Devil's Shore Read Online Free Page B

sat on the purple mat and imitated Claire’s lotus pose. My now lithe body sank into the pose with ease. I thought ruefully of how I’d struggled to sit on the floor when I took Brendan to his first baby tumbling class. My former thick body and its awkward movements seemed like a lifetime ago.
    Thoughts and images, like mosquitoes, skittered around my head: my kitchen in Rathfarnham, my brother Bobby’s face, my mother’s long red cape. I closed my eyes and forced my face to assume a mask of serenity. For some reason, it was important for me not to fail Claire. A few moments later, Claire came up behind me and placed her hands on my shoulders. They tingled with that same strange electric current and my shoulders, which were in their usual place up near my ears, relaxed, the muscles now liquid, like melted butter.
    “There, that’s better. Don’t try so hard, Orla. Let it come to you.”
    Within twenty minutes, seven other women joined our sanctuary. Without a word the women, ranging in age from twenty to sixty, removed their sandals and assumed the lotus pose on identical rubber mats.
    My mind calmed to a slightly less insistent buzzing. Claire led us through a series of yoga poses. Although I’d never done yoga before, I followed along, my muscles responding on their own to Claire’s soft authoritative voice. The movements further eased the buzzing in my brain and for the first time in two years, my head was quiet, calm, as if once again I were its only inhabitant.
    Claire turned off the music, and the room was silent as a tomb. We sat like that for at least twenty minutes. Claire then placed a candle in front of each of us.
    “Look at the candle,” Claire instructed. “Become one with the flame.”
    I looked into the candle, unsure what to think or feel, stared into the flame, willing my mind to be a blank. To find my inner peace.
    “Don’t turn away, ladies. Focus.”
    The flame entranced me, seduced me like a lover. The old scar on my arm burned as I continued to stare, bewitched by its beauty. It flew up higher and I felt myself pulled into it. The flame became a bonfire, fed by the ancient wood of the Mountain, and I was back in the forest, on Devlin’s Mountain. A dark-haired woman encased in a red robe grabbed my right hand while another dark-haired woman, familiar and yet not familiar, took my left. Hand in hand, close to a dozen raven-haired beauties circled the flame, their voices harsh and guttural as they chanted in Irish.
    The women raised their hands, and mine along with them, as they circled the fire. At first slow, then faster and faster, they flew around the fire as they continued their chant. Soon my mouth also formed the ancient words, but my eyes never left the flames. The Devlin women raised their voices in anguish, in exultation, as the inferno leapt up into the sky, their power, my power, blending, coursing through the line of women.
    “Oh my God!”
    The cries of the women brought me back to the yoga studio. The small room was now thick with smoke as the flame of each woman’s candle licked the ceiling.
    Instinct overtook me and I blew out the flame in front of me, as easily as a birthday candle. With one small breath, I had extinguished each candle in the room.
    The women stared at me, their faces inscrutable. I looked at Claire.
    She smiled her Madonna smile. “Ladies, I believe we’ve found our ninth witch. Our circle is complete.”
     

 
    Chapter 4
     
    “Like hell you have.” I sprinted to the door, leaving my trainers behind.
    “Orla, wait!” Claire cried. “There’s no reason to be afraid. Let me explain.”
    I didn’t wait to hear her explanations. I’d spent enough time with the Devlin witches, both living and dead, to last me a lifetime. The last thing I needed was the Long Island variety.
    My bare feet fairly flew over the hot pavement. One of the street lights shattered as I ran by, startling my neighbor’s landscapers.
    Jesus, all I wanted was to live my life