A Girls Guide to Vampires(10)

"Joy, you cast your stones for eleven people that day, and of those eleven castings you saw disaster in ten, four of which involved natural disasters that manifested within three weeks," Miranda said firmly. "The Womyn's Magyck Festival Council has forbidden you ever to cast your stones within their domain. They would have banned you completely except they knew how much you help out at the Shoppe."

"And how much you donate each year in support of the Council," I muttered darkly.

Miranda waved a hand. "Exactly. So no rune stones! I might have been a little hasty in suggesting you don't have any psychic ability. You do seem to have one."

I looked up from cuticle watch, shooting a smug glance at Roxy to make sure she was listening. "Oh? What do I have? Precognition? Clairvoyance? The ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound?"

She ignored my attempt at humor. "No. I think you're cataclysient."

Huh? "Cataclysient? Is that a word?"

"What does it mean?" Roxy asked.

Miranda closed her eyes, breathed in deeply the scent of the herbs bound into the invocation candles, and traced an ancient symbol of protection in my general direction. "It means when you cast your rune stones you have the dangerous and uncontrolled ability to call down cataclysmic disasters."

Roxy snickered. I was stunned by Miranda's outrageous, and patently false, claim. I stood up, saying, "You're making that up. There is no such word as cataclysient, and even if there was, I'm not it. I'm just a simple woman trying to do you a favor, and I resent the fact that you can think something so ridiculous about me. Sheesh!"

"Oh, I don't know," Roxy started to say. I mouthed that I'd get her later. She just grinned and continued on. "There's just something about you that shrieks cataclysmic disaster. I think Miranda's dead on."

"You would."

"Ladies!"

We stopped sniping and looked at our friend. She shook her Invocation candle at us. "I don't know what exactly the Goddess chose to reveal to your eyes, but I do know this—you are taking her gift far too lightly. There is purpose behind everything she reveals, and if you do not take careful heed of her warnings, you will suffer."

"Are you trying to scare us?" I asked.

"If she is, she's doing a good job," Roxy muttered sotto voce. I agreed wholeheartedly.

"Yes, I am, if that's what it will take to bring you to your senses. The Goddess did not share her vision of your future with me, Joy, but this I sense: If you continue down the path you have started, you place your life, your very soul, at risk. Please keep the Goddess's words close to your heart, and make no foolish decisions."



It wasn't so much Miranda's words, but the almost tangible sense of fear surrounding her that remained with me, still palpable almost an hour later as we drove through the winding roads toward the small town on the southern Oregon coast where we lived.

"What are you going to do?" Roxy asked.

"About what?"

She shot a fast glance at me out of the corner of her eye as she turned down the street where I lived in a tiny studio apartment. "About our trip. I know you think I'm an idiot to spend my two weeks in Europe hunting down a Dark One, but I was hoping you'd come with me because I think we'd have a lot of fun. Now… well, now you have a really good reason to go to Paris instead."

I shrugged. "You know, I like Miranda a lot, she's a very kind and giving person, but I have to tell you—it just rankles when someone tells me not to do something. It makes me all that much more determined to do it. And this whole business with the 'child of darkness,' and a soulless wonder—well, you have to admit it sounds like it's straight out of a book. And not a very well-written one, either."

Roxy pulled into the driveway leading to my apartment. "So you're going to come with me, then? You'll help me find a Moravian Dark One?"

"No." I levered myself out of her car, making yet another mental promise that I'd never ride in that car again without first losing twenty pounds. "I won't help you find a make-believe being that doesn't exist anywhere but in the world of fiction; however, I will go with you to the Czech Republic, but only because it's an historic area that sounds interesting, and because you have absolutely no ability with foreign languages. I'd never be able to live with myself if you ended up in some Czech prison because you inadvertently propositioned some policeman rather than asking him where the nearest toilet was. I'll come with you, but don't expect me to pander to your idiocy over vampires and others of their ilk."

She grinned, her eyes shadowed in the flat glow of the overhead light. "Dante's castle is next door to the town I'm going to, you know. You said you want to see some castles while we're in Europe, and if we hang around Dante's long enough, we might get a glimpse of him. I'm going to take all my books just in case we can corner him."