She proceeds to look me over with agonizing fastidiousness, as if I am a prize mare to be ogled, giving nothing away. At last, shepulls the spectacles from her face without a word and holds them over her shoulder for Donna to put up. Then, she lays her hands in her lap. Everyone around me is achingly silent, hanging on her every gesture as if they dare not breathe without her permission first. I don’t know if I’m supposed to keep standing there or step away or say something. But before I can figure it out, she speaks.
“Let the conclave commence.”
15Conclave
I am surrounded by women far deadlier than I, women whose understanding and experience of our gifts outweigh my own. They have a history, an unspoken accord, that binds them together. I see it in the way they look at one another, the heavy glances, the tiny gestures of brows and lips and hands. In their posture and proximity, the easy way they move around one another. The careful way they move around me.
It is clear—they belong; I do not.
I sit rigid in the dining chair Myrtle has provided as they circle with their own chairs, aware that I am in the hot seat, completely out of my depth. Aunt Myrtle speaks first.
“Piers came to me of her own accord,” she begins. “Drawn by something we all share, clutching the memory of our meeting more than twenty years ago.”
“Does that matter?” Scarlet’s mother, Barbie, asks before Myrtle has barely taken a breath to continue. Her dark hair is glossy straight, framing her face in long layers, causing her gray-green eyes to stand out in contrast. If she’s older than Azalea, it’s not by much. “She’s completely green, ignorant. And that’s dangerous for us, especially at her age. I know it’s not her fault, but I don’t see how that makes a difference. I have a daughter to protect.”
“We all have daughters to protect,” the second-oldest woman in the room says sharply. Her hair is gray fizz around her face, skin mottled with brown, but there is beauty there in the largeness of her eyes and the puckered bow of her mouth.
I notice the way Myrtle drops her head at the words, daughterless.
“Well, most of us,” the old woman amends.
Barbie looks put out by the interruption. “Thank you, Lattie. But your daughter is fifty-one, and hers is already twenty-two.” She nods to the two women I assume are Lattie’s daughter and granddaughter, respectively. “Scarlet is six.” She looks at me. “I thought the plan was to leave her be, observe from afar, and act in the interest of the venery should she malfunction. Isn’t that precisely what’s taken place? You said yourself, Myrtle, that her work was sloppy, amateur, lacking polish. There was a sheriff here just today asking questions. We can’t afford that kind of attention. She’s already put us at risk.”
The threat behind her words is unmistakable, sharp enough to rip a hole in the room, bleeding tension. I shiver to think what acting “in the interest of the venery” actually means. I’d like to defend myself, but she’s not wrong. I don’t know what I’m doing. And that can’t be good for anyone here, least of all me. And they aren’t even aware that I’ve done itthreetimes already. Not once, like they’re arguing. Not even twice, as Myrtle knows.Threetimes. So it will happen again. It is only a matter of time. The question is, will I be ready? Can I be? Can I pull it off with the kind of grace they expect of me, and do I even want to?
“Malfunction?” Myrtle’s eyebrows crinkle symmetrically like an accordion bellows. “She’s not an android, Barbie. She’s a person.”
“She’s a witch,” the older woman in the pink slacks speaks up, the one who had been watching me with Regis. She rests a hand on Barbie’s shoulder. “A bane witch, no less. If she were just a person, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. And my daughter is right. The risk is too great. We let Lily’s sad story play out and it has done nothing but cost us. It’s time we end it.”
Myrtle whirls on her. “She’s one ofus,Rose. She’s family.”
“Is she, though?” I turn to see Azalea has spoken from the other side of the circle. She cocks her pretty blond head and eyeballs me,her bright yellow dress swapped for a lean Missoni pencil skirt and a cropped tee that readsHATE BAIT. Her hair has been pulled into a high ponytail with a big, black bow over it. “I know she’s Lily’s daughter, but didn’t Lily make it clear she was out of the venery? I still don’t understand why we let her live after that,” she says casually, as if ending my mother’s life were as simple as returning a dress that doesn’t fit. “Might have saved ourselves a trip.”
A rush of heat rips through me, stealing my breath, and it takes a moment to register that it’s anger. I feel defensive for my mother, the very same woman who left me clueless. It’s so startling, I nearly topple from my chair. With effort, I force the feeling down. I cannot lose my cool when I am this outnumbered.
“With all due respect, Azalea,” Myrtle cuts in, “you were three at the time.”
Azalea shrugs nonchalantly and proceeds to slurp her Coke through a metal straw. If I don’t make it out of here, I realize, she will fly back to her life of indie fashion labels and cold brew on the West Coast as if I never existed, relieved to have one less responsibility to think about. It’s a chilling thought.
“She’s right,” someone says. I turn my head and take in the redhead in her forties, the soft turtleneck she wears, the delicate curve of her ear, the cut of hazel eyes so like mine in shape and size that I cringe when I see them.
“Thank you, Misty,” Aunt Myrtle says, visibly relieved to have someone’s support.
“No.” Misty smiles sweetly. “I meant that Azalea is right. Lily renounced the venery. She renounced her family. She renounced her powers. She renounced our lifestyle. Everything that makes us who we are, keeps us safe. She didn’t deserve our mercy, but we gave it to her anyway. I’m not inclined to do so again.”
Myrtle frowns. “Lily was… a disappointment to be sure. But she never actually put us in harm’s way. We had no reason to move against her.”
“No reason?”The woman, Rose, is purpling under her collar. “We hadeveryreason. Thirteen in this room tonight if I’m countingright. She was a wild card, uncalculated, unpredictable, a bomb that needed to be disarmed before she detonated. If we wait for the explosion, the damage is done.”
Barbie’s fingers toy with the green enamel locket on a long gold chain around her neck. I wonder what she keeps inside, probably nothing good. “Hasn’t Lily put us in harm’s way by leaving her daughter untrained, undefended in the world? Effectively and literally dumping her on our doorstep thirty years too late with a badly botched mark and a nosy cop sniffing around?”
“If we had delivered the last kiss, then it would have been preemptive. Premeditated, even. We don’t kill innocents. I thought we settled this twenty years ago,” Myrtle argues with exasperation, twisting in her seat.
“It would have been protective,” Rose counters. “If you recall, several of us were opposed to your pleas for mercy at the time.”
“And clearly still are,” Myrtle shoots acerbically. She shakes her head, as if she’s been stung. “We’re arguing over something that is already done. Lily kept her word to the venery. When the relationship was no longer sustainable, she ended it.For good.She saw to his dispatch herself, and it shattered her. She knew it would, and she did it anyway. For all her faults, she wasloyalin the end.”
My mind reels at this morsel of new information about my mother and her death. It sits bitter on the back of my tongue. I assume they are talking about Gerald—her sole relationship for most of my life, implying thatshekilled him. But I can’t imagine it. Can’t envision all her years of misguided devotion to that selfish buffoon spilling out across the linoleum in a tide of excrement and vomit, the grisly issue of a well-timed kiss, a drop of sweat in his coffee, her lips around the neck of his beer bottle. But Myrtle’s words ring with truth; it would have shattered her to do so. And suddenly, her suicide is coming into sickening focus. I grip the seat beneath me until my knuckles whiten.
