Evocation, p.15
Evocation, page 15
“And you’re sweet as can be,” Kitty said. “One of the many reasons I enjoy your company. But I’m no fool, Moira. I know how hard you work to earn the respect of those playacting men in the Society. I’d wager it would feel pretty good to have them groveling at your feet for a change.”
Moira had never considered herself a very ambitious person. Ambition, she had been raised to believe, was not ladylike or Christian. But she couldn’t deny the tingle of excitement raising the hairs on the back of her neck at the thought of appearing at Society events on Rhys’s arm, wearing a metaphorical crown as his chosen consort. She could just imagine the way the older men who never gave her the time of day would gag and gawk to see her elevated to such a station. The way they would fall over themselves to kiss her hand and whisper their requests in her ear. And she, who never forgot a slight or forgave a person who didn’t deserve it, would delight in denying them.
Moira shook herself out of the fantasy with a little gasp. It was very unlike herself, to wish for such things. But then again, she had been acting less and less like herself lately. She felt like there was a whole other woman germinating deep inside her, poised to break through to the surface and bloom like a poisonous flower.
It should frighten her, probably.
She found she was only eager to meet this new woman.
“Moira?” Kitty asked.
“Sorry,” Moira said, shaking off the last dregs of her daydream. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind, these days.”
“Is this about Rhys and David?”
“How do you mean?” Kitty lowered her voice, despite the fact that nobody in the open expanse of the Common was eavesdropping on them. Kitty always lowered her voice in the presence of a potential scandal. “There’s nothing… going on there, is there?”
“Going on?”
“I mean, in the past it’s been all too easy for them to get tangled up in each other. Are Rhys and David seeing each other again? I won’t tell Nathan if they are, I promise. I just wonder.”
“Rhys and I are married,” Moira said with a thin little laugh. Something in her stomach clenched and fluttered at the thought of David and Rhys together, which was ludicrous, it was impossible. And yet, a strange, giddy sensation swept through her, part jealousy, part simmering intuition, part… Moira wasn’t quite sure. It almost felt like excitement, but that was all wrong, wasn’t it?
“Plenty of people have open marriages,” Kitty went on. “Nathan and I are closed at the moment, but I had a standing arrangement with my last boyfriend. I thought you and Rhys might be the same. That he and David had a sort of on-again-off-again thing.”
“They’re on-again-off-again, alright,” Moira said with a snort. “One minute they’re attached at the hip and the next minute they’re fighting like cats and dogs.”
“Interesting,” Kitty said with an innocent glance over her Prada sunglasses.
“Are you trying to say Rhys has been running around behind my back?”
“Absolutely not! I have no reason to believe it and I don’t think the man even has it in him to hurt you like that. All I’m saying is that he and David have history.”
“I can handle David Aristarkhov,” Moira said. A few weeks ago, it would have been a bluff. But she was starting to learn what made David tick, and she was confident in her ability to fiddle with the clockwork of his mind. “And my marriage is rock solid.”
“I’m happy to hear that. I just worry about you, Moira. Your heart is so big, and I never want you to be taken advantage of. Don’t let David take more than he gives.”
“I won’t,” Moira said, bumping shoulders amicably with Kitty, and they continued their promenade through the park, turning their faces up towards the sun.
“We can talk more at the Society benefit gala in a few weeks,” Kitty said. “You are coming, aren’t you?”
“We’ll be there. Rhys won’t miss an opportunity to shake hands and make an appearance as the upstanding Society member he is. Thank God you’re going, Kitty. I never know who to talk to at those things.”
“They’re a drag,” Kitty said with a blithe laugh. “But we can find a corner to gossip in. In the meantime, promise me that you’ll watch out for yourself. Sex or no sex, getting into bed with your enemies is dangerous.”
“I promise,” Moira said, the wind catching in her hair and ruffling the coils. “And I wish you all the best on your machinations to break into the Society. I hope to see your induction ceremony someday.”
“And I very much hope to see you on Rhys’s arm as the High Priest’s wife, someday. I know you don’t want the title, Moira, but you’d be great at it. You have a good head on your shoulders, you don’t suffer fools, and you’re a stronger witch than those men give you credit for. You could bring them all to heel, if you wanted to. Especially after mediumship lessons from Boston’s own prince of the occult.”
Moira offered her coffee cup to Kitty in a toast. “To getting what we deserve, then,” she said.
Kitty’s pink lips spread into a smile of perfect professional understanding. “To just desserts, my dear.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MORIA
The fourth week they were all supposed to meet up, David sent over a brief note to Moira’s cell, obviously dictated with speech-to-text, apologizing for having to work through the weekend. Apparently, the judge was incompetent, and his co-council was intransigent.
“David cancelled,” Moira said, not looking up from her gala dress, which she was expertly hemming at the kitchen table.
“Looks like it’s just you and me today, kid,” Rhys said, pulling a tray of freshly baked brioche out of the oven. He was a decent cook, but he could probably sweep the bread week of any season of Bake Off.
“I assume you’re gonna want some time in your study to cross reference that demonic name?”
“I actually thought you and I could spend today together,” he said, deftly halving a bun and slathering it with butter and raspberry jam, just like she liked. “Maybe get out of the house.”
Moira opened her mouth with a mischievous gleam in her eye and Rhys fed her a bite, then let her suck a spot of jam off his thumb.
“Well if we’re going anywhere, I’m going to need a shower,” she said. “Care to join me?”
“I was hoping you would say something like that.”
Half an hour later, Moira was freshly showered, liberally perfumed, and well-pleasured by Rhys’s deft fingers. She hummed to herself as she pinned her favorite bamboo doorknocker earrings in place and shimmied into a matching linen crop top and culottes set that flattered her midsize frame. She had put on weight since living off goldfish crackers and the cafeteria’s free iced tea (never sweet enough) in college, but she loved the body she lived in, and so did Rhys, so she didn’t mind. Rhys actually opted for some color, for once in his life, and paired his dark chinos with a pale green shirt that complemented her outfit. Walking on his arm out to the car, Moira felt desirable and spoiled for love and otherwise invincible.
They brought a picnic lunch out to the banks of the Charles, and Rhys painstakingly arranged the brioche buns and dried apricots and Babybel cheese wheels on the blanket so that Moira could take an aesthetic photo for her Instagram page. She snapped one of Rhys when he wasn’t looking, because he was just too handsome in his sunglasses and tousled hair, and she snuck it in at the end of her social media carousel.
After their miniature feast, Moira reclined with her head in his lap and drowsily listened to the sounds of children playing in the distance. Rhys alternated between trailing his fingers along her bare shoulders and dropping kisses to her forehead.
It was, in a word, perfect.
“I love this,” she said, rubbing a dandelion stem between her fingers. “Quiet time with you.”
“I love it too,” he said, giving her a lingering kiss on her mouth. “I’m sorry I’ve been so busy lately. I just get so caught up in what I’m doing, and I lose track of time.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” he said, guiding her chin up gently so he could look her in the eye. “You’re the sun in my sky, Moira. You should always come first. Work, research, the Society… it should all be secondary.”
She could tell from the tight way he was holding his jaw that he was more upset by his actions than his words suggested. She pushed up onto her elbows and cocked her head at him. “Sometimes life gets in the way. Lord knows I can get swept up with my clients and you don’t see me for the whole day. But I appreciate being prioritized, as much as you can.”
A question tingled on the tip of her tongue. Another day, when she was less sure of herself, she might not have asked. But she felt safe and secure, in this moment, so she posed it. “I talked to Kitty last week. She seemed to think there might be something going on between you and David.”
Rhys blanched. “Something romantic?”
“That seemed to be her idea.”
“Love, you don’t believe that, do you? Whatever lies between David and I is strictly professional.”
“Come on. I’m not accusing you of cheating, but even you can’t really believe that.”
“What do you mean?”
“David is a force of nature. He’s got a way with people, and he’s charming, for better or worse. He’s… compelling.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a crush,” Rhys said with a wry smile, but there was a touch of panic underneath the expression.
Moira arched an eyebrow, unable to resist batting her husband around like a cat with a mouse, just a little bit. “Would that make you jealous? Imagining me with him?”
“Of course,” Rhys blustered, but Moira knew her husband well enough to know that he also found something about the image enticing. “But that’s never going to happen. We’re married, and David only dates men. As far as I know, anyway.”
“I’m only pulling your leg, sugar.”
“Right,” Rhys said, but his shoulders sagged in relief. Moira was tempted to press on that relief a little, to worry at it like a loose tooth, but she resisted the urge. One step at a time. “There might be some lingering… energy there, I won’t lie to you. But I remember what dating David was like. Unless he becomes a different person overnight, I don’t want anything to do with that. And moreover, I would never do anything to jeopardize what we have.”
“But you’re allowed to have friends. You know that, right?”
Rhys harrumphed. “I’ve got you and I’ve got my Society brothers. Who needs more friends than that?”
“Don’t be prickly. I’d love to see you let yourself have a little more fun, sometimes. There’s more to life than research papers and summoning circles.”
“You’re probably right.”
She reached out and squeezed his hand. She couldn’t read him as well as she could read David; Rhys was a fogged mirror, where David was a plane of clear industrial glass. But she could feel the love he had for her, emanating from him like his favorite cologne.
“Speaking of David,” he said, clearing his throat. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you too.”
“Go ahead.”
“These sessions the two of you are doing… Do you think they’re really helping? I’m protective of you, Moira. I know David can be a lot to deal with, and I don’t want him crawling around in your head unless you’re sure this is good for you. Say the word, and I’ll call this whole thing off. Your health and safety come first. I’m serious.”
Moira reached up to brush a stray wisp of pollen out of Rhys’s hair. All around them, joggers and cyclists made use of the footpaths, taking in the dazzling way the light reflected off the water.
“I can take care of myself, baby. And yes, I think the sessions are helping. My intuition is getting stronger, but it’s also getting easier to control. Besides, David isn’t so bad, once you dig under all the posturing. Some days, I almost like him.”
Rhys’s eyebrows shot up. “No way I just heard you say that.”
“I’m a woman of mystery,” she said, settling back down against his lap. “You never know what I’m gonna do.”
“And if you reach a point where you can totally block everything out, will you choose to walk away from that part of yourself?”
A single cloud passed across the sun overhead, shadowing Moira’s face. She gnawed on the inside of her mouth until she tasted iron. A good person wouldn’t be tempted by the promise of power. A good person wouldn’t spend hours turning a possible version of themselves over in their head, a version who was influential, respected, maybe even a little feared. A good person wouldn’t be propelled forward by such reckless curiosity, a bottomless appetite to know.
Maybe Kitty had been right. Maybe, when you got right down to it, Moira wasn’t as good a person as everyone thought.
“Well. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m gonna do either,” said Moria.
Rhys, God bless him, left it at that. He just held her and watched the ducks on the Charles paddle by, and that, in its tender simplicity, was enough.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MOIRA
David wasn’t the most hopeless student Moira had ever had, but he was close.
David was powered entirely by flat whites, hubris, and a pathological need to push himself beyond his limits. Moira had never met someone who slept so little or worked so hard and looked so effortless doing it. She wasn’t sure which seemed more exhausting, constructing two parallel high-pressure careers or maintaining the image around them. Although that seemed to be getting increasingly difficult as his condition progressed. Every time she saw him, he seemed a little more diminished, a little more rubbed raw. He didn’t need to say it out loud for her to know the blackouts hadn’t let up.
She was just going to have to convince him to loosen his death grip around productivity to get him to accept them, even if that meant breaking a few fingers.
“If you don’t close your damn eyes, I’m going to blindfold you,” Moira said.
David was sitting in a circle of amethyst, rose quartz, and selenite crystal in the second story hallway of his father’s home. Rhys had banished them both from the study, claiming that their bickering was making it impossible to get any work done. Moira indulged his snippy attitude, since he was cross-referencing fourteen texts in three languages. Listening to your wife and your ex debate the magical properties of various crystals probably wasn’t conducive to research.
“I don’t see why that part is necessary,” David said. He was dressed for work, and he did look a little ridiculous sitting cross-legged on the ground in Brooks Brothers slacks. Good. He needed to stop taking himself so seriously.
“You know why. It’s about focus. It’s about surrender.”
“Gross,” David muttered, but he closed his eyes all the same. He took a deep breath, and Moira nodded her approval. She was sitting just outside the circle, across from him, within grasp if necessary.
Moira trailed her fingers over the spiky contours of her favorite amethyst geode, lovingly transported all the way from Jamaica Plain. She had built this crystal grid to emanate and magnify feelings of deep peace, healing, and self-compassion, exactly the sort of re-charge a drained psychic would need after a long day of work. And David’s life, it seemed, had been nothing but a series of those.
“How does that feel?”
“Like dunking myself in warm bathwater.”
“Not so bad, is it?”
“I hate baths. They’re inefficient.”
Moira made an offended sound, but then she realized that David was grinning, doing his best to hold back laughter.
“I’m kidding,” he said. “You have to learn when I’m teasing you.”
“Well, you’re on the record as a genuine asshole, so that might take a while.”
“Noted.”
“Back to the task at hand; are you getting anything?”
David shrugged. “Not really. The energy isn’t uncomfortable, but none of that love and light you promised is getting through.”
Moira chewed on her lip. Should she have incorporated more clear quartz to boost the properties of the other crystals? Had she leaned too heavily on selenite, which could be soporific if overutilized? Her eyes landed on the labradorite on his left hand.
“Give me your ring,” she said. “I’ve got a suspicion it’s cancelling everything out.”
“This?” David asked, covering his ring with his hand. His eyes were still closed, a concerned expression creasing his brow. “I never take it off.”
“Exactly. I’ve got you sitting in a ring of downers while you’re wearing an upper. Hand it over.”
David grimaced but unscrewed his ring and dropped it into Moira’s hand. The moment the skin-warmed crystal hit her palm, a rush of energy flowed through her. She felt wide awake and revved up, strong enough to face down any challenge. It hit her like espresso on an empty stomach and left her feeling similarly queasy.
“This is how you feel all the time?” she asked, slipping the ring onto her thumb for safekeeping. “I feel like I could fight a catamount. Or pull a twelve-hour shift.”
David absentmindedly rubbed the pale band of skin where his ring had been. “I’m getting a little spinny,” he said. “Could I have my ring back, please?”
“Not yet. Ground like I taught you. You can handle this by yourself.”
David pressed his palms into the wood on either side of him, leaning into the point of contact. In a few minutes, the concerned lines between his eyes smoothed over, and he was breathing evenly again.
“How does that feel?” Moira asked.
“Good. I think. Quiet. Soft, sort of. Warmth, right through here.” David pressed splayed fingers to his sternum. “But weird. I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“You don’t have to do anything. You just have to receive. That’s the point.”
Just as David was about to reply, there was a deafening crash from down the hall, loud enough to shake the floorboards. Moira yelped and her go-go boots kicked over a couple crystals, breaking the circle. David’s eyes flew open.
