Love Potion #9 Read online

  Lilith looked away.

  Dritta turned the card between them, the painting upon it catching the moon’s silver light. Her tone turned thoughtful. “This card, this card of his love, is your card as well, is it not? Are you this Sebastian’s love?”

  Lilith’s tears welled. She bit her lip, unable to keep from looking back to the distant glow of the village. Her heart ached with the knowledge that she’d never hear Sebastian’s laugh again. “You know that I was,” she whispered.

  “And you think love is something that dies with the flesh?” Dritta snorted, not waiting for an answer. She gripped Lilith’s shoulder suddenly, her fingers digging into Lilith’s skin. The younger woman didn’t dare to move. “You are his love, for better or for worse.” He has sworn to return to you, and a pledge made on the gallows is not readily evaded.”

  Lilith frowned. “But…how?”

  Dritta chuckled. “How indeed?” She handed the card back to Lilith with the courtly air that earned her much silver from the gadje, a mysterious smile on her lips. Lilith looked down at the card, willing it to give her an answer.

  The Fool spoke of travels, of a journey beyond your current place, a new beginning, a shucking of an old skin.

  A beginning – like a new life.

  Lilith’s eyes widened in sudden understanding, and she looked to Dritta with astonishment. “Sebastian will return as a babe!”

  Dritta’s smile softened. “As do we all. Remember?” Lilith nodded, staring down at the card in wonder, and Dritta tapped her shoulder. “And you, you had best be ready, child.”

  Lilith frowned. But if Sebastian was reborn as a child, even this very day, she would be old by the time he grew to a man again. And if it was not this day…Lilith could not bear the thought.

  She could not die before Sebastian returned!

  Lilith’s hand rose to her lips, an ancient rumor echoing in her thoughts. Could it be true? Dritta would know. “It is whispered that there is a way to immortality.”

  Dritta nodded, her eyes bright. “I do not know the secret, child, or on your mother’s memory I would share it with you.” She leaned closer, her brow nearly touching Lilith’s own. “But there are others, others who know different secrets than we do. With your Gift, you can find them, learn what they know, prepare yourself.”

  Lilith was shocked. “But I cannot leave the kumpania!”

  Dritta sighed, a sad sound. “You cannot stay, child.”

  Lilith noticed only now that the rest of her Rom family lingered in the shadows behind Dritta, watchful, silent as birds. There was a new wariness in their gazes, and their expressions reminded her of how they watched the gadje. Her uncle was no longer alone in that.

  She understood that they had sheltered her in defiance of the gadje. And in so doing, they had risked their lives. Any affection Lilith had known here, any old obligation to her mother, was gone. The only debt owing was her own. She had been judged.

  She was mahrime. Polluted. Unclean. She had been intimate with a man not of her own kind, not of the true blood, not tacho rat. She was tainted.

  Love was nothing compared to that.

  And through no fault of his own, Sebastian left her doubly shamed – due to his death, he had not rendered the bride price to Lilith’s kumpania for taking her maidenhead.

  It did not matter that Lilith had surrendered it willingly. She stood and surveyed the others, recognizing that her choice had cost her the only family she had ever known.

  It was a high price to pay for love, but Lilith had no regrets. She could never have denied the passionate touch of the man she loved. If nothing else, she had those golden moments to treasure until – if? – she and Sebastian found each other once more.

  “You must leave,” Dritta said, her tone resolute. “You are of us no longer.”

  Lilith lifted her chin. Even knowing this was the way things had always been done did not take the sting from the wound. Her own family denied her. The cast her out to the four winds and left her open to any fate. Their disregard made her deeply angry.

  But she could deny them in return.

  Knowing how they loved a tale, she would give them no story of her stormy departure to recount in the years ahead. She would leave silently.

  And she would continue to deny them, as they denied her, for every day and night that remained of her life.

  She would never forget this rejection. For this one deed, they would forget everything that had been between them, all the things she had done for them, all the bonds that bound them together. Lilith did not care if it was the Way; it would be her way no longer.

  “You are right,” she told Dritta proudly. “I will leave the kumpania. From this moment, I am not Rom.”

  “You will always be Rom.”

  “No. I choose to be Rom no longer.”

  Dritta shook her head. “It is in your blood, child. Who you are will follow you.”

  “I will not let it.” Lilith stared at the others for a long moment, noting the distrust in those eyes. “Do not fear my taint, you who have been my brothers’ and sisters. I will leave this very night.”

  If she’s hoped for an argument, Lilith did not get one. Indeed, their relief was tangible.

  So be it.

  Lilith turned away, only the sight of a rare tear on Dritta’s cheek making her pause.

  Dritta reached to touch Lilith’s cheek, then kissed her gently. “Bahtalo drom, child,” she whispered, so softly that none of the others could hear her words.

  Lucky road. There would be no second chances.

  It was farewell forever.

  Lilith plucked the Fool card from Dritta’s hand, then turned away, her heart aching. She did not know where she would go, where she would find shelter, what dangers would confront her, whether she even could discover the secret of immortality.

  But Lilith would cut a new path. She would make a new life and find a haven for herself in some corner of the world. She would become something other than what she had been; she would shed the identity that had cost her everything, and shed it like a second skin. She would wait for the reappearance of her true love.

  That would make every sacrifice worthwhile.

  She did not miss the fact that Sebastian was not the only one to step toward a new horizon on this night of nights.

  * * *

  1

  The Magician

  Toronto – August 1999

  It was hotter than Hades in the city, the kind of sticky steamy summer day that most people consider more characteristic of New Orleans than the great white north. The humidity was oppressive and tempers were wearing thin on that Saturday afternoon.

  And Mitch Davison had the misfortune to be moving.

  “I wanna go swimming!” three-year-old Jen wailed from the back seat of the much-abused Honda wagon. She kicked her feet against her car seat impatiently and Mitch caught a glimpse of her trembling lower lip in the rearview mirror. The treasured toys she had refused to entrust to the professional movers filled most of the back seat of the car – at least what was available after the family wolfhound staked his turf.

  “I’m hot,” her brother Jason agreed.

  Both children looked expectantly to their father, as though he could solve everything.

  Mitch tried. He really did.

  “Well, you’re just going to have to wait a little bit longer,” he said with as much cheerfulness as he could manage. “What kind of Kool-Aid should we make first?”

  The dog nudged Mitch in the back of the neck with his wet nose, demanding an open window. Mitch rolled down his window and got a great furry head beside his ear as a bonus. Colley panted like a blast furnace on his shoulder.

  “Cherry! And I wanna swim now!” Jen cried, as though volume could make it so.”

  The combination of a restless night and an unsettled day was affecting the toddler’s usual sunny disposition. It was a tough day for the kids, Mitch knew, but he wasn’t having a lot of fun himself. The traffic was brutal,
the air conditioning had given out in the car and the sweat was running down his back like a river. Not for the first time, he knew why parents usually came in teams.

  Not that Janice would have done any better with this day than Jen was doing. That thought did just about nothing to improve Mitch’s mood.

  Maybe, maybe, Andrea was already at the house. Mitch could really use his stepmother’s help this weekend.

  Which pretty much guaranteed she had forgotten the whole thing and gone to the Caymans instead. The last trait Mitch would attribute to Andrea was reliability.

  Charm she had by the bucket, though.

  “I’m working on it, Jen,” he said. “Just hang with me. How about a song for our new house?”

  Jason started ‘Old Macdonald’ and much to Mitch’s relief, Jen went for the diversion. They got through the intersection on the next green light, and entered a miraculous stretch of unjammed road. Within moments, Mitch was turning into the common driveway that ran behind the houses on their new street. Ramshackle garages were interspersed with new ones. Gangly tomato plants and grapevines dangled over fences with such abandon that he thought they might take over the lane, given half a chance.

  “Look at those sunflowers!” Mitch pointed to the flowers in an effort to distract the kids when their song ended.

  “Those ones are really big,” Jason said, in his usual quiet voice.

  “Orange!” Jen shouted, the contrast marked as always. She shook her beloved Bun by the ear. “I wanna swim!”

  “Any minute now.” Mitch turned into the driveway behind the house and his heart sank.

  The yard that was now his was a chaotic mess of greenery. The dandelions certainly had been more manageable when he had looked at the house.

  Two months before.

  Well, Jen would have to make do. Mowing the weeds was hardly on the agenda today.

  A striped grey cat sat on the fence between their disaster of a yard and artfully lush garden beyond. The cat was backed by a brilliant array of bobbing flowers. It eyed the Honda’s occupants, then calmly licked its paw.

  Cooley took one look and barked, the noise enough to deafen a normal man at such close proximity. Mitch had already started to open the door, only to have 140 pounds of wolfhound muscle him aside and explode across the yard.

  Barking his brains out the whole way.

  Well, it was no secret that they’d arrived.

  The cat gave Cooley the disdainful look that cats everywhere reserve for non-felines and proceeded to clean the other paw with great care. Cooley was beside himself, running back and forth beneath the cat’s perch.

  At least he was occupied.

  And he was flattening some of the weeds.

  Jen began to bellow for escape; Jason was out the door and off to explore – no doubt to look for bugs – and Mitch was left to manage the details. Once he had broken trail through the yard and unlocked the kitchen door, he wasn’t surprised to find no sign of Andrea.

  The movers were ringing the front bell.

  It was going to be a long day.

  And he was, one more time, all on his own.

  * * *

  Lilith was in a funk. She rattled through her house, picking listlessly at this crystal or that astrological chart. She was dimly aware of the moving van disgorging possessions next door, but wasn’t really interested.

  She was hot in more ways than one.

  It was their 579th anniversary and – just like the last 578 times – Sebastian hadn’t shown.

  Yet, even given that, today Lilith couldn’t evict Sebastian from her mind. The memory of the evening they’d spent together tormented her. The echo of his last pledge rang in her ears. She had dreamed of him the night before, relived that precious time so vividly that she’d been sure she could feel his hands on her when she awakened in the morning.

  But he wasn’t there.

  Lilith was alone.

  Still.

  Maybe it was the heat that tried her patience.

  Maybe it was this marathon run of celibacy that was getting on her nerves. Lilith had been patient, but immortality alone wasn’t a lot of fun. She was tired of being resilient and optimistic. She was tired of being cheerful in solitude.

  Lilith was done with the waiting.

  And Sebastian was late, but any calculation.

  Tarot card reader, astrologist and crystal therapist, Lilith had adopted all the trappings of the occult to mask her Gift. She was reluctant to give any hint of the real nature of her talent, so she blamed everything on the tarot cards. People found it easier to believe that a stack of cardboard cards held the secrets of the future than that Lilith could see the truth in their eyes.

  For the fact was that the draught for immortality – when Lilith had ultimately earned the right to a sip – had added an interesting twist to her innate Gift. After drinking that elixir, Lilith could see anyone’s match right in their eyes. Regardless of where that lovematch was in the world, she could set anyone on the path to connecting with his or her soulmate.

  Maybe it was because her heart had been so full of Sebastian when she had that precious sip.

  It was a bitter kind of irony to make her living consoling the lovelorn when she was so lonely herself. Lilith didn’t even know how many weddings she’d been invited to attend, mostly because she had in some way been responsible for introducing the bride and groom.

  Always a bridesmaid, as the saying went.

  The experience was getting old. She’d stopped going stag to weddings five years before, but it didn’t make her feel any better. The invitations were bad enough.

  Sebastian was taking his own sweet time returning to her, that much was for certain. Lilith remembered the way he had kissed her and her skin heated. She closed her eyes and leaned back in her favorite chair to remember every caress, one more time.

  The only time.

  So much for promises made on the gallows.

  Lilith frowned at the room, and caught the knowing glint in D’Artagnan’s eyes. That cat saw too much, and it was a blessing he couldn’t talk. He had moved in with purpose two years before, characteristically disinterested in Lilith’s opinion of his presence.

  She wondered whether the cat knew that she only let him stay in deliberate defiance of Rom norms. Cats licked themselves, polluting inside with outside. Cats were dirty in Rom terms. Cats were mahrime.

  But then, Lilith had been mahrime herself for a long time. Maybe there was a twisted kind of justice in D’Artagnan’s deliberate adoption of her. Maybe they belonged together.

  That wasn’t the most optimistic thought she could have had.

  Lilith wondered why she had any concern with mahrime conventions. It wasn’t as if the Rom and their ideas had anything to do with her. Nope, she was just a witch who told fortunes, not a gypsy at all. She had studied gadje witchcraft, learned to mix potions and cast spells, draw circles for the moon and read astrological charts, too.

  She was not Rom.

  She refused to be Rom.

  And that was that.

  D’Artagnan started cleaning himself – always fastidious – and even the sight of his little darting tongue made Lilith fidget.

  She had definitely been alone too long.

  What was keeping Sebastian?

  Lilith picked up her deck of tarot cards, shuffled and considered the riddle of what to do. She fanned the cards across the table and plucked one from their midst, her heart skipping a beat when she turned it over.

  The Magician.

  A card about making things happen. A card for the creative and the powerful. A card hinting that it was time things got done.

  By her.

  It was a card that demanded immediate action.

  Lilith considered it. Why was she just waiting for Sebastian? In every other area of her life, she was the one to take the initiative and make a difference. She had to admit that it would be a lot more romantic if Sebastian just swept into her life again on his own.

  He ha
d promised, after all.

  Was his promise a lie?

  No. She wouldn’t think along those lines. She stood up and went to the mirror. One more time she looked deeply into her own eyes and one more time, she caught no glimpse of Sebastian. Obviously, her Gift didn’t extend to herself. Magick was like that.

  But maybe some of the things she had learned over the centuries could help.

  The thought had no sooner crossed her mind than Lilith was on the way to her kitchen. She checked the calendar and discovered that both sun and moon were right for a love spell.

  That had to be a sign that she was on the right track.

  Whether her actions provoked a response or not, it was good just to be doing something. Lilith turned on the radio and tuned into the oldies station. The first song made Lilith smile and turn up the volume.

  Love Potion Number Nine.

  A potion it would be.

  Lilith danced as she conjured, a reckless glee making her feel decidedly younger than her many years. Her cauldron was on the stove and the strongest love potion of all time was rapidly being assembled.

  If Sebastian was anywhere within the galaxy, he’d get this message. When he showed up, Lilith had several hundred years of creative thinking to put to good use.

  Lilith felt her desire heat to a fever pitch with every pinch of this and two petals of that cast into the brew. Anticipation hummed beneath her skin and every passing second added to her conviction that this spell would work. The mixture began to boil and its earthy perfume filled the house.

  The yearning was enough to make her knees go weak.

  Lilith changed softly before the simmering brew.

  “Lover true, come to me,

  Through the air or across the sea.

  Once we loved all night with style

  Come back NOW…”

  Lilith chuckled under her breath as she thought of the perfect rhyme.