astra and her two friends sitting tall and straight on a fallen tree. Their posture looked unyielding, as though they'd never learned how to relax.
"Alright," she said carefully as she pulled in a deep breath of thick, forest air. Her headache was small, but pulsing steadily. She thought of their dinner party visit. "So, what? You're here to make sure nothing incredibly weird is happening? Like, a cult?"
Astra tilted her head and then walked to where Tilly sat on the muddy ground. She stared up at the woman, a rush of fear closing around her, uncertainty; she was a small, caged animal. It brought her back to that morning in the closet.
She slowly lowered herself to a crouching position. Tilly held her breath.
She wondered if this witch, who held a position in a governing coven they knew nothing about, could harm her.
She wondered if she knew that magic was buried here. If she knew what The Lost Souls House was or the ghosts it housed, and that Tilly and her friends could sense each other's feelings across town, or that the house could change its temperature based on their moods.
She may have read articles about a pink teenage boy, or a murmuring of starlings chasing a woman.
"We dance around what we are." Astrid's words floated around her. That headache pulsed a little harder, and her heartbeat picked up. She was looking at her fingernails, and Tilly watched the woman wearing a three-piece suit with her dark hair perfectly slicked into a controlled bun, wondering what magic looked like in her hands. It couldn't be the wild thing that Ursula knew in her garden or the complexity of Eloise's gift of smell.
"What do you mean?"
Another tilt of her head. The shadows of the trees slanted across her angular face in a menacing caricature.
"You carry magic inside of you."
Tilly froze.
She leaned forward, and her voice dropped lower. "You're a witch. I'm a witch. Your friends are witches. And we dance around the truth."
"Because..." Tilly hedged, licked her cracked lip that tasted like blood had flowed then stopped as the body intended.
"Because," Astra continued for her. "The truth for us will not set us free. It will burn us."
The words were thrown to the ground, a gauntlet, a threat, a damning promise. And they lived there on the ground between them. The two behind her rose from the fallen tree until they were Astra's shadows. Faces tight, eyes dark.
"But you, with your novice fingers merely dipped in a magic you do not understand?" She narrowed her eyes with a skilled smile meant to intimidate. And it worked. "You threaten everything we have worked thousands of years to protect. For what? Garden parties and ghost stories?"
Tilly kept silent. The feline smile widened. "Yes. Little witches running around a haunted town, casting spells and wreaking havoc." Her singsong voice belied the danger Tilly knew was lurking. Then her eyes turned fierce and hard. "But we cannot have that, Tilly."
