Mark of the Witch. Maggie Shayne

circle big enough to enclose the entire room. I’d set votive candles in tiny clear glass holders at the four cardinal points. I’d placed a black one in the center, inside my old iron cauldron.

      I didn’t believe in magic anymore. I reminded myself of that over and over again. I was just doing this as a sort of … precaution. As a “just in case I’m wrong” thing. All the lights in my small apartment were turned off, except for the little bulb in the tall floor lamp whose base was a tarnished copper mermaid. I’d found it in a thrift store and scored it for ten bucks. It was worth a million to me. I had just enough light to work by, and I would turn even that off once I lit the candles.

      My drapes were drawn, door locked, phones turned off. I was naked. I’d taken a quick shower to rinse away any negative vibes that might have been clinging to me from the day. It was tradition, and while I didn’t expect any of this to work, because I didn’t believe in magic, I also wanted to do it right. When the spell failed, I didn’t want to wonder if it was because I’d done a slipshod job of casting it.

      I took a few deep breaths, and stepped into the circle of shells and stones, lifted my hand and imagined a beam of light drawing a magic circle of energy. I led it backward, following the outline of shells and stones. Counterclockwise. Widdershins, in witchspeak. I opened the quarters in reverse order, too, lighting candles as I went. This was a banishing spell, after all. I didn’t have formal coven training, but I knew my shit. I’d only half believed, even when I was practicing. But tonight I was going full throttle. Giving magic one final chance to prove to me that it was real.

      I guess seeing myself on that video, wielding what looked like invisible power from my own two hands, had shaken my disbelief. Or maybe I was just wishing it was real. ‘Cause, hell, who wouldn’t?

      With all the candles dancing and sandalwood incense filling the entire place with its exotic scent, I reached for the mermaid lamp and turned it off.

      Soft yellow candlelight threw shadows around my feet that danced like little fairies and shadowy gnomes. I inhaled the scent of hot wax and dusky smoke. My body and mind responded instantly.

      Because these are all psychological triggers due to repeated use in the past, shifting my brain waves into alpha rhythm. It’s not magic, it’s post-hypnotic suggestion.

      Every ounce of tension left my muscles, my eyes went soft, and my lips pulled into a relaxed, easy smile. My heartbeat slowed. My breathing, too. Every part of me felt easier, lighter. And there was a tightness in my throat and a hotness behind my eyes.

      Okay, okay, I miss it. Doesn’t make it real. Just makes it … nice.

      I knelt in front of the black candle inside the cauldron in the center of the room, my eyes getting lost in the flame until it went out of focus and became a blob of light. “I call upon the darkest form of the Mother. I call upon the Lady of Death and Transformation. The Guardian of the Crossroads. She whose cold hand leads us from this life into the next. Goddess of the Underworld, of the dead, of the past, of every witch who ever lived, and those I have been before. I call you.” I closed my eyes, opened my arms, tilted my head back and waited to feel the presence of the Goddess, who I never called by any specific name.

      But then, for some reason a name whispered from my lips without my consent. “Ishtar,” I whispered. “Ishtar, heed the call of thy priestess.” My eyes popped open. What made me say that?

      A sudden crash spun me around as my big living room window exploded. I fell to one side, reflexively raising my arms to shield my face from the flying glass. The wind, on what had been a perfectly calm night, whipped my drapes inward and swirled through the apartment like a twister. The mermaid lamp slammed to the floor. My Warhol print soared off the wall and hit me in the forearm—aiming for my head.

      The candles blew out, and the whirlwind kept raging.

      I jumped to my feet to try to deal with it, though I had no idea how—turn on the light? cover the window? call 9-1-1?—but something stopped me. I held steady, somehow knowing I had to ignore the chaos and finish what I’d started.

      I sank onto my knees once again, the windstorm still raging around me, my hair blowing into tangles that would rival Medusa’s, and resumed the goddess pose, arms up and outstretched. “Nightmares have plagued me. But they will plague me no more. I banish them!”

      The wind seemed to grow even stronger.

      “This priest who follows me, thinking I am some relic of a past life, I banish him, as well. He will plague me no more! By the power of Ishtar, I command it!”

      Hell, that doesn’t even sound like my own voice….

      Rising to my feet, I stood in the circle’s center, and spun widdershins, slowly at first, then faster and faster. “I banish the dreams, I banish the priest, banish the dreams, banish the priest, be gone, be gone, be gone, be gone!” With the final words I let myself sink to the floor, releasing the spell into the universe as the wind kept whipping around me. I closed my eyes to stop the room from spinning and muttered, “So mote it be.”

      Something growled at me, long and low, like a wolf about to spring.

      From my position on the floor, feeling almost too shocked to move, I opened my eyes. “What the fuck was that?”

      The cauldron in the middle of the floor was swirling with colors that glowed and shifted and moved. It was the only light in the room. And the growl … It came again. From that cauldron.

      I crawled closer and looked at the impossible.

      The swirling, hazy colors inside the cauldron were real. I stared into them, through them. A shape formed. A torso—nude, male, muscular. And then a head, a man’s head, except that it wore a demonically twisted grimace of anger, and its eyes blazed red with an energy that blasted me with pure pain. It hit me hard, and I couldn’t look away. And as I stared unwillingly at the image of the beast inside the cauldron, it opened its mouth and released a roar of anguish and rage. It had fangs. Cloven hooves. A tail?

      The Devil himself?

      But I don’t believe in the Devil.

      I jerked backward, but it held my eyes. I tried, I really did, to look away, but it was like this thing held me.

      And then the image in the cauldron changed. The colors swirled again, overtaking the beast, hiding him, and then changing from oranges and reds and yellows to soft blues and gentle greens as a different face formed. A woman’s face this time, a black-haired beauty in flowing robes. Her brows were thick and dark, her eyes like shining chunks of coal.

       I know her! She’s one of the women from my dream!

      Her full lips parted, and she whispered two words. “Help him.”

      “Who? The priest?”

      The beautiful woman lowered her eyes to look down, into the swirling orange and yellow depths at the demon I’d just seen.

      “Him?”

      “Help him.”

      “But I don’t … I don’t know how. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How am I—Wait. Wait!” I reached my hand toward the iron kettle as if I could grab hold of the image inside, but it was fading. The cauldron turned slowly black again. “At least tell me your name!” But it was useless. She was gone.

      Lilia.

      The wind died with a soft sound that might have been nothing more than its final gasping breeze. I stayed on the floor, lowered my head to the carpet and tried to hold back the crying jag that was fighting to bust out.

      Great. I’m being sacrificed again.

      I stood near the cliff, not on the edge yet, but tied between two posts nearby, arms raised and stretched to either side. The goddess position again. Memories—yeah, memories, not illusions—flooded my brain. I heard a crack and felt the brutal slash of a whip slicing my back, and it was as real as anything I’ve ever felt in my life. And