Always a Witch (17 page)

"Listen," Cera says fiercely, snatching another bunch of herbs to shred into the fire. "Back in the old countries, before we came here, we were followed and persecuted. Sometimes killed for what we had. By those very same
people.
My own great-grandmother was burned at the stake because she could ease anyone's pain and heal most sicknesses. I watched, in a crowd full of those very same people she had cured, as a man dressed all in gray lit the sticks below her feet on fire. And that night we fled. My mother, my brothers, my grandmother and grandfather. My cousins. We had no choice. Except to stay away from those people for the rest of our lives and to make sure our children did as well." She pauses, studies her knotted hands. "And I hope you'll teach your own children the same."

"I don't know about that," I say slowly. "I thought I was one of those
very same people
for so long. My best friend is one of those people. My Aunt Beatrice married someone who wasn't Talented. They're not so bad," I finish, staring down at my green-stained fingers. "Jessica wants to be one of those very same people." I press the little stem of dried leaves to my lips, inhale the scent. It's not working. I think I'd need a bucketful of heartsease.

Cera crosses to the other side of the room and reaches up one hand to unhook another hanging bunch of herbs.

There is a creak of carriage wheels. Gabriel sits upright, his eyes flaring open. "What's going on?" he murmurs thickly.

Cera's face turns toward the window and I follow her gaze. First Phineaus climbs out of the carriage and then turns, holding open the door. Philben emerges with a body wrapped in a long dark cloak. As he shifts his burden, the cloak falls back. I can see the edge of Jessica's sleeve and her white throat. Philben glances at the sky, then toward the house. His face is inscrutable. Then he and Phineaus turn and head toward the woods, following the path that Isobel took earlier. In just seconds, they are swallowed up by the darkness of the woods.

Shivering, I look away.

Cera regards me for a moment and her face is just as inscrutable as her brother's was a moment earlier. "It will be over quickly," she murmurs, and pressing the rest of the heartsease into my hand, she turns and leaves the room. A minute later, I hear the front door slam.

"Tam?" Gabriel says from the couch.

"They've got her," I say tonelessly. I cross the room again and sink down beside his chair. After a minute, I feel his fingers in my hair.

"There's still time," he says.

"What?"

"To stop this."

I struggle upright and stare at him. His skin is flushed, but his breathing is steady as he says, "We don't have to go through with this. We can go into the woods, grab Jessica, and go back to our time."

I shake my head. "That solves nothing. I can't bring a Knight into the future. They're determined. And for some reason the book is telling them that it's her. The youngest daughter's sacrifice." I stare into the flames. Sacrifice.
Apparently, you don't understand what it means to sacrifice for your family.

Bolting upright, I say, "Alistair."

Gabriel's gaze darts to the window as he struggles to sit up. "What? Where?"

"No, sorry. Not here. It's something he said. Something at that Knight dinner about how he saved his family by sacrificing himself." I jump to my feet. "It's not Jessica they need. Or they do, but not just her. I have to go."

"Wait," Gabriel says, coming to his feet. "I'm coming with you."

"No, you can't. You're not ... Sorry. I know I'm not supposed to tell you what to do."

"Oh, Tamsin," Gabriel says with a beatific smile as he links his arm through mine. I try not to stagger as he leans most of his weight on me. "There's hope for you after all."

I don't have the heart to contradict him.

Twenty-Four

A SHARP WIND IS RISING
as we exit the farmhouse, making the weathervane horse spin and spin. Clouds have scudded across the moon. Our feet crunch over frozen ridges of earth as we run for the woods. I stumble once in the complete darkness, and Gabriel's hand tightens on mine.

"This way," he says after a second, leading me to an overgrown path that winds into the tangle of trees.

"Please don't let it be too late." I whisper those words over and over as we thrash our way through brambles and low-hanging branches. Finally, up ahead I can see pale ladders of smoke climbing into the sky. They've started the bonfire already.

We took a life. A terrible solution...
my grandmother's voice cautions.

"
Took
is the operative word here," I mutter to myself, just as the wind, redolent of herbs and pine, slaps me in the face.

We thrash our way through the trees until finally we break into the clearing. Through the flames I can make out the four points of the massive altar on which Jessica is now lying. Isobel stands to the North of the altar with Philben on her left for the East and Phineaus below her to the South. Cera, her face calmly sorrowful, stands at the right of the altar, representing the West. A low chanting rises from the woods and fields that surround the altar. Shadowy forms and faces flicker through the smoke and firelight. The rest of the Greene family has assembled.

Gabriel steps up beside me, puts one hand on my shoulder just as Cera holds her two cupped palms over the altar. A thin stream of dirt trickles from her fingers as she intones in a clear voice, "Earth, rich and deep, nourisher of all, from life to death, calls to the West. Accept our offering."

"Accept our offering," everyone says at once.

Next Isobel sways forward, her face intent. She, too, cups her palms over the altar, then leans down and blows on them once. "Air, giver of breath, invisible to all, from life to death, calls to the North. Accept our offering."

"Accept our offering."

I close my eyes and think back to the last moment I saw my grandmother. I'd sat at her feet in the library. She had sent everyone else out of the room just after she had Rowena consult the book that showed our future as a great empty blank space.
Remember, it's up to you to allow when a
person's Talent can work on you and when it can't. It's entirely your choice.

Opening my eyes, I watch Isobel step back, gracefully giving way to Philben. He stretches his palms above the altar and fire licks from his skin to light the four candles placed on the stone slab. "Fire, bright and hot, giver of light, from life to death, calls to the East. Accept our offering."

As everyone repeats these last words, Jessica's eyes flicker open. Her head twists to the left and then the right and then her mouth drops open in terror. Through the rising wind and the chanting, I can't hear what she's saying, but I can only imagine it.

Phineaus moves forward, holding a small gold chalice. I close my eyes.

"Water, sweet and pure, washing away all sorrows, calls to the South. Accept our offering." He tips the chalice forward and anoints the South of the altar with the contents of the cup.

"Accept our offering," all of them echo. They step forward.

Jessica's throat, bare to the moonlight, moves once as if she's swallowing her screams, and her eyes gaze upward as if she's begging for help from the sky above.

A terrible choice,
my grandmother's voice whispers once again to me, and suddenly instead of these nineteenth-century Greenes I can see the ghostly shadows of my family standing around the circle of fire. My mother is smiling up at my father and Rowena is laughing, her face bright with happiness, while all my uncles and aunts crowd in, clapping their hands and turning this way and that, swaying a little in the dark as if they're dancing. And I can see my grandmother, her face glimmering faintly in the moonlight.

"It's not even a choice," I whisper back to her ghost shadow. "Not a choice at all," I add as Gabriel's hand tightens on my shoulder.

I blink once and my shadow family vanishes. Thunder shakes the sky above me, and the rain sheets down. Wind is pouring through the clearing, whipping the flames higher and higher. Cera, with a face of stone, pulls a curved silver knife from her belt. She holds her other hand above Jessica's heart and the firelight catches on the little cameo watch hanging on a fine silver chain.

Cera lifts the knife to the sky, crying out, "Oh, four elements and four directions, guide this knife truly and accept our plea." Lightning cracks, then seems to liquefy and pour directly into her hand, burnishing the blade. With a plunging motion, she thrusts the knife downward.

In that same second, I gather myself and dissolve into Jessica's body. I have the strangest sensation of floating in a sun-warmed lake and then I blink and open my eyes, watching the knife descend like a shard of light.

"Accept my offering," I whisper, just as Cera's voice says,"And this blood spilled will seal the spell."

I close my eyes again, feeling an icicle where my heart used to be. Now I have the sensation of falling through darkening layers of water as I spread myself through Jessica's body, shielding her spirit with my own.
This is my choice, my choice, my choice. I allow this,
I whisper to us both. With the final shreds of strength, I turn Jessica's head to stare at the cameo watch face.

In a blur of blood-red color, the watch hands begin spinning as lightning splinters down again, forming a cage of sparks over the altar. when the hour hand points to one degree east of a new day, I push Jessica's hand against her heart, willing it to heal. Only when her skin fuses together do I wrench myself free of Jessica's body to lie huddled next to her on the cold stone slab. Rain beats down on us both and I have one glimpse of Cera's horrified face before I turn my head back to Jessica. Her eyes are locked on mine, her lips trembling slightly as my blood continues to pour from my chest. A slow soft ticking fills my ears, little miniature chimes of the hour.

"Why?" she whispers.

Or maybe it's my heart beating its last beats as my blood and Jessica's blood seals the Domani.

I form the words slowly in my head, force them to my lips in time with the doleful ringing of bells that is now clanging inside my head. Five, six, seven. "It was the right thing," I whisper.

Her eyes travel downward to where I know my life is spilling away.

I allow this, I allow this, I allow this,
I whisper in my mind, watching her blood and mine mingle.

The clock chimes nine. Quick as thought, Jessica presses her hand over my heart. Blood bubbles up through her fingers. Ten, eleven.

"For once, for once in my life I will use it for when I want to, not for when someone else tells me to..." she whispers.

On the twelfth chime her hand slips away and the edges of her face blur and dissolve into darkness.

Twenty-Five

SOFTNESS. WARMTH. FEATHERS.

Feathers?

Yes, feathers. Tickling my nose.

"Acch-hooo!!" I come to life with a tremendous sneeze. My eyes fly open and I'm confronted with the flat yellow gaze of one of Isobel's ravens. It flaps its wings, resettles itself on the table next to the bed I'm lying in. Jerking its black head left and right, it lets out a sharp caw. And then another for good measure.

"Tamsin?" My gaze swivels downward to where Gabriel is half sitting in a chair and half lying across the foot of the bed. He pushes up on his elbows, blinks his eyes at me once. "You're alive."

I raise one eyebrow. "I see that you were so concerned that you fell asleep over me." The second the words leave my mouth, I'm sorry. The skin around his eyes has taken on a bruised look, and his hands are trembling as he clasps them together. But Gabriel only gives me that long, even look I've come to expect from him and moves closer up the bed to me while I fight my way free of the feather comforter, and then he's holding me so tightly that I can draw only the thinnest of breaths into my lungs.

"Did it work?"

He releases me and nods once. "It did." Then he begins pleating the edge of the coverlet between his fingers.

Someone has to say it. "It's gone, isn't it?" I whisper. "My Talent."

And suddenly tears are burning at the backs of my eyelids and I bring my hands up to my face and start to cry in huge, shuddering gasps.

It worked the way I had hoped.

And the way I had dreaded, too.

"It's in the Domani?" I ask, even though I know the answer.

Gabriel nods again. "It's shielding all of the Knights' power. You ... did it, Tamsin. You found a way to make sure that none of the Knights would ever be able to take it back again."

I lift my head and look at him, tears still dripping from my chin. On the bedside table, the raven hops a few steps closer, cocking its head, studying me.

"So it worked? With Jessica's blood in there, too?"

"Enough of that got in there, too. When you went inside of her, your blood joined with hers."

I shake my head in wonder and then pull open my shirt. The faintest of lines crisscrosses the skin over my heart. "She healed me, though? She used her Talent."

"It was the last time she could. The clock," he says, and I think back to the moments that are now swirled in my head.

"Before it struck twelve," I say. "She healed me."

Gabriel nods. "So you see, Tam? It's not gone, your Talent. It'll always be there in the Domani from now until ... forever."

I nod, knowing there's no way to explain the despair that floods through me. Even though I had hoped for this, even though technically I've known that I had a Talent for only a few short months, the loss of it leaves me hollow inside. Now, staring up at the wooden beamed ceiling at the bunches of dried lavender and roses hanging from the rafters, I contemplate how nothing will ever be the same again.

Gabriel reaches for my hands, but just then the door creaks open. Isobel and Cera enter the room.

The raven squawks, flaps its wings, and circles the room twice. Cera waves her hand in the air, an irritated expression crossing her face as the raven swoops past her head to land on Isobel's shoulder.

"Awake and well?" Cera asks me. I nod. "Any pain?"

Just my heart. It feels like it's missing.

"No," I say softly, aware that Isobel is studying me. She digs one booted foot into the floor.

"Tamsin," she says softly. "I ... what you did ... for us. After everything..." She bows her head. "I'm sorry," she whispers.

"If you don't mind," Cera begins. "I'd like a word with Tamsin. Alone."

Gabriel looks at me. I shrug, so he pulls himself from the chair and he and Isobel move toward the door, shutting it softly behind them.

I turn my head and stare out the small diamond-paned window. The sky is a brilliant clear pink in the east, and the last of the stars are fading. All traces of the storm clouds seem to have blown themselves out.

The chair creaks softly as Cera settles her weight into it. I turn my head against the pillow, inhaling the scent of lavender and pine and something else I can't identify. "That was a brave thing you did, Tamsin," she says quietly, her hands clasped together in her lap. "A very brave thing."

I shrug again, but fresh tears begin leaking from the corner of my eyes.

"A thing that no one else in our family would ever think to do. You willingly gave up your Talent to save us all. I wouldn't have done it. Isobel wouldn't have—"

"You couldn't," I whisper. "It wasn't in the nature of your Talent. Mine was always ... different. My grandmother told me that it was my choice to allow spells or other people's Talents to work on me. So it's not that I—"

But Cera holds up her hand. "No. You made a choice that no one else would have been brave enough to make. Your name will be remembered."

At this I sit up a little farther. "I don't want it to."

Cera frowns at me. "And why not?"

"Because," I say, scrubbing the backs of my hands against my eyes. "I don't want people's pity."

"
Pity?
I hardly—"

"I don't want people to whisper about me any more than they already do, already did before I ... before I knew that I had a Talent. I can handle not having a Talent. I just don't want people to know that I used to." I clench my hands around the covers. It occurs to me that there's one other person who might be feeling something of what I'm feeling.

"I'd like to see Jessica Knight."

Cera hesitates.

"She's alive, right?" I say, suddenly alarmed.

"Of course," Cera says. "She's in the next room. And I think she'd like to see you, too."

I rustle back the bedcovers and place my feet on the floor, feeling the cool wood beneath my toes. I am surprisingly steady on my feet and shake my head at Cera's offer of her arm. As I follow her to the door, my mind churns with the last images of Jessica Knight and what she must be thinking now.

We pass into the narrow, empty hallway and Cera leads me to the door next to mine. "Is she—"

But Cera gives me a little push, and so I knock on the door. After Jessica's "Come in," I turn the knob and enter the room. It's small and narrow, similar in length and proportion to mine. As to be expected, Jessica is not lying in bed. Instead, she is fully dressed in clothes that either Cera or Isobel must have given her, standing with her back to the door, staring out the window. At the sound of my slow footsteps, she turns and opens her mouth, then seems to choke on whatever it was she was going to say. She takes a few steps forward, her face pale in the lamplight, her hair hanging loosely down her back.

"Are you in pain?" I ask her, feeling that this is probably a stupid question. What else would she be in? She just lost her Talent forever. Like me.

Jessica touches the tips of her fingers to her heart. She shakes her head. "No. You took care of that. Are you?"

"No." Then I echo, "You took care of that."

She regards me for a moment without speaking. "Why did you do it, Tamsin?"

And even though I know she knows my real name now, it's still something of a shock to hear her say it. "Which part?"

She flushes a dull red. "Why did you save me?"

I look at the lamp until my eyes ache. "Because you didn't seem like the rest of your family."

When I look back, small orbs of light burst across my vision. "Neither are you," Jessica says slowly. "For once in my life I used my Talent for something ... for something that I wanted to use it for. Not for what my mother or my brother told me to do."

"Is that why you wouldn't save Livie?" I ask, my throat suddenly dry, afraid of her answer.

She blinks at me. "I
did
save Livie. Over and over again. At my brother and my mother's insistence. Only the last time, she ... she looked at me and she begged me to let her die." Jessica draws in a breath. "So, I did." She pauses, touches her throat, and suddenly I realize her fingers are unconsciously seeking her missing cameo pin. The one that's been turned into the new Domani now. But Jessica is still speaking, so I let that thought go. "I'm glad it's gone. I feel ... lighter. I feel free." She is silent for a moment as if waiting for a response, and then when I can't find anything to say, she continues. "I take it you don't feel quite the way I feel."

I shrug. "What will you do now?"

Jessica smiles at me, a full real smile. "I intend to live," she says quietly. "I suggest you do the same."

Jessica, Gabriel, and I stand in silence across the street from the Knights' house, staring at the shattered windowpanes on either side of the front door. Although the street bustles with the usual amount of afternoon traffic, the house seems frozen and still. I have an eerie sense of having been here before. Then it hits me. This is a reverse echo of my grandmother's vision of what could have happened to my family's house in Hedgerow.

"Are they in there?" Jessica asks finally, glancing at us.

Gabriel nods. "Every last one of them."

Then he pauses. "Except for Alistair."

I draw in a shuddering breath. "What do you mean?"

"I can't find him at all." He glances down at me. "He's dead, Tamsin. His body's there, but he's not anymore."

A horse-drawn carriage clips past us, temporarily obscuring my view of the Knights' house. Wrapping my arms around myself, I digest Gabriel's words for a minute. I would have thought this news would come as a relief, but I actually feel numb. "And the rest of the Knights?" I finally ask. "Their Talents?"

Gabriel nods again. "Also gone. All of it." He touches his hand to his temple and I step closer to him.

"How can you be sure?" Jessica asks, giving him a curious glance.

"Because it's the thing that they all desire the most. It's coming out of the house like a tidal wave," he says quietly.

I turn to her. "You don't need to go in there," I say. "I—"

"I'm not afraid of them anymore," she says quietly. "They can't hurt me now."

I arch an eyebrow. "I don't know. La Spider seems pretty handy with a gun."

Jessica's forehead wrinkles slightly. "La Spider?...Oh." One hand flashes up to her mouth to conceal a smile. "My mother." She nods, considering.

"William Finnegan will be glad to see you no matter what," I say softly.

For a long moment, Jessica stares at the broken shell of her family's house. Then she nods, brushes her hands down the skirt of her borrowed dress. "That's true," she says, and her smile breaks free again, lighting her face in a way that makes her almost pretty. She looks at Gabriel and me for a long moment and then says simply, "Goodbye," before turning away and walking down the street.

I wait until she has turned the corner and disappeared for good before saying, "Can you get us home? Is there a home?"

He nods.

"Is it still in Hedgerow?"

"Afraid so, Tam."

I sigh. "Couldn't that have at least changed?"

"Are you sure you don't want to go visit Coney Island while we're here? Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge or something?" Gabriel asks, smiling down at me.

"You're on borrowed time, Gabriel." Then I stop and consider something. So am I, at this moment. And all at once the pain of losing my Talent floods through me again. Blinking back tears, I say lightly enough, "Besides, has the Brooklyn Bridge even been built yet?"

Gabriel rolls his eyes. "Your lack of knowledge about the city you live in is embarrassing. It was built in 1883." Then he grins at me. "I studied up on a lot of nineteenth-century New York facts. I had to do something while I was waiting for you to let me find you."

Sunlight edges across the cobblestones. "Yeah, well. Guess I won't be stopping you from doing that anymore."

"Tam," Gabriel says, but I shake my head.

"Forget it. I'm ready."

He looks like he wants to say more, but he takes my outstretched hands in his and looks inward. I curl my toes in my too-big boots—at last I can wear some other shoes—and turn my face away from the Knight House, up to the sky. I keep my eyes wide open. Who knows if I'll ever see any of this again. Colors swoop in and out of the darkness surrounding me, and I hear my grandmother's voice.
Your daughter will be one of the most powerful we have ever seen in this family. She will be a beacon for us all.

And then we are standing in a familiar driveway staring up at the outlines of my family's house in Hedgerow. Light is blazing from every window and the sound of voices and laughter reaches my ears. Snowflakes drift lazily through the air, the kind that are round and fat and melt so fast.

"You did it," I say to Gabriel, giving his hands a quick squeeze before letting go.

"You doubted me?" he answers, one eyebrow arched.

"Well..."

Come on, he says.

But I can't make my feet move. After a second he turns, his arms swinging a little with the motion. "I can't," I whisper. "I'm..." I turn my face skyward, letting the snowflakes land on my cheeks and eyelashes, taking deep breaths of the frost-tinged air. "I'm not me," I finish.

And then Gabriel is holding me by the shoulders, forcing me to look at him.

"You're exactly you. No, don't shake your head, listen to me," he says, flexing his fingers on my shoulders. "My Talent doesn't make me who I am. Your Talent didn't make you who you are. You're the same person you've been all along. what you did last night, for your family, no one else would have done. That's
you,
Tamsin.
That's who you are.
"

I consider this for a moment. Then, not trusting myself to speak, I nod.

Gabriel pauses, then continues with, "And I love you. I know that doesn't fix anything you're feeling right now, I know that doesn't help, but—"

"It doesn't hurt," I interject, pleased that my voice only cracks a little at the end.

He smiles, cradles my face with his two hands, and kisses me as the snowflakes fall gently all around us.

At last we pull apart. I take a deep breath and say, "We changed so many things in the past, Gabriel. What if everything's so different now?"