Once a Witch

by Carolyn Maccullough

  "Dr. Callum," I reply, my voice calm. "Or should I say Dr. Knight?"

  He bares his teeth in a silent laugh. Then he turns to my sister, who has been hovering lovingly by his side, and says, "Wait outside," his voice low and expressionless.

  Her face goes slack as if all her features are sliding off her skin. But she doesn't protest, only runs her hand across Alistair's arm, touching his fingers lightly with her own before moving toward the door. Alistair acknowledges neither her parting gesture nor her departure.

  "Sit?" he asks.

  "No, thanks," I say as breezily as possible. "And don't offer me any more tea or whatever that is to drink, either," I say, pointing to the decanter. "I'm not in the mood for your hospitality."

  I'm not really into sports, but I figure a good offense is the best defense.

  "This?" Alistair says with a little chuckle, pointing toward the decanter. "I doubt very much you'd want to drink this. You're too...ethically minded. But then again, that's always been the problem with your family." He folds his hands together on the desk and looks at me. "Seriously, do you know how foolish your family is ... and has been throughout the years? Do you know how small they've made their lives and their Talents? What a waste. A sheer waste."

  "Where are my parents?" I ask through numb lips. Not that I expect him to really tell me the truth, but at least maybe I can tell if he's lying.

  But he waves his hand dismissively and says, "I wasn't interested in what they had to offer."

  I can't imagine what that would have been, but I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of asking. He leans across the desk, fixing me with his icy eyes, and I'm reminded of a large black crane. "I am interested in what you can do for me."

  "And what is that?"

  Alistair smiles. "You can bring me what I want."

  "I think I already did that. I brought you the clock," I say, "and now my obligation is done."

  He touches the rim of a crystal glass lightly. A hollow ringing sound fills the space between us. "Perhaps you can be persuaded to try again."

  "And if I won't?"

  Sharp lines stamp themselves onto his forehead. "'Won't'?" he repeats softly. Then he lifts his voice just a notch and says, "Rowena, come in here please."

  The door opens at once and my sister glides back into the room. I wonder if she had her ear pressed to the wood the whole time. And then I wonder if she even understands what she has heard. She brushes past me and goes to his side, and I can't help but notice the joyful expression on her face.

  "I need your help," Alistair says to her with an awful gentleness, and then he pulls open his desk drawer and clatters around for a few seconds before offering my sister a bone-handled knife.

  "Don't!" I say, but neither of them even looks at me. Instead, Rowena extends her arm, the white underside of it flashing to the ceiling, and without even a fraction of hesitation she sinks the curve of the blade into her skin, as if slicing through a piece of meat.

  "Stop!" I shriek and leap forward, snatching the blade from my sister's fingers. My hand tightens over the smooth handle and for one paralyzing second as I stare into Alistair's eyes I picture myself plunging the knife straight into his heart.

  "Do it and you won't like what happens to your sister," he hisses. Suddenly, I remember my mother's warning about the spell's mirror effect on Rowena and I throw the knife into the corner of the room, where it skitters across the floor and then comes to rest. Turning back to Rowe-na, I almost throw up when I see that she is squeezing her arm calmly, watching the blood thicken and dribble from the fresh marks on her skin into a little white china cup that Alistair has so thoughtfully provided.

  "Ro," I whisper, and wadding up my shirt I try to stanch the bleeding.

  "No, Tamsin," she says gently, far more gently than the real Rowena would have if I ever got in her way. "I need to give him this," she explains earnestly. "It's so he can live."

  "Thank you, my dear. That will be enough for now," Alistair says and reaches for the cup. My hand darts down and I snatch up the cup, flinging it at the wall behind me. The cup crashes directly into a framed print of a medieval hunting scene and shatters. Its contents ooze down the picture in a sticky red smear. I'm delighted to see that I've also managed to crack the glass of the frame. I turn back to Alistair, smile pleasantly.

  "Oops. I always seem to be breaking cups in your office."

  Alistair's lips thin into a needle-flat line, but it is my sister who speaks first.

  "Tamsin," Rowena cries. "Why did you do that?" She crouches in the corner of the room and begins to pick up shattered bits of china, her fingers instantly stained crimson.

  "Leave it," Alistair says, and his voice is almost as sharp as the knife and seems to cut as deeply, because my sister looks up, the expression of dismay on her face almost too much to bear. "You may go," he says, still in that cold tone, and my sister bows her head, rises to her feet, and, still cradling the pieces of the cup tenderly, slips out.

  "You and I are more alike than you think," Alistair says at last, his voice thoughtful, his eyes quietly fixed on mine.

  I snort. I can't help it. "I don't see that at all," I say, kicking aside a shard of china. It bounces off the baseboard. "Besides the fact that we both lied about our names," I add.

  But he ignores that. "We would both do anything for our families."

  I lift my gaze, stare at him, then open my mouth. No words. I have no words to deny this.

  "And we've both been deprived of what is naturally ours. By the doing of your family."

  "That's not true," I say instantly.

  One eyebrow twists up. "Isn't it? Hasn't your family kept the truth about your Talents from you?" He leans across the desk, eyes pinning me to the wall. "All these years?"

  I force myself to say, "They had their reasons."

  "Amazing. That you would defend the very people who have denied you your birthright." He shakes his head as if I am a particularly difficult specimen to classify. "I have no such compunctions."

  "What is this?" I manage finally. "The explanation of a madman before you kill me?"

  "A madman?" And now he looks amused. "Oh, no, Tamsin. Not a madman. I take objection to that. I am nothing if not methodical. I had to be. When all you have is a single name to go on all these years, you learn to be ... precise."

  There is a ringing in my ears. "A name?" I say stupidly, and then it dawns on me. "Rowena's name. That's why you came into the bookstore that night. You were looking for Rowena. Why?"

  Alistair smiles. "Yes, Rowena Greene. It's the name that's been promised as our salvation. When your family murdered mine, our only hope was one glimpse into the future, one glimpse at the book that your grandmother, your whole family, sets such store by."

  "And you saw Rowena's name?" I breathe.

  Alistair shrugs. "Of course I didn't. This was more than one hundred years ago. My relative did and that's the name we've held on to for centuries. We knew that she was to be the key."

  "What do you mean my family murdered yours? We didn't kill anybody!"

  "Are you so sure about that?"

  "You were the ones murdering people. That's why we stopped you. That's what my—" I swallow the rest of my words. That's what my mother told me sounds incredibly childish here.

  "Is that what you think? That we were murdering people and therefore the Greene family swooped in and saved the day? Lies," he says crisply. "Your family cared nothing, nothing about who we took for ourselves as long as it wasn't one of their own. But be that as it may," he says, his voice rising, "make no mistake about the word murder."

  I stare at him, at the way his mouth splits and curls into a snarl.

  "Do you know what it's like to grow up knowing that you were meant to be something else, something so very different from all the ordinary filth you see in the streets around you, something beyond this ordinary mortal life? To walk around and know that you should have a Talent, know that with all your heart, and yet you don't because
of something that happened more than a hundred years ago?" He stares at me, his hands curling and uncurling on his desk blotter. Then he takes a breath and says softly, "When you deprive someone of their Talent, of their right to have a Talent, you kill a part of that person. From what your sister has told me, I think you just might be able to understand that. Think, Tam-sin. Think how different your life could have been."

  I shut my eyes, my brain rushing and tumbling with scenes like a river swollen with rain: Rowena and Gwyneth laughing, their mouths wide and red; Gabriel and his unanswered letters; Silda pulling gradually away from me; and the early years of school, when people looked at me as if I was weird when I was really no different from them. What if all that had never happened? What if I had known from my eighth birthday just exactly what I could do? There's no part of my life that would be the same.

  Then I open my eyes. Alistair is watching me, satisfaction smeared across his long face. We stare at each other for the length of a heartbeat before I look toward the door, wondering if my sister is still bleeding. "What do I get in return? If I help you?"

  "Your sister's life," he says, leaning back in his chair and touching his finger to the rim of the goblet again.

  "And Agatha's," I say, trying to keep the cold, trembling sickness that's welling up inside me out of my voice.

  His eyes flick to the decanter again, and now there is such a possessive hunger on his face that I almost look away. "Perhaps."

  "'Perhaps'?" I echo. "What does that mean?"

  "Perhaps it depends on you. If you can find what I want and bring it to me soon enough, perhaps it won't be too late for the lovely, lively Agatha."

  My mouth feels as if it's full of cotton, but I force the words out. "What do you want with Agatha? She doesn't have a Talent—she's ... normal..."

  "Agatha is useful in helping me ... sustain myself."

  "Like Rowena is?" I ask.

  He inclines his head thoughtfully in an awful parody of a professor considering a question from a student. "In a different way."

  "And what will happen to them? If I bring you what you want? Will you free them?"

  "Whatever there is left to free," he adds softly, and this time I can't keep the shudder from traveling across my face. "Time is running out for them, Tamsin. And when time runs out for them, be sure that there are others on the list." He steeples his hands, eyes the clock pointedly, and smiles at me. "I think your young man out there is perhaps becoming a tad anxious."

  "How long do I have to bring you what you want? And why can't you just get it yourself if you're so powerful?"

  The edge of a frown crosses his face and I feel that even though I haven't accomplished much during this interview, there's that at least. "It appears that someone of your special Talents is required." And in the little silence that follows, I almost laugh at the sad fact that I once wanted so badly to be Talented and now I would trade anything not to be.

  But all laughter, hysterical or otherwise, vanishes at the sound of a clock chiming the hour. Turning, I locate the source of the sound: the clock that was once the Domani, in the corner of the office.

  "A keepsake," Alistair murmurs. "And it does prove useful," he adds, and I jerk my head back toward him just in time to see him unstop the decanter and pour out some of the murky liquid into a glass. He holds the glass aloft, letting it catch the light so that it sparkles brightly. "To your ... success," he says with a horrible politeness and drains the contents in one long swallow. I watch the muscles of his throat twitch and then he smiles at me, his lips shining wet.

  Agatha!

  I turn and flee the room, knocking past my sister, who is curled up outside the door, her eyes closed. Alistair's laugh follows me all the way down the hall.

  TWENTY

  "ARE YOU SURE you want to do this?" Gabriel asks me again through the partially open door that connects Aunt Rennie's and Uncle Chester's dressing rooms.

  "What choice do I have?" I mutter miserably, sliding into the dress that I snatched from my closet back in my dorm room. Gabriel and I drove there after I'd managed to explain in between mostly incoherent gasps what Alistair had said. Agatha was asleep, and maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed unlike her usual deep coma. As I moved around the room, gathering up everything I thought I needed, she tossed and turned and murmured. Once she had cried out, "No, please!" I debated waking her and then decided not to. Instead, I stood over her for a minute while Gabriel waited outside, and I pressed my hand against her forehead. But she twisted away from me and turned toward the wall, and that's when I saw the cuts on her arm that were barely crusted over. I had to run away then before I started hyperventilating again.

  Now I try to take comfort in the silky fabric of the dress, but even that reminds me too much of Agatha and her squealing excitement when I had come out of the dressing room of that East Village thrift shop. She convinced me to buy the dress even though I couldn't afford it and even though I didn't have one single place to wear a full-length rose-colored evening gown from the 1930s. Last month I thought stupidly that I would wear it to Rowena's wedding. "Maybe I still will," I whisper to myself now as I twist the dress into place.

  "How's it going in there?"

  "Okay," I gasp. "I can't really breathe, but other than that, okay."

  "Breathing's overrated," Gabriel advises me. "I'm discovering that right about now with this damn tie."

  I trip across the room to stand in front of Aunt Ren-nie's huge mirror. The dress says 1930s, but my hair gives it away. I search through my stack of hairpins, settle on a few crystal bobby pins. So what that they're from the chain store Claire's? How many people are going to be peering that closely at my hairpins? How long are we going to be stuck in 1939, anyway? Just long enough to apparently wreck Aunt Beatrice's life and get out. And before I can confront that uncomfortable thought, Gabriel walks through the adjoining door. I catch sight of his reflection in the mirror as I attempt to twist my dark curls into something resembling a 1930s hairstyle.

  "You look great," I exclaim just as half my hair falls out of the knot I'm attempting to pin it in. I sigh. "I give up."

  Gabriel, wearing one of Uncle Chester's charcoal suits, advances toward me. "You give up? You give up your foolish resistance to my undeniable charms? I knew you'd cave eventually. They always do."

  I stick out my tongue at his mirrored reflection. Holding up my collection of hairpins, I say, "I give up on my hair, idiot."

  He holds out his hand. "Give them to me," he says and sets to work.

  "Ow," I say as he jabs my head with a pin. But it didn't really hurt. I just said that because he's standing so close.

  "Sorry," he murmurs, his breath whispering across the bare nape of my neck.

  "It's okay," I say through gritted teeth, hoping my goose bumps aren't visible.

  "There. What do you think?" He takes half a step back and I look at myself in the mirror again. Somehow, he has managed where I failed to roll my hair and pin it low on my neck. The curl that keeps escaping has now been positioned behind my ear.

  "Not bad," I say. "You know, if the musician thing doesn't work out, you could always be a—"

  Behind me Gabriel makes a stabbing motion over his heart and I grin at him in the mirror. "Lipstick," I say in a rush.

  "Nah, you don't need it. Why do girls wear that shit anyway?"

  "It's 1939. I can't not wear lipstick," I say and search through what I've brought before settling on Agatha's tube of Rev Me Up Red by L'Oreal. But my hands are shaking, and as a result I end up scrubbing lipstick off my front teeth. "Okay," I say at last. "Ready, I think."

  Gabriel pulls a picture from inside his voluminous jacket pocket and studies it. In the attic I found an old photo album covered with a layer of musty grime. Thank the elements that Aunt Rennie never seems to throw anything away. "Do you always need something like that?" I ask now. "Like the painting or this photo here? You know, to help you ... Travel?"

  Gabriel studies the photo for a minute
longer. "I think it helps. I've never been able to do it without some sort of ... guide like this or the painting. Concentrating?"

  I nod, staring at the photo of the girl in a swooping hat. Her face is tilted up and she is smiling widely. In one hand she's holding a cigarette encased in a long holder, and in her other hand she's cradling what looks like an old-fashioned champagne glass. She's looking at something outside the borders of the picture. Beatrice, 1939 is written in spidery letters across the bottom of the photo. Gabriel's fingers tighten around mine and suddenly we're whirling through space and I feel the dress slipping and swaying against my legs. I have time to wonder distractedly if my hair will stay put and then music is blaring in my ear and what feels like hard stone is wedged up against my shoulder.

  "Ow!" I say, peeling myself away from a brick wall. I blink and let go of Gabriel's hand.

  "Sorry," he says sheepishly. "I did tell you that this isn't an exact science."

  "Where are we?" My eyes adjust to the dimness until I can make out rows and rows of bottles and jars all containing what looks like dried herbs or oils. Sniffing the air experimentally, I encounter a familiar earthy scent. "The stillroom," I say, taking a step forward, and as if to reward me for my guess, something cool and feathery splays across my face. I reach up to bat away a hanging bouquet of lavender, the flowers silky against my fingers. A crack of light shines along the far end of the room and I think back to the configurations of Aunt Rennie's house. The stillroom opens onto the garden, and judging from the music on the other side of the door, that's where the party is.

  "I think—"

  "Quiet," Gabriel hisses. "Someone's coming."

  I whirl toward where I know the second door should be, the one that leads into the kitchen, and sure enough, right outside it are heavy, dragging footsteps. We sidle into the farthest corner of the room as this door is flung open. I can just make out the outline of a large woman, her hair skinned tightly in a bun that is cemented to the back of her head. She rattles along the shelves, muttering, "More honey syrup, Bertha. More hyssops for the punch, Bertha. The guests are thirsty. Don't dawdle, Bertha, Bertha, Bertha! And all the while my bones are aching for a sit-down." She stomps into the center of the room and reaches up toward the ceiling. The second before she snaps the light on, I realize what she intends to do.