We pulled up at the address for the witch’s meeting. I’m not sure what I had been expecting to find. Probably something outside. But the address led us to an Elk’s Lodge. Lily and I looked at the sign and then at each other. The poor fairy was still too car sick to notice we had stopped.

Lily stared at the sign, then back at me. “Is this the right place?”

“I guess? This is the address Ashley gave me. She didn’t say explicitly that it was at the Elk’s Lodge, which is weird. I’d think she would mention something like that?” I turned into the parking lot, which was filled with a surprising number of minivans. I pulled my car between a minivan and a Subaru. We got out, and the fairy followed us inside.

The lodge was a large building that had probably started out as white but had faded to an off-yellow after many years. The front door opened into a large room that reminded me of a high school gymnasium, although it smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. There were a lot of women milling around in small groups, chatting. They were all ages. Racially, it was probably one of the more diverse gatherings I’d been to in our area.

We hovered at the door, waiting for permission to come all the way in. No one noticed us. I texted Ashley, the head witch. She came over and found us.

“Hey, Ladies!” She greeted us with a hug and then turned to acknowledge the fairy. She was buzzing with happy energy. It was at odds with our more anxious moods. I had a bad case of the pretrial jitters. I never liked this part of our job. “Lily, if you could just stay at the food tables until I give you the signal, that would be great. We should be well out of your range there. I’m going to wait until the last minute to announce your presence so that we don’t tip off the black witch that you’re here. Once we have her bound by our laws, we can begin the tribunal.” At the mention of the dark witch within her ranks, she frowned. “We’re going to get this sorted out, Mr. Wasp. By Nix’s cauldron, I swear it.”

“Is she here? I don’t see her. I thought I would recognize the great, lumpy spider,” the fairy asked, flitting about, looking for his attacker.

“Indeed, she is here. I made sure of it. I have a few guards on her, too, although she doesn’t yet suspect anything. Why don’t you three head over to the food tables and help yourselves? We’ll be getting started here shortly.” Ashley gestured toward the food tables, and we dutifully trooped over there. It was very obviously a potluck. I found the mismatched containers of food endearing. They ranged from a high-end, heart-shaped Dutch oven to a bucket of fried chicken from a national chain. I loaded a plate with mac and cheese and ham. Lily didn’t take anything for herself, but she did take a little fruit for the fairy, who stood on her plate to eat.

I chewed a bite of mac and cheese, trying to decide if they had used one or two kinds of cheese when a cry rang out. Two women held a blond White woman in place. She wore a tight T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. One of the women holding her wore a pencil skirt that rode up in an alarming manner. The other woman, holding the blond down, wore a floral skater dress with a shrug sweater. Tattoos covered her legs. Ashley stood in front of them, wearing a dress with a cowl neck. There was something very out of place about four women in party clothes getting in what looked like a brawl. It must have been more than a brawl because Lily began to go still, and her breathing slowed. That was a sure sign someone had been practicing magic, and Lily didn’t want to interfere. The fairy fluttered away from me to get a better view of the woman in the cowboy boots.

A stillness had spread through the crowd. Everyone backed away from the little tableau of women and stood, watching. They shuffled themselves into closer little groups as they watched, some taking each other’s hands for comfort.

Ashley intoned, “Nix, bless us. Nix, bind her. Nix, hold her fast.” The invisible wind of her magic blew through Ashley’s hair and touched the women around her so that they were in their own private windstorm. As the magic blew over her, the center woman stopped struggling, and the two witches holding her lowered her to the floor. The two standing witches joined Ashley’s chant. “Nix, bless us. Nix, bind her. Nix, hold her fast. Nix, bless us. Nix, bind her. Nix, hold her fast.”

The words blended together, and they became meaningless as the women chanted them over and over. The fairy flew back to me.

“I don’t recognize her? I thought, for sure, I would. But, damn it, I don’t,” Mr. Wasp said, and he sounded slightly lost.

“What are they doing? Can you tell?” I asked him. Lily was busy trying to make herself as magically small as possible.

“I’m not sure. The other witches stuck the black witch with two rusty nails, and she fell over.” He was gleeful at the witch’s defeat.

“Can you fly back in and see what’s going on?” I asked him. The idea of them stabbing the witch twisted my stomach. She deserved it, to be sure, but I still hated it. Without thinking, I took another bite of my mac and cheese. In times of stress, food never let me down.

“No way! I’m not risking getting caught in whatever hocus pocus they have going on there. Flying into a witch’s circle is stupid,” the fairy said. But he fluttered up for a better look. Not knowing what else to do, I ate another bite of mac and cheese. There was some gouda in it, I decided. And mustard powder. It was very good and had a nice bite to it. I kept eating, waiting for Mr. Wasp to come back and tell me what was going on inside the circle.

Food is always comforting. Nothing like a little stress eating in times of strife. Lily was focusing on keeping her magic under control. I could see the strain of it on her face, and for the first time in our friendship, I worried that she would lose control of it.

“Will the guardians please come forward?” Ashley called. I forced myself to reach out and touch Lily’s shoulder. “We’re up,” I hissed, looking around for a trash can. With as good as the mac and cheese was, it wouldn’t do to go up there holding it.

Lily and I made our way forward. The blond woman with the cowboy boots bled from the palms, where the coven had stuck her with two red, rusty, iron nails. My palms itched, and my magic stretched itself inside of me with the urge to heal her. They didn’t need to bind her magic that way—not with Lily here to keep her from casting spells, but they’d done it anyway. Lily came up and stood beside the woman. The blond woman lunged away from her, but the tattooed woman blocked her escape.

“We, of the coven, turn this dark witch over to the power of the Safe Harbor Café to render judgment against her. We dissolve all ties with her and give the power to punish her over to the representatives of the guardhouse.” Ashley spoke loud enough for the whole room to hear.

“Who brings the charges against this woman?” Lily asked.

“I do.” Mr. Wasp’s voice was too soft to carry across the whole room. Even the witches close to us had to lean forward to hear. “I was out foraging on my own lands when this woman tore the wings from my back and poisoned me with an evil spell so they would never heal. I suffered for many nights until the guardians healed me. I ask that the guardhouse strips this woman of her powers as she stripped my wings from me. I ask that the witches use their powers to find her other victims so that the guardians may heal them.”

“No! There’s no proof that it was me. I’m not a dark witch. You guys know me. I would never do anything like this. I don’t hurt people. I’m a vegetarian.” The blond woman began to ramble. The blood from her palms drained down her fingers, staining her pale pink nails.

“I have tasted the spell in the fairy’s blood myself. It was yours,” Ashley spoke.

“There could be a mistake. C’mon, Ash, you’ve known me since we were kids—”

Ashley came forward, put her hand on the back of the woman’s neck, and pulled her down so that their foreheads touched. Her voice was a whisper. “I do know you, Abby. I know that you can be kind, funny, and smart. I also know that you’ve always wanted more power. Always, always, always. There’s more power in the suffering of a being than in the death of plants or your own blood.”

The woman pulled her head back and addressed the room. “Even if it was mine, what’s the harm? Nothing died. It was only one of the little people. They’re barely more than bugs. You’ve shoved these nails in me. That’s suffering. That’s pain. Look at me—I’m bleeding.” She held her bleeding hands up to show the room. Drops of her blood splattered Ashley’s face. I was itchy and uncomfortable, not from the sight of blood—that didn’t bother me—but rather from an injury I wasn’t healing. My magic pounded in my ears, longing to heal the dark witches impaled palms.

“That spell only keeps you from escaping. It does nothing larger. Yes, it hurts you. But not for anyone else’s gain—”

“This is just another attempt to weaken our magic and make us conform to their rules. You’re stifling us all, Ashley. You’re going to get us all killed. If they ever start burning us again, you’d have us so weak that we couldn’t fight back.”

“Enough!” Lily shouted. Both women looked as though they were about to say more and then thought better of it. “Abby, is it?” The blond woman nodded. “Ashley, are you willing to track down all of Abby’s victims?”

“We are, Guardian.”

“Will you care for them and bring them to me for healing if their hurts are beyond your abilities?” I asked.

“We will, Guardian,” she said.

“Do you believe Ashley’s word to be binding, and are you satisfied that she will follow through?” Lily asked Mr. Wasp.

“I am.” He flitted around at eye level.

Lily produced a small tea candle from her pocket along with a lighter. She knelt on the floor and lit the candle. I couldn’t hear the words she whispered over the flame, but I knew them by heart. They were the evocation to the spirit of the guardhouse to open a line. Something more akin to prayer than a spell. Where the tea candle had been, a black rotary phone appeared. This one even had the phases of the moon on the dial already. It rang once, and Lily picked up. “Safe Harbor, I am calling to record the judgment against the witch, Abby, for her crimes of dark magic against the fairy, Mr. Wasp, and any other victims we may find.” Lily spoke into the phone but looked at Abby while she spoke. Ashley and Mr. Wasp leaned forward. “Abby, you are to be stripped of your powers and banished from the guardhouse’s territory.”

“No, but—”

“Shhh.” I nudged her.

Lily held the phone out and placed it against Abby’s ear. She looked surprised for a moment, then vanished along with the phone. The two rusty nails clattered to the floor where she had been.

The room exploded into noise, with everyone talking at once. “Crap. I forgot to ask her if she had anything to do with the women who disappeared,” I said.

“We’ll know soon enough. I’ll have some people scry for them, and others scry for those affected by her magic. If there’s any overlap on the map, we’ll know the answer,” Ashley told me from the floor, where she squatted to pick up the bloody nails. Standing up, she asked, “Now, have you brought the focus objects?”

“I have. Here they are.” Lily handed her the sad shirt in its plastic bag and the lipstick.

“Nothing else? I thought you said three women are missing?” Ashley asked.

“There are. I wasn’t able to get anything from the vampire woman,” Lily told her.

“Are there any missing witches?” I asked.

“Yes and no. There are women where no one knows where they are, but we don’t know yet if they are missing. We’re not like the wolves, where we all have to check in. I’ll get a few witches and start on this.” Ashley took the shirt and lipstick and marched off. She was joined by a few other women on the other side of the hall. It was far away enough from Lily that she wasn’t jamming them. I squinted at them to see what was up, but they were too far away.

A short while later, Ashley came back, holding a map and a black mirror. “It wasn’t Abby. But we found them. They’re here, together in Fidnemed State Park. I can’t tell if they were alive or not. We couldn’t get a visual on them.” The map she handed me was marked with an “X” in the woods to the north. “The map isn’t magic, so it will be fine around Lily.”

“Thank you. Do you—do you have any feeling about what we are about to walk into? Any sort of feeling or premonition?” I asked.

“Like I said before, that isn’t really my gift. But the women who helped me cast the scrying are gifted seers, and it’s bad. I suspect that whatever’s going on is outside of the scope of magic. Magic has its limitations. If it didn’t, we would run the fucking world, no matter what Abby may have said. It’s not our ethics that limit our magic; it’s the laws of the universe,” Ashley explained. She was right, of course. If magic were perfect and powerful, it would rule the world.

I started to roll the map in my hands up into a tube but then thought better of it. “Thank you for this.” I gestured toward the map, but I meant more than that. “We appreciate your cooperation with the dark magic issue.”

“Thank you; we’ll be going now,” Lily said.

“You’re welcome,” Ashley told us as she walked us to the door. “If there’s anything else we can do for you—anything at all—just let us know, and we would be happy to help.”

“Thank you, but as Harper told you, we don’t require payment. But please let us know when you have found more of the black witch’s victims for us to heal.” Lily opened the door and started outside. Ashley gave me a quick hug and didn’t offer to hug Lily. Few in our community were willing to touch her due to the nature of Lily’s powers. Even here on the fringes of society, Lily was a double outcast. Perhaps with better reason than they knew. Yet, my heart hurt for Lily. It wasn’t her fault she was the way she was. I took her arm as we walked to the car to see if we could find the missing women.