Neophyte / Adept (37 page)

I needed someone who could teach me the
ropes––instruct me in the ways of Wicca––because only
then could I exercise
my
power––and keep House Rookmaaker from becoming the kind of place I
imagined the Ravenseals had become––decadent, hierarchical, and
competitive in a way which was disadvantageous to everyone except those few at
the very top.

My parents would’ve wanted Rookmaaker to be a place of
inclusion, I felt; and since I had no one else to discuss the matter with...

I bent my head over the paper.

“How’s the vampire situation in Rome going?” I asked,
wondering if Ballard’s family was still hunting them.

Ballard looked up. His forehead slick with sweat.

“It’s like they’ve vanished,” he said. He went back to his
work. So apparently the vampires were all gone.

With Rome now definitively the werewolves’, I would be free
to develop House Rookmaaker unencumbered by outside influences.

And
if
the Lenoir,
or House Ravenseal, or the Master House
tried
to interfere with me, woe betide the individuals who got on the wrong side of
us.

It will flourish like
a roisin dubh in the hot Roman sun, my Wiccan House
––wherever
it was.

* * *

Things to do by Magic (a list). I wrote:
fly, turn invisible
; I made a list,
ticking them all off, fully intending to learn each one.

Next, I made a chart of all the known werewolves in
Ballard’s family––and their
proclivities
....

There was Locke... And Paolo, of course; Liesel, Lia, Gaven,
Ballard. There was also Raina, Lorentz, Blunt, Giorgio, Berenice,
Michelle––Pendderwenn. It was funny. There was actually a werewolf
named
Pendderwenn
. I had thought that
was a Wiccan House, yet here it was, being used by a daughter (not son) of
Romulus.
Oh
, I remembered, writing it
down. There was also
Leander
, another
one of the Werewolf Team Leaders. I listed who was alpha and who was beta. I
thought a bit, for if I had missed one.
Volt
and Pouch
, I wrote. I didn’t know the Pack dynamics well at all.

Who
were
all of
these lycanthropes?

Plus there were lots more of them––the ones I
had never directly ‘met’––the other shape shifters.

I stood with my back to Ballard and looked at the motorcycle
shop, my eyes wandering to the open garage door. Rome was like a wonderful
shining metropolis which held the glitter of my future happiness. The past was
receding. Ballard’s past.
Mine.
The
seven hills were like a fortification, defending us. Somewhere a horn sounded,
a statue was crumbling.... And all the while I thought of him, and how we had
come so close to our dreams, only to feel them abandon us, like the fog which
rushes in and rolls out, each morning. A blanket of filth overhung Rome. I
would miss it, when I left. I would miss the romantic notion that I
would
miss Rome, but I would miss Rome,
nonetheless.

So there were four big ones: Paolo, Locke, Leander, and
Liesel (who was a chick); and also the big three, Gaven, Lia (another chick; I
don’t know why that interested me so much), and Ballard.

Something else occurred to me. With
House
Pendderwenn now extinct (and by that, I meant, all of its
members now dead),
mine
was the only
Wiccan House
in
Rome. In a way I had
already fortuitously met the neighbors. What is more, we got along. Which was
really big news. I saw Rome as a small community of like-minded pre-, post-,
and current shape changers.
And me.

(Post would be what happened when you got too old, and
pre
, like Volt and Pouch, and those
types: adolescents not yet into their powers; which is what Ballard should have
been; but he wasn’t, he was alpha dog; in point of fact,
my
alpha dog.)

Ballard continued to work on the strange and sparkly
motorcycle, while I thought about this, and who should be the new Il Gatto.

He could not refrain, however, from asking the question I
had hoped Ballard would avoid. Namely, what had happened between me
and––what’s-his-face? Lennox?

It’s over.

We’ve moved on.

I’m flying solo now.

I’m going to become a
lesbian.

“Please don’t bring up the past, Ballard. I’m trying to
block it out,” I said. “Do you mind?”

But he just said: “I liked those two bloodsuckers. What were
their names, Dallas and Chenille?”

“Not helping,” I said. I put my fingertips to my head as
though I had a migraine. And I did. If I could’ve given it a
name––I would’ve named it Ballard. Ballard Rosen.

He just chuckled.

“If you strike those poses for too long,” he said, “eventually
you become them.
What’s that?”

“I don’t need any more sophomoric Ballardisms, thank you
very much,” I said, looking at what he was pointing at. So much for secrets. My
Wiccan Mark was burning like fire.

“It’s really real,” he said. “Look at that! Halsey, it’s
like you’ve been tricked out or something. You’re
marked
.”

Ballard whooped; I did not.

He couldn’t stop staring at my Wiccan Mark. I still had my
hoodie on. Part of me was, like: Show me yours, I’ll show you mine, Ballard.
But he needed to know. He needed to know that there were things which were
happening and we had a part to play. So I pushed back my sleeve.

It was like I was revealing to him my sex. Ballard looked at
it like he had never seen one before. He licked his lips. He was all excited.

“This is my Wiccan Mark, Ballard Rosen. There are eight
Wiccan virtues, but this one’s mine. Honestly, it’s like you haven’t even seen
your sister Lia’s before,” I said. I was thinking something was up with her
Mark and like Lia didn’t want it to be seen or something. Ballard’s tool
clunked.

“Show me some magic,” he said. He had a hungry look on his
face. Was something up with Lia? What wasn’t he telling me? If she was hiding
her Mark from Ballard, it must’ve developed a certain way, maybe even wrongly.

I made my Light pop on; he
ooh’d
as I shot it around the room. And then it disappeared.
Rosens hiding things. Imagine that.

I needed no reciprocation from Ballard. I just wanted him to
know that I was badass. Not that I didn’t want to see his werewolf. His titchy
little were-Ballard. “We have to get out of these abstractions,” I said. “Only
what is real. I think, you know, you have to choose between the life you
imagined, if you follow me, and the life you actually end up having, Ballard.”

He nodded, glumly.

“You can’t reasonably keep doing something without it
becoming who you are,” I said. “I think we have two lives, the one in which we
imagine what we
can
be––movie star, film director, President of the United States; and
the other one, the one that’s actually important; the one that’s actually who
we truly
are
. I don’t want to say I
want
to be this or I’m
going
to do that––because I
won’t. I
do
want to say that I need
your help, and that, together, I think we can do
something
, which is really important. I also want to say that I
don’t want to fight anymore––unless it’s with Vittoria.” I
cat-clawed the air. “We need to be like
this
.”
I did the finger thing. And then for good measure, I said “strongass and
together,” as Lia had once said to me. “Chasing dreams is good until you catch
them,” I said. “What I want is real, Ballard. You know? Because anything else,
you throw your life away trying to catch it, and then one day it just turns its
back on you, and you’re left hanging in the wind. Like a wet and floppy pair of
skivs, you know what I mean? And I don’t want to be a wet and floppy pair of
skivs. Do you?”

“I know what you mean,” he said, “it’s like truth and lies.
The truth only hurts. Whereas a lie, if you don’t like it, you can just
disregard it, and pick up some other truth. Maybe reality
is
lies, did you ever think of that?”

Marriage, a boyfriend,
family––Wicca, magic, a sisterhood, a place, a feeling of
purpose––

Those were the things I craved. Maybe they were all lies. I
shot my sleeve down, and said, “Sometime––not now, but
sometime––I am going to want to have a talk with you, Ballard
Rosen. It’s about what we are, and what we want––but for now, I
want you to finish that motorcycle. Whose is it, by the way?”

Liesel’s––he said it was Liesel’s. It was hot
pink with lots of chromoly.

“You don’t mean to say she’s angling to be alpha dog too?” I
said.

“Angling, shooting for the moon,” he said.

“Never mind that. It’s not important,” I said.

It was a mark of Ballard’s gentlemanliness that he was
helping Liesel to improve her chances of winning this motorcycle
competition––because, despite what he said, a big part of Ballard
wanted to be in that race. I knew he did. He had ambitions of being Il Gatto
himself. He couldn’t hide it from me. And then, I imagined, Liesel wouldn’t
look on Ballard so unfavorably. I asked him how it had gone with her. He said:
she
said she was too old for him. A
subtle way, he said, of the pack reinforcing its belief that he was too young
to join them. (“A very
Lockean
point
of view,” Ballard called it.) “But you did kiss her?” I asked, referring to
Liesel.

Ballard blushed; I decided not to pursue the subject. The
last thing I needed was to be on the outs with any more of the crucial people
in my life. But he said, “We
may
have
gotten that far. Yeah.”

“Oh, Ballard, congratulations!” I said.

He kept his thank-you speech to a minimum.

But how to resolve this Locke situation?

The Pack couldn’t be under Locke––it couldn’t.
All you had to do was use Locke’s argument against him. The next Il Gatto
would
be the most important in their
history––our history, because I had been made an honorary member.

Ballard took a swig from his moonflask.

“Life is interfering. Do you feel it?” he said.

“I want you to enter that race, Ballard. And I want you to
try to win it,” I said. “Okay? We’ll talk later, Ballard, all right?”

“Okay,” he said. And then: “I can’t imagine Locke parlaying
with the House of Houses. They would eat him alive.”

“Let
me
deal with
Locke. I’ll––figure something out,” I said.

Something had passed between us––maybe Ballard
saw the Wiccan in me. Whatever it was, we were like
this
. And that’s all I could ever really ask. To be like this with
somebody. I think that’s all any of us could. Because when you find somebody
you can be intertwined with––

First things first, I thought, huffing: I needed an excuse
to get away from my obligation to Ravenseal House. Luckily Ballard supplied me
with one. “I forgot,” he said. “Lia wanted me to tell you. The
date’s
been shifted.”

“What date?” I said.

Perhaps he could see that I was having trouble
concentrating, because Ballard waited for me to make eye contact, before
continuing. I brushed the hair out of my face. “Ballard?” I said.

“Lia’s wedding. You didn’t forget, did you?” he said. He
smiled at me. I laughed back, chagrined. “No. Of course not,” I said.

“Good––because you’ve got a whole month and a
half more to think about it,” he said. He looked at me, as if to say,
What fun!

It was a moment before I understood what he was saying.

“It’s called Lupercalia,” he said, “a werewolf holiday, here
in Rome, happening this coming February. The thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth,
if I remember correctly.”

“You have a
holiday
...
celebrating... werewolves?” I said. “Publicly?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism
out of my voice. “And Lia’s wedding will be on that date?” It made no sense.
Weren’t they supposed to keep it quiet––that they could shift?
Wouldn’t this make it harder for Ballard’s family to hide the fact that they
were werewolves?

“Wait. There aren’t people who know––are there?”
I said. “That you can––that you
are
––I
mean, you
do
keep it a
secret––
don’t you
––?
Or try to? That you shift.”

Ballard gave me a pitying look.

“Did
you
know that
there were werewolves?” he asked. “Did I? Did my sister Lia? Or Gaven? Of
course not. Anyway, it’s called the Wolf Festival, Lupercalia, and it’s thought
to exorcise this city of evil spirits––which is exactly what we do,
so maybe somebody
did
talk, an old
Defender or somesuch. Although I can’t think whom.... Lupercalia is also good
for pregnancies....” he said. “What?”

“Ballard––L-Lennox is not––”

“Oh, come on. You can’t even say his name.”

“He’s not evil,” I said.

“Then where is he?” he asked. I couldn’t answer his query.
“Ah-hah!” he said.

“I’m sure he’s just
been––delayed––is all,” I said.

“If you say so,” said Ballard.

Hadn’t I just said we shouldn’t fight?

“Look. I just––care about you. All right? If
he’s...
leading you on
...” said
Ballard.

“He’s
not
! You
have no idea how complicated things are for him,” I said.
Teenage emo-queen person.

“You mean, the fact he’s a vampire, and we’re his mortal
enemies, and we’ve drawn a line, and said you to your corner, and we to ours,
and now he’s broken that, by
coming
to Rome? Gee––I never thought of that,” said Ballard.

“The Lenoir told him to come here,” I said.

“Exactly. And in the process––threatened the
sanctity of our sovereignty––or something.”

“He’s never fed here, Ballard––Lennox is a good
vampire. He only drinks Blood Cups.”