The circle itself shimmered very faintly, just like the air had been doing all day with heat. It had a sense of purpose to it: the intent to disguise, although not to hide entirely. To an outsider, it would look like more trees and grass, as if the circle were reflecting the natural state around it. I knew if I left the circle now, I’d be able to see them, because I knew they were there, but random passersby wouldn’t see any more than I had last night. No wonder the coven preferred to meet outdoors. The illusion wouldn’t work nearly as well inside.
“We’re ready.”
I startled out of my contemplation of the circle and got to my feet. The rest of the six stood together, Faye pointed in slightly the wrong direction, her rolled-back eyes wide. I fought off a shudder and shoved my hands in my pockets. “Okay, so what do we do?”
Marcia frowned at me. She was good at that. Very imposing. I hunched my shoulders and felt a little smaller. “Do you agree to partake in this ritual willingly, Joanne?” Beside her, the Elder asked Duane the same question. He said yes. I squinted.
“There’s no sex, right?”
Everyone but Faye looked exasperated at me. Faye looked exasperated at something over my left shoulder. I stuck my jaw out, stubborn. I wanted a guarantee on this one before I went through with it. Marcia sighed rather dramatically.
“There is no sex.”
“Okay. I agree, then. But no sex.”
“Give me your hand.”
I eyed Duane, who put his own hand out to the Elder without a fuss. I shrugged and put my hand out, too. “Okay.”
Marcia sliced her fingernails against my palm and laid the flesh open to the bone.
CHAPTER 23
I stared at the blood welling up with an astounded sense of deja vu. It would hurt. Pretty soon it was going to hurt a lot. The bone was already gone, hidden by pooling blood. Yep. Any second now, it was going to hurt a whole lot. But right now, pure astonishment was keeping the pain at bay. It was very interesting. I blinked up at Marcia, wondering if she would suddenly reveal herself to actually be my teacher.
She didn’t. She looked just like herself. “Blood binds us to this earth,” she said sonorously. “Put your hand together with Duane’s.”
“That seems like a bad idea.” One of the things I got to learn at police academy was how diseases like hepatitis were spread. Smearing bloody hands with somebody else wasn’t the best way to avoid that sort of thing.
“For pity’s sake, Joanne! Must everything be difficult with you? Get a bowl,” Marcia snapped to someone else. I cupped my left hand beneath my right, catching blood that was now flowing over and between my fingers. It still didn’t hurt. For the moment, I was grateful.
“I’m not trying to be difficult.” I really wasn’t. If I was trying, I’d have gone tearing off to an emergency room, at the very least. “Just, you know. AIDS, hepatitis, all that sort of thing. We didn’t exactly exchange blood tests, you know?” I thought I was being very reasonable, for somebody who was dripping her own blood all over the place. It probably helped that it didn’t hurt yet. Neither, I remembered, had the cut on my face that had left the thin scar on my cheek. I nearly lifted my hand to touch the scar, but Marcia grabbed my wrist with a painful grip. “Ow!”
Thenmy palm started to hurt. It was worse, shockingly, than having a sword stuffed into my lung. That had just been going to kill me. This was crippling. I could conceivably be unable to use my left hand again. The line of pain burned up my arm and all the way down into my stomach, making me heave. If Marcia hadn’t had an iron grip on my wrist I’d have fallen. I wasn’t particularly grateful for the prevention. I wanted to scream, but my teeth were clenched together and my throat was locked up, so I just stood there staring at my bleeding hand. The edges of the wound pulsed with my heartbeat, blood popping up in little bursts with each thud. My stomach rolled again, cold sweat sticking my tank top along my spine.
Someone pushed an earthenware bowl beneath my hand and Marcia turned it palm down. My fingers curled over my palm all on their own, which gave me hope that the tendons were all right. Blood splooshed into the bowl, then began dripping down my hand like macabre finger-paint. After a moment Duane’s hand joined mine above the bowl, his blood pooling down into it as well. I could feel it when it mingled with mine, tiny electric shocks snapping back up into my hand like drops of blood reversing their fall. It stung all the way up into the nerve in my elbow, and made my stomach twist again. I felt cooler for the first time in days, like all the sunburned heat was running out of my body through the cut in my palm.
I looked up to see Duane’s face as white as mine felt, his nose pinched and strong lines standing out around his mouth. “Well, crap,” I whispered. My voice sounded like it came from far away, possibly another planet entirely. “Next time, let’s go for sex.”
His laugh cracked over me like a whip, a sharp sound of surprise that made us both wince. Then we were leaning on each other for support, shrieking with laughter that was mixed with tears. Marcia and the Elder kept the bowl beneath our outstretched hands, but the rest of the coven stood back nervously, dismayed by our howls of laughter. I couldn’t have explained it to them if I’d tried, but Duane and I got it. We kept leaning on each other, giggling, until my knees went out and I hit the ground in a silent rush.
When I woke up my hand was bandaged. Duane was sitting up a few feet away from me, cradling his own hand, swathed in bandages as well. He looked as sick as I still felt, all the desperate humor gone from his eyes. My palm throbbed so badly I could feel it in the back of my throat and in my stomach. If I made it through the rest of the night without puking, it would be just shy of a miracle.
I rolled to hands and knees, or more accurately, hand and knees, my left hand curled up against my chest, and hitched over to Duane. “Give me your hand.”
He looked wary. “No offense, but last time somebody said that.”
A bubble of laughter popped through the nausea, making me feel better for about two-thirds of a second. I managed a smile. “No more bleeding. Promise.” I didn’t know what was going on around us. Marcia said, “She’s awake,” but no one came to check on us. Duane, who looked too tired to argue, gave me his hand. I cupped it in my right, afraid to even try touching anything with the left. “Do you believe in magic, Duane?” All things considered, it was a ridiculous question.
He half smiled and shrugged. “Yes, I do.”
“S’good. Close your eyes.” I closed mine, partly because I was too tired to keep them open. The heat had come back while I wasn’t paying attention. I felt it bearing down into the cut on my hand as if it were trying to get in. I didn’t have the energy to keep it out.
My heartbeat, thick and slow, matching the throb in my hand, was enough of a drumbeat to put me under. The heat probably helped, too, and maybe the blood loss.
I retained a vague sense of awareness of the world around me. Duane’s hand in mine had a little weight to it; the popping fire lit the insides of my eyelids to strange reversed colors. Distressingly, my garden didn’t appear around me. I wasn’t used to doing this when I couldn’t fully reach at least some level of the astral realm.
I wrapped Duane in my image of a damaged vehicle: a blue minivan, with thin white racing stripes and a baby rattle hanging from the rearview mirror. I couldn’t tell if it was my own concoction or if Duane had a secret inner minivan, which didn’t seem inappropriate, given his role as the Father.
The left front wheel well had been keyed, a deep scored mark that cut through paint and into the metal. I ran my thumb over Duane’s palm without quite touching the bandages, and, behind my eyelids, ran my hand over the mark on his car. The scoring ran deep, almost through to the other side. It would take heat to fix it, a soldering iron that would let the metal reach viscosity again so filaments could blur back together. That was how it worked in my mind’s eye; I understood on some level that a more practiced shaman should be able to just see the damage as whole, and through that strength of vision, make it happen. I wasn’t that good.