Reckoning s-13

by Cate Tiernan

  — Aoibheann

  "Don't worry about the lamp," Brigid said, backing her little Toyota out onto the street. "That was just the ghost."

  "Ghost?" I said. She was kidding, right?

  "We have a poltergeist problem," she said, as if she was casually telling me that the house was full of termites.

  "Always have—it's just been getting worse recently. That's why everyone is so tense."

  That did explain Sam's reaction to the branch. He had seemed concerned, more than he should have been by just a freak accident. At least he didn't suspect me, his creepy telekinetic niece who had just popped up out of nowhere—he just thought it was the house ghost. What the hell was happening to me? What had I gotten myself into?

  At that moment I noticed I was in a very speedy car. Brigid drove through the streets at Mach 3, squealing around corners as she felt around the console, looking for something. I gripped the seat.

  “Sarah’s daughter,” Brigid remarked with a shake of her head. “Who knew?” She successfully came up with a CD, which she slipped into the stereo.

  “You know about my mom?” I asked.

  Brigid nodded. “No one talks about her, really, but everyone knows.”

  Her tone told me everything. My mother was the scandal of the century. The unmentionable. The dark blot on the family name.

  At the rate Brigid was going, it only took about two minutes to drive to the town center. She pulled into a small seafood place called Take a Chowda.

  “It looks cheesy,” she said with a smile, “but it's good. We’ll have lunch, then I’ll show you around the town.”

  “Perfect,” I said, getting out. “That sounds great.”

  Once inside, we seated ourselves. The place was an old diner, fill of booths with Formica tables. We started looking over the menu, which consisted mainly (as I might have guessed) of different kinds of chowder, served in all different sizes and different kinds of chowder, served in all different sizes and manners. If you weren’t a chowder fan, this would have been a bad place to come. Brigid recommended that I get something called chowda ‘n’ cheddar, which came in a bread bowl.

  Over the top of the menu, I saw the door open. A guy came in the restaurant and scanned the people at the tables. He was tall, even taller than Hunter, which was why I could see him. I lowered the menu to get a better look. His hair was dark reddish brown with finger-length curled strands. He wore a pair of corduroy’s, a gray T-shirt with a pentagram design, and some kind of vintage tweed jacket. What really caught my attention, though, was his face. It was so expressive, with a full mouth and deep laugh lines that blossomed as he smiled. Something shot through me as he entered. It was an emotion, but it had an electric charge. There was something I immediately liked about him.

  He was also just a little bit clumsy. As he passed through the door, he managed to get his jacket caught, which caused him to trip as he approached us. As he steadied himself, he caught my eye and smiled. I was amazed as he continued right toward us. I could see now that the had light freckles high on his cheeks and over his nose, and small peaks in his eyebrows. When he sat down with us, I knew it could mean only one thing—he was Charlie, Brigid’s boyfriend. He gave Brigid a light kiss. I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t disappointed.

  “This is Alisa,” Bridig said, pointing at me.

  “Hi,” he said, confirming my suspicions, “I’m Charlie.”

  “I wrote you the e-mail,” I said quietly. “The one to Sam Curtis.”

  “That was you?” he asked brightly in recognition. “I was so excited! No one ever looks at my site.”

  “Here we go,” said Brigid, rolling her eye. “Charlie’s obsessed with this site.”

  “Just trying to get some more business for the shop,” he said with a grin. “That’s why my boss loves me.”

  “And how many people have looked at it?” Brigid asked, egging him on.

  “Seven,” he said, “but I’m waiting for the big rush. It’s coming any day now.”

  Even as he was speaking, Charlie looked me over, as if fascinated. While it would have been nice if he was doing so because he had fallen instantaneously in love with me, I knew the real reason: I give off a weird half-witch vibe. It must be like some high pitch that only full witches can hear. Brigid, though, didn’t seem to notice anything odd about me, which was kind of strange in itself.

  I’m so terrible at small talk. I searched my mind for something else to say. “Do you guys, um, go to the same school?”

  “Charlie doesn’t have to go to school anymore,” Brigid chimed in. “He finished after the fall semester. He’d taken the highest levels of everything. There was nothing left for him to do.”

  She folded her arms and looked at him with pride, as if he was her blue-ribbon-winning entry in the state fair. He looked embarrassed.

  “I’m taking some classes at the community college,” he explained. “It’s not like I’m just free to do what I want. But my schedule is a bit more open. I have a job at Bell, Book and Candle in the hours between class times. It works out pretty well. I might even be able to transfer some credits when I start college in the fall.”

  “Wow,” I said, impressed.

  “It’s just that, you know, we are Rowanwand.” He shrugged. “Academics is what we do best.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Brigid, flagging down the waitress.

  “So,” he said, changing the subject. “You’re Sam’s niece? You got up here quickly. You just sent that note.”

  “Right…,” I said. “You know, why wait?”

  Fortunately the waitress came at that moment, preventing me from having to explain any further. Brigid and I ordered up our chowda ‘n’ cheddars. Charlie ordered something called a superchowda power hour.

  “Sam and Alisa had an Oona moment when they came up to the house,” Brigid said. “A branch almost fell on Sam’s head.”

  Charlie turned to me in concern. “Is he all right?” he asked.

  “He’s okay,” I nodded. “But what’s an Oona moment?”

  “I guess you wouldn’t know about Oona,” he said. “Have you explained, Brig?”

  “I’d just started,” said Brigid. “I didn’t get that far. You can explain.”

  “Oona,” Charlie said, slipping off his jacket, “is a relative of yours. I guess she would be your G5 grandmother.”

  “G5?”

  “Great-great-great-great-grandmother. That’s her relationship to Brigid, so it would be the same to you. It’s her ghost that they’re talking about.”

  Ghosts. Uh-huh. What next? Did they have vampires in the cellar? Unicorns in the yard?

  “You’re telling me that ghosts are real?” I said incredulously. “I’m still getting used to witches.”

  “She’s an energy,” he explained, popping the wrapper off a straw. “A force. She’s been around for years, causing all kinds of little problems. She used to swat things off tables, break an occasional window, rip the curtains. That sort of thing. Now objects aren’t just moving or breaking—they seem to be attacking people.”

  “Attacking people?” Huh. The good part of this story was that it didn’t sound like I was the one responsible for what had happened to Sam. At least, I didn’t think so. The bad part was that I seemed to be walking into another series of scary situations. The fun never stopped.

  “The story goes like this,” he explained. “Oona’s husband, your G5 grandfather, and their two sons died in a flu epidemic in the mid- to late 1800s. Oona lost her mind. It’s bad when anyone loses his or her mind, but when it happens to a witch, it’s really bad. If the person can’t be healed, the person’s coven will perform a reining spell to protect everyone, including the afflicted. In really bad cases, the person will be stripped of power. That’s a horrible process. Máirin, her daughter, must not have been able to stand the thought of her mother going through it, so she tried to keep the illness hidden. It was a huge mistake. Oona ended up committing suicide.”

 
; “Oh my God,” I said.

  “No one knows what spells Oona cast after she lost her mind,” he continued, “but it seemed that one of them must have ended up lodging her energy in the house. Máirin describes all kinds of problems that started the minute Oona died.”

  “How do you know all of this?” I asked, feeling the hairs on my neck starting to rise.

  “Aunt Evelyn found Máirin’s Book of Shadows years ago,” said Brigid, crushing a packet of crackers into her soup. “But it disappeared from her room a day later. Maybe Oona took it.”

  “From what Evelyn’s said,” Charlie chimed in, “there were problems when Evelyn was a child. Then they quieted down for years and started again… in the, um, early seventies. After the other family problems.”

  He was saying that they had started around the time my mother left home. During an awkward pause that followed, the waitress brought our food. I had to admit that though the menu was a bit much, the chowder was amazing.

  “What happened after my mother left?” I asked, taking a big spoonful and nodding for Charlie to continue.

  “It was bad at first, I think,” Charlie answered, reaching for the bowl of crackers, “I think there was a small fire and definitely some broken windows. Then the problem quieted down again. I think it only popped up occasionally during the late seventies and eighties. But in the last few months it’s gone off the charts. One of the walls developed a crack. Some banisters tumbled down from the widow’s walk. Two weeks ago the gas line to the oven was punctured when Brigid was alone in the house. It could have been really serious, but fortunately she smelled the gas and got out.”

  “We’ve done just about every kind of spell we can think of,” Brigid added. “Now Mom’s even trying to talk Aunt Evelyn into selling the house. But Aunt Evelyn won’t do that. We’ve owned the house for over a hundred years, and she’s way too stubborn to give up trying to solve the problem. She’s sure that with our combined powers, we can do it. Oh, but…” She looked at my with what I thought was slightly exaggerated pity. “You wouldn’t know anything about that. You don’t have any powers.”

  It wasn’t a bad assumption since I shouldn’t had had any powers. It just turned out that I did. I could have told her, but somehow, “I just squashed a dark wave” wasn’t going to slide right into the conversation.

  “It must be terrible for you,” Brigid went on. “How long have you known that your mom was a witch?”

  “Just a couple of weeks,” I said, dragging into my chowder. “I joined a coven, and then I found out later. It was a surprise.”

  “Well,” she said, “I think it’s great that you’ve decided to join a coven. I mean, considering that you can’t do what we can do. But even though you’re not a real witch, you can definitely be a part of Wicca. It’s open to everyone.”

  Charlie started rocking his spoon on the table and stared at the wall next to us. I don’t think he liked the patronizing tone that Brigid was using but didn’t really want to intervene.

  “I’ll show you something, Alisa,” she said. “Want to see me work with the rhythm of the waves?”

  “Brig,” Charlie said, his eyebrows shooting up, “Are you, um…”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “This is a new spell I’ve worked out. Sending the energy out to the water. It’s really mild version of a return-to-me spell. I’d just like to show Alisa some magick. She’s probably never seen any.”

  Since I’d just been through enough terrifying magickal phenomena to last a life time, it was all I could do not to laugh out loud. And considering that my uncle had accidentally killed several people while trying to help with the rain, this seemed like the worst kind of arrogant, foolish magick in the world. A party trick using the ocean? I wasn’t a trained witch, but I had enough sense to know that this was a bad, bad idea.

  Charlie blanched. Apparently he didn’t think much of the idea, either.

  Hunter had taught me a few basic deflections while I was learning the dark wave spell. I tried to find them in my memory, where they were stuck together. Nal nithrac, tar ais di cair na, clab saoil… which were the right words? It was as if I was grabbing at hundreds of jars of exotic unmarked spices, each tantalizing and overwhelmingly pungent, and trying to figure out how to best combine them.

  Suddenly I heard Morgan’s voice somewhere in my mind, just as I had when we’d joined our minds, giving me words to a spell I’d never heard before. They ran through my head, like an old song: Sguir bhur ire, cunnartach sgeò, car fàilidh, agus eirmis tèarante sgot. I had no idea what the words meant, but I understood how they worked. I was to look for a safe place to redirect the energy that Brigid was sending to the waves. I happened to be looking at the salt, so I put it there.

  The saltshaker began to bounce. Brigid, who had been focusing on the waves lapping at the seawall outside the window, looked down at the noise. The shaker wobbles down the table and the floor. From there it rolled unsteadily to the wall near the window and stopped, unable to go any further.

  When I looked up, Charlie’s amber eyes met mine and didn’t flinch. His expression was unreadable, not unfriendly but definitely serious. I felt a wave of electricity ripple through me, giving me goose pimples. He had power, lots of it, and he was sending some of it my way, casting out his senses like Morgan and Hunter had. I suddenly felt very self-conscious.

  Within a second the event had passed. Brigid was flushed with embarrassment.

  “Well, that didn’t work right,” she said.

  “It was fine,” Charlie said graciously. “The salt was trying to reconnect with the seawater—it was affected because it was lighter and closer to you. Working with the ocean is tricky.”

  “It was good,” I nodded in agreement. “It was cool.” Anything to make her stop.

  Brigid started moving everything on her place mat around, seeming uncomfortable. Conveniently her cell phone rang. I wondered if she’d manage to spell it, too.

  “Damn,” she said, hanging up after a quick conversation. “That was Karen, my boss. She needs me at the shop. Sorry, Alisa. I guess I can’t show you around after all. Can you do it Charlie?”

  “Sure,” he smiled at me. “I’m off today.”

  “Good,” Brigid said, stuffing her phone back into her purse. “Alisa is coming back for dinner, six o ‘clock.”

  “Is this okay with you?” he asked, pulling out his keys.

  “Sure,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too eager. “Let’s go.”

  10. Charlie

  June 23, 1951

  I woke up this morning to the sound of a great tearing. When I opened my eyes, I saw that Oona had torn the front of my bridal robe—right from the collar down to within six inches of the bottom hem. My beautiful robe!

  I couldn’t help myself. I started weeping uncontrollably. Mother ran upstairs and came right into my room. I felt so hopeless, but she knew just what to do. She sewed up the great jagged rip with lasting stitch. It looked like a Frankenstein robe, with ugly scars. Then she put me in a hot bath filled with rosemary and lavender and instructed me to stay there for one hour, repeating the wedding day blessing. When I emerged and returned to my room, the gown was as good as new. In fact, it looked more beautiful than before. Mother had cast a glamour that concealed the tear. I am ready now, and we will be leaving soon. There is no more time for me to write.

  — Aoibheann

  I instantly figured out which car was Charlie’s. It was a small green Volkswagen, obviously a few years old. There was a near like of stickers on the back for different Irish and Celtic bands, including the Fianna. The thing that really gave it away though, was the one that read, 2 + 2 = 5…for Extremely Large Values of 2. I just knew that was his. Don’t ask me why.

  We drove around the harbor, looking at the fishing boats and the activity on the docks. He told me all about Ròiseal, how they worked a lot with the energy of the sea, and how they often had circles on the beach in the moonlight. He also explained how the coven was set up and how th
ey worked. Because they were all experienced blood witches, they did a lot more complicated things than we did at Kithic circles. I began to wonder if Hunter found it frustrating to work with us. In comparison, running Kithic must be like watching a bunch of kindergartners, trying to make sure they don’t eat the crayons.

  “We each have a general background in magick,” Charlie explained, "and we each have an area of expertise to help balance out the coven. We're all lifelong students, of course, because we're Rowanwand. This way we split up the burden of studying. Ruth does a lot of healing work. Brigid is being trained to do the same. Evelyn works divination. Kate and James work with defensive and deflective magick."

  "What about you?"

  "Spellcraft," he said. "How they're written, how they're broken, how they're restricted. My dad works in the same area but on a less practical level than I do. I usually work with everyday magick. He works with mathematical stuff relating to astronomy, sigil drawing, the Key of Solomon, things like that—right into the realm of abstract math, where numbers turn into sounds and colors and shapes… really hard stuff, and he also studies some very dark stuff for reference. Academic magick."

  He parked the car, and we walked down Western Avenue, along the water, then up into the shopping area. As we walked, I saw that I was passing by many of the places my mother had described in her Book of Shadows. There was the chocolate shop where she used to get chocolate turtles and peanut butter fudge. There was town hall, with the library across the street where Sam had found Harris Stoughton's book. I smelled the delicious aroma coming from Rocconi's Pizzeria on Middle Street, where she used to meet her friends after school. And at the old floral shop on Main Street, the window was filled with lilacs—her favorite flower. It was all so strange, so unreal. I felt so close to her. For the first time in a long while, I missed her with a physical ache.