I spent the rest of the night frettingpursued by Mariashe brushed the tops of the trees, in her witch"s feetfollowing me over countrysidewondering if it were really trueif they were really waiting for her to be this super witchor, well, one of uswhoever she was.
The Wolves were waiting for her and the vampires had their own claims staked Not to mention the Wiccans...
It got me thinking where my choice was; if I even had one?
A cold draught fluttered the hairs on my forehead and I went back to sleep. In the morning I had no sense of the way things had gonebut it bubbled up like something out of a fountain, the idea of the One, during our training session with Lux.
He had brought someone with him. AsherMaria"s psychic wereleopard.
I was puzzled because both Ballard and Gaven had vouched for Asheras had all of the covens.
Yet why was everyone so wary of him? In particular, the Wiccans.
He was wearing his indigo-colored vest and other accoutrements, but it was Asher"s eyes, like fire opals, staring out at you, like slitted cat"s pupils.
Lux cleared his throat, enjoying our reaction. Asher was so impressive he merited staring ata lot. Some girls were drooling.
Lia had to shake her head. She was in her robes, her Wiccan robes, which hid her Wiccan Mark. Neither one of us could discern a virtue yet. But then babies all start out the same too. My money was on Awesomeness, whatever she selected ("You"ll be able to," I said. "It"s your choice.") "This is Asher, who is do you mind if I say?" said Lux.
"Not at all." Asher looked like he was rather enjoying himself. He winked at me and I returned the greeting.
"Asher is a Half Lighter. Does anyone know what that means?" said Lux.
Half the hands in the room went up. "Vittoria?"
"Half-Magic, half- Something else," she said.
Asher smiled and his fangs were exposed.
There was a gasp.
"In my case," he said, "I am the offspring of an eclectic wizard and his wereleopard bride."
"Do you shift?" said someone.
Asher"s smile broadened. "I do something else," he said.
"But you"re not a wizard..."
Vittoria again. I wished she would just leave. Asher took it in his stride. I suddenly saw my opportunityand it came to me, what I had to ask.
"Please Mr. Asher, sir, is it possible for someone with Craft to also transform into a crocodile or a weregiraffe or something like that?"
I could see Vittoria thinking about her balloon animals again. Which was good. I didn"t want her knowing how seriously I took the answer.
Asher seemed to sense there was more behind my question, however, and I noticed as he paused, that Lia"s ears perked up.
"Some Wiccans actually covet shapeshifters as mates to create Witch Shiftersthere has not been one in over a century," he said.
I looked at Lux, who was perfectly content with Asher"s description, so it must"ve been true.
"But we need to get back to Half Lighters," said Asher.
The cla.s.s made an aw sound.
"I have to instruct you for tomorrow"s Wiccaning," he said.
Suddenly we were all on the tips of our toes. He had our full attention.
"Because one of you may be this One, the Wiccan Prime Mover. She can access large amounts of magic they"ve only dreamed of before." His un-Marked arm seemed to take in all the world. "That is why everyone is so interested in finding her," he said.
"But I thought a Wiccaning was for infants?" said Shaharizan, who clearly knew more of the magical world than I did.
At the mentioning of the One, the other Initiates hadn"t even flinchedwhich meant that I was far, far behind. I was going to have to start practicing. If I was going to form my Mark, I had to.
"Childlike is what you are, when it comes to Magic," said Asher. "You have all had to wait, have you not? So we are going to have a Wiccaning. To do this we use Guides. Fledged Wiccan Elders who help you look insideto see who you truly are."
"You mean mind reading?" said one.
He nodded.
"In a sense," he said.
A mutinous outbreak of mumbles, followed by a cold sweat. My cold sweat. I didn"t want someone messing around in my head. No way.
"What happens if you don"t let them in?" I asked. "I don"t want someone reading my mind." Grunts of agreement.
"That is where I come in," said Asher.
"Pardon?"
"I am a psychic wereleopard, Halsey. I can break in." He smiled, and his canineswhich really should have been called felineserupted mischievously.
"I don"t want you looking around... There are things, in thereprivate things..." I said.
The other Initiates and I were in a panic. It was uproar. Asher breaking in. Asherseeing.If he had thought we would appreciate that, he was very much mistaken.
"Believe me, you have nothing to worry about," he said, but no matter what he said to alleviate our worries, I couldn"t stop the ma.s.sive panic attack welling within my breast.
Vittoria flexed her fingertips. "If that"s what it takes to be in Ravenseal..." she said.
So it was true, then?
"Then I"ll do it," she said.
The rest of the Initiates nodded.
"It looks like we have to," they said.
"It"s all right." Lia put her hand on my shoulder. "I"m sure if it was really bad, they wouldn"t make us do it."
Lux helped Asher get the cla.s.s back in order.
Lux warned us to empty our minds. "They"ll try and read you," he said. I could only imagine he meant the Wiccan Elders, who sounded like a bunch of old dudes. "Remember," he said. "This is a reading. They"re looking for certain affinities, the shape of your mind, its complexity. They just want to peek inside and get a feel for you."
Gross. I suddenly found myself getting angry. "You mean so they can better know where to put us," I said. "Into which House."
"It"s true. The findings, some of them, will be broadcast," said Lux. "Do not be surprised if you get certain invitations afterwards. A part of the Gathering, is so that recruitments can take place in a controlled, safe, environment. Do you remember what I said about Wiccans not liking other Wiccans knowing about the shape of their Marks?"
We all nodded.
"Sounds paranoid to me," said one.
"The mind is the same way. It"s inviolate," said Lux. "A crucial Wiccan ardane is that you do not mess around in someone else"s head. That was agreed upon at the Covenant of 1887."
Lux had briefed us on the event, the ardanes and the hiving he talked to me about earlier.
"Then why are they making us do it?" asked Shaharizan.
"Because you have to. Just once. You"ll see," said Lux.
"I do not use my gifts," said Asher, continuing, "except under special circ.u.mstances, when the powers that be have come together and it is agreed upon that I should look."
"Among the covenants that we signed," said Lux, "was that Half Lighters were no longer to be used as weaponsto scry, as it"s called, or see into the future. It"s too much power. But they, like all fledged, can look into our minds. Something Wiccans do not do to one another, as a courtesy, as much as anything else. Clear your minds, please."
But my mind wouldn"t clear.
No matter what I did.
I had scried. I had thrown my mind over great distances. I had heard into othersor, well, listened to them. It was like I was there, but my body wasn"t. But that wasn"t possible, was it? You had to be a psychic wereleopard or something, didn"t you?
Lux and Asher paced among the Neophytes. "You"re not clearing your mind, Halsey," said Asher.
I looked at all of the other Neophytes, all of whom looked serenely out of it, or like they were constipated, so focused were they on trying to forget, to empty their brains, but that kind of oblivion just wasn"t possible for me. I could feel my forehead crumpling. I had to get to the bottom of this.
"You said that your dad was a wizard? But what kind of wizard? An eclair wizard?" I said to Asher.
"Eclectic."
"But what is an Electric wizard?"
"Eclectic. It means he wasn"t Initiated by any of the Houses," said Asher. "Wiccans have a thing. That they are all descended, one from the next, through lineaged magical bloodlinesfor want of a better wordback to the original House itself. Before it split. So in a sense, all Wiccans are related to each other. You are all in one House. One Line."
"But some Houses are better than others," I said.
He laughed.
"Do you know why I came here, Halsey Rookmaaker?" he said to me.
I looked around. It was just the two of us talking.
"To find the Wiccan Prime Mover," I said.
"No."
"Then why?"
"Know your history; it is important," said Asher. "The ailuranthropesthose who shift into catshave been discriminated against forever and always. They weren"t even invited to the Covenant of 1887, much less this Gathering. Do you see any of them here, besides me?"
"No," I said. "Well only at the party."
Asher held up his hand.
"Even in the realm of magic and fantasy, we have our hierarchy."
"But you can"t thinkI don"t think of you that way," I said.
"I know you don"t. I am here only for my powers, Halsey. Otherwise, they wouldn"t need me. An eclectic supernatural is a false magesomeone who exhibited signs of the Craft, but for whatever reason, did not matriculate and become fledged. Magical outcasts. Unschooled. Roughly fledged. In some things they know absolutely nothing. But in othersin others, we are masters in our field. We are the self-Initiated; you meet us, time to time. Have you ever met a false mage, Halsey Rookmaaker? Anyway... My father was one. A great far-seer was he. He knew things before they happened. He could always see when we were about to have dinner guests, for instance. They came like clockwork. I was there when he died. When he stopped seeing. It took us the afternoon to figure it out. But by then it was too late. He had stopped seeing. Halsey?"
My gut clenched. I remembered back to the voice that would never leave me. The mad old tinkerer in his workshop, with his ball of string.
"I have met an eclectic supernatural before, or, well, a wizard, rather, like the one your father must have been," I said. "He stopped seeing too. I was there when he stopped. His name was Infester. And he could see everything," I said.
... He saw me coming, and he saw who I was to become, and he saw me seeing. The whole Power of Sight thing.
Asher could read it on my face. "Tomorrow," he said. "We need to talk after the Wiccaning. But first clear your mind. Clear your mind, Halsey Rookmaaker. Otherwise they"ll all see."
I did as he said, feeling the weight of the inevitableness of it press into my flesh, like an ingot of gold, like a hot Wiccan Mark, it was my destiny to wield.
The Pack were treating Lia like c.r.a.p. At dinner the two of us were all alone. Ballard was with the other werewolves and Gaven was nowhere to be seen. It was me I had to worry about. I couldn"t be seen, either. Asher was right. Lia was right. Wiccans had to hide. Besides, hadn"t Lux said that it was a private discovery process?
I practiced closing my mind; but no matter how hard I tried, I kept seeing them all, staring at me, whoever they were, these Wiccan Elders.
When I looked around in the Meadpalace, I was surrounded by dangerous beings, and I certainly was dangerous. I knew that now. Maybe I had always known. It all went back to Risky, and something Asher had said. He had been telling us about shape changers. Lux had really invited him, he said, so that he, Asher, could give us a heads-up. Just like Lux wanted us to know about vampires, he wanted us to know about werewolves and other shapeshiftersand as Asher was about as other as you could get, the lesson was comprehensive and authoritative. "They transform," said Asher, speaking about werewolves et al, "uncontrollably at birth, before learning to control it; before forgetting it, in fact. Whereupon it comes back as a Big Surprise."
The others laughed, but I looked at Lia. Now at dinner she was staring pensively into her food.
"I suppose you heard what he said," she said. "Come on, Halsey, you"re good at putting two and two together."
"I thought you had missed it," I told her.
"Shapeshifters shift," said Lia. "And as you"re born with it..."
I took a sip of my soda.