“Oh, I see. What happened?”
“Well, mostly I finger painted and slept. It got me remembering that first day of kindergarten. You remember when we met?”
“I remember. I gave you my cookies because I was allergic to them.”
“Right. Anyway, once I woke up, it just hit me how we’ve known each other our whole lives, practically since we were babies. And I was about to throw it all away by taking that job.”
“We still could have talked on the phone or Email.”
“It wouldn’t be the same.” Becky reached out to take Emma’s hand. “You’re my best friend, Emma. And you always will be. No matter what happens with kids and husbands and all that, I want us to keep being best friends until we’re toothless old women in Park Glen. I know it’s going to be hard for us with you having to take care of Louise and me having to recover from this, but I want us to find a way. I don’t ever want us to end up like in that first dream.”
“I don’t either,” Emma said. As they hugged each other, Emma took care not to squeeze Becky too hard. She wiped tears from her eyes as she looked back towards the waiting room. “And I want you to be in Louise’s life too. With Jim gone—”
“Gone?”
“He died. In Russia.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He saved her life—and mine.” Emma sighed. “I can’t do it by myself. I know that. Aggie and Akako can help, but I want you to be there too. I want them to love you like I do.”
“Of course I’ll help.” Becky smiled at her, but that quickly turned to a frown. “Them?”
“I don’t really know how to explain this. I have another child. An adopted one. Her name’s Joanna. Her mother died and she asked me to take care of her daughter.”
“Who’s her mother?”
“Me. From a parallel universe.”
“What?”
“I told you it was hard to explain. The short version is that we had to fight Isis and she died and asked me to look after Joanna.”
“Jesus,” Becky whispered. “How old is this kid?”
“Eight. She and Louise are already getting along pretty well—” She stopped as the door opened and Louise ran into the room.
“Mommy, Joanna keeps taking my seat.”
Emma picked Louise up and then turned to the doorway, where Joanna stood, her face red. “She’s lying. I told her not to come in and bug you but she won’t listen.”
Emma turned back to Louise and looked into her eyes. “I told you to wait until I came to get you, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but—”
“When I’m not around, you have to listen to your big sister. Understand?”
Louise stared back at her for a moment and then nodded. “Yes, Mommy.”
“Good. Now, girls, this is Aunt Becky. Be very careful not to touch her tummy. Aunt Becky’s very sore there.” When she turned to face Becky, she saw her best friend was crying. She passed Louise into Becky’s arms.
“Hi,” Louise said.
“Hi, kid. You’re bigger than I thought you’d be. Prettier too.”
“You’re pretty too.”
“Thank you.”
Emma stood up and put a hand on Joanna’s shoulder. She bent down to whisper, “Let’s go outside for a minute.” Joanna nodded and followed her into the waiting room. As she closed the door, Emma winked at Becky, who stroked Louise’s hair while the little girl chattered about her new bedroom.
Emma knew then that Becky would love Louise as much as she did.
***
There had been a number of assemblies held in the main chamber of the archives before. Usually the biggest problem was to arrange the time and make sure no one vanished on top of anyone else. This time they faced the far more traditional problem of having to fly commercial.
Their powers, already weakened by Renee’s channeling, had all but disappeared after Isis died. Glenda assured them this would be a temporary situation, but two weeks later Aggie still couldn’t do more than conjure a bouquet of flowers, one of the first spells any novice learned. Through some miracle, though, she and the others still looked younger than their real ages. In her case, Aggie had a few more wrinkles, some gray hairs, and a bit of a middle age spread, but she wasn’t about to complain. After days as a little girl in that dreadful nursery, Aggie was grateful to be an adult of any age.
The coven had amassed enough money over the years that when they flew commercial they didn’t have to go coach. Instead, they chartered a 707 to take them across the Atlantic, to the archives. Aggie didn’t see much sense in it since they were already all assembled in Rampart City, but she supposed it was traditional.
Akako and Renee did not accompany her for this trip. After the defeat of Isis, Akako had effectively tendered her resignation; she wanted nothing more to do with the coven. “I’m going to stay home and make sure nothing ever happens to Renee again,” she said. Aggie grimaced a bit, worried once again Akako would spoil their child, but she held her tongue. It was pretty clear that Renee needed special looking after, that she would be someone very powerful as she grew older—if she grew older.
On the long flight across the sea, Aggie studied the faces of her fellow witches to try to read their thoughts. Like the little children they had been, the rest of the coven gave her the silent treatment—all except for one. Sophie fidgeted nervously and cleaned her glasses for about the hundredth time.
“It certainly looks different on an airplane. The last time I crossed this ocean was on a ship—the kind with sails,” Sophie said.
“I know,” Aggie said. She wished Sophie would sit somewhere else, but she was even more of an outcast than Aggie. She was also the reason they were all flying to the archives, so that they could determine her punishment. Such a thing hadn’t happened in centuries, though God knew she and Sylvia had skirted the line often enough.
“It’s kind of ironic that after what happened, Glenda is going to do the same to me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She’ll give me a potion to make me a child again. Then she’ll give me over to Regina or one of the others. Just like Morgana.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s already happened to us: you, me, and Sylvia. Don’t you remember what I told you back at the house?”
“You also said you were going to kidnap my daughter and kill me.”
“I’m sorry, Aggie—”
“You call me Ms. Chiostro. I’m not Aggie or Agnes to you anymore.”
Sophie winced as if Aggie had slapped her. “I did what I had to do. Someone had to stand up to Glenda.”
“You allied yourself with Isis. You helped her turn my daughter into a psychotic monster. You sent my wife to another dimension, where she had to grow up again. Your people killed my niece Cecelia. So don’t try to act like a victim.”
“You’re always so emotional, Ag—Ms. Chiostro. Why don’t you try to use logic just one time? You’ll see that I’m right.”
“I don’t care about your logic. I care about my family. That no longer includes you.”
“We were never family anyway.”
“I loved you like a sister. So did Sylvia. That should have been enough.”
Sophie snorted at this and Aggie went back to the galley. There were no stewardesses or stewards on the flight, just the pilot and co-pilot, who were warned to stay in the cockpit unless absolutely necessary. While they didn’t have their powers at the moment, there was no telling when the coven would recover them. There were bound to be some random surges that might leave the pilot or co-pilot turned into a frog—or worse.
Once they landed, they had to rent three vans to take them to the archives. This became problematic because none of them had valid driver’s licenses. They hired drivers to take them to the burial mound in the countryside north of Dublin, beneath which were the archives.
They didn’t go down to the first floor where Akako had maintained her quarters—Aggie would have to clean out he
r apartment before she left—or the vault with the most powerful spells; they restricted themselves to the main floor where tourists and archaeologists went to study the burial chambers.
In this circular chamber they gathered into two concentric circles with Sophie in the center. Aggie stayed to the back. She didn’t want to watch her sister shrink into a baby; she had seen enough of that for one lifetime already. Sophie tried to look stoic as she awaited her fate, though Aggie, who had known her for almost two hundred years, could see how Sophie shifted her weight from one foot to the other just slightly.
Glenda entered the center ring with Sophie to address the coven. “Sisters, one of us has committed a heinous crime. Sophie Joubert, also known as the Headmistress, has conspired to overthrow the coven. She has committed numerous atrocities, including murder and kidnapping. Of these facts there can be no discussion. How say you, sisters?”
“Guilty,” the others said. Aggie kept silent; she didn’t see any point to this farce.
“So say you.” Glenda turned to Sophie. “A guilty verdict has been rendered. Is there anything you wish to say before sentence is pronounced?”
The part of Aggie that remained Sophie’s sister urged her to beg for mercy. The coven wasn’t likely to go easy on her in any case, but it might help a little. Instead of a baby maybe they would let her be four or five, old enough so she wouldn’t have to learn to walk or talk or potty again. Instead, Sophie fixed them with her haughty Headmistress glare. “This coven is the atrocity. You, Glenda, are the guiltiest of all. You’ve duped us all for centuries. I was merely trying to bring your deceptions to light.”
The rest of the coven hissed at this. Aggie knew it was all over. She leaned against a wall and waited for Glenda to deliver the sentence.
Glenda nodded and then reached into her pocket to take out a vial. Aggie’s eyes widened as she recognized the black vial from her vault of potions. This vial was the deadliest to a witch, the common touch potion. “Because you have betrayed this coven and sought to overthrow its leadership, you are hereby expelled from the coven. You will spend the remainder of your days—what few there are of them—as a mortal, under the oversight of Regina Milton and her staff. When you finally expire, your body will be cremated and scattered to the eight winds to make certain your stain never again blots this world.”
Sophie finally lost her composure. She screamed, “No! You can’t do this!” Her wild eyes found Aggie, who now leaned against the wall for support. “Agnes, help me! Don’t let them do this to me! Please!”
Aggie looked down at the ground and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do for you.”
And in truth there was nothing she could do, not with essentially no power against four-dozen other women. She could only stare at the floor as three other witches held Sophie down so Glenda could administer the potion. Sophie continued to scream even after the other witches let her go.
The others parted to let Sophie stagger out of the circle. Her hair had turned from steel gray to a yellowed white, her face became heavily lined, her jowls drooped, and her back stooped. She toddled over to Aggie and reached out to her with fingers that were little more than wrinkled claws. When Sophie spoke, Aggie saw that only a couple of rotted yellow teeth remained. “You can thill help me,” she said. “Kill me. Pleathe.”
Aggie forced herself to look into Sophie’s rheumy blue eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“No! Pleathe! Pleathe!” Sophie continued to beg; slobber flew into Aggie’s face. Regina finally came to drag the old hag who had been Aggie’s sister away.
Later, down in Akako’s quarters, Aggie sat on the bed they had shared and looked down helplessly at the floor. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw Sophie again, reduced to a slobbering crone, which was how she would spend the remainder of her days. She would probably terrify the girls at Milton, who would soon devise awful nicknames for her and dare each other to go near her.
It would have been better to make Sophie a baby again. At least then she could redeem herself, become a good witch again. This way only death and humiliation awaited her. And Aggie had stood there and done nothing while it happened.
“I thought you’d be in here,” Glenda said. She sat down beside Aggie on the bed. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Why’d you do it? Because she challenged your leadership?”
“Not just that.” Glenda patted Aggie’s knee gently, like a mother. “There’s a lot Sylvia and I never told you. I suppose now there’s no point to keep it secret any longer.”
“Tell me what?”
“Sophie killed your mother.”
“What? No, that’s not true. She tried to help. That’s why she went to America—”
“She stole a spell from the archives to drain your mother’s magic. She volunteered to go to America so she wouldn’t look guilty.”
“And Sylvia knew about this?”
“She figured most of it out. She just pegged me instead of Sophie.”
Aggie looked down at the ground and remembered an argument between Sylvia and Glenda shortly after Mama died. At the time Aggie had thought Sylvia was just upset; the subject had never come up again and eventually they had reconciled. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“There’s really no way to make sure, not with Sylvia dead. Could you really trust Sophie any more than me?” Glenda patted Aggie’s knee again. “This isn’t the first time Sophie’s tried to do this. About a hundred sixty years ago, when you and Alejandro were still married, Sophie tried to turn Sylvia. But Sylvia resisted her. We thought Sophie was dead then, but we were wrong—again. Now do you see why I wasn’t going to give her another chance?”
Aggie ran a hand over her face. Just before Sylvia had died, she had told Aggie that she and Alejandro had slept together, that Cecelia was their daughter. How many other secrets had Sylvia hidden from her? She turned to Glenda. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? I’m not a child.”
“Not anymore. You’ve become a very wise woman, if sometimes still too impulsive.” Glenda shook her head. “But do you remember what you were like before you met Alejandro? You were still immature back then in so many ways. That’s why I protected you from the truth—and made sure Sylvia did as well.”
“And now you think I’m finally mature enough to handle it?”
“Yes, because you’re not so self-involved anymore. You have a wife and child to think about now.” Glenda fixed Aggie with a stern glare, which always unnerved Aggie despite that she was over five hundred years old. “Sophie kidnapped your daughter. She banished your wife to another dimension. Do you really want to take the chance that in another fifteen years she could try it again?”
Aggie looked down at her feet again. She had said almost the same thing to Sophie on the plane. She thought then of Emma, who had always said that revenge wasn’t as important as justice. Was that phony trial really justice? She looked back up at Glenda. “What Sophie did was wrong. But by giving her that potion, by condemning her to die, you aren’t any better than she is. I hope you can live with that.”
“I’ve had to live with a lot of things over the years. Not all of us have the luxury of being reborn.”
Aggie stared at Glenda for a moment before what the older witch said sunk in. She thought back to when she was still a young witch, just over a century old, when she had brewed the potion used to turn the traitor Morgana into a baby. Years later Morgana rejoined the coven under the name Sabrina—she was reborn. “Sophie was right, wasn’t she? You made us children again. You wiped our memories just like you did with Morgana.”
“Yes. Your mother and I did.”
“Why? What did we do?”
“I did it because you and Sylvia asked me to.”
“You’re lying. Why would we ask you to do something that horrible?”
“Because living this long is a curse, not a gift. I have millennia of memories I’d just as soon forget. I’ve lost enough friends over the ye
ars to fill this whole damned island twice over.” Glenda’s face took on a look of anguish, to make her look much older, practically ancient. “You and Sylvia felt the same way. That’s why you begged me to do it. You two were always so special to me, even back then. I couldn’t bear to have you in such pain. So your mother and I gave you the potions and let her raise you as sisters.”
“You said Sylvia and I. What about Sophie?”
“She was always a bad egg. Your mother thought that having you two as sisters would even her out. Clearly that didn’t work. She was as conniving as ever.”
Aggie tried to read Glenda’s face for some sign that she had lied. “What about the others? Do they know?”
“They’ve all gone through it themselves. Some of them have done it a few times. Your mother and I were the only ones who didn’t. We were the keepers of the flame. Then she died and it was just me.”
“Forgive me if right now I don’t feel too sympathetic for you.”
Glenda smiled slightly at this. “I don’t expect you to. You and Sylvia have always had so much ability, but you’ve always been so temperamental. I suppose it’s because you were so young when you joined us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“None of us were born as witches. Once, long ago, we were just like everyone else. Those of us who were lucky enough—or unlucky enough depending on your point of view—heard a call and answered it.” Glenda touched Aggie’s hair gently. “You were just twenty years old, a pretty young thing, though a bit vain. Sylvia was even younger, still a teenager, so full of passion and anger but with such a gentle heart beneath it.”
That sounded like Sylvia—and like Aggie when she had been younger. There was little doubt in her mind that Glenda had told the truth. “So what happens now? Business as usual?”
“For us maybe, but not for you. I think it’s time for you to leave the coven for good.”
“Leave the coven? But—”
“Agnes, it should be obvious after all this that you need to get your daughter away from here. If the Heretics don’t kidnap her again then someone in the coven will try to turn or kill her. She’s too powerful here, you must realize that.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 185