Cate Tiernan - Book of Shadows

"I'll be out in a minute!" I said impatiently.

Fifteen minutes later I slid into the backseat of my dad's Volvo, my wet hair sleeked into a long braid and making a damp patch on the back of my dress. I struggled into my jacket.

"What time did you go to bed, Morgan? Didn't you get enough sleep last night?" my mom asked brightly. Every one in my family except me is obnoxiously cheerful in the morning.

"I never get enough sleep." I moaned.

"Isn't in a beautiful morning?" my dad said. "When I got up, it was barely light. I drank my coffee on the back porch and watched the sun come up.

I popped the top off a Diet Coke and took a life-giving sip. My mom turned around and made a face. "Honey, you should drink some orange juice in the morning."

My dad chuckled. "That's our owl."

I'm a night owl, and they're larks. I drank my soda, trying to swig it all down before we got to church. I thought about how lucky my parents are to have Mary k. because otherwise it would seem as if both of their children were total aliens. And then I thought how lucky they are to have me so that they'll really appreciate Mary k. And then I thought how lucky I am to have them because I know they love me even though I am so different from the three of them.

Our church in beautiful and almost 250 years old. It was one of the first Catholic churched in this area. The organist, Mrs. Lavender, was already playing when we walked in, and the smells of incense were as familiar and comforting to me as the smell of our laundry detergent.

As I passed though the huge wooden doors, the numbers 117, 45, and 89 entered my mind, as if someone had drawn them on the inside of my forehead. How weird, I thought. We sat down in our usual pew, with my mom between Mary K. and me so we wouldn't cut up, even though we're so old old now that we wouldn't cut up, anyways. We know about everyone who goes to our church, and I liked seeing them every week, seeing them change, feeling like part of something bigger than just my family.

Mrs. Lavender began to play the first hymn, and we stood as the processional trailed in, the alter boys and the choir, Father Hotchkiss and Deacon Benes, Joey Markovich carrying the heavy gold cross.

Mom opened her hymnal and began flipping pages. I glanced at the hymn board at the front of the church to see what number we should be on. The first hymn was number 117. I glanced at the next number—45. Followed by 89. The same three numbers that had popped into my brain as I first entered the church. I turned to the correct page and began singing, wondering how I had known those numbers.

That Sunday, Father Hotchkiss gave a sermon in which he equated one's spiritual struggle with a football game. Father Hotchkiss is very big on football.

After church we stepped out in the bright sunlight again, and I blinked,

"Lunch at the Widow's Diner?" said Dad, as usual, and we all agreed, as usually. It was just another Sunday, except that for some reason I had known the numbers of the three hymns we would sing before I had seen them.

I am not psychic. Life is packed with weird little coincidences. I'll just keep telling myself that until I believe it.

"Where are we going?" I asked. I had changed out of my Sunday dress into jeans and a sweatshirt. My headache was gone, and I felt fine.

"An occult bookstore," Bree said, adjusting her rearview mirror. "Cal told me about it last night, and it sounded great."

"Hey, speaking of occult, you know something weird?" I asked. "Today in church I knew the numbers for the hymns before I saw them on the board. Isn't that bizarre?"

"What do you mean, you knew them?" Bree asked, heading out of town on Westwood.

"These numbers just popped into my head for no reason, and then when we got into church, they were up on the board. They were our hymn numbers," I said.

"That is weird." said Bree, smiling. "Maybe you heard your mom mention them or something."

My mom is on the women's guild at church and sometimes changes the hymn numbers or polishes candlesticks or arranges the alter flowers.

I frowned, thinking back. "Maybe."

Within minutes we were in Red Kill, the next town to our north. When I was little, I had been afraid of going to Red Kill. The name itself seemed to be a warning of something awful that had happened there or would happen there. But actually, a lot of towns in the Hudson River Valley have the work kill in them—it's an old Dutch word meaning "river." Red Kill simply means "red river"-probably because the water was tinted from iron in the soil.

"I didn't know Red Kill had an occult bookstore. Do you think they'll have stuff about Wicca?" I asked.

"Yeah, Cal said they have a pretty good selection," Bree answered. "I just wanted to check it out. After last night I'm really curious about Wicca. I felt so great afterward, like I just did yoga or had a massage or something."

"It was really intense," I agreed. "But didn't you feel yucky this morning?"

"No." Bree looked at me. "You must be coming down with something. You looked awful on the way home from the circle last night."

"Thanks, how comforting" I said flatly.

Bree pushed my elbow playfully. "You know what I mean."

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes.

"Hey, do you have plans tonight?" I asked her. "My aunt Eileen's coming over for dinner."

"Yeah? With her new girlfriend?"

"I think so."

Bree and I wiggled our eyebrows at each other. My aunt Eileen, my mom's younger sister, is gay. She and her longtime partner had broken up two years ago, so we were all happy she was finally dating again.

"In that case, I can definitely make dinner," said Bree. "Look, here we are." She parked Breezy at an angle against the curb, and we got out, walking past the Sit 'n' Knit, Meyer's Pharmacy, Goodstall's Children's Shoes, and a Baskin-Robbins. At the end row of stores, Bree looked up and said, "This must be the place." She pushed against a heavy double-glass door.

Glancing down, I saw a five-pointed star within a circle painted on the sidewalk in purple—just like Cal's silver pendant. Gold lettering on the glass door said Practical Magick, Supplies for Life. I wondered about the odd spelling of the word magic.

I felt a bit like Alice about to go down the rabbit hole, knowing that simply entering this store would somehow start me on a journey whose ending I couldn't predict. And I found that idea irresistible. I took a deep breath and followed Bree inside.

The store was small and dim. Bree moved ahead, looking at things on the shelves while I hovered by the door and gave myself time to adjust after the bright autumn sunlight outside. The air was heavy with an unfamiliar incense, and I imagined that I could almost feel the coiling smoke brushing against me and winding around my legs.

After blinking a few times, I saw that the shop was long and narrow, with a very high ceiling. Wooden shelves that looked homemade lined the walls and divided the store into halves. The half I could see down was floor-to-ceiling books: old, leather-bound volumes, bright-covered modern paperbacks, cheesy pamphlets that looked like they had been photocopied at Kinko's and stapled by hand. I read some of the hand-lettered category signs: Magick, Tarot, History, Womancraft, Healing, Herbs, Rituals, Scrying… and within each category there were subcategories. It was all very orderly, though it didn't give that impression at first.

Just looking at the books' spines, I felt that my mind was blooming like a flower. I hadn't known books like this existed—ancient volumes describing magic and rituals. I was seeing a whole new world.