Meriwether smiled, and I blinked, taken aback at how it transformed her. She nodded. "There"s a school dance," she murmured. "And my dad actually said I could go. For once. I"m going to my friend"s house and we"ll get dressed up together."
That sounded like fingernails down a chalkboard to me, but she looked happy and I was glad she was escaping her dad for a while.
"No boyfriend?" I asked.
She made a face. "No one will ask me out. They"re too scared of my dad. But I"m hoping this guy named Lowell is there." She let out a deep breath. "What about you?" she asked. "Do you have plans?"
I nodded. "Nothing too big." Just a special magick circle with a bunch of immortals. Same old, same old. "Just some friends getting together. I"ll try to make it to midnight." Since I got up before dawn these days, my head usually hit the pillow before ten. It was... embarra.s.sing. I used to feel so much cooler. But, of course, that coolness had gone hand in hand with feeling half crazy and worthless. So I guess I didn"t miss it that much.
Someone came in and Meriwether left me to go wait on them. She was back in a few minutes, carrying some poster-board signs that she and I had made to advertise our new products. I have zero artistic talent, but Meriwether had done a great job, drawing little figures finding things with happy expressions. I left what I was doing and together she and I started hanging the signs with heavy double-sided tape. "What"s your dad like?" Meriwether asked suddenly as I held up a corner so she could tape it.
I hesitated. No one had asked me that in... ages. A really long time. I quickly compared my dad, who had been a dark, power-hungry king in medieval Iceland, with Old Mac. Not too much in common.
"Well, he"s dead," I said, and Meriwether winced.
"Sorry," she whispered.
"It"s okay. It was a long time ago." Ha ha, you have no idea. Anyhoo, I let out a deep breath, allowing myself to think about my father, remember him for a few moments. Something I don"t usually do. "I... remember him as being kind of forbidding," I said slowly. "My mother was with us more. He seemed like a stern character."
"Did he travel, for work?" She pressed a strip of tape into place, then stepped back to admire our colorful sign, my carefully lettered words arching over the stick figures" heads.
Why yes, it"s hard to loot and raid and subjugate other villages from one"s armchair. My father had been a king in the way that powerful men were kings over smaller territories, a long time ago. He"d increased lands under his rule by four times during the first ten years of my life. I nodded. "He taught us stuff sometimes," I went on, not even knowing why I was bothering. "He was, um, in the military. He wanted us all to be brave and tough. My older brother adored him." Sigmundur had tried to be just like Fair in every way. He"d been sixteen when he died, but already hardened and skilled with weapons.
"Did your father yell?" Meriwether picked up the last sign and looked around for a good place to put it. I pointed to the front of the checkout counter, and she nodded. We headed over there and knelt to stick the sign up.
"When he yelled, it seemed like the whole... house shook," I said. "People who worked for him were afraid of him." I hadn"t even realized that until just now.
"Like my dad." Meriwether carefully peeled off a piece of tape and stuck it in place.
"Yeah." In a bizarre, completely inexplicable way.
"My dad"s always worse during the winter holidays," Meriwether said. We heard Old Mac leave his pharmacy and come our way, and we quickly shut up and separated, busily concentrating on our different tasks. Slowly we drifted back toward each other and continued putting boxes and bottles on shelves.
"You said it was around this time that your mom..." I"m not a delicate or sensitive person, and stomping on other people"s feelings is usually not a problem for me. But I liked Meriwether, and Lord knew she"d been through enough without me making it worse.
"Yeah." Meriwether concentrated on aligning each small box just so. "We were on our way back from a Christmas party and it was icy. My dad wasn"t with us."
"You were in the same car?" Oh, jeez. That had happened to me, too; in fact, it was how I had first met River back in 1929, in France. But the person who had died had been practically a stranger, and her death had barely made a ripple in my consciousness. Things like that hadn"t really affected me-until the cabbie, two months ago. Part of what they were teaching me at River"s Edge was how to actually feel things with appropriate weight.
Meriwether nodded without looking at me. Instantly I got it: She felt guilty for surviving. And her dad couldn"t look at her without remembering that his wife and only son had died. And she hadn"t.
"I"m really sorry," I said-maybe the second time in my life those words had ever come out of my mouth. But I did feel sorry for her-there was no way for her to win in this situation.
I remembered when I"d lived in a small village outside Naples, in Italy, in the 1650s. One of the last waves of the plague came through, and bodies were piling up. Later I read that half the people of Naples had died in that one outbreak. Half the people of a whole city. Half of them.
My little village was hard-hit. My neighbors died; their children died; the local priest died. People who had been genuinely good and kind, to me and to one another, all died within a matter of days. On Tuesday your neighbor would be working in her garden, and on Friday you"d walk past her body piled on top of other bodies in the street.
Not me. So many people, so much better than me, had died, and I was left standing to go on my merry way, because, hey, that town had become a big b.u.mmer. I kept surviving. Over and over and over.
Next to me, Meriwether sighed, then glanced back at the pharmacy.
"It just-should have been me, you know? It would have been so much better for everyone." She got up and took the empty cartons out to throw them into the recycle bin.
I sat back on my heels, struck by that. Not a new thought-I"d seen it in countless movies, read it in books. Now I knew that Meriwether felt that way, for real, in her real life.
What about me? Had I ever felt that I should have died that night, 450 years ago? That maybe my older brother should have lived? He wouldn"t have run away, like I had. He might have seized the family"s power, found some followers, and gone after Reyn and his father to avenge our family.
Or one of my sisters? My oldest sister, Tinna, had been so smart and brave. My father"s face had lit up when she came into a room. I remembered her and my mother working in the kitchen-we had cooks and servants, but every Oestara-Easter-my mother would make her special egg bread. She and Tinna would knead the dough side by side, laughing and talking.
My next-oldest sister, Eyds, had been the family beauty and my most constant companion. Her hair was long, wavy, and a brilliant strawberry blond, like the sun when it first peeks over the horizon. Her eyes were clear and gray. Even as an eleven-year-old, she"d been known for her beauty, and basically everyone was waiting for her to be four years older so they could see how really beautiful she would be as an adult. She and I had done everything together, made up all kinds of games, studied together, slept in the same room.
Then there was my little brother, Hakon. He"d been thin and pale, almost delicate. I"d seen my father looking at him sometimes with a bemused expression, as if wondering how this boy had come from the same union that produced all the rest of us. But Hakon had been sweet, not a tattler, and a faithful follower of me and Eyds as we marched around with sticks on our shoulders or practiced our rock throwing.
When the raiders broke down the door to my father"s study, where we"d been barricaded in, I was clinging to my mother"s skirts in terror. Reyn"s father-the aptly named Erik the Bloodletter-had lunged forward with a roar, and I"d felt the swift jerk of my mother"s body as he"d severed her head. She"d fallen backward right on top of me, and I"d lain, covered by the wide skirts of her wool robe, until it was all silent less than five minutes later.
Should I have died that night? Yes. Reyn"s father had shouted that none should be left alive. My siblings had all had swords or daggers in their hands, children standing up to an unbeatable foe. I"d been cowering behind my mother. Which had saved me.
Why? I"d accepted the stunning reality that I was still alive, that my family was dead. I"d never questioned why that was or if it should be that way. Until now.
"I don"t pay you to sit around!" Old Mac"s roar startled me and I was yanked back to the present day, where my boss was standing in the aisle, cheeks red with anger. Behind him Meriwether made an unhappy face. "And what"s all this junk?" He gestured angrily to a couple of our new signs. "No one said you could put this c.r.a.p up!"
Meriwether"s face flushed, and then Old Mac ripped down our signs and threw them to the floor. I clenched my teeth shut so I wouldn"t start shrieking in fury.
"Dad!" Meriwether said, her face crumpling. "We worked hard on those!"
He whirled on her as if she were a gra.s.s snake and he was a mongoose. "n.o.body asked you to! I don"t need your stupid, ugly posters around!"
Meriwether"s eyes flashed. "They aren"t stupid-" she began, but suddenly Old Mac grabbed a small plastic jar of vitamin-C capsules and hurled it. It all happened so fast-her eyes went wide, her voice choked, and before I knew what was happening, my hand snapped up, I hissed something, and the jar took a small, crazy zigzag away from Meriwether at the last second. It hit the wall beside her and cracked, then dropped to the ground. The lid popped off and gelcaps rolled everywhere.
We all stood still in the shocking silence. Old Mac looked stunned-more than stunned. He looked kind of gray and he leaned to one side, unsteady on his feet.
"I... I didn"t mean-" he said in a shaking voice.
Then I realized: I had made magick quickly, without thinking. Something in me had reached deep into my ancient subconscious and come up with G.o.ddess-knew-what spell to deflect the jar.
But I wasn"t skilled at white magick. I didn"t know enough. So the magick that had come out had been the magick a Terv would make, which I was: I"d taken energy from Old Mac to do it.
If I said anything, I would no doubt make this situation much, much worse. So Meriwether and I watched as Old Mac shook his head, as if in disbelief that he had done such a thing. Then he turned awkwardly and made his way down the aisle to the back room, trailing a hand along a shelf to help himself balance.
What had I done? Oh G.o.d. But what had my options been? Let Meriwether get hit by that jar? It was plastic and not that big, but it still would have really hurt.
Meriwether stood silently, tears running down her face.
"Does he do stuff like this? Throw stuff? Does he hit you?" Because I"d have to go kill him, if he did.
Meriwether shook her head. "He"s never done anything like this before."
"He looked pretty sorry," I admitted. "You said he"s just-super unhappy right now. Plus, you know, he"s a b.u.t.t." Inside I was shrieking about the harm I might have done with my spell.
"Tell you what," I said in a low voice. "You go to the bathroom, wash your face, try to get a grip. I"ll clean up this mess." I gestured to the shiny, honey-colored gelcaps that had scattered in a surprisingly large radius. "If he tries to stop you, knee him in the b.a.l.l.s."
That got the barest flicker of less misery on Meriwether"s face. She nodded and headed off, then paused and looked back at me. "How did you do that?" Her voice was horribly clear and soft.
A big fist seemed to squeeze my insides. "Do what?"
"You moved your hand, and the jar jumped to one side." Her voice was quiet and solemn, her eyes locked on mine. "I saw it. It would have hit me right in the chest. I was frozen-couldn"t move."
I managed an Oh, please kind of nonchalant grin, my hundreds of years of lying to people, especially myself, coming in useful. "I wish!" I snorted. I waved my hand dramatically. "Shazam! That Oreo is mine!" I gave a casual little laugh.
Meriwether looked at me for a few more moments, clearly replaying the incident in her head, wondering whether to pursue it, wondering if she had in fact seen anything. I kept my face unconcerned and went to fetch the broom and dustpan. She was gone when I returned, and I started sweeping everything up.
But I was quaking, my panicked wail sounding loud to my ears alone. I had made magick outside of River"s property. Dark magick. It was very possible that someone, an immortal, could pick up on its energy and recognize me in its patterns. Someone like Incy.
I tried to breathe normally. No, surely not, I reasoned with myself. It had taken half a second. It had been just a little thing. A little tiny thing. And I would be really careful in the future and never do anything like that again.
I kept telling myself that, over and over, all the way home. But I couldn"t help looking in my rearview mirror, as if the devil were after me.
CHAPTER 4.
It had been autumn when I"d first arrived at River"s Edge. The trees had been flame-colored, reds and golds and oranges, and the world had been just starting to shut down for the winter. Now as I drove my little beat-up car down the long, unpaved drive that led to River"s house, the trees were stark and bare, chilly skeletons with just a few brown leaves still clinging here and there. Two months ago the woods had seemed thick and impenetrable; now I could see twenty yards in. It would be beautiful in the spring.
I stopped, the car rolling to a halt on the crushed gray rock of the drive, my hands on the steering wheel. I realized in surprise that I planned to be here in the spring. I wanted to be here, wanted to see the changes. That is, if my little screwup back in town didn"t have a b.u.t.terfly effect and completely destroy my life and the lives of everyone around me.
Hey, if I were a Merry Sunshine, do you think I"d be in this place?
As I rounded the final corner, the house came into view, large and square and white. It had seemed severe and forbidding when I"d first come, but now I was aware of a gentle warmth inside my chest as I pulled off the drive and parked next to River"s red pickup.
I sat in my car for a minute, "sitting with my feelings," the way Asher had been trying to teach me. Which I hated so, so much. I am extremely skilled at suppressing virtually any emotion. Turns out, even if you suppress an emotion so successfully that you truly aren"t aware of having any, it is still there inside you. This had been one of the more loathsome realizations I"d had since I"d come here. All the emotion I hadn"t even been feeling was in fact curled up inside me like black bile, eating its way through my psyche until I was very, very close to being nuts. In the last two months, I"d experienced-and expressed-more emotion than I had in the hundred years before then.
And while I could sort of wrap my head around the reality that it was actually better this way, healthier this way, I couldn"t get away from the deep-seated conviction that, really, it totally sucked.
What was I feeling? I leaned my head onto the steering wheel and closed my eyes. Panic, of course, like I always felt as soon as my brain realized I was trying to face something instead of running away. Much more comfortable with running away.
I was... glad, I guess, to be here. Especially now that Nell was gone and wouldn"t be waiting to spring her next ill-wish on me. I was looking forward to going inside and seeing everyone. Except Reyn.
Liar. Your heart speeds up when you see him, your hands ache, your lips- See, this is why suppressing emotion is so workable for me. Who wouldn"t want to avoid that? I sighed, and then someone tapped on the window of my car, startling the h.e.l.l out of me. I hadn"t felt anyone come up.
My head whipped sideways and there he was: Reyn. Six feet of golden Viking disaster.
The very first time I"d come here, I"d been stopped like this, resting my head like this, and Reyn had tapped on my window. He"d taken my breath away, in a surly, unfriendly, gorgeous, suspicious kind of way. Here he was, doing it again.
But I wasn"t that same broken waif who"d practically crawled here this past fall. I took the keys out of the ignition and opened the car door briskly, almost whacking him with it.
"You sure do like sneaking up on people," I said snippily.
"I was seeing if you had OD"d or something," he said, mimicking my tone.
"OD"d? Oh my G.o.d, are turnips that addicting?" I made my eyes wide. "I"ll be sure to avoid them even more from now on."
He fell into step beside me as I walked quickly toward the house. The sun had dropped while I"d sat in the car, and it was twilight, that magickal time between day and night. The time of day when it feels like anything could happen. Anything at all.
"Just get back from work?" Reyn asked, and the whole scene was so incongruous that I laughed. He turned his unsmiling, slightly narrowed eyes on me.
"Is that what your wife used to say when you came home?" My voice sounded brittle in the cold air, and even thinking that he"d probably had wives was like a sucker punch to my gut. " "How was the sacking today, honey? The looting? Any good pillaging?" "
Just like that, in a flash, Reyn was furious. I felt the change come over him even before I looked at his face, saw the tightness of his mouth, the downward V of his brows. An instantaneous alarm rang inside me and I wondered if I could make it to the house before him.
When he finally spoke, it was clear that he was using all his self-control to not, say, throttle me. "That past is only a small part of who I am." His voice was tense and measured. "Just as all of the stupid, selfish, destructive things you"ve done are only a part of who you are."
My face flushed. "But your past is so much worse than mine!"
He paused, struggling again to keep his anger in check. "My past is worse than a lot of people"s," he agreed bleakly, and then turned to look at me again. "How"s your present going? How does your future look?"
Before I could answer, he strode ahead, and I was left behind.
As soon as I stepped through the front door, I felt a general excitement and energy in the air. At Yule, the house had been decorated with evergreen boughs and mistletoe, but we"d taken those down a couple of days ago. I hung up my puffy coat in the hallway, glad that Reyn was nowhere in sight. River came out of the front parlor just as I pa.s.sed the door.
"Hi," she said with her easy smile. River was one of the very few immortals I"d met with silver hair. Hers was shiny and straight, falling below her shoulders when it wasn"t held back.
"Hi," I said, trying to look calm and unrattled. "Just on my way to check the ch.o.r.e chart."
"Don"t bother," River said. "No ch.o.r.es tonight for anyone. But upstairs on your bed there"s a list of things to get done before dinner. Not ch.o.r.es, exactly. Things to help prepare for the New Year"s Eve circle later on."
"Oh." I still had a love/dread relationship with magick circles. "So... no fireworks? No champagne?"
River grinned, her clear brown eyes lighting up. "There will be champagne at dinner."
"Fireworks?" I love fireworks. I"d seen some amazing displays in Italy and in China, hundreds of years ago. Before all those pesky safety laws.
"No," said River. "No fireworks. Not in these woods, despite all the dampness from the snow. But I bet you won"t miss them."
Because the circle would be so exciting? "Ooh, are we learning shape-shifting tonight?"
She laughed and pushed me toward the stairs. "Very funny. Go get ready. Dinner"s at eight. Late tonight."
No shape-shifting. I"d been joking, but who knew what powerful immortals could actually do? I headed upstairs and made it into my room Reyn-free. I closed the door and turned the k.n.o.b on my small radiator to warm the place up a bit. As promised, there was a note on my bed, next to a gla.s.s dish of salt and a little muslin bag that smelled like herbs. I picked up the note, recognizing River"s beautiful, old-fashioned handwriting. It said: Drink the mug of tea on your bedside table.
Take a bath with the herb packet.
Put on the robe hanging in your cupboard.
Cast a circle with the salt and meditate inside of it for one hour. Think about the new year.