The Coven Read Free

marriage license . . . birth certificates.
    Breathing hard, I flipped through files on car insurance, the house’s AC system, our new water heater. My file read Morgan. I pulled it out just as my parents came into the office.
    “Morgan! Stop it!” said Dad.
    Ignoring him, I rifled through immunization records, school reports, my social security card.
    There it was. My birth certificate. I picked it up and scanned it. Birthday, November 23. Correct. Weight, eight pounds, ten ounces.
    My mom reached around me and snatched the birth certificate out of my hand. As if in a slapstick movie, I snatched it back. She held tight with both hands, and the paper ripped.
    Dropping to my knees, I hunched over my half on the floor, protecting it till I could read it. Age of mother: 23. No. That was wrong because Mom had been thirty before she had me.
    Then the edges of the paper grew cloudy as my eyes locked onto four words: Mother’s name: Maeve Riordan.
    I blinked, reading it again and again at the speed of light. Maeve Riordan. Mother’s name: Maeve Riordan.
    Mechanically I read down to the bottom of my torn page, expecting to see my mom’s real name, Mary Grace Rowlands, somewhere.Anywhere.
    Shocked, I looked up at my mother. She seemed to have aged ten years in the last half hour. My dad, behind her, was tight-lipped and silent.
    I held up the paper, my brain misfiring. “What does this mean?” I asked stupidly.
    My parents didn’t answer, and I stared at them. My fears came crashing down on me in hard waves. Suddenly I couldn’t bear to be with them. I had to get away. Scrambling to my feet, I rushed from the room, colliding with Mary K., almost knocking her down.The torn scrap of paper fluttered from my fingers as I pushed through the kitchen door and grabbed the keys to my car. I raced outside as if the devil were chasing me.

3
    Find Me
    May 14, 1977
    Going to school is more a bother these days than anything else. It’s spring, everything’s blooming, I’m out gathering luibh—plants—for my spells, and then I have to get to school and learn English. What for? I live in Ireland. Anyway, I’m fifteen now, old enough to quit. Tonight’s a full moon, so I’ll do a scrying spell to see the future. I hope it will tell me whether I should stay in school or no. Scrying is hard to control, though.
    There’s something else I want to scry for: Angus. Is he my mùirn beatha dàn? On Beltane he pulled me behind the straw man and kissed me and said he loves me. I don’t know how I feel about him. I thought I liked David O’Hearn. But he’s not one of us—not a blood witch—and Angus is. For each of us there’s only one other they should be with: their mùirn beatha dàn. For Ma, it was Da. Who is mine? Angus says it’s him. If it’s him, I have no choice, do I?
    To scry: I don’t use water overmuch—water is the easiest but also the least reliable. You know, a shallow bowl of clear water, gaze at it under the open sky or near a window. You’ll see things easily enough, but it’s wrong so often, I think it’s just asking for trouble.
    The best way to scry is with an enchanted leug, like bloodstone or hematite, or a crystal, but these are hard to lay your hands on. They give the most truth, but brace yourself for things you might not want to see or know. Stone scrying is good for seeing things as they are happening someplace else, like checking on a loved one or an enemy in battle.
    I scry with fire, usually. Fire is unpredictable. But I’m made of fire, we are one, and so she speaks to me. With fire scrying, if I see something, it can be past, present, or future. Of course the future stuff is only one possible future. But what I see in fire is true, as true as can be.
    I love the fire.
    —BradhadairY
     
    I ran across the frost-stiffened grass, which crunched lightly under my slippers. The front door opened behind me, but I was already sliding onto the freezing vinyl front seat of my white ’71 Valiant, Das Boot,