Chapter Text
When he was gone, she did not sit down again. Even in this protective space, the energy of this place was far too chaotic for her to sit. She picked up the bottle and poured herself another glass of water, nursing it as she walked to the window to watch the crowd below.
Hecate had always been unusually sensitive to energies both magical and natural. As a child, she could tell when a storm was approaching long before there were clouds in the sky. Events like Selection Day were particularly difficult, as the energy of so many untrained witches combined with anxiety and adolescent hormones could be downright overwhelming were she not prepared for it.
But nothing could have prepared her for the energy she felt in this place. From above, the dance floor seemed so strange, just a swarm of witches and wizards, undulating and evolving like the colors of a kaleidoscope below her. Without the music, it seemed mesmerizingly random while possessed of a certain logical complexity.
But when she was down there in the heart of it?
It was like riding the crest of a tsunami, thrilling and terrifying and completely out of her control. Part of her had been certain she’d crash, pounding to the Earth with the force of Nature herself. But another part of her had loved it, the chaos, the passion, even the fear itself.
And here she was.
Once again with her face pressed to the window, looking at the world from a distance.
She looked at the glass in her hand in disgust, then vanished it with a wave of her hand.
Of course, she was here, alone, hiding. She’d been hiding her entire life. Now that her confinement was lifted, she no longer had it as a convenient scapegoat. Now, it was more than apparent to her that she was, in fact, a coward.
A coward who chose to hide, behind castle walls, behind harsh words and harsher expressions, behind the tragedy of one child who’d been harmed by another child so very long ago.
She’d given up on tears decades ago. They were a sign of weakness she simply did not tolerate in herself. Perhaps it was the residual effect of the alcohol producing the moisture in her eyes. Perhaps it was something in the air.
She shook herself mentally to clear the self-indulgent emotions settling into her, trying to regain some semblance of the resolve she’d had before coming here this evening.
“You gonna stay here all night, Heckle?”
She whirled to see Cara standing just inside the doorway. Away from the crowd, she seemed smaller, less over-the-top than Hecate had originally thought. Cara’s voice was quite warm and deep, almost comforting when she was not trying to be heard over a crowd.
Hecate allowed herself a tiny smirk. “It’s Hecate,” she corrected.
Cara laughed, a full, throaty sound that filled the room. “Honey, if you’re Cackle’s, you’re family.” She winked, adding, “And when you’re family, you get a nickname.”
She responded with an arch of her eyebrows. “I don’t do nicknames,” she responded drily.
“Right, HB. Take it up with the management.” Cara crossed the distance to stand beside Hecate, looking out over the crowd below. “It’s crazy down there, isn’t it?” She did not wait for Hecate to respond. “Some nights, I swear, if I didn’t come up here to decompress, I’d go crazy.”
Hecate nodded, unsure how to respond to that.
With a knowing look, Cara added, “I just have to be careful not to get too comfortable up here. There’s a fine line between decompressing and isolating.” She leaned slightly to nudge Hecate. “I imagine that’s something both of us are guilty of from time to time.” At Hecate’s surprised expression, she explained, “I’m really good in a crowd, but people wear me down. Sometimes I need to be by myself to recharge, hence….” She gestured to the room around them. “But then, I gotta get back out there. Otherwise…”
Hecate sighed, allowing the sentence to remain uncompleted. She needed no description of what happened to a person when isolation became the norm.
“You know, what you did tonight was very brave.”
“Brave?”
Cara smiled at her with an almost motherly expression. “I’ve had this place for nearly twenty-five years. In that time, every single teacher from Cackle’s has walked through my door, even that prune-faced Gullett woman...once…” From her sour look, it was obvious Cara had no better an opinion of MIss Gullett than Hecate had.
“You, on the other hand, have never once come to this place. Never.” If she noticed the stiff look on Hecate’s face, Cara did not let on as she continued. “I don’t just work here. I live in this village. I’m a member of the community. And I see folks from Cackle’s out, in the shops, at the bakery.” She narrowed her dark eyes straight at the tall witch before her. “But never….you….”
Hecate remained completely silent, the chaos on the dance floor below forgotten as she found herself trapped like a fly in a web, pinned to the spot by this tiny woman’s uncannily perceptive stare.
“Barry told me once about rumors when he was at Cackle’s...that you never left the school, that you were somehow cursed to stay there...stupid kid stuff, you know?”
They know they know they know…
She could feel the panic starting in her chest and clamped down on it with a grip of steel, not allowing even a trace of it to show on her face. “Children are prone to silly fairy tales,” she said coldly.
Cara shrugged, grinning softly. “I don’t give a crap about rumors,” she said. “But I know that I got at least three mirror calls this week from your friends, asking me to keep an eye out on you, asking me to make sure it wasn’t too much for you.”
Hecate’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Who...who mirrored you?”
“Batsy, Miz D, even Buttons called to ask me for advice.”
“Buttons?”
“She felt horrible about backing out at the last moment. She didn’t want you to feel abandoned, but she knew that if she came, you’d spend the entire night hiding behind her skirts.”
“Miss Cackle?” she asked, astonished. When Cara nodded, the whole situation suddenly began to make sense. Ada’s insistence that she join the group, her suggestion of a more casual outfit, even the feeble excuse she gave for backing out at the last minute.
“Mama Bird thought you needed a bit of a nudge out of your comfort zone,” Cara said. “And frankly, I knew you wanted the same thing when I saw you’d taken a sobriety potion.”
If Hecate’s eyebrows had shot any further up, they would have been launched skyward. “How…?”
This made Cara laugh outright. “The shots. I spell the shot glasses to detect alcohol levels, just so I can gauge when to cut people off. You can thank Miss Threadwhistle for that,” she added. Miss Threadwhistle had been an Herbology teacher who had blessedly chosen another profession when a single term at Cackle’s had driven her to the witches’ brew.
“I see,” was all Hecate could manage.
“When your glass came back with a slightly bluish tint, I knew you’d taken a sobriety potion. You wouldn’t have done that if you didn’t want to at least try having fun.”
“Perhaps I took it as a preventative measure against Miss Drill’s powers of persuasion,” Hecate countered. “I’ve cleaned up after these gatherings far too many times to not take precautions.”
“Hey, I’m not judging you. I swear by the stuff. With all the cauldrons I’ve got stirring, I can’t afford to lose my head. But the point, Heckle, is that you let yourself relax.”
Hecate groaned. “I made a complete fool of myself.”
Cara gave her a crooked smile. “From where I’m standing, you won the drinking contest, charmed the hell out of our headliner, and took the dance floor by storm. Doesn’t sound like you made a fool of anything.”
“But what if I hadn’t won the contest? What if I’d been forced to…. sing karaoke ….?” Her voice lowered in horror at the mere thought. “That would have been disastrous. And my colleagues….” She drew in a long breath. “They made it worse. Not one of them even asked if I wanted to go on stage, not even Miss Bat.”
Cara sighed. Taking her arm, she led Hecate to the couch. “Sit down, honey.”
Hecate hesitated for a moment, then sat primly as she waited for Cara to take the seat next to her. “Yes?”
“First of all, you didn’t lose the contest. You won. And even if you had, do you think you’d have been the first person to panic on stage? I wish I had a box of wishes for every person who was a superstar at their table, only to turn into a puddle of goo once the spotlight hit them. One poor bastard actually pissed his pants.” She laughed again at Hecate’s look of horror. “Heckle, all my queens know what to do if an audience interaction goes south. We have contingencies for that sort of thing--me, Barry, the queens. I promise you, if things had gone wrong, we’d have rescued you. Without you having to lose face.” She snorted. “Even the guy who pissed his trousers got laid that night.”
A wave of heat flushed over Hecate’s face. “Well, I certainly was not intending…”
“You gotta walk before you fly, Baby Bird. And as for your girls? They’ve seen a million drag shows; they knew we would never let you look stupid on stage.”
Hecate sniffed. “Well, it might have been nice if they’d informed me …”
“Now, Heckle, if you’d have known you were in no danger, would you be half as proud of yourself for blowing them all away?”
She had to admit, at least to herself, that she would not have been. She had turned their game to her advantage. She felt the tug of Mitzi’s pink garter around her thigh and remembered all the little trophies she’d seen over the years, tokens gathered by her colleagues memorializing nights she’d never shared. Silly things like paper umbrellas from drinks, a head boy pin from Merlin Academy (though how Tapioca acquired that, she’d never dared asked), and the like. Until she had her own, they’d seemed trite and foolish. Now, she knew that she’d treasure it for a very long time as a remembrance of her stage debut.
“No,” she admitted softly. “No, I don’t think I would have.”
“So lighten up, already.” She pulled Hecate into a tiny hug, then dropped her hands to her lap. “Now, that we’ve got that wrapped up, you’re ready for the other shoe to drop.”
“What are you talking about?”
Cara stood, smoothing her skirt as she did. “Well, with Buttons not here tonight--”
“I cannot believe you call Ada Cackle ‘Buttons…’” Hecate muttered as she also stood.
“What?” Cara shrugged. “She’s cute as a button. Regardless, with Buttons out of the picture, that leaves you as the designated grown-up.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Cara called towards the door. “You can bring ‘em in now, Barry.”
Barry opened the door, leading all three of her colleagues in a sort of perp-walk into the room.
“Batsy,” Cara said as Miss Bat wobbled towards the sofa. “Has been sweet-talking free drinks out of my bartender all night.”
“It was only a small fire,” Miss Bat murmured as she curled up on the sofa for a snooze.
“And Taps?” She pointed to Miss Tapioca, who was sporting what promised to be a bruiser of a black eye. “Taps decided to go all Nathan Detroit and start an illegal game of Dragon Craps in my storeroom.”
“‘Nathan Detroit?’” Hecate asked.
“I’ll explain it later,” Barry said sotto voce as he took his place at Hecate’s side.
“And if Miz D could just once hook up with a woman who doesn’t have a jealous wife--”
“In my defense, she wasn't wearing a ring,” Drill slurred.
“According to you, they never wear rings.” Cara rolled her eyes at Dimity’s attempt at an innocent expression.
“Seriously, Heckle, these women are a menace. It’s no wonder Buttons bailed and left you in charge.”
Hecate was unsure how much of this was serious and how much was Cara’s sense of humor. “Well, I…” she began, not really knowing what was expected of her. But before she could finish her sentence, Cara continued.
“You’re all grounded to the Fortress for the rest of the night. Heckle, you’re in charge. Keep them out of trouble.” She winked at Hecate, then turned to Barry. “Make sure they get what they need. I need to check on Mitzi before her second show. Diva acts like she didn’t do her first drag show on my stage…”
And with that, she was gone.
Hecate looked from Barry to her inebriated colleagues and gave a tiny shrug. “Now, what do we do?”
As with a single voice, all three of her colleagues said, “Shots!!!”