Chapter 2

Chapter 2 of 48 · 9-minute read

Transiting Mercury Square Lauren’s Natal Pluto

I curl up in my king-sized bed without a king and press my doubled fists into my abdomen just above my pubic bone. It’s not enough to kill the pain, which is my only distraction from that dark, equine face I saw in my back seat.

The painkiller I swallowed while walking through my front door hasn’t taken effect yet. The numbing agent from the procedure is wearing off, and I’m feeling the pain like a pilot light at the core of my being, burning, searing. It seems an apt metaphor for how my life has been over the last few months—numbness giving way to pain.

To soothe myself, I pull Jesse’s pillow hard against my back, then twist the blanket into a long appendage to fool myself into thinking he’s with me, that he’s thrown one arm across my body to hold me close, like always. I hurt too badly to sleep, and the physical pain in my belly is almost as bad.

I need sleep. Deep sleep heals the body, and dream sleep heals the mind. I’ve had little of either for so long that I can barely remember happy nights. I blink at the afternoon light sifting through the window and, preferring darkness, close my eyes.

As the pain medicine finally takes effect, I start my slide into sleep. Somewhere in another part of the house, a door opens, closes. I feel the vacuum more than hear the door. A presence moves through the house, coming closer to the bedroom I shared with Jesse for five years.

“Sonnet?” I whisper.

Only sleep answers me.

Something follows me into sleep. Something dark. Something… other. Not human. For a brief moment, I see myself sitting in my car with Jan, my grip on the rearview mirror. I see the watery eyes staring back at me, feel the jealous hatred. I see myself twist in a fury to look behind me and find nothing.

Whatever this rage-filled thing is, it has followed me home. I can’t seem to get a good look at it in my mind’s eye, but I can feel its breath on my cheek. I push my hand through the swirl of blankets around me and, in the dark, weave a protective force field over me. It’s porous, like a hedge, meant to keep out negative influences while allowing in the good and allowing out my energy.

“Keep me safe,” I whisper to the Old Gods. I don’t want to deflect ill intentions onto my loved ones, so I add, “Both me and mine.”

When I’ve slept, when I have strength again, I will figure out who sent this… thing. Innately, I know it’s an intermediary, the kind only another witch can send. But its purpose? It’s an energetic fractal of its creator, but the energy signature is not familiar.

If another witch is toying with me, I’m not amused. I don’t have the time or energy for bullshit today. I’ll put a stop to this, right here, right now. However, if I want to cut it off at the source, well then, I have to know the source, and I cannot imagine any magickal person currently in my life who would want to mess with me right now.

I take a deep breath and murmur a prayer into the darkness. “Lead me to the witch who sent this dark messenger.” I tumble into sleep before the words are fully formed.

I float in a dark void, unaware until suddenly I hear someone running in the distance. I see the light at the end of a long tunnel and the shadow of a girl running toward it. Bare feet pound into the hay-strewn earth. Her chest heaves, her throat wheezes.

Christabel?

I recognize her energy: Christabel, a friend of Rhiannon’s but closer to Sonnet in age, yet here in this dream, she’s a little girl again. Her mom—rest her soul—had helped with my kids when I was going through my divorce and had been a better friend to me than I’d realized at the time. After Yelena’s untimely passing, I’d kept an eye on the young orphan, and Jesse and I had talked about adopting her until the girl’s uncle stepped in.

In this dark place that smells of horses and horse shit, she finds a corner and hides in a crevice near the end of the tunnel. If it’s possible, she makes herself smaller.

Heavy footfalls thud past me. Not the energy of the horse-faced thing sent to follow me. Something else. Something human. I don’t sense any magick around him, but I feel the frustration and confusion coming off him in waves.

He raises a gun and fires two shots into the roof. Splinters and hay sprinkle down like snow, leaving dust motes in the air between where I stand in this dark astral place and the light at the end of the tunnel where Christabel hides. He pumps his fist to the ceiling to take a third shot but pauses to lower his aim toward the younger version of Christabel hiding in the darkness, her heavy breath still audible even from this distance.

I bolt upright in bed. My hair falls forward over my forehead and sticks to the dampness on my brow. My entire body feels as if it’s on fire.

This isn’t a menopausal hot flash although the symptoms are the same. No, this is what the witches of my former covens—plural—used to call an “energy surge.” I don’t get them often, but when I do, they are warnings that something irrevocable is about to happen unless I can get there first.

Because I’m a witch, my dreams have different textures. For other people, dreams come only in a couple of varieties: a rehash of the day or a projection of fears. For witches Initiated into the two covens I’ve been affiliated with—Dragon Hart Grand Coven and later the Elders’ Coven—our dreams can be metaphors for whatever is going on in our lives that we can’t see.

I hold my breath. No, that doesn’t feel quite right.

Sometimes we dream others’ dreams, but that doesn’t feel right either.

Sometimes the dreams are visitations, usually from the dead or dying, but occasionally from a nosy High Priestess who is either interested in our safety or nosy about who we are with.

That doesn’t feel right either.

Every type of dream a witch dreams has a very specific design to it, and it doesn’t take many of each type to learn what each dream means.

And this one? This one is a warning.

Forgetting about my surgery, I jump out of bed. I don’t bother to comb my hair or change clothes. I do stop to pee but strap my sandals on while I am sitting on the toilet. I glance at the clock across the room, the red numbers gleaming back at me in a dark house. I don’t feel like I’ve slept at all, but it’s been four hours.

I scribble a note for Sonnet.

Be back soon! I love you, Baby Doll!

Then I attach it to the fridge under the magnet that reads in block letters:

Leap and the net will appear.

Heart racing, I thumb through my phone. I know I have Christabel’s phone number somewhere. She reads Tarot cards every Saturday at the healing center—or did before we had to close it—and has a steady following of Gen-Z seekers. I know I have her number because she called me repeatedly, begging to become a regular staff member at the center, but I refused her until after her eighteenth birthday so I didn’t run amiss with her guardian.

I lock the front door as the phone rings her number. Gods, my insides hurt with every pounding footfall as I run to my car. My call goes to voicemail, so I try again.

All I can do is hope she’s not hiding from a murderer in some darkened hallway—that the ringing of my call is not giving away her position.

Finally, she answers on the fourth ring. “Miss Lauren? Is everything okay? You usually just text me if⁠—”

“Christabel, where are you?”

“Home. I’m studying for a test. What⁠—”

“Is your uncle home?”

“Um?” I can hear the confusion in her voice. “I don’t think so, but he should be soon. Do you want me to have him call you? Or I can⁠—”

“Christabel, listen to me! I need you to get out of there. Now. Don’t wait for your uncle. Don’t say anything to him. Just go out the back door. I’ll pick you up in a few minutes, but whatever you do, stay away from him.”

“But—”

“In the name of the Goddess, Christabel!” Deep inside me, Sondra’s handiwork throbs. My voice cracks, and I have Christabel’s attention.

“Okay. Okay, let me just grab my things and⁠—”

“No! Leave everything behind. Like if you knew your house was going to blow up in fifteen seconds. Get out now. Get out—now!”

I reach for the handle of my car door and remember the presence in the backseat. I don’t feel it inside the car as I scramble inside, but I do sense it nearby.

Please let me get there in time.

I jam my key into the ignition. The engine whimpers, then goes silent. I try again. And again.

I beat my fist against the steering wheel. I’m sure Jan’s husband, Steve, will let me borrow his truck. Unfortunately, that would take longer than walking to Christabel’s uncle’s house.

Jesse’s motorcycle is still in the garage, but I have no idea where the keys are. I’ve covered it up. I can’t look at it.

I half-run, half-walk, and frequently stumble the two miles to where Christabel lives with her uncle. My sandals were meant for showing off my legs to Jesse, not for cutting through back alleys filled with shattered glass and empty lots filled with briars, or for climbing fences.

I know from past experiences with premonitions not to call the police. They tend to look suspiciously at anyone who calls in a crime that has not yet been committed. That suspicion can easily turn a witch into a prime suspect, especially in cases of anything that goes boom! One good deed and three hours of swearing I didn’t set fire to Lisa’s house four years ago taught me to try to change the future by changing the course of the person directly involved.

And that tonight is Christabel.

I chug up the hill toward Christabel’s uncle’s home. I’ve picked her up from there a few times on the way to the healing center, and it’s not far from where I am now. One last lonely stretch of road in mostly darkness.

Something in a deeper darkness follows at a safe distance behind me.

A lost memory bubbles up, something I haven’t thought of in at least thirty years. For a split second, I am back in time. Fourth grade, nine years old. My best friend and I have built a “fort” underneath one of the big oak trees on our playground. We’ve outlined our fort in branches and rocks and collected handfuls of tiny snails from the undergrowth and ferns of the fountain nearby. We’ve found tiny apothecary jars buried in a field adjacent to the playground, one we shouldn’t have been playing in. Our fort is the envy of all the other forts our classmates have built in groups around the play yard. In the memory, I look up just in time to see a girl who wants to be Beth’s friend kick over our display of bottles and snails.

Just that quickly the memory is gone. I can’t attach it to anything. It’s simply there, and then gone.

I shake it off as I ascend the hill. My feet are sore, stinging. The rawness on the back of my heels where blisters burn is the only thing that distracts from the pain in my stomach. The bottom of my black skirt is wet from the grass of unknown neighbors’ side yards, but I’m almost there.

A siren blasts behind me, and I step off the edge of the road to make room for a police car that barrels past me, followed by another, and another, and another. Just ahead is the old farmhouse where Christabel lives with her uncle, a barn, and several outbuildings behind it.

All bathed in the blue and red strobe lights of six police cars.

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