NIGHTCRAFT SISTER
CHAPTER 1
Three witches floated through my bedroom wall on Wednesday morning. "Ouch--look out," I said, as Leonora's knee bumped my shoulder. Her long robes swept across the top of my dresser, knocking over my lotion and deodorant and crucibles. Niad came close behind her. At least she managed to arrive without breaking anything. Sirianna followed about a half a minute later, shaking her head as if she had a bloodworm in her ear. She landed unsteadily on the floor beside my bed, then reached back and tried to pull the rest of her hair in. It cooperated, eventually.
I waited for them to gather themselves and tell me why in the name of the Blessed Mother they had chosen this moment to drop in. If they stayed more than a few minutes, I'd be late for work again.
"Greetings, youngest daughter of my coven," Leonora said, a little coldly, I thought.
"Good morning," I said, and continued to get dressed—by hand, like a human. It was good practice to do things by hand. As I sorted through the piles of clothes I had strewn all over the bed, I stole a glance at my two coven sisters. Sirianna’s face was full of love...Niad’s, not so much. As usual.
Leonora spent an unnecessarily long time straightening her dark violet robes, which had gotten a bit mussed up as she traveled along the ley line connecting my apartment building to the coven house.
"What brings you through my wall so dramatically?" I asked, straightening up my dresser. "You could have come in the door."
"You weren’t answering your doorbell."
"Oh, was that you? I get so many humans selling candy bars and magazines and I-don’t-know-what-all, I never answer the door. Why didn’t you just send a message through the æther?" I struggled to hook my bra behind my back, then finally murmured to it to fasten itself.
"You knew it was us," Leonora said, finally settling herself in my only bedroom chair. My coven sisters flanked her like mismatched guards: Niad tall and fair, resplendent in heavy crimson robes, Sirianna short and dark, her wild long curly hair almost hiding blue jeans and a t-shirt underneath. "You missed last night’s gathering again."
"And you know we can’t close the Circle without you," Niad complained, tossing her white-blond hair out of her eyes with an impatient flick of her head. Now that I had moved out, Niad was again the second-most-powerful witch in the coven house, but that didn’t make her any happier. She had always been jealous of me, of my youth and greater power. Which was hardly my fault. I was born this way.
I smothered a flash of guilt. It was Tuesday, I should have been there, but my human boyfriend Raymond had dropped by unexpectedly, even though I had told him that I wasn’t free on Tuesdays, and then I simply hadn’t been able to tear myself away... "Why didn’t you just call Logan in? You don’t need me every single time, do you?"
"She did come, but your power is far better," Leonora answered. "In times like these, that’s very important." I felt a surge of carefully controlled anger rise up in Niad. I forced myself not to look at her. A gaze directly in her eyes at this moment could easily be taken as a challenge. Our power was equivalent enough to lead to trouble, if we weren’t sworn by blood to be loving, peaceful coven sisters.
"So you did close the Circle then," I said, extra casually. It was not really a question: of course they did, Nementhe would be waiting. "And what Beyond-shattering reason did you need a powerful Circle for last night?"
"None of your business, if you couldn’t be bothered to even show up," Niad snapped, looking pointedly at my rumpled bed, where there were still impressions of two heads on the pillows. She remained grumpy, but the dangerous moment had passed. For now.
"Niadine Laurette," Leonora cautioned her, and then turned to me. "Two more witches are unaccounted for."
"Oh, no," I said, pausing in the middle of pulling on a pair of green tights, my stomach clenching in unease. "When? What happened? Who is it?"
"It is nobody in a coven, so it is not known exactly when, or indeed whether they are even missing or not. But that makes no difference. We should all be far more careful these days. This is just one more reason why we should be living together, not spread out all over the city, getting distracted in little...love nests." She too glanced at my bed with a quick look of disdain.
I kept my face carefully blank. "Honored Mother, what do you mean?" I tried to purge from my mind the images of what Raymond and I were doing here last night. An ancient lady like Leonora could be easily embarrassed.
Leonora shook the images aside. "Youngest daughter, you know what I mean. If you cannot be home for the required coven rituals, I may have to revoke my permission for you to keep this apartment."
I simply stared back at her. No way was I going to let her take away my hard-won freedom!
Sirianna spoke for the first time, trying as always to soften the situation. "Will you come tonight, Callie? For dinner at least?" She looked at me pleadingly, her long tendrils of black hair wandering aimlessly around her heart-shaped face. She was nearly as weak a witch as Logan, but she was so sweet, everyone tolerated her shortcomings, even power-hungry Leonora. There wasn’t a mean bone in her body; it was too bad that she was almost human. "We’re having gooseberry pie for dessert," she added hopefully.
I sighed. "I don’t know. I’m...awfully tired." My eyes darted involuntarily towards the bed, the tousled sheets.
Leonora caught my quick glance and smiled. "Then you should not be exhausting yourself in bed with your lover. Take a night off. You will join us tonight for dinner."
There was no getting out of it: a direct order from Leonora was law. "Okay, see you tonight," I conceded, my eyes downcast.
"Goodbye, sister," they intoned in unison as they slipped back through the wall, and then they were gone, a flicker of velvet robe the last piece to go.
"Those witches can’t even vanish properly. They don’t care if the neighbors see them," I complained to Elnor, as I laced up my boots. "Of course, that’s exactly what they want. I’ll get caught and have to run and hide in their precious coven house."
Elnor did not respond, instead busying herself with a completely unnecessary grooming of her immaculate fur: black everywhere except for her spot-of-milk face and her dipped-in-cream paws. I smiled as I watched her. I had the most adorable familiar, petite and sweet, yet smart and very powerful.
Seeing her preen reminded me not to neglect my own hair again. I had recently splurged on some antique silver hairbrushes and was determined to learn how to use them rather than just always spelling my unruly mess into some semblance of order. I pulled over the chair Leonora had used and sat down at my dressing table, just like a lady in a Victorian novel, and got to work.
Ouch! My hair actively resisted taming no matter how much I crooned soothing words to it. It began sidling away from the brush instead of lying neatly down my back. "Oh, bother," I finally said. I really needed to get out of here. I hated being late for work. "Be arranged!" I commanded, and the tangled brown mass became two long braids falling to either side of my waist.
Okay, I was ready for the world. I picked up my bag and walked out of my apartment, locking the door behind me with the key, continuing to practice being a normal human, just to reinforce the habit. Sooner or later it was bound to become easier. But Leonora and my sisters (and my hair) had used up too much time for me to take the subway as I had planned. So after I walked partway down the block, I glanced around to be sure no humans were watching, and then I vanished, slid across San Francisco Bay, and materialized on the Berkeley campus moments later: only a few minutes after nine o’clock.
I waited, a little breathless, as my own power came back together around me. Once I caught my breath, I stepped out of the bushes, again checking to make sure I hadn’t been seen. Of course, the elevator was out of service, as usual, so I had to climb the stairs to the top floor of the life sciences building. Now I was really out of breath. I waited again, then made my way to the lab. At the dark, far end of a seemingly abandoned hall, I brushed past the spell of inattention that guarded CORP, the Central Optimal Research Panmagiatorium—our magical research laboratory. "Open essūlå," I spelled the door, and it slowly swung open.
The entire staff of thirty-odd witches and a handful of warlocks was gathered in the main room, listening to our director, Gregorio Andromedus. He paused when he saw me, then gave me a stern look and said, "Ah, Calendula Isadora, there you are. So glad you could join us."
Iris and Dreanor had saved me a seat between them. I squeezed past Iris, sat down, and tried to look small. But Greg still hadn’t resumed what he was saying. Instead, he watched me get settled. Finally I said, "What, Sir?"