Free Harvest of Changelings by Warren Rochelle Page B

think of Valeria, the long-gone wife of his father’s best friend, Ben. Valeria? Power? Maybe going to Donald’s coven could help him figure it all out.
    Donald’s coven met in a large, open room at the NC State McKimmon Center. Thomas was amazed. “You mean the university lets witches meet on campus?” he whispered to Donald as they entered the building.
    â€œSure. They have to. Freedom of religion, you know. State university, paid for by public funds. Other religious groups meet on campus. C’mon, I want you to meet some people, then I’ll show you where to leave your clothes.”
    Donald introduced Thomas to an engineering professor, her
husband, and their teenaged daughter and son. An English professor who wrote poetry. Two graduate students in crop science, who were working on a joint dissertation on the effects of the moon on the growing season of corn. A couple of undergraduates—one from Durham, the other from Salisbury.
    â€œEverybody here seems so—so normal, Don,” Thomas said, still whispering as they undressed in a smaller side room. Donald stepped out of his underwear and laughed.
    â€œWhat did you expect? Old men and women with warts on their noses?”
    â€œWell, yeah,” Thomas said. “I did.”
    â€œThere are a few of those back home in the hills. Not too many here in Raleigh,” Donald said, laughing. “C’mon.”
    All the ritual Thomas had expected and wanted was there: the incense, the cauldron, flickering candles everywhere, and naked bodies. But something was missing, something he had wanted—yes, there was power, of a sorts, but it, it—it just didn’t.
    â€œDo you understand, Don? The coven lacked something I expected. It’s all real, just like you said, but, still. I don’t know; I don’t think I am making sense,” Thomas said the next morning as he spooned more sugar into his coffee. He liked it with lots of sugar and lots of milk.
    Donald didn’t say anything as he stared hard at Thomas. The pause grew even longer as he scraped butter across his pumpernickel bagel. He finally spoke, “I think I know what you are talking about. We’re Brethren of the Right-Hand Path, practitioners of theurgy; you’re looking for the Brethren of the Left-Hand Path, goetia.”
    â€œWhat?” Thomas said, trying to sound casual, but he understood what Donald was saying. He knew what Donald was going to say. He could feel the next words coming, almost as if they were hovering next to his ear.
    â€œI’m a White Witch. You’re looking for Black Witches.”
    Donald refused to help Thomas find a black coven, insisting there were none in Raleigh or anywhere in Wake County. Thomas knew he was lying. Donald finally moved out and Thomas started looking for himself. First in libraries and bookstores for anything and everything on witchcraft, the occult, astrology, necromancy, Satanism, demonology, ceremonial magic, invocations, conjurations, planetary magic, spell casting and the making of charms, talismans, and amulets, curses, candles, and all forms of divination. He exhausted the Cameron Village branch of the Wake County Library quickly, but Walden’s and B. Dalton’s seemed to have an
endless supply: The Modern Witch’s Spellbook, Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, The Complete Book of Spells, Ceremonies, & Magic. Gardner, Crowley, Nostradamus.
    â€œCan’t keep ’em on the shelves,” the manager at the Crabtree Valley B. Dalton’s told him. “People can’t just get enough of this occult stuff.”
    Thomas understood. He gave up the North Raleigh Wake Forest Road apartment and found a tiny studio downtown, in Boylan Heights and read and read and read, black candles burning all around him. He was close; Thomas knew that, but not close enough.
    His father tried to stop him.
    â€œTom, Tom, what is all this? All these books, these