The Wiccan Diaries: Neophyte Adept Part 9

Lia.

She had received a letter as well. I couldn't bother her with this; she had her own problems. Tomorrow was the Gathering....

I ran a warm bath, and while that was happening, sent off a quick email to Ballard.

("Can you come see me tonight?" I asked. "I need to know what we're doing for tomorrow, and there's some stuff I want to speak to you about," I wrote.) Ballard was probably still asleep. As I listened to the sounds outside, everything seemed more subdued. Tourist season was over. It was a mild seventy-two degrees, and we were headed into a peaceful winter, I hoped. Rome slept.

I finished bathing and got out of my clawfooted tub and tracked footprints throughout the house; they fascinated me as I put on my clothing.

I had attended my first Wolves' Council. Me.

How many people knew about them? Did the people who ran the restaurant who were so friendly to Ballard and I? Did the people I saw wave to him as we drove our motorcycles through Trastevere? They would wave out of windows while they did their laundry.

Ballard seemed to take it for granted. He was, after all, friendly in the extreme and fun to be with. Maybe everyone loved Ballard. That made perfect sense.

Then again...

Maybe they knew what he was, what he was turning in to. Maybe it was, like, this ma.s.sive conspiracy, and I thought, Had they been members of I Gatti?

True, they were, like, a hundred years old, a lot of them, but maybe they had heard quote-unquote 'The Calling', back in the day. It made a lot of sense, Rome being handed down, generation to generation. Protectors...

I browsed through a slew of websites, but whatever was out there couldn't be culled from the Interwebs. Instead, I abandoned my search for witchcraft and werewolves, and went out, to get a drink from the vending machine.

I b.u.mped into What's-Her-Face. She ripped the tab off her soda.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," I said. "Andando. I won't be back for a while. I don't know for how long. If you hear strange noises coming from my room, run, it's most likely an intruder. Nice talking to you."

I was just about to shut my door, when she spoke. "This city is full of strange things," she said, her voice rising in that weird way she had, drawing me back. "Something to consider when you take off."

"What do you know about it?" I said. I was so unnerved by her statement, it was a second before I realized she had spoken to me like a real personand in English.

"They're here. Can't you feel them?" she said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

Her eyes got big, and spooky. "We're not alone. Take care, Halsey Rookmaaker."

I slammed the door; my breathing picked up, and I felt the chills run down my spine. Ballard knocked on the door five seconds later. I opened it, not knowing what to expect, and he walked in with a strange look on his face.

"I know what you mean," he said. "That chick is weird."

"You felt it too?" I said. "She gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"Maybe you should move. I don't even know how you afford a place like this."

I explained to him that I had some money. A small sum of money bequeathed to me by my mom and dad. I actually had lots.

"Still, this place must cost a fortune," he said. "You're right in the thick of it."

Truer words were never spoken. But when I thought about it, Ballard was right. My room was modestly proportioned, but it was right over one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world. It would be like living on Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive.

Surely the small sum of money I dished out each month wasn't enough for such accommodations. I shook it off. Ballard had brought breakfast. He went out to the balcony, to take a look around, and unwrapped a sausage-and-egg Mcm.u.f.fin, which he ate with relish, there on the balcony, before offering me one, and coming inside.

He smiled at me as we ate our meal. "That was some get-together last night," I said.

"Tell me about it. Who knew Gaven was such a mystic?" he said.

"So he's never spoken to you about where you guys come from?" I asked.

Ballard made a noncommittal sound. "Not really," he said. "It's all need-to-know. I guess I don't yet."

"It sounds like he's really busy, though, getting this place together, wherever it is that we're going to meet; and you just started changing... Maybe there's, like, an initiation or something, for all new werewolves..."

"I don't know," said Ballard, "we'll see."

"So what's the deal anyway? Are you, like, marked for life, or something? I haven't really seen any other people older than thirty, in I Gatti. What happens to werewolves when they get too old?"

"I've thought about it," said Ballard. "I think you kind of grow out of it, whatever that means. Like I said, there's a bunch more to find out. Remember that bike race we had, where I crashed, and almost got killed?"

How could I forget? Ballard had slammed into a wall head first going who knows how fast.

"I didn't know it at the time, but it's a race for who gets to be the Head of the Pack," he said.

"Isn't that Gaven's job?" I asked.

"So long as he keeps winning," said Ballard, "but he's getting older. He and Lia keep talking about settling downso I guess that means he can't be a werewolf forever."

"How old's Lia, anyway?" I asked.

"She's twenty-four."

"So she can't keep doing this much longer, either." I said.

"Apparently not. When I ask her about mom and dadthey're living in Greece you knowshe tells me to keep my mouth shut. One of the reasons she didn't tell me what I Gatti was up to until I started showing. She doesn't want me blabbing to them about it. It's like some big secret."

"What about your two older brothers? What are their names again?"

"One is called Sandor, and the other is Septimus," said Ballard. "They're really weird. So far as I know, they haven't shown. They're not werewolves."

"Oh," I said.

He pointed to the laptop. "So what have you been finding out? Anything special? What's going on?"

This was what I missed, the two of us together, sleuthing. I typed an address into the URL. "Check this out," I said. A website popped up.

Roman numerals flashed across the screen as the web page loaded: I... II... III... all the way up to the number nine.

Ballard said, "Will you look at that?"

"I thought you would appreciate it," I said.

Symbols fell like snowflakes. There were full moons and crescents, and also strange runic-shaped ones we had never seen before; not to mention the Wiccan iconography Ballard and I were proficient in having interpreted it over the summer.

They fluttered around a large symbol I had seen before. A giant circle with slash marks through it.

I drew it on a piece of paper, and filled it in by hand.

All 8 of the Wiccan Virtues. "It was said that every magical person possessed one. Their birthright," I said. "Like a star sign, almost. It defined who you were to become."

"Which one are you?" he asked.

"You remember when I said I didn't know anything? I literally do not," I said. "But I have reason to suspect I might be this one here" I tapped the wedge. "Malleability," I said. "I think it means I have transformative properties. Or something. I'm not sure."

"Like that dream you had, where you thought you might be one of us, a werewolf?"

I nodded. "That's right, Ballard."

"What's Lia? Is she Discretion? I bet she's Discretion," said Ballard. "Real party p.o.o.per."

"Whatever she is, I don't think she will know until she crafts," I said.

"I get it. It's like one of those things you have to figure out for yourself," said Ballard. "Hey, click on it! Go on! Check it out!"

I moused over the eight-sided wheel. Roman numerals appeared again. Ballard and I waited, but the screen refused to change. Nothing happened, even when I clicked on it.

"What does it mean, anyway?" he asked. "What's the website trying to tell you?"

"I don't know," I said, "but do you remember the Wiccan symbols last summer? They were in a specific order."

I quickly drew them out.

Ballard had not had the benefit of Infester's guidance. No one knew the story of the Wiccan witch, except for me.

I didn't see any reason not to include him. After all, if the story was trueif the symbols did, in fact, predict the future, and the coming of this witchthen Ballard was as much a part of the story as me. He was caught up in it, too! I drew them out.

"Vampire," I said.

"The Three Protectors."

"A fourth one. He has no name."

"A coven of vampires. Four."

"And that one?" said Ballard.

"It's the symbol for war," I said. "All told they tell the story of a Wiccan deity, with unspecified powers."

Could that be true? As I said it, I knew that it was.

"These are just the broad strokes," I said, "it's a little more..."

"Oh," said Ballard.

It happened. One second, I was in my room on Via dei Condotti, the next, it was like I was being transported someplace else. I could hear voices speaking, see strange shapesbut they were all obscured; they could not see me. Fog swirled like a vortex around us. "She will not undergo the trials. I will not let her be fledged."

"And the other one?"

"Guided by pa.s.sions. It is too soon to tell."

"Let neither of them survive. Use THEM if you have to!"

The fog began to swirl. I felt myself falling from a great height. The next second, I was opening my eyes, and Ballard was standing over me.

Ballard and I spent the day together. I didn't know how much time we could expect to see one another, with tomorrow happening, and all of that. He got this really weird vibe, like it had been coming on all day, whatever was bothering himjumping at strange noises and all that. I had never seen him so spooked. When I asked him what was wrong, all he said was, "It's Gaven's orders."

I told him about my lapse-journey-thing and not to worry about it, that I could take care of myself. He didn't believe me.

"What if something attacked you?" he said.

"Nothing's going to attack me, Ballard. And if it did, so what? I don't know if you're aware, but there's going to be a bunch of magical people therenot to mention werewolves, and I'm sure not all the vampires are evil bloodsuckers of the night. They're getting together for a purpose, whatever that is."

"I still don't feel safe leaving you alone tonight," he said. It was super sweet. "Maybe I could, I don't know, curl down at your feet or something."

The werewolf puns were going to be an ongoing treat with us, I could tell.

He looked out the windows, like something was going to attack us, and then stood out on the balconyand he would do that, like, every five minutes.

"Will you sit down," I said.

He obeyed me like a good boy.

"So, what else did you learn? Did you and Gaven get a chance to talk last night?" I asked Ballard.

"I did learn one thing. You remember that seven-sided star that was engraved over the entrance to La Luna Blu?"

La Luna Blu was this bar they all hung out at. It was in Trastevere.

"Well, supposedly, it's etched over the doorways of every werewolf-friendly tavern in town. Can you believe it? I was, like, the last to know."

Ballard was starting to interject everything he said with like, like me.

"Did that restaurant you took me to?" I asked.

"It had it," he said.

So that at least explained one thing. Their secret went beyond the bounds of I Gatti itself; I found this troubling on a couple of levels, and I also remembered the Vampire Killers, the Hunters in Prague who made it their business to eliminate Immortals. In a way, it was like there were three levels, just as there were three levels to Magical apotheosis.