CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MOIRA
The Beacon Hill house, despite all its grandeur and empty rooms, got claustrophobic fast, and Moira needed to sort through her thoughts with someone who wasn’t her husband or David Aristarkhov. There were any number of people she could call for good advice: her mother, her gang of ride-or-die friends from Rhode Island School of Design, even the girls she worked with at the vintage shop. But she needed someone who understood the incestuous intricacies of the Boston magical scene, and someone who was clever enough to think two steps ahead of whatever the hell David was up to. That left one woman.
“I knew there was something strange going on between you three,” KittyVo said, sipping her espresso delicately. The skirt of her white tea-length dress swung around her calves as she and Moira walked briskly through Boston Common. It was the first truly warm spring day, flirting with the promise of summer. The two women had met for coffee on Kitty’s lunch break, and now, with the usual compliments and pleasantries dispensed with, were right down to business.
“It’s certainly not a situation I expected to find myself in,” Moira said. “But it’s like I said, we couldn’t walk away. What David had to offer was too good.”
“And you hate watching people suffer,” Kitty put in. “Even if that person is David.”
“Right,” Moira sighed. She swirled her iced mocha, rattling the ice pensively. “Do you think it was wrong of me? To agree to help?”
“There’s no wrong or right with a man like that. There’s just getting everything you can get out of him. I had no idea you were a medium, too.”
Moira wrinkled her nose. She had always defined her abilities in opposition to mediumship. ‘Witch’ was a cozy, familiar term, passed down from her mother and grandmother. Witches helped their communities: they healed sickness, mended relationships, and divined the future. Mediums made their living in the shadows, preying on the emotions of the bereaved and dragging the recently deceased back from the grave for impromptu family therapy sessions. She had been taught from a young age to look both ways before crossing the street, refuse candy from strangers, and not keep the company of mediums.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Moira said. “Just because I see dead people doesn’t mean I want to. I don’t want to start hosting séances like David. I just want a little peace and quiet. David seems to think that by strengthening that psychic muscle, I’ll be able to block out the dead more easily. I hope he’s right.”
“David might be a dick, but he’s not a charlatan,” Kitty said, in that careful, airy tone she used with her clients when convincing them to sign on to an upsell. “I do believe he helps people, in his way. Maybe you could too? You’re already a powerful witch, Moira. You aren’t afraid of your other gifts, so why run from this one?”
Moira shrugged one shoulder, suddenly feeling a bit put on the spot. Interrogating why exactly she was afraid of the dead meant doing some serious shadow work, and wrestling with the legacy of her parents, who were loving, if complicated, people. She wasn’t sure she was up to the task quite yet.
“You don’t need to make yourself smaller in order to be worthy of blessings, God knows those boys in the Society don’t. They truly believe they deserve to get everything they want, and the universe responds in kind,” Kitty pressed. “They don’t care about what other people might think of them, so why should we?”
“I still want to be a good person,” Moira said.
“Being a good person is overrated, if you ask me. Have you talked to your mother about this? I know you two are close.”
Moira nibbled on her bottom lip. She usually told her mother everything, and she looked forward to their twice-monthly Sunday calls. But she had spent so long trying to quash down the glimmers from the great beyond creeping in at the corners of her life that she had forgotten how to talk to her family about it. There were some things her mother simply wouldn’t understand. Taking lessons from a medium was at the top of that list.
“I think this is something I’ve got to handle on my own. I’m twenty-four already, right? We’ve all got to grow up and make choices without parental input sometimes.”
“Well, what has it been like? Working with David?”
“Eye-opening for sure, but also frustrating. David is… I don’t want to sound unkind…”
“Moira, you’re too kind sometimes. There’s no love lost between me and that man. David Aristarkhov is exactly what’s wrong with the Society. He’s a spoiled, overpowered nepotism case.”
“I remember your holiday party dust-up.”
Kitty snorted. “He was bragging about himself for the thousandth time. Somebody had to put him in his place, and I had a couple of martinis in me. If I had any say in the situation, he would be completely out of the running for High Priest.”
Moira gave Kitty a knowing smirk. “Sure, like you don’t have any say in the situation.”
Everyone knew Nathan had only started showing up to the Society because he was trying to meet more young professionals in the area, and Antoni, God bless him, thought it had been a good idea to invite some guy he had approved for a bank loan to his demon-summoning club. Moira knew full well that every suggestion Nathan broached at Society meetings was actually Kitty, whispering in his ear. She was the stronger magician by far, and had been running a booming occult business long before getting married to sweet, sunny Nathan.
Kitty was one of Boston’s premier interior designers, known for her integration of traditional feng shui with sleek minimalistic interiors. The daughter of prominent Chinese American businesspeople with a strong family tradition of geomancy, she was the jewel in their crown, the child that excelled in both business and magic while making it all look chic. Nathan was their great concession to her, but they seemed happy to indulge his wandering investment whims and lack of any coherent career path because he came from a good family and made Kitty happy. Incandescently so.
“It’s not my fault the Society doesn’t induct women,” Kitty said with a shrug. “I have to leave my mark in less direct ways.”
“Why do you even want in, Kitty? It’s just a bunch of boys in robes doing dusty old rituals trying to land jobs or protect their assets during a divorce. What you do is so much more interesting, and it actually helps people.”
Kitty cast her eyes over the Common as they strolled, taking in the picnicking young lovers and tots racing after squirrels.
“I want access. Proximity to power. And I’ll never say no to more cross-training. In this day and age, flexibility keeps you relevant. Could you imagine what I could do with my skills if I also knew how to summon and control the kind of spirits the Society has access to? That’s why I want Rhys on the throne. I know he’ll change the bylaws. David will just kowtow to the sexist old guard.”
“And what would Rhys get in return?”
“Loyalty, my dear. The scarcest resource around.”
Moira sucked her teeth. “You can wade into that political nightmare if you want, but I’m just fine on the outside. I like calling the shots and running my own business. I never was good at falling in line and taking orders.”
“Maybe so, but you could be good at giving them.”
“What are you saying?” Moira asked, a premonition creeping across her skin. She gave a little shudder. Her grandmother had always taught her to pay attention to the tingling presence of her sixth sense. As far as a divination practice went, it wasn’t as aesthetically impressive as astrology or tarot, but her hunches had never led her astray before.
“Whoever the High Priest is married to has a certain influence. Wayne’s wife was never interested in the role, and she’s not an occultist. But you…”
“Kitty, please don’t try to pull me into any power games. You and Rhys are two peas in a Machiavellian pod.”
“And you’re sweet as can be,” Kitty said. “One of the many reasons I enjoy your company. But I’m no fool, Moira. I know how hard you work to earn the respect of those playacting men in the Society. I’d wager it would feel pretty good to have them groveling at your feet for a change.”
Moira had never considered herself a very ambitious person. Ambition, she had been raised to believe, was not ladylike or Christian. But she couldn’t deny the tingle of excitement raising the hairs on the back of her neck at the thought of appearing at Society events on Rhys’s arm, wearing a metaphorical crown as his chosen consort. She could just imagine the way the older men who never gave her the time of day would gag and gawk to see her elevated to such a station. The way they would fall over themselves to kiss her hand and whisper their requests in her ear. And she, who never forgot a slight or forgave a person who didn’t deserve it, would delight in denying them.
Moira shook herself out of the fantasy with a little gasp. It was very unlike herself, to wish for such things. But then again, she had been acting less and less like herself lately. She felt like there was a whole other woman germinating deep inside her, poised to break through to the surface and bloom like a poisonous flower.
It should frighten her, probably.
She found she was only eager to meet this new woman.
“Moira?” Kitty asked.
“Sorry,” Moira said, shaking off the last dregs of her daydream. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind, these days.”
“Is this about Rhys and David?”
“How do you mean?” Kitty lowered her voice, despite the fact that nobody in the open expanse of the Common was eavesdropping on them. Kitty always lowered her voice in the presence of a potential scandal. “There’s nothing… going on there, is there?”
“Going on?”
“I mean, in the past it’s been all too easy for them to get tangled up in each other. Are Rhys and David seeing each other again? I won’t tell Nathan if they are, I promise. I just wonder.”
“Rhys and I are married,” Moira said with a thin little laugh. Something in her stomach clenched and fluttered at the thought of David and Rhys together, which was ludicrous, it was impossible. And yet, a strange, giddy sensation swept through her, part jealousy, part simmering intuition, part… Moira wasn’t quite sure. It almost felt like excitement, but that was all wrong, wasn’t it?
“Plenty of people have open marriages,” Kitty went on. “Nathan and I are closed at the moment, but I had a standing arrangement with my last boyfriend. I thought you and Rhys might be the same. That he and David had a sort of on-again-off-again thing.”
“They’re on-again-off-again, alright,” Moira said with a snort. “One minute they’re attached at the hip and the next minute they’re fighting like cats and dogs.”
“Interesting,” Kitty said with an innocent glance over her Prada sunglasses.
“Are you trying to say Rhys has been running around behind my back?”
“Absolutely not! I have no reason to believe it and I don’t think the man even has it in him to hurt you like that. All I’m saying is that he and David have history.”
“I can handle David Aristarkhov,” Moira said. A few weeks ago, it would have been a bluff. But she was starting to learn what made David tick, and she was confident in her ability to fiddle with the clockwork of his mind. “And my marriage is rock solid.”
“I’m happy to hear that. I just worry about you, Moira. Your heart is so big, and I never want you to be taken advantage of. Don’t let David take more than he gives.”
“I won’t,” Moira said, bumping shoulders amicably with Kitty, and they continued their promenade through the park, turning their faces up towards the sun.
“We can talk more at the Society benefit gala in a few weeks,” Kitty said. “You are coming, aren’t you?”
“We’ll be there. Rhys won’t miss an opportunity to shake hands and make an appearance as the upstanding Society member he is. Thank God you’re going, Kitty. I never know who to talk to at those things.”
“They’re a drag,” Kitty said with a blithe laugh. “But we can find a corner to gossip in. In the meantime, promise me that you’ll watch out for yourself. Sex or no sex, getting into bed with your enemies is dangerous.”
“I promise,” Moira said, the wind catching in her hair and ruffling the coils. “And I wish you all the best on your machinations to break into the Society. I hope to see your induction ceremony someday.”
“And I very much hope to see you on Rhys’s arm as the High Priest’s wife, someday. I know you don’t want the title, Moira, but you’d be great at it. You have a good head on your shoulders, you don’t suffer fools, and you’re a stronger witch than those men give you credit for. You could bring them all to heel, if you wanted to. Especially after mediumship lessons from Boston’s own prince of the occult.”
Moira offered her coffee cup to Kitty in a toast. “To getting what we deserve, then,” she said.
Kitty’s pink lips spread into a smile of perfect professional understanding. “To just desserts, my dear.”