"So, are you getting together with Cal tonight?" Robbie asked. He grinned. "He's going to flip over all this."
My excitement began to return. "I know. I can't wait to hear what he says about it. Speaking of which, I better go. I have to get cleaned up." I bit my lip, hesitating. "Are you going to Bree's circle tonight?"
"I am," Robbie said easily. He stood and started walking back down the hall. "They're meeting at Raven's."
"Hmmm." I put on my coat and opened the front door, the box tucked securely under my arm. "Well, be careful, okay? And thanks so much for coming with me today. I couldn't have done it without you." I leaned forward and hugged Robbie hard, and he patted my back awkwardly. Then I smiled and waved, and headed out to my car.
My birth mother's tools, I thought as I cranked the engine. I actually had the same tools that had been used by my birth mother, and her mother, and her mother's mother, and so on, for possibly hundreds of years… if the initials on the athame represented all the high priestesses of Belwicket I felt a sense of belonging, of family history—one that I knew had somehow been lacking in my life until now. I wished that I could go to Ireland to research their coven and their town and find out what really happened. Maybe someday.
CHAPTER 18
Sigils
January 22, 1999
Now I know. Linden, my brother, barely fifteen years old, is dead. Goddess help me, I am alone, but for Alwyn. And they say I murdered him.
I look at the words I just wrote, and I cannot make sense of them. Linden is dead. I am accused of Linden's murder.
They say my trial is starting soon. I can't think. My head aches all the time, what I eat my body rejects. I've lost more than two stone and can count my ribs.
My brother is dead.
When I looked at him I saw Mum's face. He is dead, and I am being blamed, though there is no way I would have done it.
— Giomanach
When I got home, no one else was around. I was glad to be by myself; I'd had an idea while I was driving back from Robbie's, and I wanted to test it in private.
First, though, it was time to take some precautions. I got a Phillips-head screwdriver from Dad's toolbox in the mud-room. Then I carried the box with Maeve's tools up to the second-floor landing. Unscrewing the HVAC vent cover, I pulled it out from the wall and set the box inside the vent. When I screwed the cover back on, it would be totally invisible. I knew because I'd used this spot as a hiding place over the years—I'd kept my first diary here, and Mary K.'s favorite doll when I hid it from her after a huge fight.
Before I closed the vent, though, I took out the athame, the beautiful, antique athame with my mother's initials on it. I loved the fact that my initials were the same as hers and my grandmother's. I ran my fingers gently over the carved handle as I carried the athame downstairs.
About a week before, I'd been looking for information about Wicca on-line, and I'd come across an old article by a woman named Helen Firesdaughter. It described the traditional witch's tools and their uses. The athame, the article had said, was linked with the element of fire. It was used to direct energy and to symbolize and bring about change. It was also used to illuminate, to bring hidden things to light.
I pulled on my coat, then stepped outside into the frigid dusk and closed the front door behind me. A quick glance up and down the street assured me that no one was watching. Holding the athame in front of me like a metal detector, I began to walk around my house. I swept the ancient blade over windowsills, doors, the clapboard siding, whatever I could reach.
I found the first sigil on the porch railing, around to the side. To the naked eye there was nothing there, but when the athame swept over it, the rune glowed very faintly, with an ethereal bluish witch light. My throat tightened. So— there it was. Proof that Sky and Hunter had worked magick here last night. I traced its lines and curves with my finger. Peorth. It stood for hidden things revealed.
I breathed deeply, trying to stay calm and rational. Peorth. Well, that didn't tell me much about their plans, one way or the other. I'd have to keep looking.
As I circled the house, more and more sigils glowed under the athame's blade. Daeg, for awakening and clarity. Eoh, the horse, which means change of some kind. Othel, for birthright, inheritance. And then, on the clapboards directly below my bedroom window, I found the one I'd been dreading to see: the double fishhook of Yr.
I stared at it and felt like a fist was squeezing my lungs. Yr. The death rune. Cal had told me that it didn't always have to mean death—that it could mean some other kind of important ending. I tried to take comfort in that possibility. Bu ti was having a hard time convincing myself.
Then I felt a tingle at the edge of my senses. Someone was nearby. Watching me.
I spun around, peering into the dim winter twilight. A lone street lamp cast a cone of yellow light outside our yards. But I could see no shadowed form, no flicker of movement anywhere, not even when I used my magesight. Nor could I feel the presence any longer. Was I imagining it? Sensing things that weren't really there?
I didn't know. All I knew was that suddenly I couldn't bear to be outside, alone, for one second longer. Turning, I bolted into the house and locked the door behind me.
By the time Cal came to pick me up, I had calmed down enough that I was feeling excited about my special birthday celebration.
"What's changed about you?" Cal asked as I pulled the front door closed. He smiled at me, puzzled. "You look different. Your eyes are different."
I batted my lashes at him. "I'm wearing makeup," I said. "Mary K. finally got her mitts on me. I figured, why not? It's a special occasion."
He laughed and took my arm, and together we walked to his car. "Well, you look incredible, but don't think you have to wear it on my account." He opened my door and then went around to the driver's side.
"Did you get my messages?" I asked as he started the engine.
He nodded. "Mom said you called." He didn't mention the witch message. "Sorry I missed you. I had some errands to do." He wiggled his eyebrows at me. "Mysterious errands, if you know what I mean, Birthday Girl."
I smiled briefly, but I was impatient to tell him about the events of the last 24 hours. "I had a pretty eventful day without you. In fact, I've had two pretty eventful days." I hunkered lower in my coat.
"What happened?" he asked.
I opened my mouth, and before I knew it, everything was tumbling out of me like an avalanche: the headlights behind me that had made me wreck, scrying into the fire, seeing Sky and Hunter outside my house the night before. Cal kept shooting glances at me, some baffled, some shocked, some worried. Then I offered up my piece de resistance, finding Maeve's tools.
"You found your mother's tools?" he cried. The car swerved. I wondered for a second if it was going to end up like Das Boot. Luckily, though, we were turning into his driveway.
I threw up my hands and grinned. "I can't believe it myself," I said.
He cut the engine and sat there, staring at me in amazement. "Did you bring them?" he asked eagerly.
"No," I admitted. "I hid them behind the HVAC vent. And then when I was leaving, Dad was fixing an electrical outlet in the hall and I couldn't get to them."
Cal gave me an amused, conspiratorial look. "Behind the HVAC vent," he repeated, and I couldn't help laughing with him. It was a pretty silly hiding place for a bunch of magickal tools, come to think of it.
"Oh, well, no big deal. You can show them to me tomorrow," he said. I nodded.