White Witch

by Trish Milburn

  After much pacing and ranting, he runs out of steam and sits down beside me again, stares unseeing at the blanket covering my legs. “I’m sorry,” he finally says.

  I barely keep myself from wrapping my hand around his. “It’s not your fault.”

  “You said you had shielding power. Why didn’t you use it?”

  I don’t answer immediately, knowing how he’ll react, but there’s no escaping the question. “I couldn’t use it and the speed at the same time.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t you dare blame yourself. I’d do it again. I knew I stood a better chance than you.”

  Keller stares out the window. I can almost see the guilt eating away at him, his loyalties being pulled in opposite directions.

  “Where’s your dad?”

  “At home.” He rubs his hand over his face. “I had to tie him up, left him that way until he swore on the Bible he wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

  I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him to tie up the man who raised him, taught him, loved him. “You believe him?”

  “I told him I’d leave and not come back if he broke his word.” He shrugged. “Hopefully, that will at least buy us some time.”

  The door opens and Egan stalks in.

  I raise my eyebrow at him. “There’s this thing. It’s called a knock.”

  He grimaces. “Don’t talk so loud.”

  I knew he’d been upset the night before. Apparently, he self-medicated by getting drunk. Well, at least as drunk as a witch could get. One burst of power, and the effects of the alcohol would disappear. Evidently, Egan hadn’t decided to mitigate the effects.

  “Nice to know you all get hangovers, too,” Keller said.

  “Bite me.”

  The exchange would be funny if the situation wasn’t so dire. I shift my feet off the side of my bed to the floor.

  I catch Egan’s eye. “Any other problems besides your pounding head?”

  “Witchy kind? No. And I knocked a hole in the spirit coven’s fun. Made enough of the roadway fall away down the mountain that the state highway department had to close the road and put up detours.”

  “How’d you do that without them noticing?”

  “Really damn fast.”

  I laugh then wince as my shoulder protests. And when I consider Egan’s actions just added to the amount of power signature we’ve been racking up. “You guys had a rough night. Why don’t you both go get some sleep?”

  “We’ve got work to do,” Keller says.

  I watch him. His need to fight something, someone, is obvious. “I told you that you couldn’t be a part of this.”

  “You said I couldn’t face them. Research and brainstorming aren’t going to hurt me.”

  “Both of which are easier when you’ve slept.”

  I see the argument bubble up in him, but the fatigue wins out. “Fine.”

  “Maybe you all should go to Toni’s, make sure she’s safe.”

  “I went by, checked everything out,” Egan says without making eye contact. “Everything’s okay there. Nothing out of the ordinary anywhere close.”

  “I’ll just go home. Make sure Dad keeps his word.”

  Egan grabs a bottle of water from the fridge and steps outside.

  I stand and move farther from Keller. I get the impression he knows I’m deliberately pulling away but is frantically trying to formulate a plan to make me stay.

  “Please try to get some rest, and let the anger go,” I say. “Trust me, it’ll eat you alive if it can.”

  “Easier said than done.” He heads for the door. “I’ll be back this afternoon. Call sooner if you need me.”

  “Don’t worry. If there’s danger, Egan will sense it, too.”

  Keller looks at me for a long moment then steps through the door, dragging like he’s been awake for a week.

  I know how he feels.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I fill Toni in on what happened the night before and try not to notice how her “I’m okay” façade is as transparent as the window in her room. I don’t tell her when I see Egan keeping watch on her house a couple of times.

  We don’t talk about when Egan and I will leave, but we both know it has to be soon. Instead, we plunk ourselves down on her bed with a plethora of junk food and attempt to watch an episode of Firefly. But there’s too much tension and anticipation and worry for either of us to concentrate on Captain Mal and the gang. I end up pacing to the window.

  “What are you thinking?” Toni asks.

  “That my shoulder hurts like the devil. Can’t imagine what it would feel like if I’d really taken that bullet.”

  “Why don’t you take a nap? I’ll wake you up if necessary.”

  I watch out the window for a moment before turning back toward her. “I’ll just head home.”

  I sense she’s about to try to get me to stay so I hurry out her bedroom door.

  Though I’m tired, I’m too antsy to sleep. Instead, when I get back to my RV I end up pacing its small confines, thinking about what will come after Egan and I leave Baker Gap. If there is an after.

  I must look dreadful, because when Keller returns, he makes me go to bed. When I wake, it’s night. My shoulder still aches, but I’m way more rested than I was earlier in the day. Blinking the sleep away, I turn my head on the pillow to see Egan sitting at the table.

  “Hey, don’t look that disappointed.” Egan does his best to appear affronted as he pulls the earbuds for his iPod out of his ears.

  “Where’s Keller?”

  “I sent him to get some more sleep. I don’t think he slept a wink this morning. He was looking like something he normally kills.”

  I suspect Egan’s also tasked Keller with looking after Toni.

  “Anything going on?” I ask.

  “You mean other than me itching to get out of here?”

  “You’re right.”

  “So, where to?”

  “I’ve racked my brain all day, and all I can think to do is go to the source.” At his confused look, I say the one word that is synonymous with witches. “Salem.”

  He sits for a moment then nods. “As good a place as any.” He stands. “I’ll load the car and bike.”

  I catch a look on his face, one that doesn’t show up there often. Sadness. “Egan, I’m sorry we have to leave.”

  “Hey, I never thought life on the outside would be easy.” He tries to cloak himself in his usual carefree attitude, but it doesn’t work. He cares about Toni, that much is obvious.

  When I’m alone in the RV again, I let my eyes drift closed. I feel a lot better physically, but the constant anticipation of the covens’ arrival and the still unanswered question of how to permanently deal with the spirit coven drain me. My thoughts meander until they latch on to Keller, to what he said just before his dad had barged into the RV.

  He loves me.

  I’m replaying those words over and over when the twisting in my gut hits, causing me to gasp. The darkness inside me tugs and claws, making me feel like my skin is going to peel away and the rest of me be consumed by fire. “Oh, God, no.”

  I meet Egan’s gaze as he rushes back inside. “They’re here.” I swallow. “And it’s too late to run.”

  I feel the coven calling to me, that horrible homing signal I’d hoped never to feel again. I realize it’s only my coven, so I can feel more of their power than Egan can.

  He stares outside, on high alert. “Where are they?”

  “Shiprock.”

  As we both head outside, I thank luck that he was with me now instead of Keller. I don’t have time to waste arguing about whether I’m fit to fight. There’s no choice.

  We climb on Egan’s bike because it’s way faster than my Beetle.

  “Do we warn Keller and Toni? Their parents?” he asks.

  I consider the question, wishing I knew the right answer. “I think we have to, but we’ve got to make sure they stay where they are.”

  “I
’ve been known to make a pretty convincing threat or two in my lifetime,” he says. “But in person. I don’t trust them to stay put if we just call.”

  I nod. “Let’s go. But normal speed. We don’t want to give away our location before we have to.”

  Egan pushes normal to the limit as he speeds toward Toni’s house. We’re both off the bike, tossing our helmets to the ground and rushing toward the front door even before the sound of the bike’s engine stops echoing in my ears. I don’t even bother knocking. No time.

  A muffled cry causes me to jerk my head to my right. There in the dining room sits Mrs. Dawes, gagged and bound to one of her dining room chairs, her face covered by an envelope taped to her forehead.

  “Help me untie her,” I say.

  Egan retrieves a knife from his ankle and slices through the rope cutting off the circulation around Mrs. Dawes’s ankles and wrists. I remove the envelope and the gag. Toni’s mom is hysterical, crying and trying to stand. Egan and I hold her down.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “They took them. Those people, they took Toni and Keller.”

  “Did they say anything?”

  A sob bursts from her. “They said for you to look in the envelope, that you’d understand. What is going on? Who are they? What have they done with my daughter?”

  Egan squeezes Mrs. Dawes’s hands and tries to comfort her while I rip open the envelope. Three photos fall out of a sheet of paper onto the top of the table. My heart jolts into my ribcage when I see the first one. I can’t breathe. My vision blurs.

  “What is it?” Egan asks.

  I don’t answer. Instead, I lift the picture by the corner and stare into my mother’s eyes only moments before her death. I swallow hard, feeling like I’m trying to swallow a jagged rock. I place the picture to the side and pick up the others as my heart rate gathers speed. The gagged faces of Keller and Toni stare up at me. Tears pool in my eyes as I rub my fingers over Keller’s photo. I love him, too. I will save him, even if I have to wipe out my entire coven.

  I open the paper and read my father’s familiar script. Your defiance is finished.

  Cold surges through me at those words, the same ones my father had uttered in the moment before he’d taken the last of my mother’s life force and the light in her eyes had gone dark. I’d never seen him so angry, especially when there’d been a moment where an acceptance and a sort of serenity had filled my mother to the point where she’d almost glowed.

  Inside, I’ve never been more terrified, but my own anger is rising to ride shotgun with the terror. When I speak, my voice hits the air with an eerie calm. “Mrs. Dawes, I need you to call your brother. Have him come stay with you.”

  Mrs. Dawes tries to stand again. “I’ve got to call the police. My daughter’s been kidnapped. My nephew.”

  I press down against Mrs. Dawes’s shoulder, keeping her seated. I meet the older woman’s gaze. “The police can’t handle this. Egan and I can. We’ll get them back.”

  Understanding registers in her eyes. Then she breaks down. “I should have moved away from here. I should have kept her safe.”

  I don’t have time for the tears and might-have-beens. “Call Reverend Dawes. Stay here. Tell no one else.” I shove the photos and note into my back pocket and stalk toward the door, Egan right behind me.

  I know where to go and what to do. I don’t have to have the elusive chink in the coven armor, whatever is on that missing page of the Beginning Book. I’m going to kick their evil asses anyway.

  Egan and I ditch the Ducati at the point just before it moves into hearing range of the coven, a couple of miles below Shiprock Curve. I absolutely hate having to go the rest of the way on foot, at normal human speed, when Keller’s and Toni’s lives are on the line. The coven will sense us soon enough, but not as easily as if we use witch speed.

  When we ease around a stand of trees, Shiprock comes into view. It sticks out from the mountainside suspiciously empty of figures. I glance at Egan. His narrow-eyed expression reveals the same thought pattern. Without words, we agree to move forward with caution. If we get ourselves caught in a trap, fat lot of good that will do Keller and Toni.

  Tavis Pherson, my father, steps into our path without the slightest rustle of noise.

  It’s always creeped me out how he can move so stealthily, almost as if his feet don’t even touch the ground. I stare straight into his eyes, doing my best not to let him see how much he frightens me. For the first time, I’m facing him as a fellow witch, not his daughter.

  I see immeasurable coldness in his gaze, like I did the day he killed my mother with a brutality even the worst of humans can’t approach. For a moment, I’m that child again, the one forced to watch in wretched silence as my mother was murdered and fearing I would be next.

  I hate him for it, a hate so powerful it scares me.

  I detect movement beyond him, and probably twenty other members of my coven slip out from their hiding places amidst the forest.

  “Ah, look, it’s my wayward daughter come to save her precious little friends,” my father says.

  Bile rises in my throat along with all the memories of what he and the rest of the coven did to my mother, the details of those final hours. I want to blast him to hell for all the horrid things he’s done. For making me live in fear, having to hide who I truly am.

  “Now, such wicked thoughts,” he says, his voice taunting.

  “You can’t read my mind.”

  “Child, I don’t have to. You’re not very good at hiding your thoughts.”

  “Then you know what I’m thinking now.” That my father or not, he’s going down.

  He laughs. He actually laughs then glances to my left. “I had big plans for getting the two of you together, but I must say this isn’t what I had in mind.”

  “You know, I don’t give a flying rat what you want,” Egan says.

  “Oh, but you should.” Tavis lifts his hand, and in a blink he’s summoned Toni to him and gripped her around her throat, choking her.

  “No!” Egan surges forward, only to be blasted backward into a tree. He falls to the ground coughing.

  In the moonlight, I see Toni’s face turning red. “Let her go. It’s me you want.”

  My father tosses Toni in the other direction, causing her to roll several times before stopping next to a stump. I’m glad when I see Toni move under her own power, even if it is to pull herself into a protective ball.

  “How right you are.” He pauses. “You’re so like your mother.”

  “Good.”

  My father’s eyes narrow as he spins away, stalking toward the center of a clearing behind the protrusion of the Shiprock. “We have everything ready for you.”

  My heart nearly stops when I notice the outline of the rock-ringed Siphoning Circle on the ground. It matches the one in which the coven removed my mother’s powers and then her very life. No way in hell am I stepping into that circle. If I have to fight the entire coven and die in the battle, I’ll do it before allowing them to suck me dry.

  The fight is inevitable anyway. If I don’t fight them, if I don’t somehow win that fight, Toni and Keller will die. Egan dies. I die. The covens leave no witnesses.

  My power stirs within me, coiling like a snake ready to strike and sending sparks sizzling at my fingertips. It feels different this time, and I wonder if it’s my full power preparing itself for battle. Does my power have a sense of its own? Does it know I will need all of it if I have even the slightest hope of coming out victorious?

  “You will make this easy or he will take your place.” My father extends his arm to his right and curls his index finger. Two of my uncles come forward, dragging Keller to the edge of the circle.

  Raw anger slices through me. “Stop.”

  “We understand each other then?” my father asks.

  “I understand you’re an evil, manipulative beast. I won’t let you hurt him. Or me. If anyone is going in that circle, it’s you.”

  “I
knew you were stupid. But I had not bargained for insane.” He moves closer to me, and I don’t flinch. “My powers are greater than yours, mere child. Too bad you haven’t had your happy birthday yet.”

  “Let them go, or we’ll see who is stronger.”

  “No, I think I shall keep the useful little, powerless ones. Your bravado will not last.” He lowers his voice, making him sound more evil than ever. “You can either go first, or you can watch as I pull the life from this boy bit by agonizing bit. I promise you, your mother’s death was easy by comparison.”

  He’s enjoying this. Hatred, pure and vile, seethes inside me.

  “That’s it, give in to your true nature. Quit fighting this silly little fight. Die with some dignity.”

  I take a couple of steps forward just as I sense Egan moving behind me. He roars and sends a blast of power like arcing lightning toward my uncles, knocking them backward. As they fall, my Uncle Cannon loses his grip on Keller. I gasp as Keller falls into the Siphoning Circle. My father spins and extends his hands toward the circle, causing Keller to howl in pain.

  “No!” I send a blast toward my father, then have to duck when power blasts come at me from what seems like every direction. I cry out when one grazes me, forcing me to dive sideways. I slam to the ground on my injured shoulder. The pain pounds a gasp from my lungs, and I fight the black spots invading my vision, pushing them away.

  I don’t have time for injury.

  When I hear Keller cry out in pain, I haul myself atop the Shiprock, sending blasts my father’s direction as I move.

  My father changes focus and sends a huge wave of power toward me, knocking me backward so hard I completely circle, feet over head, in the air and land face first.

  I lift my eyes to see the spirit coven standing in front of me at the same moment I feel a well of power below me. It takes me a moment to realize it’s embodied in the rock, that it’s there for the taking.