Witches (37 page)

Her body stiffly braced against the rising winds, she kept marching away from the frozen pond and toward the man waiting in the car. By the lowered sun, she guessed she’d been gone at least two hours.

“How’d it go?” Ernie asked after she’d gotten in the front seat. God, it felt good to get out of the cold. Ernie had the heater on and Rebecca took off her cap and gloves and tried to rub some life back into her hands.

She slid her puffy eyes over to look at the man calculatingly. “Do you really want to know, or are you just making polite conversation?”

There was a hint of irritation in his voice when he retorted, “I really want to know.”

She was ready now to take any offered help she could get. To hell with her pride. There was too damn much at stake, so she told him. Everything. The look on his face when she expressed her budding suspicion that the formidable force behind Rachel’s strength could be Satan himself was worth it. It almost made her laugh, as frightened as she was, and helped take some of the pressure off her.

“That’s ridiculous,” Ernie said, but his face again betrayed him. He’d listened to everything Rebecca had said and she knew that, though he didn’t want to believe in the supernatural, he could no longer pretend, after what he’d seen and heard that it didn’t exist. The cult and what they’d done had almost been enough to convince him.

Now Rebecca did laugh out loud. “Well, impossible or not, if I want my sister back, I’m going to have to fight the Devil for her. The cult and Rachel, I believe, are Satan’s creatures all.”

Rebecca pointed her finger at the starter of the car and the vehicle roared into life. She waved another finger and the stick shift moved into drive. Ernie had to grab wildly at the steering wheel as the car lurched forward or they would have ended up against a tree.

A newly-lit cigarette had mysteriously appeared in his mouth. With two fingers, he took it out and gaped at it. Then before Ernie could sputter a word, his mouth still gaping open in surprise at what she’d done, she asked sweetly, “Could I talk you into giving me a ride to my hotel so I can pack, and call the airport for plane reservations? I need to take this book to an ancient-language specialist I know in England. Right away. I think it might help us get Amanda back.”

“Sure,” Ernie said without hesitation, putting the cigarette back between his lips as if nothing had happened, and concentrating on steering the car.

“I’ll do anything to help you get Amanda back safely.”

He turned a pair of tenacious eyes on her, his jaw going hard. “Anything—but you have to let me help. In fact, I insist. I’m a God-fearing man and I’m not afraid of dead witches—or Satan. It sure sounds to me as if you’re going to need help. A lot of help.”

Rebecca got the message and merely nodded tiredly before she slumped back against the seat. Tibby was still sleeping on her shoulder, and she took him in her hands and gently tucked him back into her coat pocket. “Okay. You can help. I’m too weary to fight you anymore. Just don’t say I never warned you when the shit hits the fan.” She had to get to London and talk to someone. Find out what was in the book. She had to get some sleep sometime, too.

“Good,” Ernie said, as he turned left down another road and drove them back to the hotel. “About time you listened to somebody. Witch or no witch.”

Rebecca smiled, crossed her arms over her plump, coated stomach, and fell immediately asleep.

It was nice to have friends.

Chapter Thirteen

Once Ernie dropped her at her hotel, she called the airport and booked a flight on the next plane out to Heathrow in London, which left in four hours. Ernie left, saying he’d be back to drive her to the airport. Outside, twilight was replacing daylight. Still no snow.

Then Rebecca took a long hot bath, as Tibby slept like a dead mouse on her pillow. She curled up on the bed beside him later and scrutinized what she’d dug up from under the willow tree. With the faint light from the bedside lamp pouring over her, she scanned the yellowed pages. She still couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Could even be in the Old Language itself. It still gave her strange vibrations when she held it. Just being in the same room with it gave her the shivers. Black magic always did that.

She was beginning to believe the book was a book of spells. That would explain her reaction to it. She couldn’t wait to have it decoded. One of the spells might be the one Rachel used on Amanda to drag her into the past; one of the other spells might be the one that explained how to get her back.

She frowned deeply, shook her head, and leaned back on the pillow with a weary sigh. She desperately needed a nap and her body was vocally rebelling from that lovely trek she’d just taken out in the desolate wilderness. Every muscle she had was moaning.

There was only one person she knew who could probably decipher the thing: Winifred Harris, her sometime book researcher. An old, eccentric, but highly skilled professor of ancient English languages at the London University. She’d met Winifred a score of years ago after one of her own books on witchcraft had come out. The woman had bluntly e-mailed just to inform her that she had some of her facts wrong.

Amused by the woman’s gumption, Rebecca had e-mailed her back and soon they’d become transatlantic, electronic pen pals. Winifred Harris lived in a London suburb. Eventually they’d met in person. It turned out that the woman was a treasure, one who was familiar with a lot of witchcraft’s ancient history and its writings. Her specialty was the Old Language. The language of the witches. Long ago Rebecca had also begun to suspect that Winifred was even more than she let on. That she was connected with a lot of influential, powerful people in the witch world, and that she kept those contacts secret for a reason. Rebecca had come to depend a lot on the professor’s approval and advice. She was wise and so damn smart.

Rebecca sat back up with a groan—time for some sleep after she called Winifred—and pawed through her purse for her address book. She located Winifred’s telephone number and dialed the phone.

“Winifred? Hello, this is Rebecca Givens.”

“Ah, funny you should call, Rebecca,” the woman’s husky voice chirped. “Just been thinking about you. Got that copy of your latest book that you sent me. Looks good, even if I say so myself. Many times as I’ve seen it before publication, that is.” She cackled, sounding like a witch herself. Winifred had done most of the research for the book.

“Thanks, Winifred. I’m calling for a very special purpose and I don’t think I have a lot of time, so I’ll get right to the point. My sister, Amanda, a witch, is in deep trouble. You remember I’ve
talked about her before?”

“Yes, dear, I recall. The gifted one.” A low-throated chuckle. “What’s the problem?”

“I’ll tell you all about it when I see you—”

“Oh, so you’re actually coming to see me? That’s a switch.” It’d been almost a year since her last visit.

“Yes, I catch a flight leaving here in about four hours. I’ve stumbled upon a very strange find here in Canaan, where my sister lives. I think it’s a book of spells. Black spells. I found it buried by a place called Black Pond, under a huge willow tree.” Rebecca held the book in her other hand and studied it thoughtfully.

The voice on the other end of the line was quiet.

“It’s in this ancient script. Perhaps, the Old Language of the witches. I need to get a translation if I can. I’m sure it has some connection with my sister’s plight.”

“Ah, sounds extremely intriguing.” The voice crackled over the long-distance line. “And getting it translated is so important that you’re bringing it in person instead of just sending it first-class insured post as usual, eh?”

“Well,” Rebecca confided, “I can’t let it out of my hands. It’s too valuable and time is of the utmost importance. I need
a translation...yesterday,” Rebecca could almost visualize Winifred’s white eyebrows rising straight up in that way she had, her black eyes blinking. She was a queer old bird, a dowdy heavy-set woman with cotton white hair and one leg shorter than the other, who lived alone in a two-hundred-year-old English thatched cottage, grew twelve varieties of rare English tea roses, drank at least three pots of tea a day, and never seemed to sleep. Oh, and she loved hot scones with orange marmalade. Nonetheless, she was also the undisputed expert in her chosen field. She taught ancient languages part time at the university and helped Rebecca and about five other novelists with their research. She was accurate, dependable, and diligent. The best researcher Rebecca had ever found.

“So you should be here around high tea time, I calculate,” Winifred replied with good-natured amusement in her voice. In England high tea was sometime between supper and bedtime. Except Winifred stayed up half the night and her idea of high tea could be the middle of the night.

“About then.”

“I’ll put on the crumpets and tea. I’ll see you soon. Ta, ta!” Then the old woman hung up. She wasn’t one for telephone chatting.

After Rebecca hung up the telephone, she set her traveling alarm clock for two hours from then, lay back, and fell instantly sleep.

When the alarm’s shrill buzzer awoke her, she dressed in a whirlwind, hurriedly packed, and was ready when Ernie knocked at the door.

She positioned Tibby gently back into her right coat pocket because she still couldn’t wake him. He must have had quite a jolt out there at Black Pond for him to be so out of it for so long. She was beginning to worry about him, but she decided to let him sleep it off on the trip. She’d interrogate him later. Apparently he needed the rest. She was so worried over Amanda, it didn’t occur to her that there might be something else wrong.

In the car as they raced to the airport, Rebecca stared out into the frosty night as she and Ernie discussed plans. She was to call him or Jane as soon as she knew she was coming back and one of them would pick her up from the airport. Rebecca had no doubt that she’d be returning to Black Pond to finish what she’d started. It only made sense that if she discovered from the book what she had to do, that she’d have to do it there. She would have to cast the retrieval spell at the place the original spell had been cast.

There was most likely a portal between Rachel’s and Amanda’s times somewhere above or in the pond.

“They say that big snowstorm’s coming in by tomorrow sometime.” Ernie made conversation a while later as they bumped down the road. “Hope you don’t get caught right in the middle of it.”

“Me, too. As long as I can get back here before it locks us all in again,” she replied with a quick smile, her mind preoccupied with what she was going to do if the snow did keep her from returning to Canaan. She could take a chance and try getting back with her magic. Maybe she’d land in a soft tree somewhere. God, if only she had the power to safely transpose herself from one location to another as Amanda had sometimes been able to do and didn’t have to take airplanes. If for no other reason, that was why she hated snow. Always had. Why she’d no longer wanted to live in New England, land of the long white cold winters. Florida or the Bahamas sounded real good to her about now.

The car’s headlights slashed through the dark gloom and illuminated a pair of shining eyes for a split second. Ernie pointed them out, thought they’d been a deer’s.

Uneasy on the seat next to him, Rebecca didn’t contradict. She knew it hadn’t been a deer’s eyes, but the eyes of some of hell’s denizens tracking their progress. They knew she had the book.

Ernie got her to the airport with only minutes to spare and after waving goodbye, she sprinted through the gate and boarded her plane.

God, she hated flying, too. This was her third flight in a week.

She found a seat in the back. Always in the rear. Someone had once told her that was the safest place, in case the plane broke in half in midair or some such thing. It was probably nonsense, but she couldn’t take the chance if it wasn’t.

She would remember later that it was when she first sat down in her window seat that she felt someone was still watching her. Someone or something. Outside the plane, it was dark. Out of the corner of her eyes, when she passed them across the window, she thought she saw…something. An elusive glimmer of red, blinking. When she looked harder, nothing.
Must be my imagination. After Black Pond and all that mumbo-jumbo. I’m just really tired.

A middle-aged man with silver tipped hair and metal-framed glasses, wearing a business suit with matching briefcase, settled down in the vacant seat beside her, nervous and jumpy. She ignored her disquiet and him, popped a mild tranquilizer, and tried to sleep like Tibby, but the man kept praying so damn loud, it wasn’t easy. She hoped he wouldn’t clamp onto her like a leech if the plane jolted on takeoff.

The plane rolled and lifted off into the air. The man next to her didn’t move an inch. Like a stone statue. Rebecca felt sorry for the guy. She was unhappy in an airplane, but he was petrified.

After a few minutes of smooth flight, Rebecca drifted off.

She had no idea how long she’d slept before the violent turbulence of the airplane brought her to with a stomach wrenching start.

“What the hell’s going on?” She barely had time to cry out before the rocking ceased. The plane leveled off and everything returned to normal. Her heart sticking somewhere up in her throat, her hands claws on the armrests, she looked at the guy next to her. He’d fainted.

The rest of the passengers were in various stages of panic. Some were still shouting, some had fallen from their seats and were crawling around in the aisles, laughing or weeping in relief; some were in shock or had passed out like the man beside her. There was litter everywhere, exploded suitcases, purses, briefcases, and other assorted odds and ends.