Timeless (15 page)

"I'll just take these groceries," Andrew said, walking toward the kitchen.

"Aunt Mindy?" Kat called. "Is that you? We need you. We have kind of an emergency in here."

"There is always an emergency of some kind, dear Kat, when you are involved. What is it now? Have you broken the heel on your shoe?"

"I'll go upstairs and find a clean sheet," Alexandria said, rushing past Andrew as he walked into the kitchen.

He sidestepped her. "Hey, where's the fire?" he asked, turning to look at her, then did a quick double take as he saw a young man in a long-sleeved laced shirt with trousers tucked into knee-high boots, and carrying a dirty, unconscious girl in his arms. His eyes opened wider when he saw a sword swinging from the man's waist. "Jesus," Andrew said. "And I thought I had an interesting night."

Mindy rushed into the kitchen, and Andrew sidestepped again. "I feel like a revolving door," he said, putting the groceries down on the counter, just as the old phone on the wall rang. He looked at it for a few seconds, wondering when the telephone line had been connected. "When it rains, it pours," he said, picking up the receiver out of the cradle and putting it against his ear. He turned and leaned against the bench, his eyes still on the stranger with the girl in his arms. Not a smart idea, he thought, turning your back on a man wielding a sword. The phone buzzed in his ear. "Hello?"

"Good evening, dear. You must be Andrew. Alexandria has told us so much about you," a woman's singsong voice crackled down the line.

"Um, yes, this is he. Andrew," he replied.

"Well, dear, this is Mrs. Barnaby returning Alexandria's call from earlier today. I was wondering if I might be able to talk to her, if it isn't any bother."

Andrew raised his arm, trying to attract Alexandria's attention as she rushed back into the room with a sheet in one hand and a pillow in the other, and failed.

Mindy grabbed the sheet out of her hand and quickly spread it out on the kitchen table. "Here, put her down," she said to D'Artagnan.

Alexandria lifted the girl's head and slid the pillow carefully under her head.

Mindy examined the girl's wounds through her slashed garments. "Hot water, clean towel and a facecloth," she said, looking up at Kat. "Go," she said. "I also need you to light as many candles as you can find to keep away any negative spirits and bad energy. I'm sure you'll find a box of candles in the pantry."

"Going," Kat said, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

"I'll get the hot water," Alexandria said, fishing around in a cupboard for a large bowl, then filling it up with warm water from the kitchen sink.

"Alexandria," Andrew said, hugging the receiver against his chest.

"In a minute, Andrew," she replied, not looking up at him.

"Add some lavender oil, speedwell and rose oil to the water," Mindy added.

Alexandria searched through the shelf of colorful bottles in the cupboard, found the lavender oil and speedwell and added them to the water. "I can't find any rose oil," she said, placing the large bowl of scented water on the table next to the girl. Next, she went to the pantry, retrieved a large box with the word CANDLES engraved on its cedar lid. She opened it to find numerous candles of all sizes in a rainbow of colors. Some of the candles, she noticed, had tiny flowers embedded in them. She quickly placed them around the kitchen, lighting them as she went with a lighter she found in the box of candles. Within minutes, the room smelled like a forest and a thousand and one wildflowers.

Mindy looked at Nina. Unspoken words passed between them. "Of course," Nina said, hanging her parasol on a hook near the back door and extracting a red rose from the vase on the kitchen windowsill. She held the bud of the rose in her palm and squeezed it above a small bowl, muttering an incantation in an ancient language no one else in the room could understand. Moments later, a crimson stream of rose oil drizzled into the bowl, filling the room with the scent of roses. She handed the bowl of rose oil to Mindy, without another word spoken.

Kat ran back into the room with a white fluffy towel and a facecloth. She hung the towel over the back of a kitchen chair and handed the facecloth to Mindy.

"Thank you," Mindy said, taking it, adding a few drops of the rose oil to the bowl of warm water. She submerged the facecloth in the steaming water, then wrung it out. With the scented facecloth, she bathed the wounds on the girl's face, arms and throat, then her wrists and ankles, where the poisoned manacles had rubbed her skin raw. "She looks like she's wearing some kind of uniform, like a waitress's uniform," Mindy said, examining the torn fabric of the girl's black skirt and white, button-up shirt. "It doesn't look like any uniform I've seen around here before, though."

"Maybe it's a uniform from a private residence?" Kat offered. "The wait staff at home wear something similar when we have formal dinners."

"That’s possible," Mindy murmured. "But whose?"

Andrew waved his hand in the air, trying to attract Alexandria's attention for the umpteenth time, then gave up. He might as well have been invisible. He put the receiver back up to his ear. "You know what, Mrs. Barnaby, now isn't a very good time. Can I have her call you back when things calm down a little bit?"

"Of course, dear boy. That would be perfectly fine. Goodbye, dear." Then the phone went completely dead in his ear. He looked at it, jiggled the cradle up and down and held it back up to his ear. Nothing. The line was completely dead. He shrugged, chalking it up as one of the many quirks of the Witchwood house, then placed the receiver back in its cradle.

The girl on the table murmured, her eyelids fluttered, then shot open. Wide eyed and breathing hard, she looked from one face to another, until her gaze found and rested on Alexandria.

Alexandria stared back at her. "It's okay. You're okay. You're safe now." She rested her hand reassuringly on the girls arm, and she flinched. "I'm sorry," Alexandria said. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

The girl's breath began to slow, and she nodded. She raised her hand, resting her fingers on her lips.

"You're thirsty? Alexandria asked. "Do you want water?"

The girl nodded again, her eyes not leaving Alexandria.

"I'll get water," Kat said, letting go of D'Artagnan's arm and fetching a glass of water.

Mindy slid her hand under the pillow and lifted the girl's head while Alexandria held the glass to her lips. The girl drank thirstily until the glass was empty.

"More?" Alexandria asked.

The girl shook her head weakly, and closed her eyes as Mindy lowered the pillow.

"Can you tell us your name, dear?" Mindy asked softly, gently patting the girl's forehead with the damp cloth.

The girl opened her eyes slowly, as though performing this simple task required all of her strength, which in fact, it did. The poison from the bloodthorn flower was indeed doing its intended job – killing her.

"Matilda," she said in a choked whisper. "My name is Matilda Hemsworth. She, she called me a witch, but I don't know what she was talking about." She was silent for a long moment, summoning up the strength to survive as tears began to run down her cheeks. She opened her eyes again, looking back up at Alexandria, who was now also crying. "Thank you for coming for me," she said to Alexandria in a barely audible voice, before closing her eyes and drifting back to sleep.

"Who called you a witch?" Alexandria asked, but it was too late. Matilda had already lapsed into unconsciousness. "There has to be something we can do for her." Alexandria said, her voice pleading. "She went through all that pointless pain and suffering for nothing. She didn't even know what she was."

Mindy shook her head. "The poison from the bloodthorn flower is very potent, and once it's in the bloodstream…" Mindy's voice trailed off. There was nothing left to say that would make any difference.

Alexandria clenched her fists. "We're witches, damn it. Powerful witches, I thought. Surely there is something we can do?” Fiercely, she brushed away tears with the back of her hand. The flames on the candles grew taller, their fiery tongues licking the air. Mindy put a hand on Alexandria's arm, and one by one, the flames subsided.

"We don't have enough power yet to actually use the Saken Circle to save her. The circle has been activated, yes, but without the chosen witches stipulated in your mother's journal, it's pretty much useless. Whoever did this to Matilda knows that, and by killing her, and others like her, they are making sure we never do. They may not know which particular witches are the chosen ones, so my guess is they're going to keep killing witches until they eventually kill the right ones. Matilda was collateral damage."

"Which clan is she from, do you think?" Nina asked, walking around to the other side of the table. "I can't see any visible symbols on her to indicate which clan she belongs to. She was obviously telling the truth when she said she didn't know she was a witch."

Alexandria shot around, hearing the sound of Nina's voice. "You're a vampire ... can't you heal her with your blood or something?"

"It doesn't work like that, not with the length of time and the amount of poison she has in her body."

"Why not?" Alexandria asked angrily.

"Because she is more dead than alive, that's why," Nina snapped in a voice far angrier than she intended.

"What difference does that make now? What is there left to lose? Shouldn't we just be trying to do something? Anything, to try and save her?"

"If I gave her my blood, now, yes, she would live. That is true, but she would be in so much pain for the rest of her life from the poison in her body, that she'd wish we had let her die. I'm so sorry, Alexandria, but I've seen this before. There is
nothing
I can do for her. If there was a way, I would do it. All we can do now is find out which clan she originates from, so we can return her to her fold.

Mindy placed two fingers on the unconscious girl's right wrist, as though she were searching for a pulse. She whispered a visibility incantation to reveal the mark of the clan to which the girl belonged. After a few moments, beneath Mindy's fingers, a small, black shape like a tattoo began to materialize on the girl's wrist. Everyone leaned in, peering over Matilda. The black mark twisted into the shape of a circle with a small tree in the center. Mindy removed her fingers. "The Rivenfell Clan," she said.

"Who are the Rivenfell Clan?" Kat asked, holding tightly onto D'Artagnan's arm. "Do you even know how to find them, this Rivenfell Clan?"

Mindy nodded. "The Rivenfells are a friendly clan. They are
experts in gems, crystals, and metal magic. A typical Rivenfell witch is kindhearted and likes to be of service to others. They worship Mother Nature, and usually have white hair and brown eyes. The Tree Of Life," Mindy said, motioning to the symbol on Matilda's wrist, "is the mark of the Rivenfell Clan.
Now that we have her name, and know which clan she belongs to, Nina and I will be able to perform a summoning spell that should help us make contact with them."

Alexandria shook her head. "I just don't understand how someone could do this to her." She was quiet for a moment, thinking.

Kat shuddered, and D'Artagnan leaned down to kiss her cheek. "This could happen to anyone of us if we're not careful," she murmured.

"I would hunt them down and kill every last one of them," he said vehemently.

Mindy nodded. "You girls will have to be particularly careful from now on."

Nina picked up Matilda's limp hand and held it. "We should prepare her for her passing in the Rivenfell tradition. I need a simple white dress. We shall make her final hours as comfortable as we can. We should wash her hair, too. It is the least we can do until we find her people."

Alexandria threw her arms up in the air. "Are you kidding me? Are you telling me we just have to stand around here and wait for her to die? I can't believe that." She walked back over to Matilda's body lying unconscious on the table and stroked blood-matted blond hair off the girl's face. "She's just too young to die. She hasn't even had time to live. I wonder if she has family, or a boyfriend who knows where she was working, give us an idea of who did this to her, stop them before they have the chance to do it to anyone else. Someone has to know who she is, surely?"

"Well, I know she must be new around here, because I know everyone in Ferntree, and I've never seen her before," Kat said. "Maybe we should call the
sheriff
..."

"No," Mindy said flatly, her tone final. She stood, took the bowl of bloodstained water over to the sink and poured it out. "This is witch business, our business, not
sheriff
business." She refilled the bowl with clean, warm water, and added lavender, speedwell and rose oil to the water. "We will take care of her, not leave her to die in the sterile surroundings of a hospital with strangers. She is a witch, and it is our duty to make sure her death is celebrated in the customs of her clan. Until we find her people, we will be her people. We will stand up for her."

The pocket watch still hanging around Kat's neck began to whirl and she picked it up. "What does this mean, exactly?" she asked, holding it open for everyone to see.

Chapter 15 – Have Faith.