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“How long have you been a witch?” Lozen asked.
“Oh, I kind of always have been. My aunt was one, and she kind of helped me along, suggested things, encouraged me, and then when it all clicked, she introduced me to the coven.”
“Can anyone join?”
Mia looked at Lozen and smiled.
“In theory, yes,” she said. “In practice, it’s not always that easy.”
Saber found herself watching Lozen, who was walking beside Mia, clearly fascinated by her. Saber was fascinated too, but she wasn’t sure it was because she wanted to become a witch.
“Here’s devil’s club,” Mia said, picking a sprig from a plant. “Good for inviting predictive dreams.”
“How do you use it?” Lozen asked.
“Make a tincture by soaking it in alcohol for a few days, or weeks if you have the time, then add a few drops into a tea or under your tongue before sleep.”
Lozen nodded, looking closely at the plant, as though to memorize it.
“Who else knows about the vampires?”
“It’s hard to say,” Saber said. “My friend Doug, this botanist I met, is going along with us, but I’m not sure if he believes or not. He just knows there’s something wrong. There are kids at school who go to these parties, but I don’t know what they actually understand. I don’t know how to describe it, but they seem to almost forget what happens to them.”
Mia nodded.
“We can make a charm that will protect you from The Forgetting. They’re not able to read minds, necessarily, it’s something older and more vague than that, a kind of an intoxication that goes both ways. They can connect with a person and feed off of their desire and their…passion. And they can create a sort of mental fog that obscures your understanding of reality, makes you question what you’ve seen, what you’ve felt. But it’s not precise, and it’s not permanent, not if you know how to treat it.”
“Wow,” Saber said, laughing a little. “That’s such an exact description of what it was like to be around him.”
“Which one?”
“He goes by the name Derek.”
“I know of him.”
“What does your coven try to do about vampires?”
“Do?” Mia said and shrugged. “Some think we should try to get rid of them, expel them from the area, others think we should leave them completely alone. They don’t go out of their way to bother witches. If they killed a witch, we’d go to war with them and they know it.”
“What doyouthink you should do?”
Mia sighed.
“I’m still young,” she said. “Part of being a witch is trusting and listening to your elders for guidance.”
They walked down toward a lake and Mia strolled to the water’s edge.
“So, your friend Doug, anyone else?”
“There’s this other guy, a pathologist’s assistant,” Saber said. “He texted me this morning. He works at the coroner’s office.”
“And what does he know?”
“He knows about the bodies of the victims. He knows something weird is going on, but he’s pretty cagey.”
Mia crossed her arms and gazed out over the lake, thinking.
“I’d like for all of us to meet,” Mia said. “But don’t tell them I’m a witch.”
