From Herring to Eternity by Delia Rosen Page A

had actually played a part in my day. No, with the growl of a motorcycle and the slamming of car doors, it was my friends. My new friends. Or, rather—as they called themselves—my sisters.
    It turns out that in the Wiccan world, establishing a temple means just that: you’ve set up a house of worship where people could come and pray. For Wiccans, that turned out to be at night when there was a moon and stars, owls hooting on chimneys, and a general quieting of mechanized society.
    At least, that’s how Sally Biglake explained it when she showed up at my door with Mad and a small group of women I did not know.
    “I didn’t realize that consecration means my door is always open,” I said.
    Sally seemed genuinely surprised. “What did you think it meant?”
    I couldn’t tell her the truth; I thought it meant absolutely nothing.
    “May we come in?” Sally pressed.
    I stepped aside, not without some reluctance, and the women filed in. There were six in addition to Sally and Mad. My cats fled their dinner bowls when they entered—something they never did with strangers.
    “How often will you be having these gatherings?” I asked.
    “Every new moon, every night of the full moon, and every Samhain,” she said. Before I could ask, she said, “That is the end-of-summer celebration marking the final harvest and the arrival of dark winter. Typically, on November first.”
    “Great,” I said. “You can help eat my trick-or-treat candy.”
    “That’s very considerate,” Sally replied.
    This was going to be terrible. The woman had no sense of irony. She wouldn’t see that this whole thing was a really bad joke.
    “Don’t you have other temples you can use to kind of spread the worship?” I asked.
    “It is customary to use the site that has been most newly sanctified,” she replied.
    “Well, here’s the thing,” I said. “In about fifteen minutes, a man is coming who, through a strange series of circumstances, I’ve had to agree to let dig in the—the temple . You should probably bless some other place because this one isn’t going to be available for a year or so.”
    The look that settled on her wide face could best be described as war-painted minus the paint.
    It was little Mad who stepped forward and said, “Do you realize what you’ve done?”
    “I think so,” I said. “I’ve obviously inconvenienced all of my, uh—sisters.”
    “You’ve done far, far worse,” Mad said, pointing at me with a crooked finger. “You have made us unhappy.”
    “I’m truly sorry,” I said. “It was either that or watch my friend, someone who is very dear to me—like a sister, a true sister—go to prison.”
    “We are not your sisters?” Mad asked with a wounded expression.
    “Apparently, we are not,” Sally declared.
    “No, it isn’t like that,” I insisted. “We are a little sorority. But I thought the purpose here was to prevent an unhappy earth, right? To keep the bad guys from digging up the camp of the dead.”
    Sally came closer. I smelled ugly weed on her clothes. I wondered if it was burned mandrake root.
    “You used us,” she said.
    “That’s not true,” I replied.
    The other women were moving around in a kind of semicircle. I was starting to get a little scared. Whoever would have thought that my cats were smarter than me? Besides them, I mean.
    I was considering making a dash for the bedroom and barricading myself inside when the doorbell rang. It was like a church bell on All Hallows dawn, when all the frolicking demons go home. The women stopped and looked to Sally. I took that opportunity to shoot over to the front door.
    “Dr. Sterne,” I said, ridiculously loud and welcoming. “Come in!”
    He seemed as surprised as I was by the effusive greeting. I almost slammed the screen door in my eagerness to admit the big man onto my campus. He entered and hesitated, obviously confused by the gathering. He was clutching his worn leather portfolio tightly, as if it were a life