Table of Contents
A dangerous temptation...
I closed my eyes and murmured the words that would let me access the cats power. Within seconds I felt their feline life forces. Without thinking, I coiled my muscles. I crouched and jumped easily to the top of our seven-foot brick wall. I landed on my toes, arms out for balance, but felt solid and secure.
Laughing aloud, I raised my face to the sky. I saw differently, heard differently, tasted the air more powerfully. I smelled other animals, damp brick, green leaves and decaying plants and dirt. I was giddy with sensation, thrilled, with fierce anticipation about exploring the whole new world opened to me. My night vision was amazing, and I gazed at everything, seeing every dark leaf, every swaying plant, every cricket in the grass, one crisp, clear snapshot at a time.
I was super-Clio, bursting with life and power, and a dark and terrible joy rose up in me.
I sat down again in my circle, trying to still my frantically beating heart. I didnt want to lose this feeling, this incredible, exhilarating extra-ness. It would be so easy to just take it, take it and keep it, and not care about the consequences.
BY CATE TIERNAN
BALERFIRE
Book One: A Chalice of Wind
Book Two: A Circle of Ashes
Book Three: A Feather of Stone
Book Four: A Necklace of Water
SWEEP
Book One: Book of Shadows
Book Two: The Cover
Book Three: Blood Witch
Book Four: Dark Magick
Book Five: Awakening
Book Six: Spellbound
Book Seven: The Calling
Book Eight: Changeling
Book Nine: Strife
Book Ten: Seeker
Book Eleven: Origins
Book Twelve: Eclipse
Book Thirteen: Reckoning
Book Fourteen: Full Circle
Super Edition: Nights Child
With love to Fiona Morgan,
who supports me in so many ways.
Clio
I heard a faint sound behind me and froze, my hands inside my canvas bag. I waited, sending my senses out more strongly, but felt nothing out of the ordinary: only sleeping birds, neighborhood dogs and cats, mice. Insects.
Ick.
I let out a deep breath. It was a new moon, which meant this cemetery was even blacker than usual. I was tucked into a remote corner, kneeling on the grass between two tall crypts. I was invisible from all directions, unless someone was right in front of me.
It was almost midnight. I had school tomorrow and knew I would feel like crap in the morning. Too bad. This was my chance, and I wasnt going to waste it.
Quickly and silently I drew a five-foot circle on the ground with sand. Inside the circle, I set four red candles at the four compass points. Red for blood, lineage, passion, fire. I was in the very center, with a small stone bowl filled with chunks of coal in front of me. I lit the candles and the coal, blowing on the coal until it was glowing red.
Then I sat back, gently rested my hands palms up on my knees, and tried to calm my nerves. If Nan woke up and found me gone, I would be dead meat. Or if anyone else found out what I was doing, again, there would be much of the brouhaha.
But two nights ago, at a circle for Rcolte, Id been blown to the ground by a huge surge of power. My own power had been taken and used by someone else. I was still pissed at Daedalus for doing it. So here I was, trying to find out how hed done it.
Id practiced magick, the mtier, pretty much my whole life. I hadnt had my rite of ascension yet, but Id had great teachers and knew I was pretty powerful for my age. Id seen any number of grown-ups work magick, for years. But Id never seen anything like what had happened at Rcolte.
Where had Daedaluss power come from? Was it from being immortal? Tonight I was going to try to go to the source: my memory. For some reason, my sister, Thais, and I could tap into memories of our ancestors, the line of witches twelve generations long that led back to the rite, the first rite, the one where the Treize became immortal and Cerise Martin had died.
Id seen what had happened that night. At the time Id been too freaked to see the big picture. But now that I knew what it was, what had happened, I would find out how.
I stilled my whirling thoughts and focused on the burning coal. Fire was my element, and I concentrated on the glowing red heat, feeling it warming the heavy air. On the ground I drew different runes:
te, for birthright and inheritance, rad, for my journey, lage, for knowledge and psychic power. I slowed my breathing. The barriers between myself and the rest of the world slowly dissolved; our edges blurred. I took on an awareness of everything around me: the inhalation of a blade of grass, the microscopic release of old, weathered marble on a tomb. In my mind I chanted a spell, one that Id spent the last two days crafting. It was in English, and Id totally given up on trying to make it rhyme.
Chains of time, pull me back
Let me sink into memory
Follow the red thread of my blood
Back through the ages
Woman after woman, mother after mother
Giving birth, succumbing to death
Back to the first one, Cerise Martin
And the night of Melitas power.
Show me what I need to know.
I had never done anything like this before, never worked a spell this big. Also, I was deliberately invoking a memory of someone I knew to be evilMelita Martin, my ancestor. In my earlier visions of that night, Id been both terrified and horrified at what Id seen. Now I was going there voluntarily. No one with any sense would think that was okay. But part of being a witch was having an ever-present thirst for knowledge, a desperate need to have questions answered, an overwhelming desire to understand as much as possible.
Of course, part of being a witch was also accepting the fact that there were many, many questions that could never be answered and many things that would never be known.
I began singing my song, my unique call for power. I sang it very, very softlythis cemetery was in the middle of an uptown neighborhood, not far from my house, and was bordered by four narrow residential streets. Anyone walking by might hear. A thin shell of awareness was distracting meI still felt the damp grass I sat on, heard the faint drone of distant grasshoppers.
Maybe this wouldnt work. Maybe I wasnt strong enough. Maybe I had crafted the spell wrong. Maybe I should ask Melita for help.
That last thought startled me, and I blinked.
It was sunny, and I was standing in the middle of a small garden patch. I held my long apron up with one hand, and with the other I picked tomatoes, letting them slide into the pouchy sling my apron made. I saw that fat green tomato worms were eating some of the vines. So my anti-tomato-worm spell hadnt worked. Maybe I should ask Melita for help.
But now I had enough tomatoes for Mamans gumbo. I hitched up my apron so they wouldnt spill and headed back to the kitchen. My bare feet felt the warm earth, the slightly cooler grass, the rough, packed oyster shells of the path to the barn. My back hurt. My big belly stuck out so I could hardly see my feet. Two more months and the baby would be born. Maman said my back wouldnt hurt anymore then.
