EYE OF THE WITCH (Detective Marcella Witch's Series)

  “Shah! You looked smokin`.”

  “I know!”

  “Right, then. I see what you mean. Another couple of years and someone would have started asking questions.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you could help yourself look older if you wanted to. You could do something funky with your hair, baggy up on the pants….”

  “What! And deny an ass like this?” She hopped off the wall and modeled her rear end for me. “No way!”

  “All right. I get it,” I said. She did have a fine ass, witchcraft notwithstanding; the girl had earned the bragging rights and then some.

  “Besides,” she added, and I thought she sounded a little disappointed. “There’s been a major shift in the celestial alignment that facilitates the passage. I won’t have the opportunity to renew my vows again for another ninety-nine years. I’ll be two hundred and seventy one by then. Even for a witch, that’s old. If I couldn’t have completed the ceremony tonight, I don’t think I would have made it to another one.”

  “Really?” I said, and my mind drifted off somewhere, wondering what might happen to me in the meantime. If my biological clock slowed to the pace of hers, then ninety-nine years might only add thirty-three to my now twenty-five. In that case, I’d still look only fifty-eight. Perhaps then, she and I could renew the vows again. I leaned back on the wall and nearly fell off it. Lilith laughed, but it brought home her point. Nothing she or I did anymore could ever seem so simple. How does one keep reinventing one’s self in the face of near immortality? How does one carry on a normal life? I turned to her, hoping to find answers in the subtleties of her mood.

  “Lilith? May I ask you a question?”

  “No.”

  “No, what? I can’t ask you a question?”

  “No. That’s the answer to the question you were going to ask. Actually, your question was a two-part question. Wasn’t it?”

  I hated that she could still do that. “Yes.”

  “Then the answer is the same for both.”

  “Oh. I see.” I sat on the wall, stewing over the matter, unsure if I shouldn’t ask her anyway just to clarify things. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I turned to her again and said, “So, you were never married?”

  She kept her gaze straight ahead. For all the people and equipment picking around at the tornado site, it seemed remarkably quiet. “No, I never married.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, me neither. And no children?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Right. Same here.” I reached out and took her hand. “So do you—”

  “No, Tony, I don’t. So, don’t ask.”

  “Okay. I won’t ask.” I let go of her hand. She turned around to face the crowd again, but then stepped back, settling against the wall between my knees. I pulled her in closer, wrapping my arms around her waist and setting my chin upon her shoulder. Her hair smelled so very fine and her cheek so smooth against mine. I know she wanted me to think I knew that she knew what I wanted to ask her, but I’m banking on the hope that she didn’t. After all, Lilith is a complicated woman. But she knows what she wants, and I’m sure she gets what she wants when she wants it. Me, I’m not so complicated, and I’m a pretty patient guy. Add to that the real possibility that I may have another hundred or so years to get what I want.

  Earlier, I set my hand upon the obsidian in my pocket and made a wish that I might start my life over, that I might know then what I know now. I prayed that the powers of witchcraft bestowed on the granitic glass through Lilith’s spell might somehow bend to my will, if only I believed hard enough. She later told me that the obsidian wasn’t the true eye of the witch, but at the time, I didn’t know that. I cannot say with certainty whether or not the obsidian had anything to do with what took place since then, or if the evening’s events were all part of Lilith’s original grand scheme. Either way, I believe that any given circumstance comes with its own built-in variables.

  I listened to the words of Lilith’s rite of passage ceremony. She invoked the powers of the coven, ‘…Invoke thy magick, and essence grant,’ she said. I know I heard it. Towards the end, she added, ‘…by Rite of Passage this night begun, bestow upon thy soul plus one.’ Now, I’m no expert on the ways of witchcraft, but seeing that I’m now some forty years younger, I’m thinking that ‘plus one’ means that I, like Lilith, have been granted the secrets and essence of magick. I still have a way to go before I catch up with her. I mean, I won’t be casting spells anytime soon, but I can wait. Besides, I think it will be worth it. And it should be fun, too. After all, Lilith is not the only one who can stare into the Eye of the Witch without blinking.