I sent my mother a check every month to help with her expenses, and very occasionally we exchanged an awkward phone call. But I hadn’t seen her since that awful day.
“Did you figure out where everyone will be staying?” asked Maya.
“Calypso agreed to have them at her place, thanks be to the heavens. She actually sounds pretty excited about it. Graciela’s coven sisters are a font of arcane knowledge about healing herbs and botanicals, so they’ll have a lot to talk about.”
Calypso Cafaro was an expert in botanicals who lived in a large farmhouse outside Bolinas, about half an hour’s drive up the California coast. Calypso had also offered to let me and Sailor have our nuptials in her lush garden surrounded by redwood groves. It would be an enchanted place for a handfasting—a witchy wedding.
Bronwyn had sent away for her license to officiate, and if it got here on time, she would be able to legally marry us. My heart fluttered at the thought: part eager anticipation, part pure nerves.
“Oh, good,” Maya said with a quiet chuckle. “I kept imagining them all snoozing on yoga mats here in the store.”
“You don’t know how close we came to that.” I winced at the thought of having thirteen elderly witches—and my mother—literally underfoot.
“How long will they be staying?”
“I’m not sure, but they want to be here for the wedding.” On the one hand, it felt as though Sailor and I were rushing into this. On the other hand . . . it meant a lot to me that Graciela, her coven, and my mother would be there. At the very least we could have an unofficial handfasting with them all in attendance, and later make it legal at city hall.
I wanted—I needed—the strength of my womenfolk around me as I embarked on this new phase of my life.
I sniffed loudly.
“You’re sure you’re not getting a cold?” Maya asked.
“I don’t get colds.”
“Lucky you. Is that a witch thing?”
“I’m not sure, actually,” I said with a smile. I had a hard time distinguishing my own idiosyncratic weirdness from the traits I had inherited from my witchy foremothers. “But I’ve never gotten a cold. I’ll try some hot honey lemonade later, just to be sure.”
“Hey, that reminds me,” Maya said. “I stopped by an herb store in Chinatown yesterday to get some ginseng, and ran into Sailor. He hardly even acknowledged me, which was weird. Is everything okay? Did I do something to offend him?”
Sailor is my boyfriend. Correction . . . Sailor is my fiancé. Lordy, that was a hard idea to get used to. Still, the thought made me all warm and cozy somewhere deep within me.
On his best days Sailor had a tendency to simmer and to brood. On his worst, he was sullen and irritable and not prone to social niceties. But he liked Maya, and it would be out of character for him to ignore her. Plus, it was hard to imagine what well-mannered Maya could do to offend anyone.
“As far as I know, everything’s fine,” I said. “When was this, exactly?”
“Yesterday, a little after four.”
“That’s strange. When I saw him last night, he told me he had been training with his cousin all afternoon, which is on the other side of town. You’re sure about the timing?”
When she nodded, the beads woven into her locks made a soft clacking sound. “I went right after my drawing class.”
“Huh,” I said.
“He probably just stopped by, and had other things on his mind.”
Maya and I had been working together for a while now, and she knew me pretty well. Not to mention she was no fool. She could tell the story bothered me.
I had landed in San Francisco without family or friends, and though I had been working hard to learn to develop emotional bonds, it wasn’t easy to shake my loner ways. My childhood hadn’t exactly taught me to trust others. If it hadn’t been for my grandmother Graciela, I wouldn’t have known any stability—much less love—at all. So when Sailor actually proposed marriage to the likes of little ol’ me, I was stunned. Over-the-moon happy and excited, but stunned. I still couldn’t quite believe it was real.
I gazed at the ring he had given me. It glittered in a rainbow of green and blue, pink and orange. The stone, set in antique filigreed silver, wasn’t a diamond but a teardrop-shaped druzy, which was the inside of an agate, whose tiny crystals reflected the colorful mineral underneath. I told myself it was just a hunk of metal and rock, not a magical talisman. And yet . . . with every sparkle it reminded me that Sailor loved me.
Me, Lily Ivory. The outsider, the weirdo, the witch nobody even liked, much less loved.
All of which made it harder to understand why Sailor would lie to me about what he had done yesterday. It wasn’t a lie, I assured myself. Probably just a misunderstanding. Sailor must have taken a break to run a quick errand to the store, just like Maya had. No big deal. No reason to even mention it.
Except . . . Sailor’s teacher in the psychic arts was Patience Blix. Patience was Sailor’s gorgeous “cousin,” but it turned out they weren’t actually related by blood. According to Sailor, it was a Rom thing. Patience possessed an hourglass figure, a mass of black curls, and flashing dark eyes, and she took her role of fortune-teller seriously—particularly in the wardrobe department. She was a talented seer, but we weren’t exactly buddies. In fact, I felt like her first name must have been meant ironically, because the truth was, Patience trod on my last nerve.
“Lily? Everything all right?” asked Maya.
For the second time this morning, I had lost track of the conversation. Not a good habit to develop. Given the way my life had unfolded, I needed to keep on my toes.
“Yes, um . . . sorry. Too much on my mind, I guess.” Without meaning to, I had been squeezing the mint
