Chapter 4 The Three
FOUR
The Three
My cousin Faith was already sitting in the living room in the chair I usually took. I’d always taken it because it gave me distance from Mom and Gran, who often seemed to direct their complaints toward me. I understood wanting distance, but I didn’t want Faith to feel herself an outsider.
She was sixteen and quietly gorgeous. She had dewy, glowing, light brown skin—a perfect combination of her parents—with bright green eyes and shoulder-length micro braids.
She was my Aunt Elizabeth’s youngest. Her older brother Frank was getting ready to begin his senior year in high school, and the two of them worked a couple of days a week for me in the gallery.
If I hadn’t already known my Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Robert were kind, loving people, their children would have tipped me off. Of all my cousins, Faith and her brother were my favorites.
“Mom, I’m rearranging your furniture.” I motioned for Faith to stand up and then picked up the chair, moving it closer to the couch.
Mom rolled the tea cart in. “Arwyn! No heavy lifting,” she scolded. “What are you doing?” She poured three cups of tea while she watched me.
I slid over the other club chair as well, so both were across the coffee table from the couch.
“You’re not Gran, Mom. This room was arranged to put Gran at the center.
She always sat in the rocking chair by the fire, away from us.
She sat higher in her rocker than the rest of us on couches and chairs, allowing her to look ever so slightly down on us.
And I always sat where Faith was, a chair so far away from the heart of the room, I might as well have been in the kitchen. ”
Brow furrowed, Mom’s gaze traveled around the room as I spoke, handing first Faith then me a teacup.
“It reinforced that I was the outcast,” I told her. “On the periphery at best, and I should remember that.”
Mom shook her head. “No, darling. Your grandmother loved you.”
I shrugged, plopping down in one of the chairs while motioning to Faith to take the other. “Maybe. If she did, though, it was in spite of their plans for me.”
“Their?” Mom hadn’t moved, her hands clutched tightly in front of her.
“Great-Gran, Gran’s sister Margaret. I don’t know, but I felt suspicion and hostility when I got close to them. The calculation in Great-Gran’s eyes was hard to miss. I was the family’s secret weapon, and she was trying to decide how best to train and use me.”
I stood again, putting my teacup on the table, and pulled my mom to the couch and her own teacup. “That’s not you, Mom. Great-Aunt Margaret might like to throw her weight around, but she was never as powerful as Gran, or you for that matter, so she can fuck right off.”
Faith made the quietest of gasps.
I turned as I sat back down. “Am I wrong?”
Faith looked back and forth between Mom and me.
“She was one of the most vocal about my mom marrying my dad.” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“I heard Mom and Dad talking late one night after a family party.” She glanced at me.
“You know my dad treats humans because the family didn’t want a Black healer helping them. ”
My mom started to protest, but I nodded and Mom’s eyes went wide.
“Great-Aunt Margaret was the ringleader on that. Dad loves what he does. He says no patients or parents are as desperate or as grateful as the ones he works with in pediatric neurology. And the family has Uncle John as a healer. It’s fine.
” She glanced at me again. “But I’ve felt that hostility too. So has Frank.”
I took a sip of the tea. “So I’m rearranging furniture, Mom. This is a new Corey Council. We are the Three, equal in our footing in this triad. We’re not playing power games. Right?”
Mom nodded decisively. “Correct.” She picked up an embossed leather notebook from the coffee table and opened it. “We have some family business, some requests for help and advice, to deal with first.”
At the gallery, Faith often deferred to her older brother.
She was soft-spoken but observant. As our discussion went, she opened up, and we saw more of the real Faith.
Her insights were proving to be invaluable.
Most family members knew to straighten up and behave when Mom was around.
Faith, though, flew under the radar and she therefore knew things neither Mom nor I did.
“I think the real question is what we do with the Queen Anne in Pacific Grove,” Mom said.
The grand yellow house was across the street from the ocean.
It had been in the family for at least a hundred years before it eventually went to Mom and me.
It had been way too big for the two of us, but I’d liked my turret room with the view of the back garden.
I turned to Faith. “Do you think your family would like to move in?”
She shook her head. “No way. Mom has her greenhouses in the back of ours and Dad said that house gave him the creeps.” Her eyes went wide when she realized what she’d said. “Sorry, Aunt Sybil. It wasn’t—”
Mom grinned and waved away the explanation.
“Your father is right. It is a creepy house. It’s a showpiece, but it has a dark heart.
” She glanced around the living room with the huge windows out to the patio and cliff over the ocean.
“This one is better. It still has darkness, which might be residual from the dark spells Calliope and her demon used to try to get at your Gran or… Well, regardless, I want to do a cleansing today, if we can.”
Faith and I nodded.
“Good,” Mom responded. “As for the yellow house, Great-Aunt Margaret wants it for herself and her children. I’m not sure which ones. She contends that since Gran and Martha are gone now, the house should go to her.”
“Maybe Bracken wants it,” I suggested.
Mom glanced up and gave me a look.
“Okay. No, he doesn’t. He didn’t have a happy childhood in that house. From what he’s mentioned, it sounded like Great-Great-Gran was even worse than Great-Gran and they all lived in that house together.” I tapped the chair’s arm. “Did I ever tell you that Bracken had my bedroom before me?”
Mom shook her head. “I didn’t know that, though I suppose it makes sense.
Your great-great grandmother and grandfather had the first-floor suite.
Marion and Charles—your great-grandparents—had the large bedroom at the end of the second floor, with Mary, Margaret, and Martha taking the rest of the rooms. I hadn’t considered where they’d put Bracken. ”
Mom tapped her pen against the open page of her notebook. “It was probably for the best, considering how my Great-Gran and Gran treated him. Well, anyway, Aunt Margaret wants the house.”
“No,” I said.
I saw Faith shake her head out of the corner of my eye.
Mom looked between us and said, “We’ll table that for now.”
“If Margaret tries to give you a hard time, you let her know why you’re the head of the family and not her.
Age doesn’t mean anything. It’s power. That’s the Corey way.
Does Margaret have powerful children or grandchildren?
” I asked. What I remembered from family get-togethers was that her side of the family was even shittier than my own.
Mom’s head tipped to the side, considering. “Her daughter Joan is probably the most powerful of that line.”
“Derek,” Faith added. “Aunt Joan’s son Derek is pretty powerful. He can influence people.”
I watched her a moment. She looked quite uncomfortable. “Did he do something to you?”
She shook her head. “Not me.”
“Frank, then?” I guessed.
“Wait a minute.” She took out her phone and texted, receiving a response right away.
She texted again and waited for a reply once more.
When it came, she pocketed her phone and said, “Yes. Derek and Frank are in the same grade. Derek pretends to be a nice guy around adults, but he’s a secret bully.
Frank stopped him from harassing this asthmatic kid who was wheezing, running the mile in middle school PE.
Derek and his friends were running behind the kid, breathing heavy and mocking him.
Frank said the kid was really having a hard time breathing and looked like he was going to cry.
“Frank shoved Derek out of the way and walked the kid to the teacher. I guess it was a substitute that day who didn’t know this kid wasn’t supposed to be running and the kid was too embarrassed to make a big deal about it.
Anyway, Frank ended up having to run extra laps.
The sub saw Frank shove Derek, but he didn’t notice what Derek was doing, which Frank thinks was because Derek spelled the teacher.
He said the way they were running right up on top of the kid made it obvious, but Derek walked away free and Frank had to run extra laps.
“The thing is, though, Frank wrecking Derek’s fun pissed him off, so he went out of his way to spell others around Frank. Not Frank directly. Corey Curse and all that.” Faith looked between Mom and me, no doubt taking in our disgusted expressions.
The Corey Curse was created hundreds of years ago to discourage us from killing each other as we schemed and clawed our way to the top. Seriously, we’re a family of assholes and always have been.
Faith continued, “Like, Frank tried out for basketball when they got to high school, but at the tryout, this other big kid tripped on nothing, slamming hard into Frank. They both hit the floor and Frank broke his elbow.” She glanced at me.
“You know how smart Frank is. Somehow, though, whenever he shares a class with Derek, Frank gets low grades on his tests and essays. It’s always the same.
Frank takes the paper up to the teacher after class.
The teacher looks over his work and apologizes, not understanding how she could have made such a mistake. ”
My fingers drummed on the arm of the chair. “This is that little shit with blond hair like his dad’s, right?” I tapped my cheek. “A dimple?”
Faith nodded while my mother said, “Arwyn, no. Let me take care of this.”
“I can wait my turn,” I told her, which didn’t seem to be what she wanted to hear.
She gave me a look while she put her notebook on the table and stood. “We have someone to welcome into the Three. Let’s go outside so we can be closer to the Goddess.”
I gave Faith a look that said I wasn’t forgetting anything. That creep had a comeuppance headed his way. Her conspiratorial grin told me we were on the same page.
Following Mom, we went out the side door, crossed the slate patio, and situated ourselves in the middle of the lawn, halfway between the house and the cliff. The sound and scent of the nearby roaring ocean made me feel lighter and more content, blowing away my earlier annoyance.
“Faith and I went over the ceremony before you arrived,” Mom told me. She turned to Faith. “Are you ready, honey?”
Faith nodded, looking very nervous.
“Remember,” I told her. “You’re asking the Goddess for her blessing to join us as the Three.
It’s what’s in your heart, in your mind, that matters.
She won’t be upset if you get a few words mixed up.
Clear away those worries and show the Goddess your heart.
She’ll accept your gifts as you’ve accepted hers. ”
I took off my gloves as Faith stepped between Mom and me, closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and raised her hands to the heavens, reciting the words she’d been taught.
“I, Faith Corey Bishop, accept my destiny, maiden to your mother and your crone. I will share the power and the responsibility. I will protect this family and rout out, by whatever means necessary, those who would endanger my people. I offer, without reservation, my power that it might be used for the safety and betterment of the Corey coven.”
I felt it the moment it happened. My blood sizzled as the connection changed.
The Goddess had accepted Faith. I was now the Mother to her Maiden and Mom’s Crone.
The Corey Council had reformed. The power was different this time.
Faith was an elemental, so the connection felt almost electric, like lightning was running through my veins.
We stood in a triangle and held out our hands. When I gripped each of theirs in my ungloved hands, darkness descended, and the visions began.