“I’d like you to make an educated guess. Then, we’ll run some experiments and test the theory together.” He almost smiles again, and opens his arms, like,isn’t that grand?
“But… where do I even start? Our powers were bound, right? I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything magical in my life before last night. Oh! Unless you count the time I raw-dogged a bag of mushrooms and ran naked through the San Gabriel Mountains screaming, ‘I’m a delicate feminine flower crushed under the boot of patriarchal oppression!’ until a park ranger intervened, gave me her jacket, and escorted me back to the ranger station to sleep it off.”
He blinks at me. The smile dims darkly. The sigh sighs heavily. “No, Miss Bonnivarde. I donotcount that time. Try again.”
“I’m pretty sure I saw a fairy that night.Withwings. And that park ranger? She totally knew what I was talking about. I could see it in her eyes. Man,fuckthe patriarchy, you know?”
“For the love of…” He shoves a hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up all over the place. “I’m asking you to consider your feelings and experiences since you’ve reunited with your sisters and reclaimed occupancy in your childhood home.That’swhen you reconnected with your magic, and that’s what we’re looking to connect with here. Focus, Miss Bonnivarde. What stands out to you?”
“Oh, that’s easy. The ghosts and visions. Hands down.”
A cocked eyebrow. A quick scratch of the jawline with an elegant thumb. “Not the sentient house?”
His curious gaze pins me in place. My first instinct is to change my answer, but something tells me this is a test of my convictions. I shake my head. “The house magic wasn’t unique and specific to me. It didn’t feel like it was coming from me, whereas the other stuff did, somehow.”
He points at me, the light returning to his eyes. “Precisely.”
Score!
Eager to keep the praise train rolling, I say, “It seems to me that those things are related—the visions and the spiritcommunication. Maybe not in an obvious way, but I feel like they’re connected.”
He neither confirms nor denies, but the light in his eyes grows a bit brighter, inspiring me to continue.
“What do you make of my mother’s ghost showing up?” I ask. “She was there right before Calista, but then she bounced.” My chest tightens at the memory, the old bitterness simmering. “If Calista is the ancestor I’m connecting with, the one who’s kind of guiding me, I guess I’m just curious why my mother would come at all. Especially considering we had no contact for the last twenty-three years. I don’t even remember her, really.”
Something complicated flickers through his gaze, and when he answers, his voice is soft and contemplative. “In all likelihood, she accompanied Calista in the hopes you’d be less frightened. It’s actually quite a feat that she was able to manifest at all; newly deceased don’t typically cross back to the human realm so soon after passing. It’s very draining on them. Painful, even.”
A tiny pang of sympathy rings in my chest. Thankfully, Dr. Sutherland seems ready to move on.
“How are you feeling right at this moment?” he asks. “Any more visions or spirit encounters since our meeting last night?”
“Not so far. I’m thinking maybe Calista’s a night person.”
“Many spirits are. It can be easier to communicate at night, when the veil is thinner and human minds are more fluid and open to connection. For now, our experiment—if you’ll kindly follow me?”
We gather our things and he leads me to Calista’s grave at the center of the cemetery, then instructs me to close my eyes, reach out with my senses, and report on what I feel.
Almost immediately, that now-familiar tugging grabs hold. Without overthinking it, I open my eyes and move away from the grave, letting it guide me past the other headstones and out tothe back edge of the cemetery. Dr. Sutherland follows, the only sounds the scratch of his pencil in his journal, and the occasionalahhorhmm—the sounds of his mental wheels turning.
“I feel like I’m being pulled,” I say, continuing out past the hawthorn trees that border the cemetery. “Not enough that it’s controlling me, but… it’s more like an ocean current.”
“Let’s keep following it then, shall we?”
There’s a chance I’m being sucked into a death vortex, but having Dr. Sutherland at my side makes me feel more brave and confident than I have in years. I relax into the sensation and follow the tug deeper into the woods, leaving the graveyard behind.
We end up in a clearing, the hawthorns giving way to other bushes and ferns, overgrown and autumn-brown. Barely passable. Here, the sensation finally ebbs, and a new one slips over me, prickly and sharp, as if my limbs have all fallen asleep and I need to shake them out.
When I tell Dr. Sutherland about it, he nods sagely, peering at me over the tops of his glasses. “This is where Calista took her final breath,” he says, almost reverently. “Where her blood was spilled, and the demons came forth, granting her the magic that became your legacy.”
“The original portal, then?”
“Yes and no. This spot is where the demons first manifested, yes. But calling it a portal—using that term foranyof the summoning locations, really, including the one your ancestors established in your basement—is a bit of a misnomer. ‘Portal’ is really just an all-encompassing term for the energetic boundary between your human realm and the realms of Hell. Demons can be summoned into almost anywhere, so long as the witch knows the proper techniques. And when the boundary is weak, some demons can enter at will. That’s why your work is so crucial. You’re not just protecting the literal portal in the basement.You’re protecting the entire boundary, the powerful yet fragile ecosystem of summoning and channeling Hell’s magic. Your basement portal is the channel through which you’ll exercise that control, conduct your workings, summon demons for your personal dealings, that sort of thing, but it’s merely a piece of a much larger whole.”
“Great. No pressure!”
“None that you can’t handle, leastways.” He opens his journal again, glancing through his scribblings, making a few more. “We are standing at the birthplace of your family magic. The perfect location for our next experiment.”
He directs me to close my eyes again. Then, in a soft, hypnotic voice, “I want you to reach out to me, to perceive my presence with all your remaining senses. Without the visual cues, what else can you detect?”
