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CHAPTER NINETEEN

A few weeks later, on the Friday night before finals, Avery has Leo, Aaron, and me over for a holiday party. I’ve taken to calling our little group The Clairs , but only in my own mind. It’s my way of distinguishing them from the O-Chi’s, because yes, my life has become that compartmentalized.

Avery welcomes me into her apartment with a flourish, her multitude of bracelets tinkling like bells.

“What smells so good?” I ask.

“Spiced cider.”

From the sofa, Aaron winks. “ Hard spiced cider.”

Like an eager child, Avery opens the small gift bag I hand her. “Krampus!” she laughs when she pulls out the scented black candle. “This is fantastic.” She lights it and places it alongside the others on the windowsill, making sure to spin the jar so we can all appreciate the demon on the label.

Leo arrives the moment I flop down on the couch. He’s gone rogue tonight and is wearing color—a deep wine-red, to be exact—that brings out the rosy brown in his eyes. In the flickering candlelight, they’re mesmerizing .

He greets us all. “Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Seasons Greetings, whatever?—”

Avery interrupts, “Yule, Leo. Yule and only Yule.”

“Okay, then,” I say, “So how do we celebrate Yule?”

“Drink. Everyone come get some cider.”

We all squeeze into the kitchen and ladle the hot, spicy beverage into our mugs.

As we sip, Avery tells us about Odin’s Wild Hunt.

I know a bit of Norse mythology, but not this tale, and it’s one that shocks me.

On the Winter Solstice, Odin rides through the sky on his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, striking down the bad people and showering the good with gifts.

“Get your chin off the floor, witchling,” Avery says when she recognizes the shock on my face. “Christians didn’t invent Santa Claus.”

“I don’t know who sounds worse, Odin or Krampus. Why do we have to scare the hell out of people to get them to be good?”

Aaron flashes us a grin. “I say, why not just let them be bad?”

“Cheers to that!” Avery clanks her mug with Aaron’s and we toast all around.

Why not be bad, indeed? I’ve spent almost twenty years trying to be good, or at least trying not to disappoint people. But why? Because I feel their disapproval so keenly? Maybe one of these days I’ll muster up the nerve to be bad, just for the fun of it.

Back in the living room, I take my time admiring Avery’s holiday decorations. Real evergreen boughs, pomanders, pinecones, and a wreath made of bound twigs and orange slices.

“What’s with all the oranges?” I ask her.

She licks the sweet cider off her lips. “They’re a symbol of the returning sun.”

Hmm. There’s something primal about celebrating the longest night of the year and the brighter, warmer days to come. We modern humans like to think we’re above nature and that it doesn’t impact our daily lives, but it does.

“I could really get into this Yule thing,” I say. “It’s peaceful. ”

“I know.” Avery sighs and inhales the citrusy, spicy scents. “Gotta get my fill before I go home to the Bauer family holiday chaos.”

I nod in sympathy. I’d love to spend the season enjoying the crisp air and chasing the dark away with candles, but there won’t be time for that. For the first six days of the break, I’ll be in Raleigh with Zander, visiting his family. Then I head home to my own.

Double the families, double the chaos.

Avery tells us she’ll be spending half her break in Palm Beach for her sister’s equestrian tournament. Evidently, she has two sisters, both younger than her and both everything her parents want Avery to be. “I’m the black sheep,” she admits with a shrug.

What follows is a chorus of “me too ’ s.”

Leo shocks us all by revealing that he has a sister.

“How old is she?” I ask. “What’s her name?”

“Summer,” he says, gazing into the distance. “And she’s only fourteen.”

I bite back the “aww” that’s on the tip of my tongue. “Are you going home over the break?”

“For a little while. But I have to help Robin with something first.”

More demands from his mysterious roommate.

Avery is tipsy enough to pry. “Help her with what?”

He shifts in the armchair like it’s made of rocks. “We’re hunting down a ley line.”

A what?

“Really?” Avery sits straighter. “Why? Where?”

“Asheville,” Leo replies. “Supposedly, there’s one right in the middle of town. Where the old Vance monument used to be.”

Aaron and I exchange quizzical glances.

Avery asks, “There’s one that close?”

“We’ll find out.”

“Are you going for the solstice?”

Leo nods and rubs the back of his neck. “Liminal space at a liminal time. ”

“Okay,” Aaron interrupts. “What in the hell are you two talking about?”

It’s Avery who explains, and what she says is fascinating.

A ley line is a straight path of earth energy.

For millennia, people have felt nature pulsing along these invisible routes and considered them sources of power or doors to other worlds.

Of course, there’s all sorts of cockamamie stories about them, like that they’re faerie paths or the sites of alien landings.

But when Avery shows us a website where someone has mapped a ley line from Africa to the UK, I’m floored.

The perfectly straight line connects the dots right through the Pyramids, Rome, and Stonehenge.

While Avery talks, I study Leo. He’s a plant-healer, a psychic-collector, and he’s looking for a ley line.

Is he some kind of witch, too? And who or what the hell is Robin?

None of us have met her or been to her and Leo’s apartment.

He says he lives in Breakridge, but he could be a shaman living in a yurt for all I know.

He nods in agreement with Avery’s explanation, but otherwise keeps silent. When she’s through, he goes to the kitchen for more cider. I glance at Avery and Aaron, but they’re still talking about Stonehenge. I guess I’m the only one who notices how evasive he’s being.

He returns to us a minute or two later, wearing a smile. “Anyone game for an experiment?”

An experiment or a test? Or, to put it even more accurately, training?

It’s so hard to tell with Leo.

He settles back into his chair while, at his request, Avery jumps up to get her Tarot cards and a pen and paper. Resting his elbows on his knees, he clasps his hands. “Let’s see what three psychics can do when they work together.”

Avery and Aaron are all eagerness, but me? Not so much. I bite my lip and toy with my amethyst. They’re just cards; they can’t hurt me. They didn’t the last time we used them.

Aaron asks, “You in, Betts? ”

“Um—” I return his bright smile with a shaky one of my own. “Sure.”

“Let’s do it. Teamwork.” Avery winks at me. “Like the Three of Pentacles.”

“Exactly.” Leo scoots to the edge of his seat so he can shuffle the cards on the coffee table, and so his knee makes contact with mine. He pulls a card at random and lays it face down in front of us. “Let’s see if the three of you can figure out which card this is.”

Aaron slides it closer to himself. “Lemme guess. We each take a turn with it and see what it tells us?”

“Yeah, but don’t say it out loud. Write it down.”

Presumably to avoid influencing what the next person senses.

Aaron chuckles. “I might’ve had too much cider for this, but I’ll give it a try.

” He sets the card on his knee and shuts his eyes.

Before I can decide if it’s rude of me to be watching him, he opens them again and scribbles something on the notepad Avery gave him.

Silently, he passes her the card and, like he did, she closes her eyes as she holds it in her left hand.

A moment later, she tears a sheet out of the notepad and writes down what she’s seen.

My turn. I clamp my lips to keep from qualifying an attempt I haven’t even made yet. My heartbeat thumps in my ears. I can do this. I’m in a safe place and I know what I’m walking into.

I glance at Leo.

“Go ahead,” he says, his eyes telling me, I’ve got you.

I lay a hand on the card and close my eyes. Nothing. Aaron and Avery read it so quickly and confidently. Maybe I’m in over my head. I take a deep breath and toss aside my self-consciousness. Listen for my intuition.

Put it over your heart .

I press the card to my chest and concentrate on its energy. Feelings come pouring in. The hardest part, it turns out, is finding the right words to describe them. Once I’m done making notes, I slap the pencil down and shudder off the card’s more unpleasant sensations.

Noticing, Leo lays a hand on my knee .

Aaron reports first. “I heard metal clanging.” He slides his paper into the middle of the table.

“Swords?” Avery wonders aloud. “Or armor? Oh! It could be the metal goblets. What sort of metal sound, Aaron?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t a hollow clang like the cups would have. That’s all I can tell you.”

Avery tells us she saw water. “A pool or a lake.”

“Water’s associated with cups, isn’t it?” Leo asks her.

“Yeah, but it’s on some of the other cards too, especially Swords and the Major Arcana. I’m going to rule out Wands or Pentacles. I’m thinking armor or swords. Knight of Cups maybe?”

“Okay, Betts,” Aaron says. “Help us out.”

Leo asks me, “What did you feel?”

I peer down at the words I wrote. They make no sense, but here goes nothing. “Confused. Trapped. Rock and a hard place.” I look up at my friends, expecting disappointment or amusement.

Instead, Avery gasps, “It’s the Two of Swords!”

“You sure?” Leo’s hand hovers over the card, awaiting the signal to flip it over.

“Positive. It has the swords and they’re crossed, so there’s your clanging metal—” She counts off the points on her fingers. “The woman’s sitting in front of a lake. And…the Two of Swords is all about having to make hard decisions. The rock and the hard place.”

Leo hands me the card and lets me have first peek. One glance and my breath catches. I meet his eyes. And his smile. Pulse racing, I turn the card up so everyone can see.

The Two of Swords.

“Well, I’ll be,” Aaron whispers.