Always

  And the children wouldn’t be such oddities as they are now, she thought, and this would be good. As for her father, if Darci changed history, he’d never know what he’d missed. It would be like Jack not remembering that he’d never met Diana Drayton.

  She took a breath and looked back at the circle. Adam was at home now, staring out the window at his wife, with her blonde hair floating about her shoulders as she tossed a stick to a dog. “No time travel,” Darci said. “No witches. No FBI showing up at two in the morning saying that a child had been kidnapped and asking, ‘Can Darci help?’ No raising anyone from the dead. Just normal.”

  Darci decided to carry out her plan for the witch, and she’d leave Adam to this new future. She’d let him be happy. She’d let him have the wonderful life that he deserved.

  As for her, she could divorce Putnam. She could pop back in time and tell herself—or write herself a note, maybe—and…

  She looked back at Adam as he stood by the window. She’d seen him look exactly like that a thousand times, and she’d used her mind to calm him down, to make him at peace with himself. But what did he have to be sad about now? she thought. He had everything, so why was he looking as he had when he’d been carrying around the burden of a destroyed family?

  “Show me what’s inside his head,” she said softly. “Show me what’s really, really inside him.”

  For a moment Darci became dizzy, and in the next moment, she could hear the thoughts of Adam Montgomery.

  He was looking at his beautiful wife, but he felt only fondness for her. What’s wrong with me, he asked himself. I have it all. I have everything. But why do I want more?

  Darci saw him turn away from the window. What do I want, he asked himself.

  He ran his hand over his face and she saw him give a little smile. I want what so many of my ancestors seemed to have. I want a love that overpowers me, engulfs me.

  “Enough,” Darci said softly, and the circle closed. She got up, poured herself some juice, and thought about what she’d just heard. This Adam hadn’t been kidnapped, yet he was still an outsider, still different from the other people in his family.

  “And so am I,” Darci said. “I’m about as different as you can get.”

  She sat back down on the chair, stared at the droplet that was the circle, and said, “What would happen if I were to go back in time to before Adam was married? What if I went to his university? Would he notice me?”

  The circle opened, but all she saw was the glassy, wavering surface. There were no images. She stood up and put her face into the circle, but still there was nothing to see.

  She collapsed back against the chair and knew without a doubt that this emptiness was yet another test of her. She wasn’t going to be told whether or not she could make Adam love her again. When they’d met they’d been put together in extraordinary circumstances and had been forced to work together. At first there had been no physical attraction from him to her, and he’d even laughed at Darci’s passes at him.

  “I don’t know if I can do it,” she said. “How can I compete with all those long-legged girls who grew up in country clubs? Adam and his family are…” She couldn’t finish as she put her face into her hands.

  It was while she was trying to decide if she could bear to see Adam and be rejected that she thought, I can try. I can just, plain old-fashioned try. If I lose, then…

  After she’d made her decision, she desperately wanted to see her daughter and niece. Using the circle, she went to them, and saw that they weren’t in the least surprised to see her stepping out of a horizontal pool next to their swing set. Darci romped and played with them for an hour, then knew she needed to go. She needed to do what could be done to bring Adam back to all of them.

  As she prepared to leave, she couldn’t keep from crying and hugging and kissing them, all the while thinking that she might never see them again. If she didn’t connect with Adam, neither of them would be born.

  At last, she got back into the circle and returned to the hidden room. Using every bit of concentration she could muster, she put aside her personal fears and began her task.

  First, the witch. She needed to change that woman’s life.

  The plan that had taken Darci so long to come up with was actually very simple. All she did was make the witch ask questions that the mirror had kept her from asking.

  First, she made the witch ask the right question so that she saw that if she slept with a man, she would lose her ability to foresee the future.

  The second question had taken more work. Darci had had to ask to see what it was that the woman really wanted in life. Darci would have guessed that she wanted power, but, no, the woman had wanted to be respected. She’d thought that money would get her respect, then that evil power would make her respected, but both had failed.

  Darci made the woman ask the mirror what would happen if she used the mirror for something besides making money. It took Darci a while to get the witch to ask the right questions, but she’d been able to use her True Persuasion to put the thoughts into the woman’s head.

  In the end, what the woman did was write books about what she saw. Unlike her stepsister, she had no desire to share anything about the source of her knowledge, so she kept the mirror a secret all her life. She told people that she’d been born with paranormal ability, and as a result, she became a renown psychic. Presidents and kings called her in secret and asked for her predictions.

  The witch became a celebrity, and her elevated status kept her happy. She especially loved to play up her virginity, and she was credited with cutting down teen promiscuity by twenty-five percent.

  However, without gaining any evil power, she was not able to unnaturally prolong her life. She was to die when Darci was only six years old.

  What happened to the mirror after the woman’s death was ugly. It fell into the hands of three of the woman’s caretakers and they used it for evil.

  Darci made the woman ask the mirror about her own death so that she saw when it was going to happen and what would become of the mirror. It would be found out that she’d killed her stepsister to get the mirror, and that would be all that people remembered of her. Her hard-won respectability would be gone. Darci showed the woman where to hide the mirror two days before her death. She also told the woman to take a supply of Jerusalem salt and some dried raspberries with her, and showed her what was to be done with them.

  Smiling, Darci leaned back in her chair. She felt she’d accomplished a lot in a short time. It had taken hours to make sure that the woman’s not becoming a witch wouldn’t hurt the world. She had murdered a lot of people. It was horrible to think of, but would any of those murdered people live to be worse than the witch? “Show me all,” she’d commanded, then felt sick at the sheer number of faces that flashed by her. She looked at auras, watching for irregularities and muddy colors. She was happy to see that several of the people contributed significantly, whereas the others just lived ordinary lives.

  Her next task was to return to her hometown of Putnam, Kentucky. This was hard for Darci and at first all she wanted to do was pop back to the old stone building where she’d had the witch hide the mirror and the little man in his cage. But Darci knew she was being cowardly. Instead, she made herself go back to her own room in the run-down house where she’d lived with her mother—or, more rightly, lived by herself since her mother had rarely been there.

  Closing her eyes, Darci stepped halfway into the circle, then visualized where she wanted to go, and took a step forward. When she opened her eyes, she was in her bedroom in Putnam, and, immediately, sensations overwhelmed her.

  The room itself was ugly, with peeling wallpaper and a bed frame and mattress that someone had thrown out. She and her mother had lived on what her mother could make in one cheap job after another. Almost always, her mother had quit because the boss expected everything from her. Sex had never been enough. Men had wanted to possess Jerlene Monroe—and they still did, which was the secret of her c
urrent success in the movies.

  Sitting down on the bed, Darci could see so much more than she had before. Her own daughter had extraordinary powers, but Darci understood them. How must it have been for a woman to give birth to a child who talked to rocks? Who could do things with her mind?

  As Darci sat there, looking around the cheap, awful room, she saw many things about herself, about her mother, and about the town.

  Getting up, she opened her closet and saw the ghastly, hand-me-down clothes there. Now, looking back, Darci realized that it had never occurred to her to use her True Persuasion to gain money and worldly goods. She’d always been so ashamed of what she could do that she’d done nothing for herself. And she’d naively thought that no one around her knew what she could do.

  As Darci touched the cheap, worn clothes, she felt sorry for that child who was half-starved and left on her own so much.

  For a moment she was nearly overcome with self-pity, but then she straightened and smiled. She had changed. She was no longer afraid of her power—no, her Power. She had seen how she could help people, even to helping the world, and from now on instead of spending her time wishing she were “normal,” she was going to thank God for choosing her, for whatever reason He had, every hour of every day.

  She closed the closet door, looked around the room one last time, then left it. She walked through the small house, not looking at anything. She was done with looking back, done with regretting and wishing that this had been that way, and that that way. From now on, she was going to look ahead—unless history needed a bit of tweaking, that is, she thought, smiling.

  Darci was brought up short when she saw her mother sitting at the kitchen table, polishing her perfect nails. This had not been part of her plan! As it often did, her mother’s beauty startled her. But now, having seen that gorgeous face on the big screen, it was even more startling.

  “Where are you going?” Jerlene asked, her tone cold.

  When she was a child, her mother’s constant coldness had terrified her. For all that Darci had abilities, she’d never been able to see that her mother loved her very much.

  “I’m going…” Darci began, then stopped, realizing that, out of necessity, when she’d been a child she’d never told her mother anything but lies. What could she have said, that she was going out to visit her friends who had died long ago?

  Suddenly, Darci remembered how her mother had saved her life, and the resentment she’d felt all her life toward her mother left her. “Mom,” she said softly, “I know that you and I haven’t always been the best of friends, but I also know that when the chips are down you’d risk your life for me.”

  Jerlene, who usually refused to move her face for fear of causing wrinkles, looked up at her daughter in astonishment, then her face began to crumple. Tears formed in her eyes. “I didn’t know you knew that.”

  “I found it out,” Darci said as she kissed her mother’s cheek. “Don’t worry, Mom, everything will be all right.”

  Smiling, Darci walked out the back door of her mother’s house and up the hill. For behind the house was an old stone building, built by pioneers and now falling apart. Darci had spent a lot of her childhood in that roofless shelter. She’d talked to the ghosts and listened to them and sometimes found things for them. They’d helped her survive her childhood.

  When she reached the building, the ghosts came out to greet her, even the grumpy old man who’d fallen down the well and had never forgiven his wife for being happy that he’d died. They knew that she’d been gone for years and they wanted to hear all that she’d seen and done.

  Darci shot them images of her life while they excitedly told her about the old, sick woman who’d come there and hidden two things.

  “Yes, I know,” Darci said as she went to the corner and pulled the rotting bucket out of the mud. It hadn’t been moved in many years. Under it, safe, was the mirror, beautifully packaged in silk and waterproof plastic. Darci could feel the tears of the old woman. The mirror had been the only real friend she’d ever had in her life.

  Beside the mirror was a little homemade cage with a rock inside it. There were still a few pieces of Jersulaum salt left and one dried raspberry. The little man had eaten only one of each a year so they’d lasted for the years it took Darci to grow up. The cage was made of cardboard and string and should have rotted, but it was intact, clean and new.

  “Are you going to wake up now?” she asked, holding the cage aloft.

  The rock didn’t move or change form, but Darci heard him in her mind. “Depends on what’s going on.”

  “I have a circle that I can see history in and change it.”

  He sent her images of the iron egg with a question.

  “Forgot to look inside,” she said, then felt him go back to sleep.

  “My sternest critic,” she muttered, then, holding the cage and the mirror, she commanded the circle to appear. Seconds later she was inside the hidden room and she placed her treasures on the long shelf.

  She took the iron egg from the base and looked at it, but she could see no way to open it. It took several minutes of twisting and tugging before she finally thought of blowing on it. Her breath made the two halves part. Inside was a necklace, small and plain, except for the three blue stones on it. When she held it up to the light, the stones seemed to give off a radiance of their own. Not from this planet, she thought, then started to put the necklace on. “Not yet,” she whispered. Adam was next, but first she had to go to a hairdresser and to the mall. She had some shopping to do.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  DARCI WAS STANDING IN THE DOORWAY OF ADAM Montgomery’s secretary’s office, and she was having to work hard to keep from running away. After she’d had her hair cut and had bought a St. John suit, she’d lain awake most of the night planning what she’d do to make Adam fall in love with her again. She’d had her hair cut and highlighted just the way he liked it. And she told herself that she was going to use her True Persuasion as little as possible—if at all. If she got him through trickery, it wouldn’t last. As a child, she’d learned that when she tried to make people fall in love with each other, it couldn’t be done.

  The university where Adam taught was a prestigious Ivy League school. In other words, full of Yankee snobs who’d never said a kind word to anyone in their lives.

  His secretary, who looked like she’d grown up in Greenwich, Connecticut and been educated at Miss Porter’s school, was looking Darci up and down in a way that would have once made Darci cringe.

  But now, Darci looked the young woman in the eyes and said, “I’d like to speak to Dr. Montgomery, please.”

  “He’s not here. Come back some other time,” the woman said, looking back down at her work.

  The headache I could give you! Darci thought, but instead she smiled. She stared at the top of the woman’s head and concentrated. So much for not using her powers.

  The secretary looked up and said that Dr. Montgomery would be away all afternoon. “I have no idea where he is.”

  A tough case, Darci thought, still smiling. She stared deep into the woman’s eyes until she said, “Hiking. Whitnell Woods.”

  “Thank you,” Darci said politely, then started to leave, but she stopped and looked back. “How are Dr. Montgomery’s parents?”

  “Fine. They were here last week.”

  “And his sister?”

  For the first time, the young woman smiled. “Beautiful, as always.”

  “What was her name again?” Darci asked.

  “Elizabeth Montgomery.”

  “Yes, of course. She…?”

  The woman pointed to a large poster pinned to the wall behind her. It said Elizabeth Montgomery in Concert.

  “She plays the piano,” Darci said in wonder, staring at the poster. Bo was truly beautiful, with clear eyes. There was no horror in them. “Is she married?”

  “No, but she’s engaged.”

  Staring at the poster, Darci smiled. Adam’s sister had been named Boad
icea for a great queen in one life, and in another life she’d also been named for a great queen.

  “You wouldn’t have tickets to the concert, would you?” Darci asked, concentrating on the woman.

  “Why, yes, I do. They were to be given to the head of the department, but I’m sure he won’t mind missing the performance.” She reached into a desk drawer and, smiling, handed Darci two concert tickets.

  Darci took a pen and paper off the woman’s desk and wrote a note.

  Dear Mr. Raeburne,

  I’m a great admirer of your work. Would you please come backstage after the concert and meet me? Perhaps we could have dinner together.

  Elizabeth Montgomery

  When Darci finished, the woman was holding out an envelope to her. Darci put the tickets and note inside, then addressed the envelope to her father. “Would you please mail this for me?”

  “I’d be happy to,” the woman said, still smiling.

  As Darci walked away, she thought, I bet her face hurts tomorrow.

  • • •

  Darci cleared the wooded area of all hikers except for the one who she could feel was now walking toward her. She’d chosen a beautiful spot just off the trail by a little stream, and spread a cloth on the ground. She’d changed out of her pretty suit into a shirt and khaki pants, with a little straw hat with a ribbon on the back of it. Adam had always liked her in hats. She’d purchased many of the foods he liked, and had even gone to a wine store and bought something that was supposed to be excellent.

  While Darci had sworn she wouldn’t use her powers on Adam, she thought it was perfectly fair to use what she knew about him.

  In the minutes before he arrived, Darci closed her eyes and felt him. She could feel his presence, feel his aura even through the trees. Would he recognize her? Would something inside of him know that he’d never met her, but that he was madly in love with her?