“Hired muscle, eh?” Malina says, her tone drier than a week-old bagel.
“Yeah! But also thunder gods. Forgot to mention it, sorry. I thought you would know already.”
“I only divined your arrival with the horse,” she says, opening the padlock on the gate. It looks like a perfectly normal lock, but a quick flip to the magical spectrum confirms that there is a whole bunch of hoodoo surrounding it. There are also layers of protections ringing the entire fence and arcing over the property in various shades of purple, from lavender to deep violet. I’m sure that while I lived in the same building as the sisters in Tempe, their floor of the tower looked like this, pulsing with warning.
Malina Sokołowska’s funky white house sits behind a brown slatted wood fence that encloses the whole acre and a half, and the architecture is old school—I can tell by the popped-out windows with triangular tiled hats on the second story, and the giant casements for the first-floor windows are a giveaway too. I’m guessing it was built in the 1930s. There’s moss growing on the wide stone steps leading up to the main house, and a smaller set leads to the door of what must be either attached servants’ or guest quarters. Most of the coven is outside waiting for us on the steps, bundled up in coats and purple scarves, sipping thermos cups of tea or coffee held in their gloved hands. Their smiles are wide and genuine when they see Orlaith and me. Berta bounces up and gives me a hug and then asks if I would like some cake. “I knew you were coming,” she says, “so I baked you one.”
“That would be great,” I tell her, “but I’d like to make sure that Świętowit’s horse is happy first.” To the wider group, I announce, “His name is Miłosz.”
A couple more witches emerge from the house and then the entire coven steps forward, grins on their faces, for introductions to the horse. He shies a tiny bit at the crowding, but I send soothing thoughts to him and explain that these women will be taking care of him now and protecting him from the god who branded him. There will be apples and oats and he’ll be able to take walks in the woods and enjoy the sky from now on.
He already knows Malina, and introductions to the other four witches I know proceed quickly. I point out Roksana, Berta, Klaudia, and Kazimiera, and they say hello to Miłosz. Malina darts inside the house to get me a fresh shirt and light jacket for the chill.
I have to slow down and take my time after that, switching my head into recording mode. Formally meeting the rest of the coven will be news for Atticus when I catch up with him. He signed a nonaggression treaty with the original five shortly after he took me on as an apprentice, and these new coven members are not technically bound by it; he’ll want to know who the free agents are. And I have to remind myself that I am not bound by that agreement either—and neither are any of the sisters when it comes to me. When they are smiling and welcoming like this, it’s difficult to remember that we aren’t really friends. Maybe they would like to be, though. I think Malina is a very different leader than the old one, Radomiła. Her new witches all appear to be in their twenties, but that doesn’t mean anything; I’m thirty-four now but still look like I’m in my twenties.
Martyna is a brunette with bangs and has the rest of her hair tied back in a ponytail. She has piercing blue eyes rimmed in thick mascara and sharp, thin lips she’s painted blood red. “If you’d rather not have that heavy cake,” she confides to me, “I made some delightful cookies.” Her eyes dart to Berta and her lips turn up on one side. Berta’s eyes are narrowed, and it’s evident that there’s a friendly competition going on to see who can first foist her baked goods on the Druid.
“Hiiiiii,” the next witch says, bobbing her head once and smiling at me. “I’m Ewelina.” Her bubbly greeting is a stark contrast to the Swedish death-metal T-shirt I see peeking out underneath her jacket. She has hot-pink streaks in her black hair, multiple piercings in her eyebrows, a ring in her nose, and a stainless-steel stud underneath her bottom lip. Unlike the others, she has no purple scarf, but she wears dark-purple eye shadow instead. She throws up some horns with her fingers as if she’s at a Dio concert and nods once. “Rock on.” I think that might be all the English she knows, and that’s fine—her smile goes a long way, and her few words of English are more than I know in Polish.
Agnieszka looks somewhat colder and more nervous than everyone else. Her violet scarf is wrapped around her to such heights that her mouth is completely hidden. I see only her prominent nose and eyes above it, like an old Kilroy graffiti from World War II. She has purple mittens on her hands, which I notice when she extends one to shake mine. “I’m not very good at baking—or anything normal, really,” she says, apologies in her tone, “but I’m quite good at wards if you need anything like that.”
“That’s very kind. Thank you.”
Next, a blond witch who’s spent a lot of time in the sun introduces herself as Dominika. She’s shaven the right side of her head down to her ear but let the top and left side grow straight and long, in a sort of homage to New Wave styles of the 1980s. Her exposed, perfectly shaped right ear has eight different piercings with beautiful rings and studs, and when I begin to stare at it I realize that it’s what she uses to charm people. Wow, an ear witch. I blink furiously and look at her eyes, which are shining with excitement.
“I love horses,” she says. “Will you tell Miłosz I’m so glad he’s come to stay with us? He is magnificent!”
I relay these sentiments to Miłosz, and he nickers in response to the flattery. Dominika pulls an apple out of her coat pocket and asks, “May I give this to him?”
“Of course.” She moves it under his nose, presenting it on top of her palm, and he nabs it with his lips and then crunches down with evident satisfaction.
Magdalena has a giant mane of dark hair that frames her head and hides her neck so that her very pale face appears to float in black waters. Her complexion combined with that hair remind me uncomfortably of the Morrigan. But it’s not her hair that she’s using to charm people: She uses her eyebrows, shaped into graceful arches, and an uncanny ability to raise either of them independently or waggle them around.
Casting eyes sideways at Berta and Martyna, she says to me, “You should not be eating cakes or cookies. Scones are best.”
“Oh. You’ve made scones, then?”
Her right eyebrow lifts heavenward. “No. I can’t bake for shit, as you Americans say. I just have strong opinions about breakfast. We should not be feeding you cake and cookies as the sun is rising. You need meat and cheese, and if there must be bread, then a scone.”
“Oh, I like this one,” Orlaith says.
Zofia is the definition of petite: I’m not sure she’s fully five feet tall. Her hood is up, fringed in white fur, and a thick braid of auburn hair spills out of it and falls down to her chest. She nods and says only, “Pleased to meet you,” in a thick accent. I think, like Ewelina, she is reserved because of language rather than because she has nothing more to say.
Patrycja is either the daughter of immigrants to Poland or one parent is not ethnically Polish. Her complexion is russet brown and I’m sure she’s asked constantly about her heritage, so I don’t ask—it doesn’t matter anyway. She’s dressed in winter running clothes and wearing a pair of those abnormally bright running shoes, so I’m guessing she likes her exercise.