Virago tilts her head questioningly toward the phone because Carly’s shrieking loudly enough that she can obviously hear every word my best friend is practically screaming.
I smile in embarrassment, mouth “just a minute.”
I sigh into the receiver.
“Carly, seriously,” I whisper, “I’m sorry, I really don’t have time to—”
“Okay, okay,” she says, still cackling with glee.
“But the
minute
you’re alone, you’d better be calling me back and giving me
serious details
, or I am going to be
so pissed
.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I tell her, chuckling in spite of myself.
But, seriously, it’s really not like what she thinks it is.
Really
not like that.
I hang up with her and turn back to Virago, who’s gazing sidelong at me, then, her eyes dark and bright, shining from within.
She reaches across the space between us, takes up my hand with her warm, curving fingers, pressing her palm against mine effortlessly.
“M’lady Holly,” she whispers, leaning toward me, stopping herself at the last moment.
We’re so close that our noses almost brush, and I breathe in the scent and warmth of her, the sweetness of leather and mint, her lips close enough that if I tilted up my head, pushed forward just a little…
“Holly,” she repeats, voice low.
“Thank you so much for the clothing,” she murmurs to me, head inclined toward me, her tone soft, warm, her low voice making me want to shiver, but I squash the urge to do so again.
“It’s no problem,” I tell her truthfully.
“It was my pleasure.”
Slowly, regretfully, she straightens in the seat again, shakes her head, her ponytail of ink-black hair pooling over her shoulder, contrasting darkly with the crisp white of her shirt.
“Now…” she tells me with a long sigh.
“Your brother?
I have a job to do,” she adds heavily after.
With regret.
The job.
The monster.
The portal.
The witch.
Right.
I breathe out, try to still my thundering heartbeat.
Fail at that.
My brother’s shop isn’t that far away from the mall, but it’s more in the artistic district of the sprawling suburbs.
A few blocks worth of driving, and then I’m pulling up right in front of it.
“So, about my brother…”
I trail off, turn off the car engine, hands tapping a
rhythm on the wheel.
A woman from another world sitting in your passenger seat, wearing the sexy hell out of a tie and men’s clothing and looking like the most gorgeous thing you’ll ever see is bound to distract you.
“My brother might, might,
might
,” I stress, “be able to help you.
The worst is that at least he won’t think you’re crazy.
Which is a start.”
“Why do you think he can help me?” asks Virago as we get out of the car, stare up at the building before us.
“Because my brother’s a witch,” I tell her, hands on hips as I stare at the very unfortunate sign of my brother’s shop:
“Welcome to
The Cat, The Cow and The Cauldron
,” I tell her with a smile.
“The…the cow?” she asks, perplexed, following me up the broken sidewalk and purple steps that lead up to the bright purple door of his shop.
It’s bright purple and covered with glittery stars that Aidan re-glitters every month or so because glitter paint isn’t exactly weather-proof.
I push the door open, and the bell rings gaily with its fairy-esque chimes as we step into the shop.
Immediately, we walk into a fog of incense and herbs, the default perfume of, really, any occult shop.
But I also smell cotton candy.
Which is the particular perfume of
this
shop.
My brother has an eternal sweet tooth.
“Holly!” hoots Aidan from behind the cash register, erasing something in a notebook with a chewed on pencil.
He glances up at me with the wide, usual grin, his dark red hair looking especially unkempt and crazy today as it’s on end and pointed in every direction.
He’s wearing his ever classy “
real
witches do it on a
broom
” black t-shirt, and he has slow, methodic drum music playing in the background, which means he’s burning his “Primal Energy” incense and probably working on the bookkeeping for the shop.
He’s grinning at me, and then he looks past me, and the grin sort of freezes on his face, his pointed little beard quivering.
I think he’s trying to suppress a chortle of glee as I actually
see
the equation being worked on in his head and coming to a conclusion.
He darts forward, his mouth in an “o” of astonishment.
“Holly, did you actually do the unthinkable?
Did you break up with the ice queen?”
He spreads his arms, all but waltzes out from behind the counter and squeezes me so tightly I can’t breathe.
His shoulder reeks of incense.
“I’m so proud of you!” he wibbles dramatically in my ear, and I punch his shoulder, push him off me with a chuckle and roll of my eyes.
“Oh, my God, Aidan, It’s not what you think,” I tell him, shaking my head and cutting my finger across my throat at an angle that I hope Virago can’t see so that he could possibly shut up.
“Aidan, try to get serious, okay?”
“Hah!
Did you
hear
what she
asked
of me?” he says, waggling his eyebrows at Virago, who’s folded her arms (an action that looks somehow even
more
graceful and sexy as she’s wearing a tie and vest while doing it) and adopts a careful expression of neutrality, rocking back on her heels and planting her feet an impressive hip-width apart as she raises a single brow and regards my brother with an expression of disbelief.
This is how most people who enter
The Cat, The Cow and The Cauldron
begin their shopping experience (Aidan’s two-man
real
skull collection is the very first thing you see when you enter, positioned on either side of his jet-black cash register) but Aidan—my cheerful, charming brother who could charm the scales off a snake—usually gets to them by the end.
As he tries right now, for example, taking Virago’s arm gently and leading her along the shelves of tea.
What is, arguably, the most “normal” friendly section of the shop.
“Now,” he tells her, “can I interest you in some genmaicha tea, perhaps?
It’s a lovely green tea with the rich, nutty aroma of roasted brown rice,” he says, his tone smooth and warm as he rubs at his little red beard with a hand that flashes with rings of various semi-precious stones and purportedly imbued with different magical energies.
The walls of
The Cat, The Cow and The Cauldron
are painted a very esoteric shade of purple, a shade that’s a little darker than his front door, and are covered with paintings of black cats, black and white cows (wearing pointy witch hats and superior expressions), and cartoon cauldrons with faces (which are, admittedly, slightly creepy).
The shelves are stocked with the usual wares:
sparkling crystals, rows and rows of blessed and consecrated candles, packets of incense, statues of gods and goddesses and stacks of tarot cards and books—stuff you’d find in any occult shop.
But Aidan loves his little store to the moon and back, and it shows in the handmade items in his cases, jewelry made by local designers of semi-precious stones that have healing properties, and on the immaculately spotless glass shelves, rests everything from wire wrapped crystal pendants to handmade bath salts and little hand-sewn goddess dolls.
This place has always made me feel at home, but today…now…the usual comfort from this space drains from me as I remember exactly why we’re here.
“Aidan,
seriously
…”
I trail after him, popping a piece of hard candy from the dish on the counter into my mouth.
Because he keeps the candy in the open air, they often have a flavor of fruit and sugar mixed with frankincense and myrrh.
It’s not
terrible
.
“I have a problem…”
I whisper to him, and he finally drops Virago’s arm at that statement, turns toward me, and suddenly his big-brother-ness takes hold of him, and his eyes narrow as he hugs me again, tighter and harder.
“What do you need?
Tell me what you need,” he says, his voice low as he shakes my shoulders gently, and I sigh with relief as I search his eyes.
This is pure Aidan at his finest.
He may have a great sense of humor and a propensity to be mischievous and funny, but at his very root, he’s the ultimate problem solver, and he
always
wants to help.
Maybe he
can
help us.
Aidan’s always had my back.
Always
.
“Things are a little…weird…” I tell him, taking a step back as I try to figure out how, exactly, I’m going to tell him everything.
He glances from me to Virago, and then sighs.
“Okay.
Go to the back room.
Turn on the tea kettle.”
It’s his usual battle cry for when the going gets tough.
Aidan crosses to the front door and locks it, turning the old metal lock with a satisfying
click.
He even switches the hand-painted “The witch is
in!
” sign (not surprisingly a purple number, covered in gold, glittery stars) over to “the witch is
out!
”
Virago picks up a large chunk of rose quartz, carved into the shape of a skull from the counter.
“This is quite like any witch shop that I’ve been in, back in Agrotera,” Virago tells me as she sets the crystal skull back down onto the counter, and we turn and head toward the back room.
“They have tea and herbs and candles and spells in their shops, too, so…is that why you brought me here?
Because your brother is a witch?”
“Well.
I don’t think your version of a witch and our world’s version of a witch are the same thing,” I warn her with a slight grimace.
“And I’m really not sure he can help you much at all.
But I’m hoping he might be able to help a
little
, at least,” I tell her, and we walk through the dark hallway and the shimmering, purple beaded curtain into what my brother has always cheesily called “the Lair.”
It’s a terrible descriptor that should never be uttered.
Because “The Lair” is a beautiful place.
“The Lair” is the big back room that in front of the
bigger
back stock room that holds all of the random merchandise and window displays that don’t quite fit in
The Cat, The Cow and The Cauldron
currently.
The Lair is big enough to hold a coven of about twenty people, which is actually about the size of Aidan’s witch coven when they all get together for Sabbats and Esbats and the weekly meditation circle that Aidan always makes a point to invite me to.
And, surprising no one more than myself, I actually go, every single week, because he’s pretty good at leading the circle, and—at the very least—I get relaxed for a handful of minutes.
The walls in “the Lair” are painted black with purple and gold mystical symbols and Goddess figures.
The chairs around the edges of the room are all plush and mismatched colors (though, somehow, they effortlessly compliment each other anyway.
It’s Aidan’s interior design superpower), and some of them have holes with stuffing coming out, which Aidan has artfully draped shawls and pillows over, so when he flicks on the dim light, and the string of Christmas lights that he put up around the ceiling of the room, it’s one of the most cozy and magical places you could imagine.
And I don’t even believe in magic.
When Virago and I enter the room, Virago comes to a complete standstill, gazing around at the paintings on the walls, her bright blue eyes wide.
Then she pauses, breathing out softly, slowly as she stares at the painting on the far wall of a goddess—a depiction of Aidan’s matron Goddess, Hestia.
Hestia’s a Greek Goddess of hearth and home (which really makes sense, because Aidan’s all about family and home and making his space beautiful and warm.
I envy him that, sometimes.
And it’s why I got him to help me decorate my house), and the painting here, while not actually very good in an artistic sense, is still obviously heartfelt.
The mural depicts a naked, disproportionate, curvy woman with curling black hair and loving brown eyes holding a terracotta bowl of fire as she gazes out at the room with an expression of bemusement and kindness.
I’ve always thought that she looks ike she’s about to step out from the wall to embrace you tightly.
Aidan comes in behind us and blows a kiss unthinkingly to his matron Goddess, and then stops, watching Virago, too.
Because Virago is still staring at the far painting, working her jaw, and it’s then that I realize there are tears in her eyes.
A single one sheds, twinkling in the shine of the lights as it traces its way over Virago’s high cheekbone, and down the softness of her cheek.