Ostara, 1993

Aunt Shelagh told me she saw someone under a braigh before, when she was a girl, visiting her granny in Scotland. A local witch had been selling potions and charms and spells to cause harm. When Aunt Shelagh was there one summer, the Seeker came.

Shelagh says she woke in the night to screams and howls. The whole village turned out to see the Seeker take away the herbwife. In the moonlight, Shelagh saw the glint of the silver braigh around the herbwife's wrists, saw how the flesh was burned. The Seeker took her away, and no one saw her again, though they whispered she was living on the streets in Edinburgh.

Shelagh doesn't think the woman was ever able to do magick again, good or bad, so I don't know how long she would have wanted to live like that. But Shelagh also said that one sight of that herbwife under the braigh was enough to make her promise to never ever misuse her power. It was a terrible thing, she said. Terrible to see. She told me this story last month, when the Seeker was here. But he took no one away with him, and our coven is placid once more.

I am glad he's gone.

— Giomanach

I drove home as quickly as I could, considering that the streets were basically one big ice slick. The temperature kept dropping, and the air was miserable with the kind of bone-drenching chill that Widow's Vale seems to specialize in.

"I thought Mary K. broke up with Bakker after what happened," said Cal.

"She did," I grumbled. "But he's been begging her to take him back, it was all a mistake, he's so sorry, it'll never happen again, blah blah blah." Anger made my voice shrill.

My tires skidded a bit as I turned into our driveway. Bakker's car was parked out front. I slammed the car door and crunched up our walk—only to find Mary K. and Bakker huddled together on the front steps, shaking and practically blue with cold.

"What are you doing?" I exclaimed, relief washing over me.

"I wanted to wait for you," Mary K. muttered, and I silently applauded her good sense.

"Come on, then," I said, pushing open the front door. "But you guys stay downstairs."

"Okay," Bakker mumbled, sounding half frozen. "As long as it's warm."

Cal started making hot cider for us all while I stayed outside and salted the front walk and the driveway so my parents wouldn't have a hard time when they got home. It was nice to get back inside, and I cranked up the thermostat, then headed to the kitchen. It was my night to make dinner. I washed four potatoes, stabbed them with a fork, and put them in the oven to bake.

"Hey, Morgan, can we just run upstairs for a sec?" Mary K. asked tentatively, clutching her mug. Since I'd met Cal, I'd begun drinking a ton of cider. It was incredibly warming on cold days. "All my CDs are in my room."

I shook my head. "Tough," I said shortly. I blew on my cider to cool it. "You guys stay downstairs, or Mom will have my ass."

Mary K. sighed. Then she and Bakker brought their stuff to the dining-room table and self-righteously started to do their homework. Or at least they pretended to do their homework.

As soon as my sister was gone, I waved my left hand in a circle, deosil, over my cider, and whispered, "Cool the fire." The next time I took a sip, it was just right, and I beamed. I loved being a witch!

Cal grinned and said, "Now what? Do we have to stay downstairs, too?"

I let my mind wander tantalizingly over the possibilities if I didn't practice what I preached but finally sighed and said, "I guess so. Mom would go insane if I was upstairs with an evil boy while she wasn't home. I mean, you've probably got only one thing on your mind and all."

"Yeah," Cal raised his eyebrows and laughed. "But it's one good thing, let me tell you."

Dagda padded into the kitchen and mewed.

"Hey, little guy," I crooned. I put my cider down on the counter and scooped him up. He began to purr hard, his small body trembling.

"He gets to go upstairs," cCl pointed out, "and he's a boy."

I grinned. "They don't care if he sleeps with me," I said.

Cal let out a good-natured groan as I carried Dagda into the family room and sat on the couch. Cal sat next to me, and I felt the warmth of his leg against mine. I smiled at him, but his face turned solemn. He stroked my hair and traced the line of my chin with his fingers.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"You surprise me all the time," he said out of the blue.

"How?" I was stroking Dagda's soft triangular head, and he was purring and kneading my knees.

"You're just—different than I thought you would be," he said. He put his arm across the back of the couch and leaned toward me as if trying to memorize my face, my eyes. He seemed so serious.

I didn't know what to think. "What did you expect me to be like?" I asked. I could smell the clean laundry scent of his shirt In my mind I pictured us stretched on the couch, kissing. We could do it. I knew that Mary K. and Bakker were in the other room, that they wouldn't bother us. But suddenly I felt insecure, remembering again that I was almost seventeen and he was the first boy who'd ever asked me out, ever kissed me. "Boring?" I asked. "Kind of vanilla?"

His golden eyes crinkled at the edges, and he tapped my lips gently with one finger. "No, of course not," he said. "But you're so strong. So interesting." His forehead creased momentarily, as if he regretted what he'd said. "I mean, right when I met you, I thought you were interesting and good-looking and the rest of it, and I could tell right away you had a gift for the craft. I wanted to get close to you. But you've turned out to be so much more than that. The more I know you, the more you feel equal to me, like a real partner. Like I said, my muirn beatha dan. It's kind of a huge idea." He shook his head. "I've never felt this way before."

I didn't know what to say. I looked at his face, still amazed by how beautiful I found it, still awed by the feelings he awoke in me. "Kiss me," I heard myself breathe. He leaned closer and pressed his lips to mine.

After several moments Dagda shifted impatiently in my lap. Cal laughed and shook his head, then drew away from me as if deciding to exercise better judgment. He reached down and pulled a pad of paper and pen out of his book bag and handed them to me.

"Let's see you write your runes," he said.

I nodded. It wasn't kissing, but it was magick—a close second. I began to draw, from memory, the twenty-four runes. There were others, I knew, that dated from later times, but these twenty-four were considered the basics.

"Feoh," I said softly, drawing a vertical line, then two lines that slanted up and to the right from it. "For wealth."

"What else is it for?" asked Cal.

"Prosperity, increase, success." I thought. "Things turning out well. And this is Eolh, for protection," I said, drawing the shape that was like an upside-down Mercedes logo. "It's very positive. This is Geofu, which stands for gift or partnership. Generosity. Strengthening friendships or other relationships. The joining of the God and Goddess."

"Very good," said Cal, nodding.

I kept on until I had drawn all of them, as well as a blank space for the Wyrd rune, the undrawn one, the symbol that signified something you ought not know: dangerous or hurtful knowledge, a path you should not take. In rune sets it was represented by a blank tile.

"That's great, Morgan," Cal whispered. "Now close your eyes and think about these runes. Let your fingers drift over the page, and stop when you feel you should stop. Then look at what rune you've stopped on."

I loved this kind of thing. I closed my eyes and let my fingers skim the paper. At first I felt nothing, but then I focused my concentration, trying to shut out everything except what I was doing. I tuned out the murmur of Mary K. and Bakker's voices from the dining room, the ticking of the cuckoo clock my dad had built from a kit, the gentle hum of the furnace kicking in.