Mark of the Witch

I guessed I would have to be satisfied with that for tonight.

Rayne turned to her fellow priestesses. “Ladies, would you kindly wrap things up for me? I’m drained.”

As Rayne took a seat on the cool ground beside me, the other women took over. One thanked the Goddess for Her presence and aid, then each of them bade a hail and farewell to the energies of the four directions. Finally one woman took up the magic circle, the invisible space Rayne had cast. The magic circle was the witches’ temple. Sacred space. Holy ground. I knew better than to leave before all of that was complete, but I was eager to go once it was finished, hoping to find a smoke on the way home. I was dying for a cigarette.

Rayne put a hand on my arm and I jumped. “You need to eat something, Indy. Ground yourself. I’ve got coffee and cake inside.”

“Right. Ground myself.” I’d forgotten the habitual post-ritual snacking. Always seemed to me that the “grounding” thing was just a good excuse for a pile of sugary carbs. “I know it’s rude of me to rush off, but I just feel … compelled to get home.”

“Then that’s where you should be.”

“Thanks for understanding. And for all of this …”

“Text me in the morning, let me know how it goes tonight. I’ll do the same as soon as I have any information for you. Blessed be, Indy.”

“Blessed be,” I replied automatically.

I headed for the subway stop on the corner, intending to catch the next train to my Brooklyn neighborhood.

But there was something happening to me. A tingling, like an itch I couldn’t reach way down deep in my psyche, and a slowly spreading darkness that kept sucking my attention away from the here and now. Like a person running on lack of sleep who almost drifts off, then shakes herself awake, I fought against the somnambulant state trying to overtake me, went down the stairs (into the Underworld), dropped a token (paid the ferryman) and pushed through the turnstile (entered through the first gate). I found a post to lean against on the nearly empty platform and waited for my train to arrive.

A few other people wandered in, most not paying any attention to me. There was an old man who made brief eye contact and smiled, breaking an unspoken rule, probably because in his day it was rude to do otherwise. There was a cluster of pants-hanging-off-the-ass punks, one of whom had a nice crisp unlit Marlboro Light Menthol in his hand, and a nice-looking couple who were too lost in each other to notice anyone else.

Off in the distance, I heard the train echoing closer.

I drifted, pulled myself back, drifted again. I kept almost falling asleep and seeing myself in different clothing. Not quite like in the dream, though. This time I wore a long cloak of black, with a hood pulled up over my hair, bathing my face in shadows.

Stupid dream. Can’t you at least wait until I get home?

I jerked myself back to the present. The train was closer. The other people were beginning to edge nearer the tracks. The punks were uncomfortably close to the old man. The lead one was about to light his smoke, lighter in his other hand. But then he paused, pocketing the lighter, smiling at the others, nodding the old man’s way. The intended victim seemed to realize it about the same time I did. And just as the flash of alarm showed up in his kind blue eyes, one of the underwear-showing assholes pulled a knife. I felt myself lunging toward them even as I fell into the blackness of my dream world.

I woke groggy, rolled over in bed and pried one eye open to look at the clock. There was a cigarette, a white filtered Marlboro Light Menthol, lying in front of my little alarm clock, pristine, unsmoked, waiting for me. Had the nicotine fairy visited last night?

Then my foggy eyes focused on the illuminated red digits. 11:11. I’d slept way late, which was totally unlike me. My brain reminded me that my shift at Pink Petals, the flower shop sixteen blocks from my apartment, started at noon today, and that, more than anything, set a fire under my ass. I bounded out of bed, took a record-speed shower and toweled down in front of the mirror. A handful of mousse and a quick finger comb, and my hair was done. Easy breezy. I was still tugging its natural crimp-curls into shape as I gave my mirror image the once-over, but I stopped moving with one hand still tangled in my hair. My forearm was sporting a black-and-blue mark the size of a pizza slice.

Frowning, I lowered my arm and looked down at my body. Small boobs, still hanging where they ought to, no marks on what I’d always considered a rather boyish figure. I was kind of straight—slender, but straight—long waist that was nice and lean, but no flaring out at the hips. No booty in the back. I was small everywhere. Delicate and slight. I turned and looked back over my shoulder, spotting a good-sized slate-colored blob on one shoulder blade and a maroon one on my butt cheek. Legs looked okay in back. I looked down and cringed at the way the second littlest toe on my right foot was all bent out of shape and discolored. Looked broken. Felt it, too.

I turned back and met my own eyes in the mirror. “What the hell happened last night?” Damn. I was a mess. And that was about the time it hit me that I didn’t remember how I got home. In fact, I didn’t remember anything except standing in the subway, trying to hold on to the here and now, while something else was trying to suck me in. I remembered the punks and the old guy. I remembered one of them with a knife, and another with a mouthwateringly good-looking smoke in his hands. I remember lunging toward them.

And then … nothing.

And now there’s a mouthwateringly good-looking smoke on my nightstand. Coincidence? Or not …

I went back to the bedroom, picked up the cig, looked it over. I wanted to smoke it almost more than I wanted to know how I’d gotten home and into bed last night, but I couldn’t. God only knew what might be in it. Punks like that, you just couldn’t tell—assuming that was where I got it, which was impossible to know.

I picked it up, drummed up every ounce of will in my entire body, took it to the bathroom, dropped it in the toilet and flushed it away.

I almost cried.

I grabbed my towel off the floor, hung it up to dry and rubbed some witch hazel on my bruises. Then I dressed—leggings and a pretty little white camisole with lacy straps, long minty-green sweater over that, with a wide enough neck that it could hang off one shoulder. I added a wide pale brown leather belt that matched my short, kick-ass boots right down to the big gold buckles.

Then I wielded my makeup brushes like magic wands, and in another five minutes I was ready to face the day. Heavy eyeliner, dark shadow, luscious long lashes. I was still wearing my pentacle from the night before, and I decided to keep it on. Hell, it couldn’t hurt. And it might help. It had my birthstone, an amethyst, in its center, and ivy vines made of silver twisting around the circle that enclosed it. Each leg of the star was made of a tiny broomstick. I liked it, lapsed Wiccan or not.

Giving one final glance in the mirror, I headed out of my apartment. My boots protected my sore toe so I didn’t even limp. None of my bruises showed. No one would ever know what had happened last night.

Apparently not even me.

Sixteen blocks was a good brisk walk, and I loved it. I walked to work most of the winter. I walked it in the rain, when it wasn’t torrential. Today was gorgeous. Cool but sunny, and it smelled good outside for a change. I liked the neighborhood, the people I passed on the way, the excuse to get my heart and lungs working a little bit harder than normal. It was all good.

I passed the little convenience store where I used to buy my smokes and almost went inside. I even slowed my steps as I went by the door and, glancing in, saw my beloved Marlboro Light Menthols in their pretty white-and-green boxes, stacked inside a locked, clear plastic case. And the little lighters on the counter. I’d need one of those, too. Maybe just for today …

I stopped. I took one step into the doorway, and then I closed my eyes. It’s been three weeks. Three hellish, miserable weeks that I never want to go through again. If I buy a pack now, I’m going to have to go back to Day One. Start over. No. It’s got to get easier soon.

“Lucy?” said someone from inside the store.

My eyes popped open. A man stood just inside the entrance, facing me. And for a long moment I sort of locked onto his eyes and couldn’t look away. There was some kind of buzzing in my head, and my skin was cold and prickly.

“Hello,” he said.

His voice felt like warm fingers on my skin.

I feel his hands on my back.

I blinked myself out of whatever sort of idiot-haze I’d fallen into and tried to look at him the way I would normally look at any stranger who called me by the wrong name. He was gorgeous, that was for sure. Italian, or maybe Spanish. Sun-kissed bronze skin, hot Hershey Bar eyes, wide, kissable-looking lips, and a bod to die for underneath an all-black getup with—oh, shit, I was going straight to hell—a white tab at the front and center of his collar.

“I’m sorry, Father. I’m not Lucy. You must have me mixed up with someone—”

“Not Lucy,” he said, “Loosie.” As he said it the second time, he pointed to the counter, where another clear plastic container held loose cigarettes. The sign above them said, Loosies, $1 ea.

“Is that even legal?”

“I have no idea. If not, it won’t last long.”

“Still, a buck for a smoke? That’s effing highway robbery. Uh, sorry about the effing part. Habit.”

“When you’re trying to quit, you’d pay five bucks for just one, and you know it,” he said, a little humor in his tone and in his eyes.

My knees wobbled. I locked them.

“It’s effective, too. You give in to temptation once, but you do it without buying a whole pack and then feeling justified in smoking all twenty. Perfect solution. Weak moment, give in, and you’re still okay. Right?”

He made perfect sense. But I couldn’t tell him so, because my eyes were on the smooth skin of his neck above the forbidden collar, and the tiny bits of whisker he’d missed shaving this morning. I wanted to rub my cheeks against them.

“So? Loosie? It’ll be on me.” He pulled a cigarette from the pocket of his clerical black shirt and held it up, much the way I envisioned Eve holding that glossy red apple or pomegranate or whatever it had been, up to Adam.

I took it with a quick snatch. “Imagine a priest counseling me to give in to temptation.” Especially one who looks like he does. ‘Cause … damn.

Smiling a little, he pulled out a lighter, and I took a step backward so I could make immediate use of it. I flicked his Bic, smiling at the evil rhyme scheme that brought to mind. The flame rose up and danced like a tiny reminder of hellfire, and there wasn’t even a breeze to interfere. I held it to the tip of the slender white confection and drew in my first breath of carcinogenic smoke in three long weeks. Closing my eyes, I let my lips pull up at the corners in sheer bliss and blew the smoke slowly from them.

“Oh, that’s good,” I whispered. Then I opened my eyes and met the priest’s. “Thank you, Father.”

“You can call me Tomas.”

He pronounced it Toe-MAHS, with the accent on the “mahs.” Italian? Spanish? A priest, either way. As in forbidden. Hands off. Don’t even think about it.

“Thanks.” I took another puff, saluted him with the cigarette between my fingers, and turned to continue my walk to work, smoking all the way and pointedly ignoring the people who waved their hands in front of their faces and coughed big fake coughs when I passed them, even though they had plenty of room to give me a wider berth. “It’s still legal on the sidewalk, dumb-ass.”

“That’s quite a temper you have there.”

I frowned, turning around. That gorgeous priest was following me, just a couple of steps behind.

“I’m sorry. Was this your only one? Did you want to share?” No effing way. I looked at him, and my eyes tripped over the dimple in his cheek when he smiled. Okay, I’ll share.

“I have another. Just waiting to get to a spot with a little more room around it.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of the fake-coughers?”

“Not at all. Just see no need to offend everyone I pass on my way.”

“On your way to where?” I asked.

He hesitated just long enough that I knew something was off. This was not a chance encounter, and given the shit that had been going on with me, and the fact that I had no memory of a long section of last night, I got a little shiver right up my spine. I don’t know that I had any specific theory about what he might have had to do with it, but I was pretty sure there must be something.

Then he said, “Flowers. I need flowers.”

“Flowers.” I sucked in another drag. Half gone already. They really ought to make those loosies in 100s. If someone was desperate enough pay a buck for a smoke, they would certainly pay two for a longer one. “Just by coincidence, I work at a flower shop.”

“Which one?” he asked.

“Pink Petals. Four more blocks.”

He smiled. “May I walk with you?”

This man was not safe. There were a thousand voices whispering things in my head, and I couldn’t understand a single one of them, but being near him made them louder. And yet for some reason I heard myself tell him, “Suit yourself.”

So we walked. And the quiet got a little awkward, so I said, “What’s the occasion, Padre?”

“Occasion?”

“You’re looking for a florist. That usually suggests an occasion.” I puffed and savored, and figured his company was a small price to pay for the pleasure. Besides, his company wasn’t all that unpleasant.

“I just want to send some flowers to a friend. Maybe you can help me with that.”

“Bet I can. You looking for anything in particular?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

“And is this for what? A birthday? Anniversary?”

“Samhain Eve, actually.”

I stopped dead with my smoke halfway to my lips. He’d even used the correct Irish Gaelic pronunciation, Sow-en.

He was watching me, gauging my reaction, I was sure. “Halloween was last night. You’re a little late, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t say Halloween. I said Samhain Eve. It’s the original Halloween. This year it falls on—”

“November seventh,” I blurted, then barely resisted clapping a hand over my mouth.

I looked up to see him nodding in a self-satisfied way. “So you do know about Samhain,” he said.

“I’m a lapsed Wiccan, and yes, I know about Samhain.”

“Lapsed?”

I shrugged. “It’s all just superstition. So’s your path, by the way. I’m an equal opportunity atheist.”

“Wouldn’t know it by your jewelry.”

My hand flew to the pentacle hanging against my sweater, between my breasts. “It’s a pretty piece. Nothing more.”

“I see.”

“In addition to knowing about Samhain, I also know that, as a rule, Catholic priests do not follow witches, lapsed or otherwise, around New York City on the day after Halloween. So would you mind telling me just what it is you want from me?”

His smile faltered, and he lowered his head. “I’m not a Catholic priest.”

Note to self—he didn’t open with “I’m not following you.”

“Anglican?” I chanced.

“Gnostic.”

My brows went up.

“A very-little-known Gnostic sect, actually, known as the Keepers of the Pact.”

“Vroom, vroom.” I made a twisting motion with my hands, and then, when he didn’t smile, sang a few notes. Nothing. He was just staring at me, those dark brown eyes trying to swallow my soul.

And my soul was wanting to be swallowed. Utterly wanting it.

“So you need an arrangement—”

“I don’t need an arrangement, Indy. I need you.”

I closed my eyes tight, sighed hard. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” So, he was some kind of stalker, then. I took the last puff of my smoke, looked sadly at the butt, wondering how it had gone so fast, and dropped it down a sewer grate. “Look, I don’t know what you’re up to here, but—”

“I’ll tell you, if you’ll let me. Will you give me five—maybe ten—minutes? Will you do that for me?”

“Do I really need the whole spiel, Father? Can’t you just hit the highlights? Nutshell it for me?”

“All right.” He took my arm and led me off the sidewalk toward a café where they still had a few tables set up outside. It was only another block to Pink Petals. I could see the sign from here. We sat down as if we planned to order breakfast. And then he looked me straight in the eyes. “This is going to sound—well, insane. I didn’t believe it at first. But I’m changing my mind.” He took a breath, lifted his chin, held my eyes and sort of rushed ahead. “There is a demon who is going to try to come through a portal into our world on Samhain Eve. If he succeeds, he could very well bring about the end of mankind. You are destined to help me stop him.”

I tightened my lips, inhaled, nodded slowly, surreptitiously looking around us to see if I could spot a cop. Just my luck, not a single one in sight. “Hoookay. Um, I am pretty sure you have the wrong girl, Father Tomas.” (Emphasis on the Mahs.) I got to my feet, inching sideways, clear of the table.

“The woman I’m looking for has lived many lifetimes, Indy, including one in ancient Babylon in which she and her two sisters were executed for the practice of witchcraft.”

His words slammed into me like a baseball bat in the hands of Derek Jeter. I stopped moving and tried very hard not to look the least bit intrigued, not to meet his eyes as I asked, “Executed … how?” Despite my best efforts, my voice came out hoarse and wobbly.

“Pushed from a cliff.”

I felt it again, those hands at my back, warm, the touch filling me with utter pleasure and horrible grief all at the same time. I felt the moment when my feet left the solid earth, and the sickening way my stomach seemed to float upward as my body fell. I heard the wind whipping past my ears, tugging my hair.

I sank into the chair again, shook the vision away before I had to relive that horrible impact, and kept my eyes lowered. “I think you’re probably a little bit disturbed, and maybe not even a real priest.” My voice was very low, very soft, the words delivered in a slow, deliberate monotone. “I’m going to go now, and if you follow me, I’m afraid I’ll have to call the police.”

He sighed, lowering his head. “Call them with what, Indy?”

Frowning, I started to reach for my BlackBerry in its handy pocket on the side of my French vanilla suede Louis Vuitton bag, but it wasn’t there. I must have lost it … probably in the subway last night.

When I looked up he held it in his hands.

“Where did you get my phone?”

Touching the screen a few times, he laid the phone faceup on the table and slid it across to me.

“How did you …”

“Look,” he said.

I frowned down at my phone at the familiar black box of an online video just as it began to play. It took a few seconds for me to realize that I was the star of the piece.

I snatched up the phone and stared in disbelief as I, Indira Simon, wearing the very same clothes I’d had on for the ritual last night, flung my hands out toward a knife-wielding gangbanger and without so much as touching him, sent him flying so hard his pants fell the rest of the way down before his butt hit the concrete. Then I spun around, flinging my hands toward another, and his head bounced back as if I’d delivered an uppercut to the jaw. Only, like before, I’d never touched him.

The way I was moving was like tai chi on fast-forward. Graceful, rapid, powerful. I yelled something at them, but in some strange language that sounded made up. The old man ran away, looking back over his shoulder at me like I’d sprouted horns or something. And then I got nailed from behind and went down hard. But I sprang up again, did a flip—a fucking flip—that seemed to defy gravity and every other law of physics and whipped my hands once more, shouting more words in that same foreign language. I missed that time, nailing a big metal wastebasket and sending it flying like a missile. It came apart when it hit the wall, clanging and banging to the floor. And then the punks closed in on me all at once, kicking the shit out of me for a minute, before someone off camera—probably the person holding it—shouted, “Hey, get the hell away from her. I’m calling the cops!”

The voice was female. And familiar, though I couldn’t quite place it.

The punks ran for it. Well, two of them did. The third was basically being dragged between them. And then the camera came closer, as if the person carrying it were bending over me. “Are you okay?” a male voice asked.

I heard the woman ordering this guy away, too. Demanding to know if he’d actually been filming an assault instead of helping. I couldn’t see her coming closer, as the camera was still on me as I stared up at it. Close up, my eyes were black—jet-black—except my eyes are blue—and then I said, “Milik ša zanunzê ihakkim mannu?”

The camera backed away and the video abruptly ended.

I blinked, staring at my BlackBerry, swearing under my breath as I dragged my finger along the bar at the bottom, managing to rewind the video just a little. Then I hit Play and stared again at the close-up of my face.

Yes, my eyes were black. Irises, pupils, everything. Just two black marbles. Dead-looking eyes.

The woman in the video, a woman I still couldn’t think of as me, uttered her strange words again, and I whispered along with them, “Who can know the minds of the Underworld Gods?”

“What’s that, Indy?”

I’d forgotten the priest was still sitting there and looked up at him quickly. “It wasn’t me.” I barked the words so fast, I didn’t take time to think about them first. But once they were out, I knew it was the only possible argument I could make. I turned the phone toward the priest. “Look at the eyes. Those aren’t my eyes. This is just some chick who looks like me. My eyes are blue. Not black. All right?”

“But she looks just like you,” he said.

“No, she doesn’t. She has black eyes. And she knows a lot of martial arts shit I wouldn’t even begin to be able to do. And how the hell did you get my phone?”

“You left it at your friend’s place.”

“My f-friend?” I blinked at him, looking like a doe in the headlights, probably. “You mean Rayne?” I thought that was her voice on the recording.

He nodded. “She went after you to return it and saw the last bit of the attack. Then she realized that guy was recording it. She tried to get him to delete it, but he told her to go to hell, that it was going to go viral. She took you home and put you to bed, but she was so upset she forgot she still had your phone on her.”

“So … you know Rayne?”

He nodded but didn’t elaborate. “She knows about my … mission. That’s why she told me about you.”

I was feeling horribly betrayed by my friend, and there were tears in my voice when I asked, “And have I gone viral?”

“Thankfully, no. Most people who commented seem to think it’s a hoax. But you and I both know it wasn’t. Was it, Indira?”

“It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t real, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay?” I got up, hitched my bag higher on my shoulder, turned to leave. “I’m going to be late for work. I have to go.” I started walking.

He came with me, damn him. “Trust me, I know how hard it is to believe all this. It took a lot to convince me, too. Took seeing the impossible with my own eyes, and I’m still arguing with my doubting side.”

“Your doubting side is right. I’m not a demon fighter. I’m just a simple ex-witch trying to eke out a life in the big bad city. You’ve got the wrong girl.”

“You’re a Warrior Witch. One of three. And I need your help.”

“You’re not getting it.” I strode faster, aiming for the big pink sign on the front of the shop up ahead.