KISS THE WITCH by Dana Donovan

positioned the
others on the remaining compass points following clockwise. Her
chant, again in ancient rhyme, mimicked the mantra recited during
the drawing of the circle.
    As she did that, Lilith gathered the
remaining candles, a dozen or so, as near I guessed, all of them
white and in glass jars. She arranged them on the coffee table,
stacking them in pyramid fashion in front of a black mirror to
create an altar of sorts. She then reached up on the bookcase for
the dagger I had seen earlier that morning, the thing she called an
athame. Lilith pointed it at Ursula and asked her to get the
elements from the kitchen. Then she pointed it at me.
    “ You.” She gestured with a
stab at the circle. “Get in here.”
    I did, and when Ursula returned with a bowl
and a dish, Lilith cautioned us against stepping out of it.
    “ Once cast,” she warned,
“We cannot break the circle. Doing so will upset the balance of
energy and thwart our efforts to form a new coven.”
    “ Forever?” I
asked.
    “ No, not forever. For
tonight. If anything interrupts the ceremony we will have to try it
again when the moon is right.”
    I know most men might think that would be
okay by them. Playing slip-n-slide on the curves of a beautiful
woman like Ursula is a once in a lifetime opportunity, if not once
in many lifetimes. What guy would not welcome the chance to do it
all again some other night? My problem was that I still had to look
Dominic in the eye the next day. That was bad enough. Looking him
in the eye and knowing I would be oiling up his fiancée’s
nookie-nook again was more than I could bear.
    “ All right then,” I said.
“Let’s get on with it.”
    We positioned ourselves in front of the
makeshift altar, me in the middle, Ursula to my right, Lilith to my
left. Ursula set the bowl and dish on the coffee table. The bowl I
could see held water, the dish salt. Lilith placed the athame
across the top of the water bowl and whispered, “Mothers of the
Coven, cleans thy waters, make it pure, allow by thrice thy ranks
to soar.”
    “ By thrice thy ranks to
soar,” said Ursula.
    Lilith nudged me with her elbow. “Oh,
right,” I said. “By thrice thy ranks to soar.”
    She places the athame across the dish. This
time I was ready for her. “Mothers of the coven, cast thy salt and
make it pure, allow by thrice thy ranks to soar.”
    “ By thrice thy ranks to
soar,” said Ursula.
    “ By thrice thy ranks to
soar,” I said.
    Lilith took the athame, walked to the east
edge of the circle, pointed it at the yellow candle and shot it.
Seriously. I mean, I know you cannot shoot something with a dagger,
not usually. But Lilith did. She pointed her athame at the candle,
took aim down the length of her arm and unleashed a bolt of blue
lightning that zapped the shit out of it. The resulting discharge
obliterated the candle and set one quarter of the circle, from east
to south, on fire.
    She blasted the red candle next, with
similar results, setting half the circle on fire from east to west.
Though the flames were small, barely three inches high, they were
intensely hot, heating the brick dust to a molten mass in
seconds.
    Ursula and I stepped aside and allowed
Lilith access to the last two candles. Once she zapped those, the
shallow ring of fire encircled us completely. Why it did not burn a
hole in the floor and drop us into the basement, I could only
wonder. But with Lilith, I have come to trust her more than I trust
my own eyes. For all I knew, we were in the basement, maybe already
dead. I remember thinking that would not be all bad. As I gazed
dreamlike into the flames twitching nervously at my feet, I
considered the possibility. There were worse things I could think
of than spending an eternity with two naked women and an endless
bottle of olive oil.
    I might have carried that happy thought
further had I not faded back from the heat of the flames and backed
up into the business end of Lilith’s athame. The point jabbed me in
the left