“Ruby, Linda said we’d be learning how to strengthen and reinforce the fault line so nothing…. bad can get through. You sound like you think something is going to get through.”

“Derek didn’t send me to prepare you for the best-case scenario. If something does break out, you ladies are what stands between it and harm to your community.” Remembering her earlier thought, Ruby added, “Think of Derek as a sheriff, and he’s pretty much decided you’re capable of being deputies. That’s what I’m here to train you to be.”

Miriam pressed her lips together, but nodded. When they’d arrived, there’d been the usual atmosphere of chatter that punctuated an amicable female get-together. On a normal night, after the Grounding, when the general energy work was done, Ruby knew they usually sat down to the wine and tempting hors d’oeuvres Linda had waiting in her fridge. Hundreds of years ago, when the very first all-female coven had been formed, Ruby suspected it had been that way. They’d performed their vital magical function to help crops, protect or heal family, but in the aftermath, they’d bond over discussions of family, marriage and service, the building blocks of the female world. A different, but no less important, kind of circle.

She’d just introduced a new element to this coven, one most modern-day groups didn’t face. As a result, Miriam’s somber expression, her trace of uncertainty, was now reflected in the other faces in the circle.

“Let’s do that meditation,” Linda interjected. “The Lord and Lady are with us. They’ll guide us, steady us. Help us learn what needs to be learned, and know what questions need answers.”

The ladies settled into their preferred resting states, eyes closing. The five-minute meditation started with a Goddess chant to focus the mind. Once it was done, Marie lifted the flute she had resting next to her and began to play a haunting Native American piece that spoke of blue sky and grass-covered plains. It was easy to imagine oneself lying between those two wide expanses, connecting to the energies above, below and within, as well as the surrounding elements, all infused with divine power. The focus of the coven intensified, that energy condensing around them. After several moments, Marie, her eyes closed throughout the playing of the piece, set the woodwind aside and joined them fully in the meditation, letting the night sounds take over as a natural extension of her music.

Ruby kept her eyes open throughout. She monitored the rate at which the auras changed around each of them, confirming her opinion of which coven members were strongest, most focused. But beyond that, she didn’t need the meditation. She could ground herself in a blink, pull magic into herself as needed, as easily as picking up a pencil to write.

A pink moon was rising over the trees while the dusk light settled. It looked vulnerable yet enduring, something she used to feel and no longer did. At least not until Derek Stormwind had walked back into her shop.

Holy Goddess, could she string three sentences together in her mind that didn’t involve that man? Closing her eyes, she took a few deep breaths, synchronizing with the others. While she didn’t need it for her magical purposes, the preparatory meditation connected the circle, connected her to the other women, and that was important, though she’d held off from it as long as she could, curiously reluctant.

As she tapped into that flow, the alluring peace and tranquility that came with such spiritual sisterhood, no matter how transient to the moment, filled her. It brought a bittersweet feeling. Grief. An emotion that would find familiar ground among thirteen women who’d experienced the joys and sorrows of marriage, childhood— of life itself, from the uniquely female perspective.

The Dark part of her recoiled from the dangerous provocation. Then Linda reached out, took her ice-cold hand. Robin, the woman on the other side of Ruby, did the same, connecting them as a natural part of the circle binding. Ruby had an overwhelming urge to squeeze those hands tight, to imagine Raina’s long-nailed, elegant fingers, or Ramona’s chapped palm. Her chaotic friend’s nails were usually jagged, chewed off. Raina had sometimes playfully rubbed one of her own wicked nails across Ruby’s palm to tickle it and disrupt her circle casting, make her laugh.

“Blessed be,” murmured Robin. It was picked up and continued around the circle until it came back to Linda. When she lifted her head, Ruby sensed it, opened her eyes. Linda looked at her expectantly.

“Blessed be,” Ruby said, though the words stuck in her throat. “All right, then.” Giving Linda’s and Robin’s hands a brisk, functional squeeze, she drew her hands back to herself. “First lesson is feeling the fault line itself, its contours and shape, and taking our wards and protections with us when we stretch out in a line to do that. This circle is a powerful place, but that fault line is even more so. You can draw on that power even as you’re strengthening it, which is a different kind of ‘circle,’ just as three-dimensional, because remember the circle itself is a sphere….”

She hadn’t been lying. True magical energy work was an extremely intense workout, particularly while learning to do it properly, correcting bad habits or carelessness that developed from doing monthly routine prayer circles. When she called for a break three hours later, that moon was high in the sky and the women were drained. Some were sweating, the cotton ritual robes they’d donned clinging to their skin. As soon as Ruby said they were done for the night, they closed down the circle and headed up to the house in weary clumps. Miriam hung back, however.

“You did something extra to it, before, didn’t you?”

Ruby cocked her head. “I don’t know. Did I?”

“It felt like a different energy than our usual casting, an additional protection, of sorts. I thought it might have been something Mr. Stormwind left, but it felt like you.”

Ruby almost smiled. Mr. Stormwind, indeed. “Yes, I did an additional protection before you arrived. You have good instincts. Keep working on that.”

Miriam nodded. When she didn’t move, Ruby realized the young woman was intending to walk with Ruby toward the house. Linda’s kitchen had a bank of spacious windows, throwing warm light onto the lawn. Open French doors brought the clink of glasses as wine was taken out and poured. The beginnings of soft chatter and tired laughter wafted down the slope. Just as she’d anticipated, the women were doing what women did so well, particularly when they shared a common purpose.

“Oh, I’ll….” She bit back the urge to escape. They had a lot to accomplish in the next two weeks. Tonight was barely a warm-up. Bonding with the teacher would be essential for them to trust her lead, let her abuse them in all the necessary ways.

She knew how to appear intimate, confiding, without actually telling someone anything about herself. It had been necessary in dealing with her mother’s clients and her mother. Cultivating that talent had helped her launch a successful gun shop, which depended on a loyal clientele who needed that reassuring combination of professional firmness and warmth from the proprietor. Yeah, she was primed and ready to scribble out one of those management success books. How to Turn Dysfunction into Dollars. She’d add it to her to-do list. Not.

Pulling the scrunchie out of her hair, she shook down her brown locks and scrubbed at her scalp to relax the tense nerves. “I’m starving.”

“Then we better get up there. It’s going to go fast. Hope Linda made extra tonight. So when did you start practicing….”

THE SUCCESS OF THOSE TENTATIVE BONDS BETWEEN teacher and students proved themselves over the next three days. On day four, she felt they were ready to move into scarier territory. She called Christine into the center of the circle with her.

Next to Linda, Christine was the strongest member of the coven. For that reason, Ruby now had her holding the Fire Quarter, opposite Linda’s Earth Quarter, a good balance. “All right, everyone. How do we shield ourselves from magical attack?”

She looked toward Christine. “I’m going to throw a spell at you. It’s going to be uncomfortable, but I promise you it won’t be painful. All right? I want you to feel it first, so apprehension won’t distract you from what I’m about to teach you.”

Christine nodded, a little warily, but she was game. “How do I—”

Ruby thrust out her arms, as if she were snapping out a towel with both hands. Calling fire energy was barely more than flipping a switch and pulling it in. Christine started, gave a short yelp and clapped her hand over her stomach. “Ouch. That felt like…. like electricity.”

“Yes, at that level, that’s what it feels like.” At a higher level, it felt like an explosion that rocketed through the skeletal system and took over the body, making it jitter like a puppet on strings. Or picked it up and threw it onto the windshield of a car.

“Ruby?”

She tuned in to Linda’s voice, realized the woman had called her name a couple times. She shook herself out of it. “Sorry; I was thinking of the next step,” she lied.

“I saw the energy arc,” Miriam said, her eyes wide. “It was like….”

“The air shimmered, and sparked,” Robin finished.

Ruby kept them on track by sharpening her tone. “All right, now. Christine, you remember the protections I had you practicing for your Quarter? Good. When I throw it at you this time, I want you to make a similar motion toward me, but focus that protection through your hands. Imagine it’s suddenly become a big, life-sized shield in front of you, and put everything you have behind it. Remember, just like me, you’re drawing from the elements for the energy source. You pull it into yourself, bind it with your own power signature so the shield anchors itself to you, then project. It will feel cumbersome right now, but with practice, you’ll do it as instinctively as you throw up a hand to ward off something coming at your face.”

It didn’t work the first or second times, but it was a new skill for Christine, and for the rest. Few of them had seen magic manifest in a physical form from a witch, versus feeling its abstract movement through their bodies. No matter how well tuned a person was to ritual and the terminology, seeing active magic like in the storybooks could be unsettling.