Always a Witch (9 page)

A group of children is gathered in front of a small ring where an elephant, tethered to a stake by one foot, is sitting back on its hind legs, almost like a person. A pink and white teacup is cradled in its trunk, and as the children watch, it raises and lowers its trunk as if drinking.

"How charming," Jessica cries, her voice light and happy. She flings her arm out, tugging on Mr. Finnegan's sleeve, and they stop to watch as the elephant accepts a slice of bread from its handler, tucking it carefully into its gaping mouth.

As the crowd claps enthusiastically, my eyes are drawn upward to the small tree, which offers a little shade on the dusty clearing. A large black crow perches on an overhanging branch, its head cocked, its yellow glass eyes pinned to the scene below. Its very stillness seems off somehow, and I stare at it for so long that I look away just in time to see Jessica and Mr. Finnegan moving toward the striped tent along with another wave of people. As I hurry after them, I glance back once. The crow glides silently off the branch, circles once, and settles on the round dome of the striped tent. It points its beak downward and stares at me.

That does it. I reach out with my mind and
pull
hard.

With a startled squawk, the crow bursts into flight, then half falls, half flies down the side of the tent to the ground. In a millisecond the bird's form blurs and lengthens. I find myself now staring at a girl my age, her long red hair loose over her shoulders. She glares up at me as I take three steps closer. Just then a small child blunders into my side, his outstretched finger pointing toward the girl on the ground.

"Mama, Mama," he babbles. "That lady. She was a bird. She—"A woman wearing a patched blue dress, with another infant locked under her arm, reaches down and gives the boy a slap across his ear. His words abruptly transform into a shriek.

"Don't run off like that," she says, giving me a harried look. "Begging your pardon, miss," she mutters, and then tugs her wailing child away.

"But she was a bird," he sobs again.

I turn back to find that the girl has climbed to her feet and is brushing the dust off her plain gray dress. Her hair tumbles forward over her shoulders. Her skin, lightly freckled, is flushed either with heat or emotion.

"Who are you?" I say immediately.

She cocks her head at me, studies me with green-gold eyes. "I could ask you the same thing," she says at last.

"I saw you turn from a crow into a girl."

She shifts her shoulders. "Are you sure about that? Appearances can be deceiving." But a thread of curiosity or fear is running under her light words, and her eyes never stop examining my face.

I hesitate, wanting to ask her if she is connected in any way to the man who I saw standing on the street corner. Then I blurt out, "Are you from the Greene family?"

She doesn't answer and her face doesn't change, but her upper body inclines back just a degree.

"You are, aren't you?" I take a step closer. "Please, I need to see you. All of you. It's urgent. You're in danger."

The girl's eyes narrow. "You come here with Jessica Knight and you want to warn me about danger. The others don't trust you. A
stranger will come from a faraway time, bringing the end of our days as we know them.
"

"That's Alistair, not me!" I practically scream at her.

"Alistair?" the girl asks.

"You read that in the book, right?" I try to remember the exact wording that both my grandmother and Rowena had read. "Doesn't it say that a stranger comes to town in the dying days of the year? And that he knows much more than he should. He? Him? It's a
man.
His name's Alistair Knight."

But she is shaking her head. "Only a stranger, seen entering the house of the Knights. And that death and destruction follow her."

"That's not right," I whisper. And then I remember my sister warning me just how hard it was to read the book, to make even a few words appear. Apparently, these Greenes have only seen that a stranger was coming. "Please. I have to meet your family. Where do you live? Just tell me that much."

"Agatha," Jessica calls, and I want to scream at the other girl's timing. When I don't turn immediately, Jessica calls again, "Agatha." This time her voice is sharp and precise, a faint echo of La Spider's. I turn to see Jessica and Mr. Finnegan standing at the tent entrance. Mr. Finnegan looks confused, while Jessica's eyes are burning. She lifts her chin in what appears to be a nod, but the gesture is not aimed at me.

I glance back at the crow girl, who has now moved a few steps away, her face a shuttered window. She inclines her head back at Jessica and then her eyes flick back to my face. "I'll find you again."

Before I can answer, she slips off into the crowd.

Turning, I walk back to Jessica, who immediately hisses, "What did she say to you?" Her eyes are narrowed, and suddenly her resemblance to her mother is striking.

I do my best to appear confused. "The young lady? I stepped on her foot so I was apologizing to her," I explain swiftly, hoping that Jessica didn't see the girl change from a bird. "Do you know her?" I ask now. "I didn't mean any harm, my lady, I just—"

"Never mind," Jessica says shortly, and turns back to Mr. Finnegan.

The rest of the hour passes in a blur. I barely take in the trapeze artists and the prancing horses and the lion tamers. Instead, I keep a respectable three feet behind Jessica and Mr. Finnegan. "
I'll find you again." Please, please, please let her be telling the truth.

"Where to now?" Mr. Finnegan is saying, gesturing with his free arm toward the wide swath of green tents that we haven't yet entered. But Jessica shakes her head, biting down on her lower lip.

"I have to go," she says at last. "They'll already be wondering where I am, and—"

"It's not been an hour yet," Mr. Finnegan says, but still she pulls herself free.

Her shoulders curve downward. "It doesn't matter," she says at last. "An hour, a week, a year—none of it makes any difference." Then she straightens up, takes three steps toward me. "Come, Agatha. We're going back."

I nod, trying not to notice how crushed Mr. Finnegan looks.

"Jessica," he says softly, catching at her hand. "Please—"

"It's over, William," she says, her voice flat. "Once and for all. Please don't contact me again."

"Then keep this," he murmurs, and swiftly presses the brooch back into her hand. "To remember me."

She nods once, then walks away from him, her back held in a needle-straight line.

I throw an awkward half smile at William.
Believe me, you're better off far away from these people.
I almost tell him that. But I decide to play lady's maid just a little longer and follow Jessica instead.

Jessica is silent as we slip back through the crowded streets, her face carefully blank, and I realize she is assembling her mask again. The change from the giddy and laughing girl of half an hour ago is startling.

I'm reminded of how I used to assemble my very own such armor anytime I walked into my house at Hedgerow. Before I knew I had a Talent, when I thought I had no place in my own family. The idea that Jessica Knight and I could have anything in common is so weird that I'm almost grateful to the horse-drawn truck that is barreling down on us, as it provides a welcome distraction from that uncomfortable thought.

Finally, we turn off Madison and reach the relative quiet of Twenty-seventh Street with its pristine rows of brownstones. Storm clouds are now scuttling across the sky, and the breeze has picked up, outlining our legs through our skirts. Jessica and I approach the side entrance cautiously, but no one seems around at this hour. Looking up, I pinpoint two birds perched on the gabled window of the neighboring house. I reach out and tug at them, but nothing happens. They're only birds.

"This household is ... very different from your last, I imagine," she says finally as we reach the black gate.

"All households are different," I say neutrally. I glance over my shoulder, but except for a few strollers and a woman pushing a pram, the street is still. No crows perched in any of the trees.

Then I gaze sideways at Jessica, who still has made no move to go inside the gate.

Instead, her eyes are filling with tears and her fingers are clutching convulsively around the little cameo pin. Before I can think of what to say, she blinks once, twice, and then her calm veneer shifts back into place. "Here," she blurts out, and presses the cameo into my hand.

I stare down at the woman's engraved face, at the tendrils of hair that curl against her ivory neck. Without thinking, I press the side of the pin, and the face slides open to reveal a small watch inside. A steady ticking, almost too soft to hear, brushes at my ears.

"It's sweet, isn't it?" Jessica murmurs, her eyes downcast. "It must have taken a month's wages for him to buy it."

"Are you sure you—"

"Keep it," she murmurs. "And take my advice," she says softly. "Leave this house. As soon as you can." And with that she slips into the side gate, leaving me no choice but to follow her.

Somehow I manage to get through the rest of the day without any major mistakes. True, Jessica wrenched a petticoat away from me when I fumbled the laces, but other than that she was silent as I helped her get ready for her afternoon of coaching with whomever she was supposed to do that with. In fact, I started to think of her as a human-size doll that I had to dress up in different outfits, even though I kind of always hated dolls when I was little.

Now, after an excruciatingly early dinner with Rosie, Cook, and Mr. Tynsdell, who glared at me every time I raised the fork to my mouth, I am sitting in the tiny upstairs room wondering what to do with the rest of the evening and the night ahead of me. Jessica already told me not to wait up for her. "I don't need any help this evening," she added, probably because I looked startled. I kept my mouth shut and nodded because I had no idea that a lady's maid was supposed to wait up.

Darkness presses close against the little dormer window and the wind buffets against the glass panes. A chill seeps into the room. Shivering, I cross to the window and stare out at the street. Carriages are rolling across the cobblestones, the faint clatter rising to meet my ears. All sorts of people are bustling across the streets, lingering to talk to each other in twos or threes despite the cold November evening.

"Thinking of jumping?" Rosie says behind me, and I do jump, smacking my head against the glass.

I glare at her, but she laughs. Her cheeks are tinged pink and her hair is loosened a little. "Where did you go after dinner?" I ask, but she only winks at me.

"Can't know all my secrets, Agatha!" she says gaily. Crossing to the cracked mirror above our dresser, she gazes into it while pulling back her hair into a smooth knot. She reaches into her drawer, withdraws a little pot, and dusts something onto her forehead and nose. The sweet smell of talcum powder flitters into the air between us, and suddenly, I swallow hard and for one instant envision myself back in my dorm room at school with the real Agatha as we both glitter ourselves up for a night out in the city.

"Don't wait up for me," Rosie says, snapping shut the lid of her box. Then with a wink she slips out of the room.

I wait for the space of one heartbeat, and then ease off my shoes. On cat-soft feet I follow her. Thankfully, Lady Knight doesn't seem to believe in wasting lamp oil on her servants, so plenty of thick shadows line the walls. I melt into them as I pad down the servants' back staircase, letting Rosie dash ahead of me.

When I reach the landing, I expect her to continue down the three curving flights to the kitchen, but halfway there, she disappears. Or actually, I can't hear her anymore. I press into the side wall and wait, listening as hard as I can. I've noticed that the door to the kitchen always squeaks a little, so I wait for that familiar sound. But there is only silence.

And then a soft
snick
whispers across the landing below me.

I follow the curve of the spiral of the stairs as fast as I can, only to find more shadows and one lamp casting a feeble flickering light across the thin red carpet of this landing. On impulse, I reach up and unhook the lantern from its iron wall sconce. The oil sputters and hisses with the motion, then settles, and the flame burns true.

Okay, so not the kitchen. The only other option is back the way I came. I climb up the stairs again, retracing my steps, swinging the lantern this way and that. I have to do this three times before I see it. Right under the third bend in the staircase is a small door. Even with the light of the oil lamp I can just make out the three simple lines of its frame that is perfectly flush with the wall. And now I come to my next problem. There's no doorknob.

Running my free hand along the panels that blend into the wall gives me nothing. I press the wood where the doorknob would be, but still nothing. I lean back a little and study the door again, that soft
snick
echoing in my ears.

The lamp sputters again in my hand, and I look at it thoughtfully. Then I turn and examine the wall behind me. Another iron wall sconce—only this one is empty. Stretching my arm, I nestle the lamp securely into the wall sconce and am rewarded with that same soft
snick.

I turn back and confront the wall. The door has slid back and become a gaping mouth that leads into another tunnel.

I step into the doorway, reach up, and brush both hands along the walls on either side of me. My right hand encounters nothing but cobwebs and something slimy that scuttles away from me. I stifle a scream, and just then my left hand skims across a small switch. The door suddenly slides shut behind me, leaving me in complete blackness.

Great.

I step forward, feeling my way slowly, wishing that I had brought my shoes after all. The dampness of hard stone seeps through my stockings and worms into the soles of my feet. The passageway slopes down after a second, and I stumble but catch myself against one wall. Cautiously navigating the steps that I seem to have found, I wind downward in the dark. After a while a faint light begins to grow before me, and then at the level of my ankles I see a square grate, about two feet tall and a foot wide, full of a flickering light.