Stray Witch

by Eva Alton

  And all those feats in the time it had taken me to get to the riverbanks and back.

  It was astonishing.

  If I hadn’t been so outraged, I would have been impressed by his newly discovered skillfulness.

  A desperate growl left my throat, and I slid against the doorframe, sheltered under the shadow of our lovely front porch.

  And then it sank in.

  My children were gone.

  My sweet little girls.

  The only thing I still had.

  The street was empty, with everybody inside enjoying their air conditioning, so I allowed my face to find refuge in the palms of my hands, knowing that nobody would see me.

  And then, on the balmy wooden floor, I allowed myself to break down for the things I never achieved and the ones I lost, and especially for the children I hadn’t had a chance to kiss goodbye.

  Chapter 27

  Clarence

  “Don’t.” Jean-Pierre said.

  Fiadh, the Irish waitress, was lying limp in my arms, a couple of bites away from eternal peace. I didn’t remember how she had ended up on that grassy mound. I didn’t recall luring her there―maybe it had been she who lured me in the first place, as I wandered in despair around Saint Anne’s, in the dazed agony which followed after reading Alba’s goodbye note and confronting Elizabeth about it.

  Alba hadn’t mentioned her reasons. However, they weren’t hard to guess after the way she had looked at me before running away from my suite. The horror I had seen in those eyes would forever haunt me as proof of what others really saw in me.

  To say I was devastated after my conversation with Elizabeth would have been an understatement. She had lost her patience with Alba. She wanted me to erase her memories.

  Her memories of The Cloister.

  Of everything we’d been through together.

  Her memories... of me.

  And if I didn’t manage, death penalty was the standard punishment for humans who knew too much.

  I owed my second chance at life to Elizabeth.

  A life I had never wanted.

  Just like I had sent Rose Auberon to her demise, my touch had once again become a kiss of death for an innocent. Whatever I cared for was always destined to damnation. I should have let Alba be, instead of succumbing to temptation and sentencing yet another guiltless creature. Had I been strong enough, she would still be there, pacing the halls of The Cloister with her shy smile and that tousled hair of hers.

  But now she was gone for good, and just the thought of losing her was enough to send me down the rabbit hole of madness.

  As soon as I had comprehended the scope of my mistakes, the beast inside had taken hold of me once more. This time I had allowed it to, watching it like a mere spectator.

  The hands about to finish that blameless woman’s life weren’t mine anymore: they were the beast’s.

  “Why shouldn’t I, Jean-Pierre?” I turned around to look at the monk, who had appeared out of nowhere. He must have been following me. “We are monsters, and that’s what monsters do,” I said grimly.

  “Because you can do better.”

  “You and I have killed enough humans in the past to earn our passage to hell a hundred times. Tell me, Brother Mercier, who are you to moralize?”

  “I’m your friend.”

  I snarled, letting go of the sleeping waitress and collapsing on all fours on the ground. Jean-Pierre stood beside me with his arms crossed, expectant.

  “You aren’t any better,” I growled, the grass scratching my face.

  Jean-Pierre took the waitress’ pulse and exhaled with relief. Then he threw her over his shoulder and started to walk away.

  “But I never strove to be a Robin Hood, remember?” he said meaningfully, his voice fading away. “You did. And you still can.”

  Chapter 28

  Alba

  It was lunchtime when I finally wiped my nose on my sleeve and gathered the courage to go seek refuge―and food―at the Yang house.

  May was holding a glass of lemonade―or was it actually a margarita?―as she came to open the door in a lace dress which might have fit one of my kids’ Barbies. She stood in the foyer, blocking the way with her small-framed body, and something in her wary attitude told me that Mark had also found the time to talk to her about me before his departure.

  “Laura is mopping the floor,” May said, which in housewife slang meant don’t you even think about stepping in until it gets dry.

  “I left my phone charging in your guestroom,” I said, seeing no Laura and no signs of wet tiles.

  “I will fetch it for you,” May said, finishing her suspicious lemonade in one massive gulp. “Wait here.”

  She closed the door in my face.

  A black cat jumped on a wicker rocking chair on the porch and started to purr at me from the green and white striped pillows.

  “Hey there!” I called, ducking my head to check the animal’s eye color. Sure enough, it had purple golden eyes. “Here, kitty, kitty! Is it you, Miss Jilly?”

  After a minute, May was back, holding my phone with the charger swinging like a dead mouse below it. She had also brought a greasy paper bag decorated with red Chinese characters and all my bags on her back.

  “Why are you talking to a chair?” she said, looking perplexed, as she handed me the phone.

  “I’m talking to the cat over there. It’s my daughters’ cat.”

  “Alba, there’s nothing there, but Mark told me about the drinking. If you need help...”

  “What? No!” I grimaced and walked over to the rocking chair, decided to grab the cat and dangle it in front of May Yang’s face if necessary. But Miss Jilly jumped into the wall and literally passed through it like it was a water curtain.

  I blinked. “Never mind. It went away.”

  May pursed her lips, looking worried. “I thought you might be hungry, so I got you Sichuan beans. No garlic,” she said, thrusting the bag against my chest, but avoiding my eyes. “And I need to tell you something... my mother just called. She’s going to stay with us for a while, so I’ll need the guest bedroom. I couldn’t say no to her.”

  “Oh, I understand, it’s okay.” I couldn’t believe this was happening. This sudden change in May’s attitude stank of Mark’s doing, too.

  May left the luggage at my feet noiselessly, making it clear that from that moment on, I had become persona non grata in her house.

  “When did you see Mark?”

  That asshole hadn’t lost a second.

  He had even managed to warn the neighbors against me.

  May opened her mouth and closed it again, which made her look like a choking fish.

  “Mark?” she said, with feigned candor, “I haven’t seen him for weeks. It’s not like he visits often. You should know that.”

  “Did he call you, then?”

  She remained silent.

  “Whatever he told you, I probably didn’t do it,” I said with a sigh, folding the top of the Chinese takeaway as my hopes to get an ally―and a place to stay―evaporated.

  “Of course not,” she said. She made no effort to deny anything.

  “Did he tell you where he took the kids?”

  May stared at me blankly, looking like she was about to cry. “I know nothing. I promise.”

  “Okay. I’m leaving now. Say hi to your mom,” I said, turning around with all my bags over my shoulder and ignoring her surprised expression at the mention of her mother―who obviously wasn’t coming any time soon.

  “Thank you, I will,” she answered, composing herself quickly. “You take care of yourself, Alba.”

  Chapter 29

  Alba

  Lightning flashed, scattering a flock of larks like crumbs in the sky. I searched for ravens among them, but there were none. Summer rainfall used to be one of my favorite weather occurrences, back when I used to have a roof over my head. As a newly homeless person, they didn’t seem so enticing anymore.

  I ran to my porch when the first drops
hit the ground, and I managed to throw the bags in front of the locked door. A second later, the dark clouds herded in a looming black mass and crashed in resounding thunder. Buckets of water started to pour down the gutters, filling the air with the refreshing scent of wet grass and mud, and I decided to sit on the entry bench and wait for the storm to pass.

  Julia’s diary was still in my bag, so I took it out and kept on reading.

  August 16th, 1972

  The pain inside my chest won’t go away. I was at the doctor’s, and they ordered a few more tests. The nurse looked at me encouragingly and said I shouldn’t worry because I’m too young for it to be serious.

  Hopefully, she’s right.

  I’ve been buying all the books I could find about witches and vampires. So far, apart from the little success I had with Kodrinova’s obscure manual, all I found were made up stories. I’m starting to lose faith. Hopefully, I’ll find a useful grimoire or at least a witch’s cookbook at the flea market before I’m too old to read without a magnifying glass.

  November 3rd, 1972

  My heart is not in good shape, and Doctor McKenzie wants me on bed rest. He mentioned an operation, but I’m too scared so I convinced him to postpone it. Elizabeth is going to use her contacts to get me a second opinion in the meantime.

  On the bright side, I’ll have an abundance of free time to read all my antique shop finds.

  March 26th, 1973

  I’m feeling so much better now that spring is back. It’s been a hard winter. Back on my feet and to my job duties. It seems the new medication is working well, and Doctor McKenzie assured me I’m going to live to see my grandchildren’s children. He made me laugh with his comment. If only he knew that it wasn’t a happy laugh.

  May 17th, 1977

  Yesterday, I found the most interesting notebook collection at an antiquarian. They had already saved it for me under the counter because they know me as “the lady who always searches for esoteric manuscripts.”

  June 21st, 1980

  Bed rest can be so tedious. I miss getting outside, and I can’t even open the skylight myself, which means I’m trapped in the darkness day and night, because none of the vampires can do it for me, either.

  A couple of steps tire me to the point where I feel like fainting, despite swallowing at least seventeen different pills every morning.

  I have a feeling my days on this earth are numbered, and it feels like a failure not having been able to live up to the inheritance I supposedly carry.

  My blood may be sour and revolting for my vampire companions, but real magic has mostly eluded me all my life. Now, I can’t even walk down the corridor without panting. I doubt I’ll manage to unveil the mystery soon enough.

  February 3rd, 1981

  Francesca has taken to visiting me every afternoon, which makes my days a bit brighter. She’s surprisingly warm-hearted, and she takes care of me in a way which would beat the most loving nurse.

  I don’t want to die alone in a hospital, and these vampires are the only thing I have left in the world.

  And I miss Ludovic. I miss him so much. I wonder where he is, and why he never wrote back.

  I feel I’m too young to die, but Death’s bony fingers keep approaching. Francesca has offered to arrange a beautiful funeral for me. She promised to make sure my grave always has fresh flowers. The way she talks about death, it sounds like she almost yearns for it. She told me I can’t rest at St. Anne’s, so I’m bound to spend the rest of eternity next to Gabriel, in Saint Emery by the Sea.

  I lifted my eyes from Julia’s writing, suddenly baffled. Who was Ludovic, and who was Gabriel? I had assumed Ludovic was Julia’s deceased husband. Things were getting confusing, but I had nobody to ask anymore.

  February 28th, 1981

  Francesca is so loving; she sometimes feels like a mother to me, despite her deceivingly young appearance.

  Tonight, she admitted she envied me. She said she wished she’d lived a full life and earned a peaceful death. She says I should be grateful, because I will soon be reunited with the love of my life.

  Then I cried. Not for my vanishing life, but for the love I never had.

  And as she left my room, the tingling in my arms got so strong that I could see it, lighting the room with a green glow. Still crying, I realized what I had been doing wrong all these years. The answer had been there all the time, but I had been blind to it...

  A loud meow interrupted me just as I was about to turn the page.

  “Miss Jilly,” I whispered.

  The elusive cat was sitting on the grass under the pouring rain, meowing at me. Its eyes shone like gold and purple mirrors in the cloudy afternoon, reflecting the distant lightning, but its fur was oddly dry, and the raindrops passed through its body like it wasn’t even there.

  “You are a strange cat, did you know?”

  Miss Jilly let out a long, urgent sound and started to walk away, waving its glossy black tail at me.

  “And you are crazy if you think I’m following you in the middle of this downpour,” I added with narrowed eyes.

  Miss Jilly meowed once again, and stared at me with such an intelligent, human look, that I thought for a second that she was about to say something. She didn’t, but she still managed to freak me out. I slapped Julia’s diary shut, wondering whether I was on the verge of madness.

  “Okay, whatever. It’s not like I have anywhere better to be anyway,” I muttered, and sticking the notebook back into my bag, I left the safety of my porch and immersed myself in the torrential rain.

  AFTER FOLLOWING THAT cat into the deluge for just a couple of minutes, I looked like I had just been disqualified from a wet t-shirt contest. It didn’t help that my dress was flimsy and yellow, and now also see-through, and that my speed was hindered due to having only one operational shoe left. Why didn’t I change shoes before leaving the porch?

  Miss Jilly skipped over the puddles without a single splash, always pausing to look back and check on me. Finally, she made a halt next to a bus stop and waited for me on the metal bench. As soon as I stepped under the shelter, she vanished into thin air.

  “Well, if that wasn’t weird,” I gasped. The unpredictable antics of that ghostly cat were going to cost me my sanity.

  I sat under the small shelter of the bus stop and waited for the rainstorm to stop. Meanwhile, I inspected my handbag, and noticed with consternation that everything inside it was soaking wet―including Julia’s diary.

  I opened the notebook, taking good care not to tear the damp pages; but the ink had already started to get blurry. Carefully, I skimmed up to my last read page, right where Miss Jilly had interrupted me, and continued:

  ...I have been sourcing my energy from hatred and wrath, and I achieved small results, but never the big accomplishments I always dreamed of.

  Life has a cruel sense of humor, though: now that I finally found out where I went wrong, I’m about to be engulfed by darkness.

  Hopefully, this diary will help whoever takes up the baton after me, now that this discovery can’t help me anymore.

  That was the end of Julia’s diary.

  I closed the notebook and pondered my predecessor’s words. If I understood correctly, she had managed to wake up her magic in a fit of rage. I had also felt such energy a couple of times: once when fighting Mark; the other in that home improvement store. Both times, it had been relatively easy to allow the fear and hatred to flow and even materialize into fiery sparks. What she was implying, though, seemed much harder to achieve. Especially in the current situation.

  “Julia,” I said aloud, as the rain poured like angels’ tears down the lonely glass shelter, “wherever you are, I beg you, help me. I have nothing left in the world. Mark has taken away the house, the children, and even the access to our bank account. I don’t know where to go or what to do. If you can hear me, please, give me a sign, because otherwise, I think I will go crazy... if I haven’t already.”

  The rain kept falling ruthlessly. After
a while, I forgot about my hopeless plea. It was getting chilly at the bus stop and I just wanted to go home―if only I knew where that was.

  The lights of an approaching intercity bus turned the rain into drops of golden fire. The long vehicle appeared unexpectedly from behind a row of houses, and stopped at a red traffic light, giving me just enough time to decipher the big rectangular sign on its front. Its final destination was written in square, greenish letters, and it was Saint Emery by the Sea.

  I knew that town: it was a small place a couple of hours away. I sensed there had to be something significant about it: something important I was missing.

  The damp diary became heavy in my hands, and I remembered Julia’s words just as the vehicle went past the stop without halting:

  I’m bound to spend the rest of eternity next to Gabriel, in Saint Emery by the Sea.

  That couldn’t be a coincidence.

  I stood up and ran, waving my arms wildly at the bus driver.

  “Wait! Stop!” I shouted.

  The vehicle jolted and pulled over abruptly, just a couple of yards ahead of me. The doors opened with a deep hiss which sounded like a mammoth groaning.

  “An awful day, huh?” the driver said, as I crept up the stairs and climbed into the empty bus.

  “You have no idea.” I panted, taking a wet dollar out of my wallet. “The worst ever.”

  I HAD BEEN TO SAINT Emery with my grandmother, and I could still remember perfectly where the only church in town was. It was a small white building with a blue roof and a pointed bell tower, which looked sinister and decrepit under the ongoing harsh storm. The cemetery was right behind it, protected by an iron gate.