Always a Witch

  I sigh. Most mothers would be pleased if their child got into Stanford. Not mine. She'd like nothing better than to have me live right here in this house in Hedgerow for the rest of my life, like generations of Greenes before me.

  "I was in California once," a voice says, and then Uncle Morris blinks into view. My mother shrieks and drops all three forks on the floor.

  "They have the loveliest wineries out there," Uncle Morris says to Gabriel, who is trying not to laugh. Stroking his chin, Uncle Morris glances out the window. "I took a tour of this little vineyard once and had the most delightful Cabernet. The grapes were sweeter than honey that year, and—"

  "Be quiet, Morris," my mother snaps, and then turns back to me. "Why would you leave New York? It's bad enough that you live in New York City for most of the year. I'm still not used to that, but why would you leave? And why would you let her?" she demands of Gabriel.

  "Whoa," Gabriel says, putting his hands up.

  "He doesn't control my—"

  "That's not what I meant," my mother interjects. "Just why would you even need to go to college now that you've ... now that everyone..."

  "Now that everyone's decided to stop lying about me having a Talent?" I say blandly.

  A silence descends over the room.

  Uncle Morris clears his throat. "Ah, not everyone lied to you, Tamsin. I believe it was just your mother and father and your grandmother who even knew you had a Talent."

  "And Rowena," I add cheerfully. "Don't forget about her. She'd be upset if you did."

  "Thank you, Morris," my mother says bitterly, slamming the forks back onto the counter. "Thank you, as always, for being so helpful."

  Uncle Morris blinks and his gaze shifts mournfully toward the door. He starts to go hazy around the edges, but then Gabriel slaps him on the shoulder. "Hey, Uncle Morris, let's go play poker. I feel like winning some money."

  Uncle Morris brightens. "All right. And I have a bottle I've been saving for just such an occasion."

  "What occasion?" I mutter, but no one answers.

  Gabriel kisses my cheek. "Later," he says against my ear, and leads Uncle Morris from the room.

  My mother sorts silverware in silence for a few seconds. "I didn't mean that," she says stiffly after a moment.

  I'm not sure what she's referring to, but I nod. "Okay."

  "I just thought you would be happy ... living here in Hedgerow with us ... after school finishes."

  "Come on, Mom. It's not like I'm the first person to go to college in this family." Then I pause. "Am I?"

  "No. Of course not. It's just that I thought you would want to—" She blinks rapidly and presses the back of one hand to her eyes.

  Wow. Planning this wedding must really be getting to her. I jerk open the refrigerator again and stare at the rows of cakes. "I don't know what I want, Mom. Half the time I forget that I even have a Talent and I think I'm just ... ordinary, and then the rest of the time I walk around school remembering I have this big secret. I just ... need to decide..."

  "Decide what?" a deep voice says from the doorway. My mother and I both turn to find my grandmother leaning against the wall. Her skin gleams almost translucent under the kitchen light, and the bones in her face seem to stand out sharper than ever. She's been ill for several months now and no one seems to be able to do anything about it.

  "Mother," my mother says immediately. "You should be resting. Let me—"

  My grandmother holds up one hand and my mother falls silent. Her dark eyes find mine and then some expression flickers across her face. Sadness? Unease? I can't tell. "Decide what, Tamsin?" she asks again, her voice clear and strong as ever despite her appearance.

  Decide who I really am.

  But I can't say that out loud, so I gaze at my grandmother helplessly. Her Talent is to read minds even though she apparently hasn't tried this on me for years, ever since she learned what my Talent was. But somehow she knows exactly what I'm not saying because she closes one eye in her trademark wink and says softly, "Ah."

  Two

  "DOES THAT LOOK LIKE THE dress I put on hold?" Rowena asks the room out loud as I step across the threshold, holding the rose-colored dress that Agatha had pronounced so perfect for Rowena's wedding. "When I asked you to show me the dress that you're wearing for my wedding, I meant the dress that I picked out, the one on hold for you at Eidon. The one I instructed you to get. This one is rose colored. Rose. The one I picked out was silver."

  "Gray," I mutter.

  Rowena's eyes narrow and she steps off the pedestal that she's been standing on. Kicking her voluminous skirts aside, she marches toward me. "What?"

  I squirm a little and flap one sleeve through the air. "Can't I just wear this one? I mean, no one is going to be looking at me anyway," I say, striving to appeal to her vanity.

  "No, you cannot just wear this one," she says, her lip curling up as she glances at the wilted dress in my arms. "Where did you even get that thing?"

  I probably shouldn't mention that I got it at a thrift store. Rowena loathes thrift stores, and she's already regarding the dress as if it's infested with fleas. "And what happened to the dress I sent you to get?"

  "I didn't buy it," I say in a small voice, even though that should be completely obvious to her by now.

  "What do you mean you didn't buy it?" Rowena asks, holding her arms out. Aunt Linnie makes a clucking noise, maybe because of all the pins she has clamped between her lips, and exchanges a look with my white-faced mother, who hovers in the background.

  I shift from one foot to the other. "Um..."

  "I asked you to do one simple thing for me, Tamsin. One simple thing, and you couldn't do it, could you?" My sister's voice is rising. "This is my wedding. My wedding. My special day. And you had to mess it up for me. Because you're Tamsin Greene and you think you're above all the rules now."

  "That's not what I think," I say, stung.

  "Rowena," my mother protests. The veil in her hands twitches sharply. "That's—"

  "Don't you defend her, Mother. Not this time."

  I blink. When has our mother ever defended me to Rowena? "I ... it looked really awful on me," I finish lamely, and then try to backtrack, because one look at my sister's reddening face tells me this wasn't the best defense. "And it wasn't my size—"

  "So what?" she hisses. "We could have fixed it. Aunt Linnie could have fixed it. I am the bride. I am the bride here."

  "No kidding," I say, which only seems to inflame her more.

  "Well, you're going back to the city to get it—"

  "Fine by me," I say just as our mother says, "No."

  The word falls like an ax through the rest of Rowena's sentence. The silence is broken only by Aunt Linnie's humming as she adjusts the last pin in the waistline of the dress.

  "Your grandmother said that no one is to leave the property again."

  "What?" Rowena and I both say at once.

  My mother shrugs. "She doesn't want anyone leaving for the next few days."

  "Why?" I ask.

  My mother massages her right temple as if trying to drive away a sudden pain. The lines between her eyebrows deepen into what seems lately like their permanent dent. "She wouldn't say. Something she saw."

  Errant sparks fly from Aunt Linnie's hands, and she exclaims softly, stepping back.

  "Oh, for the elements' sake," Rowena says, swishing her skirts out of the way and examining them thoroughly. Aunt Linnie wrings her offending hands in distress, but the ivory expanse of silk seems undamaged. My sister glares at me, then tromps to the door of her room and bellows down the hallway, "Silda. Silda, come here." Whirling back, she hisses, "You will match with the other bridesmaids. You will if it's the last thing I do!"

  My mother and I exchange glances. "Uh, Ro," I say doubtfully, "I think you're taking this a little—"

  "What is it?" Silda, our cousin, asks a little breathlessly as she enters the room. Tucking her wispy pale hair behind her ears, she glances first at me, then at my moth
er, and last at Aunt Linnie, who is still shooting sparks from her hands. "What's the problem?" she asks again, now in the tone that everyone seems to be adopting with Rowena lately. The "I'm not going to make any sudden moves or eye contact" tone.

  I'm suddenly thankful for the three final exams that kept me at boarding school until today.

  "That," Rowena says, pointing at me and my offensive rose dress. "That is what Tamsin thinks she is wearing in three days. To my wedding," she emphasizes in case we're not sure of the occasion that she's referring to. "Even though everyone else's dress is silver—"

  "Concrete gray," I mutter, and as Rowena turns to glare at me, a smile slides across Silda's face so fast that I'm not sure it was ever there to begin with.

  "Since Tamsin is being so stubborn and since Mother wouldn't dare send her back to the city to get the dress—"

  "That's—"

  "I need a favor from you," Rowena continues, disregarding our mother's protests. "I need you to change the dress to silver. Change it to match the others."

  A prickly silence fills the room. Silda can change the surface appearance of an object. Shoes into stones, pebbles into diamonds. I don't know if she can manage a whole dress, but I sigh. If she can, then maybe we can avert this whole disaster that was, I admit, of my own making.

  Shrugging, I step forward and spread the skirts of my dress.

  It stays the exact same shade of rose.

  "Tamsin," Rowena shrieks, and I jump. "Stop it. I know what you're doing and you're to stop it right now."

  "What? What am I doing? I'm not doing anything," I say. "Sorry, Silda—is it too much? Can you—"

  "Just let her change the dress," Rowena snaps, bustling forward, her cheeks turning the color of a brick. I stare at her for a second before realizing what she's saying.

  "I'm not—"

  "She's not stopping me," Silda says softly, and I turn to look at my cousin. If anything, her face is even more flushed than Rowena's, but she meets my eyes steadily. "I haven't tried to change the dress because I don't want her to try to stop me."

  We all stare at Silda for a second until I am the first to recover. "Of course," I say bitterly. "You think I'm going to try and take your Talent." It's true that if someone tries to use his or her Talent against me three times, then I absorb it, but still, I would never do that to my own family member. Then I swallow sharply. I did do that to two of my own family members. One was Aunt Beatrice in 1939 and the second was an ancestor of mine who could throw fire in 1899. Still, it's not like I took their Talents away from them in the process.

  And now Silda drops her gaze to the floor, but her voice is fierce as she says, "It's not right, Tamsin. It's not right that you can do that."

  "I won't," I say. "I don't want your stupid Talent," I add coldly. "What good would it do me anyway?"

  "Tamsin Greene," my mother says reprovingly as Silda lifts her head to stare at me. I match her glare for glare. My cousin and I used to be friends, or at least friendly.

  "That's uncalled for," Silda says, frost coating her voice.

  "Funny. I could say the same thing to you," I snap. "Sorry, Ro," I say, still staring at Silda. "Looks like I'm wearing pink after all."

  "What? This is my wedding," Rowena shrieks, and we both jump. Then she takes a deep, slow breath and says to Silda in a voice that is soaked in honey syrup, "You will change her dress right now. You will change it to match the others and you will be delighted to do it."

  Silda blinks slowly and turns to me, her hand outstretched.

  "Rowena," my mother exclaims.

  "That's right," Rowena says to Silda, ignoring our mother. "You want to—"

  "Oh, stop it," I say irritably, and reaching out with my mind I pull hard in the way that I've learned. Suddenly the air in the room feels like winter as Silda blinks again and then steps back, her face pale. Her eyes dart to Rowena.

  "You tried to compel me," she accuses my sister. Turning to me, she whispers, "And you stopped her."

  "Don't bother thanking me," I mutter as I brush past her and out the door.

  Darkness pours through the hallway of Grand Central Station, a darkness alleviated only by the occasional flash of lightning and by the four-faced clock, which is glowing with a cold white fire. Before my eyes, the clock begins to ripple and swell to five times its normal size.

  Stop! I try to wake myself out of this moment, but I can't. I have to watch it play out.

  One of the clock faces has now become a door that's swinging open. And all the while the hands are still spinning, spinning backwards, unraveling the moments and years.

  Ten feet from the door, three figures seem locked in a strange kind of dance, arms and legs distorted by the clock's bright glare. Alistair is pulling my sister toward the door and the complete blackness that waits beyond it, while Gabriel has latched on to her other arm. Rowena twists between them like a rag doll.

  "Rowena!" I scream. Alistair's eyes meet mine, chips of ice. "She'll never be free. None of you will ever be free," he hisses, his words carrying over the wind and the rain.

  I jerk awake, my hands flailing outward as Rowena's twisted face shimmers and then fades into the pre-dawn shadows of my bedroom. Only then do I let myself blink and fall back against my pillows. I stare up at my ceiling for a while before turning my head to look out the window. The fields and forest beyond are hushed with the last breath of night, that perfect stillness just before daybreak.

  She'll never be free. None of you will ever be free.

  That last part's new, I conclude after a second. Usually the dream stops with Rowena stepping through the doorway. But this time Alistair's words have taken on a deeper twist. None of you will ever be free.

  I grind my knuckles into my eyes, trying to rub away the last image of Rowena burning into a skeleton. This makes the third dream in a month. If this keeps up I'm considering asking my mother for one of those sleeping potions that she regularly doles out to Hedgerow's needy residents.

  I pull the sheet up to my chin and flip my pillow. If I had these dreams only at home, I could use it as the perfect excuse not to come home, but the last one before tonight happened at school. One minute, Alistair was wrenching my sister's arm backwards as he pulled her through the open clock, and she was withering away into smoke. Then in the next minute, Agatha, with a head full of curlers, was standing over me, swinging the mop (that we never use otherwise) through the air over our heads. Later, after we had stopped giggling, she told me that she had woken up to me screaming and thought that someone had broken into our dorm room. I don't know if she was planning on scrubbing him to death or what. Poor Agatha. I can't be the easiest roommate in the world.

  I sigh and look through the window again. Frost glitters across the fields. In three days it will be the Winter Solstice; Rowena's wedding day.

  She'll never be free. None of you will ever be free.

  "Mrrr," comes a small complaint from the corner of the room.

  I flail upright again and then Hector, my grandmother's cat, leaps onto the bed. "Stupid cat," I mutter. My heart is beating as fast as it was when I first woke up.

  "It's just a dream," I say out loud to myself, petting Hector's head a little too vigorously until he slaps at my hand with one paw. Luckily, he leaves his claws sheathed. "Just a dream," I say again.

  Hector yawns once, then regards me through half-closed yellow eyes.

  "Yeah, I know. I'm not buying it either." With my two index fingers, I rub small circles in my forehead, before standing up. "Milk," I announce. "Hot milk will make me fall asleep. Or at least that's what I've heard." And maybe Gabriel's still awake and I can persuade him to sit up with me.

  At that thought, I smile and search out my pair of fuzzy bunny slippers that Agatha gave me as an early Christmas present. With their bulbous pink noses and goggly eyes, they're ridiculous, but I need some kind of ridiculous right now.

  I crack open my door and stick my head out. The whole house seems to be silent and still and
—

  "Mrrr."

  I jump again. Apparently, Hector understands the word milk because he's crept off the bed and is now winding around my ankles until I almost trip. "All right, all right, I'll feed you, even though it's the middle of the freaking night," I whisper, all too aware that I'm talking to a cat.

  The stairs creak in their usual spots as I head down them. After one backward glance, Hector dashes ahead of me into the kitchen. I'm about to follow him when I stop, my head turned. A light is on in the small side parlor, and a murmur of voices, too low for me to distinguish, tugs at my ear. The last I saw of Gabriel he was locked in what looked like an all-night poker game with a red-eyed, grim-faced Jerom, who was insisting that he be allowed to wager his cuff links. Uncle Morris had apparently gambled away everything he had and then had conveniently fallen asleep over his cards. Why anyone continues to play cards with Gabriel is beyond me. I won't even play with him even though I have the Talent to stop him from "finding" all the aces every single time.

  But now I inch closer. It doesn't sound like Gabriel or Jerom.

  "No, I don't remember that," a voice says querulously, and I recognize it as Aunt Beatrice's. "Are you sure that happened, Morris? When did we say that? Now, back in 1939 I remember seeing a girl who looked a lot like her, but I think she was—"

  "Are you sure it was 1939?" Uncle Morris breaks in.

  "Of course, I am," Aunt Beatrice answers immediately. "I never forget a date!" Which is so patently untrue that I wait for Uncle Morris to laugh.

  But he doesn't.

  Instead he says, "Of course you don't. Here, have some more sherry, dear, and tell me—"

  I tiptoe closer and peer through the half-open door to take in the scene before me. The parlor is lit by one slender red-fringed lamp and a dying fire in the hearth. The sliding doors that lead into the side garden are standing open, and cold air swirls into the room, raising goose bumps on my skin.

  Uncle Morris, wearing his usual rumpled suit, is sitting very close to Aunt Beatrice on the love seat. As I watch, he rolls to his feet and deftly hooks two fingers around the neck of an opened bottle of sherry. He refills Aunt Beatrice's glass, but before handing it back to her he turns away and pulls something from his suit pocket. A tiny bottle that he swiftly unstoppers and tips backwards into his own mouth. Aunt Beatrice huffs with impatience.