by Cate Tiernan
“Uh, okay. But actually I wanted to talk to you,” I said quickly.
She slurped her drink.
“Are you okay?” I couldn’t help asking.
She nodded and wiped her mouth on her jacket sleeve. “Yeah. I just... didn’t get much sleep last night. Maybe I’m coming down with something.” She gave another sideways glance, and I wondered if she was supposed to meet someone.
“Well, I have to tell you—I took your book on Monday.” There. I’d gotten it out.
She gave me a blank look.
“Your green book. That you had Monday in your backpack. Well, I took it.”
Morgan’s brows creased: The rusty gears of her brain were slowly creaking to a start as the OJ flowed into her system. She gave a quick glance over her shoulder to her backpack—the scene of the crime—as if clues would still be there. “Oh, that green book? The Book of Shadows? You took it? Why?”
“Yes. I took it on Monday. And I read it. And I need to talk to you about it.”
Suddenly she looked more alert. “Okay. Do you still have it?”
“Yeah. I want to keep it. It’s... it’s about a woman named Sarah Curtis, who lived in in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the seventies.”
“Uh-huh.” Go on, and feel free to start making sense, Alisa.
I gulped down some chilly air, hating what was about to come out. “Sarah Curtis, from that book, the witch, was my mother. I’m pretty sure.” Like, positive.
Morgan blinked and shifted her weight. “Why do you think that?” she said finally.
“My mom’s name was Sarah Curtis, and she lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts. There were things in the diary that reminded me of things about my mom and that my dad has told me about her. And then, after I had read it, I went to the jewelry box she left me and found a secret compartment underneath. I opened it, and there were letters inside from an uncle I didn’t know about, and he talked about magick. In one of the letters he said congratulations about your new daughter, Alisa. In Texas. Which is where I was born.” I took a a deep breath. “Sarah Curtis was a Rowanwand witch.”
Now I had her complete attention. Her eyebrows raised up in pointy arches, and she seemed to stare right into my brain. “But your dad isn’t, is he?” I shook my head. “So you think you’re half witch?”
“Yes,” I said stiffly.
She shifted her weight and glanced around again. What was with her? “Half witch. You. Jeez, how do you feel about it? It’s kind of a shock.”
I gave a dry laugh.“Shock doesn’t cover it. I’m so... worried. Really, really upset. I never knew any of this. I don’t think my dad knew about it, either. But all of a sudden I’m something I didn’t know, and I’m just... freaking. I don’t want to be a witch.”
Nodding, Morgan looked understanding. “I know what you mean. I went through that last November. All of a sudden I was someone else.”
I knew that was when she’d found out she was adopted. “It’s just that you—and Hunter—and the others, well, it scares me, some of the things you do. And now I find out I’m just like you—” Okay, this was not putting it well. But Morgan didn’t look offended.
“And you wish you weren’t, and you’re worried, and you don’t know what it means.”
“Yes.” A rush of relief washed over me—she did understand. Someone understood what I was going through.
The first bell rang then, and we both jumped as if poked with a cattle prod.
“I’ll never get used to that sound,” Morgan said, looking at the students filing into the buildings. “Listen, Alisa, I know how you feel. It wasn’t easy for me to find out about my heritage, either. But talking to people about it can help. Why don’t you come to the next Kithic circle on Saturday? Everyone misses you. And you could talk to Hunter or me afterward. We could be your support group.”
I thought for a moment. “Yeah, okay. Maybe I will.” I looked down at my backpack. “So I can keep the book?”
Morgan looked at me.“I think it’s already yours.”
5. Morgan
“Before the dark wave could be reproduced pretty much anywhere, the most we could have pulled off would be an epidemic, like the plague. And that’s so hit-or-miss.”
— Doris Grafton, New York, 1972
Why am I doing this? I asked myself. I was sitting in Das Boot in front of Hunter’s house, trying to work up the courage to just walk in. Yes, I wanted to have dinner with him; yes, I wanted to hear more about Rose MacEwan’s BOS; yes, yes, I didn’t mind escaping Mary K.’s “Thursday Dinner Special”: spinach pie. But I also couldn’t help feeling reluctant at having to see Daniel Niall again.
I cast my senses out before I got out of the car—not that being in the car, even with the doors locked, was really any protection at all. Not against a witch as strong as Ciaran. I felt nothing, reminded myself dryly that this was not necessarily a guarantee, then hurried up the uneven front walk to Hunter’s house.
He answered the door before I knocked.
“Hey,” he said, and that one word, plus the way he looked at me, dark and intense, made my knees go wobbly.
“Hi... I brought these,” I said, thrusting a paper-wrapped cone of flowers at him. I was too young to buy wine but hadn’t wanted to show up empty-handed, so I’d gone to the florist on Main Street and picked out a bunch of red cockscomb. They were so odd-looking, so bloodred, I couldn’t resist them.
“Cheers.” He looked pleased, and leaned down to kiss me. “Are you all right? Has anything out of the ordinary...?”
“No.” I shook my head. “So far, so good. I just can’t shake the feeling...”
Hunter pulled me close and patted my back.“I know.”
“He could be anywhere.”
He nodded. “I do know, sweetie. But all we can do is be on our best guard. And know that if he does try anything, we’ll battle him together.”
“Together,” I said softly.
Hunter smiled. “Well, take off your jacket and come sit down. Everything’s almost ready.”
Hunter’s dad came in and looked at the table set for three. Hunter went into the kitchen, and I was left awkwardly standing there with a man who distrusted me and quite justifiably hated my father.
“Hi, Mr. Niall,” I said, managing a smile.
He nodded, then turned and went into the kitchen, where I heard murmured voices. My stomach knotted up, and I wished I were at home, scarfing down spinach pie.
Five minutes later we were sitting at the small table, the three of us, and I was working my way through Hunter’s pot roast with enthusiasm. A plate of Hunter’s really good cooking went a long way toward making me able to stand Mr. Niall.
“Oh, so much better than spinach pie,” I said, pushing my fork through a potato. I smiled at Hunter. “And you can cook.” In addition to being a fabulous kisser, a strong witch, and incredibly gorgeous.
Hunter grinned back at me. Mr. Niall didn’t look up. He was starting to lose his pinched look, I saw when I glanced at him. The first time I’d met him, he looked like someone had forgotten him under a cupboard—all gray and dried up. After more than a week, he was beginning to look more alive.
“Da, why don’t you tell Morgan some of what you’ve been thinking about with Rose’s book?” Hunter suggested. “The part about the spell against a dark wave?”
Mr. Niall looked like he’d suddenly bitten a lemon.
“Oh, you don’t have to,” I said, feeling a defensive anger kindle inside me. I clamped down on it.
“No, I want him to,” Hunter persisted.
“I’m not ready,” Daniel said, looking at Hunter. “I’ve gotten some help from the book, but not enough to discuss it.”
Hunter turned to me, and I saw a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Da has been reading Rose’s BOS. In it there are sort of clues that he thinks he could use to craft a spell, something that could possibly dismantle a dark wave.”
“Oh my God. Mr. Niall—that’s incredible!” I said sincerely.
Well, there it was, out in the open. I felt like the town tramp sitting in at a revival meeting.
Hunter became very still, and I knew enough to think, Uh-oh. His hands rested on the table on either side of his plate, but every muscle in his body was tensed, like a leopard ready to strike. I saw Mr. Niall’s eyes narrow slightly.
“Da,” Hunter said very quietly, and I could tell from the tone of his voice that they’d had this conversation before, “Morgan is not in league with Ciaran. Ciaran has tried to kill her. She herself put a watch sigil on him for the council. Now he’s on his way here, or is already here, to confront her about it. They are on opposite sides. She could be in mortal danger.”
There was a terrible stillness in his voice. I’d heard him sound that way only a few times before, and always in intensely horrible situations. Hearing it now sent shivers down my spine. Coming had been a mistake. As I was debating whether or not I was brave enough to just get up, grab my jacket, and walk out to my car with as much dignity as possible, Mr. Niall spoke.
“Can we afford to take the chance?” His voice was mild, unantagonistic: He was backing down.
“The chance you’re taking is not the one you think,” Hunter said, not breaking his gaze. Silence.
Finally Mr. Niall looked down at his plate. His long fingers tapped gently against the table. Then he said, “A dark wave is in essence a rip in what divides this world from the netherworld. The spell to cast a dark wave has several parts. Or at least, this is my working hypothesis. First, the caster would have to protect herself, or himself, with various limitations. Then he or she would have to proscribe the boundaries of the dark wave when it forms so that it doesn’t cover the entire earth, for example.”
Goddess. I hadn’t realized that was possible.
“The actual rip, for lack of a better word, would be caused by another part of the spell, and it basically creates an artificial opening between the two worlds,” Mr. Niall went on. “Then the spell calls on dark energy, spirits, entities from the netherworld to come into this world. They form the dark wave and as a cloud of negative energy destroy anything that is positive energy. Which describes most of the things on the face of the earth.”
“Are these ghosts?” I asked.
Mr. Niall shook his head. “Not exactly. For the most part, they’ve never been alive and have no individual identity.They seem to have just enough consciousness to feel hunger. The more positive energy they absorb, the stronger they are the next time. The dark waves of today are infinitely stronger than the one Rose unleashed three hundred years ago. Then the last part of the spell gathers this energy in and sends it back through the rip.”
I thought. “So an opposite spell would have to take into account all the parts of the original spell. And then either permanently seal the division between the two worlds or disband the dark energy.”
“Yes,” Mr. Niall said. He seemed to be loosening up slightly. “I think I can somehow do this—if I have enough time, and if I can decipher enough of Rose’s spell. I have knowledge of the dark waves, and my wife was a Wyndenkell, a great spellcrafter. But it’s starting to look as if Rose was careful not to put the information I need in writing.”
It was my ancestor who started all this, I thought glumly. It runs in my family. My family. I looked up. “Could I see Rose’s book again, please?”
Hunter immediately got up and left the room. Mr. Niall opened his mouth as if to object, then thought better of it. In moments Hunter was back with the centuries-old, disintegrating Book of Shadows. I opened it carefully, trying not to harm the brittle pages.
“Does either of you have an athame?” I asked. Wordlessly Hunter went and got his. “Hold it over the page,” I told him. “See if anything shows up.”
“I’ve tried this already,” Mr. Niall huffed.
“Da, I think you underestimate the benefit of Morgan’s unusual powers,” Hunter said evenly. “Beyond that, she’s a descendant of Rose. She may connect with her writing in ways that you and I can’t.”
Hunter slowly moved the flat of the knife blade over the page, and we all peered at it. When I had first found my mother, Maeve’s, Book of Shadows, I had used this technique to illuminate some hidden writing. I had a feeling it might work again.
“I don’t see anything.” Hunter sighed.
I took the athame and slid the book closer to me. I let my mind sink into the page covered with tiny, spidery writing, its ink long faded to brown. Show me, I thought in a singsong. Show me your secrets. Then I slowly moved the athame over the page, just as Hunter had done. Show me, I whispered silently. Show me.
The sudden tension of both Hunter and Mr. Niall’s bodies alerted me to it even before my eyes picked up on it. Below me on the page, fine, glowy blue writing was shimmering under the knife blade. I tried to read it but couldn’t—the words were strange, and some of the letters I didn’t recognize.
Taking a deep breath, I straightened up and put the athame on the table. “Did you recognize those words?” I asked.
Mr. Niall nodded, looking into my face for the first time all evening. “They were an older form of Gaelic.”
Then he picked up the athame and held it over the page. For a long minute nothing happened; then the blue writing shone again. Mr. Niall’s eyes seemed to drink.
“This is it,” he said, awe and excitement in his voice. “This is the kind of information I need. These are the secret clues I’ve been looking for.” He looked at me with grudging respect. “Thank you.”
“Nicely done, Morgan,” said Hunter. I smiled at him self-consciously and saw pride and admiration in his eyes.
All of a sudden I felt physically ill, as if my body had been caught in a sneak attack by a flu virus. I realized I had a headache and felt achy and tired. I needed to go home.
“It’s late,” I said to Hunter. “I better get going.”
Mr. Niall looked at me as I turned to go. “Cheers, Morgan.”
“’Bye, Mr. Niall.” I looked at Hunter. “What about the writing? Will it disappear if I leave?”
Hunter shook his head. “You’ve revealed it, so it should be visible for at least a few hours. Long enough for Da to transcribe it.” Hunter got my jacket and walked me out onto the porch.We both gave a quick glance around and felt each other cast our senses.
“Let me get my keys,” he said. “I’ll follow you to your house.”
I shook my head. “Let’s not go through this again.” Hunter was always trying to protect me more than I was comfortable with.
“How about if I just sleep outside your house, then, in my car?”
I looked up at him with amusement and saw he was only half joking. “Oh, no,” I protested. “No, I don’t need you to do that.”
“Maybe I need to do it.”
“Thank you—I know you’re worried about me. But I’ll be okay.You stay here and help your dad decipher Rose’s spell. I’ll call you when I get home, okay?”
Hunter looked unsure, but I kissed him good night about eight times and got into my car. It wasn’t that I felt I was invincible—it was just that when you go up against someone like Ciaran, there isn’t a whole lot you can do except face it. I knew he wanted to talk to me; I also knew that he would, when he wanted to. Whether Hunter was there or not.
As I drove off, I saw Hunter standing in the street, watching me until I turned the corner.
I felt like crap by the time I pulled into my driveway. I got out of Das Boot and locked it, grimaced at its blue hood that I still hadn’t gotten painted, and headed up the walk. The air didn’t smell like spring, but it didn’t smell like winter, either. My mom’s dying crocuses surrounded me.
It wasn’t really that late—a little after nine. Maybe I would take some Tylenol and
watch the tube for a while before I went to bed.
“Morgan.”
My hand jerked away from the front door as if electrified. Every cell in my body went on red alert: my breathing quickened, my muscles tightened, and my stomach clenched, as if ready for war.
Slowly I turned to face Ciaran MacEwan. He was handsome, I thought, or if not strictly handsome, then charismatic. He was maybe six feet tall, shorter than Hunter. His dark brown hair was streaked with gray. When I looked into his eyes, brownish hazel and tilted slightly at the corners, it it was like looking into my own. The last time I had seen him, he had taken the shape of a wolf, a powerful gray wolf. When the council had suddenly arrived, he had faded into the woods, looking back at me with those eyes.
“Yes?” I said, willing myself to appear outwardly calm.
He smiled, and I could understand how my mother had fallen in love with him more than twenty years ago. “You knew I was coming,” he said in his lilting Scottish accent, softer, more beguiling than Hunter’s crisp English one.
“Yes. What do you want?” I crossed my arms over my chest, trying not to show that inside, my mind was racing, wondering if I should send a witch message to Hunter, if I should try to do some sort of spell myself, if I could somehow just disappear in in a puff of smoke.
“I told you, Morgan. I want to talk to you. I wanted to tell you I forgive you for the watch sigil. I wanted to try once again to convince you to join me, to take your rightful place as the heir to my power.”
“I can’t join you, Ciaran,” I said flatly.
“But you can,” he said, stepping closer. “Of course you can.You can do anything you want. Your life can be whatever you decide you want it to be. You’re powerful, Morgan—you have great, untapped potential. Only I can really show you how to use it. Only I can really understand you—because we’re so much alike.”
I’ve never been good at holding my temper, and more than once my mouth has gotten me into trouble. I continued that tradition now, refusing to admit to a fear close to terror. “Except one of us is an innocent high school student and the other of us is the leader of a bunch of murdering, evil witches.”