“It’ll be fine,” I told him, knowing I was trying to convince myself just as much as I was attempting to convince him.
“I’m trying to make myself believe that.”
Just as I opened my mouth to reply, I heard a knock at the door, and knew it was my father and Lawrence. I disentangled myself from Connor’s arms, saying, “Showtime.”
His mouth compressed, but he only nodded and went to the door. The two men stood outside, both wearing their usual loose-fitting light-colored shirts, my father in the inevitable cargo pants, Lawrence in Wranglers so faded I had to wonder if they were older than I was. My father held a small linen bag in one hand.
“Come in,” Connor told them, his voice tight.
I smiled at them as they entered and asked, “Do you want something to drink? We have bottled water, and there’s some cold tea — ”
“Water later,” Lawrence said. “But first we need to prepare the space.”
“Um…prepare the space?”
In reply, my father drew a sage smudge stick out of the bag. “We weren’t sure if Connor had cleansed the place lately.”
Try ever, I thought. Smudging was something we McAllisters did a lot, but one thing I’d noticed about the Wilcox clan was that they didn’t seem to follow too many of the old ways, except for observing the solstice celebrations.
“No, I haven’t,” Connor said, looking embarrassed, although I wasn’t sure if his embarrassment was due to the fact that he’d never done such a thing, or because he couldn’t believe the other two men had suggested doing it in the first place.
But they were deadly serious, and so we spent the next twenty minutes or so following them from room to room as Lawrence chanted quietly in Navajo, touching the smudge stick to the four points of each chamber, tracing symbols I didn’t recognize above each window and doorway. By the time they were done, it was only a few minutes before ten. I could feel my pulse begin to race when I realized what time it was. Not good. I needed to be calm, in control.
“It is time,” Lawrence said at last. “Where in this place do you feel most comfortable?”
I was inclined to tell them it was upstairs in bed with Connor, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t go over very well. “In the living room,” I replied. That wasn’t even a lie. We’d spent lots of good moments in the living room, including a few memorable ones on the rug in front of the fireplace.
Probably not a good idea to bring that up, either.
Lawrence directed me to sit on the couch, with Connor beside me. That was good; I didn’t think Lawrence would separate us, not after we’d spent so much time with me practicing the meditations in Connor’s company, but my anxiety kept ratcheting up and up, and right then I really didn’t know what to expect.
My father sat down in the matching armchair, but Lawrence remained standing, his back to the cold hearth. I wondered if he was going to maintain that position the entire time I was off in my trance…meditation…whatever. But he probably had a much better idea of what he was doing than I did, so I didn’t ask.
The clock ticked away, and I cast a worried glance up at it. Four minutes after ten. Almost there….
“Breathe,” Lawrence said. “Reach out, and sense the powers at work this night.”
As simple as that, and I knew it was time to begin. I gave a brief nod, then reached out and laid my hand on top of Connor’s just before I shut my eyes and drew in a deep breath.
I could feel it, almost as soon as I shut out the physical world around me. This longest of days was coming to an end and would begin to tilt back toward the dark, even as the earth blocked out even the slightest trace of the moon’s light. Their energies, wildly opposed and yet somehow working in concert, seemed to crackle on every side.
This time I drifted out the big windows overlooking the street as if they weren’t there. The sidewalks below me were crowded with people; after all, to them this was just another Saturday night, another excuse to get out and party. I thought I caught dual shimmers of energy that were Clay and Isaac, moving through the throngs, but of course they were not my goal tonight.
Here in downtown I could feel nothing, no whisper of an alien presence that might be Nizhoni’s. I wanted to curse, but I knew that would only break my focus. No need to be impatient, I told myself. Time doesn’t work the same way in the world of the spirits.
No, it didn’t. It could speed up, or slow down. During some meditations it would feel as if I’d only been gone for five minutes, when in reality nearly an hour had passed. Other times I’d think I’d been away for hours and hours, and would return only a minute or two after I shut my eyes. So I couldn’t allow myself to worry about how much time this was all taking. It would take what it took, and not a second more or less.