American Witch

by Thea Harrison

  I’m going to enjoy the coast. Good night, Josiah.

  Alexei.

  Her phone was dark and blank for a long moment. He was doing the same thing she was, thinking things through, deciding whether or not things were okay. This was a strange new reality for both of them.

  Good night, Molly.

  * * *

  Over the next several days, they fell back into their habit of texting at the end of the day. At first she was afraid he might want to talk, and she wasn’t ready to go that far. But he didn’t suggest it. Gradually she grew to look forward to their nightly exchanges.

  He didn’t share details about his job, and she didn’t ask.

  She didn’t share details about where she was going. And he didn’t ask again.

  The clinic called with the results of the blood test, but by that point it was just a formality. She was, indeed, pregnant.

  Meanwhile, the signs pulled her north. Now that her Power had woken, it pressed her forward with barely understood impulses and urges.

  The inside of her ears itched. The moon disrupted her sleep, and an ocean of magic filled her body. She could hear the tide washing underneath her skin. It spilled out of her eyes, nose, and mouth and dripped invisible ectoplasm from the palms of her hands.

  She went to extremes to avoid accidentally brushing against anybody. She couldn’t settle to meditate. She felt unpredictable, undomesticated like a feral cat, and she didn’t know what she was capable of or what she might do. If she didn’t find her dream teacher soon, she would sell the Subaru and catch the first flight she could to Louisville, the seat of the witches demesne.

  Eight days later, the sun edged close to the horizon as she drove into a town called Everwood in Northern California. Her eyes felt dry and itchy, and an ache had set in between her shoulder blades from so much driving.

  She was tired of trying to interpret random signs, and she was beginning to feel discouraged. All she wanted was a room she could rent for longer than a few nights. She needed a shower and her clothes were dirty, so she needed to find a Laundromat as well.

  She wanted to order pizza delivery. Hell, she wanted a massage.

  Just after she had crossed the city limit, she found a gas station and filled up. Then she paid with another prepaid Visa and walked inside.

  “Can I help you?” asked the girl at the cash register.

  “I’m looking for a place to stay for the night. Got any suggestions?”

  “Nothing in Everwood is too far away.” The girl grinned. “It’s a pretty small place.”

  “How nice.” It wasn’t nice. It meant she might be staying in another roadside motel. She hadn’t felt a twinge of morning sickness yet, but if she looked at one more cheap polyester bedspread, she might hork all over it.

  “The closest place is a motel off the highway. Turn right at the next light and you can’t miss it.”

  Uh-huh. “What other options are there?”

  An older man walked in from the back. He nodded to her. “How you doin’?”

  Her tired mind seized up. It was getting harder and harder to pretend to be normal. She hesitated too long as she groped for the right pleasantry.

  Both the man and the girl watched her, their attention hooked. The girl paused in chewing her gum.

  Molly said cheerfully, “It’s going to be summer solstice soon.”

  Soon as the words left her mouth, she winced. That didn’t sound crazy at all, did it?

  Oddly, the man seemed to relax. Smiling, he said, “Did I hear you’re looking for a place to stay?”

  “Yes.” She eyed him warily, unsure if she wanted to trust anybody who relaxed at her strangeness. “Got any recommendations?”

  He nodded. “Follow this road north about a mile and a half. It’ll curve to the right. Turn left onto Muir Road. That will take you up the hill. There’s an old bed-and-breakfast at the top. You can’t miss it. It’s the big house that overlooks the bay. There’s a widow’s walk on the roof.”

  A widow’s walk. That meant the house was built sometime in the nineteenth century, it would be large, and it had an ocean view. And the thought of a real breakfast acted like a siren’s lure. They might even let her do her laundry.

  “Sounds interesting, thanks.” She returned the man’s smile.

  “Sure thing.” He told her, “Sarah Randall runs the place. If you decide to go up there, tell her Colin and Tallulah say hey.”

  “I will. Have a good night.”

  “You too.”

  Back in the Subaru, she drove slowly through the town. It looked well kept, with a main street filled with charming shops painted different colors and several side streets that held more utilitarian buildings such as a post office and a courthouse.

  The road wound up an incline that lifted her over the rooftops of the town she had just passed through. She could see the Pacific. Sunlight sparkled off the calm surface of the water. The approaching sunset would be a kaleidoscope of fiery color.

  Clusters of houses in cul-de-sacs spun off either side of the road like fractals, interspersed with clumps of redwood forest. When she reached Muir Road, she turned left. The road took her along the curve to the top of a hill where a large Victorian house with a widow’s walk sprawled, limned with the gold of the setting sun.

  Even to her cranky, tired gaze, it was beautiful. Signaling, she turned into the short drive and pulled up to the house. The grounds were attractively landscaped with areas of bright green lawn bordered by lilac bushes and flower beds and large pots filled with lemon trees.

  A man walked around the corner of the house. She summed him up in a glance. He was either a gardener or a handyman, maybe thirty, with broad shoulders, shaggy blond hair, sun-bronzed skin, and strong features. He wore faded, dirty jeans and an equally dirty white shirt. As he strode toward the Subaru, he stripped heavy-duty gloves off large-boned hands.

  “Evening,” he said as she climbed out of the car. He had a great face, intelligent and friendly. Flecks of dirt dusted the bronzed skin at his throat. “Can I help you?”

  “A man suggested I come up here,” she told him, shading her eyes from the brilliant westering sun. “Is this Sarah Randall’s place? He told me to watch for the house with the widow’s walk. He said it was a bed-and-breakfast.”

  “This is Sarah’s place.” The man held out a big, callused hand. “I’m Sam, her great-nephew. I keep the weeds beaten back for her.”

  Forgetting her recent aversion to touching anyone, Molly took his hand. His long fingers closed around hers gently, then he let her go.

  “Love the lemon trees.”

  His hazel eyes smiled as he looked around the property. “Thanks. I don’t know if Sarah’s still taking guests, but you can always ask.”

  He didn’t mean the bed-and-breakfast was full, did he? She looked around. The parking lot was empty, and that view was really spectacular. “I think I will. The worst she can do is tell me no.”

  “That’s what I figure.” He smiled into her eyes. “Good luck.”

  That straight look held just a little too long. He’d done that on purpose. Apparently a ten-year age difference with an older woman didn’t bother him very much.

  “Thanks.” Smiling, she turned to walk up the path with a little extra bounce in her step. Her life might be the definition of complicated, but there was nothing wrong with a little ego boost.

  The top half of the door was beveled glass. She admired the handiwork as she knocked and waited. Through it, she caught a blurred glimpse of an old woman moving toward the door just before it opened.

  She revised her impression immediately. The woman was not so much old as she was frail. A scarf of soft blue cotton wrapped around her head, and Molly’s heart sank as she took in the implications.

  She glanced away at the large foyer. One of her mother’s friends had gone through chemotherapy the previous year, and she had been very sensitive about her hair loss and appearance.

  “Well, hello,” the woman said.r />
  “Good evening. I’m Molly. I’m hoping you might have a room available to rent?” she asked. “Colin and Tallulah say hi.”

  She offered her hand. The other woman took it, and as their palms came in contact, she sensed an immense Power. It was quiet and strong, honed like Josiah’s, and deep as a well.

  She fell into it. And fell, and fell…

  Her shocked gaze lifted to the other woman’s face, which was thinner and more lined than the witch’s face from her dreams. But it was indisputably the same woman. Molly stared into her dark, powerful eyes.

  “I’m Sarah Randall.” The witch smiled. “It took you long enough to find me. You’d better come in.”

  Over the past several weeks, she had gradually lost faith that she would ever meet the witch from her dreams. Now here they stood, face-to-face, and excitement and fear jostled for dominance. “I can’t believe this.”

  Sarah Randall laughed. “Moving from the dream world into the physical can be a trip.” She opened the front door and called out, “Sam, would you bring Molly’s luggage in?”

  Sam straightened from his weeding. “Sure thing.”

  She called over Sarah’s shoulder. “It’s unlocked. Thanks!”

  He grinned. “You bet!”

  Closing the door, Sarah turned around. “He’s a good boy.”

  “Boy?” Molly raised an eyebrow. The mature man outside was nowhere near a boy.

  “I held him on my lap when he was not yet a day old,” Sarah told her, eyes twinkling. “So yes, to me, he’s still a boy. Come with me.”

  Molly followed her back to the kitchen. She looked around with fascination. “This isn’t like the kitchen in the dream.”

  “No? What was that like for you?” Sarah went to the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of tea.

  “It was yellow and green, and there was a huge, antiquated gas stove.” Molly glanced over the thoroughly modernized space with stainless steel appliances, cream-painted cabinets, and granite countertops.

  “Funny how the magic chooses to manifest,” Sarah said. “I haven’t had that kitchen since the fifties.”

  Molly accepted the tea with a murmur of thanks, eyeing the older woman sidelong as she slid into the opposite chair at the breakfast nook. Despite her illness, Sarah looked barely old enough to have been born in the fifties, let alone old enough to have had a kitchen.

  “You’re one of those witches who’s older than you look.”

  “One of ‘those witches’?” Sarah raised her eyebrows. “How many have you met?”

  “One, before you.” The tea was delicious, and she drank thirstily. “I think he was born at the end of the Russian Empire. He taught me a few things that kept me from going crazy.”

  Sarah regarded Molly curiously. “What kind of things?”

  “My Power started to manifest telekinetically, so he showed me how to focus and use it at will. He also said at some point I would have the ability to slow down my aging, which he has done. I assume you have too?”

  “Yes, I’m much older than I look.” Sarah’s expression turned dry. “And with the kind of Power you carry, you’ll be able to make the same choice, but I would encourage you to think hard about it. While you might gain a prolonged life, you’ll give up a lot in order to get it.”

  “I wondered about that. The witch who helped me said he watched his children’s children die of old age, and he still looks like he’s in his midforties.” She looked down at her glass, reluctantly acknowledging how much she missed Josiah.

  Sarah nodded. “If you use the spell of youth, eventually you’ll be saying goodbye to all your loved ones, their children, and their grandchildren. It is a hard choice, and at some point you will still die. We’re all human, after all, but you won’t face death until all the people you know and love have been dead and buried for a very long time.”

  “I see.”

  “Don’t look so stricken on my account,” Sarah said gently. “I’m not a victim. I knew what I was doing when I cast the spell. For all that I gave up, I gained a very long, fruitful, and interesting life. This is just the consequence of that choice. Besides, I’m not checking out quite yet.”

  “No, you’re not.” Sam spoke from the doorway. “You made me a promise. You’re going to stick around for at least another year, hopefully two.”

  “You know I can’t promise anything,” Sarah replied. “We’ll see how much time the chemo buys me.”

  “I’m not letting you off the hook,” Sam told her. “I want to have you in my life for two more years at least, so focus your intention and make it happen. You’ve always said you could achieve anything with enough focus.”

  Sarah smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Sam helped himself to a glass of tea and drank it down while standing in front of the sink. His warm hazel gaze met Molly’s while he said, “I put Molly’s luggage in the seaside turreted room. Is that okay?”

  “That’s perfect. Are you going to stay for dinner?”

  He shook his head. “I’m rank as a buffalo. I need to shower, and I have some contracts to go through this evening, as well as an early-morning appointment.”

  After he took his leave, Sarah said, “Sam’s a landscape architect. He runs a very popular business.”

  Molly told her, “It’s nice how he looks after you.”

  Sarah’s expression softened. “I call him my great-nephew, but the reality is there’s a few more ‘greats’ involved. He and I are the last of our direct family line. He’s a good person—strong, kind, and committed to doing wonderful things.” She pushed to her feet. “Come with me, and I’ll show you the house.”

  It was a spacious place. From the outside it looked like it had three stories, but Sarah only took her through two. There was a door at one end of the second-floor hall that was closed. She guessed it led to an attic.

  Curiosity had her lingering. In her mind’s eye, she could feel/see sparks hanging over her head like stars. “What is that?”

  “That’s my workroom,” Sarah replied. “Some things up there are dangerous. I keep it locked so strangers won’t go poking around up there.”

  “Gotcha,” she murmured. What would a workroom of a very old witch look like? Maybe if she was lucky Sarah would show it to her sometime.

  Upstairs, there were eight bedrooms in total, counting Molly’s turreted room, which she adored the moment she set eyes on it, and two upstairs bathrooms, one on either side of the house. The bedrooms were small, but the bathrooms were spacious and modernized with showers installed in claw-foot tubs, the shower curtains hanging from oval metal rings suspended overhead, and white-painted cabinets and floors tiled with Carrara marble.

  On the first floor, there was a large entrance hall, a comfortable reception room, Sarah’s bedroom that had once been a library, a formal dining room, the large main kitchen with a breakfast nook, and another large back kitchen that had been built as an extension off the main house.

  That room had windows on three sides and would be an ideal place to do the hot, heavy work of canning in the summer without heating up the rest of the house. The area underneath the counters was filled with boots, gardening tools, and odds and ends.

  Last, but not least in Molly’s view, there was the walk-in pantry, the laundry room, and a water closet that had been recently renovated into a tiny bathroom with modern fixtures and a compact shower with a small bench upon which to sit.

  Like all Victorian homes, it was an enormous and expensive beauty, and other items and areas glowed with magic, not with the attic’s bright, dangerous sparks, but with a soft, gentle subtlety.

  A stained-glass piece hung in a kitchen window, with a circular, repeating design that seemed to go on forever.

  A small, rustic-looking broom, tied with a blue ribbon and decorated with spring colors, hung on the wall near the front door. A wrought iron candelabrum sat in the clean fireplace in the reception room, filled with lavender-scented beeswax candles that looked homemade and f
elt gently, deeply magical.

  Outside the french-style doors in the breakfast nook, there was a patio with a round table and chairs. The tabletop was a mosaic of a pentagram, made with pieces of bright polished glass and stone. The pattern was repeated in the flagstone floor of the patio. Farther out in the yard, a large labyrinth made of small white stones spread out over a large yard.

  The house would have been a work of art all on its own. With the magic that had been woven over the years into wall art and the everyday furniture and items, there was a complexity about the place, both visually and mentally, that Molly found compelling.

  Moving as though her joints pained her, Sarah sat at the kitchen table again. “You’re welcome to stay while you and I get acquainted. I might not suit you as a teacher, and Everwood has its quirks, so not everyone feels comfortable here. You’re the only guest, so please clean your own room and keep up with your bedding and towels. If you find a place in town where you’d like to stay, we can work out when you’ll come up for lessons.”

  “Of course. How much do you charge per night?” She frowned. “And would you consider a monthly rate?”

  The other woman waved that away. “I’m not going to charge you anything.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t stay here for free. I have to pay you something.”

  “I don’t need your money. If I did, I would charge you.” Sarah considered her. “I’ll be blunt. We don’t have the luxury of taking years for me to teach you or for you to study in your free time. You would do better to stay here. It will be cheaper than having to pay for room and board. Then you’d only have to work part-time.”

  “I don’t need a job right now.” Molly smiled. “If I stay, I can get groceries and cook, and I’ll help with cleaning as well. If you’re going teach me, I can help you in return. It’s only the right thing to do.”

  Sarah nodded. “We can always change our minds if it doesn’t work out.” She eyed Molly. “What do you think?”

  Molly tapped her fingers on the table, considering. “I think you should know the whole story before you decide to take me on,” she replied. “My real name is not on the ID I’m carrying. My husband tried to kill me, and now he’s dead. The police want me for questioning, and no, I didn’t kill him. That witch I told you about… It’s complicated. I’m pregnant with his baby. He and his coven are hunting down an ancient, dangerous witch who steals other witches’ Power to prolong his life. That may or may not have something to do with how my husband died, and whoever it is may or may not also want me dead. We’re not really sure at this point.”