While Kaz fetched Leilani, I changed the sheets on my bed for Tanner and left a quilt and a pillow in the living room for the evening’s designated triage nurse and chauffeur.
“Remember to put out towels for Lei-li,” I called up the staircase.
I was desperate for sleep, but houseguests deserved clean bedding and their own towels, and if the amount of thumping was any indication, Harper was turbo-cleaning his room in anticipation of his special guest.
He called back, “Got it, Mom.”
My special guest was talking on his cell phone in the living room. I pantomimed him walking down the hall and sleeping in my bedroom. He nodded and mouthed a thank you.
Bed. Sleep. I ducked into the refuge of my office, rested my upper back against the closed door, and visualized sliding between crisp cotton sheets and seeing this day finally end.
Dammit. The tinctures were waiting, unopened, in their pretty lavender bag in the downstairs bathroom.
I reread the instructions, dropped the recommended dosage into a small glass of water, and drank it down. The smell of Kaz’s coffee meandered down the hall and tried to tease my brain into waking up, but my body wisely overruled the temptation.
When I closed my eyes and sank my head into the blessedly soft pillow, sleep came fast.
Mornings arrived early during the height of summer, and by four thirty or five on Monday, light streamed through my office’s uncurtained windows. I lay on my back, covered to my breasts by a white cotton sheet, and contemplated rising before anyone else.
Stretching my arms and legs, I opted to stay in my makeshift bed. My toes found the cool surface of the wall underneath the window, and my fingertips curled around the legs of the old farmer’s table I had turned into a sturdy desk. Underneath, a board laid over the foot rest served as a shelf for my rickety wooden flower press and a stack of cigar boxes and photo albums. At one time, before I started high school, I’d wanted to be a botanist. The oldest album held preserved plant matter and my earliest sketches. A few of my mother’s sketches were in there too. She and I would sit side by side and make detailed renderings of the flowers I dissected.
I scooted onto my belly and extracted the album from the pile, along with a few well-thumbed books. Piling the stack beside the bed, I imagined the bodies congregating under my roof would be better served if I familiarized myself with my new skills. Speaking Tanner’s middle name without knowing it beforehand then causing my ex to fly out the door simply because I raised my voice—and my arm—were two things that would not have happened prior to the ritual.
But I wanted a mug of tea first.
In the living room, Kazimir slept on his side on the couch, a pillow over his head. The coffee carafe was cleaned and upside down on the dish drainer. I lit the flame on the stove and filled the kettle from the tap, careful to flip the cap up so its whistle wouldn’t wake the house. Mornings had a sacred quality to them, and I wanted to sip my tea in silence.
And solitude.
I let a pot of Assam steep four minutes and tiptoed a mug of sweet, creamy tea to my office. Settling in cross-legged, the warmth from the mug spreading into my lap, I leaned against the tongue-and-groove paneling and breathed into a scan of my house. Watchful stillness flowed along the floorboards and up, down and across the supporting beams. When I floated my inquiry beyond the shingled roof, there was a lack of anxiety in the air and the surrounding woods.
The wards were holding. They were strong, complex, and palpable without making me feel claustrophobic or imprisoned.
Soothed by the pervading sense of calm, I drew my awareness into the room and under the lightweight cotton of my nightgown, to my skin. I paused. Breathed. Sipped at my tea, placed the mug on the windowsill, and resumed my earlier position on my back.
Limbs akimbo, I returned to those hours I’d spent encircled by ancient, sacred Sitka Spruce. I replayed the walk to the grove, the way the deliberate placing of my feet had expanded my awareness and opened my eyes, ears, and nose. I replayed the gifts the witches offered—the symbolic gestures, the spoken words, the very act of their participation. I wanted to know more about the meaning of each headpiece, and as I dove deeper into my memories, they were overlaid with someone else’s.
For one, elongated moment, love flowed toward me, and I knew it was my mother’s love, stored away in a place beyond the present, gifted so I would never again need to wonder.
I snapped into the present and stifled a sob. Reaching for one of my mother’s spell books, I opened the cover to read the familiar dedication written in her delicate hand.
For my Calliope.
Chapter 16
Pressing the aged paper to my lips, I kissed the ink. The tears rolling down my cheeks dampened the page, and where they landed, more words appeared in faint brownish ink.
My heart thudded against my ribcage, grabbed onto curved bones, and threatened to hammer its way out. I moved the book away from my face, afraid I would smudge or forever lose one of the few examples of my mother’s handwriting I possessed. I caught a teardrop on my fingertip and trailed it through the spaces between the words.
The salty wetness illuminated more missing letters.
Nurture your Garden
Know your Roots
Watch for the White-Winged Man
Beware the …
… Water’s Edge
I wet my tongue and pressed the tip against the missing words. The page remained blank, the paper thicker than the surrounding area, as though a section had been replaced with a patch. I scraped the edge of my fingernail after the word beware until a scrap smaller than the nail on my pinkie peeled away.
My instincts were right; whatever word or
