31. Liminality

thirty-one

“You do her a disservice,” Tobias’s voice floated through the open window. He crossed his arms, squaring his shoulders as he argued with Lou. “How can she learn to manage her Way if you will not allow her to access it?”

“And you think she is ready to run with a pack of cultists bleeding her magick everywhere?” Lou scoffed and shoved a bag in the back of her Land Rover. “Hardly.”

“And Beltane?”

“What of it?” She slammed the trunk of her car and walked around the vehicle, out of sight from where Milla and Diego huddled in the window. Tobias followed, his voice dropping too low to hear.

“Goddess, I don’t know which will be worse.” Milla adjusted the electric candle in the window and twisted the blinds mostly closed. “Three and a half hours in a car with Lou or with Tobias.”

Diego chuckled and cast her a sidelong glance. “I am sure it will not be so bad if you are in the same car as Darkly.”

“Horned God, okay, nevermind. That is the worst scenario. If we ride with Lou, they’ll fight the whole time, and if we ride with Tobias, he’s gonna want to talk to me.” She wrinkled her upper lip and gagged. “Or worse, sit next to me.”

“I do not think you are being fair, peque?a bruja.”

“I am being more than fair, considering all the bullshit he’s pulled.” She yanked on the curtain to punctuate the point and jerked her thumb at her sofa. “Did you know he’s been sleeping on our couch?”

“Sí. Who do you think offered it to him?”

Milla stared at him, mouth hanging open like a fish. A tiny squeak came out as she processed what he had just said, and Diego was spared from her eruption by his phone ringing.

He pulled it from a pocket, grinning widely at the screen, and answered. “?Hola mi amor!” Spinning away from Milla, he flashed two fingers at her and mouthed, “Talk to Darkly,” before disappearing down the hall. “Sí, in the next few minutes. How was your drive?”

Four hours later, Lou’s Land Rover pulled into the lot of a large greenspace west of downtown Tallahassee. Milla stifled a yawn, straightening in her seat and taking in their surroundings.

“I thought we were heading to the mission?”

“We are,” Cyrus explained from the seat beside her. He closed his laptop and tucked it into a neoprene sleeve. “But the campground is here.”

“We’re meeting Diego’s contact,” Lou said from the front seat. “Apparently, the cultists congregate here while the Witch of the Demesne lays his magick, and once he’s ready, the pack will take off to stir things up.”

Tobias’s BMW pulled in beside them, and Milla wasted no time leaving the Land Rover. Donmar and Cyrus had kept a friendly chatter for the drive, allowing Milla to doze. She stretched, working life back into her limbs and waving at Diego as he stepped out of the BMW. He smiled at her and scanned the parking lot, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Darkly pushed open the passenger door, laughing at something Tobias or Rai had said, and hit Milla with a bright, easy smile. “Good ride?”

“Yeah.” Seeing him so relaxed, laughing with clear green eyes and absent the strain that had taken up residence on his face, did something funny to Milla. She followed him to the rear of the BMW, freezing when he tugged off his shirt and tossed it into the trunk. Chatting with Tobias, he was oblivious to his effect on a handful of nearby cultists who stopped in their tracks, bumping into each other as they stared. Milla’s attention, however, he noticed and returned tenfold, scaling his gaze from her face down to her running shoe-clad feet and back, his smile darkening with interest.

She wasn’t wearing anything special. Just her running gear, but maybe she’d put a bit of effort into the ensemble. After all, she was a Witch of the Demesne, appearing in another witch’s territory. She had an aesthetic to uphold and chose to do so with short lycra shorts and a heather gray tanktop adorned with a screaming raccoon and the words, “Life is trash.” The deep cut-outs on the sides revealed a purple sports bra with a multitude of straps that she may or may not have dug out of her closet after seeing Rai wear a similar one.

Though no one could prove it, and she absolutely would not admit to it.

During the drive, she had woven her scraggly bangs into her hair and fixed the rest into a long braid dangling over one shoulder. She untied the end and re-tied it for something to do with her hands, pointedly looking away from Darkly as he tugged on a running shirt.

“You can stop now,” Diego murmured from behind her. “He is not looking anymore.”

Milla jumped, feigning innocence by cocking her head. “Hm?”

“Bruja idiota.” Diego chuckled, raising a hand as a tanned, rangy-looking man wandered over from the campground. His sun-bronzed hair was pulled into a low ponytail, and from his beaded necklace and split-hem running shorts, Milla took him for a cultist. “Josh!”

“Hey, man!” He jogged the rest of the distance, a feat considering the flip-flops on his feet, and gathered Diego into a big hug, lifting the witch off of his feet and swinging him side-to-side. “Good to see you, D.”

“Tú también.” Diego grinned as he was set down. Milla gave them room, beyond weirded out by the interaction. She believed him when he said he had a contact; why wouldn’t she? But this was more than just “a contact.”

“And this is the rest of them?”

“Sí, the whole coven.”

“Great, good. Awesome.” Josh swept his gaze over the witches, hunger flashing in his eyes. No doubt they reeked of magick. Eight witches of eight disparate Ways, and two of them a rarity. He licked his lips and cleared his throat before spinning toward the park. “Follow me. I’ll show you where to drop your bags, and then we’re off.”

Where Milla had expected tents set up around fireplaces and hammocks in the trees, maybe a handful of cultists sitting on logs singing “Kumbaya,” the campground was anything but. Fancy RVs parked in a row boasted front porch areas to rival the wealthiest neighborhoods in St. Augustine. Chairs and rockers, outdoor grills, twinkle lights, and canopies decorated the space, and large, two-room tents were tucked in among the recreational vehicles, the front rooms open and welcoming.

Shouts and hollers echoed through the trees, and at one point during their tour, Tobias neatly avoided being beaned in the head by a frisbee.

“Horned God,” Lou said, recoiling from a row of port-a-potties. “This reminds me of our childhood.”

“I’ll say.” Darkly eyed the cultists gathered around a trio of kegs and a snack table at the center of the campground. He rubbed a thumb across his lower lip, barely suppressing a smile.

“Where the hell did you grow up, summer camp?” Milla cackled, her laughter dying away with Darkly’s barely-there smile.

“In a caravan,” he answered in a near-whisper. “Mum and Da were performers; they met when she joined a Galway troupe, then moved to a Highlands carnival when I was young.”

The photograph in his bedroom formed in her mind: sullen teenaged Lou beside her grinning parents and a younger Darkly, a family portrait posed in front of an RV and tents.

He tipped his chin toward his sister, still speaking low enough that Milla had to lean in to hear him. “She trained in Grim Ness, so I wouldnae have to be uprooted.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “After they died.”

“Oh.” Milla walked silently beside him for a few steps. “I guess that explains the accent.” And then, because Milla was Milla, and this all felt too real, “And why you’re such a clown.”

Darkly said nothing. Milla thought he’d gone back to listening to Josh’s explanation of the camp and its intentional layout, ignoring her when she’d taken it too far. But then, he chuckled. “Aye, suppose it does.”

“We’ll end the trail here,” Josh announced, calling attention back to himself. “Everyone will circle up around the kegs, and there will be a last push before we close out the night and the real party begins.”

“Push?” Cyrus asked.

“Song and dance,” Diego answered with a knowing smile. On cue, the cultists near the kegs broke into song. “?Así!” His smile stretched to a grin, and he ran to join, moving faster than Milla had ever seen.

“What’d he say?” Darkly asked.

“Like that.” She scanned the cultists and chewed her lower lip, unable to keep the worry from spreading from her face. “I should go see if he’s—”

“He’ll be fine,” Darkly assured her. He gently pressed his hand to her back, keeping Milla walking. Her skin tingled at the soft press of his fingertips, and that wouldn’t do. She needed to be focused on the cult and the ritual, and already, he’d distracted her from whatever Josh had said. Not a huge deal in the scheme of things.

“Of course, he’ll be fine,” Milla snapped and skirted away from his hand. “He’s a grown witch.”

“You looked worried.”

“I don’t need you telling me how I feel.”

“Funny thing, that.” Darkly spun around, walking backward and smiling at Milla as he teased. “Knowing how others feel is a peculiarity of my Way.”

“Then stop using it on me.” She darted around him, jogging to catch up with Cyrus, who was facedown in his tablet, and the witches actually paying attention.

“One big circle,” Josh was saying. “More or less. If you cross your eyes and squint real hard.”

“But won’t it affect the magick if your trail runs in a circle?” Rai asked.

“I sure as shit hope it does.” Josh grinned at her. “Best damn high of the month if we run this right.”

An idea sparked, and Milla raised her hand, earning a bemused smile from the cultist. “Ludmilla, right?”

“Yeah, um, do you always run these things at the same time?”

“Yup!” He nodded. “The pack’s off at six o’clock sharp for evening runs. We’ll chase the magick for about an hour, then be back here to stir up the fun before night fully sets in.”

It made sense. The most potent rituals were those conducted at times of transition—twilight hours, the witching hour, the turn of the season, or a solstice or eclipse. Reaching the liminal edge of casting, at that moment in-between, when the world is no longer as it was, but not yet what it could or would be.

A skilled witch could hold her ritual in that moment, gaining power as the becoming stretched on and the being was delayed. Milla had relentlessly trained for that moment when the magick was almost too big to hold. The ritual at Lake Pontchartrain was one of becoming. A summons of the Baron and his Maman. A rebirth of wild magick in the world.

It was in that moment, when she had summoned the Shades, cleared a path to the Gates, and the world was all but torn open, that Milla had trapped Ezra.

All of that in mind, she asked Cyrus, “Have you been tracking the times of the rituals?”

“Of course I have,” he said with more bite than her question warranted. “What good would I be if I wasn’t?”

“Alright, calm down.” Milla allowed herself a slow breath to keep from sassing him more. “Just wondering, what time did the burnouts happen in the other rituals? Or the largest surge of the Ways?”

Cyrus’s face went blank. He slowly raised his eyes from the screen, staring at Milla for a moment before returning to his tablet and pulling up a flurry of reports, adjusting settings and data points. “Horned God.”

“Thought so.” She smiled, proud of herself for making the connection. He scurried over to Lou and showed her the screen. Her eyes widened as she took in the data and hissed something too low to hear. Whatever it was sent Cyrus running back to the Land Rover.

“I want to speak with the Witch of the Demesne,” Lou told Josh. “Immediately.”

“Yeah, me too.” Josh frowned, biting his thumbnail as he scanned the cultists and witches hopping in circles on one foot. “He was supposed to lay this thing live.”

“Lay what?” asked Donmar.

“The trail.” Josh waved his hand at the cultists and the campground. “This is meant to help him get a nice little boost before Beltane next week, but it works best if the magick is fresh versus whatever drop casting he’s decided to do.”

“Why does he need a boost, anyway?” Milla asked. “It’s just a performative rite, right?”

“Sure, yeah, to some. To other witches, it’s the pinnacle of their year, a chance to feed into the regional power and get a little something back in return. Demesne lines have been known to shift with the power given to a major sabbat like Beltane.” He winked at Milla. “And I guess there’s a demesne to the east of here that worries him. Maybe it’s performance anxiety; maybe it’s territorial; who’s to say?”

“Goddess.” Milla feigned gagging. “As if anyone would want to steal Tallahassee.”

Josh’s eyes flickered and gleamed as he grinned at her. His gaze lifted over her head, and something old, far older than the twenty-something cultist, peered up at Darkly. “But that’s not up to the witch, is it?”