Witch & Curse

by Nancy Holder

  She scanned it; all the words were in Latin, and she didn’t recognize the lay of the land at all. Frantic, she scrutinized the shapes and cursed her geography teacher for being so boring that Holly had slept through every class.

  There!

  There was a small island with an X over the top of it. She tapped it with her finger and glanced questioningly at the other woman as she glided over.

  The apparition dipped her head in acknowledgment. Holly turned back to the map, searching desperately for something that she recognized. Another island, much larger, seemed to be close by; the shape of it tickled something in Holly’s memory.

  England! It has to be.

  Triumphant, she turned back to the other woman, only to find her staring toward the wall opposite with a look of fear on her face.

  Someone’s coming. I can sense it too.

  On the table, the hat began to glow. . . .

  Her fear palpable, the woman waved her hand above her head, and everything turned black. Then someone burst into the room, bellowing, “Sasha!”

  Holly screamed and bolted upright.

  Amanda burst into her room, eyes wild, hair sticking out in all directions. She grabbed Holly by the shoulders and shook her.

  “Holly, are you all right?”

  Holly managed to nod, composing herself, wiping tears from her eyes, swallowing around the tightness in her throat. Unable to speak, she motioned for a glass of water, and Amanda ran out of the room. Amanda was back in seconds with a Dixie cup from the bathroom. Holly downed the water gratefully, her throat finally loosening.

  Finished with the water, Holly looked up at Amanda to tell her about her dream and strangled back a gasp. Amanda’s face seemed huge to her. She could see every blemish in her cousin’s skin, could clearly distinguish every strand of hair. She blinked fiercely, willing the enhanced sight away.

  It remained. She groaned and sank back onto her pillow, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “What is it?” Amanda asked, quieter now.

  “I had a dream. There was a woman. Someone . . . a relative, I think.”

  Amanda sounded concerned. “Isabeau?”

  Holly shook her head. “No. I don’t know who she was. She took me to this room where there was an old map. I found this island on it and it was close to England.”

  Holly risked opening her eyes a bit. Amanda’s expression was one of puzzlement.

  “Wait right here,” she murmured getting up again.

  “Gladly,” Holly answered, closing her eyes again. She felt sick and queasy, so disoriented that it was as if the bed were rocking. Almost unconsciously she reached for Bast, who rose from her haunches at the foot of the bed and sauntered toward her mistress.

  Amanda was gone for several minutes. Holly began to drift. Bast slipped herself under Holly’s arm and began to purr.

  Holly felt a little better, and she murmured, “Thank you, sweet kitty.”

  Bast nuzzled her and pressed her nose to Holly’s cheek.

  “Sorry,” Amanda apologized as she returned and eased back down on the bed.

  “Where are Tante Cecile and Silvana?” Holly asked.

  “They went back to their place,” Amanda said. “Tante Cecile wanted to check their wards.”

  “Your dad?”

  “Still sleeping,” Amanda told her. “Or passed out. I don’t know what the difference is when you’re drunk.” She sounded sad and bitter. Then she brightened. “Meanwhile. Geography. I found an old atlas I got in junior high. Who’d have guessed I’d ever use it?”

  “Tell me about it,” Holly replied, warily opening one eye.

  She could see the texture of the paper as Amanda shoved the atlas under her nose. She groaned and tried to focus on the pictures. There was England.

  “Do you see it? The island you saw?”

  “No,” Holly confessed, knowing she couldn’t blame it on the image being too small. “It was right there, though,” she said, pointing to where she remembered.

  Amanda closed the book. “Holly, it was just a dream.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Okay, suppose it wasn’t. You said it was an old map. Maybe the island’s not there anymore.”

  Holly frowned, bemused. “Are you saying it sunk or something? Like Atlantis?”

  Amanda shrugged. “Could be. If it’s magical.”

  Holly opened the book back up, her eyes barely slit open. She found the page again and stared hard at it.

  “Maybe no one can see it,” she said slowly. “Maybe it’s simply been forgotten.” She trained her acute visual strength on it, willing any hidden lands to be revealed to her.

  “But . . . that makes it disappear off a map? That’s unlikely.”

  “ ‘Occult’ means ‘hidden,’ ” Holly reminded her.

  Bast kneaded her arm, and Holly yawned as her eyelids drifted closed. She could feel sleep tugging at her; she didn’t have the strength to resist any longer.

  As she fell asleep, she wasn’t even aware of Amanda leaving.

  Morning.

  And no more dreams.

  Bast had wandered off, and Holly had gotten up. Now, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, squinting to avoid staring at her own pores, Holly knew what she had to do. She pulled her hair back and fastened it in place with a silver Celtic barrette and left the bathroom. She walked downstairs, rehearsing what she was going to say to Amanda.

  Downstairs she found her cousin hunched over a bowl of Rice Krispies. Amanda glanced up at her.

  “You slept a long time,” Amanda said. “I warded my dad and checked all the house’s wards.” Her gaze traveled to the spot where, upstairs, her father’s bedroom was located.

  Holly grabbed a bowl and joined her at the table.

  “I have this weird eyesight thing going,” she told Amanda. “Like I’m seeing everything super close up. It’s not fun.”

  “We’ll work a spell,” Amanda ventured.

  “After I eat something,” Holly replied. “I feel pretty nauseated.”

  “Have any more dreams last night?”

  “No,” Holly admitted. She poured in milk, stared at the bowl, and pushed it away. She knew she wouldn’t be able to keep down a thing. “But I’ve been thinking about the one I did have.”

  Something in her tone must have alerted Amanda, because the other girl stopped and stared at her suspiciously. “Why do I think that I’m not going to like this?”

  Holly folded her hands on the table. “Amanda, I’m going to go find Jer.”

  Amanda picked up her glass of orange juice and drank it down slowly. When she had drained the glass she put it down with a solid thud on the table. She locked eyes with Holly, who squinted to avoid seeing the blood vessels in her cousin’s eyes.

  Amanda spoke in a calm, firm voice. “Absolutely not.”

  “What?”

  “Michael could attack again at any moment and we have to be prepared, which means we can’t scatter to the four winds.”

  Holly took a deep breath. “I have to find him. He’s alive somewhere and I have to go to him.”

  Amanda did not relent. “Is that you talking or Isabeau?”

  “It’s me,” Holly said, her temper beginning to flare. “Jer helped save us from his father before and he can help us again.”

  “So, this is an altruistic gesture,” Amanda said sarcastically. “Nicole’s already missing, and you’re going to go save Michael Deveraux’s son, for the good of the coven, the fight against evil.”

  “Absolutely.” Holly nodded.

  “Liar.”

  The word hung in the air between them. Holly felt her cheeks flame even hotter. She didn’t know which made her angrier, the accusation or the fact that it was true. She stood up slowly, feeling her fingertips begin to tingle with electricity.

  “I am going and I don’t need your permission.” She turned to go.

  Amanda leaped to her feet.

  “Holly, have you ever stopped to think that Michael might
be deliberately doing this to divide us? We’re weak without Nicole. If you go, you’ll make us weaker. For all we know Jer is dead. How could he have survived the Black Fire? We both saw it burning him.”

  Holly slammed her fist down on the table, her desperation getting the best of her. “And whose fault is that? We were fine until you pulled me away from him!”

  “Are you insane?” Amanda asked, starting to shout. “The building was falling around us; the fire was devouring everything. What was I supposed to do, leave you behind?”

  Tears slid down Holly’s cheeks. “We would have been fine together, the magic we share—”

  “It’s the magic that Isabeau and Jean share,” Amanda cut her off. “It has nothing to do with the two of you. You’re just the unwitting hosts. You were that night, and that’s what they want again. To use you, both of you, in their own little weird twisted dance.”

  Holly’s hand flexed and tiny sparks danced along her fingertips. “Jer and I have our own magic that has nothing to do with them.”

  “Really,” Amanda flung at her. “Or is it just that you’ve got the hots for a Deveraux?”

  “But I dreamed—”

  “Sometimes dreams are just dreams!” Amanda yelled. “Not every dream you have means something! It’s just because you freakin’ want him, Holly! Get a clue!”

  “Oh, yeah, then how come I have Superman’s vision now?”

  There was a bewildered pause from Amanda. Reluctantly she said, “Okay. That I don’t know.”

  Holly took a deep breath. “In my dream, the woman touched my eyes and I could see everything sharper, clearer. It’s like I can see everything. And I can ‘see’ that I’m supposed to go find him.” She picked up the cereal box and thrust it into Amanda’s arms. “Go over there,” she ordered her cousin.

  Amanda studied her for a moment. Then she strode across the kitchen. She held the box up toward Holly. “Read the ingredients for me.”

  Holly focused in on the box and began to read off the ingredients. “Rice, sugar, salt, high fructose corn syrup, malt flavoring.”

  Slowly Amanda walked back to the table and set the box of cereal back down. She looked at Holly’s eyes; Holly tried hard not to squint. Then she sighed and sat back down at the table. “What the hell is malt flavoring?”

  Holly shrugged. “How should I know? At least you can see I’m not lying.”

  Amanda clearly wanted to avoid that statement. “Regardless, Holly, I don’t want you going off after Jer right now. Be patient. We’ll work something out together.”

  “I can’t be patient. Jer might not have that long,” Holly said quietly.

  She turned and left the room. There was no more sense in arguing.

  Both had made up their minds.

  “You can’t leave me alone here!” Amanda yelled at her. “He’ll kill us, Holly! He’s just using you!”

  Stricken, Holly hurried to her room, slammed the door, picked up a vase on her nightstand, and hurled it across the room.

  Tommy.

  Amanda grabbed her purse and stomped out the front door, answering Holly’s slam and her crash—bitch probably broke that vase. That’s okay; it was ugly any-way—and had swung her leg into the station wagon when she realized that her father was still upstairs in his stupor or whatever.

  Holly can deal with him, she decided.

  She had demon-dialed Tommy’s number as she backed out of the driveway; it was ringing, and she flooded with relief when he picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” she said, “and it’s all so crazy.” She started to cry. “Tommy, I’m so scared and I hate this and she’s talking about splitting on us and—”

  “Half Caffe,” he cut in. “I’d suggest you come here, but the ’rents are having some kind of Democratic fundraiser and there’s no privacy. Rich knee-jerk liberals are laying their fur coats on my bed and telling me to vote for the Clean Water Bill.”

  Despite her mood, she smiled. Tommy Nagai had been her best friend all her life. Through thickest and thinnest, he had watched her back. She felt bad that they had started to drift a bit, now that magic took up so much of their lives.

  “I know it’s dicey to show in public,” he continued, “but we’ve warded the Half Caffe pretty well, don’t you think? And since Eli and Jer are both out of the picture, I’m thinking it’s pretty safe. Michael’s too old to know about it, unless the guys mentioned it. And my take on that family is they didn’t sit around the dinner table saying, ‘Would you like to hear about my exciting and fun-packed day?’ ”

  It felt good, normal even, to listen to his banter and know that once again he was going to be a prince for her.

  “I’ll be there,” she told him.

  “Can’t wait, Amanda,” he replied.

  Amanda.

  Tommy gave his hair a brush in the men’s room of the Half Caffe. He looked okay . . . for him, and if you liked Asian Americans, he was way ahead. He had excused himself from his parents’ party by pointing out a window and observing to a clump of guests that since it had begun raining, there was plenty of clean water, at least for today, and his work there was done. The guests had chuckled appreciatively.

  Tommy knew how to work a room.

  And I think this room’s clean, he thought, as he meandered back into the din that was the main hangout of Seattle’s young crowd. It was a coffeehouse, decorated with oversized marble statues, murals of forests, and a balcony from which he and Amanda had spied on many of their high school friends and enemies. Their first year of college was pretty much blown, thanks to Michael Deveraux; only Tommy had managed to keep his grades going, and that had been because it was easier to do that than to deal with the parental pressure that would have resulted if they had fallen off.

  He climbed the stairs to the balcony and found a table a deux—a section of a plaster column topped by a glass circle. The rain had made the interior gloomy, so the staff had set votive candles in little pumpkins on each table. Nearly everyone in the place had on some little bit of Halloween gear—skeleton earrings, splatter T-shirts—and Tommy felt a pang for the old days, when he and Amanda were social outcasts, Nicole was an insufferable snob, and he had wanted to shake Amanda and say to her, “I want you to be my honey, Amanda, not my best bud.”

  Ah, youth.

  His waiter, costumed as Count Dracula, stalked him until he ordered stuff he knew Amanda would like: chai tea latte and a cinnamon roll. Then the waiter was happy, plopped down a couple of waters, and left Tommy to wait for Amanda.

  And there she is.

  She rushed in, looking nervous, closing up her umbrella as she shook an errant raindrop or two from her curly, light brown hair. She hadn’t been cutting it as much—no time, when warlocks are trying to kill you—and he liked the softness around her face.

  She saw him, waved, and came up the stairs. They hugged, because they always did, but this time Tommy held her for a few beats longer.

  She started sniffling against his shoulder. Alarmed, he drew away, then realized she wanted him to stay put; he put his arms around her, soothed her, saying, “Shh, shh, I bought you a roll.”

  She giggled softly and went to her chair.

  He was sorry about that, but he took his own and raised his brows, ready to listen.

  “She wants to split. She had this dream. Jer’s on an island and she wants to go to him,” Amanda said in a rush.

  “An island,” he repeated.

  She rolled her eyes. “In England, or somewhere near England.”

  “Ah.” He folded his arms. “Because there are so few there. Just the Orkneys, and, oh, tiny Britain itself, and—”

  “And we’ve got warlocks trying to kill us and all she can think about is her one true love, who is also a warlock.”

  “Movies these days,” he said smoothly, as the waiter brought over the tea chai latte’s and the roll.

  “Yeah,” she replied, getting it.

  They waited while their things were placed
on the table. Then Amanda sat back in her chair and sighed heavily.

  “This dream,” he ventured.

  “He’s locked up. Or something. I don’t know. She can’t leave us here by ourselves. We’ll be massacred.”

  He agreed, but he didn’t say anything. He just let her talk.

  “It’s not fair, it’s not right, and I think we should tell her she can’t go. She’s our High Priestess, for god’s sake!”

  “In the same movie,” he continued, as the waiter came by again to refill their water glasses.

  To his surprise, Amanda guffawed. She pounced on his left hand, which was lying innocently on the table, and said, “Oh, Tommy, I just love you!”

  His heart skipped a beat. Oh, if only you did, he told her silently. Amanda, a truer heart has never pumped oxygenated blood cells.. . .

  He picked up his cup and said, “We should hold a circle. Talk to her. You’re right; she can’t act as if she’s not part of a greater whole. We’re already all pissed off at Nicole.”

  She released his hand and he was very sorry about that. But her eyes had a new shiny quality to them, as if she were looking at him a little differently, and he dared hope . . .

  ... as he had been hoping for over ten years . . .

  “You’re right. We should hold a circle. Oh, Tommy, what would I do without you?” she chirruped.

  He smiled gently at her. “Let’s don’t find out.”

  Her lips bowed upward; her cheeks got rosy, and yes, there was definitely something new in her eyes.

  “Let’s don’t,” she agreed.

  Michael: Seattle, October

  It was Samhain—Halloween—and upstairs the doorbell kept ringing. Michael knew the trick-or-treaters were confused and disappointed; the Deveraux house was usually one of the best places to go. Intent upon maintaining good ties with the community, his treats were always very lavish.

  This year, he had better things to do on the night of one of Coventry’s major sabbats.

  Now in the black heart of his home—the chamber of spells—he had donned his special Samhain robe, decorated with red leering pumpkins, green leaves, and blood droplets and brought out special ritual arcane: green-black candles in which swirled human blood; a ritual bowl cut from the skull of a witch hanged at Salem; even a special athame, presented to him by his father the first time he had raised one of the dead.