Reckoning

  "Hunter knows what?"

  It wasn't a broom closet I had entered; it was a pantry cupboard. Since I couldn't clean the floor with crackers and cans of soup, I shut the door and hung my head. "About me. About my problem. I was going to get help..." "Help with what?"

  "My..." Ugh. I was in no condition to explain. I didn't have the energy to say the word telekinesis. It had too many syllables.

  "Why don't you go sit down by the fireplace?" she said, taking me by the shoulder and leading me towards the door. "This is nothing. I'll get it." I nodded and stumbled into the empty room where the circle had just been. Everybody else was gone. Suddenly feeling exhausted, I slumped down in a corner of the room between the sofa and the wall and closed my eyes. Everything in me hurt. It all passed through my mind, everything I'd written on the slip of paper, everything that had been eating at me. Hilary. My father, My mother. My insane powers. The dark wave. And now all the water flooding Hunter's house. The images just kept on coming, smacking into my mind like it was a punching bag. Someone was approaching me. Without opening my eyes, I knew it was Hunter---it wasn't witch power. He was just the only of two people left, and I heard Morgan moving in the kitchen. I felt him slide down and sit on the floor next to me. Whatever he had to say to me, I clearly deserved it. I was a freak. I was flooding his house. I was a danger to myself and others. I braced myself for the lecture I was sure he was about to give. He was going to kick me out of Kithic, I thought, just when I had realized that was the only place I found any peace. I pulled my knees into my chest to steady myself.

  Instead of giving me the berating I was expecting. I felt Hunter put his long arm over my shoulders.

  "Alise?" he asked, trying to get me to open my eyes and look at him. I couldn't. He put his other hand on the back of my head, guiding it down so that it rested on his shoulder. I felt the whole wave of emotion coming to the surface. It was so powerful, it almost made me shake. "Let it out," he said, his voice soft.

  Much to my embarrassment, his words opened up another floodgate---this time in me. I started to sob. And just as with the plumbing, I couldn't control the flow. In the distance, over my sobs, I heard the sound of the kitchen drain releasing and the water gurgling as it was sucked down into the pipes. 4. Uncontrollable

  September 3, Goddess, merciful goddess. What is happening in this house? The event that had started it all seems so trivial now, it nauseates me. Tioma had taken my favorite sweater, my pink angora one, from my room without asking, only to get ink on the sleeve. I found it in a ball at the back of the drawer, furious, I went off to find her. She was in the living room, shrinking behind a book, as if she knew what was coming. Of course, I tried to control myself, but I was enraged. She stoop up and tried to deny what she had done, which only made me angrier---so angry that I couldn't speak. Just as I

  turned to stalk back to my room, the heavy, glass-doored bookcase tipped over and slowly

  fell---right onto Tioma. I heard the glass shatter as it fell against her, knocking her to the ground and landing on her back. She made no sound. For a minute I thought she was dead--- then I saw her fingers move. Mother and Father weren't on the house, so it was up to me to help her. A spell came from the back of my mind, something I'd read in an old Book of Shadows--- a spell for making things lightweight. Without another moments thought I quickly preformed it, and I was able to lift the bookcase off my sisters back. She looked broken. There was blood coming from all parts of her body where the glass ad punctured her, but she was alive. I called out to all members of the coven, asking them to run and help. Then I started reciting every healing spell I have ever learned to stop the bleeding. Within minutes my parents and various members of Ròiseal were running through the door. They rushed her off to the hospital.

  Tioma is still there and is still insensible, but the doctors say she will recover. Mother and Father praised me endlessly, telling me that my quick thinking and composure saved her life. But all I can think of is my rage---my stupid rage over a sweater---and the sight of the massive cabinet coming down on my sister. Why do these ghosts want to harm us?

  ---Aoibheann

  I don't know exactly how long we sat there like that, but it had to be a while. It seemed like every drop of water in my entire body was being sucked out through my eyes. Hunter just sat through it all, rocking me back and forth, like you do with crying children. I was a mess. Finally my breakdown slowed, and he let go so that I could sit up and wipe off my face with my hands. I saw that I had completely soaked through the shoulder of his gray T-shirt. Very fitting. I was dousing everything else---why not Hunter too?" "I'm sorry," I sputtered, my breath still jagged. "I'm so sorry. I did this. All this damage..." "What happened?" he asked softly.

  "I don't know," I sniffled.

  "Could you feel anything physically?" he said. "Could you sense anything happening?" "You mean aside from the sound of exploding pipes and the stampede of people out the door?" I said, much more sharply then I intended. "Maybe some tea," he said, backing off the subject. He looked up at Morgan, who I suddenly realized was standing right by us. She handed me some Kleenex, which I desperately needed. "Morgan, would you mind?"

  "I'm on it," she said, standing upright and headed for the kitchen. "Use the blue canister," he said. "It's in the back." I just sat for a few minutes after that, saying nothing, staring at the floor and wiping my eyes whenever they teared up again. He set his arm back over my shoulders and let me lean against him. I finally worked up the will to say something. "I didn't mean to..." I waved my hand around, trying to indicate the flooding, my crying... basically everything that had happened that night. "Do you think I haven't seen tears before?" he said softly. "And after the dark wave, do you think some water on the floor is really going to bother me?" That did put it in perspective a bit.

  "What's wrong with me, Hunter?" I said, unable to keep my voice from breaking. Morgan returned with a tray full of steaming earthenware mugs and a small chocolate chip cake that must've been intended as an after-circle snack before I made everyone scatter. Hunter released me, and I pulled myself into on of the chairs in front of the fireplace. Morgan handed me a mug of tea and sat down on the floor next to us. It was scalding hot to the touch,

  and I must have winced. She reached over and circled her hand above it, and immediately it

  cooled to the perfect temperature. I looked down at her in amazement. "How did you...?" Duh, I thought. This is Morgan. Cooling some tea wasn't exactly a big deal for her. "Never mind," I added. "Dumb question." Hunter sat down across from me and leaned forward. He took a mug and then reached for my hand.

  "It's a simple spell," he said. "A little transferal of energy. Just focus your energy. Tell yourself that the tea will cool. Know it."

  I did my best to focus. He rotated my hand once over the cup, and I felt a little warmth, like I'd grabbed a hot potato and let it go. He took a sip of tea. "Very nice," he said with a smile. "Well done." Hunter doesn't smile too often, but when he does, he could met a stone. He really could have been a model. "Drink that," Morgan said, pointing at my cup. "Believe me, it works." "Better than Diet Coke?" I croaked, rubbing the last of the moisture from my eyes. "Almost," she said. Hunter rolled his eyes good-naturedly. I tried a sip of the tea. It was sweet and tasted like a whole garden of herbs, nothing like the nasty concoctions Hilary bought at the health food store. This was powerful stuff, and I could feel it all through my body, spreading calm. "Do you feel up to talking about it now?" Hunter asked, watching me as I drained the cup. I nodded. Morgan poured me some more from the pot and mixed the honey. "Right," said Hunter, his tone turning professional. "The exercise we did tonight was designed to help bring out and release negative emotions. A lot has happened to you recently, to say the least. You have a lot of new information. Morgan has told me that there have been some things going on in your family, too. All of that was shaken loose, and it seems to have triggered an attack."

  "An attack?" said Morgan. Hunter turned to her. "Alisa is tel
ekinetic," he explained. "We said that we would look into the problem after the dark wave had been dealt with, and now we are." "Telekinesis," Morgan repeated. "Is that what it was? I thought I felt something weird in the tàth meàmna brach."

  Just before the dark wave had come, Morgan and I had joined minds in a ritual called a tàth meàmna brach to fight it. She had seen everything inside my mind, and I had seen everything in hers.

  "No doubt you did," he agreed. "Could you get a clear idea of what was going on?" "No," she said. "It was a strange sensation, but I didn't really know what to make of it. It felt like an electric shock, but a mental one. I thought it was coming from the dark wave." "All that stuff that happened to you---the shelves in the library, the butter dish in the kitchen---that was all me," I said, looking down at her. I was referring to various instances of things falling over or flying around in the last few weeks. Several had ended up heading for Morgan, and she'd seemed really upset by them. "I didn't mean to do those things. In fact, at the time I didn't even know it was me."

  "So the deflection spell..." she started to say, turning pale. "It put you in the hospital. Oh, Goddess."

  I wasn't sure what she was talking about, but Hunter nodded to her. "It wasn't Ciaran at all," he said. "But to get back to the problem at hand," Hunter went on thoughtfully, "aside from helping to release your emotions, the spell obviously triggered something. It would be very hard to tell what exactly it was. It's a general release spell with a broad range. How did you feel when we were performing it?"

  "It was so strong," I said, remembering it with a shiver. "These feelings... I felt like a volcano. I kept trying to push the emotions down. I didn't even know what was going on until I saw everyone panicking."

  He drummed his fingers on his knee and looked thoughtfully into the fire for a moment. "Judging from what I've seen so fat," he said, "I'd guess the phenomenon is somehow connected to your emotional state. I remember that objects would fall when you became frustrated with learning the dark wave spell. Tonight the flooding stopped when you started to

  cry."

  "That's it?" I said hopefully. "So how do I stop it?" "Its exact mechanism will be a bit more complicated to determine, I'm afraid," he explained. "These things are rarely easy. You may react to certain substances or elements more that others, or you might be attuned to certain magnetic or magickal forces. In order to draw up that much power, you're tapping into something fairly deep---probably a whole web of energies." Wrong answer. He was supposed to say that this was a cake problem and that he had a book that would fix it right here.

  "How long have you had this condition?" he asked. "My whole life, I guess," I said, picking at the flecks of herbs that floated to the top of my cup. "Weird little things have always happened to me. I just used to think that I was very unlucky and clumsy. But it's gotten a lot worse recently. My mother has it, too. She talks about it in her Book of Shadows."

  "That's very significant. I didn't know that. Is there anything else you've noticed about these episodes? Do they have anything in common? Anything at all?" "Not really," I said. "Nothing I can think off." Hunter got up and started to pace a bit. He seemed to be thinking the problem out. I noticed that the cuffs of his jeans were soaked, as were his boots. "I know a man in London named Ardán Rourke," he said. "This kind of thing is his specialty." "What kind of thing?" Morgan asked. "Telekinesis?" "Uncontrollable magick, in any form. It's too late to ring him now---it's after two o'clock in the morning there. I'll try tomorrow. There's also Jon Vorwald, a Burnhide who works out of Amsterdam. He might be able to tell if it's a magickal reaction to certain metals or other substances, which it very well might be. I'll contact him, too. In the meantime I'll talk to Bethany Malone. In fact, let's see if she's home now. He went into the kitchen for the phone. Morgan reached up and took my hand. I felt a warm flow of energy coming from her, soothing some of my frayed nerves. "I wish I'd known," she said.

  "I just figured it out a little while ago," I said. "It was news to me, too. I never meant to do anything to you. You know that right?"

  "Of course," she said.

  "No answer," Hunter said, coming back and breaking himself off a handful of the cake. "Do you want me to scry for her?" asked Morgan. "No." Hunter shook his head. "I'll try again tomorrow, after I talk to Ardán and Jon." "I need to wash my face," I said, wanting to get up and be alone for a moment. I suddenly felt like some kind of leper. All this talk of phenomena and metals and bringing in specialists from London and Amsterdam was too much. Was my problem so bad that it required a global effort to fix?

  Hunter shifted uncomfortably. "I'd use the upstairs one. The downstairs is still... very damp." In the upstairs bathroom there was a film of water covering the black-and- white-tiled floor. Hunter had thrown down a few towels. They were strewn around the various puddles, swollen and heavy, like enormous slugs. Water had pooled into a kind of lake under the claw foot tub. If this was the drier of the two bathrooms, I really didn't want to know what the downstairs one looked like.

  Though I had soaked the place, I could see that it was otherwise spotlessly clean, even austere. Soon it would smell like mildew, thanks to me. I picked up the towels and wrung then out as best as I could into the tub, then hung them from the shower rod. My face was a damp wreck. My huge eyes were completely bloodshot, and the lids were puffy. I looked gross, froglike. I splashed cold water on my face until it seemed less swollen, then dried it on one of the hemp washcloths that hung from the towel bar. When I came back into the living room, Hunter and Morgan were huddled together in discussion. They separated as I entered. "Are you feeling any better?" Hunter said, rising to give me his chair. "I think I should go home," I said.

  "I don't think that's advisable, Alisa," he said. "You've just been strongly affected by a spell. I

  think you should stay here until it wears off a bit."

  "I'd really like to go," I said quietly. Hunter studied me for a moment, and I felt a weird sensation come over me, as if someone was trying to climb into my skin.

  "What's that?" I asked.

  They both raised their eyebrows.

  "You felt that?" said Hunter.

  "Yeah," I said, running my hands over my arms. "It was creepy. What was it?" "That was us," he said. "We were casting our senses out to you, trying to get information about how you felt."

  So they were witch-spying on me. At least he was honest. "Have you ever felt it before?" he asked. "No," I said. "Why? Have you ever done it before?" "Very strange," Hunter said, not answering my question. He rubbed his chin, then nodded to himself. "Right, then. I'll take you, if you really want to go. Morgan, you might want to have a look at those books on pyromancy while I'm gone." A minute later I slid into the passenger's seat of Hunter's old Honda and stared into my lap. Seeing that I wasn't in the mood to talk much, he turned on the radio, but it didn't work very well. All he could get was a static-ridden country station. After a few minutes of trying to get something else, he grimaced and switched it off. "Unbelievable," he commented, shaking his head. "We witches can tap into the power of the universe. We can rip holes between life and death. But we still can't get an old radio with a bent aerial to pick up anything besides crackly country and western." I couldn't help but smile at that.

  As we pulled up in front of my house, Hunter turned to look at me. "I'll try and have some answers by the morning," he said. "For now, just get some rest." "Okay," I said, reaching up for the door release. As I was getting out, he reached up for my arm. I turned around to see him stretching over the passenger's seat to look at me. "Ring me if you have any more problems tonight," he said. "I don't care what time it is." He waited until I was inside before pulling away. I could hear my dad and Hilary in the kitchen, talking about their plans for converting my room into the Hilspawn habitat. I took from what they were saying that they had just gone out to order a crib and a dresser. Now they were making a list of objects to put on the gift registry---the monitor, a sliding rocker, a Diaper Genie... In their excite
ment they didn't even notice that I had come home, which was fine with me. I headed off to my room. I wanted to enjoy it while it was still mine. 5. Explosion

  October 29, A strange thing happened today. I was down in the library looking through some old books on the elder futhark alphabet. These particular books are rarely used, so they're kept well in the back. As I pulled the book from the shelf, I noticed another book wedged behind it. To my amazement, it turned out to be a Book of Shadows that belonged to my great-great-grandmother, Màirin Quinn. How it had gotten lost like that for so many years is beyond me. Our family has always taken great care with its books, especially the Book of Shadows. Stranger still, some of the pagers have been violently torn out. It's not like a Rowanwand to mar a book in any way. I wonder what happened. I'm going to read the book tonight, then I'll make sure its filed away in the proper place. ---Aoibheann

  Even before I turned on the light in my room, I knew that something was wrong, Things were

  different. There should have been shoes by the door for me to trip over. Somebody had changed things in here. Had my attack done something to my room as well? I flicked on the light and discovered the worst.

  My belongings were in boxes. Clothes. Shoes. Posters and pictures from my walls. One box was full of books, including my mother's Book of Shadows and mine. It took me a frantic minute to even find Sam's letters---they were packed in with a bunch of old papers from the floor. There were bundled together and retied in ribbon. I felt my stomach clench. This had to be the work of Hilary. For her to have gone through my stuff was bad enough, but she had been handling my mother's personal property. Had she read the letters? My book? My brain couldn't even put those thoughts together. Insane, raging, I blew open the door and tore through the house. This was it---I couldn't hold it back any longer. I found them still sitting in the kitchen, giggling over something. "What's the matter, honey?" my dad asked. I must have looked like something out of an alien movie. I felt my eyes bulging and my heart racing. My hands were clenching and unclenching. "What did you do?" I hissed.