Electric Blue (9 page)

It was hard living with conservative parents who were also alcoholics. They came from a generation where anything strange and unusual, like Witchcraft, was frowned upon, and even hated. Her parents had both always drank. It had just gotten worse as the years passed. She could remember them telling her as a child that she wasn't allowed to drink until she was nineteen, but she watched since a young girl as the booze they both drank (sherry for her mother, beer for her father) ruined them and made them shells of who they once were. It made living arrangements difficult. It was hard to love and talk to people who were supposed to be her parents when they were both drunk all the time. She was twenty one years old and had always had to take care of herself. Now she had to take care of her parents.

Her mother had been beautiful once; a smiling, happy woman who was dragged under by her husband’s drinking and then succumbed to the devil of drink herself. Gone was her beautiful dark brown hair. Lucia was her mother's child as she didn't look a thing like her father. She was her mother's child through and through, without the love for drink she had. With another sigh, she opened the front door of their dilapidated duplex and let herself in. The house was in great disrepair. The porch sagged under her weight, dust covered the floors in a thick, suffocating layer and grime covered the windows, making the house seem to glow in the shadows.

"That you, Lucinda?" Her mother's shrill voice called out. She heard her mother's voice in her nightmares. It grated at her nerves, like nails on a chalk board.

"Yes, Mother, it's me."

"Where have you been?" Ilene, her mother, came into the foyer. She swayed a little bit and held on to the wall beside her. She had been drinking since early morning, Lucia saw. Her eyes were red and bloodshot. "Did you hear me," she slurred. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Out."

"OUT!" Ilene mimicked. "Out with who? Your boyfriend?"

"I don't have a boyfriend."

"Why not? What's wrong with you? You ain't got no one to tickle you, sweetie? That's not good, it's a woman's right to be tickled."

"Maybe I don't want to be tickled."

"If I wasn't tickled, if your father didn't screw me, you wouldn’t be here."

Lucia looked at her mother in the eyes. Challenging her. "I wish he hadn't."

"Why? Why in God’s name would you wish you weren't born?"

"So I wouldn't have you as a mother."

Her mother wheeled back and slapped her, hard across the face. Spit flew out of her mouth and hit the floor. "You will NOT talk to me that way, do you understand me?" her mother yelled. Her voice sounded tired. Lucia, still stinging from the fact that her mother had hit her, pushed past her and went into the kitchen. Her father was at his usual spot, by the window, booze in hand, a glassy look already closing his eyes off from the rest of the world. He would be no help to her.

"Did you hear me?" Her mother said, coming after her.

"Yeah, I heard you," Lucia said, grabbing a bag of cookies, a few pops and some apples. She started heading for the stairs.

"Then what the hell do you have to say for yourself?" Ilene blocked her way, standing in front of the steps, stretching her arms so that her fingers touched the walls on either side.

"You're pathetic," Lucia whispered.

Her mother threw herself at her. Ilene was a whirlwind of nails and harsh words. She struck her daughter, hitting her, slapping at her. She pushed her daughter down to the floor, pulled at her hair, kicked her with her sharp, pretty little shoes. She didn't stop until Lucia was on the ground in the foetal position, tears streaming down her face.

"No," Ilene slurred. "YOU are pathetic. Don't you forget that."

Lucia listened to her mother’s footsteps walk away from her, her steps slapping against the hardwood flooring. The house smelled of old sweat, alcohol and stale air. Lucia rubbed her hand across her face. It came away bloody. She heard the tinkle of the liquor cabinet. Her mother was going for the harder stuff. She could hear her beginning to nag her father, Bill. They would be fighting before midnight.

Lucia went upstairs to her bedroom and put her bag down and the food she had grabbed from the kitchen. She locked her door, the doorknob, the latch, the chain and then the deadbolt that she had installed herself. She put the door stopper in place too. Her room was her protection against the world around her. She would not have it violated. Walking to her dresser, she lit a white candle at her alter for protection. She opened her window and let in the hot September air. She took a pack of cigarettes from her jacket and lit one, taking the smoke in to her lungs, letting it sit there, exhaling. Everything was a ritual. She stared at the candle flame, and made a wish. She wished for things to be different, for her to have a life free of her parents. She had made the same wish every day for the past two years, when her parents had finally succumbed to the bottle and let their lives unravel away around them.

She went back to her alter and lit a green candle for prosperity too.
What the hell
, she thought,
I need every little bit of help I can get
. She had to try to focus on the positive. All she had to do was save up enough money for first and last month’s rent and she would be free of here. She supposed she could have asked Alicia or Poppy for help. Or even Orlando and David for that matter. But her pride would not let her. It was bad enough that her parents were alcoholics, but the fact that her mother enjoyed beating her left a bitter taste in her mouth. She was ashamed of where she came from, who her family was. She had told no one of her situation at home. No one knew where she lived, no one knew her secrets. Her pride would not let her share them. She removed the small bone Buddha from her jacket pocket. She turned it around in her hand, felt its smoothness, the soft pulse of energy that emanated from it. "Poppy. . . ." she whispered. Now I have more secrets to carry, she thought.

Chapter Thirteen

Find Poppy

Poppy yawned, the morning sun shining through the car windshield making her blink. She pulled her sunglasses out of the visor, put them on and kept driving. She was still tired from last night. The announcement that Roz was pregnant coming on the heels of her suicide attempt made for an emotional evening. They had left Chip at the hospital. He had wanted to stay with Roz, sleeping in a room beside hers in intensive care. He could see her through a glass window, six inches of glass separating him from his wife. He looked tired and drawn, but had been flushed with the excitement of parenthood.

Before they left, Chip had pulled her aside. "Look," he said. "I know that you and Roz don't really get along. . ."

Poppy had been stunned that Chip had even known this piece of information. "We know each other through David. We've never really been the best of friends."

"It just means a lot to me that you came to see her, that you came to visit. It'll mean a lot to her." He hugged her then and she went rigid for a moment and then hugged him back. She wasn't used to seeing Chip so expressive, but that was probably because she didn't know him very well.

"I'm glad I could come," she said finally. His kindness had touched her. Roz had found a real gem. She hoped that whatever demons that were haunting Roz didn't push him away. Poppy didn't know what was wrong with Roz, but there was something going on. They needed to get Roz to talk to them about what Jethro had done when she woke, otherwise she would retreat further inside herself.
Why could life never be simple?
She thought. She sighed. She had enough on her plate for today anyway, without worrying about someone else. She felt the butterflies in her stomach, felt her nerves humming underneath her skin. She was going to see Cecelia Robinson and her granddaughter Naomi. She hoped that Naomi would have some information on her father. More than that, she had questions to ask. If she couldn't ask two Witches about magic, then who could she talk to? For she had become certain that that was what they were. Cecelia seemed too wise to be a simple woman, and there was the way she looked. She was over a hundred years old but didn't look a day over fifty. And there was Naomi. . .she intrigued Poppy. She had to be psychic, being able to get vibrations the way she did. She knew that some people just had the gift, like Orlando and Alicia. . . .

She gasped and had to stop the car. Something else, another memory, fluttered back into her mind:. . .Alicia brandishing a blue light that glowed,
Orlando
passing electricity to David, only to be brought back to life. . . .Poppy took some deep breaths. She wished that her mother was here with her, but she had had to work a double at Rosie's Café, so she was on her own. She could certainly use her mother now. Where had that memory come from? Why were Alicia and Orlando using magic? Why did no one mention any of this to her? There seemed to be far too many secrets surrounding her right now;
Orlando
and Alicia's magic, whatever was happening to her, the secrets that danced behind Lucia's eyes, the secrets that Alicia seemed to be carrying, what was wrong with her, and the Harrow House that had shaken. She still didn't know what had caused that, but was sure the house held the answers. But that was part of the problem. Too many questions and not enough answers. Well, hopefully, today she would get some answers. The unanswered questions covered her like a shroud and she wanted to shed some of the weight. She could remember the feeling of the magic under her skin and the memory of it sent shivers down her spine.

She pulled up in front of the de Bruyn household and parked her small sedan. Alicia had given it to her as a present, but Poppy rarely drove it. She felt uncomfortable behind the wheel of a car, it made her nervous. Too many things were making her nervous lately. Getting out of the car, she was struck with how beautiful their house was. Cookie cutter houses surrounded her on either sides but the de Bruyn's was pretty, quaint. There were shutters on the window, a lovely garden and a row of bushes to cover the ugly brown stucco wall. The house seemed loved by the people inside. She was glad she had someone to trust.

Naomi came to the door when Poppy rang the doorbell. She had her short hair dyed an attractive colour of blonde and there were streaks of red running through it. "Your hair looks lovely," Poppy said.

Naomi smiled. "Thanks, I got it done yesterday. Come in, you must be curious about your father."

"More than that."

"More than that? What do you mean?" Naomi brought her into the living room.

"I have questions. . .other questions." Poppy was nervous. This wasn't coming out as well as she had hoped. "I know you're both Witches," she said.

"That's where you're wrong, dear," Cecelia said behind her. She was seated in her chair by the window, a basket of knitting on her lap. "We're not both Witches."

"Oh?" Poppy was momentarily crestfallen. She had hoped that these two would have answers for her.

"No, indeed. Naomi IS a Witch, as you have already guessed." She smiled and looked at her granddaughter. "She comes from a long line of Witches, actually."

"Then would that not make you a Witch?"

"Oh, no dear, I'm much more than that." She smiled. "I am an Oracle," she said.

* * * * *

Poppy thought she had misheard. "Excuse me, you're a what?"

Cecelia smiled a patient smile. She stood and came towards her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I'm an Oracle, dear."

"Like seeing the future and all that?"

Cecelia smiled. "More or less."

Poppy felt faint. "Maybe I better sit down; this is all a little too much to think about." Poppy sat in the leather arm chair looking up at Cecelia, the leather creaking around her. "It's quite a lot to wrap your brain around."

"Isn't it?" Cecelia said.

Poppy regarded her through eyes that had become slits. "Why would you tell me this?"

"Because the future has already shown me doing so."

"What?"

"Because I have seen this conversation in the future. I know we are right to have it, that it is right to tell you."

"You don't do anything unless you see it happen?"

"It's not really that simple," she said. Cecelia sat down in her chair again, pulling it closer to Poppy. Naomi sat on the couch against the wall, so that she could converse with the other two comfortably.

"I'm much like the Delphic Oracle from
Athens
," Cecelia said. "She too was able to see the future."

"Wasn't she the one married to a god?"

"The very same. She could only see bits and pieces of the future. . .she would sniff the sulfur that rose from the earth and have hallucinations. She would make vague predictions from what she saw. She was very renowned; people would come from thousands of miles away to hear her judgments."

"But they wouldn't always relate to the people?" Poppy said.

"Not really," Naomi said. "They would listen to her speech, and interpret it for themselves. She may have said something like ‘woman wears band of silver’ and the woman may have taken that to mean she was getting married."

"When in reality, it may have meant something else?"