Witches (29 page)

“I will not set foot in that wicked place. The
things
in those jars. Sometimes I think they be staring at me.” Maggie crossed herself, her face white as a ghost; her eyes peering cautiously into the inky corners of the cluttered cellar.

Amanda had never seen such a collection. She ran her fingers lightly over the dusty bottles. Some of the contents she thought she recognized.

Foxglove roots. One-fifth of a grain was so lethal it could slow and then stop a heart’s beating. She reached out and poked a clump of hedgerow or nightshade as some people called it. Fourteen of its berries could easily kill, and less would induce delirium. There was curare and the dried fruit of hemlock, both of which, in varying doses, could inflict gradual or complete paralysis.

Amanda studied a strange-looking dried plant. If she was right, it was tansy, a magical plant believed to prolong life, though it was exceedingly rare and she’d never seen any except in pictures in old dusty books. She laid a hand reverently on it and wondered where it’d come from. Where everything had come from.

There were rows of what appeared to be exotic potions, poisons, and ghastly looking monstrosities (parts of slain animals?) in some bottles. Blood-colored liquid in others. Some of them made Amanda queasy. They were so grotesque.

She never used such things in her magic.

There were also the more common medicinal plants and herbs that Amanda was more familiar with that she used for healing fevers, chills, and other ailments...and on and on.

A well-stocked witch’s pharmacopoeia. Heavy on the black magic ingredients, though. Real heavy.

Amanda could only imagine what the townspeople would do if they found this forbidden cache. What they would believe. Just the thought of it made her nervous.

Her skirts disturbed the dust around her and she began hacking. She put a hand over her mouth. The dirt stung her eyes.

“Where’s the diary?” She coughed.

“She hid it. There.” Maggie reluctantly moved behind her and pointed with a shaky finger to a flat rock right beneath Amanda’s feet. “Underneath that rock buried a little under the dirt.”

Maggie handed her a stick, sharpened on one end that had been lying on one of the shelves; then she edged back, closer to the entrance.

Amanda crouched down and lifted the heavy rock, set it aside, and started digging.

“Are you sure it’s here?”

“It is. Dig deeper,” she encouraged Amanda.

Amanda began to dig harder in the moist, loose soil. Finally she hit something and tossed the stick aside.

Her fingers brushed something smooth and hard, covered in a scrap of coarse cloth. She tugged it from the ground and unwrapped a delicate leather-bound and clasped book. “Got it.”

She got off her knees and hid the diary in her basket under the herbs she’d already collected to help Lizzy shake the last remnants of her fever. She’d study it later when she was alone. Maggie seemed frightened in the cellar and wanted to get out of it as soon as she could. She knew how she felt.

“All right. We can go now,” she told the girl, and shooed Maggie out into the sunlight and toward the house.

Maggie didn’t say anything once they’d left the cellar. Amanda was too preoccupied with her own thoughts to notice how quiet the girl was.

She couldn’t wait to examine Rachel’s book of spells. Then, she’d know more about her nemesis. Know how to defeat her.

If she could. Perhaps, Amanda had the sudden hope, there was even a spell in the book that might let her go back home. Break the enchantment Rachel had put on her.

For now, she tucked the little tome away in a safe place that Maggie showed her under a loose brick of the hearth and then spent the rest of the day cleaning the cottage from top to bottom. Tomorrow she’d try to fix the windows, if the right tools and supplies were available.

That night in the soft glow of candlelight Amanda and Maggie worked on the children’s new dresses and became friends. Amanda began to realize how lonely the girl had been.

She never mentioned her mother. Not once the whole night. Amanda thought of her quite a lot. Where was she? In her time, or in between? Still haunting Black Pond? She asked Maggie about Black Pond and Maggie gave her general directions to it. It was about six miles away toward the west.

That night, as the two girls slept on their pallets, Amanda retrieved and opened Rachel’s book of spells by candlelight. Amadeus was perched in her lap, for some reason very unhappy at what she was doing. If she could have understood him, she probably would have had an earful. He clearly didn’t want her to have anything to do with the book. Twice he actually tried to snatch it away from her, and when she took it back from him for the second time, he actually nipped at her.

She couldn’t understand what he was fussing about. As she turned page after page, her bewilderment grew. If the book was full of spells, it wouldn’t have mattered. Wouldn’t have helped her one bit. She couldn’t read a damn word of it. It was in some sort of code or arcane language, indecipherable to her. Whatever secrets it held were not for her to learn. A chill tingled along her spine. As only another witch would know, she sensed that the book in her hands was evilness itself. In the end, she hated to even touch it and hid it away again under the brick.

When she and the children were long asleep and the fire in the hearth was burning low, Amadeus stealthily dug it out. He silently made the door open with his waning magic, and holding the book carefully between his teeth, he scampered out into the rainy night.

When he returned a while later, he spent a lot of time meticulously cleaning away the dirt clumped between his claws and around his sore paws until there wasn’t a trace of where he’d been or what he’d been doing. Then, with a huge smug grin on his furry face, he laid his weary head on his paws and fell asleep.

Chapter Eight

“Rebecca! Great, I’ve finally gotten a hold of you. You are a difficult woman to track down, Sis.” Jessica’s usually placid voice sounded breathless on the other end of the receiver.

“Yeah, when I’m on a book tour like this, I am. Two one-horse towns a day, three hick radio station programs with ungracious and unprepared, arrogant hosts, inadequate lodgings, and discounted Greyhound bus tickets keep me hopping, all right. My messages, urgent or not, don’t always catch up to me. Sometimes never. You’re damn lucky, yours just caught me by a hare’s whisker.” A self-amused chuckle crackled across the line, but Jessie caught the tiredness behind the voice, too.

“Good thing I had this sudden whim to call my answering service this morning. I got your messages.” Rebecca didn’t tell her sister that it had been more than a whim, but almost a driven compulsion. Even her mouse familiar, Tibby, had urged her to call her younger sister. Pronto. She’d shuffled down to the phone booth on the lower level of the hotel complex in her robe, curlers, and fuzzy kitty slippers, and had sleepily dialed the number. She wasn’t even awake yet, and Tibby was chattering on like a magpie in her housecoat’s roomy pocket. She didn’t know what had gotten into the critter lately. He’d woken her at dawn with a lot of nonsense about someone close to her being in real danger.

Call your sister.

Since the only sister she knew of who had a phone was Jessie, she’d called Jessie. As silly as Tibby could be sometimes, he had his connections. There was a whole worldwide network of witches’ familiars and they jabbered and gossiped over the miles with their magic, like servants once gossiped in the downstairs kitchens. Maybe he knew something she didn’t.

“Well, it would help if you’d break down and get a damn cell phone,” Jessie’s voice was accusatory.

“Nope. Sorry. No can do. I tossed the last one in a river. I don’t want people calling me day and night wanting this or that. You know I need my privacy. Besides, we witches have our own way of communicating over long distances. Who needs a monthly cell phone bill? Not me. Still, since it only works between witches and you’re not a true witch, an old fashioned phone will have to do. Good thing you have other talents, Sis. Lots of them.”

“Thanks for the compliment. Still doesn’t get you off the hook, though.”

“So…what can I do for you, Jessie?” Her voice purred. She was tucking her short dark hair back up into the curlers as it escaped. Her face round and her eyes a startling blue as they scanned the surrounding doors, all with numbers on them. Most of the guests were still sleeping, but some were packing their suitcases in their cars and going off to breakfast at one of the local restaurants. Breakfast made her mouth water. She was starving. There were only two decent places to eat, as far as she could tell, a Denny’s and some sort of truck stop, in this godforsaken tiny town. Somewhere in Tennessee, but she wasn’t sure exactly where. It was like that sometimes on these whirlwind book promotion tours. Two towns a day and she never could remember where she was half the time.

“It must be an emergency, Jessie, if you’ve gone to all this trouble. Your messages—all ten of them—sounded desperate.” Rebecca shivered a little. She’d left her sweater in the hotel room. It was cool outside for November, but not yet cold.

“Yes, I think it’s an emergency.” A gulp of air and only a split second pause before Jessie launched into everything like a freight train on a fast track.

“Amanda’s in a whole hell of a lot of trouble, if you ask me, and I’m afraid—really afraid—for her...and that was before...before the Satanic cult stole Jane’s little boy and Amanda went to get him back...before the townspeople found the boy, mutilated and half dead, at Amanda’s feet last night, burned her cabin to the ground, and chased her through the woods. Now, according to Ernie, Jane’s boyfriend, Amanda’s disappeared on top of it all.” A sharp intake of air and she plunged on again before Rebecca could stop her.

“I told her she’d gotten involved in this thing way over her head with this long-dead witch, Rachel...and, Rebecca, I tried to warn her...tried to get her to wait until we could locate you to see if you could help her or try to get some
kind of help...but you know Amanda...headstrong and always thinking she can handle every damn thing alone. She just couldn’t wait because she knew the cult was going to kill Jonny and the townspeople thought she was one of them—”

“WHOA! W...h...o...a!” Rebecca interrupted forcefully, her head spinning from information overload. “Slow the bejesus down, Jessie! I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Remember me? The left-out sister who might as well have been on another planet for the last couple of months and doesn’t know what’s been going on? The black-sheep sister of the family? Amanda may have let you in on all the scuttlebutt, but not me.” Underneath all the bravado in the lilting voice there was a thin veneer over the hurt of being left out.

Jessica, even upset, but ever-observant, caught it. Just as she usually did.

“I’m sorry, Rebecca.” She sighed wearily. Rebecca could almost see her rubbing the side of her forehead, as she always did when she was losing it. “I guess I just got carried away. Just worried, that’s all. Time is essential. I might not be a real witch like you two, but my woman’s intuition is pretty good. I know Amanda’s in real trouble. I feel
it in my bones. I need your help. I can’t do a thing by myself. Please?”

“All right,” the voice on the other end of the phone grumbled. “You can count on me. What are sisters for, anyway? We have to talk face to face, though. As soon as possible. Phones won’t cut it. Too many ears listening.”

There was an unusual caution in Rebecca’s manner that puzzled Jessica. It wasn’t like her sister to be afraid of anything or anyone, even though with her limited powers, at times, her sister thought she should be.

“I’ll come as fast as a plane can fly me,” Rebecca said.

Rebecca, unlike Amanda, had never perfected her appearing and disappearing act. She could use magic to get places, but only at her own risk. Short distances usually were safest. She didn’t always get where she was aiming. The last time she’d tried, she’d ended up on the icy wing of an airplane—in flight—and after that had given up traveling that way. She took public transportation now. It was safer.

“You can cancel the book tour?” There was relief in Jessie’s voice.

“Sure. Who’s the best-selling author, anyway? I’ll tell my agent screw the damn book tour ’cause my sister comes first. The book seems to be doing bloody well without me hawking it all over the airways, and at all the bookstores, anyway.” Rebecca was a born Anglophile and spiced her conversation with British dictum whenever she could. She had friends and colleagues in England and flew over whenever she could get away. At times, she even affected a slight British accent that drove Jessie nuts.

Then Rebecca commented sarcastically, “Satanic cults and dead witches, huh? What has little Amanda gotten herself into…” She trailed off, thoughtfully. There was concern under her sarcasm. She didn’t possess the powers her sister Amanda had, but she had the knowledge. She’d written two books on Satanic Cults and their followers and she’d learned long ago that they were nothing to fool with.

From her pocket, Tibby was chattering hysterically again. Something about him being afraid. Not wanting to go.

We should just as well drench ourselves in gasoline and
light a match. Be done
with it.

His little hairy, black face was peeking out at her from the darkness of her pocket, his whiskers jumping like tiny antennae and his beady black eyes bulging. He was always scared. What a wuss. Rebecca shushed him. She could only listen to one conversation at a time. “I’ll talk to you in a minute, my pet,” she whispered down at him.