Always a Witch (18 page)

"Only one way to find out."

I nod. "I know. Let's go in."

Hand in hand, we climb the hill of the driveway toward the house.

Epilogue

CLOMPING UP THE PORCH
, I reach out for the screen door only to have it flung open from the inside. Rowena is standing just inside the doorway, the light shining through her hair. "Finally," she cries gaily, and flings her arms around me.

"Ooof," I mutter in response, but she doesn't seem to notice. Instead, she pulls both of us indoors into the crowded kitchen. It seems that all my family is packed inside, spilling in and out of rooms. Everyone seems to be talking at once, laughing and shouting, but before I can focus on any one thing, Rowena is babbling away in my ear.

"Oh, Agatha called. She said she couldn't get you on your cell. She's coming up tomorrow on the ten a.m. train, not the eleven, so we have to remember to get her at the station, and also, you got a letter from Stanford that is very,
very
thick." She gives my hand a little squeeze. "I think this could be it, Tam. Aren't you excited? You got into
Stanford!
It's what you always wanted!" She's smiling so genuinely at me that I can't help but frown. Luckily, she doesn't seem to notice as she babbles on. "Oh, and I want you to tell me what you think of—"

"What?" I manage to say. "Wait a minute. Agatha's coming here? Stanford?"

My sister gives me a quizzical look. "Yes. She's coming for my wedding. Remember, we invited her last month?" She leads me through the living room, where more of my relatives are clustered.

"Ah, the city girl is back," Uncle Morris says, popping into the air next to me. I jump a little.

"Tamsin," Uncle Chester calls from the corner, where he is juggling pieces of a broken plate through the air. My mother looks up from the couch, smiling at me, before narrowing her eyes at Uncle Chester.

"Okay," I murmur, trying to steady myself against this onslaught of information. "I need a minute here," I mutter to Gabriel. Before anyone can say anything else, I slip out the side door into the backyard.

Where it was snowing just a few minutes ago, a soft breeze scented with jasmine is now blowing and the air feels practically balmy. In spite of everything, I smile and look toward the greenhouse, where one light shines. Typical of my father to call up spring in the middle of December. I wander past my family's altar, which is bedecked with red and gold leaves and a basket of apples and sweet herbs. The apples are so deeply scarlet that they're almost glowing in the moonlight. And then my feet take me a little farther out into the meadow and I'm drawn to a simple stone marker adorned with a wreath of dried purple flowers. Crouching down, I gently push the wreath aside to read the engraved words: thom greene.

"They came here in 1899. Isobel and Cera, Philben and Phineaus. A few of us stayed in the city and bought the house on Washington Square that you well know. But those four wanted the peace of the countryside, where they could live unhindered."

Turning my head, I regard my grandmother, who has come to stand beside me. Her breathing is light and shallow, but the moonlight is kind to her, smoothing out the wrinkles from her face until she almost seems like a young girl again. Like the girl I met in another garden in 1939. Her eyes shine at me. "Well done, Tamsin. No one else could have accomplished it."

Shrugging, I clamber to my feet. There are a hundred things I could say, but I say the only one. "It's really gone, isn't it?"

My heart beats painfully in my chest until my grandmother bows her head and says one word. "Yes."

I draw in one breath, then another as a sudden realization floods through me. At last I understand why my grandmother raised me the way she did. For seventeen years she let me think that I didn't have a Talent so I would understand just how to live now that it's truly gone. I press my hands to my eyes. "But what am I now?" I ask her, my voice a thin thread under the star-filled sky. "I'm not a witch now. And I'm not an ordinary person? Am I?"

My grandmother is watching me steadily. Slowly she takes my hand. "You are a beacon for us. One of the most powerful."

"I'm not," I say softly. "Not anymore."

Smiling, my grandmother presses my hand. "Always, Tamsin. Because of you, we have a future. That's why you will
always
be a beacon for us." Still holding my hand, she turns toward the house, toward the sound of laughter and music spilling out from the lit windows.

Looking back at her, I smile, close my eye in her trademark wink, and say, "Ah."