VenCo(24)

Stella turned the TV off. She got up and removed the M&M’S, then tucked Lucky under the thin blanket. She placed a hand on the girl’s chest to feel the rise and fall of her breathing. It was something she’d done when Lucky was smaller, just to be sure. She carried too much stress, this one, even in her sleep.

“I know we have to move,” she whispered. And she did. Clermont had told her about the eviction after he got his letter. She forgot about it right away, but every now and then, it came back, the knowledge that she would have to leave her home. She knew that Lucky was trying to protect her, to find a way to make sure they were safe and housed, hopefully together. And that Lucky couldn’t bring her into those decisions, because, well, Stella didn’t hold information that well anymore. She didn’t know when it had started, but she knew it was the truth. Like tonight—she’d been watching TV, trimming her toenails, and the next thing she knew, she was naked, at the edge of a pool.

She watched her granddaughter sleep. She looked so much like her father when she slept. It brought back the good memories of Jerry, before she lost him, before he started breaking into their apartment to steal things to pawn for the drugs that hollowed him out.

She walked to the window and looked out over the parking lot to the headlights passing by on the highway. She felt something gnawing at the blurry edges of her thoughts. Something was changing. She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed tight, hoping that it would hold her together long enough to make it to whatever end was coming.



The Mother sat at the boardroom table by herself. She hadn’t bothered to call in the others. She needed time to think and the freedom to be worried. With the Oracle together, she very often had to be the calming balm in the mix. But today, with the sixth on her way to Salem, she needed to consider everything carefully, and that meant she needed to be worried.

The truth was, the asshole in the desert was more dangerous than anyone could imagine. She wanted to ignore the rumours, to chalk up the texts as old-fashioned hysteria, to boil him down to machismo gone awry. But Jay Christos was Benandanti—the men who hunted at night and sometimes in the dream space—and an immortal one, at that.

Several of the Crone’s ancient volumes were splayed on the table in front of her, open to faded line drawings. Illustrations of men in long cloaks gliding over the crops of sleeping farmers; men in seventeenth-century pomp on horseback, chasing hags through the woods; men setting fire to woodpiles with struggling women crying out on top. These were from the before time, before the Inquisition decided anyone who had the power to travel outside of their body—even men who claimed to use it to fight evil for God—were themselves witches. The Benandanti were soon hunted like the women they pursued. Historians said they were hunted to extinction. Actual history saw it differently.

The men went underground and now had both God and vengeance fueling their mission. Their persecution was because of the witches, and, salt in their holy wounds, they were being called by the same name. Burrowed as they were, hiding in plain sight, they wormed their way through the years, killing anyone who could be a witch—rumour was Jack the Ripper himself was Benandanti, hunting the dark streets of London for powerful women.

After 1913, there were no more sightings, no more talk. It seemed they had well and truly been bred out of existence. The witch community waited to make sure the coast was really clear before forming their own group—VenCo—and starting work on the right to vote. This would be a new era for women and witch-kind. Once again, witches started popping up in proper society, séances became fashionable, and the occult was dinner conservation. But slowly, quietly, the killings continued.

The first Oracle was pulled together with the Mother’s own grandmother sitting in the position she now held. She was the one to write down the whispered story of the spoons, to demand a Booker who could read the stars be brought in to help, who turned out to be the mother of the current Crone. It was this grandmother who went missing, only to turn up murdered at the hands of the last remaining Benandanti, one who played by the old rules because he was, in fact, very fucking old—Jay Christos.

The Mother had to make tough decisions—that was part of being a Mother. She had to think of the entire family at all times, before herself, before any one person or cause. The Crone and the Maiden knew about Christos, but they didn’t know how he stole sleep from the Mother. How he featured in her nightmares when she did manage to nod off. Just how big a shadow he threw over her life.

And now, knowing that Christos was on the move? Knowing that he was sharp and angry, trained and—most dangerous of all—having the time of his life hunting? Some days she envied the general public. Today she would have given anything to be a barista or a soccer mom with two mediocre kids. Today it was a very bad day to be a witch. Especially one who alone understood the danger that was slinking around the new coven like a wolf.





10

Jay Finds the Weak Link




There were no lights on in the top-floor apartment, hadn’t been all night. No movement in the windows. No one came in or walked out. The bitch wasn’t home. It was starting to feel like no one in the entire building was home. He considered giving up, but then a woman in a housecoat opened the front door carrying two very full bags of garbage.

Jay sprang from the back seat of the sedan and bounded up the steps.

“Here, let me help you with that,” he called out, both gloved hands held up to show that they were empty.