Once a Witch (14 page)

“Um… Mom, can you–”

“Oh, Tamsin,” she says, her arms releasing me suddenly. I gulp in air.

“You found her. Thank the earth and stars above” Her face is so sharply drawn and so blotchy from crying that I feel a terrible pang that I didn't think to call her from my cell sooner than I did. Then again I was dealing with a maniac.

“About that, Mom,” I say, pulling back a little.

“I've just made a couple of interesting discoveries.” But my mother's gaze is pinned to Rowena as my sister stirs and opens her eyes. She peers at all of us, blinking several times as if we are apparitions from the wrong dream.

“Where is he?” she murmurs. Her hands comb through her hair as though she's searching for answers there, and I have to turn away. Movement flickers at the edge of my vision and I look out the window to see my father and Uncle Morris heading down the driveway.

“Where's James, you mean? He's coming. He'll be here right away” My mother speaks in a loud, extra-careful voice, the kind people seem to reserve for non-native speakers and children.

“Uh, Mom,” I begin.

“She doesn't–”

“He wants me back,” Rowena frets.

“He certainly does,” my mother agrees too quickly.

“We all do, sweetheart. You haven't been yourself these past few days. You . .”

The little rush of my mother's words tumbles to a halt. She has found the marks on Rowena's wrist, and now she smoothes her fingers over and over them, her mouth working with the weight of what she can't or won't say. Rowena stumbles out of the car and my mother almost trips in her haste to follow. Gabriel and I look at each other.

“What did it feel like?” I ask him finally. He wraps his fingers around the keys still dangling in the ignition and pulls them out but says nothing.

“Back on the highway, when–”

“I know when,” he says abruptly.

“It felt like I had to do this. Like I had to turn the car around or I would… I would die or something” He snorts, but I notice that he's clutching the keys.

“I just knew I had to do this. That it was the right thing to do. And then…”

“And then what?” I whisper.

“Then it stopped. When you touched me. When you told her to stop.” He is staring at me now.

“What exactly did you do?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?” I gulp under his fiercely incredulous look.

“I swear I don't. I felt something, too, and then… it stopped. I wanted it to stop and so it did.” I stare out the window. Rowena is staggering down the driveway, her arms outstretched as if reaching for someone, while my mother bobs beside her. As I watch, my mother reaches out to grab my sister's shoulder, but she shakes her off with an impatient movement. My father, holding an uprooted plant aloft, is trailing behind them. And Uncle Morris simply stands in the driveway shaking his head.

“Why don't they do something?” I whisper.

“I don't know. I don't think they can” Then his voice sharpens with excitement.

“But maybe you can, Tam.” I shake my head and say automatically,

“I can't stop Rowena” In the quiet of the car my words spin like a coin and slowly come to rest. I stare at Gabriel.

“She's… I did stop her. From persuading you. You really didn't do anything?”

“I couldn't,” he says simply. Then he taps the keys on my knee as if to get my attention.

“Tam, don't you get it? You stopped Rowena. She wanted me to turn the car around and I would have–”

”She can do that,” I murmur in a daze.

“She can make anyone do anything she tells them to–”

“Apparently not,” Gabriel interrupted, slapping at my knee again.

“And what's more, you stopped that man from killing us in 1899.”

“I did?”

“Yes, you idiot! Don't you see? He was going to kill us. With the clock–”

“I remember,” I say.

“And stop shouting. I'm right here” But something is unfurling deep inside me and I feel as if I too might start shouting at any moment. Something like, Take that, everyone who said that it was really such a shame about me. In my mind I can see the proverbial rooftop and me climbing up there to make the announcement to all the stunned faces below.

“And you touched the clock. And nothing happened to you. Twice is too much of a coincidence, Tam,” Gabriel is saying, and I look at him dazedly.

“You have a Talent.”

“But why? Why now? Why didn't I know any of this before? Why didn't my mother or my grandmother or anyone know this?” I break off to look at Gabriel, who is suddenly not looking at me. Instead, he reaches forward, picks up a loose CD, and slips it back into a cracked purple case.

“What? What is it?” But before he can answer, a navy blue Saab roars up the driveway with no care for the potholes. It comes to a stop in a spray of muddy gravel that echoes against the side of Gabriel's Volvo. A second later James is tumbling out of the car.

“This is about to get ugly,” I murmur and exit the car, aware that Gabriel has done the same. The rain has softened to a drizzle as I stand next to James. I've always thought of my sister's fiancé as my sister's fiancé. Everyone knew they would be a match someday. Personally, I think it's because they're both arrogant and opinionated. Even when we were kids, he never seemed like one.

I think it's because of his Talent–he's able to absorb words and store them like a cactus stores water. He can read a book once and years later recite it page for page. I think all those words line the walls of his brain and smother any desire to speak with us lesser mortals. Or maybe we smothered that out of him long ago when we refused to listen to his vast stores of knowledge for more than two seconds before running off or stuffing him headfirst into one of the barrels outside the barn that collected rainwater. In my defense I never did that. I just served as lookout whenever anyone else did. Who knows what he talks about with Rowena or if he ever gets a chance to talk when he's with her. But he does burn with this kind of cool fire, an intensity that seems to serve as an eloquent foil for my sister's beauty and brightness. Now, however, his face has a pinched white cast to it, like a man who is standing in a blizzard.

“Hi, Tam,” he says dully, staring down the driveway. My mother is holding Rowena by the shoulders, and my father has come to stand next to them as if blocking Rowena's escape. My sister twitches under my mother's hands like a dishcloth pinned to the line. I wonder suddenly when Rowena last slept. Or ate.

“How long has she been like this?” I ask.

“A week,” James answers in a hollow voice.

“I was hoping that when your mother called… when she said you were bringing her back… that Ro would be… better” The last word breaks and I lower my eyes, staring at a thicket of bristlebright weeds blooming in a particularly deep pothole. Gabriel whistles between his teeth.

“What do they think?”

“That she's under some kind of”–a pained look crosses James's face–”spell. A love spell” He turns to me so suddenly that I take a step back.

“Who is this man?” I swallow. I don't know if now is the time to tell James that I introduced Alistair, however unwillingly, into Rowena's life. Into all our lives. But just then Rowena breaks free from my mother and runs toward us, her arms spread, her hair flying. James steps forward as if to catch her, but she pulls herself up short, seeming to barely register his presence except to say,

“I need the keys.”

“Ro,” he says softly.

“Wait a minute. Do you even–”

“The keys,” she repeats, making an impatient motion with her left hand toward the Saab. Her eyes are like two holes burned into her face.

“No,” James says. His voice splinters, and I wonder if this is the first time he has ever uttered that word to her.

“James,” Rowena says, and her voice becomes custard-soft and sweet.

“Give me your keys now. I need them and you want to help me” Swaying forward, she puts one hand on his arm.

“Rowena” He says her name in a long rush of sound and there is compliance and love and utmost despair all mixed up into it. And at the same time he is reaching into his pocket and I hear the faint clink of metal. I don't even need Gabriel's fiercely whispered

“Tam” in my ear before I'm moving forward.

“Stop listening to her,” I say to James, and because I still can't get a sense of this, I jerk Rowena's arm and say brutally,

“Stop telling him to give you the keys.” Beside me, I feel James give a little jolt and then he pulls his hand from his pocket as if burned. When she sees that his hand is empty, my sister howls. Then she turns and slaps me. Hard.

“Whoa!” Gabriel shouts, and then he's moving past me, pinning Rowena's arms to her sides. She screams, strands of her blond hair falling across her face and clinging to her wide-open mouth. Out of the corner of my eye I see my parents start toward us. In midstep my mother winks out and then she's standing next to me, breathing hard as if she really did just sprint up the driveway.

“What happened?” she gasps. She throws the question out to all of us, eyeing my sister, who is still struggling in Gabriel's grasp. I touch my stinging cheek, my fingers brushing across what feels like a scratch from my sister's ring.

“Tamsin stopped her. From compelling me,” James says in a wondering voice.

“One minute I knew that I needed to give her the keys and then… the next second I knew I didn't have to. The feeling was gone.”

“She did that for me, too. In the car ride up here,” Gabriel adds.

“Otherwise, we wouldn't be here right now” Just then my sister's head jerks up and slams into Gabriel's chin.

“Ow–dammit” There is blood on his lip as he adds under his breath,

“And that might be nice,” but I think I'm the only one who hears him. James steps forward and puts out his hands to my sister, who's breathing hard now.

“Traitor,” she spits, turning her head away. She goes very still and maybe Gabriel relaxes, because all of a sudden she jerks forward and frees herself in one sharp movement. She stumbles a little away from us, nearly crashing into my father, and regards us all balefully. Then she flings herself at the Saab, her fingers scrabbling at the door. I don't know if my sister plans to hot-wire the car somehow–I doubt she knows, either– but my mother gives a little mewl of despair, then turns and makes a beckoning motion toward the house, where a small knot of people have gathered on the porch. Gabriel's mother, Lydia, detaches herself from the group and comes forward slowly, almost reluctantly.

There are circles under her eyes as she puts a hand on my mother's shoulder, squeezing it briefly. She nods at my father, who looks distinctly troubled, and then moves toward my sister.

“Oh, no way,” Gabriel mutters, and I shoot a look at him. But he is eyeing his mother with trepidation.

“I need you to distract her,” Lydia murmurs to James, and he takes a step toward the wild woman that is my sister, hunching his shoulders and lowering his head. Somehow, he reminds me of nothing more than a weary bull resigned to charging the matador once again.

“Rowena,” he says softly.

“I'll drive you back to the city,” he offers, and she turns, staring blankly at him as if trying to remember his name.

“I'll drive you back to… him” His voice chokes a little, but he rushes on.

“Let's leave now, okay?” She takes a step toward him hesitantly.

“You'll drive me?” she repeats in a ragged voice, and he nods. She moves closer to him.

“Thank you,” she whispers. Quicker than thought, Lydia's hands slip through the air, like white blurring birds, and clamp firmly on either side of my sister's temples.

Rowena's face contorts for one slash of a second and then she sways into James's waiting arms. Lydia shrugs, rubs one hand across her face.

“She'll sleep for a while, Camilla,” she says to my mother.

“Call me when you need me again,” she adds and picks her way back to the porch, her hands wrapped around her elbows. James bundles Rowena more tightly into his arms and touches his face to hers for just an instant, like a man gulping air. Then he straightens up and begins carrying my sister to the house.

The spikes of her high heels are scuffed with mud from the driveway and her right arm flops bonelessly in the air with every jouncing step. I don't think I've ever seen my sister this graceless. I look over at my mother, who is leaning against my father's shoulder, tears gilding her face.

I AM SITTING on the top step of the staircase, my arms looped through the wooden railings, when Gabriel finds me. He walks up the stairs, balancing a full plate and a cup, and as he lifts his gaze to me, a flash of silver slides off the plate and falls through the air clattering onto the steps below me.

“Shit–sorry,” Gabriel whispers with a glance toward the closed door of the library at the bottom of the staircase.

“No big deal,” I say.

“They know I'm out here” My parents have been sequestered in the library for more than an hour now.

“Who's in there?” Gabriel asks, motioning with his chin since I still haven't taken the plate from him. I follow the movement, glancing the opposite way down the hallway to the also tightly closed door that leads to Rowena's room.

“Your mom.” Gabriel nods, sits next to me, and holds out the plate. The smell of slightly burned bread wafts upward. He has made me a grilled cheese sandwich, the filling oozing out in a white gooey mess. Somewhere he also found a handful of carrots that have been chopped into thick coin-shaped pieces. I'm trying to figure out why he thought I might need a fork and knife, but I decide it would sound ungrateful if I ask.

“It's not sushi or fish tacos or pizza, but I did the best I could,” he offers, and I take the plate into my hands, finding its warmth comforting. I look sideways at him.

“How do you know I like sushi and fish tacos and pizza?”

“My sources are excellent.”

“Agatha” I think about my roommate for a minute. I didn't even tell her I was leaving the city. There wasn't any time, but still, I know she'll be worried by now.

“I should call her,” I say, but somehow I can't find the energy to get up and do it.

“You should eat first,” Gabriel says, and bumps the plate toward me. I pick up a triangle of sandwich, watch as more cheese filling drips out, and put it down again.