Wish Club Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The air felt parched, like a scorched puff of desert

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  copyright

  This book is dedicated to my husband Jeff,

  for helping me earn my wings

  The air felt parched, like a scorched puff of desert. Even though the night was cold, the air seemed to be burning its way into Greta’s nose. She stuck her head farther out the window, sniffing, searching for any signs of moisture, and before she realized it, she was standing outside on the fire escape.

  The orange Chicago streetlights traveled away below her to the horizon, and her eyes followed them, beginning a scan of the western sky for a different kind of sign, a clue to what was troubling her. Her concentrated expression deepened the furrows in her forehead, the fine lines in the corners of her eyes, the thin ridges around her mouth where lipstick sometimes crept. The late November wind whipped her long gray hair wildly around her face. She raised a veined hand to her forehead and kept on sniffing, but instead of sensing snow on the horizon or a storm a few days off, all she could sense was that something was not as it should be.

  The air felt wrong, wrung out and dried, as if something or someone had thrown it out of balance. She brought her hand back down to match the other one on her hip and, after one final look, turned to step back inside, shaking her head.

  Just one more thing to try to put right, she thought. Just one more thing in this world in need of fixing.

  Chapter One

  Claudia climbed the uneven wooden steps to Gail’s Victorian wondering if anyone else would show up, wondering if maybe, from now on, Book Club might be just herself and Gail. She pressed the doorbell and waited, staring at the sorry-looking ears of Indian corn hanging on the door.

  A harsh wind blew in from the lake, which was visible during the day at the end of Gail’s Edgewater street. It would be cool, Claudia thought, to live this close to the water. Although Claudia suspected the real reason Gail loved this neighborhood was because it reminded her of her edgier days. Tonight the lake at the end of the street was invisible, a black void, and Claudia hugged herself against the chill.

  “Hey! We were beginning to wonder if you were going to show up.” It wasn’t Gail, but Lindsay, who opened the door.

  “Am I late?” Claudia looked at her watch as she stepped inside. It was only a quarter past seven. Her eyes met Lindsay’s. “You mean everyone’s here?”

  Lindsay closed the door and stepped around Claudia. “Everyone,” she said, popping her eyebrows as if to say, I told you so. She reached out her hand for Claudia’s coat, which Claudia took off and handed over, staring past Lindsay into Gail’s living room.

  All five Book Club members were there. Everyone.

  With wineglasses in hand, they took their seats on the two couches in Gail’s front parlor, Lindsay managing to snag the high-backed, Queen Anne chair in between them. Claudia suppressed a smile; even subconsciously Lindsay thought she was the queen bee. And it was, of course, Lindsay’s voice that quickly broke through their chatter. “I’m so excited about what happened last time. I think this group has a lot of positive energy.”

  Well, that took less than thirty seconds, Claudia thought.

  Gail set a tray of vegetables, fruit, and cheese down on the coffee table and stood her nearly six-foot frame up to full height. She ruffed her spiky white-blond hair with one hand, her dark roots showing, almost as long as the blond ends. “Tonight,” Gail gave Lindsay a look before she turned toward the kitchen, “I think we should try to focus our energy on the book we’ve all come here to discuss.”

  As she watched Gail, Claudia twirled the ends of her own dull brown hair, the same color as Gail’s roots. Although she had to admit the idea of being able to work magic had its appeal—like maybe it could give her the courage to do something new with her boring hair—Claudia wasn’t sure she wanted Book Club to change. She thought, as Gail obviously did, that Book Club should probably continue to be Book Club and that the previous month’s digression into the occult should remain an anomaly.

  “Oh, I loved the book.” Mara hugged her copy of Home to her chest. “I just cried and cried at the end.” She shook her head and sniffed when she said this, as if she were going to reenact her tears. Mara had a large face, a fat-woman’s face. Claudia was always a little surprised whenever she noticed the tiny body beneath it. “It was so lovely,” Mara continued, sniffing, her cheeks flushed. “Sad, but lovely.”

  “What about his wife and that other woman—they stay friends?” Jill asked from her seat on the couch next to Mara, the two of them contrasting against each other like fire and ice: Jill’s cool elegance, Mara’s warm frumpiness.

  Jill was fabulously turned out tonight in her trademark black Prada. Combined with her long black hair and fair skin, the outfit made her blue eyes leap out, the effect of which, Claudia was certain, Jill was not unaware.

  “I find it hard to believe they stay friends,” Jill continued, “especially after all that.”

  “They were friends for a long time.” Gail walked back into the room carrying another tray, this one full of pastries and chocolates. “They were friends since way before he came along.” She put the tray on the table and took a seat on the couch next to Claudia.

  “Well, I hope I don’t have any friends like that,” Jill said, biting the head off of a broccoli floret.

  Claudia pushed her glasses up higher on her nose before she spoke. “She doesn’t leave Joseph in the end, because Joseph is her home. She came home and he was there, where she was at home, and so, she decided to stay…where she felt at home and comfortable…you know, at home. With him.”

  “That’s just the kind of insight we expect from our English teacher.” Lindsay’s sarcastic comment got a laugh from the group.

  Claudia made a face at her. Thanks a lot.

  “Well, there’s no place like home.” Mara giggled.

  Lindsay used a wicked-witch voice to add, “And your little dog, too,” and it made Claudia realize just how much Lindsay resembled not the Wicked Witch of the West, but the Good Witch, Glinda, with her heart-shaped face and her perfectly curled shoulder-length blond hair. It wasn’t hard to imagine Lindsay with the gold crown, either, enveloped in a cloud of taffeta. She even had a proclivity for pink.

  “I was hoping it would take longer than this before we started quoting witches.” Gail rolled her eyes and tossed her copy of Home down onto the coffee table.

  “I got some books about witchcraft.” Mara watched for their reactions as she spoke, her eyes rapidly moving from face to face. “I’ve been reading them since—well, since, you know. Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but I really think there i
s something to it, something to what we did last time.”

  Lindsay clapped her hands together. “See? See? I’m telling you, there is.”

  “I need a drink.” Gail got up and walked to the dining room, where the bar was set up.

  “Gail, now, come on.” Lindsay sat with perfect posture at the edge of her chair. She turned her entire body to face Gail. “You know we really should talk about this. It’s unhealthy to keep things inside and all repressed.”

  Claudia watched Gail’s face contort as she repressed a comment, probably one concerning the healthiness of too much therapy.

  “I just don’t think we should put any weight on what happened last time.” Gail paused. Wine burbled into her glass in the silence. “I think we all had a little too much to drink and we got all caught up in ghost stories and witchcraft and whatnot.”

  “I’m with you,” Jill said. “I don’t think we can take credit for stopping the rain or putting out that candle. It was just a coincidence. All that chanting was just silliness. I mean, honestly.”

  Gail nodded her head and flipped the palm of her free hand up to the ceiling. Exactly, her face said as she walked back from the dining room to join them.

  “But what if we did do it?” Mara asked. “Wouldn’t it be a shame if we just stopped and never found out if that chant or spell or whatever it was actually had worked some magic?”

  Mara could be like a terrier at times. It was a feature about her they all found simultaneously annoying and endearing. Mara could belabor a plot point or character trait to death, like that time at a previous meeting, when she’d kept insisting Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces was not crazy. When Mara argued, Claudia could almost imagine her teeth grinding into the book jacket while she thrashed it around in her mouth, an image reinforced by the fact that Mara’s curly black hair was turning to salt and pepper: in other words, terrier gray.

  “Don’t you want to explore this at all?” Mara continued. “I can’t believe you’d just let it drop, forget about it as if it had never happened. Think about what it could mean if it did happen. I think we need to look into this, just a little bit. To make sure. Wouldn’t it be magnificent if we really could use our energy to make changes? And I’m not just talking about clearing the skies for the squash festival like in The Kitchen Witches, either. I’m talking about helping each other.

  “These witchcraft books I’ve been reading, they talk a lot about controlling your reality—and your destiny—and it doesn’t have as much to do with eye of newt and hemlock as it does with harnessing and controlling your own energy and using it for good.”

  Hmmm. Working magic. Controlling your destiny. The idea was beginning to grow on Claudia. Perhaps bringing Mara into this group would turn out to be one of her better ideas.

  “I’ve read about this before, too,” Claudia said, adjusting her glasses again. “It’s in a lot of New Age literature. They talk about how women used to always meet for healings and to pray for good fortune, and to celebrate, but how, as our society became male-dominated, this stopped, and the women who did this became labeled as witches—because the men were afraid of their power as a group.” Claudia, happy she’d found her voice again, pressed on. “It’s why thirteen is an unlucky number. It’s the number of moon cycles and women’s cycles in a year. It’s all related.”

  “Well, the book I read,” Gail said, “was written by some crackpot from the sixties. He said you could use lemon and salt to break the effects of a negative psychic attack, you know, like the evil eye.”

  The women looked at Gail.

  “What?”

  No one said anything.

  “What?” Gail asked again. “I don’t get to go out and buy a book on witchcraft? I just wanted more information, that’s all.” She stopped. “It was a used book. It’s not like I’m buying into this or anything.”

  “Who else bought a book about witchcraft this month?” Lindsay had her hands on her hips, her ringleader pose. She looked first at Claudia, who shook her head “no,” and then Jill, who did the same. She reached down into the large Vuitton bag next to her chair and pulled out two books of her own. Mara took three books out of her tote bag. Lindsay looked up at Gail. “Well?”

  Gail sighed, then got up and went to get her used 1960s crackpot book.

  Lindsay set a huge Benton’s Grimoire on the coffee table. “I am absolutely intrigued by witchcraft.” She started flipping through the grimoire’s glossy pages.

  Gail’s eyes met Claudia’s. Here we go again.

  “Lindsay,” Gail said, “I don’t think I have the patience or energy to endure another one of your trendy obsessions. Remember that Japanese tea ceremony? And I don’t have the time to sit through whatever the witches equivalent might be.”

  “But this is different,” Lindsay said, pulling the grimoire off the table and onto her lap, sinking back into the wings of her chair. She looked over the book, her chin lifted slightly off to one side.

  Claudia could tell Lindsay wasn’t really reading. In fact, she was pretty sure Lindsay’s eyes couldn’t even see the pages, the way her eyebrows had pulled together in a look of bemusement. Everything about her seemed to ask, That tea ceremony wasn’t so long, was it?

  “What I think Gail means is,” Claudia raised her eyebrows at Gail, “she’s not ready to buy into witchcraft or any whole new belief system, based on one controversial night and some anecdotal stories in some books.” For all of Lindsay’s bravado, Claudia knew that inside lay an extremely sensitive soul. “Gail? Am I right?”

  Lindsay flipped a page of the grimoire.

  Claudia clenched her jaw and thrust her chin toward Gail, widening her eyes.

  “Right,” Gail said.

  “It’s not like I’m trying to convert anybody.” Lindsay looked up from the pages. “I just find the whole subject fascinating, that’s all. I think this is something I want to explore for myself. If some people want to do it with me,” she looked at Mara, “well maybe that would be fun, too. I’m not trying to change anyone’s belief systems or anything. I’d never force someone into doing something they didn’t want to do.”

  Claudia and Gail exchanged a glance again and this time Lindsay caught them. “Would you two quit doing that?”

  “What?” Gail feigned innocence, and Lindsay glared at her, angry, but then she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know why I put up with the two of you.”

  “Because we put up with you, dear,” Gail said. “You know we love you, Linds, it’s just—”

  “—we’re not always as open to trying new things as you are,” Claudia finished. “That’s all.”

  “How about this,” Mara said. “Why don’t we try it one more time and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, then the subject is closed and we never bring it up again.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Jill’s blue eyes were wide. “I think I’d really rather we didn’t.”

  “I think we need to settle this.” Lindsay leaned back into her chair, crossing her arms and legs.

  “But it’s not even raining.” Jill looked pained.

  “Not a rain spell.” Mara shook her head. “Just any other spell. To see if it works.”

  “And what if it does work?” Jill asked. “What then?”

  Mara looked surprised at the idea, then giggled. “I guess I never thought of that.”

  “What exactly is it you want to try in my house?” Gail asked.

  “Well, I was thinking we could try one more spell, just like the last time—only this time we do it for something else.” Mara looked hopefully at Gail.

  “My kids are upstairs. I don’t think I really want this to—”

  “It’s not like we’re going to sacrifice a goat in your living room,” Lindsay said.

  Mara flashed a horrified you’re-not-helping look at Lindsay before turning back to Gail. “I just thought we could try a chanting spell again. You know, light a candle, hold hands, say a few words.”
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br />   Gail looked around the room. “In that nineteen-sixties nutcase book I read, the guy really believed he was under psychic attack from evil forces all the time.”

  She looked at Claudia as if she were expecting some support, but Claudia shrugged. She’d liked what Mara had said about harnessing their energy, about using it to help each other. What if this group did have some magic in it? Like Mara said, it would be a shame to waste it. And what if they could use it to help each other? What could be the harm in that?

  Gail persevered. “The guy said he knew it was an evil spirit that put a thought into his head telling him to drive his car off the road. He said he had to race home for his lemon and salt.”

  But no one said anything. Gail was outnumbered. She looked at Jill, who shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  “Oh jeez-o-pete,” Gail said. “Fine. If this is what it’s going to take to get this nonsense out of your systems, then fine. We’ll try it. I’m going to make sure the little ones are asleep.” She started walking toward the stairway, then turned back around with an afterthought. “By the way, what exactly is it you want to chant about tonight?”

  Mara looked sheepish. “Well…I was thinking maybe we could chant for Tippy.”

  “Tippy?”

  “My cat.”

  Gail sniffed in a big breath as if she were about to say something, but instead, she turned around and headed up the stairs.

  A Christmas tree candle, the only green candle Gail could find, burned in the center of the coffee table. The top couple of tiers had melted down and now it leaned a little to one side, making it look more like a Christmas bush than a Christmas tree. In the dark of Gail’s living room, the women stood in a circle around it, holding hands and an image of Tippy in their minds’ eyes, bathing him in a healing circle of white light.

  Tippy was a long-haired black cat recently diagnosed with diabetes. He couldn’t jump anymore, and sometimes he walked as if he were in acute pain, although the veterinarian had assured Mara he wasn’t, that he walked on the backs of his footpads because of some neurological condition brought about by the diabetes. This weird walk always seemed to miraculously disappear when it came time for his daily shot of insulin. After six weeks of chasing him around the kitchen with a syringe in her hand, Mara was willing to try anything else.