The Jezebel List

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Christina

? Attend a pagan festival

I cannot, under any circumstances, be caught at this festival.

And yet here I am anyway.

I didn’t know what to expect when I drove out to this field in the middle-of-nowhere Tennessee on a cold January night.

After all, the Full Wolf Moon is my first-ever pagan festival—although the name should have at least tipped me off to the random bouts of howling that keep breaking out around the massive central bonfire.

I lift my phone to surreptitiously snap a photo of a lady in an enormous fur coat who could pass as a wild animal, her head thrown back and features feral in the glow of the fire.

When I text the photo to my roommate, he simply double-checks that I’ve turned on location sharing with at least three people.

I chuckle, but I’m not put off by any of the eccentricities here—not the ladies in flowing skirts and flower crowns, not the couple standing back to back with hands clasped straight out to their sides, not the bejeweled older woman donning a pointed witch hat.

If these spiritual or religious rituals help people make sense of a chaotic world, more power to them.

I would never begrudge anyone their beliefs.

We’re all doing whatever we can to get through the day.

It’s when religion is used to hurt, hate, belittle, or control people that I lose my cool. And I know more than anyone how quickly those ugly realities can happen.

Thankfully, everyone here seems to be having fun. They might even be on to something with all this howling.

Tucking my hands tightly into my peacoat pockets, I wander past the eclectic music circle of bowls and chimes toward the vendor tables. I smile to myself as I meander through displays of beaded bracelets, artwork, and evergreen arrangements lit by tiki torches.

But then I stop at a table littered with used candles. “Can you tell me about this?”

The large woman at the table snatches up two candles—a black one and a white one—and bangs them down in front of me.

“This is a cord-cutting ritual,” she booms out. “Perfect for the new year and a fresh start. It’s about cutting ties and is not to be taken lightly.”

The look she levels is comically serious, but as someone who has cut many a tie over the past year, I get why she might be so fervent.

“Okay,” I say. “Explain it to me.”

“This ritual will allow you to release your emotional burdens with a person, place, or thing,” the candle woman continues. “We’re harnessing candle magic, herbal magic, elemental magic, and color magic.”

I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep a straight face. “That’s a lot of magic.”

The woman merely nods and explains the meaning of the candle colors, the symbols etched into the sides, and the herbs in the little dish underneath. “The cord represents what you want to sever,” she says. “The bigger the beef, the thicker the cord.”

I almost laugh, but my heart rate ticks up too. “How do I know how big my beef is?”

“You just have to know, honey.”

I survey the options strewn across the table.

What is left to sever? I haven’t spoken to my family in over a year.

My childhood home doesn’t exist anymore.

There’s no boyfriend to speak of—not now.

Over months of therapy, I’ve painstakingly rooted out every belief and every plan I didn’t choose for myself.

Maybe this is simply my chance to put all of that behind me for good.

I select a relatively thick piece of twine.

Candle woman nods. “Now tie it around the two candles. We’ll light them, and then you’ll cut the cord.”

I do as she says, fingers slightly trembling as I tie the twine. The woman offers me a pair of scissors, and I take them gingerly.

“Think about what the cord represents,” the candle woman says. “And then make the cut.”

I get to be who I want to be now. I get to choose who I want to be.

My pulse accelerates.

Snip.

The twine collapses into the waxy bowl of herbs beneath the candles.

Before I can even acknowledge the surprisingly cathartic rush of that cut, a sharp exhale sounds to my left. I snap my head in that direction.

A youngish man is watching me intently from six feet away.

He’s striking, to say the least. An angular face with big, deep eyes peering from beneath his black beanie.

Thin but solid, dressed in nothing but black, from his tight jeans tucked into ankle boots up to his leather jacket.

The entirely black ensemble makes the chestnut hair spilling out of his beanie onto his shoulders somehow brighter, even colorful, in its reflection of the torches.

But the torch light also glimmers off something right in the center of his chest.

Oh my good gracious.

It’s a camera.

I go momentarily lightheaded. “Are you filming me?”

He’s totally shell-shocked, which strikes me as odd.

The damned camera is hooked into straps that run underneath his leather jacket; surely someone who regularly goes around filming unsuspecting people would not be frozen to the spot when called out for it.

Although, I am using what my friend Ally calls my “run-for-the-hills” voice.

She says it’s so scary because it doesn’t match my face, whatever that means.

Thankfully, I have a pretty high tolerance before reaching that threshold, but the idea that I’m being filmed at a pagan festival against my knowledge catapulted me over it in two seconds flat.

“Hello?” I demand when he doesn’t answer. I slip my hands back in my peacoat pockets and step toward him. “I asked you a question. Are you filming me or not?”

He finally shifts those big, fervent eyes downward, the features of his face drawn tight in concentration. But when he tosses his head back up, his shoulders relax and his expression clears. A playful smile pulls at his lips that are chapped red, no doubt from the winter wind.

“So sorry to have caught you off guard,” he breezes as he tucks the camera into a bag attached to the bottom of the straps. “I’m covering this event as part of a documentary project.”

He’s loose now, affable. Voice instantly familiar. None of the tense lines and burning eyes from a moment ago.

“Do all of your documentary projects film people without their permission?” I ask. Run-for-the-hills voice: still active. But he’s not running for the hills. Yet.

Instead, he takes a casual step forward that lessens the six feet between us enough for me to note he’s on the tall side, a good four or five inches taller than me even in my heeled boots.

He grins conspiratorially at me, like we’re sharing some secret.

“Technically I don’t need permission here since this is a public event in a public location.

” He tilts his head to adjust his beanie, the grin growing wider.

“But I do secure permission for interviews. And I would love to interview you.”

I shake my head. “Out of the question.”

His easy smile slips, just a fraction.

“In fact,” I go on, “I need you to delete any footage you have of me all together.”

And there’s the groove across his forehead. His intensity is peeking out from beneath the effortless charm. Interesting.

He cracks his neck and schools his features back into cool relaxation. “Of course I don’t want anyone to be part of something they are uncomfortable with. Would it help if I explained the project a bit more—?”

“No.” Okay, that comes out a bit sharper than I intended. He’s frozen again. I step a couple of paces closer, and I watch his eyes widen slightly with every inch closed between us. I’m near enough now to peer up at him as I add, a touch more softly, “It’s not really about that.”

He stares at me. Those eyes—they are big and open, like you could fall into them, but keen as a hawk.

He whispers, “May I ask what it’s about?” It’s not a challenge. It’s deep, earnest curiosity.

I open my mouth, but no words come out, and he has the good grace to avert his gaze in something like shame. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business—”

I cut him off. “Explain the project.”

His eyes snap back up to mine. “What?”

“Tell me what this documentary project is.” I’m still royally pissed off, but the earnestness he’s so clearly trying to hide is hard to discount entirely. It’s not exactly his fault that my being here could have severe consequences for me.

His eyes crinkle, even as the corners of his mouth just barely tick up. Oh, that’s his real smile. Quiet, understated.

“I’m exploring countercultural spiritual practices in the Evangelical south.

What they are, why people engage in them, the stigma around them.

” He runs a knuckle across his bottom lip.

“How they’re painted as radically different from traditional church rituals but in fact share many similarities.

” The last part slips out with an edge of frustration.

I have to bite down on a grin. “So you’re anti-church?”

His brow furrows slightly. It’s a small movement, but I can tell—just like with his smile—it doesn’t fully mirror the depth of what’s going on in his head.

“I wouldn’t say that exactly,” he starts carefully. “But I am anti-bigotry, anti-hypocrite, and anti–con artistry. And unfortunately, those three things can run rather rampant in many religious traditions, especially in the South.”

Dude is preaching to the choir. Figuratively and literally, since I spent my entire life smack in the middle of one—my mother with her baton, my father at the pulpit.

Well, my entire life up to a year ago.