Shadow Witch (48 page)

Miss Duffy dropped her chin again and said, “I shall tender my resignation from this school immediately.”

“Is that what you want?”

She hesitated for a moment before shaking her head.

“Then why did you agree to spy for the mayor?”

“Mr. Fuller did not give me much choice. He said if I wanted to keep my position as a tutor, I had to do this.”

“But we offered you a permanent job,” Rachel said.

“They convinced me that the school would eventually fail, and that tutoring the Fuller’s children was my only real option.”

“Do you feel that way?”

She shook her head again. “At first I did, but now I think that the school will continue.” She looked up again and nodded. “I think it will thrive. I think it is the best thing for this town. I
want
to work here. I don’t want to be a tutor for the rest of my life!”

“I’d like for you to keep working for us,” Rachel said and glanced at Jamie, “but you have to stop spying for the council. That is, if you
want
to be a teacher at this school.”

“I do. I really do.”

“She’s telling the truth,” Nova said. “I feel it strongly.”

“Well....” Rachel leaned back in her chair. “If you stay on, it would nice if you could be more congenial. Talk to us once in a while. Be a part of the group. Can you do that?”

“Yes. It has been hard for me to be so duplicitous. You are so nice to me, and I feel like a traitor, like a...like a rat.”

“Well, like I said, I’m disappointed, but I think I understand why you did this.” Rachel leaned over and patted Miss Duffy’s arm. “I want you to know that we’re on your side, though. But we need you to always be on ours. Talk to us whenever you have a problem. We can help.”

“All right,” Miss Duffy said and wiped her eyes again.

“That still leaves us with the problem of what to do about the town council,” Jamie said. “This may be something that a witch can handle better than a wizard.” He turned to Nova. “You think Momma Sue and Mrs. Malley would know how to handle this?”

“I don’t know,” Nova said. “I can ask them when I see them this Sunday.”

“Good.” Rachel stood and nodded firmly. “Miss Duffy, I want you to continue as you’ve been doing. Go meet with the mayor and Mr. Fuller today, but don’t tell them anything important. Lie, if you have to. Maybe we’ll be able to end their meddling soon, once and for all.”

* * *

Saturday was boring.

Sammi had to stay inside all day and wasn’t even allowed to go across the street to play on Jamie’s swings because he wasn’t there to make an invisibility shield for her.

Sammi saw a couple of girls riding their bicycles on the sidewalk in front of the house, but Mrs. Callahan wouldn’t let her go out to say hello to them. “We don’t want anybody to see you right now,” Mrs. Callahan said. “Not until the police catch Mr. Gundy.”

So Sammi stood at the front window and watched the girls ride away.
They look like they’re my age, too. I know we could be friends
. Then she plopped on the couch, crossed her arms and poked out her lower lip.
All my friends are in Rivershire. There’s nobody to play with here. Even Fred’s gone. She’s working all day
. “There’s nothing to do!” she whined to nobody in particular — the walls, the floor, the furniture, any grownup within earshot who might take pity on her and entertain her.

That night, Fred had her friends over, and she let Sammi hang out with them.

Sammi sat on the couch in the living room between Fred and Nova. Rollie was squeezed in next to Nova on the end. Bryce was sitting a few feet away in the wing chair, looking bored, but Jamie and Melanie were standing, talking about fate. Or as Rollie called it, the Big Cosmic Scheme.

Jamie was gesturing broadly with one arm, trying to make a point, while Melanie watched him with her hands on her hips. Nobody else was engaged in the discussion at the moment.

Sammi was happy to be included in their group, but the conversation was over her head and she felt lost. “I wish I knew what they were talking about,” she said.

“Me, too, Sammi,” Fred said and eyed Jamie and Melanie. “Half the time, those two are so far into geek-speak that it sounds like another language.”

“Bryce?” Nova said. “Does Melanie talk like that when you go out on a date?”

Bryce shook his head. “Only when she and Jamie get talking about this esoteric stuff. She’s normal most of the time.”

“What does
esoteric
mean?” Sammi asked.

“Hard to understand.”

“That’s about right.” Nova nodded, then said to Jamie and Melanie, “Hey, you guys look like a couple of professors discussing a math problem in front of a chalkboard.”

Jamie stared at her for a few seconds, then widened his eyes. “A whiteboard! That’s what we need. Then we can diagram this. There are a couple of them in the school in Rivershire. Let’s go there.”

“
No
, Jamie,” Fred said. “We don’t want to hang out there.”

“I don’t want to sit in a hard classroom chair.” Rollie leaned back and draped his arm on top of the couch behind Nova, close, but not quite touching her shoulders. Nova didn’t seem to mind. Sammi smiled to herself.

“Then I’ll go get one.” Jamie quickly outlined a magic doorway as Fred groaned a complaint. She turned to Nova and frowned at her. “Why did you say that? Now they’re gonna go all-out total geek on us.”

Nova spread her hands and winced, and Jamie stepped through to the dark classroom beyond the open portal. He returned a few seconds later and wheeled a whiteboard into Fred’s living room.

“Great,” Bryce grumbled. “Can’t we go downstairs and watch a movie on Fred’s big TV instead?”

“Little Mermaid!” Sammi said brightly.

“Oh, Sammi,” Fred said with a sigh. “Not again.”

“We’ve been over this
fate
stuff a zillion times.” Bryce sat up in his chair and gestured at Jamie’s walking stick, which was leaning against the wall nearby. “I thought you wanted to talk about that.”

Jamie paused with a marker in one hand. “Glad you reminded me.” He picked up the carved piece of wood and regarded it for a moment. “Maybe with the whiteboard I can show you more of what happens when I make doorways with this thing.”

“You said it’s like glowing lines,” Fred said with a shrug. “Big deal. I get those all the time when I make potions.”

“Are they like this?” Jamie drew a point on the board and then made lines radiating from it in all directions.”

“No. Mine seem to come from my body and connect with the ingredients of my potion, and then flow on into the earth. I feel connected to everything.”

Sammi pointed at the diagram. “That looks like spokes on a bicycle.”

“Or a spider web,” Bryce said.

“But they go in all dimensions,” Jamie said, “instead of on flat plane like a bike wheel or a web.”

Melanie rubbed her chin as she looked at the whiteboard. “Do the lines look different for different doorways?”

“Um...I’m not sure.” Jamie scratched his head with a fingertip. “Let’s see. I’ll make a doorway to my family room.” Jamie grasped the stick firmly in one hand, closed his eyes and began the outlines of a magic portal. “I see the glowing lines in my head. Let me make one to the school now.” He held out his finger and initiated the spell again, then after a moment, opened his eyes and shook his head. “They’re not the same. Not radically different, just...somewhat shifted, a little.”

“Make a doorway to the three moon world and see what happens,” Bryce said. “We haven’t been there in a while.”

“I’ve never been there,” Nova said.

“Me neither!” Sammi said. “Let’s go!”

“I’m for that,” Rollie said. “You can do a fireworks show for us, Jamie. This is
boring
.”

Jamie gave Rollie an exasperated look. “Can we finish this first?” Rollie shrugged and Jamie closed his eyes again and began another doorway. He nodded. “It’s different. Again, not by a lot, but now that I’m looking for it, I can see it.” He blinked and wrinkled his brow. “I wonder what it means?”

“I still think it’s like the quantum Earth Internet,” Rollie said.

“Or a brain.” Melanie pointed at the drawing on the whiteboard. “Those could be like synapses.”

“Maybe it’s a map,” Nova said.

“A map!” Bryce sat up straight in his chair again. “That could be it.”

“Of your magic sense of space,” Fred added.

Jamie looked at each of his friends and then regarded the elaborately carved stick again. “Huh. Maybe. I need to talk to Mr. Winston about it again.” Then he looked at Fred. “That reminds me; don’t forget to talk to Momma Sue tomorrow about my problem with the Rivershire town council. I need her and Mrs. Malley to help me come up with a way to stop them from meddling with the school.”

“I’ll remember. But
that
reminds me....” She turned to Nova. “Did you contact your dad yet?”

“No.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know...I just...I don’t know.”

Rollie turned in his seat to face her. “You said you would.” Rollie frowned at her. “Maybe we should do it for you.” Rollie pulled his phone from his back pocket. “What did you say the name of his restaurant was? Belanger’s?” He tapped the screen and grinned. I bet I can find him right now.”

“Gimme that!” Nova reached for his phone, but Rollie stood and turned his back to her.

“Let’s see,” Rollie said, “Atlanta, right?”

Nova stood, too, and tried to reach around him, but he spun away and blocked her with his body. “Rollie, stop!” she shrieked.

“Not ’till you promise to get in touch with your dad. You’d said you’d do it already.”

“I promise, I promise! I’ll write to him tomorrow. Just don’t call him now.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Whatever. I’ll write a letter to him tomorrow and mail it on Monday. I swear!”

“All right.” Rollie turned to face her again and pocketed his phone. “But you still gotta go to church with me and my folks tomorrow, too. You told my mom you would.”

“I’m going, but it took me two hours to find something to wear. I finally found a decent dress in the back of my closet.” She blew out a long gust of air. “Been a long time since I’ve been to church.”

“That’s okay, as long as you go tomorrow.”

“Are we done here?” Fred said. “Sammi and I want to go to the three moon world and watch Jamie’s fireworks show.”

“Let’s make popcorn!” Sammi said.

“And bring lawn chairs,” Bryce said. “We can get some from Jamie’s garage.”

“All right.” Jamie shrugged. “I think we’ve done enough for tonight.”

“Finally!” Sammi said. “Something that’s not boring.”

Rollie grunted and said, “Amen to that.”

Sammi searched through the soda cans on top of the picnic table before she found one that she thought was hers. There were two large bowls among the clutter that were nearly empty except for the remains of a few popcorn kernels. Three beautiful moons hung in the sky, two of them full, the other a smiling silver sliver.

Rollie and Bryce stood at the edge of the wide, rocky precipice, hurling stones out over the chasm so that Jamie could blast them while he floated high in the air. The other girls were stretched out in lawn chairs, applauding Jamie’s pyrotechnics.

Sammi turned when she heard Mrs. Callahan call her name, and saw her walking through the open portal from her living room. Mrs. Callahan paused on her way and leaned over to turn down the music from Fred’s boom box that sat on the hard ground.

Mrs. Callahan sat next to Sammi on the bench of the picnic table and rubbed Sammi’s back. “Are you having fun?”

“Unh hunh.” Sammi bobbed her head earnestly. “Jamie’s blastin’ rocks, and we danced a little while ago. Everybody did, even Bryce, and he doesn’t like to.”

“Who danced with you?”

“Most everybody.” Sammi lowered her voice and leaned closer to Mrs. Sikes. “Rollie slow danced with Nova, when Jamie and Fred were dancing in the sky.”

Mrs. Sikes wiggled her eyebrows conspiratorially. “Maybe you kids need a chaperone.”

“No. We’re behavin’. Honest.”

“I believe you.” She patted Sammi on the back and said, “It’s your bedtime, little girl.”

“Aw, can I stay up just a little while longer? I’m havin’ fun.”

“I’m glad. I know you’ve been bored all day, and I’m sorry. But you know we have to keep you out of sight, so you have to stay inside.”

“That’s okay, I understand. But tomorrow won’t be so bad ’cause I get to go to Momma Sue’s, and the next day is Monday and I go back to school.”

“You have a lot of friends there, don’t you?”

“All of them are my friends, even Milly.”

“I’m sorry you don’t have any buddies in our neighborhood yet, but you will, soon as the police catch Mr. Gundy. Then we’ll get you a bike and you can play outside like a normal kid.” She glanced at her watch and said, “You can stay up another fifteen minutes, and then you have to go to bed, okay? But try not to get up at dawn tomorrow. You’re sleeping in Fred’s room with her and Nova, and they’ll be grumpy if you wake them up early.”

“I won’t wake them up. I’ll sleep late, I promise.”

They both turned to see a large cascade of colorful sparks drift down from the sky, and the older girls clapped and hooted.

“I think I’ll stay and watch for a few minutes,” Mrs. Callahan said. “It looks like Jamie’s putting on quite a show.”

Chapter 27

Gundy had tried to be patient that day, but twice his restlessness had gotten the best of him and he’d driven into town to look for Sammi. Both times he’d been forced to turn around and leave when he spotted police cars patrolling the neighborhoods he wanted to check.

So many cops!
he thought as he hurried back to his hotel. He’d seen three patrol cars the day before, thwarting his search.
How can they have so many? Hendersonville ain’t that big
.

Somehow, they knew he was there. He’d found another short article in the paper about his wife’s murder, which was accompanied by an old picture of him, taken before he’d shaved his beard and bleached his hair, and it said that police had reason to believe that he was in the Hendersonville area.
How do they know that?I didn’t tell anybody where I was going
.