Cate Tiernan - The Calling

She looked at me, startled. “I told you. I’m completely crazy about him.”

“Well, then please stop treating him like crap!” I said. “It’s painful to watch.”

Bree put the shirt back and calmly moved on to a rack of trendier clothing. “If you want to know the truth,” she said, “it’s Robbie who should be treating me better.”

“What?” I stared at her.

“At the club last night,” she said. “He danced and flirted with all those women.”

“Three, and they all came on to him,” I argued.

“Don’t blame them. It’s Robbie’s responsibility to say no,” said Bree. “If he really wants to be with me, why did he encourage them?”

“Maybe because he wasn’t getting any encouragement from you?” I suggested. “Come on, Bree. You had your own little entourage over by the café. What kind of message did that send? Besides, you know none of those women mattered. Robbie doesn’t care about anyone except you. Can’t you see that?”

Bree held up a slinky black cocktail dress. “I know Robbie’s trying,” she acknowledged. “But so am I.” She frowned, put the dress back, and moved on to a rack of pants. “This is just the way relationships go.”

“Only because you steer them that way.”

Bree sighed. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. I’m hitting the dressing room. Are you going to try anything on?”

“I’ll meet you in there,” I told her. Obviously the conversation was over.

I quickly scooped up a couple of V-necked T-shirts and a few camisoles. Camisoles were my official choice for underwear. Having nothing to put in the cups, I’d given up on bras.

There was a line for the dressing rooms, so I shouted for Bree. She yelled back that I should share her room.

I found Bree wearing a stretchy bronze-colored top with black knit hip-hugger pants. She looked amazing. “Think Robbie will like this?” she asked.

I groaned and slid down onto the floor of the tiny cubicle. I decided to try one more time. “Listen, I know for a fact that Robbie loves you. And you obviously care about him. Why can’t you trust that and stop trying to undermine all the good stuff? Why can’t you just let yourself love him and be happy?”

Bree rolled her eyes. “Because,” she said with absolute certainty, “in real life things just don’t work that way, Morgan.”

Didn’t they? I wondered. I thought again about Bree’s mom walking out on her and her dad. That had to be the root of all her warped ideas about love.

Or did Bree really know something I didn’t?

Twenty minutes later Bree and I left Diva’s, each of us carrying a neon pink shopping bag. Bree had bought the bronze-top outfit, a chartreuse day pack, and a black T-shirt for Robbie. I’d gotten a cobalt blue tee and a lilac camisole, which pretty much shot my clothing budget.

“What’s next?” I asked, cheered by our retail therapy.

Bree looked thoughtful. “There’s a fabulous shoe store right around the corner, and there’s a shop close by that specializes in African jewelry. There’s also an aromatherapy place off Wooster,” she added.

“Let’s check that out.”

We hadn’t gone more than a block when my witch senses began to tug at me. “Bree, can we go this way?” I asked, pointing down Broome Street.

She shrugged good-naturedly. “Why not?”

I followed my senses the way a spider follows its own silken thread and found myself in an alley off Broome Street. Hanging over a narrow doorway at the end of the alley was a square white banner with a green wheel printed on it. In the center of the green wheel was a purple pentagram.

“The Wheel of the Year,” Bree said. “The diagram for the eight Wiccan sabbats.”

The feel of magick grew stronger with every step we took. When we reached the shop, a sign on the black cast-iron door made me smile: Gifts of the Mage: Specializing in Books of Magick and the Occult. And beneath it in smaller letters: Welcome, Friends.

I pushed open the door, causing a brass bell to ring, and stepped into a cool, dim, high-ceilinged space. I didn’t see the sort of general Wiccan supplies that Practical Magick stocked, but a wall of cabinets behind the counter held essential oils in bottles that looked positively ancient. A deep balcony ran around the walls halfway up, with more bookshelves and shabby armchairs in alcoves.

Bree walked toward mahogany shelves stacked with tarot decks. “Oh, they have a reproduction of that gorgeous Italian deck I saw in the Pierpont Morgan Library,” she said.

My witch senses were still prickling. Was there something here that I was meant to find? I glanced up at the black metal staircase that led to the balcony floor.

“Alyce recommended a book on scrying,” I told Bree, “but she didn’t have it in stock. Maybe I can find it here.” Already absorbed in tarot decks, Bree mumbled an okay.

Following the store directory, I climbed the stairs to the balcony and began to search for the divination section. The scent of old leather tickled my nose. I could almost feel centuries of spells whispering to me. Find me, invoke me. I’m yours, I’m made for your power . I passed sections labeled Oracles and Emanations, Amulets and Talismans. It felt good be among so many books filled with so much knowledge.

I rounded the end of the aisle and came face-to-face with a large section labeled Divination. Just beyond it, at the end of this next aisle, I saw a man seated in an armchair next to a potted tree of some sort. I stopped, confused by the feeling of familiarity that swept over me.

Then I realized he was the same man who’d been in the courtyard of the club the night before. He was reading a book, looking as relaxed as if he were in his own living room. He wore a tweed jacket over a white shirt and faded jeans. Cropped salt-and-pepper hair softened a hawkish weathered face.

He glanced up, showing me deep-set brown eyes, and acknowledged me with a courteous nod. “We meet again,” he said.

“Do you work here?” I blurted.

“No.” He seemed surprised by the idea. “I teach myth and folklore at Columbia. This is just one of my more pleasant sources for reference materials.” He had a faint accent, which I hadn’t noticed before. Irish or Scottish, maybe—I wasn’t sure. He marked his place in the book and closed it. “Was that your first time at the club, last night?” he asked.

“Yes.” Sometimes I am such a brilliant conversationalist, it’s really overwhelming. Why was I so tongue-tied around this man? I asked myself. It certainly wasn’t a crush thing. He had to be nearly as old as my dad. And yet I felt an affinity with him, a familiarity, an attraction.

He regarded me with curiosity. “What did you think of it?”

I thought about the beautiful illusion Killian had created for Raven.

“It was a little intense, but also cool,” I said. “I’d never seen witches use their magick just for pleasure.”

“Personally, that’s what I’ve always liked best about magick—using it to create beauty and pleasure in the midst of the trials life forces us to undergo.”

He made a sign over the potted tree, and I watched its leaves fade, shrivel, and fall off. From the soil a green shoot grew. It was as if I were watching a movie on fast-forward. No natural plant could grow so quickly, but in the space of a minute or so a lilac bush grew against the trunk of the dead tree, and pale lilac blossoms opened, filling the air with sweet fragrance.

It was incredibly beautiful. It was also a little unnerving. It broke all the laws of nature. What would happen to the lilac? It was an outdoor plant that needed a winter’s frost. It couldn’t survive in a pot in a store. And I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the healthy tree that had died for a witch’s pleasure.