A Special Place for Women, Laura Hankin [brene brown rising strong .txt] 📗

that made me light-headed. Nausea roiled in my stomach. My face was reflected in Vy’s eyes, and I could’ve sworn that for a moment, amid the smoke, the image twisted and turned into that of a gull, batting its wings to stay above the waves.

I pressed the blade into my skin, at the base of my thumb, chewing on my lip to stifle any whimpering. The sharp pain of the knife as it bit into me was what finally convinced me that I wasn’t dreaming, and then my skin split, my dark red insides revealed to the air. “Your blood is mine,” Margot prompted.

“Your blood is mine,” I said, “and mine is yours.” I held my hand out. My fingers trembled as the blood began to trickle down my wrist, staining the sleeve of my cotton shirt. I turned my hand over and watched the blood run into the fire, the rest of my body starting to tremble too. “So mote it be.”

“So mote it be,” the women repeated, and repeated again, over and over, a kind of monotonous chanting. Caroline took the knife back from me and placed it on the altar. Margot dabbed the ointment onto my hand—it was cool, smelling of some herbs I couldn’t identify. She bound up the cut. Then the women all reached out and clasped hands in the circle, Margot taking my right. Vy’s calloused hand gripped my left palm, and I recognized it—she’d been the one who’d held her hand over my mouth when I’d woken in the dark that night, lifetimes ago.

We circled around the fire, and the women all began to take deep, slow breaths. “Breathe it in,” Margot said to me, so I followed their lead, my stomach expanding and contracting, the dizzying scent of the fire flooding into my nose and down my throat, a tingling within me spreading and spreading as, distantly, a church bell began to chime, twelve times. The final chime lingered and faded, and when it was gone entirely, Margot released my hand.

“We are bound together, our secrets safe within this circle,” she said, her voice ceremonial, her eyes closed, lashes fluttering. Then she opened her eyes and smiled. “Now for the fun part.”

THIRTY-TWO

The fun part?” I repeated dumbly.

“Each new initiate gets a spell,” Caroline said. “To welcome them to the circle.”

“Something we can do for you, something you want,” Margot said.

“What should it be? Oh, I know.” Caroline clapped her hands, the most efficient witch I’d ever seen. She turned to the altar and opened the drawers, which contained jars and herbs and also, incongruously, a few cans of LaCroix. “Success for your novel.”

“Oh, maybe,” I said.

“Protection,” Iris said. “As the Judge Melton consequences continue to play out.”

“Or,” Margot said, “we could summon your mother.”

I turned my head toward her so fast I nearly got whiplash. “What?”

“Bring her spirit here. Let you talk with her,” Margot continued, her tone almost dreamy, and anger at her flooded into me, anger that she would dangle this in my face when my mother was gone and nobody would ever be able to bring her back.

“Margot, no,” Caroline snapped, the anger in her own voice startling me. “We’re not doing that kind of magic here.” The two of them locked eyes. They’d had this argument before. Already, the power dynamics in this coven were coming into focus. Maybe Margot gave the speeches, but Caroline was the boss.

“I know,” Vy said. “Raf.” We all turned to her.

“What?” I asked.

“At the gala,” Vy continued. “After you sucked face, I asked him if he loved you. He got all red.” So that’s what he hadn’t told me about their conversation. “He does, but he’s scared to say it.”

“Sweet Raf,” Margot said.

“He’s the only good man in the world,” Vy said. “But he’s shy.”

“Aw,” one of the other women in the circle—Ophelia—said. “That’s adorable. Also, his restaurant is incredible.” The women on either side of her murmured their approval of Raf’s cooking.

“And you two were so sweet together at the gala,” Iris said.

“Sometimes he has trouble expressing things. So let’s loosen his tongue,” Vy said.

“The supplies, though,” Margot said.

“I brought a cow tongue.” Vy reached into her robe and pulled a Ziploc bag out of her pocket. The bag was filled with ice and something else: a hunk of meat. Great, she’d just been carrying raw meat around with her all night. I looked at the other women, expecting to see their faces pinched in distaste, but only smiles beamed back.

“Perfect!” Caroline said. “It’s settled, then. Ready, Jillian?”

“Uh,” I said. Eight pairs of eyes turned toward me, bright with anticipation. I couldn’t think of a way to protest now without seeming suspicious. Besides, it’s not like it mattered. It wasn’t real, so I should let them have their fun. Maybe someday I’d tell Raf, and we’d laugh over it, after things had gone back to normal, long after I’d forgotten the feel of his mouth against mine. (The memory of our kiss had slammed into me a few times since the gala, very inconveniently.) “Ready.”

Vy plopped the slimy, cold cow tongue into my unbloodied hand, which didn’t exactly help my nausea. Caroline went back to the altar, where she picked up a vial filled with some kind of oil, plus the knife again. Oh God, I’d hoped we were done with that particular prop. She opened the vial and spilled some of the liquid into her hand, scattering drops of the oil on the cow tongue. She rubbed the rest of the liquid on my forehead. It smelled of ginger and cloves. Then she handed me the knife. Did they want me to stick it into the cow tongue now? How many germs were on this blade? As soon as I got out of here, I was going to have to make an appointment for a tetanus shot. (Yes, I was turning into my mother.) Get ahold of