Chapter 13
Thirteen
Jason went downstairs three hours later. He had showered and shaved, and had taken Sage’s advice about trying to rest. Although he had always found it nearly impossible to nap, he had fallen asleep within a couple of minutes after lying down. It was something about the tower room, he decided. Sleeping in a place so high and isolated, surrounded by storm and ocean, had allowed him to relax as deeply as if he’d spent hours in meditation.
The clothes Sage had set out for him were soft and comfortable, with none of the mustiness or discoloration he would have expected. A crisp scent of cedar permeated the fabric. He owned handmade shirts from London and Hong Kong that didn’t fit him this smoothly. These could have been made specifically according to his measurements. Which didn’t strike him as coincidence.
So far, Jason thought wryly, he was enjoying the company of witches far more than he would have expected.
He reached the bottom floor and found the main room empty. Appetizing smells hung in the air. The sound of voices and clanking utensils resonated from the kitchen. Pausing at the threshold of the keeping room, he saw that the table was covered in white linen and set with flatware and sparkling glassware.
Justine was lighting candles, her back turned to him. A thin blue sweater and a long flowered skirt followed the slender lines of her body before flaring gently. She was barefoot, sexy, her hair loose and rippling. Still unaware of his presence, she clicked a long-necked butane lighter repeatedly but couldn’t get a flame started. The shoulder of the sweater sagged away from an ivory shoulder, and she hitched it up impatiently. Setting aside the lighter, she snapped her fingers in front of each candlewick. A succession of brilliant flames appeared.
More witchery. Although Jason didn’t react outwardly, he was startled by the sight of Justine creating sparks with her fingertips. Jesus Tap-dancing Christ. What else was she capable of? Staring at her, he slid his hands in his pockets and leaned casually against the side of the doorjamb.
At the sound of the floor creaking beneath his feet, Justine started and whirled to face him.
She turned white and then flushed, her velvet-brown eyes wide. “Oh. I…” One hand made a fluttering gesture to the table behind her. “Trick candles.”
His mouth twitched. “How do you feel?”
“Fine. Great.” Justine sounded breathless. Her gaze took a swift, nervous inventory of him. “How about you?”
“Hungry.”
She motioned in the direction of the kitchen, nearly knocking over a candlestick. “Dinner’s almost ready. Those clothes are great on you.” She hitched up the side of the sweater again.
“How do you feel?”
“Better since you put me on a defrost cycle.” Her color deepened. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t mind thawing you out,” Jason said, reaching out to stroke his fingers through a few of the wavy, shiny locks of her hair. Gently he tugged the sweater down her shoulder, caressing the silky exposed curve with his palm. He heard her breath change. He thought about the things he wanted to do to her, all the ways he wanted to penetrate, pleasure, possess her. And he forced himself to let go of her while he was still able. Justine wandered into the kitchen, seeming dazed, while Jason went to the front door and opened it.
Standing in a blast of cold air, he tried to create a peaceful scene in his mind… an Alaskan glacier, a snow-topped mountain. When that didn’t work, he thought about foreign debt crises. Piranhas. Oompa-Loompas. When that didn’t work, he began to list prime numbers in his head, backward from one thousand. By the time he reached 613, he was able to return to the keeping room.
Justine was setting bowls of vegetable soup on the table. She glanced at him, her cheeks pink.
“Can I do something?” he asked.
Rosemary replied as she carried baskets of bread from the kitchen. “All taken care of. Have a seat, please.”
He went to help Rosemary and Sage into their chairs, and took a seat next to Justine.
Rosemary blessed the meal, praising the earth for growing the food they were about to enjoy, thanking the sun for nourishing it, the rain for quenching its thirst, and so forth.
“Jason,” Sage invited when the blessing was finished, “tell us about your foreign relatives. I find that so intriguing. Were both your grandparents Japanese?”
“No, my grandfather was an American serviceman, stationed at Naha Port—a logistical base in Okinawa—during Vietnam. He married my grandmother against her family’s wishes. Not long afterward he was killed in action, but by then my grandmother was pregnant with my mother.”
Justine passed a basket of bread to him. “How did your mother end up in America?”
“She visited Sacramento when she was a teenager, to get to know some of her American relatives. She ended up staying here for good.”
“Why didn’t she go back?”
“I think she wanted the chance to live independently for a while. In Okinawa, her family had kept a close eye on her, and they all lived under one roof: my grandmother and assorted aunts, uncles, and cousins.”
“Heavens to Hecate,” Rosemary exclaimed, “how large was the house?”
“About three thousand square feet. But it allowed a lot more room than the American equivalent. Not much furniture, and no clutter. The interior could be made into different rooms with all these sliding paper doors. So when it was time to go to sleep, everyone laid their futons on the floor and pulled the doors shut.”
“How could you stand the lack of privacy?” Justine asked.
“I learned that a sense of privacy doesn’t have to depend on walls and doors. At least not external ones. Two people could sit in a room and read or work separately without ever breaking the silence. It’s an ability to put up walls in your mind, so no one can get through.”
“And you’re good at that, aren’t you?” Justine asked.
Relishing the challenge she presented, he gave her a level stare. “Aren’t you?” he countered.
Her gaze was the first to fall.
Jason turned the conversation to Sage, asking what life had been like on Cauldron Island when she’d first moved there. She described the years she had been employed as the island schoolteacher, with approximately a half dozen students. They had all met every morning at a one-room schoolhouse at Crystal Cove, not far from the lighthouse. Now the only families who lived there were retirees or part-timers, so the school had been closed.
“We still use the schoolhouse from time to time,” Sage volunteered. “The building is in perfect condition.”
“What do you use it for?” Jason asked, and felt Justine’s toes in a warning nudge against his ankle.
“Social gatherings,” Rosemary said briskly. “Are you enjoying your dinner, Jason?”
“It’s terrific,” he said. The soup was hearty and fresh-tasting, made with potatoes, kale, corn, tomatoes, and herbs. Honey-sweetened Dark Mother bread was served with homemade apple butter and slabs of local white cheese.
Dessert consisted of an eggless breadcrumb cake sweetened with molasses and dried fruit. According to Sage, the recipe was from the Depression era, a time when eggs and milk hadn’t always been available.
The elderly women were like an old married couple, reminiscing about their life on the island. They told stories about Justine as a child, such as the time she had been so determined to have a surprise birthday party for herself that she had planned it out and given Rosemary and Sage meticulous instructions. They had thrown it for her, of course, and had called it Justine’s unsurprise party.
And during one winter visit, Justine had complained about their pagan Yule traditions because she had wanted a Christmas tree.
“I explained to Justine,” Rosemary said, “that our tradition was to put a straw Yule goat out in the yard. She asked what tradition we would have if it weren’t for the goat, and I said I wasn’t certain. And the next morning”—she paused as Sage chuckled and Justine buried her head in her hands—“I looked out the window to discover that the Yule goat was gone. There was only a smoldering pile of ashes on the ground. Justine denied all responsibility, of course, but she said with great enthusiasm, ‘ Now we can have a tree.’”
“You burned the Yule goat?” Jason asked Justine, amused.
She explained with chagrin, “It was a ritual sacrifice. He had to go.”
“We’ve had a Christmas tree every year since,” Sage said. “Even when Justine wasn’t with us.”
Justine reached out and put her hand on Sage’s shoulder. “I visited every holiday I possibly could,” she said. “We haven’t missed one for a while, have we?”
Sage smiled at her. “No, indeed.”
After dinner they went into the main room to sit by the fire and relax with glasses of elderberry wine. Eventually Sage and Rosemary sat side by side at the piano and played a showy duet of “Stardust,” embellished with arpeggios and glissandi.
Justine curled up in the corner of the sofa, gathering up her knees beneath the long flowered skirt and hooking an arm around them. She smiled at Jason as he settled next to her. “They like you,” she said in an undertone.
“How can you tell?”
“‘Stardust’ is their best piece. They only play it for people they like.”
“Are they… together?” he asked tactfully.
“Yes. They don’t usually talk about their relationship. The only thing Sage has ever said to me about it is that no matter how old you get, you’re always capable of surprising yourself.”
Jason watched Justine’s expression as the melancholy notes of “Autumn Leaves” filled the air. It was the kind of song that didn’t need words, emotions balanced on every lonely note. Firelight played over Justine’s porcelain skin and the wistful curve of her mouth. Delicate shadows smudged her eyes. She was tired. He wanted to hold her while she slept, her body tranquil and dream-heavy in his arms.
Lightning shot through the sky, accompanied by an earsplitting crack that caused Justine to start. “It feels like the storm will go on forever,” she said.
“I think it will die down enough for you to leave tomorrow,” Sage said, still playing the piano. “Of course, we’ll have to work up a good strong protection spell before you go.”
Justine’s expression tautened, and she gave Jason a wary glance.
“Protection from what?” he asked, his voice pitched so the other women couldn’t hear. “The storm?”
“Sort of.” Justine’s fingers harrowed the folds of her skirt, plucking and smoothing.
His hand covered hers, subduing the restive movements. “Can I help?”
The question nudged a brief smile to her lips. “Saving my life was more than enough.”
As Sage finished the song, Rosemary turned on the bench to face Justine. “We have something important to discuss,” she said.
Even though he knew it was none of his business, Jason couldn’t stop himself from saying, “It would be better to wait until the morning.” Justine was still fragile from the day’s events, not entirely in control of herself. At the moment, the only likely result of a discussion, or argument, was mutual frustration.
Justine frowned, pulling her hand from his. “It’s something I have to talk to them about,” she told him. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise. It’s why I came to visit in the first place.” Her mouth pulled into an apologetic little grimace. “I don’t mean to be rude, but… could you go to the guest room for a little while?”
“Of course.” Standing, Jason went to the built-in bookshelf near the fireplace. “I’ll grab a couple of books to take with me. I’ve been wanting to catch up on my reading.” He pulled a couple of random volumes from the shelf. “Especially…” He paused to glance at the top title in the stack. “Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest . And The History of Marine Propellers and Propulsion.”
“You’ll love that one,” Justine told him.
He gave her a sardonic glance. “Don’t spoil the ending for me.”
***
Jason had insisted on carrying the dishes into the kitchen before going upstairs to the tower bedroom. It had pleased and surprised Justine to discover that a man of his position would help with housework. And it amused her to see how much Rosemary liked him in spite of herself.
“It’s not that I dislike men,” Rosemary said defensively, after Justine had made a comment to that effect. “It’s just that I dislike so many of them.”
That remark, and her sour expression, caused both Justine and Sage to crack up as they rinsed and stacked dishes at the sink.
Rosemary wiped the countertop with great dignity. “I will admit,” she said after a moment, “that Jason is a charming and well-spoken man. Not to mention intelligent. I can hardly credit that he once played football.”
Justine affected a tone of grave concern. “I hope he hasn’t ruined any stereotypes for you, Rosemary.”
“I don’t stereotype. I generalize.”
“Is there a difference?” Justine asked with a grin. “You have to explain it to me, because I don’t see one.”
“I’ll explain it,” Sage interceded. “If Rosemary were to say that all men are insensitive brutes who love football and drink beer, that would be stereotyping. However, if Rosemary said that most men are insensitive brutes who love football and drink beer, she would be generalizing.”
Justine listened with a dubious expression. “Neither version gives men much credit.”
“That’s because none of them deserve it,” Rosemary said.
Sage said to Justine sotto voce, “ That is stereotyping.”
The three of them worked companionably in the kitchen, rinsing dishes and loading the dishwasher until it was full. Justine volunteered to wash the large soup pot in the sink. As she plunged her hands into hot soapy water and scrubbed the pot, she pondered how best to open the subject of the curse, when Sage did it for her.
“Justine, darling… Rosemary seems to believe that you have somehow managed to break the geas. Which I told her couldn’t be true, since it would be nearly impossible for you to accomplish such a thing on your own.”
Justine didn’t pause in her scrubbing. “So you admit there was a geas?”
A nerve-grating silence greeted her question.
Justine was astonished that they were trying to keep secrets from her, even when those secrets had a profound impact on her life. After Zo?, there was no one Justine had ever trusted more than these two women. To be deceived by them hurt her on as deep a level as Marigold had ever reached.
“There was a geas,” Rosemary admitted quietly. “Let’s return to the main room and sit together while we—”
“Not yet. Still working on this pot.” Justine scoured the stainless steel with frantic intensity. She needed an activity—if she had to sit still with nothing to occupy her, she felt as if she might explode.
“Very well.” The two women sat on wooden stools at the small kitchen island table.
Sage’s voice again: “Justine, will you tell us how you found out? And what you’ve done about it?”
“Yes. But first I’m going to tell you why I did it. Although you already know.”
“You wanted love” came the quiet reply. Justine wasn’t even certain which one of them had said it.
“I wanted at least a chance at it.” Justine drained the soapy pot and began to rinse it industriously. She tried to speak calmly, but her voice had tightened like a windup mechanism until it threatened to break. “How many times have I sat in this kitchen and bitched and cried and told you that I knew something was wrong with me? I even asked you once if it might have something to do with magic, and you both said no. You said things like, ‘It’ll happen someday, Justine. Just be patient, Justine.’ But you were lying. You knew there was no freaking chance I’d ever have anyone. That I would always be alone. How could you do that to me?”
“One can be alone,” Rosemary said, “without being lonely. And lonely without being alone.”
Infuriated, Justine set the pot on the counter with unnecessary force. “I don’t need fortune-cookie wisdom. I need answers.”
Sage spoke gently. “Justine, you were going to tell us how you found out about the geas.”
Still facing away from them, Justine braced her wet hands on the sink. “The Triodecad,” she muttered. “Page thirteen.”
Her shoulders stiffened as she heard audible gasps.
“Jumping Jupiter on a pogo stick,” Rosemary said.
“Oh, Justine,” Sage faltered, “you were told never to do that.”
“I was told about a lot of things. Unfortunately the geas was not one of them. So I had to find out from the Triodecad.” Justine turned to face them defiantly. “It’s my spellbook, and my decision to make.”
Rosemary sounded more bewildered than accusatory. “You aren’t nearly so na?ve as to think you can break one of the rules of magic without causing consequences for everyone in the coven.”
“I’m not a covener. So it’s my business and no one else’s. I opened the Triodecad to page thirteen, and it gave me the spell to break a geas, and I followed the instructions.” She gave them both a rebellious glance. “Now I’ve got some questions: Who cast a curse on me, and why? Does my mother know about it? Why hasn’t anyone ever told me? Because I can’t imagine what I’ve ever done to make someone hate me that much.”
Neither of them wanted to reply. As Justine looked from one face to another, she had a bad feeling, a standing-on-the-train-tracks feeling.
“It wasn’t done out of hatred,” Sage said carefully. “It was done out of love, dear.”
“Who the hell was it?”
“It was Marigold,” Rosemary said in a quiet voice. “She did it to protect you.”
Justine was stunned, suspended in ice. It made no sense. “Protect me from what?” she managed to ask, although it hurt to force the words from her throat.
“Marigold barely survived losing your father,” Sage said. “She wasn’t… herself for a long time afterward.”
“She wasn’t sane,” Rosemary said. “She was in the kind of pain that leaves no room for anything else. And even after she recovered, she was never the same. She came to us when you were still an infant, and said she had decided that her only child must never endure such agony. She wanted to bind a geas to you, so that you would be protected from loss forever.”
“Protect me from loss,” Justine said in a hollow voice, “by making certain I’d never have anything to lose.” She wrapped her arms around herself, an instinctive effort to keep from falling to pieces. Emotions flooded into the blankness like watercolors bleeding across wet paper.
“… disagreed with her,” Sage was saying. “But she was your mother. A mother has the right to make decisions for her child.”
“Not that kind of decision,” Justine said fiercely. “Some decisions even a mother doesn’t get to make.” It infuriated her further to read from their expressions that she had scored a point. “Why didn’t you stop her?”
“We assisted her, Justine,” Rosemary said. “The entire coven did. The geas was too powerful a spell to accomplish on her own.”
Justine could hardly breathe. “You all helped her?”
“Marigold was one of the coven. We were bound to help her. It was a collective choice.”
“But… I never got a choice.”
They had betrayed her, all of them.
It seemed as if everything in the universe were a lie. Justine felt like a wounded wild thing, ready to attack, wanting to hurt someone, including herself.
“It was for your safety.” She heard Rosemary’s voice through the pounding blood in her ears.
“Marigold didn’t want me to be safe,” Justine cried. “She wanted me to be in a prison she’d made. I would be alone, and then what choice would I have except to copy her life exactly? I would have to join the coven and follow her plan, and she would oversee everything I did and I would be just like her. She didn’t want a daughter. She wanted a clone.”
“She loved you,” Sage said. “I know that she still does.”
It outraged Justine more than anything else that Sage could look at what had been done to her and call it love. “ How do you know that? Because she said so? Don’t you understand the difference between love and control?”
“Justine, please try to understand—”
“I understand,” she said, thrilling with anger so intense it felt like panic. “You’re the ones who don’t understand. You want to believe every mother wants the best for her child. But some don’t.”
“She didn’t mean to hurt you, Justine—”
“She meant to do exactly what she did.”
“She may not have been a perfect mother, but—”
“Don’t try to tell me what kind of mother Marigold was. I’m the only person in the world who knows what it was like to be raised by her. A mother is supposed to want her child to have an education and a stable home. Instead I was dragged around like a cheap suitcase. My mother never stayed anywhere or stuck with anything unless it was ‘fun.’ And whenever parenting wasn’t fun, which was most of the time, I had to fend for myself. Because I was inconvenient.”
It was the truth. But neither of them wanted to hear it, like most people faced with uncomfortable truths. Their relationships with Marigold and Justine, their culpability in the geas, their trust in the coven’s collective wisdom, all of it was suddenly precarious. And Justine knew exactly how they were going to handle it. They would blame her for being rebellious and difficult. It was easier to blame the troublemaker, the unhappy victim, rather than look inward.
“Of course you’re upset,” Sage said. “You need time to adjust to this, but there isn’t time. We must do something now, darling, because in changing your fate, you’ve managed to—”
“I didn’t change my fate,” Justine snapped, “I changed it back. ” Energy smoldered beneath her skin, racing from cell to cell.
Rosemary was staring at her oddly, her face drawn. “Justine,” she said carefully, “you can’t ever change things back to exactly what they were before. Your fate has been shaped by every action you’ve ever taken. For every action there is a reaction. And in breaking the geas, you’ve upset the balance between the spiritual realm and the physical world. You’ve created a storm in more ways than one.”
As far as Justine was concerned, the last straw was having to endure a lecture from a woman who had helped to place a lifelong curse on her. “Then you shouldn’t have helped to curse me in the first place!” The energy released in a volatile and undirected snap, flooding the light fixture on the ceiling. A trio of bulbs exploded, glass raining and glittering in the remaining glow from the corner lamp.
“Justine,” Rosemary said sharply, “calm down.”
Flatware rattled and jumped beside the sink. Justine’s mouth was filled with the taste of ashes. The rage and hurt cut through her like blades.
Sage was white with astonished concern. “We only want to help you—”
“I don’t need your kind of help!” A paring knife and a few stray pieces of magnetized flatware shot across a counter and stuck to the side of the stainless-steel refrigerator. Justine was half blind with fury. Nothing was the way she’d thought it was; nothing was real or true. She heard them calling her name, Rosemary’s voice angry, Sage’s pleading.
Amid the turmoil, she was aware that Jason had come into the room. Rosemary told him harshly to stay back, that Justine was out of control and would hurt him. Somewhere beneath the rage, Justine was terrified that Rosemary was right.
Ignoring the warnings, Jason reached Justine in a couple of ground-eating strides and pulled her close. He took her head in his hands, forcing her to look up at him. “Justine,” he said, his voice low and urgent, “look at me. It’s okay, baby. Remember what I told you?… Whatever you do or say or feel. Look at me.”
Gasping, crying, Justine dragged her unfocused gaze to his. She was held by those midnight eyes, by the way he stared at her as if he knew her inside and out. He was calm and steady, compelling her to be there with him. Guiding her out of a storm, once again. “Are you hurt?” He smoothed her hair back. “Did you step on any glass?”
“I don’t th-think so.” She felt the white-hot energy draining away. But the anger, and the anguish, were still raging. She couldn’t look at either Rosemary or Sage. “This is why,” she told Jason, trembling and laughing, tears leaking from her eyes. “The truth or dare question, remember? Why I broke up with my boyfriend. He was afraid of me. You should be, too. You should—”
Jason hushed her, kissing her forehead, stroking back a lock of hair that had stuck to her wet cheek. He reached for a nearby roll of paper towels and tore one off. After blotting Justine’s eyes, he held the paper towel to her nose, and she blew obediently.
Sage sighed as she saw that the tempest had passed. “We’ll take care of this,” she said to Jason as he glanced over the mess in the kitchen. “Thank you, Jason. We’ll finish talking to Justine, now that she’s—”
“No.” He was staring at the flatware and the knife stuck against the refrigerator. “I’m taking her upstairs.”
Justine stiffened as she followed Jason’s gaze. He should run from her, like Duane would have. Instead he put a hard, bracing arm around her shoulders. “Careful where you step,” he said. “I’m good with hypothermia, but I’m damned if I can do stitches.”
“She has more ability than we thought,” Rosemary said to no one in particular. “Possibly more than I’ve ever seen in one individual. And she can’t control it at all.”
Exhausted and sullen, Justine remained silent. Her jaw trembled as she stiffened it against more crying.
“I think we’ll call it a night,” Jason said in a deliberately pleasant tone, guiding Justine from the room.
“There is something both of you must know,” Rosemary said.
“It can wait until later,” Jason replied.
“No it can’t. You see—”
“Rosemary,” Jason interrupted firmly, “with all due respect… it’s time to shut up now.”
The older woman opened her mouth to disagree, then closed it and glanced at Sage, looking rueful. “Perhaps it is.”