The lesbian witches intended to fix their own shit, not the whole wide world and everybody in it. They were practical that way.

‘The circle is open, but never unbroken,’ affirmed a witch, wearing a white robe covered in feathers.

‘Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again,’ sang another in a black robe and a mask of flame.

Then the witches – they were a coven of eight – tossed up their hands and took off their masks, laughing and wiping the sweat from their faces. They had visited the Land of the Dead and returned safely. They were back in Santa Cruz, the last day of October, 1983.

They left the candles burning on the messy altar in the living room and crowded into the kitchen. They pulled dinner from the fridge and oven and sat down. The seven housemates and one guest fitted perfectly around the table, and Wren happened to sit next to the guest, Robin, Nikki’s cousin. Wren noted Robin brought tabouli.

A witch in a satiny rainbow-hued robe and a stereotypical pointed black hat called over the commotion. ‘Hey, Robin, what’s the difference between parsley and pussy?’ This was Lupe, who often soothed social awkwardness with a joke.

Robin looked shocked. ‘I don’t kn –’

‘EVERYBODY EATS PUSSY,’ the coven shouted, Lupe conducting the chorus with her chopsticks. Robin shook her head, smiling. ‘Ah, lesbians.’

‘We sure are,’ said Lupe. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘Let’s say I like parsley also,’ Robin replied drily, in a voice like Jodie Foster.

Wren filled her plate and took more tabouli than anyone else. She liked ritual magic, but loved the feast afterward more. She hadn’t eaten parsley for a long time. She kept silent for most of the meal, as her housemates complimented Lupe on getting the harvest in just before the rain, Hazel’s succotash, and Ginny’s elaborate salad. The women explicitly avoided discussing the ritual they had just completed, or their impending eviction. That would come later.

Wren half-listened and slowly buttered a roll. She used it to push tabouli onto her fork. The ritual left her disappointed, and she wanted to figure out why. They had begun as always, with each witch swearing to enter the circle ‘in perfect love and perfect trust’. They raised a cone of power, grounded the energy, then entered a trance. Together, they imagined walking into a cave, crossing a dark lake on a magical boat and meeting ancestors on an island.

But when the other women began murmuring and communing with ancestors, Wren just stood there, wordless. In her imagination, an old lady approached, crowned with yellow hair in a beehive. Her pear-shaped body swam in a purple paisley shift. More middle-aged fat ladies in loud dresses appeared. They led Wren in a circle-dance she had learned as a child, but gave her no messages from beyond the grave.

She should have expected she’d feel dissatisfied. The coven held Halloween rituals on the night ‘when the veil between the worlds is thin’, they said. Her coven sisters sought advice from their ancestors, learning family secrets, and speaking again with loved ones they actually knew. For these witches, Halloween wasn’t macabre. But Wren was adopted. She wished rituals helped her understand her mother, but ancestor rituals engendered a curiosity about blood-relatives that conflicted with a shameful disloyalty to the single mother who raised her.

Wren avoided further contemplation of her mother-damage and helped stack up plates. Everyone else was avoiding talking about The Eviction.

Kelsey had pushed her mask up onto her head. Now she looked like her hair was on fire. She was teaching Robin to pronounce Samhain, sah-win, and said it was an Irish word.

From Wren’s other side Lupe was shrieking, ‘I vant to saak yoour blaad’, baring her teeth on Hazel’s neck. Her witch’s hat fell onto the table and Wren saw it was covered in plastic spiders. Hazel laughed and squawked. Hazel’s pointed hat was a straw cornucopia, tied under her chin with green ribbon. It looked sillier than she probably intended. Her shirt and robes and jewellery were all oranges and yellows. Hazel never dressed up like an identifiable goddess, only the pure essence. Wren loved how her coven sisters interpreted the symbols of their Dianic wiccan tradition – by doing whatever they wanted.”

Across the table, Ginny was still wearing small horns, visible among her dark curls. She always dressed like an animal at their rituals. Wren assumed they were meant to invoke a goat, not the devil. Nikki had worn her usual plastic child’s mask, this one featured the huge teeth of a beaver.

Suddenly, Wren heard Robin’s voice in her ear, asking who she had been dressed as.

‘Persephone.’ Wren adjusted the black bodice of her gown and wondered how much Greek mythology Robin knew. ‘Do you know her?’

‘I’ve met her.’ Robin answered as if the goddess were someone who worked at the Food Bin, and not Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, Daughter of Demeter All-Giver.

Gloria had overheard. She leaned forward, pushing back the sleeves of her white feathered owl robe. Wren assumed it had something to do with Gloria’s favourite goddess, Athena. Gloria could dress like a bird and never look ridiculous. She asked expectantly, ‘Did you speak with Persephone tonight?’

‘I didn’t speak to anyone.’ The witches around the table fell quiet. Robin looked at the faces of her intensely curious new friends. ‘I saw what I always see.’ Wren felt an instant affinity. Robin also had a mediocre ritual.

Wren noticed Robin was still wearing one of the coven’s black choir robes from the Bargain Barn. During the ritual, she covered half her face in a black velvet mask rimmed with orange sequins. Wren wondered what that costume meant.

‘I’ve heard of the Land of the Dead, but it’s not that,’ Robin was saying. ‘I’m cold. A circle of stones surrounds me. Outside the circle is nothing but open prairie, with lights far away, like campfires.’

Gloria put down her wine. ‘You’re all alone without your ancestors?’

‘When I die, I don’t meet anybody,’ said Robin. ‘I’m stuck in that stone circle and must live again, remembering every life that came before. The future is my afterlife.’

Gloria wanted more detail, but Kelsey interrupted.

‘It’s getting late. Robin, if you don’t mind, we have some household business to deal with.’ Kelsey looked significantly at Gloria.

‘We’ve all read the letter,’ Gloria said. ‘They are kicking us out.’‘We only have thirty days.’

‘That fucker!’ Lupe spoke for all of them.

‘I don’t want to move again,’ moaned Hazel. ‘Last summer’s garden had the highest yield yet.’ Lupe put an arm around her. They had been best friends since high school, and they were so often together that people assumed they were lovers. They weren’t any more.

‘If we move, maybe I can get a dog,’ Ginny said. For her, the worst part of being a renter was the prohibition of animal companions. Ginny had put on Nikki’s silly mask, and Nikki was wearing Ginny’s horns. Above Nikki’s heavy eyebrows and wide grin, they absolutely looked devilish.

‘Can’t you do something, Nikki?’ asked Gloria, pointedly. Nikki and Robin were related to most of the old Italian families of the county, including their landlord.

‘I can talk to him,’ Nikki said reluctantly, ‘but that family connection isn’t what it used to be since I came out.’

‘They had to have known,’ said Lupe. ‘It’s not how she looks –’

Nikki completed the joke, ‘– it’s how she looks back.’

Their chuckles died, and the certainty of impending eviction settled around the table. Wren felt the warmth of Robin’s shoulder against her own, then caught Nikki nodding at Robin. The cousins shared a familial resemblance, but Robin’s delicate features contrasted with Nikki’s burliness. The corners of Robin’s mouth turned down when closed, a sad expression Wren found perversely attractive.

Robin cleared her throat. ‘Nikki wants me to tell you I bought a property up in Bonny Doon. It needs some work, but maybe you’d like to move there.’

‘Robin bought Nana Nicola’s old apple ranch,’ Nikki explained with a wicked chuckle. ‘The uncles were counting on inheriting it.’

The dejected women exploded with excitement. Robin and Nikki described a large old house surrounded by acres of redwoods, with an orchard and vegetable garden. As Robin tried to answer Lupe’s questions about apples and Hazel’s about southern exposure, the other women wanted to know about the number of bedrooms and how much rent would be.

Robin shrank back and pretended to duck under her own arms. ‘Maybe you should just come up and see.’

A quick survey of work schedules resulted in everyone looking at Wren.

‘I was going to paint in the Pogonip, but –’

‘We all like your landscapes,’ Gloria said, not even hiding her manoeuvre, ‘but your coven needs you.’

Wren glanced over at Robin, who gave her an inviting smile. Wren could not resist returning it. She agreed to visit Robin’s land the next morning. The dread of eviction seemed magicked away.