“So, they cook fish. You could have saved a boatload of cash just going to Long John Silver’s.” Sven still looked doubtful.
“Ouch, oh my God, that is hot!” I shrieked, tearing off some of my crab cake.
“Can’t you even wait for it to—” I stuffed crab cake into his mouth.
He looked at me bug eyed, tried to blow out the hot air then froze. His eyes closed and he chewed very slowly. His eyes opened and rolled back in his head. “I think I just ruined my pants,” he said.
I giggled, and we gorged. Sated, we sat, the windows clouded and in a car that reeked of fish. It looked like we had a lunchtime quickie rather than lunch.
“Why has Mia never taken me to that heavenly place?” wondered Sven aloud. Then he burped.
“She is anti-grease,” I replied. “She eats like a rabbit. No one told her that they only live, like, what? Ten years?”
“That wasn’t fish, that was nectar from the gods.”
I chuckled. Hilmack’s affected most people like that. “You think that was good, you should try actually eating in their restaurant.” I leaned back. “I am supposed to shop for the circle. What do witches consider munchie food?”
“As you are in the car with one, and I can probably still roll this gut down the aisle of a store. I could probably repay lunch by going with you.”
“You’re a witch?”
“Have you
read
any of my T-shirts?” he replied, eyebrows up.
“But I thought women were witches and men were warlocks or something?”
“How have you been friends with Mia this long and managed not to know a thing about anything?” He gave me an amazed expression.
“I don’t like weird stuff.” I wasn’t sure why I bothered defending it.
“Witch can mean man or woman. The practice is diversified. Warlocks are either people who practice demonology or fake. Wicca is a religion, a system of belief, and practitioners are generally referred to as witches. Male
and
female.”
“Okay.” I turned on the defroster and, after a few minutes, could see well enough to pull out. We shopped and bought what looked like normal munchie food to me. I was sort of disappointed, truth be told. I thought for sure witches would eat something more exotic than Doritos and cookies.
Back at the shop, and I hauled my purchases upstairs and put them away. Looking around, there was nothing to clean. Nothing needed my attention. It turned out having Sven in the house was like having a twenty-four hour maid service. The dishes magically moved from dishwasher to cupboard, the garbage magically disappeared when it began to get full, and the carpets were magically always vacuumed. That a man did it all was amazing to me since my ex-husband never picked up so much as a dirty sock.
Strolling the room, I moved to the big recliner near one of the floor to ceiling windows at the front of the apartment. Picking up a book, I immediately sat it back down.
I looked out the window until I worked my brain around exactly what bothered me and then pulled out my cell phone. Hitting memory two, I then listened to the other end of the line ring. “Hello,” came my mother’s voice.
Laughter filled the background. It sounded like the tinkling of bells.
“Are you busy?” I gripped the phone.
“No, I was just leaving court.” The laughter and music faded, and I waited until her car door dinged shut. Silence filled the line.
“Janie?”
“Dad didn’t live with us, did he?”
She sighed. “No, you know that. Why?”
“And yet I saw him sometimes.”
“Yes. Janie, you haven’t asked questions like this since you were a child.”
“He used to sing to me—”
“Yes, dear, he was a siren. That was what he did. He sang.” She stated it in the flat tone that one might assume when speaking to someone very stupid. I could picture her, hair glossy and perfect, face pinched in annoyance.
I plowed on, regardless. “And he died.”
“Yes. You were about four.”
“Was it a car accident, Mom?”
Silence. Then, “What brought this up?”
“Mom, you said there weren’t vampires.”
She was so quiet I could hear the click of her nails on her steering wheel. “Have you met one then?” she finally asked.
I pinched my eyes closed and clutched the phone. “You knew they were real?”
“Janie, you are a creature of light and magic. Things of darkness are better off avoided, and I had hoped that—”
“I would never meet one and ask you how my dad really died.”
I heard her suck in a breath. She let it out slowly and then said, “Yes.”
“So, I am asking.”
Silence.
“I am asking how my dad died, mom.”
“This is not a short story.”
“Great. Come to Mia’s store, up the stairs, and tell me a story.”
More clicking. Finally, “Fine. I will be about fifteen minutes.”
“That works.” Fifteen minutes later, the door opened and my mother came in. She perched on the end of the seat across from me, as if concerned it would cover her in witch germs if she relaxed, and regarded me steadily.
“What are you wearing?” she began, but I stopped that line of conversation with one of my own.
“So, you met my dad and fell in love and—”
She shifted in her seat. “You are grown now and understand that not all relationships are based on love.”
“In lust, then,” I tried.
“No, there are other things.” She waved an arm.
“You didn’t even lust him?” I smirked disbelievingly.
“Let me tell the story, then you can play judgmental all you want. Your father had a gift. He was a siren, a very powerful being. I was attracted to that and to the idea of the child he and I could create. I mean, look at you. You are one of the most powerful creatures—”
“
Daughter.
I’m your daughter, Mother, not a creature. I am not anything but a person, trying to figure out why you would sleep with him if your only motivation was to make a powerful
creature.
”
“Power is everything. I have told you that for years. He understood and we made you. I won’t say that feelings weren’t involved—”
“His,” I put in bitterly and her face became pinched.
“Someday you will understand my motivations. Feelings are nothing. They are fleeting. Power lasts. Power makes a difference.”
I had very little in common with this alien being. I wanted more answers though, and making her mad wasn’t going to get me them. “Okay, so you two got together to create a powerful creature. I won’t ask how disappointed you were when you got one who hated what you made her. I want to know how he died.”
“The sirens and the vampires had been aligned for a long time. One day, the vampires rose up against the sirens. The sirens fought back by calling the vampires to the sun. It looked as if the sirens would win.”
“But?” I prompted as she went still.
“But then we woke one morning and the sirens were all gone. Your father, all of them, just gone.”
“How did you know that the vampires won?”
“The vampires let it be known to all who had known any of the sirens. Basically they contacted witches, who tend to befriend them, and the witches told others and before long we all knew. So, the vampires were avoided from then on.”
“Nobody did anything about it? How did you know? Who told you?”
“His name was Randolph, I remember that much. He came to me one night and said that your father was dead—that he had killed him and wanted to know who survived him. I said no one. He looked at you and asked if you were his daughter. I laughed and told him to smell you. Everyone knew sirens smelled of the sea. He smelled you. He smiled at me and left.”
“So, my father was murdered.”
“No, he was killed in a war.”
“So, my father was murdered,” I repeated.
“If you want to be dramatic about it, yes. However, if the sirens hadn’t tried to control the vampires, the vampires wouldn’t have killed them.”
“Did my father have anything to do with controlling the vampires or was he murdered for the acts of others?”
“Oh, where do you come up with this crap?” she snapped. “Don’t martyr your father. He was no saint. He helped make you, and the whole point of that was to control the night and day world. I am happy he didn’t live. I would have hated to see what a disappointment you would have been to him.”
Her eyes flashed in anger at me, and I found a well of cold deep within me and cloaked myself with it. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing her words cut me. I would never let her know that for years, things said along those lines made me bleed. I merely nodded. “Thank you for coming over, mother. It means a lot to me that you finally told me all this.”
She sniffed at me, haughty, cold. I failed to see how sirens were supposedly cold. My mother wasn’t a siren, and she was by far the coldest person I had ever met.
I ran a bath in the big black tub. I lit the candles and wondered if Mia would ever be back to light them again. I poured something from a beautiful glass bottle that smelled of flowers into the water. I took off all my clothes and sank under the bubbles, face below the surface, and held my breath as long as I could.
I had read somewhere that sirens were supposed to be tortured souls.
I wished I wasn’t so close to the mark.
~
I awoke when Vickie landed on the bed, smelling of snow and little girl.
She curled up with me. “Mom, Sven said you had to go to some circle thing tonight and that you probably wouldn’t care if me and him, since tomorrow is Friday and we don’t have school because of that teacher day thing—”
“He and I,” I corrected automatically. I ignored the run on sentence.
“Yeah, he and I took my friend Jordan to the new Pixar movie.”
“Any homework?” I kissed her head and vowed I was never, ever going to tell her I was disappointed in her.
I don’t care if she grows up to be a hobo, I will tell her that she was the best hobo I ever met.
“No, I did it at school.”
“Lemme see the backpack.” She obediently fetched it, and I crawled out of bed. I was becoming a night person, sleeping in the daytime and running around with dead guys at night.
Refusing to believe she was dead, I knew I had to find Mia. Somehow it seemed I would know if she was gone, like the world would be a little darker if she weren’t in it.
Vickie showed me the work she’d done at school and, after dinner, I waved at her, Sven and a little blond girl as they left for the movie. While I still had the front door open, Julia appeared across the street waving. I went back upstairs, re-bagged all of the munchies and carried them downstairs.
I flipped the sign to closed, locked the door, and crossed the road to join Julia in her car. She had a nice car. I pulled on my seatbelt. “Is it okay, do you think, to close Odd Stuff early?”
“Mia always closes it for the circles. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
I nodded. “Where are we going anyway?”
“The beach.” She hummed to a song on the radio.
“Aren’t we going to freeze?”
She laughed. “Eat this and you will be fine.”
She passed me a granola bar looking thing. It was soft and looked like it had chocolate chips in it. “What is it?”
“A potion of sorts. Just eat it.” Well, last night I drank a shot from a vampire bar, so this probably was considerably less harmful than whatever that was. I ate it, and she pulled into Walnut Beach. On the sign that read Walnut Beach, a smaller sign had been posted saying the park was closed for the season, yet it looked like someone plowed the driveway free of snow.
I shifted in my seat, suddenly hot and pulled off my coat. Still warm, I pulled off the sweatshirt I had on over a T-shirt and was still warmer than I wanted to be.
I looked at Julia. She wore a coat, but pulled it off now that we had parked to reveal a bikini top.
“What is in that protein bar? I feel like it’s summer, but I see snow—”
“Magic. Told you, sweetie, we’re witches. It will wear off in a couple of hours.” With that, she got out of the car and I followed. We went down what was probably the boardwalk, but was invisible from all of the snow. The wind cut off the lake, but it only felt cooling to my over warm skin.
This is so weird.
I looked out over the water and could see a lighthouse in the distance. Lighthouse meant rocky shore, and I wondered if my father ever lured some ship into sinking here. Okay, maybe I was still sort of depressed from earlier. Sleep didn’t cure all ills.
Women gathered along the break wall. Lit candles melted into the sand and the women all wore either swim suits or T-shirts and shorts. I was the most dressed woman in my jeans and tee, and I was far too unclothed for the beach in snow. I wondered mildly what anyone would think if they saw it. There certainly wasn’t a rational explanation. What do witches do anyway, besides hang out on the beach in the dead of winter in swim suits?
I caught Julia’s arm. “What exactly are we doing again anyway?”
“A circle. Okay, here is the quick definition of Wicca. Wicca is a nature oriented religion rising out of Alexandrian witchcraft. We believe in harmony with the earth and with our nature as humans.”
Oh, well, I am kind of human-ish.
“We have rituals to celebrate many things, like equinox, and the changing of the moon. We also celebrate the power we have inside us. We celebrate the power of man, or God, and the power of woman, Goddess.”
I thought,
well, that sure is a lot of partying
, but kept my mouth shut.
“Tonight is just us girls,” she continued. “We are celebrating being women, creators, and the power of the Goddess.”
“Okay, how do we celebrate? Do we chug beers and swap labor and delivery stories, or what?”
She laughed and it was as husky and whispery as her speaking voice. “No, we do honor Maiden, Mother and Crone, though.”
Who?
I must have looked thrown off, because she added, “Women have three cycles in their lives. Maiden is the young virgin. Mother is the mother, like you. Crone is when our bodies can no longer reproduce.”
“Okay.”
Young, fertile, and old. Made sense
. Youth is growth, rebirth. Fertility is creation. And with old age comes wisdom. I could be okay it, so far.