Cate Tiernan - The Calling

She let us into a dark, railroad-flat apartment, not much wider than the narrow hallway. “This is your living room,” she said as we entered a small front room. She tapped the steel bars that covered the window. “Security,” she told us proudly.

The kitchen had a claw-foot bathtub, a small refrigerator desperately in need of cleaning, and a family of large, healthy cockroaches living in the sink. “Just put down some boric acid,” the woman said casually.

Then she took us into the last room, a tiny decrepit bedroom with a window the size of a phone directory.

“You two got jobs?”

“I work in…with computers,” Robbie said.

“I waitress,” I said. That had been Maeve’s first job in America.

“Well, you’ll have to put all that in the application,” the woman said. “Come down to my apartment and you can fill one out.”

I was wondering how we were going to get out of the application process when I felt something in the tiny bedroom calling me. I studied the stained ceiling.

“There used to be a leak,” the woman admitted, her gaze following mine. “But we fixed it.”

But that wasn’t what had caught my attention. I had felt a magickal pull from the corner of the ceiling. Looking more closely, I saw that one of the panels of the dropped ceiling was slightly askew. Whatever I was sensing was behind that panel. The watch? Could it possibly be, after all these years? I had to find out.

“I told you, we fixed the leak,” the woman said loudly.

I bit back an irritated reply. I needed a moment of privacy. How was I going to get rid of this woman?

Frustrated, I raised my eyebrows at Robbie and nodded toward the living room. Robbie shot me a “Who, me?” look.

I nodded again, more emphatically.

“Um—could I ask you a question about the living room?” Robbie said hesitantly. “It’s about the woodwork.”

“What woodwork?” the woman demanded, but she followed him, anyway.

As soon as they had left the room, I shut the door and quickly turned the lock. I had to reach that ceiling panel. There was only one way. I climbed up on the narrow window ledge and balanced precariously.

Thank the Goddess for low ceilings! I thought as I found I could just reach the panel. With my fingertips I pushed up against it. The panel moved a fraction of an inch. I stretched and pressed harder. The magickal pull was getting stronger. I felt a faint warm current against my hand. I stretched, groaned softly, and gave another hard push.

The panel lifted up and I fell off the ledge onto the floor with a thud.

“Ow,” I mumbled. Quickly I climbed back up onto the ledge. I heard the superintendent’s footsteps hurrying across the apartment. Then she was twisting the doorknob, trying to open the door.

“Hey, what’s going on in there?” she yelled, pounding on the door. “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Robbie said quickly.

“Then come out of there!” the woman shouted, pounding harder.

Just ignore her, I told myself, heart racing. I stuck my fingers through the open panel. Empty space and a wooden beam. Then my fingers closed on smooth fabric encasing something hard and round.

“You come out right now or I’m calling the police!” the woman shouted.

I didn’t hesitate. This was absolutely necessary magick. If he ever found out, Hunter would understand.

“You will forget,” I whispered. “You never saw us. This did not happen. You will forget.”

It was as simple as that. One moment the woman was screaming and threatening, the next I heard her ask Robbie, “So you want to see the apartment? You know, you’re the first one I’ve shown it to.”

I put the panel back in place, then jumped down from the ledge, clutching the watch. Apartment three must be directly upstairs, I realized. Maeve must have hidden the watch beneath her floorboards. I unfolded the green silk and felt a protective spell whispering from the material. The watch case was gold, engraved with a Celtic knot pattern. A white face, gold hands. A tiny cabochon ruby on the end of the winding stem. I stared at it, and tears rose in my eyes. It represented so many things to me, things both wonderful and horrible.

But there was no time to think about that now. I tucked the watch into my pocket and unlocked the door. Then I went out to get Robbie.

“You’re not going to believe what I found in there!” I said when we were about a block away from the apartment. “You’ve got to see this watch.” I started to take it from my pocket.

Robbie was walking fast, his eyes on the sidewalk. “Just put it away,” he said.

“What?” I was startled at his angry tone.

“I don’t want to see it,” he snapped.

I stared at him. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Is this about Bree?”

Robbie turned on me, his eyes blazing. “No, Morgan. This is about you. What the hell happened back there? One minute that old lady was calling for you to get out of the bedroom. The next minute she couldn’t remember ever having seen us before.”

“I did a little spell,” I said. “I made her forget.”

“You did what?”

“Robbie, it’s okay,” I said. “It was temporary. It’s already worn off.”

“How do you know that?” he demanded. “How do you know that spell didn’t rewire her brain? How do you know she won’t think she’s going senile when she suddenly remembers the two people she blanked on? Elderly people find that kind of thing a little upsetting.”

“I know because I made the spell,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “What are you so freaked about, anyway?”

Robbie looked enraged. “You don’t get it, do you? You messed with someone’s mind! You’ve lucked into these amazing powers, and you’re abusing them. How do I know you won’t do something like that to me?”

I felt like he’d knocked the wind out of me. When I found my voice, it sounded high and tinny. “Because I gave you my word that I wouldn’t. Come on, Robbie, we’ve been friends since second grade. You know I’m not like that. This was a special circumstance.”

He looked at me like I was a stranger, a stranger who frightened him. “The Morgan I know wouldn’t screw around with some poor old lady. You played her like she was a puppet. And I feel like a jerk for having been part of that whole charade. I feel dirty.”

I tried to calm the butterflies in my stomach. This was serious. “Robbie, I’m sorry,” I said. “I had no right to make you part of that. But this watch belonged to Maeve. I had to get it. Did you really think I could leave it there? It was my mother’s. That makes it my birthright.”

“Like your power?” he asked, his voice shaking.

“Yes. Exactly like my power.” Every so often words come out of your mouth with a cool, resonant certainty and you know you’ve hit a bone-deep truth. There’s no taking it back or denying it. That’s how it felt then, and Robbie and I both stood there, suspended for a moment in the awful implications of what I’d just said.

Maeve had given up her magick, but there was nothing on this earth that would make me give up mine.

“So this birthright of yours.” I could see him fighting for control, trying to keep his voice steady. “It gives you the right to manipulate some woman you don’t even know?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“No, it’s just what you did . You were flexing your power. Well, I’m starting to think maybe your power isn’t such a great thing.”

“Robbie, that’s not true! I—”

“Forget it,” he said. “I’m going to see if I can get in on another chess game. If I’m going to be totally overwhelmed, at least it’s going to be by something I understand.”