Always a Witch (5 page)

My sister raises her other eyebrow now. "Brilliant," she says succinctly.

Somehow I get the feeling she's being sarcastic.

"All right, well—"

"That's brilliant. Warn our family. Especially in 1887, when Traveling is forbidden and they're really likely to believe you. And then you're going to tell them that something they haven't done yet, and haven't even
thought
about doing yet, is not going to work anyway in the future so they need to
do it better.
That'll really go over well."

"Doesn't anyone read the book in their time? Won't they be able to read the future and understand what happens?"

Rowena stares at me. "Wow. You really know next to nothing about how the book works, don't you? You don't just flip open the book and read the future like you're reading a recipe. Besides Talent it takes strength to even ... wrestle a few of the words onto the page. They're ... slippery at best. If you're lucky you get to see phrases, glimpses of what
may
come to pass. It's not all laid out there like a newspaper article."

"Thankfully, we have you," I mutter. "I suppose you're amazing at it."

My sister regards me coolly. "I'm not, actually. But I'm the best besides our grandmother, who's most likely the best this family's ever seen. And even she couldn't prevent all this from happening. So, that should tell you how hard it is to understand the book. And how do you plan on finding them, anyway? Our family in the nineteenth century?"

I shake my head at her. "What do you mean? The house on Washington Square Park—"

"Was bought by our family in 1895."

"Oh," I say.

"It's not like you can just head back there and look them up in the phone book, okay? They didn't have phone books then, you know."

"Gee, thanks for the tip." I cross the room, rubbing my arms against the cold air that's seeping through the cracked window. "You know, I think I can manage this. I mean I did find the Domani, after all."

"Yeah, and look how well that worked out," Rowena mutters. Then she shakes her head, "Besides, you had significant help. Gabriel." She circles the room once, then again, the hem of her robe swirling around her calves. Other people's robes would just flap, but no, not Rowena's. "So just how are you planning on getting back without him? You can't..." Then she nods her head once as if confirming something. "The Domani. You're going to use it."

I swallow. Only my grandmother and Rowena know that I'm the current Keeper.

"I'll only be gone for a couple of days. Long enough to find our family and warn them, then I'll come back. Just in time for your wedding." I try to smile, but my sister stares at me.

"Even if you manage to get there using the Domani, you do understand that it won't work again to get you back. You'll have gone back to a time when there is no Domani, so how are you going to get back?"

Somehow I know my blithe answer of
I'll figure something out
isn't going to work on Rowena. My other answer of
I'm probably not going to make it back
isn't something I even want to think about. "Give me three days, Ro. I'll find them, I'll warn them, and then I'll find a way to get back. Just tell Mom I went back to the city to pick up the dress. That I felt so guilty—"

Here my sister snorts, something that would seem inelegant when done by anyone else. "She'll never believe it."

I shake her grip off. "
Make
her believe it," I say.

My sister turns pale. "I can't use my Talent on Mom."

"And Gabriel," I add.

"I can't use it on either of them. You—"

"You used it on Silda," I say.

"That was different. That was about a dress. This is just a
little
more serious." She holds her thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart.

"Please, Ro. I need a time to try and do this on my own. I don't need anyone else getting hurt. You heard what the stranger said tonight.
Don't be angry with your young man. He did put up a good fight.
Don't you get what that means?"

My sister starts to shake her head, and then her eyes widen. "He Traveled here. Using Gabriel's Talent. Which means Gabriel Travels to the past and—"

"And they get him. Somehow. But that doesn't have to happen. That can all be changed."

But my sister gives my wrists a little shake. "Three days. You're coming home. No matter what happens. Three days, Tam, and then you'll find a way home, no matter what. Promise."

"I promise," I whisper. "In time for your wedding."

I've never felt so bad lying to my sister.

"There," Rowena says, pinning the last of my curls into place and turning me by the shoulder to face the mirror. "You look somewhat respectable."

I blink. Rowena has managed to tame my hair into a tight knot and has pinned and tucked me into my costume, mending the worst of the rips and tatters. She also made me remove the two silver studs I had in my right ear and the two pink hearts in my left. "And, here, take these," she adds, metal glinting between her fingers.

I look down at the small hoard of dollar coins, fifty-cent pieces, and copper nickels she pressed into my hand. I can't help but smile. Uncle Chester had given us each a few of these old coins throughout the years, and we used to fight over them all the time. "I knew you stole these from me."

"I did not," Rowena says. "You lost yours. These were from
my
collection. Anyway, I made sure none of them was from after 1886, so you should be safe."

I slide the coins into the inner petticoat pocket, where they feel agreeably heavy. "I promise not to spend all of these at once," I say, because the weight of everything else I should say is pressing at my throat. And then, because there's nothing left to do, I pick up the Domani very carefully by the chain. With a deep breath, I release the catch. The locket springs open and I brush my finger against the glass face.

Between one ticking second and the next, the clock hands freeze in place. Tiny letters begin arranging themselves into an inscription on the back of the open lid. Letters written in a language that I'll never be able to understand. "Hurry, Rowena," I whisper.

For one horrible instant I think my sister has changed her mind when she folds her lower lip between her teeth. Then she leans forward and reads the inscription in a soft, trembling voice: "Fire in the East and Water for the South, Air for the North and Earth in the West. All of these now Blood does bind. Yet even now Time erases what Blood would buy."

We stare at each other.

I find my voice first. "That's not what it said—"

"The last time," she says, finishing my thought. A cold wind curls around my ankles, pulling at my clothes, and a splinter of lightning stabs across the blue sky outside my bedroom window. All at once, dark clouds race from the west to meet the growing light in the east. Glancing down at the watch in my hand, I notice the tiny second hand is spinning wildly backwards, followed more slowly by the hour hand. I reach out, brush the air above my sister's shoulder, careful not to touch her. "Tell Gabriel ... tell him I love him. That I'm sorry," I whisper.

Rowena frowns. "Tell him yourself, Tamsin. When you see him in
three
days." Then she narrows her eyes at me. "You're not—"

But whatever else she is going to say is lost as my windows rattle violently under the sudden onslaught of the storm. The Domani is burning in my hand, but I tighten my fingers anyway, and then the ground buckles once violently and darkness presses down across my eyelids with a weight that I can't endure. I black out.

Five

WHEN I OPEN MY EYES
it's to find that I'm sprawled under a tree, bands of sunlight criss-crossing my faded black skirt. The sky overhead is a bright aching blue, and golden-red leaves drift like snow through the air. I pull myself to a sitting position, blink, and take in two small, solemn-faced children, a boy and a girl, standing just a few feet away from me. The boy sticks his thumb in his mouth, his eyes wide and round, while the girl holds a large wooden hoop in front of them both like a shield.

"Hello," I say, my voice cracking a little.

They both jump, and the boy jams his thumb even farther into his mouth and starts sucking it furiously. Finally, the girl speaks. "How did you do that?" she asks, her voice wavering.

"Do what?" I ask as I dig a pine cone out from under my knee. I don't trust my legs yet. My head's still spinning and there's a weird empty sensation in my chest as if my heart is trying to drop down into my toes. I take a deep breath. I made it. I think.

"You appeared out of the air."

"Oh, that." I wave one hand and the little boy ducks behind his sister. "Listen, never mind about that. Can you tell me the date, first of all?"

The girl's mouth curves downward and her pale eyebrows scrunch together. "How can you not know?"

"I just ... don't."

"October twenty-eighth," the boy said. "Nanny is going to give us candy apples on Beggars' Night."

"Beggars' Night ... oh, Samhain," I say. Three days before Samhain. Alistair must have just arrived. A
stranger appeared in the dying days of the year.
There's still time to stop him. There has to be.

The boy takes a half step out from behind his sister's skirts, and after pulling his thumb out of his mouth he says, "Are you one of them? The ones who walk on Beggars' Night?" He is eyeing me hopefully. "Can you do magic?"

But now his sister turns her frown on him. "Don't be foolish, Collin. We wouldn't see her in the daylight if she were." Then she turns back to me. "That's what Nanny calls it," she adds suddenly. "Samhain. But Mother doesn't like—"

"Collin. Eugenia," a female voice sputters, and then a second later, a middle-aged heavy-set woman, dressed in black with a white cap bobbing loose on her head, trundles toward us. "Where did you children get to?"

"She fell asleep," Collin whispers to me. "She always falls asleep in the park."

I glance at the woman's sun-scorched face while finally attempting to climb to my feet.

"What mischief are you at?" the woman huffs as she hurries over to them. A sloshing liquid sound accompanies her movements. Abruptly, she claps one hand over her skirt pocket. The sloshing sound stops.

"We were talking to the lady. She just appeared under the tree. Like one of your spirits that you—"

"Hush now," the woman says, glaring at me as if I'm the one who claimed to be one of her spirits. She brushes down Collin's pants with what seems like a little too much force and then produces a smaller and more delicate white cap from her skirt pocket. "I found this on the bench, missy," she says to Eugenia, who scowls again but lets the woman settle it on her head.

"I told Collin she's not one of your spirits," Eugenia says, her voice thickly smug. As the woman jerks the laces into place under her pointed chin, Eugenia reaches out and gives her brother a pinch on his arm. "I told him that since we could see her—"

"Hush," the woman says again, and gives me another sidelong glance, her gaze sweeping me from head to toe. "I close my eyes for a second and the two of you run off. Talking to strangers and all. You'll both be the death of me, that's what," she mutters, giving Eugenia's laces one final tug.

Just then a black and red carriage glides past us, the driver holding the reins tightly, staring straight ahead. The passengers, three girls around my age dressed in brilliant blues and scarlets, are giggling riotously as their glances skip over me. Even though I know it's silly, I sigh, trying not to look down at my black skirt.

The woman straightens up, watches the carriage pass, and then takes both children by the hand and begins to lead them away.

"Wait," I call after their retreating backs. The woman halts and turns, but just barely. "I'm looking for a family. The Greenes. Do you know them or where they live?"

"Never heard of them," she says, and, lifting her nose in the air, she marches off. Collin gives me one forlorn glance over his shoulder, and I heartily wish I had taken the time to freeze his horrible nanny just for a minute so he could at least be satisfied. Even if that would have been an incredibly stupid idea, it still would have been fun.

I take a deep breath and turn in a slow circle to get my bearings. I'm standing in what appears to be a park, with pathways curving left and right. Somewhere to my right, a fountain is gurgling and the shrieks of more children ring out across the grass. Trees, blazing with autumn golds and reds, surround me, and here and there through the branches I glimpse rows and rows of brick houses that look oddly familiar. It takes me a second and then I pinpoint it. Washington Square Park. I probably landed here because I had been thinking of my family's townhouse, which is—or I guess will be—on the north side of the park. I stare through the trees again, noting that there are definitely more of them than I'm used to. Turning northward, I search for where the huge stone archway should be. Just a few months ago, Agatha and I had taken turns snapping each other's picture under it when we took a prospective NYU student tour.

There's no archway.

And now the ground seems to tip and spin beneath my feet, and for one second I feel a stab of fear. Maybe I'm not immune to the symptoms of Traveling after all. I put one hand out and press my palm against the rough bark of a tree to steady myself.
Relax. You knew everything was going to be so different. And it's not like you haven't done this before.
Then I swallow, trying not to remember that the last two times I Traveled, I had Gabriel with me and a guaranteed way of getting home. But thinking about gabriel is not an option, otherwise I really will start crying. I stare down at my other hand, which is still clutching the Domani. I hold the little locket up to my ear. Just as I thought, the clock is no longer ticking. The way home is truly going to be a mystery. I slip the locket over my neck, close the catch firmly, and, steeling myself, I step onto the nearest path, searching for a way out of the park.