As the folds flowed around me, encasing me with their magickal vibrations, I took out my mothers tools: a ceremonial dagger called an athame and a witch's wand, long, slim and decorated with lines of silver beaten into the dark, old wood. I was ready.

First I drew a circle on my floor with chalk. With fleeting pride, I noticed that my circle-drawing was getting much better. It was now nearly perfect. I stepped in, closed the circle, and knelt before my altar. "Goddess and God, I call on thee," I said softly, looking into the candle's flame. "Your daughter Morgan calls on your goodness and your power. Help me make magick. Help me learn. Show me what I am ready to know." Closing my eyes, I let out all my breath, then slowly drew it in again. Within a minute I was deeply into meditation: I had practiced so much that meditation was like using a muscle. It was there, it was almost immediate, and it was strong.

What am I ready to know? I asked.

In my mind a narrow road unspooled before me. Trees and shrubs lined each side, making the road both inviting and secluded. I moved down the road, smoothly and with no sense of pace—as if I were floating above the hard-packed earth. It felt wonderful, exciting. Eagerly I sped forward.

I flew around a curve and then recoiled in sudden horror, a wordless scream coming from my mouth. Before me, blocking my way, was a dying serpent, a black, roiling, two-headed snake. Its flesh was hacked and eaten away; acrid blood stained the roadbed, its bitter, repugnant scent making me cover my nose and mouth. The thing was dying. It curled upon itself in agony, twisting as it lost its breath and felt its blood flow. I backed up slowly, not sure how dangerous it still was, and then from the sky a beautiful, cold, crystalline cage dropped over the thing, With one last shriek of torment the two-headed black serpent lashed its barbed tail and died. The cage shimmered over it gently, seeming made of air, of music, of gold, of crystal. It was made of magick. I had made it. And my cage had helped kill the serpent.

Gasping, I clawed my way back to consciousness, opening my eyes to find my heart pounding, the scent of the serpent's blood still in my throat. I wanted to gag, the horrible images still behind my eyes. The serpent had been Cal Blaire en Selene Belltower. It didn't take a psychology major to figure that one out. My subconscious was obviously still working through that particular horror. The deaths of Cal, the first boy I had ever loved, and his mother, Selene, a powerful, dark Woodbane witch, were still ever present in my everyday awareness. I gazed at my red candle and shuddered. There was no way I could explore that path any more tonight. Maybe I needed to see it, maybe magick had needed me to see something, learn something, but I couldn't face it. I hoped that with the passage of time, the memory would sink deeper.

I swallowed and watched the scented smoke rise from the incense. Maybe if I had continued down the road of my subconscious, I would have seen myself, in New York City, about to be sacrificed by Ciaran's coven for my own power.

No thank you. No more of this. The Goddess must have thought I was ready for this, but I didn't feel ready.

Once again I gazed at my red candle. My situation was strange: I was an unusually powerful blood witch. Yet because Wicca had discovered me only about three months ago, I was relatively unschooled in magick. Even as hard as I had been trying to learn, the breadth and depth of a witch's knowledge ensured that I would be at it my whole life. Another fact was that I was uninitiated. An uninitiated witch was not in command of her full powers—in fact, not exactly in command of her powers at all. Which was what everyone kept trying to tell me.

Until now I had loved feeling my powers stretch and grow, like a plant towards sunlight. The more I made magick, the stronger my magick seemed and the easier it was to make it flow. I had believed that my magick would be good, that I would walk in sunlight even though I was Woodbane. Belwicket had been a Woodbane coven but had renounced dark magick centuries ago. But then I had found out Ciaran was my father, and all of my assumptions had snapped. I was no longer sure that I would use magick for goodness. No longer sure that I could stay out of the shadows. Now with every breath I remembered that I had been born of evil, the daughter of a murderer. And that had cost me Hunter.

I have a choice, I thought. I choose to work good magick.

I looked at my altar and concentrated, centering myself and focusing my energy. Rise, I thought, looking at the silver bowl holding the incense. "Rise, be light, be light as air. I lift you up and hold you there." The little rhyme came into my head, and simultaneously the silver bowl wobbled a bit, then shakily rose above my altar. It hovered there, weightless, while

I stared at it in shock. Oh God, I thought. Wicca had shown me many things in the last three months that I never would have thought possible, but the idea that I had the power to levitate anything amazed me.

Okay, concentrate, I told myself as the bowl tilted. I concentrated. Almost immediately it steadied.

Next I made the candle rise and kept the two objects floating before me. Could I make it three? Yes. The bowl of water rose gracefully. I was able to keep them steadier now, and the three objects bobbed before me as I turned my attention to the bowl of crystals. This was amazing, intense magick. I could tell none of this skill came from my friend Alyce Fernbrake, who had shared all of her knowledge with me in a powerful ritual called tàth meànma brach.

This power was mine; this power was me. It was beautiful and good in a way I could never be.

A slight vibration in the floor barely registered with me as I began to levitate the bowl of crystals in the air. More thin, light, striations of sound—distracting me… Crap, they where footsteps!

I leaped up, shoved the altar behind my desk, and kicked the silver bowls and candle out of the way. Hoping I hadn't burned the rug, I jumped into bed. I was pulling the covers up when the door to my room opened.

"Morgan?" my mom whispered, peering into my room.

Asleep, I'm asleep, I thought, feeling my eyelids get heavy. My mother gently closed the door, and I heard her walk down the hallway. I waited until I heard the door to her own room close, then slunk out of bed and tried to clean up soundlessly. This had been so stupid. I had been so full of myself that I hadn't remembered to put up a border spell that would alert me when my parents came home. I hadn't been casting my senses, paying attentions to my surroundings.

Gently I shoved my altar back into my closet. I took off the robe and gathered the bowls and tools and hid them with the altar. Tomorrow I would put them where I usually hid them: behind the HVAC vent in the hallway. Pretty full of yourself, aren't you? I thought with disgust as I tried to scrape up the sand with my hands. You just want to make any kind of magick you can, with no thought as to the consequences. That's a Woodbane way to behave.

I cleaned up the circle as best I could, knowing I would have to finish tomorrow. I brushed my teeth and got into my pj's. Then I climbed back into bed and pulled up the covers. All of my misery was back and more. I had missed a coven circle tonight. I was Ciaran's daughter. I didn't have Hunter. If things were this bad when I was only seventeen, what would they be like when I hit thirty?