Always a Witch (3 page)

Uncle Morris, wearing his usual rumpled suit, is sitting very close to Aunt Beatrice on the love seat. As I watch, he rolls to his feet and deftly hooks two fingers around the neck of an opened bottle of sherry. He refills Aunt Beatrice's glass, but before handing it back to her he turns away and pulls something from his suit pocket. A tiny bottle that he swiftly unstoppers and tips backwards into his own mouth. Aunt Beatrice huffs with impatience.

Frowning, I focus in on my uncle's face. The way he moves, almost with a lazy, catlike grace, is so unlike his usual puttering motion that I can only wonder if the change has something to do with whatever it was that he just drank. As I stare at the scene before me, all at once Alistair's voice comes hissing back into my head.

None of you will ever be free.

"Here you are," Uncle Morris purrs, leaning over my great aunt.

Flinging the door open all the way, I scream, "Aunt Beatrice, stop. Don't drink it!"

Both Uncle Morris and Aunt Beatrice jerk their heads up. The glass slips between their open fingers and falls to the floor, the liquid spraying out in a shining arc.

"Tamsin," Aunt Beatrice snaps, her mouth working as if she's not sure what to yell at me for first. But I can only stare at Uncle Morris as he leaps to his feet and grins at me, a wide un-Uncle-Morris-like grin.

"
Tamsin,
" he echoes, drawing out my name. "The name suits you so much better than—"

Reaching out with my mind, I slam up against the force that is
not
Uncle Morris and yank hard. All at once, a shimmering, twisting light pours from Uncle Morris's chest and reforms itself into a tall man with a mass of lion-colored hair. He is wearing dark formal clothes from another time, and as I stare at him, my mouth slightly open, he takes off his hat and tips it to me. "A pleasure to see you again," he murmurs. "But I do wish you had waited for the proper time. Your charming aunt was just telling me so many fascinating things about you all."

"Oh," Aunt Beatrice murmurs, crumpling off the couch to land on the floor. She clutches the collar of her green silk robe to her throat with knotted fingers.

"Stay back, Aunt Beatrice," I warn her and then stare at poor Uncle Morris's body. "What have you done to him?" I hiss.

The man glances down at my uncle, smiles again. "Him? He'll live. He might have even enjoyed the experience." And with that he nudges my uncle's body with one foot. Uncle Morris coughs faintly, but his eyes remain closed.

"Well, you won't enjoy this," I snap. Holding up one palm, I shoot a gust of fire directly at him.

At least I try to. Nothing happens. Not even a spark flutters out from under my skin.

The man lifts one eyebrow at me. "Impressive," he murmurs. "Truly. And now, having confirmed what I needed to, I'll be on my way."

Stunned, I hold up my other hand and try again. I imagine a pure jet of flame knocking squarely into the man's chest. But nothing happens.

"Aunt Beatrice," I scream. "Freeze him." I bolt forward as my aunt, who is now kneeling beside Uncle Morris, raises her head, gives me a doubtful glance, and then tries to stand. But her feet are tangled up in her bathrobe sash and she tips sideways, giving a little whimper as she goes down.

The man clicks his tongue against his cheek and shakes his head in a mock sorrowful fashion. "And this is the legendary Greene family? How in the world did you people ever triumph over us?" he asks, spreading his hands to the ceiling as if seeking the answer there.

Not wasting any time with words, I shove my hand toward his forehead, intending to freeze him. But he sidesteps me easily, knocks my hand aside, and then captures both of them between his own. He pulls me up against him and we stare at each other, our faces inches apart. And even at this very inopportune moment, I notice that he has the most unusual eyes I have ever seen, pale gray with definite streaks of silver that wheel outward from his pupils.

Stop staring into his eyes, you idiot!

But still, I can't look away, and he seems to understand that, judging by the way his full lips curve into a delighted smile. "It was
such
a pleasure," he murmurs as if we're alone in the room. "I do wish we could have gotten to know each other better." Then he pauses, seems to consider. "Well, perhaps I do have a moment. And who could resist you?" And before I can even react, he leans down and kisses me fully on the mouth.

I struggle, but then suddenly the whole world narrows down to the feel of his mouth on mine. The hazy thought that I've never kissed someone with a mustache before enters my head before a wave of cold clarity breaks over my skin. The usual reaction when someone is trying to use a Talent on me.

The next second he's released me and I stumble backwards. He smoothes the corners of his mustache, then says lightly, "Another time?" as if asking for a rain check.

"Oh, and please, don't be angry with your young man. He did put up a very good fight, after all. I'd hate to be the cause of a lovers' quarrel."

I stare at him blankly for one second.
Gabriel? What happened to him?
Furious, I swing my hand at him again, but he steps sideways.

And vanishes in midair.

The wind whips through the still-open French doors, swirling through my hair.

"Oh, dear," Aunt Beatrice whimpers. "I don't think he was who I thought he was."

I sink to the floor, next to Uncle Morris's body. "No kidding," I mutter, dragging the back of my hand against my lips.

Three

"
HE SAID IT WAS SUCH
a pleasure to see you?" my mother exclaims for what must be the third time. She raises her mug of tea to her lips but puts it down again, untasted as far as I can tell. "Why? Why would he say that?"

I still don't have an answer for her, so I stare at my own cup of rapidly cooling tea. Better than looking around the room, confronting the fear and worry on everyone's faces. My mother and father, awakened by Aunt Beatrice's yelps, rushed down the stairs two minutes after the stranger had disappeared. Disheveled with sleep, they listened to my stumbling and confused account of what had just happened, made even more stumbling and confusing due to Aunt Beatrice's querulous interjections and the sight of Uncle Morris moaning on the floor. At which point my grandmother had walked slowly into the parlor, leaning heavily on Rowena, and I had to start the whole story again.

My grandmother had listened silently until my voice stuttered to a halt. Then she sent my sister to the stillroom, and when Rowena returned clutching a small brown bottle, she had tipped most of its contents down Uncle Morris's throat. The room suddenly filled with the scent of honeysuckle and black pepper and glue, and Uncle Morris had coughed and gagged and screwed his face up until I was fervently glad that I wasn't the one drinking that stuff. But whatever it was seemed to work, because he sat up and demanded in a rusty-sounding voice that I bring him a real drink, right away. My mother had tried to question him as to what happened, but he shuddered, swilled half his glass of wine in one swallow, and repeated that he couldn't remember anything after falling asleep on the couch earlier in the evening. Beatrice finished her own glass of wine, then eyed Uncle Morris's half-full glass hopefully, and that's when my mother had told them both to get some rest. After that we had all made our way into the library, where my grandmother had sunk slowly into her favorite chair, seemingly lost in thought.

"Why would he want to meet Tamsin?" my sister asks suddenly from where she's sitting next to our grandmother.

"Thanks," I say, but my heart isn't in it because she looks so tiny in the green armchair. Plus her face is too pale and she's methodically rubbing her left wrist against the side of her bathrobe.

She flashes me a look that I could interpret in my sleep, then sits up straighter and addresses my grandmother. "We need to consult the book. We need to get a glimpse of the future so we know what to do, what to think about"—here she lifts one hand, gestures toward the window as if to encompass the outside world—"all of this."

As if compelled, all our eyes swivel to the book lying closed on the library desk. The heavy black cover is embossed with twining leaves and arcane symbols that blur in my vision as I think back to the last time I was in this library with my grandmother. The words that she uttered then come swirling back into my head:

I can see nothing for our future. Nothing, as in, we will no longer exist. The pages are empty in a way that they never have been before.

Now I stare at my grandmother, willing her to speak. She brings one hand to her forehead, her fingers pressing and kneading the wrinkles there. "It's no use," she says at last, and I look down as everyone turns back to her.

"But why?" Rowena protests after a moment, and I have to wonder at how bleak everyone must be feeling, since normally my grandmother's word would never be questioned. "We've always consulted the future to understand the—"

My grandmother drops her hand and says, "Look to the past this time, Rowena—1887."

My sister seems about to object, but then stands up and approaches the book. "Wouldn't you rather..." Her voice trails away. I study my tea again.

"I don't have the strength anymore," my grandmother says at last, her voice as deep and steady as ever.

Jerking my head up, I look at my mother and then at my sister. They both look grave but unsurprised.

My mother stands up abruptly, knocking over the cup that she has balanced precariously on the edge of her chair. Dark tea soaks into the rug, but she doesn't seem to notice as she joins my father at the window, her arms swinging a little with displaced energy. Both of my parents lean forward as if bracing themselves against a bitter wind.

Rowena murmurs a single word and then opens the book. I stare down at my hands, flexing my fingers cautiously. I try to shoot a small spurt of flame at the tea-stained carpet by my feet, but just as before, nothing happens. My skin doesn't even tingle the way it used to before the fire erupted from my palm.

Looking up, I catch my grandmother's eyes on mine and I immediately clasp my hands together in my lap again. I had left out that small detail of no longer being able to use the power of fire in my general account of the evening. The sound of whispering pages pulls at my attention, and I stare at my sister. Her lips move soundlessly, one finger skimming down the length of the book as she reads. Then abruptly, her face goes even whiter than before.

"What is it?" my father says, stepping forward. His hands clench by his side. Reflexively, I check the sky outside the library window, expecting a violent storm to blot out the wisps of sunrise-pink clouds at any second.

"This wasn't here before," my sister whispers. She throws a quick look at my grandmother, who gives a tiny nod, then continues, "
In 1887, in the dying days of October, just before Samhain, a stranger arrived in New York City, claiming to know more than he possibly could. He was seen calling upon La Spider, the matriarch of the Knight family.
" Rowena lifts her head again to stare blindly across the room, while crumpling the long fingers of her hand into a fist. "Alistair. He made it back there."

"We have to do something," I snap. "We're not going to just sit here and let him try, right? He's gone back to a time before ... before the Domani exists. He's going to tell the Knights about it. What if our family can't make the Domani because of what he tells them? What if the Knights ... win?

My family was forced to create the Domani in 1887, when the Knights, a rival witch family, began to threaten the Greenes and their way of life. Somehow they managed to capture all of the Knights' power, isolate it in one object—the Domani—and assign a Keeper for it. Over the generations, the Keepers changed. For safety's sake, no one knew who the Keeper was at any time. And no one knew what the Domani was, since it kept changing its appearance, too. Outside of the Keeper no one was able to touch the Domani and still live.

Except for me.

Back when I'd thought Alistair Knight was really Alistair Callum, just a professor at NYU, I'd agreed to help him find a lost family heirloom. I hadn't known then who the Knights were, what the Domani was, or that I actually did have a Talent. I hadn't known a lot of things. But I did find the Domani. Once as a wall clock in 1899, once as a pocket watch in 1939, and once in the present day as the clock in Grand Central Station. And then I became the Keeper. For now.

"But what if he doesn't succeed?" my mother asks the room in general. "If he's Traveled back to 1887, how long can he last there anyway?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, because no one else seems confused by that statement. Everyone gives me blank looks until Rowena, adopting her favorite "Clearly I know more than you know and that's the way it will be until the end of time" tone, answers me.

"It's a rule of Traveling. A Traveler can't stay long in the place that he's Traveled to before he suffers ill effects."

Tightening my fingers on the handle of my mug, I ask, "Ill effects?"

"Death," she says succinctly.

"Oh." I sit back in my chair and contemplate this. Just a few months ago, Gabriel and I had Traveled twice, but we never seemed to suffer any ill effects. Then again, we were in 1899 and 1939 for less than an hour each time. "How long?"

"Well, no one really experiments with this, Tam," my sister says, frowning at me. She seems on the verge of adding something else, but then doesn't. I can tell that she's still wondering how I managed to Travel back to 1899 and 1939. Only my grandmother knows that Gabriel took me and not the other way around.

"Three days," my grandmother says suddenly. "I remember that from our history. Three days is generally the limit."

My mother seizes on that. "Maybe he won't be able to do much in just three days?" she asks hopefully.

Rowena and I both resume staring at my mother. "Are you kidding me?" I ask. For once, my sister doesn't even bother with words. Yanking back the sleeve of her robe, Rowena thrusts her arm forward. Faint scars glimmer on her skin.

A slow rumble of thunder sounds in the distance. My father's jaw is set.

"Obviously, he's succeeding," I whisper. "Otherwise, why was this stranger able to come here tonight?"

"Camilla," my grandmother says, her voice quiet and even. "Everyone. Leave the room. Everyone leave, except Tamsin."

Two spots of color blaze suddenly in my mother's cheeks, but she turns and leaves the room without another word—although she does throw a pretty eloquent burning glance at me. My father follows, and last of all my sister, who closes the door softly behind her.

The fire cracks through the otherwise silent room, and I get up, cross to my grandmother's chair, and kneel by her side. She puts her hand on my hair, smoothing back the curls from my forehead.

"I have to go back," I say finally. "To 1887."

She sighs. "I know."

Shadows skip across the hearth, pooling around the paws of the china dog statues that stand at attention on either side of the fireplace. I hold up my hands again as if asking my grandmother to inspect them. "I lost it. I tried to throw fire at the stranger tonight and couldn't. Why?"

My grandmother shifts in her chair. "I wondered about that. I suspect your powers of assimilation are only temporary. As in, you can borrow other people's Talents, but only for so long."

"How long?" I ask slowly, turning my hands over, examining the tips of my fingers.

"That I don't know. See if you still have Beatrice's power."

I quit examining my hands to look up at my grandmother. "Now? On you?"

"Well, unless you see anyone else in the room," my grandmother murmurs.

"What if I can't ... unfreeze you?"

My grandmother snorts. "It does wear off. After a week. And I highly doubt you're going to lose it between one blink of an eye and the next."

I swallow as my grandmother juts her forehead toward my trembling fingers. Her sweetly sharp scent wraps around me as I reach up, touch her brow with the lightest of taps. She stills into immobility, her eyelids frozen in the act of blinking. In a sudden rush of panic, I tap her forehead again, harder than the first time, and she draws in a breath, leans back. "Well, that answers that. You still have the power to freeze people."

"For how long?"

"You acquired it a week or two after you acquired the power of fire, yes?" I nod. "So you have a little time perhaps."

I swallow, then voice my most pressing fear. "I have to go alone."

My grandmother leans back and closes her eyes, and I try not to notice how the skin sags around her jaws, leaving the bones of her cheeks to stand out in sharp contrast. "I suspect Gabriel will have a hard time with that," she says at last.

"I know, but how can I let him come with me?"

My grandmother opens her eyes and regards me down the length of her nose. "I don't know that you can
let
him do anything, Tamsin."

I duck my head and try not to think of how incredibly angry Gabriel's going to be with me if I don't at least give him the option. But I can't. Not after what Rowena told me tonight about the long-term effects of Traveling.

"Those effects of Traveling—that doesn't apply to me, right? I mean, nothing else seems to touch me so—"

"I doubt that Traveling will harm you in the same way that it does other people. Nothing seems to apply to you in the normal fashion," my grandmother adds wryly. "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."

This I already know, since I was able to let Gabriel take me back to different times. But now I voice my next niggling thought. "Still, if I ditch Gabriel, it's going to be impossible to Travel back anyway. We only Traveled twice, so I don't have that power." Visions of tricking Gabriel into using his Talent on me three times while I secretly resist scurry through my head, leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth. But there seems to be no other way.

"Of course, there is another way," my grandmother says now, and I look up with a start, then remind myself that she can't use her own Talent of walking through my mind unless I let her.

"How?" I ask.

She regards me for a moment as if expecting me to come up with the answer. And then I do.

The Domani!