Witches in Wonderland

by J. D. Winters

  She knelt and muttered something, touching Clarissa and growling out some sort of magic phrase, and Clarissa cried out in agony and twisted on the ground, writhing like an insect that had been pinned to the wall. Gran Ana rose and shook her head.

  “That’s what comes of trying to topple a strong sorceress,” she said as though giving me a lesson. “I knew from the first I wouldn’t have any problem with her once I really got into it. She’s pathetic.”

  I gaped at her, finally catching my breath and thinking about demanding a little credit here. After all, I was the one who had felled the beast.

  “Gran Ana,” I said. “I need to….”

  “You need to gather your people and go home,” she told me crisply. “I’ve been cleaning up messes like this for a long, long time. Let me do my job. I’d like to get as much settled into place as I can before the police get involved.”

  “But I can’t leave you to do this alone.”

  “You can and you will. Oliver will make sure I have all the help I need. Go now.”

  A lone police siren could be heard a few blocks away.

  My grandmother sighed fretfully.

  “I’ll go on one condition,” I said, feeling unusually aggressive and sure of myself. “I’m going to come out to your place this afternoon. You will finally tell me all that I need to know. Agreed?”

  She stared at me for a moment, giving me that fierce gaze she was so good at. I stared back. After all this, I wasn’t going to be bullied by her anymore. The siren came closer.

  Finally she nodded curtly. “Agreed. Now go.”

  I went. And took my friends with me.

  But the picture of what I’d left back there in my old house stayed in my head, blotting out everything else—Phyllis on the floor, spread out like a sacrifice—to what? Hector, huge and scary, but toothless, standing there, swaying in the entryway, not sure where to go or what to do. Clarissa, a writhing shell of her former power. Gran Ana so sure of herself, so efficient. Oliver, like a doleful undertaker, helping to “clean up the mess”.

  And most of all, that twisted, glittering dagger, so beautiful, so evil, so deadly.

  We walked quickly to where I’d left my car. Mandy was carrying Shrimp and I was nervously looking back over my shoulder. We got into the car and Mandy leaned over to give me a half hug of encouragement.

  “Hey,” she said, her eyes filled with—something. I guess it was admiration. Whatever. “Hey, you did it. You really did it.”

  I gave her a shaky smile, then closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “We did it,” I said. “I couldn’t have done it without the two of you.” I looked over at her. “Thank you for coming. I’m really, really grateful.”

  Suddenly my eyes were filled with tears. We looked at each other and laughed. I started the engine and we took off for home.

  Home. It’s such a loaded word, but such a comfort. At least it should be.

  Shane wanted to take me out to Gran Ana’s, but I wouldn’t let him.

  “I need to go alone,” I told him. “This is between me and her. I need to show some strength here.”

  He didn’t like it, but he understood. He nodded. “Okay, Haley,” he said softly. “Go do what you have to do. I’ll be waiting.”

  That put a lump in my throat. He was such a good guy—and we were so NOT fated to be together. He had his place in the scheme of things, and I had mine. I was a witch meant to be a sorceress someday. Never the twain shall meet.

  No, we had no long-range future. But for now…

  “I’ll come to see you as soon as I get back,” I promised him. And then I left for Gran Ana’s.

  For once, there was nothing magical going on at my grandmother’s. I didn’t see any evidence that she had any comatose young women stashed in bedrooms. No flamingoes. No strange new lakes. It was just a beautiful house on a cliff overlooking the ocean. My grandmother’s house.

  She served me tea and was pleasant. I decided to ease into things by asking for a few explanations that didn’t come too close to the quick.

  “So tell me about Clarissa,” I began. “Was she really here to try to take over this haven from you?”

  “Oh absolutely,” she said, pouring fragrant tea into a fragile china cup for me. She was dressed in a long, Asian-influenced silk robe that accentuated her elegant form and manner. I glanced at the stunning collection of Ming Dynasty ceramics on her wall in specially built display cases. Was all this show of strength and high culture meant to intimidate me? Or was this just my grandmother at her leisure? I decided to go for the latter. After all, she was what she was.

  “She came expressly to undercut me and remove my power. She thought this a nice, ripe haven for the taking. And that was your fault.”

  That shook me. “My fault?”

  “Yes. She found out about that time in your teenaged years when you wrote that letter to Kenny Sands inviting him to come bring his ghost-busting show to town, telling him your grandmother was a sorceress who needed investigating.” Her eyes blazed with icy heat.

  I blushed crimson. It was true, I suppose. It seems I had done that.

  “I don’t remember a thing,” I said, avoiding her steady gaze.

  “Of course you don’t, and I forgive you anyway. How were you to know that years later, a dishonest sorceress would be searching for a haven with a weak spot where she might be able to wiggle her way in. She found one through Kenny and his archives. The young never look ahead. That is why they so often stumble.”

  “Did you come looking for Clarissa that night of the meeting at Bentley’s?” I asked. “I thought I saw you…”

  She nodded. “I tried to have it out with her right then and there, but she avoided me. I could see she was determined to do things her own way, so I stepped back.”

  “Hmm.” I sipped my tea, considering her words. She was probably right. Still, it would have been nice if she’d confided in me from the first, wouldn’t it? She’d thrown me off a bit, now it was my time to make her heart race a little faster.

  “Well tell me this. Why did you have Phyllis under a sleeping spell in one of your bedrooms?”

  “Oh.” She flushed slightly and I did a little tiny dance in my chair. Yeah! Got one.

  “Phyllis is a special case. You see, her mother was particularly kind to me in Paris when I first went to live there. She got me into the most important clubs, introduced me to the necessary circles, and when she asked me to be godmother to her first born daughter, I, of course, acquiesced.” She shrugged. “I could do no less.”

  “I see.”

  “Phyllis is a delightful young lady and I love her dearly. But she is completely normal. Not a hint of the supernatural. And she has no idea what I am.”

  “Oh.” That was a bit of a surprise, even though I should have figured that out on my own.

  “So when she comes to visit, I often put her under a sleeping spell for the times when I have business to do or people to see and I must hide that from her. She never notices. She’s a dear.”

  That was interesting. You see, I told myself. Nothing to be jealous about. You’re a super, she’s a normal. Totally different categories. No need for competition.

  And yet, I had to admit, there seemed to be a thread of genuine affection in my grandmother’s treatment of Phyllis. Somehow I didn’t think we’d reached that plateau between the two of us. Not yet. Would it ever come? It would be nice.

  “How is she?” I asked. “Did she recover from what happened this morning?”

  “Oh yes. Clarissa actually had her in a sleeping spell as well.”

  Our eyes met and I couldn’t help but laugh. She barely smiled, but I think we had a moment.

  “Poor Phyllis,” I murmured.

  “She’s fine. Has no idea what happened. In fact, she’s off right now with that fellow from the Hollywood bunch. Derek something?”

  “Oh.” Wow. Things were moving fast, weren’t they?

  “It’s also the case that Phyllis can be quite usefu
l helping me with things that must be done in the normal world. I use her to run errands for me when she’s here. That’s why I sent her to the Haunted House today. I was hoping she could clear up a few things for me, but instead, Clarissa got involved and that dreadful Hector.” She rolled her eyes.

  I nodded. “Speaking of Hector, what is the deal with that guy?”

  She paused and thought a moment. “Actually, his is quite a tragic story. He was a perfectly decent man, a devout man, a Roman Catholic, with a young family. He took them camping in Yosemite. During the night, somehow his young son wandered off. Hector combed the entire valley, broken hearted, just frantic to find his son. Day after day, he wouldn’t stop. His wife begged him to go home, the authorities told him too much time had passed to be hopeful any longer, but he wouldn’t give up. He searched night and day and finally, he was searching in the dark and he fell into a canyon, hit his head and died. Now he still wanders away, trying to find his lost son. No one knows what happened to the boy. His remains were never found.”

  “How awful. Poor man.” It actually was heartbreaking.

  “Yes. He is completely captivated by his rosary beads, as you could see I’m sure. Whoever has those beads has him by the heart.”

  “Yes, I saw that.” I sighed. “So many hopeless tragedies,” I murmured. “Like mine.”

  She drew in a deep breath and nodded. “Yes,” was all she said.

  I waited. Nothing seemed to be coming after that simple statement. So I summoned my courage and asked her point blank.

  “What happened? I know I was supposedly drowned in an accident. But what happened with me after that? How…how could I come back this way? Especially after years…..”

  “Yes. I need to explain a few things to you.”

  “Please. About me and that stone, I just don’t understand. What are these rocks all about?”

  I was begging and I had to stop that.

  Gran Ana looked at me for a while before she answered. And she wasn’t dismissive, and wasn’t even wary. She was just… thinking. Like she was trying to talk to me without impressing on me how important she was, or how I should just do what she said. I had the sense that she was really trying to connect. So I packed away my sarcasm and irony. If she came to me with honesty, I should return the favor. If I could.

  “Moonhaven isn’t like most haven towns,” she began. “There are only a dozen throughout the world that sit in a place of real power. That power has to be protected. The stability of the whole haven system rests on the strength of each individual haven town. That strength is bound up in the interconnected power of the first line, the standing stones. They are placed with precision, protected with powerful magics, and create… a kind of field of magic. Anyone who is born here or has lived here a long time is known to the stones. They and their efforts go toward maintaining the protection the stones give, at the same time the stones watch over them and allow certain practices impossible without the help of the stones. Also, they can weaken or even keep out anyone who doesn’t know and care for their importance, anyone who doesn’t have their safekeeping in their hearts.”

  Wow, that sounded like an important thing to keep protected, and secret. Safe and secret and undamaged.

  “But the one nearest here is broken. Does it still work?”

  Gran Ana waved her hand in the air side to side, the “sort of-kind of” motion.

  From what she’d already told me, I had the impression that things were more important than what she was now implying. I felt a touch of impatience at her attitude.

  “Oh, gosh. What happened? Wasn’t that dangerous? To the town, I mean.”

  She stared at me a moment, her eyebrows raised, then shrugged and drummed her fingers on that table top. “I broke it. I had to do it. I needed the magic captured inside in order to produce and use its special powers.”

  She said in such deadly earnest, and with such a fire in her eye that I knew she couldn’t be joking. It made me feel almost sick, to think that to get her way, this woman would so endanger the town she was sworn to protect.

  I was astonished and just a little nervous to find out more, but I had to. “Why did you need all that power?”

  She spoke evenly. “I needed the power to cast an important spell, and in order to do it, I needed all the potency this town could spare. And then some.”

  “But why?”

  Her eyes glinted. “For you. Because I had need of you. The future of this haven town depends on you. I can’t do this all alone.”

  She said the words very hard. Then a hint of a smile played on her face. “And I liked you. Everyone else in your family may have resented me, but though they worked hard at not being helpful, they didn’t dare go up against me in any meaningful way. But you tried to do something against me, move against me, right to my face. You don’t remember, of course. But you did. I like that spirit.”

  “Do you really?” I had a hard time with that one. “Because I keep getting the impression that you don’t like it at all.”

  “Well, it does have its problems. I haven’t been sure I could trust you to do the right thing. After all, you’ve forgotten everything you’ve ever known. It would have been a lot handier to have you come back with everything still intact. But that didn’t happen. So that was something I had to deal with. I had to test you a lot. Just to be sure.”

  “Sure of what exactly?”

  “Sure you would be true to the family, true to your calling….true to me.”

  “Ah. That’s the crux of it, isn’t it?”

  “Of course. How could it not be? I’m the sorceress of this haven and it’s important that my granddaughter carry on in the family traditions.”

  “And what would you have done if I didn’t? If I’d scorned all that?”

  She stared at me without answering but I thought I knew the answer. My heart was thumping in my chest. She would have thrown me back, wouldn’t she? She would have said, “Oh well, that didn’t work”, and I would have been back in that cold water, fighting for air. Wow. She was some piece of work.

  “Oh.” Suddenly I realized what some of this was all about. “You mean, because my parents didn’t?”

  She hesitated. “I wouldn’t go that far. Your father has impeccable instincts. But your mother….”

  I felt my cheeks burning. Resentment was creeping into my emotional state and I tried to hold it back. “What about my mother? You didn’t trust her, did you?”

  She was silent for a long moment, then looked at me again. “I wouldn’t put it that way,” she said carefully. “The future will tell. Right now, our major work must be to find them and bring them back. You do understand that?”

  “Oh yes. I understand.” I looked at her and tears filled my eyes. It was as though a dam had burst. There it was—something I’d known I was missing. Something I’d been reaching for and never finding. The agony, the yearning, the need for my family suddenly opened up inside me like a flower blooming in fast-forward. I ached to have them back.

  “I understand,” I repeated, my voice breaking a bit, “and I endorse that goal with all my heart.”

  “Good.”

  She reached out to touch my arm and there was a softening in her face. For just a moment, I thought she was going to hug me. But then her spine stiffened and she turned away.

  “Alright then. Does that satisfy you for the moment? Don’t worry. We’ll talk again. But for now, I’m done.”

  And she was gone.

  It was after dark when I finally got home. I spent a few hours walking on the beach near Gran Ana’s house, then another two hours driving out into the country and back again. Shane was waiting on my front steps, sitting there as though waiting for moonlight.

  “Hey,” I said as I slouched down to sit next to him. “Sorry I took so long.”

  He took my hand in his and laced fingers. “Take all the time you need,” he said softly.

  I sighed. “While I’m thinking of it, catch me up on a few things.”
>
  “Shoot.”

  “Is Gordon exonerated? Is he home with Rennie and the mayor?”

  He nodded. “Safe and sound and preparing for a hearing on what he did with those memory chips. That still has to be dealt with.”

  “Oh. Poor Rennie.”

  “She’ll survive.”

  “And what about Rosy Grenada? Has anyone looked into what she was doing with those ghosts she was carrying around?”

  “That is still a mystery. A puzzle for another day.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. “But I do want some answers.”

  “Did you get some from you grandmother? How do you feel about what she told you?”

  I scrunched up my face and shook my head. “I understand about the stones, I think. And that she did something dangerous and powerful when she brought me back. But I still don’t understand…” I turned to look at him. “Where was I for two years? What was I doing? Was I in some kind of coma, or…?”

  He was shaking his head. “I don’t know,” he said bluntly. “I’m sure she’ll fill you in at some point.”

  I looked at him, his eyes glowing in the dark, the sense of his wide shoulders and handsome face so close, so strong, and a feeling of affection swept over me as I realized how important this man was to my sense of safety, my happiness, my sense of self. I turned my face up to his and he kissed me. It was a long kiss, sending heat shimmering through my system, sending joy cascading through my mind. When he pulled back and looked at me, he saw the tears streaking down my face.

  “Haley,” he said, alarmed. “What is it? Did I…?”

  I touched his face with my fingertips. “You did nothing,” I told him. “Nothing but good things. You’re the best thing in my life right now.”

  His arm tightened around my shoulders and he gave me a crooked grin that flashed in the pale light. “Are you sure?” he said. “How about this little guy?”

  He dug into his shirt pocket and came up with Shrimp, smiling widely and looking happy to be with us. I had to laugh.

  “So much for any privacy around here,” I said, rising from the stair. “Come on in and I’ll ply you with cinnamon buns.”