Always a Witch

by Carolyn Maccullough

  "Don't wait up for me," Rosie says, snapping shut the lid of her box. Then with a wink she slips out of the room.

  I wait for the space of one heartbeat, and then ease off my shoes. On cat-soft feet I follow her. Thankfully, Lady Knight doesn't seem to believe in wasting lamp oil on her servants, so plenty of thick shadows line the walls. I melt into them as I pad down the servants' back staircase, letting Rosie dash ahead of me.

  When I reach the landing, I expect her to continue down the three curving flights to the kitchen, but halfway there, she disappears. Or actually, I can't hear her anymore. I press into the side wall and wait, listening as hard as I can. I've noticed that the door to the kitchen always squeaks a little, so I wait for that familiar sound. But there is only silence.

  And then a soft snick whispers across the landing below me.

  I follow the curve of the spiral of the stairs as fast as I can, only to find more shadows and one lamp casting a feeble flickering light across the thin red carpet of this landing. On impulse, I reach up and unhook the lantern from its iron wall sconce. The oil sputters and hisses with the motion, then settles, and the flame burns true.

  Okay, so not the kitchen. The only other option is back the way I came. I climb up the stairs again, retracing my steps, swinging the lantern this way and that. I have to do this three times before I see it. Right under the third bend in the staircase is a small door. Even with the light of the oil lamp I can just make out the three simple lines of its frame that is perfectly flush with the wall. And now I come to my next problem. There's no doorknob.

  Running my free hand along the panels that blend into the wall gives me nothing. I press the wood where the doorknob would be, but still nothing. I lean back a little and study the door again, that soft snick echoing in my ears.

  The lamp sputters again in my hand, and I look at it thoughtfully. Then I turn and examine the wall behind me. Another iron wall sconce—only this one is empty. Stretching my arm, I nestle the lamp securely into the wall sconce and am rewarded with that same soft snick.

  I turn back and confront the wall. The door has slid back and become a gaping mouth that leads into another tunnel.

  I step into the doorway, reach up, and brush both hands along the walls on either side of me. My right hand encounters nothing but cobwebs and something slimy that scuttles away from me. I stifle a scream, and just then my left hand skims across a small switch. The door suddenly slides shut behind me, leaving me in complete blackness.

  Great.

  I step forward, feeling my way slowly, wishing that I had brought my shoes after all. The dampness of hard stone seeps through my stockings and worms into the soles of my feet. The passageway slopes down after a second, and I stumble but catch myself against one wall. Cautiously navigating the steps that I seem to have found, I wind downward in the dark. After a while a faint light begins to grow before me, and then at the level of my ankles I see a square grate, about two feet tall and a foot wide, full of a flickering light.

  Crouching down on my heels, I peer out into a room that looks like a study, with books and tables and one desk against the wall. I haven't seen this room before. Judging from the distance I've traveled, I'm guessing it's somewhere on the second floor. A fire is burning steadily in the massive fireplace directly across from my grate, but the crack of wood is the only noise in the room. That, and a soft ticking coming from a clock hanging on the same wall as the fireplace.

  The clock that Alistair once asked me to find back when I thought he was merely a professor at NYU.

  The clock that Gabriel and I Traveled back to 1899 to steal.

  Twelve

  CHEWING MY LIP, I LEAN BACK against the wall, not caring about potential crawly things. Instead, I run through my options. Destroying the clock now won't help. My family—in this century—still apparently needs it for the spell that they will eventually cast on the knight family. Stealing it to bring to the nineteenth-century Greenes might work. If I could even find them. This can't be where Rosie vanished to unless there's a door that I haven't come across yet. Besides, the passageway runs on and I have a feeling it branches out through the rest of the house. Shifting, I am about to climb to my feet when the door suddenly opens and Mr. Tynsdell enters followed by a tall man wrapped in a dark overcoat. Raindrops gleam across the man's glasses and on the brim of his black bowler hat, which he holds in both hands.

  Alistair.

  Suddenly, I'm glad that I'm sitting down in this cramped passageway, as I don't think my knees would have supported my standing weight.

  "If you'll just wait here, sir, I'll see if Master Liam is even at home. This isn't the customary hour for calls," Mr. Tynsdell says, his voice peevish with reproof.

  "I understand that only too well." Alistair breaks off his words in ragged chunks. "But they need to know that this is urgent."

  I close my eyes, hearing the echo of that same word that I threw at the crow girl this afternoon.

  "Find someone. Lady Knight, Master Liam—anyone," Alistair says, gesturing sharply with his hat. He looks as if he's about to start beating Mr. Tynsdell across the face with it, and the butler seems to realize this. He steps back and eyes Alistair for a moment.

  "As I've told you, sir: Lady Knight is not at home. She has gone to the theater."

  "What theater?" Alistair asks wildly, hope blustering across his face.

  "I wouldn't know," Mr. Tynsdell says, his voice solidifying into a vast and icy wilderness. "I will see if Master Liam is even available." And with that he pivots neatly and leaves the room.

  Alistair heaves out a sigh and begins pacing, in and out of my line of vision.

  Think, think, think, Tamsin. But short of prying the grate loose and then bashing Alistair over the head with it, I don't know what to do. Then a spark of an idea comes to me. If I can just get in there, freeze Alistair, and then somehow drag him back into the passageway with me, I can prevent this meeting from ever taking place. I arch up and begin skimming my hands over the wall in increasingly desperate swoops, searching for a way into the room.

  But then the door to the study opens again and Mr. Tynsdell reenters. My small flare of hope is smothered as Liam appears behind the butler. "Mr. Knight, this is ... Mr. Callum. Mr. Callum, this is Mr. Knight." Mr. Tynsdell pauses, then asks, "Shall I bring any claret, sir?"

  Liam raises his eyebrows at Alistair and says in a hearty tone, "How about it? You look like you could use a drink."

  I study Alistair, acknowledging that Liam is right. Alistair does look like a man in need of a drink. Or in need of something. His skin has taken on a grayish tone and even from my limited vantage point I can pick out the half-moon-shaped bruises under his eyes. He looks like ... Rowena when she was sick. When he was draining her blood and drinking it himself. Either he's already feeling the effects of Traveling that Rowena warned about or it's an addiction that needs to be fed. Or both.

  Alistair hesitates, moistens his lips with the point of his tongue, then shakes his head. Liam gives a suit yourself type of shrug, and then with a motion of his hand indicates that Mr. Tynsdell should depart. The door closes again and the two men regard each other.

  "Liam," Alistair says, his voice cracking now. He takes a step forward and reaches out one hand in an almost childish gesture.

  But Liam shifts back. "I didn't give you leave to call me by my first name." His voice is still polite, but a note of warning flickers under it.

  Alistair checks his forward motion, his hand curling through empty air. "No, no, of course not. Forgive me. Your customs are not known to me. Let me start again. I want to tell you my name. My real name. I have waited so long to use it." Then, as if he can't contain the flurry of words, he adds, "I've waited so long to see you and your mother."

  "Yes," Liam says now in a bored voice. "Mr. Tynsdell mentioned you had called before. Listen, if it's for one of those charities, my mother already gives more than—"

  "It is not for charity." Alistair's voice is sharp. "I am no
t here because of a charity. I am not like the rest of them." And here he flings one arm out as if indicating a crowd of starving beggars. "I am one of you."

  "How so?" Liam asks softly. He has withdrawn to the fireplace and now selects a poker from the rack of iron tools. He plunges the tip of it into a burning log, which hisses and then snaps into a thousand sparks.

  "My name is Alistair Knight," Alistair says quietly to Liam's broad back. "I am related to you and I have come to warn you. I have Traveled a long way. Do you understand me?"

  At this Liam turns slowly, the poker dangling from his fingertips. "You've Traveled, did you say?"

  "Yes."

  Liam's eyebrows point upward in an expression of wonder. "No one in our family is able to do that. Is that your Talent?" His voice takes on a note that I can only identify as hunger.

  Alistair pauses. "No," he concedes. "I Traveled with the help of a device called the Domani. A device that you need to demolish before it even exists."

  I press cold fingers to my mouth, my eyes drifting over to the small wall clock that is steadily ticking away the minutes, the seconds, that my family has to survive. But Alistair seems too bent on speaking to notice its presence in the room.

  "My dear man, you're raving," Liam says, and now he's forced good humor into his tone, the way someone would when talking to a child.

  Hope blooms again in me. Maybe Liam will think Alistair's crazy and leave it at that.

  "I am not raving," Alistair says, and something about his tone must have set Liam on edge, because I watch as the other man's nostrils flare once. "I have Traveled from a future where we don't exist. All of our Talents have been stripped away. We're ordinary."

  "And how does this even come to pass?" Liam asks now, taking a step closer.

  "The Greene family," Alistair says. "They—"

  But whatever else he was going to say about my family is cut off by Liam's great shout of laughter.

  "The Greene family, did you say? That pitiful bunch of pig farmers?"

  I frown. Pig farmers? My mother was sort of vague on what the family was doing in New York City during this century, but I didn't think we were living in the city raising pigs.

  Evidently, Alistair is confused also. "They're not to be dismissed. Even now they're plotting to—"

  "Cera Greene and her bunch of useless sisters and brothers? They're nothing. No one of any consequence in society."

  "But they will be, don't you see? They know what you're up to and they'll—"

  "And what are we up to?" Liam asks, still smiling.

  Here Alistair hesitates, and then his hands unfurl. Taking a step forward, he says, "The experiments on humans and eventually on those with Talents. Learning that we can extend our life span and also our own Talents and the control of others who have them."

  "And just what is your Talent?" Liam asks suddenly.

  Alistair frowns and I lean forward. My foot slides against the rough stone floor, making the slightest of scraping noises. Alistair turns his head, his gaze stabbing in my direction. "Yes," he whispers hoarsely. At the same time I feel a tingling pass over my skin, followed swiftly by that sharp mental clarity that comes whenever someone tries to use a Talent against me.

  I close my eyes in relief. Whatever he just tried to do my Talent blocked.

  But now Alistair is frowning even more, and I realize that he is puzzled.

  "It just revealed itself to me when I arrived. Because I now exist in a time before ... before the Greenes steal our powers."

  Liam sucks in a breath. "And what is it?"

  Alistair licks his dried-out lips. "I can see through walls, through barriers."

  "Fascinating," Liam murmurs, leaning the poker against the side of the hearth. "I think I'd like to try that for myself." All at once he shimmers and dissolves into a gray mist that gathers itself into a pulsing ball. It hovers for a second in the air and then swoops into Alistair's chest. At the same time, Alistair makes a strangled sound while clutching at his heart. He closes his eyes, then opens them again and takes a few steps around the room, his hands outstretched, like a toddler learning to walk. Then Alistair/ Liam swings his head sharply and focuses on the walls.

  Without thinking, I reach out with my mind and block whatever he's about to try.

  Do it again, I beg Alistair/Liam silently. One more time and it's mine. But after a moment, Alistair/Liam shrugs and then Alistair's body ripples and shudders before crumpling to the floor. One hand spasms on the carpet and then stills. A gray mist pours out of Alistair's chest and reforms into Liam, who steps over Alistair's prone body with care. Liam shakes himself a little, like a dog shaking itself free of raindrops, and stares down at Alistair's body.

  "What did you ... what did you do to me?" Alistair murmurs from the floor.

  "A little experiment. I didn't manage to see through any walls, though, old chap. I think you might be wrong about that." Liam wanders back over to the fireplace, picks up the poker again, and examines the fire as if deciding where to poke it next.

  "She's here," Alistair says, and if possible, his face goes even whiter. He sits up with a lurch. "She's in this house somewhere," he says urgently to Liam. "Tamsin Greene."

  "Who?" Liam says.

  Alistair's mouth works. "She ... I know she's here."

  "Now you really are raving, my good man." Liam studies the poker, running one finger along its wrought-iron handle. "Still," he says, so softly that I have to strain to hear him. "Still ... you might prove useful. You might allow me the means to achieve what I need. You see, my mother's rather against me experimenting on our own family, but she might make an exception for you. Seeing as you're ... a more distant relation, shall we say?"

  "Yes," Alistair breathes, fastening his eyes on Liam's face. "That's what I want. That's what I'm meant to do. I can help you."

  "I'm so glad to hear you say that," Liam murmurs.

  And all at once, in a motion almost too swift for me to follow, he swings up the poker and brings it down against the back of Alistair's skull.

  Thirteen

  JUST IN TIME I PRESS MY LIPS together to keep from screaming. I want to block out this sight, but it's as if my eyelids have been glued open.

  Liam steps back and then plunges the poker into the fire again as if shifting logs is his only concern. After the fire has scoured the poker clean he sets it back in the rack. Only then does he turn and, taking an empty crystal goblet from his desk, stoops by Alistair's motionless body, pressing the goblet to Alistair's ear. Horrified, I watch as the crystal cup fills with blood. when the glass is almost full Liam sets it on the desk and wipes his hands with a handkerchief he procures from his pocket. Sighing, he stares down at the stained cloth for a moment and then tosses it into the fire, where it flares a second later. Then he crosses to the doorway and presses a small black button.

  A minute later, there's a knock on the door and Rosie enters. But she's not alone. She's holding the hand of a very small child. From the pants and shirt, I'm guessing it's a boy, although I can't quite tell between the smudges of dirt on its face and the cap on its head. "I brought him like you asked. Found this one in the usual place. Five Points. He—"

  "Did anyone see you?" Liam interrupts.

  She tosses her head. "Do you think I'm new at this?" she asks with a grin. And then the pleased expression fades from her face as Liam steps back and she sees Alistair's body. "What happened?" she breathes. She studies the body more closely. "That's the man who rang the bell earlier."

  Liam nods. "A small accident. He hit his head."

  "Oh," Rosie says. It's clear she doesn't believe him. It's also clear she's not going to mention that. Instead, she says briskly, "I'll summon Horace, shall I? He'll get rid of him for you?"

  Liam shakes his head. "I do need Horace. That other one you brought me didn't last long. I'll need him to get rid of it. It's in the usual room. Let's hope this one"—and here he nods once at the child—"is made of stronger stock." Then he returns to examin
ing Alistair's body. "But this one ... this one may be useful yet. He may be the key to this puzzle. This one may be quite ... extraordinary." Then, he straightens up, pats Rosie on the cheek. "My girl," he says, his fingers lingering on the curve of her chin.

  She smiles up at him, then says casually, "You know, Horace'll want the usual fee."

  "He is mercenary, that one," Liam says with good humor. After crossing to his desk, he unlocks a side drawer. He fills Rosie's outstretched hand with what sounds like coins. The child's saucerlike eyes dart swiftly between Liam and Rosie, but otherwise he seems uncomprehending.

  "Shall we move him, then?" Rosie says. Liam considers the body for a second, then nods. Kneeling down, he grasps Alistair's shoulders and heaves him across the floor. Rosie dances ahead of him to the wall opposite me, and pulls down a life-size portrait of a frowning woman dressed in white fur. Behind the painting is a small door, which she pushes open. Stepping aside, she watches as Liam heaves Alistair's body into the dark space beyond. Then she pulls the door shut.

  "I'm going to wash up." Sighing again, he studies the spot where Alistair fell. "The carpet will have to be replaced," he says absently. "You summon Horace. Meet me back here at a quarter past eight. I have an appointment that I have to cancel."

  "Do you need him, then?" she asks, jerking her thumb toward the child, who still doesn't seem to understand what's happening. "If you've already got—"

  "Oh, no, no," Liam says fondly. "I can always use a spare. And besides, this one is different. Do you know he claimed to have a Talent?" He touches one finger to his lower lip as if anticipating the taste.

  Rosie draws in a startled gasp. "But he ... but then..."

  Liam shrugs. "Of course, he's probably lying. But still, I have a few things I'd like to try."

  Rosie turns her face up to his, reaches out one hand to his sleeve. "Will you let me ... this time ... will you let me try it, too?" She tugs harder at his arm. "You did promise. And if this one has the magic like he says, maybe it would work on me, too?" Her eyes flick toward the crystal goblet full of Alistair's blood.