By Sun Read online

  “Yes, Tía.”

  Lucy stepped further into the shop, following the mechanical whir and click as Izel turned her scooter. Lucy was a bit wary as she saw two strange brujas flanking either side of the long counter. It was clear she was interrupting something big. The air practically crackled with magic, as if the peaceful shop of yesterday now prepared for war.

  One of the witches—a petite woman with reddish-brown hair, tight jeans, and a big attitude—stared her down. The other one, tall, dark, and curvy, wearing a summer dress, pointedly ignored her, contemplating a bone reading instead.

  Shit, Lucy thought. Part of her just wanted to crawl out of the dim, cool, smoky shop, gather her supplies, and figure it out herself. But the whole coven insisted that she couldn’t. Brenda and Raquel were both pissed at her, and the rest of the coven had already started tugging on the threads of the magical network that made up Portland. The street activists and community organizers were being called, too. This was going to be another big one.

  And Lucy didn’t like it. Not one bit. She would rather follow her itching palms and do the work herself. But Tonantzin had also insisted.

  ::If you serve the people, you must trust the people.:: the Goddess had said last night. Well, Lucy couldn’t argue with that, much as she might want to.

  So here she was, because Tonantzin had given her the bright, harebrained idea of a nationwide bruja network. And to get that? She needed to get Izel on board.

  And apparently getting Izel on board meant working with these two brujas, here.

  “I brought…” Lucy held out the basket of strawberries and a bottle of good wine. She was annoyed at herself, for feeling as if she should go begging in front of witches she didn’t know. Giving Tía Izel honor was one thing, but talking about her problems and explaining herself in front of those two? It wasn’t going to happen.

  It’s going to happen if you expect to get any help, she thought.

  Tonantzin was riding her back, and last night? Despite the prescribed beer bath, the children had woken her up, crying in her dreams.

  Izel smelled the strawberries and nodded. Setting the basket on her lap, she whirred over to one of the altars and placed three of the largest berries at the feet of a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Tonantzin.

  “Valeria! Open this bottle, please, and get four glasses from the back. And Jimena? Put that reading away, please. You have gotten all you will from it. Enough for now.”

  Valeria’s boots thumped on the scarred pine floor, but Lucy noticed that she took the bottle from Izel with some deference. And Jimena wasted no time sweeping the reading into a small bag. So…the mighty witches were Izel’s apprentices, then? That made Lucy feel better somehow. As if she wasn’t completely out of her depth. Maybe the big magic she’d been worried about interrupting was just a lesson.

  She felt some of her confidence return. Apprentices, she could deal with. They were no better than she was, and who know how good their magic even was?

  “Why have you come? Didn’t my answers yesterday satisfy?” Izel grinned. She knew Lucy had left the shop unsettled. But everything with Izel was some sort of test.

  Lucy decided the best course was to ignore the question.

  “Things have grown more urgent. The coven thinks we need to act quickly. There are…timely things happening. We’re going to need your help. I need your help.”

  Izel’s eyes sharpened. Valeria’s boots sounded on the floor again, followed by the sound of glasses being set on the glass countertop, followed by the thunk of the wine bottle.

  “Pour please, and bring the stools out from the back?”

  “Yes, doctór.”

  Doctór. Teacher. So yes, they were Izel’s students.

  As Jimena poured the Oregon Pinot Noir into an assortment of wine glasses, Valeria thumped into a back room again and came out toting a tall bar stool.

  “Sit,” Izel said, pointing to the stool across from her scooter, “and let us taste this wine you brought.”

  Lucy climbed up onto one of the padded barstools at the counter, facing Izel, who swirled the ruby liquid in the one glass actually the proper shape for a red wine. Lucy swirled her own, more narrow glass, deepening her breathing and returning to her center while she waited. There would be no rushing this process. That much, she knew.

  “So, tell us.”

  Lucy cleared her throat and sent a quick prayer to La Madre.

  “We are taking on ICE, but it needs to happen fast. Other Gods have gotten involved and things are growing…complicado.”

  “What Gods?” Izel’s voice was pointed. Harsh.

  “Lugh.”

  “The Irish God?” Valeria asked.

  Lucy nodded. “Yes. And since the feast of his mother just passed, and he’s meddling with people who aren’t even Pagan, it feels like we need to act now. Besides…” She held up her right hand to show the scratches Valeria and Jimena. “my hands keep leading me to the ICE building, and I got chased by DHS cops yesterday.”

  “Ask your question, sobrina,” Izel said.

  This was the thing that was always hardest for Lucy: trusting people who hadn’t already proven themselves to her. But she supposed Tía Izel’s apprentices probably felt the same way about her.

  “Will you help us? Tonantzin has shown me what must happen, but…” She looked at the other two witches. This wasn’t her story alone. Jack and his friends could go to prison for what they had planned.

  “You can trust them,” Izel said, training her eyes on first one woman, then the next. “If they betray us, they know the consequences.”

  Valeria and Jimena just sipped their wine, silent.

  “We need to take on as many ICE and DHS offices and prisons as possible. Simultaneously. We have hackers working on it, and we need as many trained brujas as possible. People who are capable of linking with me and the coven when the time comes. You know so many…”

  Izel held up her wine glass and gazed into the ruby depths as if she were scrying for a vision. She nodded, communicating with whatever spirits surrounded her. Spirits always surrounded a witch of Izel’s power. She outclassed Lucy and everyone in Arrow and Crescent, frankly. And the coven really couldn’t pull this one off without her help.

  Lucy’s mouth was dry, and she all of a sudden wished her glass held water instead of wine.

  Izel looked at her. “I see. La Madre has been speaking to me, too, showing me the vision of what can come, but she did not tell me how it must be done.”

  “When is this going down?” Jimena asked.

  “Sunday,” Lucy replied.

  “Sunday?” Valeria coughed out, choking on her wine. “Are you shitting me? That’s two days from now!”

  “Silence!” Izel’s voice cracked like a whip in the smoky air. “It will be done. We will contact the brujas in San Diego, Oakland, St. Louis, Chicago, Brooklyn, and San Antonio. Do you think that will be enough?”

  Lucy closed her eyes, listening for Tonantzin, trying to sense the future. Nothing. Just the certainty that Sunday was the day, and that she would know what to do.

  “Yes. And if it isn’t? Well, things can’t get any worse than they already are, can they?”

  22

  Jack

  Jack had found something, and the power of it terrified him even more than the thought of facing himself.

  Oh, it wasn’t something brand-new, but like everything about this project it was the combination of seemingly random things forming into a whole that gave it the power. The power it had to terrify him, was, he hoped, the power it would have to terrify those who needed to be scared. Those who needed to shit their pants because they never thought the day of reckoning would come for them.

  Olivia broke through one obstacle earlier that afternoon. She had found a weakness in the DHS computer network. She was currently networked with three of her buddies—Jack had no idea who they were and probably never would—but it seemed as if they were working out a way to exploit that weakness.
/>   “Hey, Olivia?”

  Her head snapped up and her fingers stilled, and she even went so far as to lower the pounding heavy metal so that Jack wouldn’t have to shout.

  “I think I found something,” he said.

  Olivia leaned back and stretched her arms over her head, then cracked her knuckles, and rolled her head on her neck.

  “God,” she said, “how long I’ve been sitting here?” She shoved her way back from the desk and got to her feet, where she commenced stretching in a tiny two-foot-by-two-foot space carved out between shelving, file cabinets, computer stacks, and her desk. “You hungry?”

  Jack realized that, yes, he was. After he’d almost blown out Olivia’s computers, and they’d gotten things under control again, he hadn’t stopped for anything. It had been hours.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You got anything in the house? Or should I order some Thai?”

  Olivia sniffed the air, then bent to touch her toes.

  “Smells like Grace is cooking.”

  Jack smelled it then, the tang of tomato, and the fragrance of sautéed onions, beef, and some spices he didn’t recognize. His stomach actually growled.

  “Before we take a dinner break,” he said, “can I tell you what I found?”

  Olivia was upright again, rubbing at her shoulders. “Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I’m still kind of elsewhere, you know?”

  Jack knew exactly what she was talking about. The more single-minded a person could be, the better the coder. Or the longer hours they could work uninterrupted, at least. Project managers liked that.

  “I’m wondering if we can seed something into their network. Plant something. But not just a piece of code,” he quickly added.

  Olivia took a swig of some water. “Well, yeah. But what are you thinking?”

  “Like sounds, images.”

  “I don’t see why not, but I’ll have to double check the code. Make sure it’s easy to transmit. I mean, Anonymous does that shit all the time, right?”

  “But as far as I know, they’ve never hacked a system as big as this.”

  Jack leaned back in his chair and rolled back and forth a little, thinking. He still felt the presence of the God. Lugh, he guessed he should start calling him. And all he knew was that for the first time in a long while, it all felt right.

  “I want to blast those fuckers,” he said. “Make them pay.”

  Olivia laughed and nodded.

  “Tell me what you got,” she said. “Then I really need to eat.”

  With the flicker of a thought, an image of a beautiful face, all angles and planes, with soft, soft lips, Jack realized there was someone else he wanted to tell.

  Lucy.

  “I’m going to pass on dinner, but here’s what I want to do…”

  23

  Lucy

  After the meeting with the brujas, Lucy was pissed. Not at the witches, and certainly not at Tía Izel. They would keep their word. And the knowledge that she now had backup? That was pure gold.

  Her truck whined as she pushed it through traffic heading back toward Portland. She really needed to get back to work, but the Goddess boiling in her blood wouldn’t let her. She had prayed for strength and the ability to help bring some justice—but if she was telling the truth, really? She was out for the kill.

  “I’m coming for you, pendejos. I will curse you with every breath in my witch’s body. I intend to make you pay.”

  More quickly than she should have been, she was hurtling across the bridge, back toward the ICE building. She knew that one of the interfaith groups planned to be out there in the afternoon. It was almost five o’clock now, though. She hoped to get there in time. For what, she still wasn’t sure, but Tonantzin and the tingling in her scraped-up hands pushed her.

  Lucy could practically taste the magic flowing between her hands and the earth surrounding the ICE building. She could taste the building itself, all concrete and steel, human sweat and computers.

  And the fear and arrogance? She felt those, too.

  Lucy was just going to have to trust this new form of psychometry. She had to let it guide her, no matter what, and the coven was just going to need to trust it, too. She really hoped that they were all on point, gathering resources and people, because Goddess knew, the time was now. Everyone felt it. Now that Lughasadh had passed, time was running out. If they were going to harness the power of the sun, they had to do it before the year tipped too far towards Winter Solstice. August was the last hurrah, astronomically. There was no telling when autumn would come creeping on the wind.

  And it was going to take the full power of the sun, and the power of Lugh’s lightning, and the power of every Goddess and God they could call on, to take these bastards down.

  Lucy barely noticed the river, or the other cars. She was too intent on getting to her destination on time. Her phone buzzed and jounced in her pocket. She ignored it, which was a bad move for an independent business owner. But again, she just couldn’t care. There was too much else to pay attention to right now. She couldn’t put it off for long, but paying the bills took second place at the moment.

  She swung the truck around the great curve leading to Macadam. And there it was again, that ugly, square building. Sure enough, a group of around fifty people were still gathered outside. It looks like arrests were under way.

  Now, these were fairly pro forma arrests. It was a dance of civil disobedience, rather than a direct confrontation. There would be no less-than-lethals or pepper balls shot into soft flesh today. There would be no truncheons smacking skulls. But as long as these well-scrubbed religious people tied up the cops for a while? Well, it was something. And it showed the state that the people were not backing down.

  Lucy slammed the truck into the first parking spot she saw, sticking out from the sidewalk at an angle, not finessing the job at all. It was going to have to be good enough. She paused long enough to slick her hair back into a rough ponytail and wipe a kerchief across her sweating face. Then, as fast as her boots would carry her, she pounded up the two blocks toward the rail tracks, the empty former camp, and the long gated driveway where people in clergy collars and bright stoles were singing, hands up raised. A smaller group blocked the gate, seated on the ground. They were making sure that at least for these couple of hours, the transport buses couldn’t get through.

  Good.

  Between her anger and Tonantzin’s power, Lucy practically vibrated.

  Flowing through her veins, and pouring out into her ætheric bodies, Tonantzin’s power pushed at Lucy’s skin. The mother of the people. Defender of the poor. She who brought light and crushed evil. Dark-skinned, and beautiful, she who would avenge the downtrodden with the sheer force of will and the power of love. Earth mother, patron of those who grew and gathered, who harvested and sowed.

  As she grew closer Lucy smelled sage burning. That meant at least one of the First Nations activists was present. She was finally able to make out the words of the chant the people were half shouting and half singing. “The children of the earth are not for sale! The children of the earth are beloved of all!”

  Lucy was intent on getting closer, as quickly as possible. She didn’t even notice the DHS agent step in front of her until it was almost too late.

  “You,” he said, forcing his breath out past his lips in accusation. “Are you the bitch we chased off the other day?”

  His eyes were like ice chips boring into her. Lucy met his ice with the fire surrounding her mother. Surrounding her. The cop was physically huge, but Lucy’s aura was bigger.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about; I’m just trying to exercise my civic rights.”

  Lucy tried to sidestep him, but he blocked her.

  “I don’t think so, ma’am.”

  She looked at him, holding her defiance like a knife.

  “You have no right to stop me.”

  “I don’t need a reason, all I have to do is deem you a threat. Are you a threat?”

  Lucy lea
ned in, catching a whiff of citrus aftershave and the sourness of old tobacco. That fucking tobacco again. Her hands itched. White people perverted everything, even the most sacred of native herbs.

  “You have no idea,” she said, voice pitched low. He leaned in further to catch her words. It was all Lucy could do to keep from grabbing his neck, pulling him closer, and shoving a knee into his groin.

  “Are you threatening me?” He asked his voice was filled with mild amusement now. As if he was dismissing her.

  She backed up a step, and stared into his face again. “Why don’t you just let me join my friends?”

  “Why don’t you just turn around?”

  They were at a standoff. The noise of the crowd grew louder, and the singing felt strained. Someone blew a shofar, with three blasts loud enough to shake the windows. The arrests must be happening in earnest. Lucy wasn’t sure exactly what she had planned to do anyway, she just knew she had to be here.

  And maybe this confrontation was enough.

  “What were you doing around the side of the building?” he asked, pretending a mild disinterest, as if he was asking what her favorite hobby was.

  Never talk to cops, she thought. That’s what the anarchists always said.

  Lucy spun on her boot heel, and walked away. She walked toward the dirt on the edge of the tracks, and, squatting down, she touched her hands to the earth.

  Earth Mother, be with me, she thought.

  The DHS cop stared at her, but he didn’t follow. Good, let him think he’d won.

  Lucy whispered to the dirt beneath her hands, “Help me, Mother. Let my body know your taste.”

  Lucy sent a thread of energy sneaking down through her boots into the soil. She felt herself connect all the way down and back up to the blazing sky, tinged again with smoke from distant fires. The wind kept changing, just like everything on this earth changed, and Lucy was a witch in tune with every element, just the way she was supposed to be.