Next came the bay laurel leaf. I tore it in half and added it to my tiny bonfire.
‘Shouldn’t we be doing this at night?’ Lydia asked through a very loud yawn, stretching both her arms over her head until the bottom of her crop top started to roll up her ribs. ‘Communing with the dead feels more like a stroke of midnight thing than not-even-nine-thirty on a Saturday morning.’
Before I could answer, the flame of the burning cedar turned black. My fingertips began to prickle and the heat took over my body, pumping magic through my heart, scorching me from the inside out. Everything happened faster this time, so fast I didn’t have time to warn Lydia before we were plunged into darkness. I heard her calling my name but I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t see anything. I was back in the nowhere space, held in black velvet nothingness, waiting.
The vision was the same but different. I was there, and so was the wolf, the same one from Bonaventure, I was sure of it. But this time, we were in a tight, dark space, lit with black candles. Outside, I heard water rushing as the flames roared, an apocalyptic contradiction. Inside, the wolf was bleeding, tangled up in wires, and behind it I saw two people. One sprawled on the floor in front of a marble altar, covered in cuts and gashes. Catherine. The other was the pale woman with the white hair.
‘This isn’t what I was looking for,’ I said, clawing at the ground. ‘That isn’t what I wanted to know.’
But what I wanted didn’t matter. The woman flew at me with inhuman speed, faster and faster until I felt her slam into my body, my essence matched by hers, and together we let outan agonizing scream. I fell backwards and the chaos around me disappeared, replaced by the bright blue summer sky.
‘What the hell was that?’
Pushing myself upright, I saw Lydia kicking at the salt circle, her cheeks stained with tears.
‘It’s OK,’ I said, crawling towards her, weak and empty. ‘You’re OK.’
‘No, I am not! I am so fucking far from OK,’ she yelled. ‘Did you put something in my coffee? Am I tripping?’
‘You saw it?’
Lydia Powell, descendant of a dormant witch had shared my vision.
She jumped to her feet and knocked over the ashes of my offering, stamping it out with her sneaker. ‘I will try anything once but that was not just anything. I thought cedar repelled moths, not made you trip balls and hallucinate giant freaking wolves. Is it even cedar? Oh my god, what did we burn? What have I been breathing in?’
‘Lyds, please, I’m sorry,’ I insisted, pleading for her to sit back down. She might have seen the vision but I felt like I had lived it, and my insides crawled with the sensation of the ghost passing through me. I wasn’t strong enough to stand and if she ran, I wouldn’t be able to chase after her.
‘I should never have asked you to do this. I’m so, so sorry.’
She didn’t move. Instead she stared at me for a second then stamped on the bonfire once more for good measure.
‘You shouldn’t have asked me to do it without telling me exactly what “it” was,’ she replied as she knelt back down beside me. ‘You look awful, by the way. Super dehydrated.’
‘I feel awful,’ I replied, relieved and beyond grateful that she was still by my side. ‘I really am so sorry, I truly didn’t know that was going to happen.’
‘Then why did we do it?’
The cemetery was empty, nothing but trees and headstones, green grass and blue sky. No white-haired woman, no red-haired grandmother. No wolf.
‘I just wanted to ask a question,’ I said, struggling to get the words out. ‘I’m so confused about everything.’
Lydia stroked my back, a wash of compassion filling her brown eyes.
‘You were trying to contact your dad,’ she guessed. ‘Your birthday is coming up and you miss him. I get it, Em, I really do. I pretend not to care about my father but I search for him all the time, although I mostly use the internet instead of the dark arts. It’s less traumatic, but only a little.’
‘It’s not my dad,’ I replied in a thick voice, determined not to cry. It wouldn’t help the situation now. ‘There’s no way to contact him.’
‘Wyn then?’
One perfectly round tear slid down my cheek at the sound of his name and landed in the ashes of the cedar.
Lydia took it to be a yes.
‘I don’t want to have to say this, Em, but you need to wake up. Sometimes people you love, the ones who are supposed to love you back, they leave and you never really understand why,’ she said, her words measured, detached. ‘My dad left. My mom left. Even my own twin can’t wait to start college to get away from me. Sometimes the reason people aren’t with you is because they don’t want to be.’
‘Lyds, that’s just not true.’ It killed me to know she was hurting and I hated myself for not seeing it before now. Lydia Powell was a walking ray of sunshine but even the brightest days had to deal with dark clouds sometimes.
‘Your dad didn’t leave you, he didn’t even know your mom was pregnant. Jackson loves you, and your mom didn’t leave,she just moved. She wants you in Charleston with her, doesn’t she?’
