The front porch lights and the living room lights were lit when I reached the house, and I unbuckled and removed my dancing shoes on the front porch before entering, feet silent on the wood floors. Bruiser and Evangelina were sitting in the living room, a Parcheesi Royal Edition game board on the table between them. Evangelina was dressed in some silky pale pink top, which should have contrasted poorly with her red hair but didn’t, and skintight jeans. She looked svelte and toned and oddly younger than I’d noticed, which was strange. Evangelina had always struck me as a Valkyrie warrior woman, brusque and demanding and in charge, riding roughshod over all opposition. But lately she was looking softer, more feminine, far sweeter than I remembered, with a glow to her skin.

When I stopped inside the front door, she was looking up at Bruiser with a teasing expression. Crap. She was wearing lipstick. And eye shadow. The sexual tension in the room was heavy enough to stub my bare toes on. Evangelina was flirting with Bruiser, leaning so close the pink of her silk shirt covered them in a pinkish glow.

Beast roared up into my eyes. Mine, she thought at me. And in the same instant, I remembered Rick. My heart did a little dump and splat. Rick. “Not really,” I said aloud to my alter ego. “Not now.”

Evangelina and Bruiser looked up at the sound of my voice and Bruiser stood in a motion that looked ingrained, old world charm left over from his early years in England and reinforced by living with a feudal-lord vamp-master. He looked great, his hair shoved back, jeans cupping that great-looking butt, a crisp white shirt tucked into the waist, the sleeves rolled up to expose corded arms. He looked good enough to scoop up on a spoon and lick all over. I smiled at the mental image as Beast growled unhappily and slunk away again, muttering, Mine. Mine.

“Evening,” I said, aware that I was interrupting much more than a board game. “I need a spell to counteract a spell.”

“What kind?” Evangelina asked.

“One somebody put on me to keep me from thinking about him, or being able to analyze his plans, or even remember that he was around.”

“A sorcerer? The Witch Council would punish him for using spells against . . . well against humans. I don’t know what they’d do about spelling you.”

“Not a sorcerer. Something else, not human, not vamp, not witch. He smells like pine and jasmine and . . .” I thought back. Remembered my own surprise when I had visited the woo-woo room at NOPD. And the weird feeling, when I was in my freebie house, doing research, a sensation as if I wasn’t alone. Maybe . . . “Maybe a spell to watch me,” I whispered, “put there by Girrard DiMercy, Leo’s Mercy Blade.”

Bruiser’s eyes tightened on me. “I’m having trouble remembering what Gee did to me, but I recall a blue, misty spell flowing up over my skin, and the smell of pine and jasmine. But I don’t think he got to finish laying it.”

“It’s not an egg,” Evangelina said.

“Casting it, then. Whatever. Can you take it off?”

“If I can see it, especially if it’s unfinished or frayed. Sit down. Let me get some things from my room.”

“Let me grab a shower,” I said, fleeing the room. Okay, I was fleeing Bruiser but no way could I say that. I took a fast shower, pulled on the clean pants and tee I’d worn earlier, and braided my hair out of the way.

Evangelina was sitting in a wingback chair when I reentered the room, and the Parcheesi game had been put away, replaced by two feathers, three candles, a small silver knife, a silver bell, and a gold cross on a gold chain. I took the seat she indicated, a pillow on the floor at her feet. Beast didn’t like the submissive position, but I overrode her, sat in a half lotus, and relaxed.

“You say the spell was blue, so I assume that you can see magic,” she said as she lit the candles. The smell of matches and flame scorched the air. I took a fast breath. I had given that away. But neither Evangelina nor Bruiser looked surprised or accusatory or even curious, so I managed a nod, my heart in my throat. Beast was crouched close to the surface where she could see, silent, shoulders hunched, her four paws close together, positioned so she could leap away if needed. Evangelina turned off the lamps, throwing the room into semidarkness, flames dancing on the pale wall.

Evangelina said, “You meditate, yes?” At my nod, she went on. “And you are a practicing Christian.” There was an odd note of distaste in her voice, and I remembered Evangelina practiced some other religion. I nodded and she placed the gold necklace over my head, rested it on my chest near the gold nugget. The metal was cold but warmed immediately. “I want you to watch the flame of the white candle. Breathe in its scent. Relax.” She drew out the word “relax.” The scent of conifers rose on the air, surprising somehow. I’d expected vanilla or some froufrou scent. I stared at the flame, bright in the dusky light.

“Close your eyes and think about the candle flame, vivid, alive in a dark room.” Her voice dropped in volume, deeper in tone, like a hypnotist, going for the deep, unconscious mind. I held the image of the flame in my mind and closed my eyes.

“The flame is white and yellow, warm and steady. The flame lights the darkness, throwing back the night. Can you see it?” I nodded. Her words slowed, softened as she spoke, “Good. The wick. It’s visible through the flame, rising up through the body of the candle from its base. It’s like your spine, rising from the center of you, strong and vital and filled with potential. Your mind and spirit are nestled at the tip of the candle, bright with power and energy. You are the candle. You are the wick. You are the flame.”

I nodded and relaxed my shoulders, letting each vertebra settle and loosen, slipping easily into the relaxation and meditation technique. A candle flame is used by many different religious and secular groups to begin the trek into the deepest mind. I breathed steadily, the pine scent now mixing with jasmine from another candle. Gee. It reminded me of Gee . . . Evangelina had chosen well. My facial muscles relaxed into an almost smile.

“The candle has no purpose without the flame. The flame has no home, no power, without the candle. Yet, the flame consumes that which gives it life,” she said, her voice falling lower, “in a cycle of fuel and energy, of matter and mass.” Her words filled the softness of the night, slow. Mellifluous. “Watch as the candle is burned by the flame. As the wick is consumed, it gives us light. It gives us warmth. It is a symbol of life and eternity. Yet, even the wick of life burns low, quivers, and dies.”

Evangelina was talking about the circle of life, the birth and death of all things, and the rebirth of some new thing from the ashes of the old. “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” she said. I let my breath go slowly out, sighing, accepting what cannot be truly understood.

“Yet, for now, the soul of the candle burns, bright and steady, lighting your darkness.”

“Yessss,” I whispered, understanding. This wasn’t Cherokee meditation. This was the magic of the white man. But as always, there were similarities, connections, parallels. I watched the candle flame, pure and perfect.

“You are now in a tranquil place, calm, dark, and peaceful. It is the refuge where your soul resides. The home of your spirit. You are protected here in this place of darkness and light and peace. Safer than any place you have ever been. You are warm and sheltered. This is your soul place. Your secret haven.” I nodded, smiling fully. I knew this place.

“Open your eyes,” she said, softly. “Look around you. The candle burning in this sanctuary is your soul, your life. There is no one here but you. You are alone and secure.”

“Yes,” I nodded. “Alone. Safe.” I breathed in and let my breath flow from my lungs in a long steady exhalation, feeling all the tension fade away. Drums started beating, quietly, peacefully, a four beat rhythm, hard-soft-soft-soft, hard-soft-soft-soft. In the dark, in the fluttering shadows, misty fingers and ghostly hands slid against deer skin drums, tightly stretched. Herbs burned on a fire. Wood smoke crackled, dry and aromatic. I knew this place.

I focused on the candle flame, but it was wrong. The wrong shape, the wrong size. Wrong. “Not a candle,” I murmured. My soul would never be a candle. “Fire. In a pit. Coals . . .” I saw them, glowing and hot, fed by forest deadwood, the heat in the embers moving as if alive. No, I would never be a candle, but I could be a fire, potent with possibility and restrained violence. I licked my lips. They were dry from the heat of the coals, yet, around me, a cool, wet wind moved through the darkness, breathing up from the deeps of the heart of the world. I burned and shivered, balanced between the flame’s light and warmth, and the dark, chill night.

“Turn your eyes,” a voice murmured in the darkness. “Search out the far corners of the place where you are. What do you see in the light of your soul?”

I turned slowly. Seeing the place of my soul. “The heart of the world,” I said.

“Describe it to me.”

“It is the heart of the world.” What more was there to say? A woman of the People would have understood, but the white woman . . . no. Yet, I could try to describe the vision, the image. “Walls rise up to the rounded roof.” I tried to lift my hands to show her the shape, but they were heavy, as if tied to the earth. “The roof melts down. The floor of the earth rises up. And melts again, puddling like fat, rich from an autumn bear. Dripping like your white man’s candle.”

“Caves? With stalagmites and stalactites?”

I dipped my head. “Water drips everywhere. Little splats. Like the blood of the earth falling, sacrificed. The tears of the heart of the world. A drum beats, like a heartbeat. And on the breath of the dark there is sage and mint and”—I took a slow breath and relaxed totally—“sweetgrass. They burn on the fire. Flames light the walls.” I smiled. “And there is pine and jasmine. But only a little. A hint of them, buried under the perfume that burns in the heart of the world.” I fell silent.

“There is someone there,” the soft voice said. “That person is you. Do you see her?” I nodded. “Tell me what she looks like.”