Once a Witch (13 page)

“As you will see from this next slide, Pollock's essential form and structure remained. But the size of his canvas– this slide doesn't actually do it justice, but the size–” My phone buzzes against my hip and I jolt awake. Although I'm pretty sure the vibration can't be heard all the way at the front of the room, Mr.

McDobbins pauses for a moment of throat clearing. He usually does this whenever students walk in late, they whisper too loudly, or someone's cell phone goes off in the dead quiet that he requires for his lectures. It's easier to bore us all to tears that way. Glancing down, I see the word HELLCRATER light up the screen. I frown, click my phone off, and try to pay attention.

“Pollock's career as an artist didn't really take off until–”I just spoke to my mother yesterday. If she's calling again that means something dire has happened. My grandmother! I push back my chair and of course it screeches across the linoleum floor. Light spills from the slide projector, giving McDobbins's face a lurid glow.

“Ahem,” he says finally after an agonizing pause while I try to gather my books and papers. A pen clatters to the floor, as loud as an exploding bomb in the now tomb like silence. I watch it disappear under this oblivious girl's chair. Damn.

It was my favorite, even though I know it's stupid to have favorite pens.

Somehow, I manage to shuffle toward the door, and thankfully, when my hand is on the tarnished knob, McDobbins resumes speaking. The door closes off whatever other fascinating information he was about to impart on Pollock– no doubt taken straight from page 188 of the textbook under

“Biographical Information on Jackson Pollock. ”

I had been skimming that section last night while Agatha drank a shot of vodka for courage and then began cutting her hair. When the piercing yowls of distress from her side of the room became too much, I had to pry the scissors from her hand, and I pretty much gave up on my reading after that. Now I half crouch, finish stuffing all my books into my bag, and stop just before exiting the building.

A soft and steady rain is pattering down. As usual I have no umbrella. Leaning in the doorway, I watch as three girls dash by and come to a halt at the crosswalk, which is now submerged in slick gray water. Their squeals travel through the thin-paned glass door and one girl, her face pulled into an expression of acute distress, holds up her foot, revealing red sequined flip-flops. A flicker of movement catches my eye. Across the street, a man and a woman have paused in a doorway to a building, taking shelter under the arched stone awning. I watch the girl's bright head incline upward toward her companion. He bends over her and seems to whisper something in her ear. For three seconds they are frozen in this tableau and I can't help but study them like a painting: the girl's golden hair, her pale face, her whole body turned into his, while he, wrapped in a dark raincoat, stands like a slash of poisonous ink against the white marble archway. Then he turns his head, the sheen of his glasses winking briefly at me just as he moves out into the rain, striding briskly away. The girl stares after him, then slumps suddenly against the door frame, one hand drifting to her throat. She seems about to faint. Bursting through the door of my building, I scream out,

“Rowena!”

PUDDLES HAVE SWAMPED the sidewalk, but I plunge straight through them. The rain is slashing down now, and I temporarily lose sight of my sister as a city bus roars past, tossing up a slap of water that instantly soaks my jeans. In those few frantic seconds, my mind is churning. Rowena and Alistair? Rowena and Alistair?

How? Why? When I reach the other side of the street, miraculously she is still there.

“Rowena,” I say again, and at last her head turns and she stares at me.

“Oh,” she says vaguely.

“Oh”?She is wearing the same black dress that she wore the night of her engagement party and heels, which I can't imagine are very useful for navigating puddles. She is paler than usual but her eyes are shining, and I have to admit that whatever the circumstances, my sister looks beautiful.

“What are you doing here?” I blurt out, trying to wedge myself into the shallow protection of the doorway while rain falls against the right side of my face.

“What's going on? And why were you with Alistair? That was Professor Callum I saw you with, right?” I take a deep breath and try to slow down, try to ignore the fact that my sister is looking at me as though she's never seen me before.

“Mom said you were coming here to go dress shopping again. But she said Friday. It's only Wednesday, Rowena. Wednesday,” I insist, as if somehow my naming the day of the week will make my sister snap to.

“Wednesday?” she repeats in a faint voice so unlike her usual warm honey tones. My hands and feet are tingling suddenly and I turn, but the sidewalk is now empty except for rivulets of rain running into the cracked concrete. Turning back, I notice that my sister is also craning her neck, as if looking for someone. A shiver seems to pass over her and she huddles in the doorway, a crumpled heap of a girl.

“What's he really like, Tam?” she says, her eyes imploring, her fingers scrabbling at the sleeve of my coat. I'm about to ask if she is talking about Alistair when my eyes are drawn to something on her exposed wrist. Without asking, I grab her arm, push her coat sleeve back. Three dark lines, barely scabbed over, mar the otherwise clean surface of her skin. What's even worse is that she doesn't resist, doesn't seem to notice that my fingers have tightened into what must be a painful clench around her hand.

“What is this?” I say roughly, shaking her hand a little, staring at the crusts of blood. My mouth feels dry, as if I've just swallowed sand, as I add,

“You need… you… you shouldn't be here.

“Her fingers under mine spasm briefly and finally she tugs herself free.

“I want to be here. I need to be here. With him. You wouldn't understand.” I step back until the stone lintel edges against my shoulders. I don't ask who she means. It feels as though my heart has briefly stopped beating. Rain is running down my neck and soaking into the collar of my jacket, but I don't care. I cup my hand over my cell phone, listening to the ringing on the other end of the line.

Please, please, pie–”Hello?”

“I need you.”

“I like it,” Gabriel exclaims, his whole voice filling my head. But I can't even smile.

“You know, I was wondering how long it would take–”

“You have your car in the city, right?” A man bundled tightly in a dark raincoat brushes past me and I bite back a scream, but he doesn't even look at me. Not Alistair, not Alistair, not Alistair.

“Um… yeah. You need me to take you to IKEA or something?” I wish.

“I need you to take me home. Me and Rowena.”

“Wait a sec–what's–”

“I don't have time to explain,” I whisper into the phone, and then my voice chips into pieces.

“There's something wrong with her.”

“Tell me where you are.” Because of the rain it takes us more than an hour to get out of the city. It feels more like three.

“Tamsin,” Rowena says from the back seat.

“Where are we going?” This is the third time she's asked.

“We're going home, Ro,” I tell her again.

“Remember? Big house, fields, garden, goats” Gabriel looks at me sideways but makes no comment. I shift in the passenger seat and an empty Coke can spins away from my foot.

“I don't want to go home,” she says predictably, and I sigh, digging my nails deeper into my thighs.

“Yes, I know. It's only for a little while. Then we're coming back. Okay, Rowena?”

I crane my neck, try to smile at my sister. But she won't return my smile, won't even look at me. Instead her face and hands are pressed to the rain-smeared window and I have a sudden absurd flash of what she must look like to other drivers and passengers on the highway. Her fingers twitch restlessly on the glass, her nails tapping out a Morse code message of distress.

“He doesn't want me to go,” she whispers so softly that it's like a thread of sound, practically lost over the rush of wheels and rain.

“He needs me” At last she turns a fretful face to me and says,

“I need to go back. I know it. I know it here,” and she thumps her chest so hard that I almost feel the vibration in my own body. She shifts in the back seat but then immediately lurches forward again, her mouth stretched into a narrow slash.

“Listen, Rowena,” I beg, barely clear on what I'm saying.

“We just need to go home for a little while. Just a little, little while. And then we're going back. I promise” In the same breath I mutter to Gabriel,

“Can't you go any faster?” Gabriel looks sideways at me again and answers in the same muttering tone.

“I'm pushing eighty-five. That's about all this piece-of-crap car can do.”

“He wants me back!” Rowena shrieks suddenly, slamming her hands into the back of Gabriel's headrest.

“Shit!” he exclaims, and we lurch around a car in our lane, just scraping past.

“Rowena,” I say, reaching out to grab her hands. She twists away as the pale point of her tongue darts across her upper lip. Her eyes, which seem all pupils right now, grow darker.

“We're going to go back. But it's good this way. Really,” I babble.

“It's good to play hard to get. Guys get more intrigued this way. Right, Gabriel?

Gabriel?” He looks in the rearview mirror, regarding my sister like she's a rabid animal.

“Um… oh, yeah. We… love that stuff. Gets us really hot. ”

I nod maniacally as my sister's eyes flicker to me. For one brief instant her face is blank and then she shakes her head.

“What do you know, Tam? What do you know about love?” Swallowing hard, I silently acknowledge that the words, at least, are pure Rowena, even if the tone–blank, emotionless–is all wrong.

“I know this isn't love,” I say, all pretense of remaining calm gone.

“This is something, but it sure as shit isn't love” I wrap my hands around my knees– otherwise I'm afraid I will reach out and attempt to slap my sister back to sense.

“Easy, Tam,” Gabriel murmurs, reaching out one hand, and I take it, feeling the comforting squeeze of his warm fingers. But Rowena's next words drive all that from my head.

“He told me you would say that. That you wouldn't understand. None of you.”

“Oh, really?” I say, my voice dripping with scorn.

“And what did he–”

“We need to turn back,” Rowena says again, and now her voice has smoothed, stretched into its familiar sweetness.

“He wants me to come back. To him” I stare at her, helpless.

“Gabriel,” my sister singsongs, ignoring me now.

“Turn the car around. At the next exit you are going to turn around and head back to New York City.”

“Tam,” Gabriel says slowly, dreamily,

“maybe we should go back. ”

“What? No! Are you crazy? Don't listen to her!”

“Yes, listen to me,” my sister adds, her voice supple and beseeching.

“This is what you have to do. Turn the car around. ”

“Okay, okay,” Gabriel agrees, his voice brightening as if he is only too happy to oblige my sister. I punch him. Hard.

“Ow! What the hell?” He shakes his head briefly, his fingers tightening on the wheel, and then he gives me a look.

“Tam, what do I… I feel–”Rowena leans back against the seat.

“That's it, Gabriel,

“ she purrs, her voice looping and twirling through the car like warm butterscotch taffy.

“You're doing the right thing,” she encourages as Gabriel flicks on his blinker and heads into the right lane. A truck's horn blares at us, its headlights slashing through the car.

“Don't kill us in the process,” I snap.

“Don't listen to her,” Rowena says.

“She doesn't understand. Anything.” Ignoring her, I reach across Gabriel's lap and crank down the window. Rain splatters through, soaking us both.

“Shake it off,” I tell him.

“I can't… she needs me to do this,” he murmurs. His fingers tighten even more on the wheel, but we're heading for the exit too fast. Tick, tick, tick. The sound of the blinker seems unnaturally loud.

“Calm down, Tamsin,” my sister says.

“Stop trying to tell Gabriel what to do. ” Her voice is butter rich, starting to reverberate warmly inside me, like ripples spreading outward across the surface of a lake. She hasn't used her Talent on me in years, but I remember that this is what it feels like. And then I get the weirdest sensation. It's as if the widening rings of Rowena's voice hit a stone wall inside me and shatter on impact. Just like that they go silent. Without pausing to think, I lean forward and tap Gabriel on the shoulder.

“Stop listening to her. Stop” I stare at my sister, who is staring back at me.

“Enough,” I say quietly. Gabriel blinks and twitches as if he's received an electric shock.

“What was that?” he whispers. In the next instant he flips off the blinker and we glide past the exit.

“Noooooooo!” Rowena screams, pounding the seat next to her in fury. I think I've never heard anything so sweet. An hour and a half later we grind to a halt.

“Home sweet home,” I say, and for once I mean it. Rowena seems to be asleep in the back seat, although every once in a while a spasm crosses her face and she moans as if in pain. Gabriel switches off the ignition, leans forward a little, and rests his head on the wheel. With one hand he rubs at his neck, his fingers circling the blue moon tattoo.

“Aren't you glad you came back?” I ask after a few seconds. He gives me a look, one side of his mouth hooking upward in what I hope is a smile, but he doesn't answer. And I don't have time to thank him because the door crashes open and my mother is flying down the driveway, her hair struggling free of whatever she's managed to stick in it. In the next second she disappears and then flickers into view in the back seat of the car.

“Hi, Mom,” I say, my voice somewhat muffled as she has me enveloped in as much of a hug as she can from the back seat. My head is smashed into her shoulder and my neck is starting to develop a serious kink. Her skin smells of lavender and sage, its heady perfume thickening all around me.