VenCo(11)

Meena turned in a slow circle. I get it, I have to go to Toronto, but for who? What the hell?

She was getting frustarted. In response, the trees pulled their arms back and coiled their fingers into fists and began to buzz. Before they burst into flames, she heard them exhale one word—sixth—before she was pushed backward by a great wind.

Meena opened her eyes, and the universe spun above her—the glittery, off-kilter mobile Wendy had made for her on their first wedding anniversary, with a card that read, I would give you every star in the sky, if I could.

The dream had been fire and light and panic, but three things stuck: luck, Toronto, and sixth. The sixth witch had been found.

She threw off the blanket and climbed out of their four-poster bed, a romantic throwback to an era neither she nor Wendy would be welcome in. She unwound the silk wrap from around her head and walked to the balcony doors, throwing them open. A cool spring breeze blew in. She perched on the edge of the clawfoot tub they’d refused to move into the adjoining bathroom after they bought the old house and ruminated on the dream before it fell away, stretching out her legs and back. She was only fifty this year, but already arthritis was threatening.

Their house was in an older part of Salem, a neighbourhood Meena had always loved but could never afford to live in before she joined VenCo. She and Wendy had bought it not long after Meena’s father passed away while writing a sermon in his attic office. Ironically, or perhaps prophetically, the subject was “Our Eternal Paradise.” She wondered if that paradise had been waiting for him, if he had willed it into being after all. If the manifestation of heaven could be achieved through sheer stubbornness, Josiah Frederick Good, the descendant of one of the original colonial witches, would be the one to do it. Because of his genealogy, Pastor Good had spent his entire life trying to make good with Jesus.

A yellow bird sang her down the stairs, like the opening trill of a musical. She walked past portraits of the women from her family lines—the British peasants, the West Indian healers, the revolutionaries and mothers—every eye following her.



Meena loved her house—a fresh start. It helped that VenCo had a realtor on the books who had guided her to it right away and had gotten her a great deal. It was wide where it should be wide and narrow in the places it should be narrow, like a gorgeous body, like a secret that revealed more of itself every day. There’d been so much cleanup over the past five years, it would have been easier to just renovate completely. But both she and Wendy agreed the house was a part of their family now, too, so they took the time and effort to reclaim instead of redo, adding to it when the mood struck and funds allowed. The crystal chandelier hanging over the main entrance alone had taken them a month to clean, unhooking and soaking each bead in soapy water. When they got it all done, it looked like a giant glittering birdcage made of light itself. In fact, there were two wild birds on it now. They couldn’t keep them out. Every time someone lifted a window or opened a door, little birds shot in and perched.

Meena crossed the foyer into the bright, clean kitchen. Two full walls were covered in small shelves that held all manner of ingredients in carefully labelled jars. The wide island with its curved faucet and farmer’s sink held bundles of herbs and a stack of books. Since this was also Wendy’s home, there was no room without books. The glass doors to the back were thrown open, and the smell of coffee lingered.

Wendy Kiwenzie sat outside on their stone patio at a heavy oak table that was meant for a formal dining room but now lived here, with vines winding up its carved legs like stockings being knitted into place. Still in her nightshirt and silk dressing gown, she had a pair of small glasses perched on her nose and was reading the Arts section of the New York Times, her long hair in a loose braid over her shoulder.

“Ah, my love,” she said, looking up. “How did you sleep?”

Meena poured herself a black coffee and drank half the cup in one gulp. “The sixth has been found.”

Wendy put down the paper and wrapped her robe more tightly around her. “Where?”

“Your old stomping grounds . . . Toronto.”

“Well, at least it’s close. So you’re not having to run off to Turkey, or someplace even farther.”

“I told you, love, this doesn’t go farther than Turtle Island.” Meena finished her coffee and stretched her arms over her head, then tipped her neck from one side to the other. The dream had left her stiff and drained and yet also weirdly energized. “The Oracle said the spoons are New World only. Not that this place is new, just to borrow a troubled phrase . . .”

“How do they know for sure? What if there are more than seven spoons? What if this is bigger than here?” Wendy didn’t add what she was really thinking. Is this about to get dangerous?

“The Oracle said . . .”

“How can we even be sure the Oracle is right? If they knew everything, wouldn’t they gather the damn coven themselves?”

Meena could read the worry in her wife’s tone, so she softened her own. “Wendy, you know that’s not how it goes. They divine, and we act. They are the guidance, and we are the hands.”

She was still trying to wring the meaning out of last night’s dream. The clues for finding the other spoons had been more straightforward. She got a location and a name and sent the last witch off to get the next witch. That was how it was done.

She took a calming breath. “‘Luck has entered the game.’ That’s the line from the dream. What do you think that means?”