Something Wicked by Evelyn Vaughn

candlelight. Her aged, accented voice wavered like the water in the black scrying bowl she held. But her half-sung words held a strength beyond volume—the strength of a priestess. “She is the powerful Queen of the Night. It is She who stands at the threshold between life and death. She is not to be called lightly.”

    Lightly? I could remember every word of my curse. I wish you a lonely, empty, suffering life in which nobody loves you and everything you care about shrivels and dies….

    “Don’t worry, Nonna. ‘Lightly’ isn’t a problem.”

    We were in the parlor of Nonna’s apartment, her blinds drawn firmly against outside light and prying eyes. She’d draped an embroidered altar cloth across her coffee table, with magical tools arranged on it—green candles, a censer, an athame, a beautiful old cypress wand from her homeland in Tuscany…and the bowl she now held.

    A bowl black as night, filled with melted snow. It was in this that she looked beyond our world to someplace else, maybe to the will of Hekate herself.

    To do this, Nonna stood very still.

    I did not. It was my job to move, to walk with slow spins, clockwise, around her. It’s not as strange as it sounds. A lot of traditional dances move in circles, for long-forgotten reasons. Even kids sense the rightness of it, from “Ring around the Rosie” to “Duck, Duck, Goose.”

    Movement raises energy. And circles within circles hold triple power. I was weaving myself into and out of the scent of incense and candle wax and something more—the tingle of magic in the air. Trancelike, I didn’t even have to turn on my own. The growing magic turned me.

    “The Goddess,” Nonna continued softly, “is not ours to be summoned or ordered about. We are Hers. You especially, cara, are Hers.” She meant because both sides of my family worshipped Hekate—and because of my name. Kate isn’t short for Kathryn. “You called out to Her in your time of greatest need, and She answered.”

    “I think She…” But here was no place to doubt why the door had flown open as I spoke my curse, or why Victor Fisher had fled. Yes, it could have been coincidence. But I knew it wasn’t. “The Lady saved my life.”

    Nonna’s focus remained on the scrying bowl and on whatever she saw reflected in it. It sent a fluid mask of light across her aged, timeless face. “Would you have spoken the curse had you known the price?”

    I would have sold my soul to bring justice down on the bastard. Still would.

    But would I have sold someone else’s?

    Her sharp gaze lifted to mine. Her penciled-in eyebrows arched questioningly.

    “I used the wrong name,” I reminded her.

    She nodded. “Half the name you spoke was correct. It bound the curse to the killer as well.” To judge by the newspaper articles I’d collected since last night’s accident, she spoke the truth. Victor Fisher Attacked in Jail. Lawyers Request Solitary Confinement for Witch Killer’s Safety.

    I’d read each article, and I’d thought, Good. But…

    “But what about his brother?” I whispered.

    Her tsk-tsk sound wasn’t hopeful. “Can you unthrow a handful of rocks because one of them struck an innocent?”

    The answer to that was probably no. Damn it. “There has to be something you can do to fix it. Please.”

    Nonna shook her head. “This is not for me to change, cara. It is yours, and Hers. For this, you will have to ask Hekate yourself.”

    “Like…pray to her?” Could it be that easy?

    “Write your request.”

    When she handed me a small piece of parchment and a silver pen, I considered, then wrote, Help me make this right.

    Meanwhile, Nonna studied the water. Some witches can see visions in anything that puts off reflections—mirrors, crystal balls and black bowls of liquid. Eventually, she uncorked a vial on her altar and poured a clear liquid into the water. I barely noticed that it smelled alcoholic until she took my request, folded the paper into a triangle, lit