Witches (46 page)

Time to go.

Rebecca had to wade into the water to catch the lip of the portal this time, to get into the light.

Then in what seemed like an instant later, wet from the waist down, and sputtering from the freezing cold that blasted her, she and Amanda were in Ernie’s helping arms. Amanda looked like Amanda again, dressed in her normal clothes, blue jeans and a plaid shirt; probably the same thing she’d had on when she’d disappeared.

They’d made it!

“God, Rebecca, I thought you’d never get back. It’s been a whole day! Was I worried. Then all that ungodly commotion. I heard gunshots—” Ernie went blubbering on about one thing after another. Rebecca was so happy to be back, safe, with her sister, she didn’t hear a word after he’d said a
whole day.
To her it’d only been a few minutes.

“You waited for me all that time, huh, Ernie?” She marveled aloud, as Ernie took an unconscious Amanda into his arms and they made for the warm van under the willow tree. The snow had stopped and it was over waist deep in some places. It was colder than before, if that was possible, and a sheet of ice shimmered across everything. The sky was a low–hanging, gray ceiling.

“I wasn’t going back to Jane without the two of you,” he stated with a bleak face. “She gonna be all right?” he asked, referring to Amanda.

“I pray she will be. She’s been shot.”

Ernie had gotten to the car, opened the back doors, and settled Amanda in the rear of the van on a pile of blankets. Rebecca was
right behind him. Her lower body already feeling like an icicle. She was shivering so hard, she could hardly walk. She had to get out of the cold, out of her wet clothes. Saving Amanda had taken more out of her than she’d admit.

“Where was she hit? I see the blood.” Ernie had skillfully and quickly cut the material away from Amanda’s shoulder where the red stain had been, with a pocketknife he’d produced from one of his pockets. “There’s no wound!”

Rebecca leaned around him and gawked down at where the wound was supposed to be. He was right. There was no wound. Now. Just clear creamy skin. Amanda was beginning to wake up.

“Well, I see she has her powers back,” Rebecca said with obvious relief. “She’ll come around pretty soon now, I’d guess.”

“Good,” Ernie quipped, taking the self-healing in stride, and shutting the van’s back doors with Amanda inside. “That means we don’t have to rush her to the hospital. We can all go back to Jane’s and get some hot coffee and some supper. We can gloat over our success. Our survival.

“On the way back you can tell me exactly what happened on the other side. What it was like and why it took so long. Then at Jane’s we can embellish and retell the tale.

“Afterwards, I’m gonna sleep for a month.” He yawned, resting red-rimmed weary eyes on Rebecca a second before he plodded through the deep snow and got back behind the wheel. He waited until Rebecca had slid in on the other side before he started the car.

Its wheels spun in the clinging white stuff for a few minutes and when Rebecca snapped her fingers, it fairly leapt across the crusty snow, seeming to float above it until it got to the road, where Ernie and the car took over and drove them back to town. Ernie didn’t say a word.

Rebecca looked back at her sleeping sister, and smiled to herself.
Haven’t lost my touch, either.

Amanda was going to be okay. Everything was going to be all right. She’d done it. Truly done it, and made it out alive to tell the tale. Damn, what a book it would make.

She’d never felt so good.

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue...six months later

Amanda sat at the wheel, her hands molding the last pot. Jane would be relieved to see that she’d finished all of them in time. Lately the supply never seemed to be able to live up to the demand; yet, she supposed, she should be glad that so many people loved her creations. That they sold so well.

Outside the open window, the April breezes playfully teased the budding branches of the trees by the side of the road. She lived in town now. Three doors down from Jane’s Gift Shop, which she was part owner of. She spent a couple days a week working in the shop itself to ease Jane’s workload, since Jane had had little Christopher, Ernie’s son.

Amanda’s hands stopped moving, her restless eyes staring out the window at the town. So many things had changed. Jane and Ernie had gotten married after she’d come back from Rachel’s time. She was happy for them. They truly loved each other. Ernie was building an addition on the back of the shop to make room for everyone. Amanda could hear the hammering even now. Ernie’s good-natured swearing when he missed a nail. She smiled wistfully. It was good to be in town, so close to all of them. Jane’s boys were always underfoot and Amanda had decided she liked it.

When she’d first returned the townspeople had wanted to make amends for what they’d done to her and for burning down her cabin. They’d offered to build her a new one, or to give her a house in town.

Amanda had opted, after very little thought, to take the house in town, instead of the new cabin way out in the woods, alone. Something had happened to her those months she’d spent in Rachel’s time. Someone other than herself had needed her. She’d been loved and had loved. It had felt so good. There was no going back now to what she’d once been. A loner, a recluse.

She didn’t want to live that way anymore. She wanted the townspeople to accept her, wanted them to like her. Wanted them to respect her. Besides, the town had made it quite clear they’d wanted her, as well. She was a hero, saving Jonny and destroying the cult like she had, and everyone wanted to be her friend. She’d decided she wouldn’t mind that, either. To have more friends. A different kind of life.

A new life. So she’d moved into the one-story frame house down the street from Jane’s, redecorated it so she’d have her own art studio in the back, and then had asked Mabel to move in with her. Telling her she needed her, which she would soon enough.

Rebecca was living with her English warlock in London and was as happy as she’d ever seen her. In love and content with herself for the first time in her life. She still wrote the books, but she’d stopped being a celebrity witch and had become a true one in every sense of the word. She still possessed the great powers that the Guardians had given her six months ago to help save Amanda.

The Guardians...now that was one of the strangest developments of all. They really existed. Always had. They were very powerful. Worldwide. They’d had their eye on Rebecca and Amanda since their birth, if she could believe everything they’d told her.

Rebecca was already one of them and active in their adventures. Using her magic to help other witches in trouble. To right wrongs or to prevent them, like Rachel trying to steal Amanda’s body and soul to wreak havoc on the modern world.

Amanda stood up then, arched her back, her hand braced in the small of it, and strolled toward the window. Her hugely rounded belly pushed at her long dress.

Amanda would be inducted into the Guardians herself in a few months’ time. After her baby was born. They’d wanted her to get her head straight first, too. She’d almost grieved herself into a grave when she’d first come back, over Joshua’s death and Amadeus’s disappearance.

Joshua’s dying had been like Jake dying all over again. She’d stayed in her bed and refused to see anyone at first. Then her other sister, Jessie, had arrived and between Rebecca and her, and the discovery that she was going to have a baby, Amanda had begun to heal. She still was. The Guardians wanted to be sure she was all right before she reported to work.

Though her sisters had left a few weeks after she’d settled in her new home, they both had promised to come for the birth. It’d be wonderful to see them.

Joshua’s baby.

She smiled sadly at the thought of Joshua. He’d died trying to protect her, avenge his brother, but he would never be completely dead now. She would have his child. A girl. A girl she’d name Elizabeth Margaret. After Rachel’s children. Lizzy for short.

Amanda had looked up Rachel Coxe in the library and had found nothing on the woman at all. Even Mabel and Ernie couldn’t recall the legend of Rachel and Black Pond any longer. The memory, as the legend itself, had faded from their minds. Faded like the words Rebecca had had copied from Rachel’s book of spells. They only knew of Rachel now as the witch who had kidnapped Amanda into the seventeenth century. That was all. Even that was beginning to melt away like Jane’s, Ernie’s, and Mabel’s memories along with what had actually happened at Black Pond. The demons. Rachel. Satan. Along with the knowledge that Amanda was a real witch and that the baby she was carrying belonged to a man who’d lived over three hundred years ago. Soon all of them, even the town, would forget what Amanda really was. What had occurred. She supposed it had something to do with the Guardians, or human nature. What people didn’t understand, they chose to forget. Sometimes they succeeded.

Simon Fletcher, Guardian, friend, and lover to her sister, Rebecca, had sent her a strange dream message a few months ago. It seemed that in the history of white witches there’d been a blind witch around seventeen hundred, named Elizabeth, who’d later married an Emil Givens. She’d had a sister named Margaret. No mention of their mother. They’d both become famous as two of the most powerful white witches of their time. Each had been one of the first Guardians.

Both had been her ancestors.

Amanda had truly changed history by going back and doing what she’d done. In more than one way. She’d completed a circle that had had to be closed. By saving those two children, she’d indirectly saved many people’s lives, including hers and her sisters. Without Elizabeth Givens, there would have been no Amanda—and no child to come.

Simon had explained that was one of the main reasons she’d been
chosen to go back. Chosen. The Guardians had been behind all of it. The fact that Rachel’s ghost had chosen her to take her place. Her attacking the cult and losing her powers. Going back and meeting Joshua so that he’d be the instrument to save her and the girls. All planned. Except this baby. An extra bonus. Amanda’s face grinned again.

Simon and the Guardians knew of Joshua’s baby, of course. Simon had told her in her dream that the baby would be special. Very special. A leader of witches. The most powerful witch in seven centuries. Amanda smiled again, a secret smile, as she rubbed her swollen belly gently. A
leader of witches.
Well, well.

The light was going with the day, so Amanda slowly ambled from her studio into the kitchen. Mabel was cooking them supper. It smelled like fried chicken.

The old woman turned and smiled at Amanda as she came in. Made her sit down and take it easy. Told her, as always, that she worked too hard. That she’d better rest before that baby came. She wasn’t as young as most women having a first child. Like a mother hen.

It was chicken. Mashed potatoes and corn on the cob.

Amadeus loved chicken.

“Don’t worry,” Mabel bantered in a lighthearted way. “There’s more than enough chicken for that crazy cat of yours.”

“Good. Because he just let me know how hungry he was.”

Amadeus appeared out of nowhere in Amanda’s lap. He tipped his one ear to the side and winked at his mistress. Amanda hugged him so tightly he squawked and jumped out of her arms, sashaying away like he was mad.

Amanda didn’t care. There were tears in her eyes. He’d come home last week after being gone all those months. No explanations. No fuss. He’d been there at her door one morning, wet, bedraggled, and starving. She’d given him up for lost or dead a long time before, had mourned for him every day.

She was just thrilled to have him back. No matter how eccentric he was. How smart mouthed or pushy.

For a few seconds Amanda was back in the seventeenth century. Maggie and Lizzy. The Indians. Sebastien. She relived the horrible helplessness she’d felt in that dark, filthy cell, the hideous screams of the tortured, that run for her and Joshua’s life through the night woods. She remembered Gabriel going down, the pain of losing Amadeus. Joshua dying. The agony of being shot, the disbelief and joy when Rebecca had shown up.

Jessie had been right all along. They’d really underestimated Rebecca.

Amanda laid a protective hand on the baby in her stomach, her eyes far away.

She’d loved Joshua so much. As much as Jake, perhaps more, because she’d lost him once before. How she missed Joshua even now. Even after the worst of her grief had subsided, she’d known the truth: she’d meet Jake/Joshua again someday in another life. It was preordained. She’d never really lose him. She’d always have his love. How miraculous to be having his child—when she’d long given up hope of having children. The child she and Jake had never been able to have. A gift from God. She was blessed, wasn’t she? Yes, the answer came from her heart. Blessed.

You have loved and been loved, you have your family and friends, and soon you’ll have your beloved’s child. You are so lucky.

“You ready to eat, Amanda?” Mabel asked, having put the food on the table and awakened her from her daydreaming.

Amanda blinked, and met Mabel’s soft eyes.

“
Yes,
I’m ready. We’re more than ready.” She patted her stomach.

Together, the three of them sat down to supper.