The Calling

1. Prophecies

March 2, 1977

I dreamt of Ireland again. As always, the dream left me with a longing that makes no sense. It’s just an image, deceptively simple, innocent really: a small child’s dress of cream linen, blowing on a line against an open blue sky. Behind it the grass slopes up to the base of Slieve Corrofin, with the great rock at the peak in the shape of a lizard’s head. I remember the locals calling it the Ballynigel dragon, though I reckon that was more for the tourists than anything else.

So why does Ballynigel still haunt my dreams? And what do I make of the fact that the dream returns when I am eighteen, two nights before I’m to marry Grania? If, as we are taught, everything has meaning, then what does this mean? Am I being warned away from the marriage? No, that seems impossible. I’ve been dreaming of that dress since I was eight.

Besides, Grania is three months pregnant with my child. And she’s a good match. Her family is one of the wealthiest in Liathach, our coven. More to the point, her mother is the high priestess of Liathach and has no other children, and Grania has no ambition to lead the coven herself. She’s happy to let me take that role. I’ve always known that one day Liathach would be mine to lead. Being Greer MacMuredach’s son-in-law will make the passing of power that much easier. Together Grania and I will raise a dynasty full of true Woodbane magick.

— Neimhidh

At eight-thirty the sky still held the paleness of early morning as I drove south on the New York State Thruway. There were almost no other cars on the road, and the world seemed still and hushed in the chill January air. In the backseat of Das Boot, my enormous ’71 Plymouth Valiant, Bree Warren, Robbie Gurevitch, Raven Meltzer, and Hunter’s cousin, Sky Eventide, were crammed together. All were sleeping—Raven half collapsed against Sky, Bree snuggling with Robbie. The only other person awake was Hunter, who sat in the passenger seat beside me. I glanced at him, saw his chiseled profile intent as he studied a map. Sometimes I wondered if Hunter ever lived a moment without that focused intensity. Did he even sleep intensely?

Maybe I would find out over the coming weekend. The six of us were about to spend four nights in New York City. I’d never spent that much time with Hunter, and something deep inside me thrummed with pleasure at his being so close to me. Things were still new between us, but I knew without question that I loved him. Most of the time I felt pretty certain that he loved me, too, although sometimes I got insecure about that. I had told him how I felt weeks ago, but he had never said it back to me. Who knew—maybe he just didn’t feel it was necessary. I hadn’t had the nerve to ask him.

“Morgan, you’ll need to take the Palisades Parkway to the George Washington Bridge, then get the Harlem River Drive to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt motorway,” he said, sounding very British.

“We call them highways here,” I said, unable to resist ribbing him.

“The highway, then. It will take us straight down the east side of the city.”

“I know.” I’d never driven to New York City before, but I’d gone with my family plenty of times. From Widow’s Vale, about two hours north, it was a pretty direct route.

“How fast are you going?”

I glanced at the speedometer. “Seventy-five.”

He frowned. I smiled. Responsible Hunter. At nineteen, he was the youngest member of the International Council of Witches, a Seeker, charged with ferreting out witches who used their power inappropriately and administering punishment. It was a serious job. Too serious, I sometimes felt. Since I’d met Hunter, I’d seen more of Wicca’s dark side than I cared to.

About two months earlier I’d learned that I was in fact not the biological child of the people I’d always thought of as my parents. Rather, I was adopted and a blood witch, the descendant of one of the Seven Great Clans of Wicca. What’s more, I was heir to an incredible legacy of power.

Magick had brought me searing grief. It had made me question absolutely everything I’d ever believed to be true. But magick was also the most amazing gift: an opening of the senses, a surfacing of ancestral memories, an exhilarating connection to the earth, and a strength I’d never imagined possible. And it had brought Hunter into my life. Hunter, who I loved more than I’d thought possible.

“You’re almost up to eighty,” Hunter said, sounding disapproving.

I slowed down to sixty-five. “There’s no one else on the road,” I pointed out.

“Except perhaps a police officer,” he warned. I felt his green eyes on me, and when I glanced at him, he smiled. “Pity we don’t travel by broomstick anymore,” he said.

“Did we ever?” I asked, honestly curious. “It sounds like fun.”

Hunter shrugged. “Really? I suspect it would be awfully uncomfortable—hard seat, no heat or air-conditioning, bugs constantly flying into your mouth….”

I glanced at him again and saw the glint of amusement in his eyes. I felt a rush of delight that made me break into a goofy grin. “I guess I’ll stick to driving for now.”

We rode in silence for a while. The haze of thin clouds in the sky was starting to burn off, the sky settling into the pale, crystalline blue so typical of winter skies. There were a few more cars on the road now.

Hunter was the reason we were all going to New York City. Hunter, my dream, and the ancient boiler in Widow’s Vale High, which had broken down the Wednesday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, miraculously extending a three-day weekend to five days.

As it turned out, the council had taken my dream very seriously. They considered it a prophetic vision and had ordered Hunter to investigate. “They think the animals in your dream were actually members of a Woodbane coven called Amyranth,” Hunter had told me when he’d gotten the council’s directive.

“Amyranth?” I frowned. Where had I heard that name before?

Of the Seven Great Clans, the Woodbanes were known for their tendency to covet and abuse power. But there were also Woodbane covens, like Belwicket, the one my birth parents had belonged to, that had forsworn evil.

“Amyranth is not one of the good ones,” Hunter told me. “It’s one of the worst. It’s the only coven believed to practice the forbidden magick of shape-shifting. Actually, another coven, Turneval, also used to shape-shift. But Turneval was disbanded in the early seventies, after their core members were stripped of their magick by the council. Amyranth has avoided the same fate by operating in deep secrecy. Members usually maintain membership in another coven; Amyranth is their secret coven.” He gave me a sideways look. “Selene Belltower was a member of Amyranth.”

“Oh.” That’s where I’d heard the name Amyranth before. I shuddered involuntarily at the thought of Selene. “So we’re talking very scary.”

Hunter had been sent to Widow’s Vale last fall to ferret out a group of Woodbane witches who were using dark magick to destroy their opponents and increase their own power. Their local leader had been Selene Belltower, the mother of Cal Blaire, Hunter’s half brother and my first love. Though I was Woodbane myself, Selene had wanted to drain me of my power, and she’d used Cal to get to me. When that plan had failed, Selene had kidnapped my younger sister, Mary K., forcing Hunter and me into a horrible showdown with her, just before Christmas. She’d nearly killed Hunter and me both, and I worried that Mary K. might still be suffering some subtle bad effects from having been her captive.

Cal had stepped in front of me and taken the bolt of dark energy she’d aimed at me. Now Cal was dead, killed by his own mother. Although he’d used and betrayed me, in the end he’d given his life for me. I was still coming to terms with that: both with the fact that the beautiful boy I’d loved so much was gone and that he was gone because of me.

Selene had also died that night—and though I certainly hadn’t meant to kill her, I was haunted by the fear that my magick had somehow contributed to her death. I’d never seen death up close. It was so final and empty and awful. Seeing Cal and Selene alive one minute, dead the next had changed something inside me. For all of Selene’s and Cal’s formidable powers, they were as mortal as anyone else. Ever since that night I’d looked at everyone I knew and loved with a new awareness. We were all so fragile, all capable of being so easily extinguished. I couldn’t help thinking of that again as I drove on this beautiful morning.

“Are you all right?” Hunter asked softly. “If you grip that wheel any more tightly, you’re going to wrench it off the steering column.”

“I’m fine.” I forced my hands to relax.

“Are you thinking about Selene and Cal?” Hunter guessed. He was very sensitive to my emotions. No one had ever read me with such precision. Sometimes it made feel vulnerable and exposed. Sometimes it was weirdly comforting. At that moment it was a little of both.

I nodded as we whizzed past an exit. No love had been lost between Hunter and Cal. They’d never known each other except as enemies. But Hunter knew I’d loved Cal and was doing his best to be respectful of that. More than anyone, he understood how much coming into my powers had cost me.

“Let’s talk about something else,” I said. “Can we go over the details of this vision one more time? I’m still not clear on what it is we’re supposed to do.”

“We’re not supposed to do anything,” Hunter said. “You’re staying out of this. I don’t want you taking any risks, Morgan.”

I felt a prickle of annoyance. We’d had this argument several times in the two days since the council had contacted Hunter. Because I was the one who’d had the dream, the council had asked that I accompany Hunter, just in case he needed to consult with me. I, of course, wanted to go. It was my dream, after all. Besides, I loved the idea of spending time in the city with Hunter.

Hunter hadn’t been so keen on the idea, though. “It’s too dangerous,” he’d told me flatly. “For you of all people to go walking into a nest of Woodbanes…”

He explained that the council believed Selene had been acting on behalf of Amyranth; it was possible I still was a target. I couldn’t pretend that prospect didn’t frighten me. But Selene was dead now, nothing bad had happened to me in the weeks since her death, and I was starting to feel safer. Safe enough that my desire to go with Hunter outweighed my fear.

“The council thinks I should go,” I’d argued.

“The council are a bunch of—” He broke off, pressing his lips together in irritation. My eyes widened. Was he really about to bad-mouth the International Council of Witches?

“They don’t always consider the risk to individuals,” he said after a minute. “They’re not out here, doing the legwork. Anyway, you can’t go,” he went on. “You’ve got school. Your parents aren’t going to let you take two days off to go down to the city just because a bunch of witches in London think you should.” He was right about that, I had to admit.

But then the school boiler had broken down, and Bree had suggested that we combine Hunter’s mission with a road trip to her dad’s New York City apartment. After a long discussion my parents had said I could go, and after that even Hunter couldn’t come up with any more good reasons for me not to. I smiled, thinking about it. It must have been fate.

By late Wednesday night our road trip had expanded to include six members of Kithic, our coven. Sky was coming along because she and Hunter, who were cousins, always looked out for each other. Raven wanted to be with Sky, and Robbie had come to be with Bree.

Traffic thickened as we headed down the Palisades Parkway toward the George Washington Bridge. I slowed. “So the animals in my dream were actually Amyranth witches in their animal forms—have I got that right?”

“Right,” Hunter confirmed. “We think so. We know they use animal masks in some of their darker rites. It’s rarer for a witch to actually be able to take on animal form, but they are capable of that as well. The council thinks that the wolf cub on the table must represent the child of the witch who appeared as the wolf.”

My mouth fell open. “But—I mean, it looked like the cub was about to be sacrificed. Are you saying a mother—or father—is out to kill their own child?”

Hunter nodded. “That’s the theory,” he said quietly. “The most likely scenario is that the victim’s power is going to be drained. Which usually means death.”

“What else?” I asked after a moment, trying to match his calm.

“Well, now we get to what the council doesn’t know,” Hunter said. “First of all, we aren’t sure which cell of Amyranth is planning this event.”

“How many cells are there?”

Hunter blew out a long breath. “Four that we know of. One in San Francisco—that was Selene’s group—one near Glasgow in Scotland, one in northern France, and one in New York City. We’ve managed to get spies into the other three cells, but unfortunately, the one in New York is the one that the council knows the least about. Basically, all we know is that it exists. We don’t know the identity of any of its members, can’t even connect it to any specific incidents of dark magick. It’s the most shadowy of all the branches.”

I tried to make sense of all of this. “So the council doesn’t know who the wolf really is.”

“Or who the cub is,” Hunter said. “We believe that he or she is a young witch in terrible danger. But we have no idea who this witch is or why he or she has been chosen as a victim.”

“And your job?” I asked.

“As I said, we’ve already got agents inside the other three Amyranth cells, who will find out as much as they can,” Hunter said. “Since we have so little information about the New York coven, I’m to try to fill in the gaps, find the witch who’s targeted, and, if it turns out the target is here in New York—”

“We’ve got to find a way to protect him,” I said, finishing his sentence.

“I’ve got to find a way to protect him,” Hunter amended. “You’ve got to relax and enjoy the city. Shop, see museums, eat bagels, visit the Statue of Liberty.”

“Oh, come on. You’re going to need help,” I argued. “I mean, you’ve got nothing to go on. Where do you even begin to find this stuff out? Can we scry or something?”

“Don’t you think the council has already tried all the methods of getting information by magick?” Hunter asked gently. “We’re at a dead end. It’s a matter of legwork now. And you can’t help me on this.” He laid his fingers gently on my lips as I started to protest. “You know it as well as I do, Morgan. It’s simply too dangerous for you.” He looked troubled. “Which reminds me of the other thing the council couldn’t figure out.”

“What’s that?” I whacked the horn impatiently. Traffic had slowed to a crawl, even though we were still miles from the exit for the bridge.

“We don’t know why you’re the one who was given this dream.”

A cold finger of fear traced its way down my back. I swallowed and was silent.

“Gurevitch, get your elbow out of my ribs,” Raven murmured. There was a general stirring in the back, then Robbie leaned over the blue vinyl bench seat. “Morning,” he said to us. “Where are we?”

“About five miles north of the city,” Hunter answered.

“I’m starving,” Robbie said. “How about we stop for breakfast?”

“I brought muffins,” Bree announced. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her holding up a large white paper bag, managing to look both sleepy and cover-girl beautiful. Bree was tall and slim, with dark eyes and sleek, mink-brown hair. She and Robbie, our good friend since elementary school, had recently started going out—sort of. Robbie was in love with Bree, but when he’d told her that, she’d gotten “all squirrelly,” as Robbie put it. Yet she continued to see him. What, exactly, she felt for him was a puzzle to me. Not that I was any expert on coupledom. Hunter was only the second guy I’d gone out with.

“Got any lemon poppy seed?” Raven asked as she rooted through the muffin bag. “Want one, Sky?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Sky said, yawning.

Sky and Raven were a study in contrasts. Sky was slim, pale, blond, with a penchant for androgynous clothing and a delicate beauty that belied her considerable power. Raven, Widow’s Vale’s resident goth girl, favored a bad-girl wardrobe that left very little to the imagination. Her current outfit featured a tight black vinyl bustier that revealed the circle of flames tattooed around her belly button. A purple stud in her nose flashed as she turned her head. The interesting thing was that Raven, who had set a record for seducing guys, was now seeing Sky. And Sky was in love with Raven. It was definitely an attraction of opposites.

Hunter took a cranberry muffin from Bree and fed me a chunk of it as I navigated the torturous bridge traffic. “Thanks,” I mumbled through a sticky mouthful, and he reached out to wipe a crumb from the corner of my mouth. Our eyes met and held, and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks as I saw the desire in his gaze.

“Um, Morgan?” Robbie said from the backseat. “The road is that way.” He pointed through the windshield.

Still flushed, I wrenched my attention back to the road and tried to ignore what being so close to Hunter was doing to all my nerve endings. But I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to stay with him in Bree’s father’s apartment.

Mr. Warren was a successful lawyer with clients in the city and upstate New York. I knew his city apartment was in the East Twenties. Even if we weren’t going to have the place to ourselves, being in a New York City apartment with Hunter seemed wildly romantic. I pictured us in the master bedroom, gazing out at a night view of the Manhattan skyline.

And then what? I asked myself with a twinge of alarm. Hunter, sensing it, took his hand off my thigh. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said quickly.

“Are you sure?”

“Um—I’m not really ready to talk about it,” I said.

“Fair enough.” I could feel Hunter deliberately turning his senses away from me, leaving me to examine my own thoughts in peace.

Cal had been my first boyfriend. He’d been so beautiful, so charismatic and seductive. Not only that, he’d introduced me to magick and all its beauty. He’d told me we weremùirn beatha dàns, soul mates. And I’d wanted to believe him. Every fiber of my being had wanted to be with him, yet I hadn’t felt ready for the final step of going to bed with him. Now I wondered if part of me had known all along that Cal was lying to me, manipulating me. It made my grief for him into a more complicated thing, layered with resentment and anger.

But Hunter was different. I loved him, trusted him, and was completely, soul-shakingly attracted to him. So why did it scare me to think about actually sleeping with him? I glanced in the rearview mirror, studying my friends. Robbie was a virgin like me, but I was pretty sure that wouldn’t last long, now that he and Bree were together. He wanted her desperately. I didn’t know about Sky, but I knew that Bree had lost her virginity in the tenth grade, and Raven—well, I couldn’t imagine Raven ever being a virgin.

What was wrong with me, that I was seventeen and still so inexperienced?

“You’ll want to take the next exit,” Hunter murmured, and I was grateful for the gentle prompt. I merged into the traffic on the Harlem River Drive, and we swept across the top of Manhattan to the FDR Drive and the East River.

Quite suddenly the open view of the winter sky disappeared. The air became tinged with gray, and billboards and tall brick projects rose to my right. The traffic, already slow, became stop and go; impatient drivers leaned on horns. A van in front of me spewed a cloud of black exhaust. I caught a glimpse of lead-gray river water to my left, with industrial buildings on the far side. A taxi driver yelled unintelligibly at me as he passed on the right.

I felt a surge of raw, boisterous energy. We were in the city.