Once a Witch (24 page)

“All I know is that you have a terrible choice ahead of you. That's what I can see.” In the distance the quartet begins another waltz, the music rising slow and sweet. A terrible choice?

“He's got Agatha, too,” I say at last. My grandmother frowns at me.

“Who is Agatha? Is she one of our family?”

“No” Thankfully,

“She's my friend from school. My roommate. She's–”

“A Talentless one?”

“Yeah, but–”But she speaks over me.

“When you go back, you will find the Domani again.”

“But how–I mean, Aunt Beatrice is… was…” I glance at my aunt wildly, as if she's going to confirm this information. But her eyes remain unblinking, her mouth still shaped in that bubble of surprise.

“Assuming I'm still alive,” my grandmother says slowly,

“I am the Keeper.”

“You?” I gasp. She nods once.

“From this moment on, I have become the Keeper.”

“Then… where is the Domani now?”

“In Grand Central Station.” I close my eyes and call up the hustle and hum of that busy hub. So many times I've rushed through it, always late to catch a train upstate with the clock ticking away the last few seconds I have. Late. My eyes snap open.

“The clock?”

“How did you know that?” my grandmother asks.

“It's always something to do with time, isn't it?” I think back.

“It was a wall clock in 1899 and it is–I mean, was– a pocket watch here in 1939.

So it has to be a clock in my time.” But now something else is niggling at me.

“What do you mean, assuming you're still alive?” I demand. At this she smiles.

“Tamsin. Hard as it may be for me to imagine right now, I will grow old” She glances at her hands curiously as if trying to picture the protruding bulbs of veins and age spots that will sprout on her currently smooth, tight skin.

“When?” I ask miserably.

“When will you–”She laughs, her face lighting up all at once, and I'm suddenly struck by how beautiful my grandmother really is.

“Are you asking me to predict the exact time of my own death?”

“No… I'm sorry,” I whisper, but she's still smiling at me. Her fingers come up again and press into my cheekbone for an instant.

“You have to save your sister. If you don't, if he takes her back with him, back to where this allstarted, then he'll be unstoppable. Everything ends then if he takes her.”

“So,” I begin, and the lump in my throat feels more like a boulder. I try again.

“So, what you said about me being one of the most powerful, that's all true? But still, next to Rowena I'm not… I'll never be like her… I'll never be . .”

I trail off, realizing that for once I really do wish that my grandmother could read my mind. We contemplate each other in the softly falling darkness, and somewhere above us a night bird warbles three trilling notes. I blink, then blink double time, trying to stop my eyes from filling with tears.

“You have your own role to play. You are a beacon for us all,” my grandmother says at last, her voice unexpectedly gentle. I roll my eyes.

“By the way, you mention that, the beacon thing, when I'm born. Maybe you shouldn't, because it kind of puts a lot of pressure on me” Inwardly, I marvel that I can talk to my grandmother like this, in a way that I never could back in my real life. Maybe it's because of everything that's happened. Maybe it's because she doesn't look so much like my grandmother at the moment. A door slams somewhere in the vicinity of the house and my grandmother takes a step back.

“Time is moving in your world, too. You have to go now.” I nod, then suddenly turn back to the three motionless figures behind us.

“But what about Aunt Beatrice?What did I do to her? Gabriel… will he… be okay? How do I…”

“You know how to,” my grandmother says calmly, and at this I start to lose it a little.

“Actually, I don't know what to do. I mean, it's nice that you suddenly have so much faith in me and all, especially after all these years… um… before all these years that are about to come” I shake my head irritably, then continue.

“But I don't know what I did to Aunt Beatrice. I mean, I tapped her on the head, just like this, see?” I take two steps toward Aunt Beatrice, touch her forehead again.

“Oh!” Aunt Beatrice says, blinking at me and stepping back stiffly as if awaking from a long sleep.

“You!”She raises one hand–either to hit me again or to shield herself from me, I'm not sure which–when my grandmother says,

“Don't, Beatrice. She's not one of them.” Aunt Beatrice stares at her sister, then back at me.

“But she tried to…”

“I know,” my grandmother agrees. She folds her hands and closes one eye briefly.

“None of that, Althea!” Beatrice's mouth twists into a tight pouch of annoyance, and then she bursts out with

“I want to know what's–”I divide a look between my furious aunt and my serene grandmother before running to Gabriel. I touch him lightly on the head and wait for him to blink.

“I've got a lot to tell you,” I whisper. But his face remains frozen.

“It's not working,” I cry.

“Why?”

“It seems you can't undo what someone else has already done,” my grandmother says at last, looking thoughtful.

“Which means only Beatrice can release him.”

“Well, I won't release him,” Aunt Beatrice says, vindication pricking through her voice.

“Not until someone tells me exactly what is going on. Right now” She folds her arms across her chest and glares at both of us.

“Or he'll stay this way forever!”

“Actually,” my grandmother interjects in a dry voice,

“it does wear off after a week or two. As I have been so fortunate to discover.”

“You can't still be mad about that,” Aunt Beatrice insists.

“She doesn't have much time,” my grandmother adds.

“Well, I do,” Aunt Beatrice says. She swings the pocket watch from her fingers like a pendulum. I glare at my aunt.

“I used to like you,” I mutter.

“What was that?”

“Nothing!” Then I clench my back teeth while advancing on my aunt.

“If you don't release him, Aunt Beatrice, I swear you'll spend the next week of your life as a statue in your own stupid garden!”My aunt draws herself up, which would be impressive if she weren't considerably shorter than I am.

“Well!” she huffs before stomping over and knocking Gabriel on the head. With a long shiver Gabriel comes to life, looking around wildly before he sees me. I run across the grass, tripping in my heels, and thud straight into him.

“Umph!” he says into my hair.

“Warn me before you're going to do that again, okay?” But his arms fold me into him and I breathe in his warm skin.

“I'm glad you're okay,” I whisper.

“Me, too. Um… what just happened?”

“I'll explain later,” I whisper back.

“And why did you touch that stupid thing again? Didn't you learn anything from the last century?”

“Well, you weren't exactly doing anything, Tam. We were standing there like idiots and that guy was about to–”

“Oh, shush!” I say, putting my fingers over his mouth. He falls silent, but I get the impression that he's smiling at me.

“We can fight about this later. Now we've got to get out of here” Reluctantly, I disentangle myself and move back. Over my head Gabriel stares at Aunt Beatrice, who is delivering what looks like one hiss of a monologue into my grandmother's ear. I spare a glance for poor Uncle Roberto, still caught motionless with one hand over his heart, as if to stop the pocket watch from traveling out of his grasp.

“Wait for one second,” I say to Gabriel, then walk back to the two women.

“Thank you,” I say softly to my grandmother, who smiles. Aunt Beatrice is gaping at me, but I ignore heras I turn away. Then one last thought tugs at me, so I turn back.

“So why did you name me Tamsin?” I ask.

“You always promised to tell me later. Even though, technically, it's earlier.” My grandmother's smile flickers, deepens.

“It's how you introduced yourself to me tonight. I just assumed that's what you wanted to be named.”

PALE LIGHT sifts through the curtains, filters across the flat gold carpet. My rose dress is tangled in the arms of Gabriel's suit jacket, and for one second I imagine our clothing rising up and waltzing together like we did last night. Last night, which happened seventy-something yearsago. We stumbled back to the present just before midnight, found a guest room where the sheets appeared to be relatively fresh, and fell onto the bed. After I had filled him in on what had happened while he was frozen, we both stared at the ceiling for a while. Finally, Gabriel pulled the white blankets up over our knees, releasing a cloud of dust in the process. After I had finished sneezing and hacking, I turned, curled into his arms, and we slept. Well, he did. I stayed awake most of the night, staring into a blackness that was occasionally punctured by light from the passing cars.

“Tamsin,” Gabriel says to me as we're sitting at Aunt Rennie's table, eating the pizza that he picked up. Or at least he's eating it. I'm too busy shredding my pizza crust into shards and then pulverizing the shards into crumbs.

“You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

“You mean intentionally?” With my fingertips I begin sweeping the crumbs into a pile in the center of my plate. But he doesn't even smile, just reaches across the table, his hand forcing my chin up until I meet his eyes.

“I don't know,” I whisper. All last night I had watched him sleep, my fingers laced together so I wouldn't be tempted to touch his face and possibly wake him.

“I'll try not to,” I say, attempting to lighten my tone. My cell phone rings, the word HELLCRATER flashing onto the screen in stark black letters. I swallow against the sudden stab of pain in my throat. This morning, when I'd asked Gabriel to locate my parents, he had closed his eyes for barely a second and then said,

“They're home” Relief had swept through me. But right now I don't have the energy to lie to my mother about why I'm back in the city. When at last the phone goes silent, Gabriel says,

“Whatever you're thinking, you–”The house phone shatters the rest of what he was going to say. I jump, my elbow jarring my plate across the table. I glance at the yellow phone shrilling imperiously on thekitchen wall. It seems my mother won't be denied. On stiff legs I walk into the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“Tamsin” Clear as ice water, his voice pours into my head.

“Mr. Knight,” I say. There's a low chuckle.

“I assume you have something for me?”

“Maybe,” I hedge as Gabriel pushes back his chair with what I feel is an unnecessarily loud scrape. A measured pause, and then Alistair says,

“Don't play games, Tamsin. You won't like the results.” I swallow.

“How's my sister?” He ignores this.

“When?”

“Tonight,” I say slowly, my eyes fixated on the ridiculously cheerful kitchen wallpaper. Red cherries and round pink strawberries dance in loose columns.

“Eleven forty-five.”

“Where?”

“Let's meet at Grand Central Station. By the information kiosk” I reach one hand out to touch a cherry. It blurs and runs through my fingers. A small, sharp silence pokes at the connection between us and then I hear Alistair draw in a breath.

“Very well,” he says, satisfaction brimming in his voice.

“Put my sister on,” I say softly.

“Would it really do you any good?” he asks almost gently, and then the dial tone is buzzing in my ear. I slam down the receiver and then I slam it down a few more times. I start bashing it against the cherries and strawberries, vaguely aware that Gabriel is trying to wrench it from my fingers. Finally, he squeezes my wrist until my hand opens and I drop the receiver for good, letting it crash against the tile floor.

“I'm okay,” I say into Gabriel's shoulder, my words muffled in his shirt. His hand cradles the back of my head.

“Yeah,” he says, sounding entirely unconvinced. At a quarter to midnight, Grand Central is a very different place than in the daytime. Only a few people rush through the great marble hall, heading toward train platforms or following the signs marked subway. All the ticket booths are closed except for one, behind which a sleepy-looking woman eyes us briefly before going back to her magazine. My eyes wander upward and I let them rest for an instant on the beauty of the gold-worked constellations hanging in the blue domed ceiling.

Then I look back down at the four-sided bronze clock that presides over the Main Concourse, its stately faces like unblinking eyes that keep watch in each direction. As expected, the information kiosk is closed for the night. But still a girl waits there, wearing a torn and tattered black dress, her hair falling across her shoulders like a whisper. As I near her, I can't help but wince.

“Ro,” I say softly, my hands reaching out for her. Purplish-yellow shadows cluster under her eyes and her lips are dry and cracked, even as they spread into a smile.

“Tamsin,” she sighs, and at that Alistair steps out from behind the other side of the kiosk. Unlike my sister's, his skin is flushed and plump with health, his dark raincoat fitting crisply across his shoulders. In one hand he holds a small black traveling case. His eyes skip coldly over Gabriel before settling on me.

“Well?” he says, and my sister turns, reaching out one fluttering hand toward him. He brushes her off, as though she's no more than an insect who has blundered onto his sleeve.

“How do I know that you'll release her?” He smiles.

“Once I have the Domani, I won't need her anymore.” I stare at my sister, willing her to acknowledge this, but she only hums a little, plays with a loose thread on her sleeve. It's then that I notice her feet are bare, streaked with dirt. I swallow a surge of anger.

“Or Agatha?” A smile slithers across his face.

“Your delicious little friend?” I consider throwing up right then and there, but Gabriel presses my fingers with his own.

“Easy,” he murmurs.

“She was useful,” Alistair says, giving a flick of his fingers.

“But she'll live” Then his gaze sharpens on me.

“If you give me what I want. Now.”