“I’ll help you,” said Selena, taking my hand and leading me into the big dressing room.
I took off the polka-dot dress that matched Selena’s; then Selena helped me to pull my mother’s family wedding dress over my head. The fabric slipped easily down my body, encasing me in silky softness. It fit loosely, in the style of the twenties. And though I didn’t have a boyish body, it was big enough in the right areas. It needed some alteration, but not much.
“Wow,” said Selena.
“Really?”
I stepped out of the dressing room. You could have heard a pin drop.
“Well?” I said, wondering at their silence.
Bronwyn gasped and teared up.
“What?” I looked down at myself, suddenly doubtful.
My mother came up to me, gave me a hug, and then turned me around so I could look into the three-way mirror.
I looked beautiful. I looked like a princess. Best of all, I looked like a very happy witch.
Everyone started talking at once, oohing and aahing, pulling a little here, a little there.
“All you need now is the perfect veil,” Maya said. “We must have some in boxes next door, right?”
“I have one here,” my mother said as she pulled a lace veil out of her sewing bag. It was attached to a tiara. It was antique, but not fancy, made of cheap wire and rhinestones that had been cleaned up and polished.
“I know it’s silly,” my mother said. “But that’s the tiara I won when I was crowned Miss Tecla County. That was the closest I’ve ever come to feeling magical.”
“It’s amazing,” I said, wishing I had a better word for it. I smelled daisies, and my mind was flooded with images of home, and Texas, and sitting in my mother’s lap while she read me a story when I was little. I thought of what Patience had said, that my thoughts were expressed in scents and symbols. Maybe this was what she meant.
“Thank you,” I said, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. I knew if I had been able to cry, I would have done so. “It’s amazing. It’s exactly what I’ve been hoping for.”
While saying, “No time like the present,” Lucille trailed me back into the changing room and pinned the dress for alterations, then helped me to take it off without stabbing myself.
After I had changed back into my polka-dot dress, Bronwyn excused herself to take Imogen and Selena to their respective homes, Maya and Lucille begged off as well, and the last of the crowd began to disperse. My mother and the Texas coven climbed back onto the school bus to drive to Calypso’s house in Bolinas. Only my grandmother and Oscar stayed behind to accompany me in my Mustang. Graciela insisted on hunting for a sparkly jacket in my inventory piled in Lucille’s Loft, and then wanted to ride with the top down, because she’d once seen a movie in which a glamorous actress—was it Audrey Hepburn, or Grace Kelly?—drove across the Golden Gate Bridge in a convertible and she wasn’t about to miss a chance to do the same before she died.
“You really taught my mother knot magic?” I asked her while we packed the last of the leftovers into boxes to take to Calypso’s.
Graciela laughed. “She’s atrocious. Truly. Still and all, it’ll be interestin’ to see what she came up with in that trousseau. Have you looked yet?”
“She told me not to, yet.”
Graciela lifted an eyebrow.
“I’m respecting her wishes,” I said, a defensive tone to my voice.
“That’s a first.”
I remembered snooping around in Graciela’s things, which was how I’d found out more than I should have about my father. “I was just a child, after all.”
“A nosy child.”
“You’re right,” I said with a laugh. “A nosy child. I guess I still am, in lots of ways. I seem to stick my nose in all sorts of things around these parts—that’s certain.”
I looked up from the Tupperware container I was closing to see Graciela—clad in a silver bugle-beaded jacket much too large for her—standing and gazing at the map behind the register, where the red thread now displayed Deliverance Corydon’s entire sigil.
“So you and the coven deliberately made Deliverance Corydon’s sign?” I asked as I joined her.
She let out a sigh, and nodded. “Yes, we cast at each point to rally her strength for you—you needed it. You now have two guiding spirits, m’ija. And they are at war. It will not be easy.”
“I don’t understand. Two spirits? That sounds bad.”
“It is not all bad. There is great strength in the negative, as you know. You are on track to become very powerful now, m’ija. More than before, much more. But you must fight to maintain control. Otherwise, one spirit will win out over the other.”
“Is that why the Ashen Witch didn’t come to me the last time I brewed?”
“She didn’t?” Graciela looked surprised, and it scared me to see worry in her eyes. But then she chuckled ruefully and patted me on the shoulder. “I guess we’ll have to work on that. She hasn’t abandoned you. Don’t worry. But she might need to be invited back.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“I know you will, m’ija. You have always been brave. To the point of foolishness.”
“So you’ve told me.”
“You must take precautions. But there is no denying what you are, so you must deal with it, embrace it, learn to best use it while maintaining balance and control. That’s the way life is. You must work on your training; you cannot keep running away from that. But we are here now, m’ija. We will help you figure this out.”
“Thank the heavens for that,” I said. “So, does this have to do with the prophecy?”
“What prophecy?”
“Aidan told me there was a prophecy about me, that my father knew about it. And . . . a demon
