“Can’t you tell?” she said, turning to him, her eyes filling with tears. “Can’t you smell it? It smells of death in here!”
“Oh, sweetheart, there, there, darling,” he said, coming in to take her elegant figure into his arms. He could feel her trembling even while at the same time he marveled at how well she fit against him. This affair had to be right; he was really falling in love, he had to do something soon, or there would be a huge explosion, and she would be hurt—he couldn’t have that. “There, there,” he murmured, stroking her back, inhaling the fragrance of her hair. But how was he going to tell her?
Then he paused, frowned, lifted his head to draw a testing breath through his nose.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “You know, you’re right. It smells like a dead mouse in here.”
A
S closing time approached, Godwin became antsy, moving around the shop, picking up objects and putting them down, dusting, needlessly rearranging displays. When he was worried or upset, Godwin cleaned. Betsy finally called him on it.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, no, what could be wrong?”
“You seem to be expecting a problem. Do you want to call off dinner?” Now and again one of them would invite the other to a cozy little supper. Godwin had done it this time.
Godwin smiled. “Not a problem.”
Betsy smiled back. “Rafael?”
Godwin nodded wordlessly. “You’ve met him but you haven’t really
met
him. I’ve invited him to dinner tonight, too, so you two can talk.”
“All right,” said Betsy, “I’ve been hoping for a chance to have a real conversation with him. It hasn’t been all that long for you two, but it seems to be serious.”
Godwin tried an indifferent shrug and failed. “It is,” he muttered, drawing his shoulders up again.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you like him?” asked Betsy, both kind and curious and therefore persistent.
“I don’t
know
!” repeated Godwin. “And that’s the problem. I mean, he
has
met my usual requirements: he’s good-looking, he has his own condo, his own car, his own money, and he’s not a rich attorney with control problems.”
Godwin had lived for a half dozen years with a wealthy attorney who was very controlling. The attorney had had to die for Godwin to escape the relationship. There had followed a series of young men who seemed more anxious to have regular meals and a place to sleep than to be sincere friends. Godwin had stopped allowing that, but Betsy still felt he set the bar too low.
“Is there a ‘but’ in there somewhere?” she asked now.
“Yeee-ess, I think so. We get along so well. We’re not alike at all, but he makes me laugh, and I can make him laugh, too. We
never
fight—but maybe that’s because I’m afraid of getting into a fight. He’s
so
wonderful, I’d be just
devastated
if we stopped getting along.” Godwin was blinking rapidly in an attempt to hold back tears. “Do you know what he calls me?”
“What?”
“
Gorrión
. He says it means ‘sparrow.’ Is that good or bad?”
“What does he say?”
“He says it’s because I’m small but brave—I think he means ‘cocky.’ He says he caught a sparrow once, and while it was helpless in his grip, it reached around with its little beak and bit his thumb. ‘Brave,’ he says. Or maybe he means ‘defiant’?”
“I think he means ‘brave.’” Betsy touched him on the arm while she thought for a few moments. “Maybe if you’re so afraid of breaking up, you should just go ahead and say or do whatever you like. If you do quarrel, it was never meant to be, and if you don’t, then you can relax and enjoy his friendship.”
Godwin thought about that and then nodded. “Yes, I see what you mean. A relationship based on false premises isn’t real and won’t last, no matter how hard I try.”
“Right.”
“On the other hand,” said Godwin, like a child dragging at the hand of someone taking him to a place he doesn’t want to go, “I really, really like him. I’m ready to do a little pretending if that means he’ll stay around. What I would like for you to do is take a good, close look at him tonight. Tell me what you think.”
“All right. Goddy, you must know that if you like him, I’ll like him.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s true.” But in a few minutes Betsy realized that Godwin was still upset. She saw him in the far back of the shop, scrubbing out the coffeemaker.
D
INNER was a success. Godwin could cook only a few dishes, but he did them exceedingly well. He served roast chicken stuffed with herbed bread crumbs and water chestnuts, autumn squash in a butter sauce flavored with sage and nutmeg, and fresh green beans steamed with slivered almonds. Dessert was vanilla ice cream under a hot applesauce he’d made himself with ginger, cloves, and lots of cinnamon.
Godwin’s apartment was small and inexpensive, located on the third floor of the old hardware store, now remodeled and restored. He could have afforded better, especially if he’d chosen to live outside Excelsior, but he loved living in this little town—and besides, he was always saving for a trip to Mexico or Costa Rica or Japan or, presently, Italy.
His great sense of style had turned the small place into a little gem of rich colors and shining surfaces.
“I have a great-aunt in Venice,” said Rafael, when talk turned toward travel.
“You do?” said Godwin, surprised.
“So you’re part Italian?” asked Betsy.
“Yes,” nodded Rafael. “That part of the family goes back a very long way, but she and I . . .” He paused. “
Es la última de la dinastía.
That means ‘She is the last of the dynasty.’ Her name is Sophia.” He smiled. “Like your cat. She is not unlike your Sophie, at that. She is large, gray and white, very manipulative—are not all cats manipulators?—and lazy in such a grand way she makes it seem like a gift.” His smile turned a little sour. “She does not approve of me. Oh, not because I am gay, there are always gay people in any family. But because I refuse to marry. She says of course I might have a boyfriend instead of a mistress. To preserve the dynasty, she thinks I should marry and have a son. But I will not do that to a good woman.”
“Good for you!” said Betsy.
“Still, it’s kind of sad,” said Godwin, and the look Rafael gave him made Betsy’s heart turn over in her breast. Godwin had said he was afraid he had nothing in common with Rafael. Betsy could see that was not true. Godwin had an understanding and compassionate nature that was shared and appreciated by his new friend.
L
EONA wrapped things up in the microbrewery—checking the specific gravity of the pumpkin beer brewing in the fermentation vessel, then washing all surfaces and rinsing thoroughly. The secret to beer, the real secret, she knew, is cleanliness. A stray bacterium or a single wild yeast getting into the brew could spoil it entirely.
Then she went around the pub, checking doors and lights and alarms. Satisfied all was in order, she pulled on her raincoat—of course it was raining again; it was going to mostly rain until it mostly snowed.
Walking the several blocks home, she considered her earlier conversation with Betsy. She liked the woman, and trusted her, but this afternoon had not been the time to mention that it was the Tarot that told Leona her enemy was female. Betsy was a good Christian and so probably not much of a believer in such things. If Leona wanted Betsy’s sympathetic help in this wicked gossip business, she had better not make a display of her psychic powers.
She went in her front door and waited to be greeted by her two cats. Snap, a ginger-and-white neutered tom with deep orange eyes, came at a trot and braced himself with a forepaw on her knee to be stroked. “Well, hello, Snapper,” she said. “Where’s your partner in crime?”
Snap didn’t know, he didn’t care, could he have another caress?
But Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Cat was nowhere to be seen. “Jo-Jo?” called Leona. After a few moments, two eyes came glowing to life in the darkest corner of the dining room, under the buffet.
“Say, what’s got you spooked, baby?” asked Leona.
In reply, the cat came stiffly out from under the old piece, crossed the dimly shining hardwood of the dining room floor, and walked sedately to Leona. There she sat, just out of reach, looking steadily up at her mistress.
Where Snap was jolly and friendly, a licker of chins and a lover of play, Jo-Jo had the poise and dignity of one of the great cats. She was a solid black, and her shape was that of the long, lean, heavy-muzzled leopard. Her method of communication, unlike the ebullient Snap’s, was subtle. But perhaps because she had to work harder at it, Leona could read her better than the tom. By the look in Jo-Jo’s eyes, something troubling had happened while Leona was gone.
Leona made a swift pass through the rooms, finding nothing amiss. There was no alarming aura in the house, no strange smells, no disturbance in the air, nothing broken or out of place. The back porch door had been repaired, and was intact. The upstairs, bedrooms and bathroom, was untouched. No window open, no one hidden in the closets.
Leona sat down on the old horsehair couch in her living room and traded stares with Jo-Jo. “Well, what is it? By the Goddess, I wish you could talk!”
Since she couldn’t, Leona sat back and let her psychic talent loose. She had been thinking like a non-Wiccan about the vandalizing of her back porch, a necessary stratagem when dealing with police and other citizens, a “we’re just like anyone else” persona she could assume at will—because it was mostly true. But right now it was time to put her witch’s hat on and consider things from a Wiccan point of view.
Someone had vandalized her porch and the police were treating it as a hate crime—an attack on her because she was Wiccan. No arrests had been made, and now her cat was all slantwise. She hadn’t been slantwise after the first attack, she’d been upstairs under the clawfoot bathtub, where she had remained for twenty-four hours.
So this wasn’t as serious. Still, Jo-Jo was alarmed because something alarming had happened. While not as scary as the vandalism, maybe it was a setup for something more serious. And it had happened because Leona had been thinking and acting so non-Wiccan at the time of the first attack. She had let that attitude—and sheer busyness at the pub—prevent her from performing a cleansing ritual in her house and rebuilding the psychic protective barriers around her property.
That was an omission to be taken care of at once. As in
now
.
She went into her kitchen and opened a lower cupboard fitted with shallow shelves holding canned goods. A hidden latch turned the shelves into a second door, behind which she stored herbal preparations in dried, powdered, and liquid form. She selected three mixtures and poured them into a silver bowl that had a raised pattern of quartered circles, stirring them with her fingers. There were a great many herbs and dried flowers in this mixture, everything from African violet to willow bark. It had an amazing scent, the hops, cloves, and anise the most potent, but dill, onion, and caraway seed doing their part as well.
“I call upon the Goddess in all her aspects,” she murmured, “protectress of home and hearth, of crop and livestock, of birth and death, of the welfare of women, the avenger of wrongs done to the earth. I summon Bast and Sekhmet, Freya and Hecate, and all those who would help me make the walls, floors, and ceiling of my house impervious to harm.”
She scooped up a part of the mixture and put it in a porcelain bowl, then poured in about half a cup of salt, again blending it with her fingers, and repeating the charm. She went from room to room turning on every light, scattering the mixture on windowsills, door jambs, and into corners. Snap trotted along behind her, eager to sniff at every strew. Jo-Jo came to sit in the exact center of each room as she went into it, watching, but saying nothing.
Finished, Leona went back to the kitchen and picked up a censer—a pierced lidded pot on a chain. With a little effort, she got half a charcoal briquette glowing in the bottom of it. She added crushed white sage and cedar shavings, and the powerful aroma—almost like marijuana—wafted to the ceiling.
“I call upon the Father-God in all his aspects, Tyr, Odin, Thoth, Ganesh, and Thor the Mighty,” she said, “and all those who right wrongs, protect the innocent, and repel boarders.” Trying not to cough, she censed the house, driving out any evil influences remaining. Then she went back through and opened windows, turning on fans, clearing the air.
Satisfied, she went to the old brick fireplace in the living room, over which hung a battered antique saber used in battle by her great-great-grandfather in the Spanish-American War. She pulled it from its scabbard and whirled it three times over her head, a summoning gesture, invoking both Kali and Shiva, bloodthirsty Goddess and God. She could feel a warmth flow off the sword, down her arm, and into her breast. She went back to the kitchen, scooped up the silver bowl, and went out the back door. She stood awhile in the semidarkness—the lit-up house cast enough light to see by around the weedy yard. It had stopped raining.
Beginning in the southwest corner at the rear of the house, she sprinkled some of the mixture, calling on God and Goddess to stand guard, to cast out malice and evil intent. She erected a psychic barrier (she imagined it as a very tall, thick, gray, stone wall with cut glass and razor wire on top) against those who would harm her, or anything of hers, within these precincts. A believer in angels, especially the kind who had swords, she recited a prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, the lead warrior of all angels. “Defend us in battle against the wiles and wickedness of our enemies,” she prayed. “Cast out those who go about the world seeking the destruction of the innocent.
Selah
,” she pronounced at the end of the prayer. Be it so.