VenCo(50)

After a few more songs, Lucky was sweaty and a little too drunk to be hanging out with her grandmother. She needed air, so she headed outside. The door slammed shut behind her, muffling the music and laughter. At least the rain had stopped. Everything was wet and shiny under a half-moon, yellow and low, like a hammock strung between clouds. In this light, the bar didn’t look so ordinary. It looked instead like it had grown from the rocks, built out of layers of salt and grit like a pearl, a hollow pearl lit by Miller High Life neon signs. She breathed deep, and the taste of the ocean filled her throat, so that was the direction she went, down to the shore.

The trees weren’t thick. She had no sooner gone into them than was out the other side, with only a low, half-crumbled wall between her and a rocky beach. She sat on that wall, facing the Atlantic.

She was here, she had actually come. She’d followed the pull she’d felt, and she had met odd, wonderful women who were offering her the chance to be a part of something meaningful. She wasn’t sure yet just what that was, or of the person she could become, but maybe it meant she wasn’t stuck anymore.

“Lettie found me at the mall. Last summer.”

Lucky was startled. She hadn’t heard Freya approach, but then the water was loud here, like a constant exhalation. “I’m sorry, what?”

“My grandmother kicked the bucket while we were on family vacay last year. When we got back, we found out she’d left a small chunk of her savings to each of her grandchildren. And guess who was one of the lucky recipients?” She smirked and pointed at herself with both thumbs. “This guy.”

“Wait . . .”

“Keep up, St. James.” Freya joined Lucky on the wall. “Shit, this is rough.” She stood and brushed the seat of her skinny jeans with the back of a hand. She loosened a stone with the toe of her army boot, picked it up, and chucked it at the water. It made a small plop. “Fuck. I never could figure out how to skip stones.

“Anyway, we got back from that disastrous trip, where I outed myself to my Christian parents, and within a week, like a miracle, a cheque was couriered into my hot little hands. Enough to get an apartment in Cincinnati, to make some changes, and to start actually living and not just waiting for each miserable day to end.”

“What were you doing at the mall?”

Freya tossed a second stone. This one didn’t even reach the waves, but it did slide nicely across the wet shore. “Working. I mean, the cheque wasn’t that big. And Hot Topic was more than happy to add me to the team. Fit right in with the furry who worked the register and the Korean-boy-band-obsessed customers.

“One day I was folding oversized Rob Zombie T-shirts when in walks this angelic woman who comes right over to me and tells me it’s time to go home—to Salem, to the coven. She said I needed to get my ass in motion, because they’d had to wait for me.”

“Wait for what?”

“Until I could call myself by my real name. In order for them to find me, I had to find me first.”

Lucky stood up, scanned the ground, found a flat, oval stone, and loosened it from the gravel. She handed it to Freya. “She had to wait until you started living.”

“You got it, kid.” She tossed the rock, and it skipped, just once, across the bruise-coloured water. Just once, just enough. She clapped her hands and jumped up and down, and Lucky saw that she was still so young. She pumped her fist, then clasped her hands together and turned to Lucky. “You come to the coven when you are ready, not when you want, not when it’s easy. You come when you’re really ready.”

The wind lifted the edges of her bangs, making her squint, and Lucky saw on her face something so calm and steady that she was envious. She wanted it, whatever this was—this certainty, this trust. They walked back to the low stone wall and sat. Then Freya turned to her and said, “My spoon was waiting for me in the land of a busted-ass wizard.”


Sandusky, Ohio, 2021



“Matthew, are you even listening to me?” Her mother’s pitch was reaching the top register, like a kettle at boil.

That’s not my name, Freya thought, closing her eyes against the bright sun, feeling the heat on her face, and trying to remain calm. “Yes, Mom,” she answered out loud.

“Then get out of the damn car.” Sarah-Beth Monahan sighed heavily, slapping the wrinkles out of her beige culottes, the official pants of summer vacation. She wore them every second day, alternating with a pair of light blue slacks with an elastic waistband.

“I’m hungry,” Freya whined, unbuckling the seatbelt and slouching out of the back seat.

“We’ll get sandwiches after the first round,” her father said. He hitched up his cargo shorts, clapped his hands, and headed towards the entrance. “Merlin’s Mini Putt! A Monahan family tradition!”

“Come on, Matty-Matty Fee-Fi-Fatty,” her little brother sang. She cuffed the back of his head.

“Oww!”

“Boys!” their mother hissed. “Cut that out. And stop teasing your brother, Casey. If anything, Matthew could stand to put on a few pounds. He’s been wasting away. In fact, here . . .” She rummaged around in her oversized purse and tossed a chocolate-covered granola bar at her elder one. “Eat this. Now.”

“Right, a slab of preservatives with a side of additives.” Freya rolled her eyes.