Witches (30 page)

A man in a tacky plaid sport suit passed by and gawked. She stuck her tongue out at him.

Her attention came back with a start to what her sister was blabbering on about at the other end of the phone.

“I can’t wait until you get here.”

Rebecca could almost hear the fear in Jessie’s plea; it fell heavy on her senses like a descending blanket.

“Put on the coffeepot and something to eat...and I’ll see you real soon, Sis.”

“Okay...good bye.”

“Good bye.”

Right before the click came, she added softly, “Don’t worry about Amanda, Jessie. I’ll find her and bring her back...even if I have to go to hell itself. I promise. No matter what it takes. We’ll find her.”

Then she cut the connection.

Even if I have to go to hell itself.

As Rebecca replaced the receiver on its hook, she frowned. The words hung before her like ghosts on the air. A sudden chilling breeze had caressed her face and as sure as she was standing there in her tacky robe and curlers, an ominous forewarning settled on her shoulders like a shadowy cloud.

Rebecca knew.

Amanda’s crossed someone or something that has a hell of a lot of power. Malevolent as all get out. I can feel it, as weak as my magic is. It ain’t just a cult or a witch, neither. It’s more. Much more.

It’s BIG.

That was as far as she got with the premonition. Any further probing after that was like hitting a blank wall.

Something doesn’t want me to know.

My, my,
Amanda. You are in deep shit, aren’t you? You’ve crossed somebody very, very powerful and heaven knows what the price is gonna be to get you out.

Rebecca only hoped that it wasn’t already too late. She sure had a bad feeling about all this.

What the hell had happened back there in Canaan, anyway, and where the hell was her sister? She couldn’t stop the horrible thought from seeping through: was she even still alive?

Tituba had crawled out of her pocket and was perched on her shoulder as she trudged back to her hotel room. He was babbling a mile a minute about how if she tried to save Amanda
she’d
be in way over her head.

Rebecca listened because Tibby was usually right, even if he was a little coward at times. He knew what he had to say wouldn’t stop her—and she proved him right.

“I’m going, no matter what you say. No matter how dangerous it is. She’s my sister, damn it.” Her jaw set, her eyes blazing.

Tibby threw his tiny paws up in the air.

Rebecca dressed in her black stretch pants and long black blouse, and hurriedly packed the rest of her clothes. Her pentagram necklace glittered around her neck. She always wore black. Part of her witch show.

She’s still alive,
Tituba told her with his thoughts. He was sitting on the edge of the hotel bed. A small ebony dot on the huge white chenille bedspread.

Hurry,
mistress. You haven’t a hell of a lot of time to save her. If you can.

That worried Rebecca more than anything Jessie had had to say.

She called her agent and canceled the rest of the tour. Her agent didn’t like it, but then Rebecca didn’t give her much time to complain before she hung up on her. She made plane reservations and called a taxi, and then headed out the door after slipping on her black sweater, munching on one of the candy bars she’d stashed away for emergencies as she went. No time for breakfast now. She had fifty five minutes to drop off her room key, settle her bill, get to the hick airport, and catch her plane. Maybe she could get some food at the airport. She hoped so. It was hard to stay plump when you ran around as much as she had lately.

Five minutes later, she was running toward the yellow taxi pulled up in front of the manager’s office. She just made her plane. Barely.

Chapter Nine

As the days went by, Amanda became sure of three things: She had to better hide or get rid of the cache of potions and black magic paraphernalia that Rachel had left behind, destroy the book of spells, and learn to fit into the society she’d found herself thrust into. There was no telling how long she would be there, and without Rachel’s or her own powers with which to protect herself, the cellar was too dangerous to leave as it was.

Yet when she pulled the brick away over the hearth, the book was gone. She had no doubt that Amadeus had taken and gotten rid of it, remembering how he had reacted the night she’d been examining it. If he had taken it, he wasn’t about to cough it up.

With Maggie’s help she cleaned out the cellar the first week, only rescuing the herbs she might need for medicinal use and some of the rarer plants. She carted away and tossed most of the repugnant evidence into the pond close by or buried it out deep in the woods. Soon the cellar only contained canned vegetables and fruit. The secret room held only the basic herbs most midwives or healers might possess. At least they couldn’t accuse her of practicing
black
magic.

Lizzy had gotten better every day until her cough and fever were gone and her cheeks were a healthy pink. She’d loved Amanda almost unconditionally from the very beginning, which amazed Amanda. It took Maggie a little longer, she’d had
to learn to trust her, but soon she was a different child, as well. They both were. In the lovely but simple dresses that Amanda made for them and the moccasins she fashioned from the soft leather that Joshua brought, Amanda realized that even Maggie could be a stunner.

Amanda became attached to both children, more so every day, no matter how she tried to rationalize the reasons not to. They needed her and she needed them. They gave her life a purpose she’d been lacking for a long time.

Joshua—he visited them in late afternoons when he’d finished his chores, arriving with food or other small gifts. Leather for footwear. Bonnets for the children. A shawl for Maggie. Meat for the table. A helping hand. Sometimes he’d stay for supper. He was kind and considerate to the girls and Maggie developed a crush on him.

Amanda couldn’t help but love him, drawn to him not only because he was her Jake, but because the physical attraction between them was too strong for either of them to resist for long.

As insane as it was, they were soon lovers. Discreet, because of the children, but lovers all the same. When the girls were asleep, they’d take a blanket into the woods and make love under the warm night skies. They’d talk about the things all lovers talked about. Except about Amanda being a witch or her previous life. As much as she hated lying to him, inventing a personality and past that really wasn’t hers, she had to—to Joshua she was Rachel.

He asked her to marry him one night as they lay in each other’s arms and gazed up at the stars. He wanted her and the girls to live with him on his farm. More than anything in the world Amanda wanted to say yes, but she couldn’t. What happened if she did marry him and then suddenly found herself whisked back to her own time? What if she regained her powers and was able to return, but had to leave him behind? He had a destiny to complete here and Amanda could destroy the fabric of time by yanking him away. He no more belonged in her time than she did in his.

Most importantly, he didn’t know she was a witch. The very thought of confessing that made her heart constrict. She already knew him well enough to know he’d never accept what she was. He was, after all, a man of his times and lived in a small world bound by his strict upbringing and religious beliefs. Jake had been an atheist. Joshua was a full-fledged Christian who went to church every Sunday with his mother and brother. He believed she wasn’t a witch, wasn’t what the townspeople accused her of being. She left it at that.

She was content and accepted every day as a gift from a somehow sardonically humorous God who sent her back into harm’s way, just to present her with the long-lost love of her life and the two children she’d always wanted. A bittersweet happiness.

Her old life was becoming more the dream with each day. By the second week, she could go a whole hour and not even think of it. Though she missed her sisters and friends, her pottery, she often found herself smiling blissfully, which always caught her off guard. There were times when she’d look around, rub her eyes, and shake her head, unable to believe that any of it was real. That she was still there, playing house, playing mother to another woman’s children, and falling in love all over again with Jake. It was a miracle. It was hell. Yet she believed deep down in her soul that there was some reason she was there, besides to take Rachel’s punishment. That belief
kept her sane.

With Maggie’s help, she fixed the windows so that they could open and shut them. She redecorated the cottage as well as she could, with Joshua’s help. He was a generous man. In a week, it didn’t even look like the same dwelling.

She visited Black Pond once out of curiosity, not that she expected to find Rachel there—she didn’t. There was nothing except the supple young willow tree, the serene water and the pond animals. No Rachel, no ghost, just as she’d suspected. The place, in all its brooding oppressive silence, was empty, though the mist, as Maggie had warned her, was heavy as pea soup. A cursed place even then, Amanda could feel it around her like a dark shroud. She didn’t stay long. If there were any answers to her problem, they weren’t there for her to find. Not yet.

Maggie informed her that it was July, though the girl couldn’t read and she wasn’t sure which day exactly. Amanda made another mental note to teach Maggie how to read, if she was there long enough. The days were scorchers, bright and vividly blue, but the nights were cool under the forest’s trees. After she’d been with the children for two weeks, Amanda decided that the next Saturday was the day she’d finally venture into the town marketplace and try to barter away Rachel’s jewelry for the other things they needed. She was dying for real sugar to put in her tea. Nobody drank coffee yet, she recalled from some history book. She sure missed it. Cider, beer, water or milk was all that was available in sixteen ninety four. Flour, so she could bake more than cornbread. More plates. Featherbeds for the girls. Amanda was sick of seeing them sleeping on bags of cornhusks. Maggie tried to dissuade her from going into town under the present conditions, but Amanda was determined to begin on Rachel’s new reputation as soon as possible. She couldn’t let the townspeople keep believing that she was evil. She had to start somewhere and sometime. Maggie was overruled.

It was in the second week that the Indians came.

One morning when she opened the door, a wooden bucket in her hands to go for water at the creek, they were standing there before the cottage, staring at her. No telling how long they’d been there waiting. Two braves and a squat, stony-faced woman in white buckskin with pitch-slate eyes and hair laced with gray.

One of the braves was the Indian who’d given her the panther tooth necklace.

“Ma?” Maggie’s voice behind her was scared. “What do they want?” She was cringing behind Amanda in the doorway. The girl lowered her voice to a soft whisper. “They are Pequot. Last spring it was Pequot who massacred the settlers down at Mustang Creek. Every last one. Even the children.”

“It’s all right, Maggie,” Amanda answered, never taking her eyes off the Indians. “They don’t mean us any harm.” She was sure of that somehow, by the calmness of their movements, the desperation in their faces. They needed something. Help.

The brave she’d met in the woods walked up to her and gestured with his hands toward the woods. His hands air-molded what she believed were teepees or dwellings. Then he pointed at her, himself, and the other two Indians and toward the woods again. His dark velvet eyes were worried. She noticed that he was older than she’d thought. There was gray in his hair, too.

“You want me to come with you to your village?” Amanda asked aloud. He didn’t understand. She duplicated his earlier gestures but pointed at herself first.

He nodded solemnly. His expressive hands described a person lying down. He made little circling motions on his skin. A rash? Touched his forehead and acted as if he were very hot. Fever. Someone was sick, she thought. By the fear in his expression, someone very dear to him.

“Someone is ill back at his village,” Amanda translated to Maggie, who was distrustfully peeking out at the Indians, Amadeus in her arms. He jumped down. “They want me to come.”

“Ma, thou art going with them? Savages? What will we do if thou art not allowed to return?” Maggie asked, grabbing at Amanda’s arm as she moved through the doorway toward their visitors.

“Don’t worry, Maggie, they won’t hurt me. I know they won’t.” She turned to look down at her. “Can you manage here by yourself for a while?”

“Aye. I always have before,” the girl retorted, straightening herself up to her full height.

The brave urgently motioned for her to follow as if he was trying to hurry her. The other two Indians were already tromping back into the woods.

“I’ll try to be back as soon as I can,” Amanda promised, hugging Maggie quickly.

The brave touched his necklaces of feathers and teeth and looked at her bare throat.

The necklace, she thought, he wants me to put on the necklace.

“It’s in the house,” she said, pointing behind her. He crossed his arms, and waited, his ebony eyes impatient.

Putting the bucket down by the door, she reentered the cottage, retrieved the necklace from where she’d stashed it away that first night, and slipped it around her neck. She’d need medicines, so she grabbed the egg basket and walked past the Indian toward the cellar with Amadeus underfoot, staying close.