Legacy (31 page)

“Forgive me,” he whispered. He made a motion with his fingers. I clasped them with my own.

“Was this your plan?” I coughed. “Your stupid
plan
? To kill yourself?”

“No,” he rasped. “But it was the only way.”

“Who is that?” someone behind me asked.

Footsteps approached me from behind, and another voice spoke. “Miss, I don’t know how you got in here, but you’re going to have to wait in the reception area,” the voice said.

“It didn’t work, anyway,” Peter said, so softly I could barely hear him. “Eric didn’t like it. He started screaming. Then Hattie came. She saw and called the ambulance.”

“Peter, we have to tell, we have to tell everybody.”

“No—”

“Get her out of here.” Someone grabbed my arm. I threw it off.

“Call security.”

“There’s a way, Peter,” I insisted. “
The
Great Book of Secrets
. Gram said—”

“It doesn’t matter what she said. No one’s going to help us.”

“Let’s go,” a third voice boomed behind me. This one grabbed me firmly under my armpits and yanked me to a standing position. I finally looked at him, seeing a uniform. Hospital security, probably.

“You’re wrong, Peter. We’ll find a way together.”

“Katy, please . . .”

The guard shoved me across the length of the emergency room and through the double doors into the waiting area. “You have parents?” he boomed, finally letting go of me.

“I’m here with her,” Gram said, jogging toward us, her handkerchief waving agitatedly.

“She’s not permitted beyond those doors, ma’am,” the guard said.

“I know, officer. I’ll be responsible for her.”

“Don’t let it happen again,” he warned, lumbering away.

“Good heavens, child,” she whispered, looking around at the people occupying the chairs in the waiting room. “What on earth were you thinking?”

I was tired of hiding. She had to know. Everyone had to, now. “It’s trying to kill Peter,” I said.

Nearby, one of the officers with Hattie turned around. Since my foray into the forbidden area of the treatment rooms, Dr. Baddely had joined them. She was looking at me, too.

For a moment I wavered between keeping Peter’s secret and trying to help him. Then the two policemen prodded Hattie, and the three of them moved slowly toward the exit. Dr. Baddely stepped away.

They were taking Hattie! To lock her up, to charge her with whatever had happened to Peter. “No!” I shouted. “Hattie, tell them!”

She looked at me with rueful, terrified eyes.

“It’s not her,” I screamed. “It’s the Darkness!”

A dozen heads swiveled to face me.

“Tell them, Hattie! We can find a solution together. Tell them about Eric!”

Hattie slumped in a faint into the arms of one of the officers.

“We’re getting out of here,” Gram said, propelling me past the police and through the automatic glass exit doors. “Now.”

I looked back. Everyone was staring, but the person I noticed most was Dr. Baddely. Her eyes were piercing through me like lasers.

She was a witch, too, then. She knew exactly what I was talking about.

By nightfall, I realized, every witch in Whitfield would know.

“I . . . I had to say something,” I tried to explain. “We need to work together, the whole community. We can do the spell of Unmaking, like you—”

“Oh, be quiet!” my great-grandmother snapped.

“But you said—”

“I said there was no way to protect the child!” She shoved me forward, away from the hospital, as if trying to outrun the inevitable.

She said nothing more, but as we made our way through the twisted streets of Old Town, the realization of what I had done came crashing down on me.

I had just condemned a ten-year-old boy to death by fire.

Penelope Bean’s ancestral home looked sort of like Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, although it was more like the House of the Hundred and Seven Gables. Gram and I came in through the side door, the former servants’ entrance, which was down a flight of steps from the street. The door opened into an enormous kitchen with a gigantic cast iron stove that made the one in Hattie’s Kitchen seem positively modern, two gleaming zinc counters, and a table large enough to seat twelve. Then we climbed up a long staircase into a foyer lined with palm trees in big brass planters. Agnes was waiting for us.

“I heard you come in,” she said, taking Gram by the elbow. My great-grandmother was wheezing from the exertion of climbing the stairs. “Why didn’t you use the front door?” Agnes asked.

“I didn’t want anyone to see us come here.”

“Oh?”

“It was my fault,” I said. “I thought I was helping. The police had Hattie, and Peter almost died, even though he said he had a plan, and I thought that if everyone knew about the Darkness, then we could all work together and do something . . .”

“Stop, stop, stop,” Agnes said. “Come in and sit down, both of you.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” I lamented as we walked into an old-fashioned parlor filled with heavy dark furniture and oval portraits on the walls.

“It’s a little late to come to that realization,” Gram said acidly. “Half the people in that waiting room were witches.”

“Grandmother, please.” Agnes held up a hand. “Now tell me, Katy. Everything.”

“Hattie’s in trouble,” I began. “The police think she’s been beating Peter.”

Trying not to trip over my words I told her about the marks on Peter’s back, what the paramedic had said on the night of the fire at Ainsworth House, the dream I’d had that had made me bicycle over to Hattie’s place, and what I’d seen when I climbed the trellis and looked inside Peter’s room.

“It was Eric,” I finished. “For the past ten years, the Darkness has been living inside that little boy.”

“Ten . . .”

“Yes. That was what my mother saw on the last day of her life.”

“She tried to kill Eric because she knew he was infected?”

“Yes. She tried, and thought she had. That’s why she went home and set herself on fire,” I said.

“But the boy lived.”

“Barely,” Gram said. “I’m sure Agatha didn’t even consider that possibility. After what she did to him, little Eric had so many handicaps that the Darkness couldn’t even manifest through him.”

“That’s why it wants Peter,” I told them. “Every night for months—ever since it learned to speak through Eric—it’s been trying to get Peter to kill his brother so that the Darkness can come into Peter. It keeps saying that Peter will be a better
vessel.
”

“Well, it’s getting stronger now. What did it do to put Peter in the hospital?” Agnes asked.

“I don’t know. Peter said it was the only way, whatever that meant.” Suddenly the thought of Peter lying on that cot with the thick bandages on his wrists was just overwhelming. I felt my shoulders start to shake. “Maybe he just got tired . . .” I said, too upset to finish.

Gram put her arm around me. “There, there,” she said. “He’s all right now, and there’s no reason to think—”

“Peter told me not to say anything to anyone, because he’s convinced that none of you will lift a finger to help him or Eric.”

“It’s not like that, Katy,” Agnes said. “Of course we want to help them. Every witch in Old Town thinks of Eric Shaw as her own child. But if this is the Darkness—and I hope to Hecate that you’re mistaken about this—then we have to consider the safety and survival of the community first.”

“But there must be a way to take the Darkness out of Eric without killing him!” I insisted.

“The method is clear—”

“Maybe there’s another method!” I shouted. “Maybe there’s a way no one has found yet. Just because something isn’t four hundred years old doesn’t mean it won’t work.”

“Do you think that no one has ever considered what you’re proposing? How many of the witches who’ve been infected by the Darkness throughout our history do you suppose had families, friends, loved ones who would give up their own lives if that could save them from burning? I’ll tell you how many, Katy. All of them.

“No one with even the slightest degree of decency wants to see another being burned to death. Not a cat, not a bug. The problem is that no one has found another way, despite centuries of searching. In the end, the community has always had to resort to the burning. And no one,
no one,
has liked it.”

“But what about the ‘Spell of Unmaking’?” I asked.

“Song,” Gram said. “The ‘Song of Unmaking’. It has to be sung.”

“It’s very obscure.”

“Well, what does it say?”

She cocked her head, thinking. “Let’s see . . .”

Through Love’s unbreaking tie
Unmake the Darkness, do not die
No death shall come, good soul, to thee,
For by the Sacred Fire set thou free.

“At one time I could recite the whole spell,” she said. “Anyway, no one knows why she even wrote it, since the solution—burning—is what we’d been doing for millennia.”

“But . . . the
sacred
fire. Maybe that’s different.”

She shrugged. “Some scholars have conjectured that Ola’ea was writing from a Christian perspective, seeing physical death as the pathway to eternal life, although . . .”

“Agnes, I think Hattie needs our help rather urgently,” Gram interrupted.

“Ah, yes. And Peter, too, I imagine?”

“Under the circumstances, most certainly.”

“What about Peter?” I asked.

“Leave things to me.” Agnes stood up and walked over to a high-backed velvet wing chair in a darkened corner.

“Er . . .” Gram rose. “Perhaps I should give Katy our gift now.”

“That would be prudent,” Agnes said, gathering her skirts around her and sitting down. She templed her index fingers and brought them between her eyebrows. I wondered if she had a headache.

Then one of the oddest things I’d ever seen happened in front of my eyes. In the silent room I heard a low buzz begin to emanate from the corner where Agnes was sitting. Then she began to fade out, as if she were an electronically produced image with static interrupting the transmission.

Gram must have seen me gawking. “Agnes has an unusual talent,” she said, pitching her voice low so as not to disturb her granddaughter, who was now blinking in and out of sight. “She is an astral traveler. She can journey long distances without the aid of vehicles . . . or even legs.” She chuckled at her little joke.

My eyes were transfixed on the wing chair, which was now empty. “You mean she’s . . . she’s just gone?”

“Not exactly. That is, her subtle body is still in the chair. Try not to sit on it.”

I swallowed. “Does she . . . does she do this often?”

“Oh my, yes. Every day, in fact, when she goes to work.”

“Aunt Agnes works?”

“Why, of course, dear. The Ainsworths have never been layabouts. Even I do my part by volunteering at the hospital.” She straightened her shoulders. “And I’m eighty-three.”

“No, I didn’t mean . . . Er, what does she do? In her job, I mean.”

“She teaches ethnobotany at Stanford University,” she said proudly.

“Stanford?” I was stunned. “In California?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter how far away the destination is,” Gram said. “It’s a much more efficient method than travel by broomstick, wouldn’t you say?” She started to laugh, but then held up a finger. “Shhh.” She squinted for a moment, as if listening to something. “Ah, yes. Agnes is with Penelope Bean now,” she said.

“Miss P? How do you know?”

“She’s sending me a message.”

I blinked. “A message? You mean a
telepathic
message?”

“Very minor talent,” she said, blushing. “Receiving messages. Anyone can do it, really, with a little study.”

“Why is Agnes with Miss P?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “But that’s what she’s telling me. Hmm.” She nodded decisively. “Righto, I almost forgot.” She walked over to a little table and opened the central drawer in it. “There’s something else she wants me to do,” she said, rummaging through the drawer. “It concerns you. Ah, yes, here it is.” She pulled out a stick.

That’s what it was, a wooden stick about ten inches long. “This is for you,” she said, handing it to me with a flourish. “A birthday gift from Agnes and me.”

“Um . . . thanks,” I said dubiously. “Is it a hair ornament?”

Her eyes widened in horror. “Good gracious, child, how did you manage all those years? It’s a
wand
, Katy.”

“A wand? A magic wand?” Images of Hogwarts came to mind. “Terrificus Splenderosa,” I said, twirling the stick. Nothing happened.

Gram clucked. “How disrespectful!” she muttered. “A wand is not a toy. In fact, it would be quite premature for you to have one at all, if it weren’t for these extraordinary circumstances. Needless to say it should only be used in case of dire emergency.”

I examined the tip. Plain wood. “Is there a phoenix feather inside?” I asked, shaking it.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just rowan wood, since your birthday occurs in August, the Druidic month represented by the rowan tree.”

“How does it work?”

“The way all magic works,” she said, snatching the wand out of my hand. “In fact, it does nothing on its own. All a wand does is to focus your intention, which is what creates magic in the first place.” She pointed it at one of the Beans’ family portraits hanging on the wall, a prune-faced old woman wearing a blue satin gown and a three-foot-tall white wig. “Know what effect you wish to achieve, and focus all your attention and will on it.” As she spoke, the sour-looking woman in the portrait produced a wide, gap-toothed grin and crossed her eyes.

“That’s wonderful!” I exclaimed, running up to the painting. As I drew closer, though, the woman’s expression returned to its former haughty somberness.

“Minor, minor,” Gram said. “Anyone can create an illusion.” She handed the wand back to me. “Not a bad wand, though.”

“Thank you,” I said, stroking the thing with my finger.

“Just make sure that what you focus on is what you really want, and not what you think you
ought
to want.”

“World peach,” I said, remembering the first time I attempted magic.