Chapter 2

Birch in the fire goes to represent what the Lady knows

– The Wiccan Rede

Iwas not concentrating. My attention was divided between doing my hair and reading about invocations, and when I glanced up to check my braid, my reflected image in the little mirror was not my own. In place of my face was a death's head skull. In a clumsy grasp for the handle, I knocked the mirror off the table.

I winced as I heard the crack of glass.

"Fuck!" I hastily finished tying off my braid and went down on hands and knees to collect all the little pieces, cursing again as a sharp spike bloodied a fingertip.

"Mirror, mirror, broken glass,

With this rhyme, I break the curse,

Seven years of bad luck let them pass,

Turn the Fate, for good or worse."

I balanced the pieces on the backing and sucked my bleeding finger as I shoved my feet into my shoes. Skulls in my reflection, broken glass, and blood spilled were not a great omen for the day. I needed to dispose of the broken mirror properly or the bad luck would continue.

As I stepped out into the hallway, a movement at the other end caught my eye. The spirit of an ancestor, her hair piled high upon her head and her waist cinched impossibly small, balanced a book on her palm as she crossed the hall, her ghost dissipating into tendrils of mist as it passed through the door into Nova's room.

"Shit," I blew out my breath.

With so many Vossen women having lived and died in the house, it was not unusual for me to see glimpses of their spirits.

Vossen women have always been witches. The family Grimoires that had survived time and violence against us went back centuries, but we knew that our history went even further back, perhaps all the way to the beginning. For us the veil between worlds has always been thinner. Every woman in the family could sense the spirits and sometimes get a sense of the unfulfilled needs that kept them refusing to move on to the Underworld.

Whilst my aunts and Nova could sense the spirits, they did not see them with the clarity that I did. My gift, my Aunt Fennel had told me, must harken back to that ancient role of guiding spirits to resolve what they felt left undone so that they could move on. That was why I had helped that grim reaper and little girl.

No… No… That wasn't true, I admitted to myself. There had been another reason.

I worried my bottom lip staring at Nova's door. I should follow the shade of my ancestor and see if she had appeared to me with purpose, but I was distracted, my mind on the burning eyes and gleam of white bone and horn within the shadows of the grim reaper's hood, the gentle way those bone-like fingers had closed around those of that poor little girl, and how he had enveloped her within his robes…

My skin burned. I pulled my t-shirt away from my chest, aware that my nipples had hardened into points. "Shit," I swallowed hard. He had been there in my dreams the night before in vivid detail. I knew the texture of his robes beneath my fingers and the smoky exotic scent of incense that clung to them. I knew the feel of his body against mine… and it had not been bone but flesh against flesh.

What was wrong with me that I was having wet dreams about a grim? I chastised myself with a heavy sigh.

I turned away from Nova's door and continued with my errand, skirting the chaos of furniture and artifacts that occupied our home, relics of hundreds of years of Vossen witches living within its walls. Many of their faces watched me from the walls, their eyes mysterious and the curve of their lips knowing.

The Vossens had immigrated to Mortensby with the first passenger ship to the new country. It was said that we had followed an ancestor who had been transported as a convict, but we had come freely, seeking refuge in a land that was proclaimed to be one of religious freedom – only to discover that was far from the truth.

Once witches had been regarded as wise women, the ones who were sought for aid and advice and who oversaw important ceremonies and rituals. But times had changed and our role within our community had changed with it.

We went from honored wise women, to reviled witches very swiftly, and practicing our craft, the sacred rituals, and ceremonies, became a death sentence. We came to the new world, seeking freedom to continue the traditions of our people, and found that it was just like everywhere else. In the new country, men wielded religion like a whip and chain to bind their womenfolk and keep them powerless, and as an excuse to hate and harm those whose beliefs did not fit their own.

As I descended the front stairs, I could hear the aunts in the kitchen and could smell pancakes. Breakfast. The backstair would have taken me to the kitchen, and that was the more direct route to the vegetable garden… if it had not also included their questions. The formal front stairs, the now-empty front hall, and the front door offered a more unimpeded progress, so I would bury the glass shards in the cemetery instead.

Vossen house was built just down the slope from the Mortensby lighthouse. It was probably not surprising that our ancestors became lighthouse keepers. Magic and flame are intricately intertwined, and keeping the hearth fire lit is natural to witches. In even the most tumultuous storm, a witch will seek to keep her hearth aflame.

The isolated position offered the Vossen women some protection from the town, enabling us to keep up our rituals away from the view of malicious neighbors, and keeping the lighthouse enabled a household of women to earn an income, which was supplemented with what was grown in the extensive gardens, soaps, candles, perfumes, and, more discretely, potions and tonics.

We had periods of wealth that enabled the house to be built, extended, and furnished to reflect the taste of those living there at the time, and periods when money was sparser, such as our current generation. With the automation of the lighthouse, that income stream had come to an end, and we were reliant on past investments and what we made in town through our garden and… our skills.

The gardens to the front of the house were walled in defense against the wind that blew in from the ocean, but beyond them, an ancestor had planted rows of pines to extend the protection to where a little graveyard had formed as the centuries had passed.

At the edge of the graveyard, I used a sharp-edged rock to dig into the ground and emptied the shards of glass from the frame, before covering it over. As I stood, my eye caught on the wide-spread black wings of a raven as it descended towards the ruins of the original Mortensby settlement at the bottom of the hill.

On the opposite hill, Pinegrove Academy was only just visible behind the trees of the estate. The acceptance and rejection letters would be sent soon, and I hoped, dearly, that I would be accepted to study at the Academy. I was definitely the first Vossen who voluntarily wished to go to what had formerly been known as Bishop House – it had a dark history of being dangerous to us.

"Hail to the raven goddess," I whispered. "Hail to the lady of wind and wings. Hail to the mother of blood and bone. Hail to the giver of all sacred things. Hear me now, I beg of you. Hear my heart's desires true. By North, by South, by East, by West, in your hands my fate does rest."

I was going to be late to work. I hurried back up the hill and into the kitchen.

"What is that you have there, dear?" Fennel wondered as I set the mirror frame on the table.

"Broke it this morning. Don't worry, I buried the pieces in the graveyard." I stole a pancake off the table and shoved it into my mouth as I grabbed my bag from the hook against the wall. "Late," I said through crumbs. "Work."

"Oh, but…" Fennel began to protest.

"Sorry. Late," I apologized already halfway out the door.

As I rode down the hill towards the town, I thought of the little girl. After she had passed, I'd had little choice but to pick her up and move her to the side of the road. Doing so had covered me in her blood and I had been a gory sight to see riding through town to the police station.

Despite their bias against me as a Vossen, the tire marks and blood on the road spoke of what had happened enough that the police had been unable to blame me for her death, though, in their anguish, the parents had accused me of having something to do with it. They did not say hex, but it was there in their eyes.

The road still held the strips of rubber, although the blood had been washed away. I avoided riding over the same area, swinging out wide around it.

In my dream, the horns and skull had been a mask, and the grim reaper had kissed me.

"Fuck." I was hot and flustered again. I paused at the base of the hill road where it intersected with the main thoroughfare, and tried to compose myself, on the verge of tears in frustration and guilt. I had seen a little girl die, and instead of being wracked with grief over her death, I was obsessing about the supernatural being that had come to escort her to the Underworld.

I pushed on, crossing the road, and heading past the signs for "The Historic Settlement Village" and "Beach" towards the thoroughly modern little town that nestled in the valley between the two opposing hills.

As I rode through town, I knew people watched me. I was a Vossen after all, but even more so, I was the Vossen who had found a little girl dying on the side of the road.

The coffee shop was busy from the overflowing car park and through the windows as I circled to the rear. It was going to be a long, tedious day.

There was a car parked in the rear. Mortensby is small enough that everyone local and their cars were vaguely familiar. I had seen the car, it had passed me, or I had passed it regularly, but I did not know the man behind the wheel by name or occupation. I vaguely connected him with a woman and children who I might have served in the shop sometime in recent weeks.

He did not belong in the employee car park.

Whilst some might have approached the car and told him to move on, I was a Vossen. We kept to ourselves and out of other's business as much as possible. It was a caution learned through generations of women's suffering.

I took my bike behind the industrial bin set to the side of the rear entrance and secured it to the railing. The door opened and Kristine Sawyer came out. She waved to the car as she dropped a garbage bag into the bin and saw me, her expression shifting from flirtatious into a sneer.

"What are you doing lurking back there?" She demanded, one hand on her hip. "You're fucking late again and keeping me and Shelley waiting."

"I'll be right in," I finished with the bike lock.

"Snooping and spying," Kristine was angry, her eyes flicking to the car. "Sticking your nose into other's business."

"I was locking up my bike."

"Yeah right," her lip curled as I started up the stairs and past her.

"Look," I paused with one hand holding open the door. "You're late to ninety percent of your shifts, and I bet you were late to open this morning. Lay off. This is my third time being late. Just because you're in a hurry to run off with someone else's husband, doesn't mean you can give me shit."

"Fuck you, Elenyx Vossen," Kristine snarled. "If you dare - "

"You'll do what?" I arched an eyebrow. "What the fuck do you think you can do to me, Kristine I'm Fucking Someone Else's Husband Sawyer. Shut the fuck up, and finish taking out the trash by walking yourself over to that fucking car and getting the hell out of here." I let the door swing closed between us.

I threw myself into the shift, moving through the monotony of filling orders, taking money, and wiping counters. Towards the end of my shift, a group entered. They were in their late teens and early twenties. Some I recognized from the local High School, but others I suspected were from the Academy – early arrivals for the new year or those who had stayed throughout the holidays. They were shiny with wealth and privilege, confident and loud with it.

They took over a corner of the room, intimidating away the patrons who had already been there. I hurried over to wipe the table and saw Nova amongst them. She avoided meeting my eyes, though I knew that she had seen me. The clothing she wore was not how she normally dressed, and some items I had never seen before. Her hair was styled differently, and her makeup… She was Nova, but also not.

I withdrew behind the counter, very aware that she did not want me to highlight the fact that we were related. She was trying to transcend being a Vossen and fit in with the obnoxious rich students and acknowledging me would ruin that for her.

I understood, in a way. There were times that I wished to escape the stares and suspicions of the townspeople and simply fit in. But, as they got up and left, with Nova amongst them, a feeling of cold foreboding raised the hair on the back of my neck. This was not good, and it would not end well.