By Dusk Read online

  “May I help you?” The woman’s voice was so kind, Shaggy felt herself tear up again. Where had all of this emotion come from?

  “I… Yes. I mean, I don’t know.”

  “Can I point you toward some books? Or crystals? Or would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Do you do readings here?”

  The woman smiled at her. “We do. And my next client just cancelled, so I’ve got a spot open right now. Do you have time?”

  Shaggy nodded, not trusting her voice.

  “All right then. Follow me and we’ll get set up.” The woman turned and began threading her way through display cases toward a configuration of bookcases and comfy-looking chairs. “I’m Brenda, by the way,” she said, turning her head.

  “Shaggy.”

  The woman stopped. “Shaggy? Moss’s friend?”

  Moss was talking about her? Shaggy felt her face flush with heat, though she didn’t know why she should feel embarrassed. “Yes. Moss’s friend.”

  They’d reached the main counter of the shop, where a younger woman with short, platinum-blond hair and tattoos snaking down one arm was ringing up a customer.

  “Tempest, it looks like I’ve got a reading after all. You good here?”

  “I’m good, boss,” she said with a grin.

  Brenda led Shaggy past the bookshelves and statuary toward a small alcove at the rear of the shop. A floor-length, royal-blue curtain was pulled to one side, revealing a small table and two chairs. As they drew closer, Shaggy could see that the table held a candle, a little brass bell, and a deck of brightly colored cards. Tarot.

  Shaggy had gotten readings a time or two at festivals. The last reading she gotten, she’d been high. Other than the flashing colors and the gentle presence of the reader, she recalled nothing. Well. Except for the important part. The one sentence that had pierced through her MDM cloud.

  “If you don’t choose your destiny, who will?”

  The words still echoed in Shaggy’s head when she woke up the next morning. Walking toward the reading table now, following the witch, they rose up like a prayer.

  “Why don’t you have a seat?” Brenda gestured to one of the chairs before pulling out her own. She waited as Shaggy fumbled her purse from her shoulder and slung it over the back of the chair. When Shaggy finally settled, she found herself staring into blue eyes filled with kindness and understanding. With a flick and a tug, Brenda closed the blue curtain around them, shutting out the shop and, it felt like, the world.

  Shaggy released a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding in, and felt her body relax. She felt safe here. Protected. And looking at those blue eyes again, she wanted nothing more than to spill her whole life story to this woman.

  If only she could figure out where to begin.

  “Let’s start with something simple, shall we?” Brenda said, as if she’d heard the thoughts that tumbled inside Shaggy’s head. She picked up the deck and, bracelets chiming together, began to shuffle. The card edges snapped together and a wash of colors flew between her hands. Again and again, she shuffled, until Shaggy was half mesmerized by motion and sound. Finally, she stopped and placed the deck in front of Shaggy.

  “Cut the deck into three piles.”

  Shaggy reached out, and split the deck into three uneven stacks, setting them next to one another on the table.

  Brenda considered the piles for a moment, her fingers hovering just above the cards before resting on the one dead center. She picked that up and stacked it on top of the other two, forming them into one deck again.

  “Okay. Let’s begin with past, present, and future.”

  Her graceful fingers snapped three cards out onto the table.

  “Ten of Wands. Two of Swords. The World.”

  The images seared themselves into Shaggy’s mind. A figure carrying a heavy burden of sticks, clearly weighted down. A blindfolded person, sitting in front of a body of water, holding two swords crossed over their chest. And last, a figure in the center of a wreath, holding two candles, looking as if they were dancing in the sky.

  “What do they mean?”

  Brenda tapped the first card with a pale fingernail. “This one, the recent past, shows you carrying far too much. Unnecessary burdens. Other people’s problems. Worry. The feeling that you need to do it all, and control it all.”

  “Well, shit,” Shaggy said, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Brenda just laughed. “Well, shit, indeed. Now, the Two of Swords tells us that you are in stasis regarding a big choice.” She trained those blue eyes on Shaggy again. “In Tarot, swords are the mind, and you’ve been trying to make a decision using your head, which is why you’re at an impasse. But see all the water in this card?”

  Shaggy nodded.

  “In this context that tells us the decision hinges on the emotions, not just your brain. And that brings us—and you—to The World. The dancer in the cosmos. The one who has completed one cycle and is ready to dance into the next. How about it, Shaggy? Are you ready for the next cycle?”

  Shaggy nodded again, then shook her head. Then burst into tears.

  23

  Moss

  Moss felt amped up and furious. It took every ounce of his will to keep his feet and hands still. Arrow and Crescent Coven was gathered in Raquel’s living room, every single member present and accounted for.

  He sat on a cushion on the floor, spine propped up against the big red couch, and glanced up at the beautiful painting of Raquel’s son, Zion, as the Tarot card image of the Sun. Moss wished for the happy, carefree feeling that the card evoked. Shit, he’d felt that just a few days ago, at the club. That night felt like it was two months ago. This year had been a trash fire of disaster after disaster. He supposed he shouldn’t call it that, thought forms having power and all. Besides which, that wasn’t a hundred percent fair. The coven had had a lot of victories, and so had the larger community.

  But it barely felt that way now. Right this minute? Moss wanted to punch something.

  “I told you,” Alejandro said to Raquel, “I quit, but I still can’t really talk about it. You should be looking at Moss about this.”

  The two witches were faced off, Alejandro in one of the chairs near the cold fireplace, and Raquel ensconced on one corner of the couch. Moss could feel the ice emanating from Raquel’s gaze as she bored two holes into Alejandro’s head.

  “Have you wondered why you even considered working for a company that puts our communities in danger?” Raquel’s voice was flat, the way she got when she was a certain kind of angry. Moss was glad she wasn’t mad at him.

  It seemed like half the coven was on edge and pissed off. He could also feel Tempest and Tobias using their energy fields to try to smooth things out and keep the energy from spiraling out of control.

  “Why don’t we all take a breath?” Tempest asked.

  “I am not done,” Raquel said. “What do you mean I should ask Moss? How in Goddess’s name is any of this on him? Alejandro?”

  “Raquel…” Brenda started. It seemed she’d finally decided that watching and waiting was no longer enough, and was stepping into the fray.

  Raquel held up a hand toward Brenda, which only escalated the tension.

  This was getting ridiculous, and wasting time. Moss decided enough was enough. He set his mug on the coffee table and waved his hands in the air.

  “Can you all just chill for a minute? This is getting us nowhere, and the action is on Saturday and we need to figure out what the fuck we’re going to do. The company is GranCo. I know it now. That’s what Alejandro means. We were both out at the fucking press conference today. Before you walked away.”

  Alejandro just shrugged and took a sip from the green tumbler in his hand. “GranCo is not my client, even if I still can’t confirm the name of who was. I refused the contract. So, get off my fucking back.”

  Brenda gave Moss a slight smile and leaned back in her chair, bracelets chiming and moonstone pendant winking at him from where i
t rested on her blue tunic top.

  “Thank you, Moss, I agree. Alejandro? I’m sure you’re making decisions to the best of your ability right now. And we need to trust that, we need to trust each other. But for right now, it seems we’re being called upon to do our best to protect the Willamette. Raquel? I know you have a special relationship with her, and I’m wondering if you and Moss could work together to figure out what is needful. And to figure out what this egregore is that Moss is sensing. As a matter of fact, I think we should go upstairs and the two of you should go into trance and figure this out.”

  The energy in the room shifted, and Moss could practically feel Tempest and Tobias sigh with relief. Even Selene came back from whatever shadowy realm they had retreated to.

  Raquel shook out her hands and rolled her neck, as if she could disperse the anger trapped inside her body. Moss exhaled in a huge rush, and then did the same. It wasn’t enough. He stood up and shook out his hands and his feet and bounced for a while, trying to shake out all the tension that had been accumulating since he first saw the crack across his windshield.

  “Good idea, Moss,” Tempest said. She sprang to her feet and began to bob and shake along with him. Slowly, one by one, every member of Arrow and Crescent Coven followed suit.

  “Do you have a smudge stick down here, Raquel?” Selene asked.

  “There’s a rosemary and lavender bundle on the hearth.”

  Soon the scents of fragrant herbs twined through the air. Selene walked the rough edges of the circle made by the coven members and living room furniture. Their long dark hair formed a loose curtain around their head, and their lips were pale today, almost matching the moonstone at their collarbone. Not quite as large as Brenda’s, it was an impressive magical amulet all the same.

  Moss breathed in the rosemary and lavender smoke, and closed his eyes, feeling for the still center at his core, the space he’d worked so hard to identify and grow. There it was, half buried beneath his fear, agitation, and anger. He sent a breath down into his belly, imagining the inhalation expanding the small pool of stillness. Moment by moment, breath by fragrant breath, he felt his equilibrium return.

  Opening his eyes, he found Raquel looking at him, her dark eyes questioning, her body coiled in waiting. He nodded her way.

  “You want to do this?” he asked.

  “Much as I’d rather ride my anger into war with these polluting bastards right now? I have to admit that Brenda’s right and some psychic reconnaissance is in order. Upstairs?” She jerked her head toward the hallway with a shake of her dreadlocks.

  “Why don’t we just do it here?” Moss asked. “I don’t feel like spending more time setting up.”

  “Okay. Lucy? Or Tempest? Want to take us down?”

  “I’ll do it,” Tempest replied, stepping forward. “But can we at least get this coffee table out of the way?”

  Lucy and Tobias waited while folks cleared cups and books from the table, then hoisted it over the couch and set it in the hallway while Selene lit some candles on the fireplace mantle.

  Moss and Raquel each grabbed a cushion and plopped down on the floor, Moss lying down flat, and Raquel sitting cross-legged, with a straight back. The rest of the coven remained standing in a loose circle.

  “Slow your breathing down,” Tempest began. “Find your center. Relax your edges. Soften your attention and allow your consciousness to float. Become a drop of water, traveling west, seeking to join the river.”

  “Yemọja, mother, hear your daughter, reveal to me what needs to be revealed,” Raquel said, her voice like honey, her words slow as molasses.

  Moss felt his consciousness deepen, and the space between each breath grow vast. He allowed himself to stretch out, and reached for the flow of the great Willamette. He clapped three times. When his mind and heart had contact, he felt the kami of the river respond.

  Deep inside his trance state, he smiled. His consciousness dropped another layer down. Deeper. So deep.

  Moss was floating in the river, surrounded by cool, murky, blue-green water. Green lichen floated by, followed by a shimmering school of sturgeon. Weak, pale green light filtered in from above. He knew it was the sun. He felt the way the sun on the water interacted, and the way the birds and the fish interacted. He felt the oxygen in the water, and the trees that rooted themselves on the banks on either side. And he was of the river, and from the river, and in the river.

  And Moss became the river. The spirit of the river entered him, and spoke in a voice so clear and deep, resounding like the striking of a gong.

  ::I am the lifeblood of the city, and I am more than that. I give pleasure to the people, and sustenance to the creatures and the plants. And all of these are of me and in me, and I am all of these, but I am also something more. I am the conduit to the ocean. I taste the sky in the fall of rain. And I am choking from these poisons, but I shall. Not. Die.::

  Moss’s awareness lifted slightly, and he could smell the beeswax of the candles, and feel the coven around his physical body. He was Moss, and he was river. He was the river, and simply a small man. And all of it was true.

  He heard Raquel murmuring, “The Goddess of the fertile waters is ready, and the people must rise. She will fill the people with her blessing, and offer them the food of restoration. The waters have been dishonored, and honor must be restored. A spirit poisons the waters, a spirit controlled by human beings. We do not yet know its name, but its presence is felt in the poison. Follow the poison. Find the people. The waters will run clean.”

  Moss was yanked back down beneath the surface, and the words of the river’s spirit tumbled from his lips. “I call my children to me. I call my children to bless themselves with the waters of life. I call upon my children to dance and sing and fight, until the waters once again flow clean. Follow the banks of the river. Dive deeply. Root. Then fly.”

  “From the great above, to the great below,” Raquel’s voice joined his, “the people and the rivers are one. The people and the earth are one. There is no separation. All must be rejoined.”

  “All must re-enter the flow.”

  Moss’s breath shuddered in his chest. He felt the spirit of the river recede, leaving him, a man lying on a living room floor, surrounded by the people he loved.

  Slowly, he blinked and sat up, wincing at the ceiling light overhead.

  He reached for Raquel’s hand and grasped it.

  “I’m going to do some shit on Saturday,” he said. “Some comrades and I will be chaining up and locking ourselves down to the bridge, and I want you all nearby. We’ll need every ounce of your protection and love.”

  He looked at Raquel then. “But that means I’ll need my witches to help with the egregore, whatever it turns out to be. I’m pretty sure it’s anchored to Patricia Sloane, though. There’s something up with her that I don’t like at all. I’m not sure I can lock down and focus on that kind of magic at the same time.”

  “You know I’m in,” Raquel replied, then looked around the circle. “And I’m sure everyone else in this room is, too.”

  “Are you sure about locking down, Moss?” Alejandro said. “Isn’t the egregore…?”

  “Locking down, tethered with community, is part of my magic. And there are enough other people here that can…”

  Alejandro leaned forward. “Yeah, but you’re the one that saw it around Patricia Sloane. No one else has that connection.”

  Moss’s reply stopped inside his mouth, as if the words were stuck there. He closed his eyes, tried to sense what the answer was.

  ::Follow the course.:: the river said.

  But what was the right course?

  “Any one of you can take on an egregore,” he finally replied. “But I’m the only one in this room that’s able to lock down.”

  He looked around the circle at the people that had become his second family.

  “I’ll do my magic. I trust you to do yours.”

  24

  Shaggy

  Shaggy sat in a corner
table of one of the Hawthorne Street cafés, still reeling from the reading, and meeting Brenda, and all the rest of it. She barely noticed the other customers coming and going, the small tables filling and emptying, the early ’90s music playing over the speakers. The mingled scents of coffee and herbal teas.

  The images of the cards still flashed through her mind. The person, bowed and burdened with a bundle of sticks. The woman holding two swords, blindfolded. And the World card…

  She needed to stop stalling. Decisions had to be made, and that meant, in order to make an informed choice, she needed to talk with Moss. She also knew he wasn’t going to want to talk about what was on her mind. Being an honorable guy, he was going to want to discuss the zygote.

  Shaggy sighed and checked the time on her phone. Moss was meeting with the coven now, she knew, but he’d replied to her text, saying he would swing by to meet her as soon as he could get away. So she sipped at her peppermint tea and waited, picking at a cinnamon scone that had been fresh in the morning but now veered toward stale. Shaggy needed the calories, but couldn’t manage to eat much.

  What she really wanted was a glass of wine, but she’d been drinking too much in the past week, and knew it. Whether she was keeping the zygote or not, she needed to slow down with the alcohol.

  Other than hormones, she wasn’t sure why she’d burst into tears in front of Brenda. The cards had felt powerful, and it was clear that she was at some sort of nexus point. It wasn’t just about the baby, or moving to Portland, or about school and being away from her family for the first time, or any of the rest of that. It wasn’t about Moss either, though she still felt conflicted about him. She now realized if it weren’t for the pregnancy, she wouldn’t feel any conflict at all. And she would just take time and get to know him, the way she imagined other people did. See if they could work something out.