Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)(21)

“Does she ever mention me?” Justine had asked Rosemary recently.

“She asks how you are,” Rosemary had said. “But she’s as stubborn as ever. Until you agree to join the coven, she says there’s nothing for you to discuss.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“I believe you should decide what’s best for yourself,” Rosemary had said, “and don’t allow anyone, even your mother, to pressure you into making a commitment you’re not ready for. I’ve said as much to Marigold. If you don’t feel called to it, you shouldn’t join.”

“What if I never feel ready?”

“Then the coven will go on as we always have. Maybe it’s fate’s way of telling us that we’re not ready for the power of thirteen.”

Sage had agreed. “No one can tell you what your path is,” she had told Justine. “But someday you’ll discover it.” She had smiled pensively. “And it won’t be at all what you expected.”

In her twenties, Sage had met and married Neil Winterson, a lighthouse keeper, and had gone to live on Cauldron Island with him. The lighthouse had been built at the turn of the century to guide shipping in the active waters of Boundary Pass, between Washington State and British Columbia. Every night Neil had climbed the curving staircase to the glass cupola, and had lit the Fresnel kerosene lamp, made with forty pieces of French crystal. Once lit, it could be seen from fourteen miles away. In heavy fog, Neil and Sage had taken turns ringing the lighthouse’s thousand-pound bell to warn approaching ships.

Sage and Neil’s marriage had been a happy one despite their disappointment over not having children. Five years after the wedding, Neil had gone out in a small wooden dory in good weather, and had never returned. His boat was found capsized, and his body was later found still wearing a life jacket. Most likely a gust of wind had knocked the dory over, and Neil hadn’t been able to right it.

The members of the coven had all helped Sage through her mourning, some of them living with her at the lighthouse for short periods of time. Sage had assumed her husband’s job as lightkeeper, and she also taught a half dozen children in the one-room schoolhouse on the island.

Approximately a year after Neil’s death, Rosemary had come to stay at the lighthouse for a week. Sage had asked her to stay another week, and another, and somehow that visit had turned into a lifetime together. “Love will break your heart,” Sage had once told Justine, “but love can also mend it. Not many things in life are both the cause and the cure.”

The phone rang twice, and someone picked up. “Hello?” came Sage’s familiar voice, sweetly frayed like antique lace and faded roses.

“Sage, it’s me.”

“I was expecting your call. What’s the trouble?”

“Why do you assume there’s trouble?”

“I was thinking about you last night. And I saw blood on the moon. Tell me what’s happened.”

Justine blinked and frowned. A red-hazed moon was a bad sign. She wanted to contradict Sage and tell her that nothing had happened, and the sign had nothing to do with her. But she was more than a little worried that it might.

“Sage,” she asked carefully, “do you know anything about a curse that someone might have cast on me? A geas?”

The silence was as thick as molten tar.

“A geas,” Sage finally repeated in a meditative tone. “What in the world would give you that idea, dear?”

“You’re not fooling me, Sage. You’re an even worse liar than I am. Tell me what you know.”

“Some conversations,” Sage observed, “aren’t meant to fly through the air between telephones. They’re meant to happen in a civilized way with people talking face-to-face.”

Justine had sometimes found Sage’s evasiveness charming. However, this was not one of those occasions. “Some conversations have to happen on the phone because some people are busy working.”

“We haven’t seen you in so long,” Sage said wistfully. “It’s been months since you visited.”

“It’s been three weeks.” Anxiety spread inside her like an ink stain. “Sage, you have to tell me about this geas. What exactly is it? And what would happen if I tried to break it?”

She heard the rush of an indrawn breath.

“Don’t do anything rash, Justine. There are things you’re not aware of.”

“Obviously.”

“You’re a novice at spell-casting. If you tried to lift a geas, you could go from the frying pan right into the fire.”

“Yeah, see, that’s what I’m pissed about. Why are my only choices ‘frying pan’ or ‘fire’? Why have you been keeping this from me? Didn’t it occur to you that I had a right to know?”

“Where did you get this idea of a geas in the first place?”

Although Justine wanted to blurt out that she’d found out the truth from the Triodecad, she managed to hold her tongue.

The silence rode out until Sage asked, “Have you spoken with Marigold?”

Justine’s eyes widened. “Does my mother know about this, too? Damn it, Sage, tell me what’s going on!”

“Wait a moment. Rosemary has just come in from the garden.”

Justine heard a muffled conference. She fidgeted and drummed her fingers on the desk. “Sage?” she asked impatiently, but there was no reply. She stood, pacing around the tiny office, the cell phone clamped to her ear.