Chapter 44

Chapter 44 of 48 · 9-minute read

Solar Return Juno Conjunct Natal Juno in the Chaos Witch’s Second House of Possessions

I park at the abandoned healing center, not far from a couple of quiet teen girls in the last glow of sunset. Sitting cross-legged on a blanket in the courtyard, they perch a Ouija board and flashlight atop their legs where their knees touch to form an energetic circuit. Both glance at me, recognize me and, full of questions, rise.

Shaking my head, I raise my palm to hold them off. They need guidance so they don’t accidentally call in some low-level entity’s pranks, but not tonight.

Still, I’m heartened to see any sign of life at the Center of Light. Maybe there’s hope for its future after all.

But first, I have one last thing I must do: confront Bianca.

Even though I’m sure the repurposed thought-form will serve up some retribution quickly, I need closure for myself. I need to see firsthand that what she’s sent out into the world has returned to her. The Gods know, I haven’t had closure about much else lately.

I need to be done with this part of my life so I can tend to my renewal and work on allowing joy back into my world. I could walk away right now and be done with Bianca, but I know myself well enough to know that I need to make sure my wounds are clean before they can heal and that I’ll thank myself later for taking the initiative now.

Still barefoot, I pick my way across the parking lot toward the ritual space and let myself through the tall gates. The fire circle buzzes with the energy of dozens of rituals I’ve led here, including the very last one at Winter Solstice before everything went to shit.

I still remember Jesse bringing up the end of the queue, freshly saged by Christabel who paused for Jesse to sage her in return. The grin on his face. The love in his eyes as he gave me a quick thumbs up from the opposite side of the circle from where I stood.

“Wait up!” Jan calls from behind me. “I’m coming with you!”

“No! Stay here. Please. Just wait by the car.”

“Okay,” says one of the girls with the Ouija board, thinking I’m talking to them.

Jan looks disappointed. “I know what you’re planning. I’m not going to let you face Miss Priss alone.”

“I won’t be alone. I promise. Stay here.”

Jan sighs loudly and shuffles toward the twosome with the Ouija board.

Picking up my pace, I head towards the lake’s edge nearest the fire circle. Rain hasn’t wet the water’s edge in weeks, so the bank of the perfect Circle Lake is dry and easy to navigate. The peaceful surface of the water catches the last of the sunset. Somewhere ahead of me sings a chorus of bullfrogs and crickets. Beyond that, on the far side of the lake, the fish camp of old RVs glints in the last rays of sunlight and comes alive with a campfire and candle flames that, from so far away, remind me of fireflies back home on the farm in Georgia. Behind the camp, deep in the woods, a whippoorwill sings.

I choose my steps as I move along the darkening edge of water. I haven’t brought a flashlight or even a match with me. I know where I’m going—one last circle to release. Around the lake, widdershins halfway, and then, after I’ve done what I must do, the other halfway back to the healing center. Eyes on the other side of the lake, I no longer look at my feet but forward along the curve of the circle.

The campfire flickers like a beacon, drawing me like moth to flame except this time I am the flame. I feel powerful, almost immortal. My aura must be twenty feet wide and just as tall.

As I approach the campsite, all wildlife stills. The whippoorwill silences its song. The bullfrogs croak and hush, croak and hush, then hush. The crickets cease their chirps.

I’ve experienced this quieting before in nature but from the other point of view. Everything either stills or runs away in the face of a coming storm.

I don’t tiptoe. Every bare footfall pounds my energy into the earth, sending a message to all living things through the root system below ground and the tree branches above. How can Bianca not feel my approach?

Everything ahead seems to freeze in time—the thrashing flames of the campfire, the trees stirred by a soft breeze.

But I am not alone. The servitor walks behind me, head bowed and obedient. It has a single purpose: to complete its mission. I’ve not changed anything except its direction, as if I were holding up a mirror to reflect it back to its source.

Jesse is nowhere to be seen. I feel him though, walking the winding trails in the woods just as he and I used to do together on weekend road trips when we stopped at State Parks to enjoy the scenery.

Nor do I see anything of Bianca. The only physical evidence that she’s been here is the campfire and two gutted and cleaned fishes on a grill over it. It’s not even a magick-making fire.

But I feel her presence, somewhere inside the bubble that encompasses both her campfire and her tiny home. The hole in front of the bottom step has been filled and covered over. Nothing representing me is buried there for her to crush deeper into the ground every time her foot touches the dirt.

I pull my magick in tight around me and make myself look small, weak, almost invisible. I have no need to puff myself up or even to lift a finger to complete my task. Let her underestimate me—that’s the best revenge.

Bianca steps out from behind the RV. Squinting a steely gaze in my direction, she pauses directly in front of me and puts her fists on her hips. She doesn’t seem to notice the servitor lagging behind me in the edge of the brush. Instead, she laughs.

“What are you doing here, you dried-up old crone?”

Her words and laughter are meant to cut deeply, but I shake my head. Her words have no power. Not anymore.

I stifle an unexpected giggle. She frowns back at me, incredulous.

“What have you got to laugh about?” She tries again. “Crone.”

I shake my head but don’t speak. I’m giggling like a maniac, and I can’t stop.

There’s no drama like there is with a witch in the maiden phase of her life, who exudes all the passion of a mundane woman but fueled by her supernatural gifts. There’s no fury like a witch in the mother phase of life, who will sic demons on anyone, mundane or magickal, who threatens her own young or children in general—and Bianca has intended harm for Sonnet as well as the daughter she believes Christabel to be.

But this little witch isn’t worried about offending me because I’m biologically in the crone phase of my life? Does she think magick disappears at menopause with the monthly flow of blood? How wrong can she be!

Crones will absolutely fuck you up, and we have the power and experience to be your worst nightmare. Just because I’ve been caught up in my own deep grief and loss does not mean I’ve forgotten what I’ve spent years learning. And just because I’m generally a compassionate, quiet, easy-going woman who doesn’t sweat the small stuff does not mean I don’t have my limits.

And Bianca has breached those limits.

“You,” I answer at last, my giggling under control. “I’m laughing at you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Go home, crone. Back to your sad little house and your sad little life.”

“The one you wanted so badly? Haven’t you outstayed your welcome in this town?”

I see her now, psychically, on a road trip across the country, camping a week at a time at sacred landmarks to feed her magick. Like extraverts and introverts, witches renew their life force either by tapping into their environments or by tapping into their inner selves. Usually both, but every witch has their preference when they need to rejuvenate.

Flashes of Bianca’s recent past flicker above her head like an old-fashioned movie reel. I see her near the edge of Circle Lake, itself an energetic beacon to all witches. She stands close to her rented RV on the night of the Winter Solstice.

I see her praying at water’s edge for more power—the kind that will make other people sorry, will make her rich, will bring her love and adoration—and then noticing the commotion across the lake at the Center of Light.

I see her make her way around the lake toward the growing bonfire in my ritual space as she watches me clearing the area of negative energies. I feel the jealousies set in.

Ah. That’s it.

Bianca is a powerful witch, all right, but she cannot create. She can only copy. Visualization is so important to manifest your desires, and yet she can’t imagine them in her head. She has to see what she wants, and then she uses her magick to claim it for her own.

“It was never Jesse you wanted, was it? You didn’t want what I had to get to him. You wanted him to get to me. You wanted what I had. He was just part of the package. Your route to power.”

Bianca narrows her eyes at me. “Shut up.”

Energetic armor slams down around her, trying to keep me out of her head, but my talents are returning stronger than ever. Regardless of the hurt of these last few months, I know fully who and what I am, and I can see fully who and what Bianca is: an imitator and a thief. She cannot create the life she wants, but she knows what it looks like when she sees it, and that life was the one I had with Jesse, the two of us partnered up to lead the Center of Light. Life wasn’t perfect for us and it wasn’t always smooth, but she saw the contentment of it on Solstice night when we joyfully worked together. She witnessed me in the height of my power with my ability to manifest in the first degree of Capricorn.

I see her to her core. She knows I do.

“You didn’t have the talent to create your own path, so you stole mine.”

“You’ve had your day, crone. You don’t get to keep your powers forever.”

“Don’t I?”

Does she think magick is good for only one phase of life? Or only for the next generation? My supernatural gifts are the result of my covenant with the Old Gods. I can pass down power to my Initiates, but like a single candle lighting a dozen more, my own flame need not be extinguished.

Bianca will never be an Initiate of mine, even without the bad blood between us. Unlike Christabel, she doesn’t want to do the work I require of anyone I teach.

“No, you don’t get to keep them forever! Time for you to pass the torch!”

I laugh. “I’m not done with my torch, thank you. I still have lots of work to do.”

And I do, I suddenly realize. In spite of the losses of this year, my life isn’t over. Nor is my purpose. I’m only forty-eight. Potentially, I have decades ahead of me, and I plan to be using my magick for good until I draw my last breath. Who knows? Maybe I’ll guide others from beyond.

Bianca takes my words as a challenge. “Do you really want to fight me?”

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