Once a Witch (17 page)

“No one that we know of.” I try not to squirm.

“And it's bad?” My mother sighs.

“Let's just say it's not good. Timeis–”Delicate,” my father supplies, and she nods.

“Yes. To put it mildly. Time is fragile, really. If you touch even one thing, disturb the past, then it could have consequences for the future that are–”

“Bleak” My father seems to reconsider and adds,

“Disastrous.”

“Oh,” I say in a small voice.

“When did this happen?” my mother finally asks.

“Before Rowena… got sick?” I nod and this minor movement seems to confirm my mother's worst fears, because her hands fly to her face.

“What's going on?” I plead into the silence.

“We think some of the power of the Domani escaped when you Traveled back to it. Did you… did you touch it at all?” My father begins to pace by the windows, his arms swinging loosely, his hands twitching a little, as if he wants nothing more than to pull up this situation by its roots.

“Of course she touched it. She's the only one who could have. Was there someone guarding it? A man or a woman?”

“A man.” I decide to omit the part about him throwing fireballs at me.

“Who was he?”

“The Keeper,” my mother says.

“The Domani changes every so often, as does its Keeper. No one knows who the Keeper is. It's a way of protecting the Domani.”

“He said that! The man in the coat. He was the Keeper. He said the power had passed,” I say excitedly. My father is nodding as if this now confirms his greatest hypothesis.

“It must have. Fortunately, whatever you gave this… professor wasn't the Domani any longer.”

“So then it's okay?” I ask hopefully, even though I know it can't possibly be. Not with both of my parents looking as ashen as they do.

“Just the fact that you touched it means some of its power escaped. Enough to–”

“Enough to give Alistair what he needed to get Rowena,” I finish numbly.

Somehow, thankfully, there is a chair near enough for me to sink into, because I don't know if my legs can hold out much longer. Rowena, I think, and my mind rolls back to the night when Alistair stepped into the cab after her and they drove off. That was the last time my sister was… my sister. My mother rises slowly, walks over to the desk, and opens a heavy brown leather book lying on the green blotter.

“Have you ever seen this book before?” I feel as if I'm moving through dense, brackish water as I get to my feet and walk over to stand beside her. With one finger I trace the worked leather scrolls and leaves that cover the spine. My mother seems to be holding her breath. I shake my head.

“This book is very valuable. It contains the history of our family and also a glimpse of the future as it might happen.” The heat from the fireplace begins to flicker across my ankles and bare feet like some obscure kind of warning: turn back, turn back. I hesitate. For so long I have told myself that I don't want anything to do with my family's Talents and all its complications that I seem to have almost convinced myself. Another wavering second and then I step closer, stare down at the page. Lines and lines of dense dark writing cover what looks like very old vellum. But every time I try to read anything, the words skitter away from me.

Without thinking I lower my fingers to the page as if to pin the words in place. But they all slide into the spine of the book like water seeping through a crack. My mother flicks the pages until she comes to a blank one. In a trembling voice she asks,

“Can you see anything? Anything at all?” The page remains a clean sweep of empty space.

“There's nothing to see,” I say. My father sighs.

“It was worth a try, Camilla.” My mother's eyes look suspiciously wet and a second later she dabs them against her sleeve.

“I thought you said… I was immune to spells.”

“There isn't a spell on this. Well, yes,” my mother corrects herself.

“There is a simple locking spell on the book itself to keep prying eyes away. It's something of a rite of passage for everyone to try to unlock this book and–” Her voice falters as she encounters my stony look.

“I wouldn't know,” I say dryly.

“This is a Talent. To read the future.”

“Like the way you read the future in all those women's teacups and all those–”

“Not their future. Nothing like that. Our future. The future of this family. I thought maybe since you have other Talents like Traveling…” Here she gives me a hard, searching look, but I refuse to let my face shift one iota, not one particle, until she looks back at the book.

“I thought you might have this one.”

“So who can read this?” But I know the answer.

“Your grandmother,” my mother confirms.

“It takes a tremendous amount of Talent to be able to decipher the future. And then it's often frustrating, as the future can change like that.” My mother snaps her fingers together, making me jump a little.

“Still, whoever can read this book is the one who guides our family. It's always been this way.”

“So, whatever Grandmother reads in here influences her decisions?” When my mother nods, I can't help adding,

“So she read something that made her want to lie to me all these years?” I stare at the book again until the page billows into a white shimmer.

“Your grandmother doesn't lie,” my mother says severely.

“Spare me, Mom,” I mutter.

“You all lied. It doesn't matter if it wasn't exactly in words” There is a small, nasty swell of silence among us all and then a clap of thunder so loud that it makes both my mother and me jump. My father paces toward me.

“You. Lied. Too,” he exclaims, his finger pointing straight at me.

“If you had told us what you did for this man sooner, then maybe your sister wouldn't be–”

“I did!” I shout. The flames in the fireplace flare silently in response and I stare at them, distracted for a moment by the pulsing feeling in my palms. Then I force myself to continue.

“I told Grandmother that he came into the store one night and asked me to find something and that I did. I did find it.” Both of my parents are staring at me, but it's my mother who recovers first.

“You told her?” my mother whispers.

“When?” Then her face seems to lengthen and grow pale in the shadows of the room.

“When you called home.” I nod.

“I didn't tell her everything. But I told her that I found something that I didn't think I should have found” I pause, thinking back on my grandmother's words.

“And she told me that since I started this, I had to see it through. That she didn't see any other way for me. Or for any of us” I shake my head.

“I didn't know what she meant. I thought it was just. .”

I shrug and let my words trail off.

“But if she knew who he was, why would she tell Tamsin to 'see it through'?” my mother asks. Her question doesn't seem to be aimed at me, so I look at my father, but he seems equally lost. Finally, he says,

“Because Althea must have foreseen something worse if Tamsin didn't help him.”

“Who is he?” I whisper.

“He's one of the Knights. That was their family name. The Knights,” my father says heavily because my mother seems unable to answer. She's staring down at the book, squinting occasionally as if something lingers just outside the boundaries of her vision.

“Oh” Knights conjure images of shining armor and bright shields embossed with gold and green. Jousting and–”They were never content with what we had.”

“'We'?”

“Oh, yes. At one point there was no division between us. Between any of us. We were all Talented. We came to this new country seeking a place to start over.

We had been persecuted in other countries. You learned about witch hunts in school?” my father continues, his hands clasped behind his back. He really should have been a professor in a college somewhere. I nod.

“That was us?”

“Well, some of us. History doesn't always have it right. But yes, we were persecuted until we came here.”

“But there were witch hunts here, too. I remember we studied the Salem witch trials and . .”

And then Leah Connelly and Melanie Nightingale cornered me in the girls'

bathroom during recess, turned on the taps, and tried to force my head under the sink to see if I wouldn't drown like a true witch. They were planning to do the prick test, too, until I split Melanie's lip open.

“Yes,” my mother agrees, lifting her head finally and rubbing at her eyes.

“But by then we had learned how to mingle, how to disappear into society.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Um… did we forget how to do that now? Because we're not so great at mingling and disappearing.” My father makes another rumbling sound, but this time it sounds more like laughter. My mother shrugs.

“Oh, that. Times are different now. Anyway, back then some of us chose to use our Talents to heal and others chose to use our Talents to farm. Peaceful choices. Except for the Knights. Over time they began what they had started doing back in the old countries. Always they had to explore the deeper and darker realms of their Talents, pushing them past their limits until their Talents turned. Warped” My mother's voice falls away on the last word and she presses her hands to her eyes again for an instant.

“Some of their… explorations involved other humans. They found ways to extend their natural life span by draining away the life force in humans.”

“How?” I whispered, but my mother shakes her head.

“We've never known. They used spells, the origins of which we never could understand. Spells that involved their victims' blood.” All at once Rowena's black umbrella blooms in my mind and I see again the long red scratch on her hand. And Alistair dabbing away her blood with his handkerchief. My father clears his throat and says,

“At first they were content with using Talentless people. But then once they had mastered that, they began to move on to Talented people. Now instead of extending only their life span, they extend their powers as well” He begins pacing again, pauses.

“You studied parasites in school?” A brief lesson on whales and their various barnacle guests comes swimming back to me.

“Um… yeah?”

“Well,” my father says, leaping back into lecture mode,

“think of a parasite and how it leeches everything away from its host. Sometimes without the host knowing.”

“Or knowing after it's too late,” my mother interjects.

“Rowena,” I whisper.

“Her wrist,” I blurt out.

“He's… taking her blood?”

“Yes. Being part of the Knight family, this man would know the spell. He may not have been able to use it all these years, but he would have been ready and waiting for just the right time, when enough of the power of the Domani had escaped.” My mother turns the pages of the book again with shaking hands, as if hoping the answers will suddenly appear.

“He's in her blood now, like a fever. Or like an addiction. One that's very, very hard to break.”

“Can't you just… kill him?” My father regards me gravely.

“We've thought of that. I would take another person's life gladly in this case.”

My mother puts her hand on his arm.

“Even though life is sacred, as you know,” she says.

“But there's another aspect to this spell. There's a mirror effect. Whatever you do to the spell caster reflects back onto the enspelled,” my mother whispers as if quoting a text by heart.

“Three times over.”

“What if I… Traveled, then?” I whisper.

“Back to the time when… when…”

“No,” my mother says sharply. She comes around the desk and seizes my upper arms.

“You cannot Travel again. Do you understand?”

“No,” I say, trying to shift out of her grasp, but her fingers dig into me too deeply.

“There have been horrible consequences already from your Traveling–don't you see?” my mother hisses.

“But why can't I just go back and fix it?” My mother gives me a little shake.

Enough to make my back teeth rattle.

“Ow, Mom–”

“You cannot just 'fix it' as you so blithely call it, because Time, as we have been telling you, is extremely delicate. Once you pull one thread, you warp something else in the pattern.”

“Okay, but–”

“Promise me you will not do this. Promise” My mother's eyes are narrowed points of light boring into my skull.

“Okay, okay.” Finally, she releases me and takes a step back and the blood starts returning to my arms.

“Tell her,” my father says softly behind her, and the color seems to drain out of her face.

“Tell her why.”

“Rowena can… can read the future, too.”

“Of course she can,” I mutter. And really I'm not surprised. Rowena is the most powerful one in our family, next to my grandmother. I've always known this, accepted this. Until today. But abruptly I tune back in to my mother, who is adding,

“And she's… she's read some of it. Before I caught her. Before I stopped her.”

I feel myself grow very still.

“And she told you what she read?” I whisper.

“She read… she read where you Traveled and you didn't come back. You couldn't, for some reason.” I press my lips flat as if that can contain the trembling. It doesn't work.

“Please, Tamsin,” my mother says, and then her voice cracks.

“I don't need to lose you and your sister both.”

I FIND GABRIEL in the downstairs parlor, playing cards with my cousins Jerom and Silda and Aunt Beatrice, of all people. I let myself in quietly and shrug at Gabriel in response to his raised eyebrows. His hands flick cards around the small walnut table, and they are either exchanged by the players or folded away in what seems to be a discard pile. Occasionally, Gabriel allots a few more from the deck that rests in the center of the table next to three beer bottles and a tiny crystal glass of what looks like sherry. No doubt who that one belongs to. In one swift movement Aunt Beatrice knocks back the contents, then bangs the glass staccato style on the table until, rolling her eyes, Silda gets up to retrieve a decanter from the sideboard.

“Here, Aunt Beatrice,” she says and dribbles a little more amber liquid into the glass.