I’ve never been much of an artist, but, dammit, I had to draw everything I saw, or at least try. It might look like a toddler had done it when I finished, but it would be something to hold onto for when I go back. I was going back, there’s no doubt in that plan, but, first, I needed backup. I needed the coven. I just hoped this time around they’d venture out to help me.
Standing in my dining room, I moved the chairs out to the walls to give myself space. I’d bought some poster board on my way home and I laid it across the table along with a sketch pencil I’d also picked up. See me being all professional? I tried to recreate the waterfalls, and the break in the water I’d looked through, well, almost tumbled down.
My efforts ended up looking like a bunch of dark lines trying to represent water. It was a mess. Maybe I could use my powers to draw it out? Hell, my luck, I’d end up recreating it in real life. Wouldn’t that be a gas?
I jumped when I heard a knock at my door, not expecting company. I set the pencil down and headed toward the front of my house. Peeking through the peephole, I was surprised to see Zelda on the other side.
I quickly opened it and bounced on my feet in excitement. “Zelda! Zomigawd I cannot believe you’re here! I’m so excited. Holy shit, I have to tell you what I found!” Her long, red hair flowed in perfect curls and her slender frame was beautiful with her glowing skin. Motherhood suited her well.
“Whoa, slow down, speedy.” She closed the door and stood for a moment, then looked around my home.
As often as I’d entertained the coven here, bringing them closer to me, trying to find a way to get into their good graces, nothing had worked. At least nothing till now.
“Right,” I started and motioned for her to follow me toward the kitchen. “Would you like a tour of my humble abode?”
She shook her head. “Another time. What’s so urgent that you insisted on seeing me?”
“I could tell you, but let me show you instead!” I led her into the dining room and pointed to the table. “This here! I’ve found something no one else ever has!”
She leaned over my drawing and frowned. “So, you found a kid’s drawing and claimed it as your own?”
I huffed and shook my head. “No, I drew this.”
“Oh, well, geez, could use some work.” With a tsk she turned to look at it. “No offense intended.”
I smiled and waved it off. “None taken.” Of course, I was offended. This was a piece of art, dammit! She’d just compared it to a child’s drawing. But, hadn’t I just done the same earlier?
“Okay, so I was hunting for some stuff for a client and I stumbled across a veil to another dimension, world, something! Oh, Zelda, just imagine! My picture could be on the cover of Time magazine!”
“Um, no you wouldn’t be on any cover. You realize stuff like this can’t be brought to the attention of humans, just like shifters can’t be known? The humans would freak the hell out. They’re better off not knowing, you know?”
My excitement quickly fizzled. Rather than jumping in excitement for me, she was the pin that poked my bubble. “Wow, talk about raining on someone’s parade.” I picked up my drawing and turned it over, face down. “Well, I was hoping to see if you could get me a meeting with Baba Yaga. I’d like to present this as a find and see what we can do—”
“Um, stop right there,” she interrupted.
I met her gaze, hopeful.
“That won’t happen, but I can go on your behalf and talk with her.”
Baba Yaga was like the queen bee on the counsel of the witch elders. Nothing happened without her knowing. She was always present without actually being there. She was the mom who had eyes in the back of her head, in a very creepy sort of way. The counsel consisted of four or five people, usually women. They all ruled in favor of whatever Baba Yaga wanted. If you ruled against her, you could be shunned, so there wasn’t much of a democracy there.
I offered a softer smile and held onto a sliver of hope this would work, and I would finally be welcomed to the cool kid’s table. “You’d do that?”
She nodded. “Sure, I would. I’ll do this for you because, to be honest, I think it’s rotten how you’re treated. You can come with me, but you’ll need to hang outside the room. Baba Yamacoochi,” she often called Baba Yaga different names, “won’t allow you in for the gathering.”
Well, it was something and wasn’t a no, but not quite a yes. It still hurt like hell. I was a witch, but they refused to acknowledge me and my powers. I upheld the rules and never broke them, yet they refused to let me play in the same sandbox. “Zelda, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she said and took an uncomfortable step back. “I don’t do favors often, so please, don’t make it a habit.”
I knew she was referring to bringing me to the covenstead. I shook my head. “It’s not a favor. I just want to know why they’re so against me being part of the coven.”
Her eyes widened for a second and if I’d blinked, I’d have missed it. Does she know something I don’t? Yeah, probably. No one tells me anything. I’m my own one woman show without a damned sidekick. Dammit, now I want a partner in crime. Like a chicken. Chickens are so cool.
“I can’t really answer that question, Cesha.”
“Why not? You must know why.”
She lowered her gaze to the floor and shifted side to side on her feet. “It’s not really for me to say.” She looked at me again, and her features screamed, “Please don’t ask me why.”
With a long sigh, I nodded. With that, I figured I’d take as much as they were willing to give. “Okay, so when do we leave?”
“She is not one of us, so, no, she cannot come in,” Baba Yaga said in a loud, overbearing voice.
I sat in a chair just outside the room they were in. The walls were a gross beige color. It was depressing. They needed a light yellow or maybe lavender in here. Beige was so boring.
Pictures adorned the walls of the different witches, with Baba Yaga’s on top. She had on a bright, lime-green catsuit with a black and white boa around her neck. I have no idea who dressed her that day or told her it was an appropriate outfit, but they should most definitely be fired. It was a horrible look.
Below her were two more witches, both equally without fashion sense. And down the line was a picture of Zelda. The pictures were arranged in a similar fashion to a family tree, showing a dynamic lineage of witches. I closed my eyes for a moment and pretended my picture was up there with theirs. Did it make me feel like I was twelve rather than twenty-five? Hell yes, but I didn’t care.
“But, please, Baba Hooha, give her a chance. She thinks she found a veil to another world and—”
“Stop right here. You ever call me a different name again I’ll put you back in the pokey.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.
Baba Yaga continued. “She is not one of us, so, no, we will not send reinforcements. You also will not aid her in any ridiculous quest she feels she must go on.”
I slunk down in my chair, her words cutting me deeper than anything else ever has.
Never to be one of them.
She won’t send help for my “ridiculous quest.”
“Well, fine, then I’ll just go on my own,” I whispered and stood from my chair. My chest felt tight with betrayal, but it was loneliness also. I didn’t have a coven of my own so how could they betray me? Even as a child, I’d been an outcast.
Living in an orphanage until sixteen wasn’t the life anyone would have envisioned for themselves. My mom died during childbirth and my father wasn’t listed on the birth certificate. I lived in foster care before the orphanage thing happened. I realized I had powers at the young age of six, thanks to the little shits who were my foster brothers and sisters. When I woke one morning with half my hair cut to the scalp and permanent marker on my face, I cried in the bathroom and set the carpets on fire.
After my final foster home fell through, the state decided right then to place me in an orphanage.
Try growing up with nothing to your name, no one to call your parents, no one to love you. It’s a lot to swallow but I learned at an early age to be independent and rely on no one. It’s also why I have issues with authority.
A tear slid down my cheek as I made my way toward the door. I’d leave Zelda here and Uber my way home since she’d driven us. Then I stopped when I heard something clang on the table inside the room. It reverberated like metal. I turned back and strode over to the door. Leaning against it, I listened in.
“There’s a prophecy, Zelda.”
“Um, what?” Zelda asked.
Then the sound of air blasting erupted around the door. I looked down and saw fog billowing from beneath the door. As soon as it touched the bare skin of my legs, it burned.
“Shit,” I whispered and stepped back. The sounds inside were then muffled, and I couldn’t hear anything.
“So, you keep me from joining the coven, you keep me at an arm’s length, and now you’re keeping me from knowing about some kind of prophecy? What the ever-living fuck?”
Then the door burst open and I looked at Zelda as she came through. “Come on, Cesha, we need to get out of here.” Her eyes were downcast with a mix of anger and sadness.
I glanced behind her into the room where Baba Yaga was putting paper back into a metal tube. I frowned. “What was that all that about? And why put up a spell to keep me from listening in?”
“Um, that wasn’t me,” Zelda announced and pushed the door open to walk outside.
I stood just on the inside and waited. When she turned around, her hands went up as if to ask what?
So, I pushed my way out the door and started toward the road. “Fuck this shit,” I yelled out. “If you don’t want to help me, then I’ll walk the fuck home.”
“Stop acting like such a child, Cesha, and get in the car. Let me drive you home.”
“Nope, I’m fine. I’ll Uber my ass before I get in with you.”
“Get back here right now,” she yelled, and I recognized the mom tone in her voice.
I growled and turned to face her. My hands fisted at my sides, my jaw twitching. “Why? So you can rub it in my face one more time how I’m not worthy to be in your most important clique of witches? Well, guess what? I no longer want in!”
“Now you are acting like a child.” She crossed her arms over her chest and raised a brow. “There are some things that can’t be undone. Trust me on this.”
“How about letting me make my own decisions?”
“And look how far that’s gotten you.”
I frowned and took a few steps toward her. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing. Just look at your life, Cesha. You’re living it on the edge of disaster. You pull off job after job, barely getting away with your life. How do you know these thugs won’t kill you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How do you know one of your shifters won’t kill you?”
“Now, that’s not fair. They’re like family. Hell, they are family.”
She had a point; it wasn’t the same, but, whatever. “I’m really done with all this, Zelda. I’m tired of never fitting in anywhere. I have a nice place and a beautiful car I totally adore. I work my ass off to have the finer things in life, and trust me, I’m not starving.”
“Yeah, I can tell with that shiny Porsche in your driveway and five-bedroom house—where you live alone.”
“Ouch, that hurt.”
“Which part? The house or the car?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, done with this conversation. “When you can’t buy yourself a family, I suppose the next best thing is to buy yourself pretty things to pass the time.”
She sighed and closed the distance to me. “I can’t come close to understanding what it feels like to be in your stylish shoes. I love clothes, handbags, and everything chic, but you need to figure out what will fulfill you. And if it’s not here, then go find it.”
She lowered her head just slightly on her last word and I had to wonder if it had a subtle undertone to go explore the realm I’d found earlier. “All right, fine, take me home. But, first, you’re buying me dinner.”
She smiled and headed toward her car. “Cheeseburgers?”
“Hell yes,” I said with a grin and climbed into her ride. This meeting hadn’t quite gone as I’d anticipated, but she did, at least, stand up for me. I wasn’t happy with the outcome, but I was being treated to dinner, so there was that.
Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow I’d venture to Starbucks and map out more of my plans for going back to this new world I’d discovered.