Witching Hour

by Skylar Finn

  I didn’t know how to re-start time and unfreeze anybody. Whatever magic Father Death used to seal us in was a powerful spell, and he’d barely lifted a finger to perform it. I had no doubt in my mind he could blast me to smithereens if I so much as made one false move.

  If Suki had seen my signal, she would be here by now. And while I had been able to communicate with Suki over some distance, I didn’t think that applied to my family, who were hours away.

  “You could work with me,” he was saying. “I could keep you alive. I prefer to use your heart, of course; it’s the most powerful one I could find. But if you agree to work with me, your powers would be hugely useful over time, more useful to me if you were alive than dead. I could use your cousin’s heart, or ideally Sister Moon’s. I feel that there would be a certain...poetic justice, in taking the heart of Mother Time’s descendant. I have lived in solitude all these years, with only the Never Was for company. It could be pleasant to once again have a partner.”

  I was amazed that he thought I would accept such an offer. I guess most people value any kind of life over certain horrible death, but if he thought I had such a pure heart, why would I stand by and watch while he killed my cousin and my best friend in my place? In order to rule alongside of him and probably wash his dirty socks for all eternity, my life lost to me and living with the eternal guilt of having sacrificed my family and all of humanity to save myself? Immortal beings were so delusional.

  I hesitated. If I flat-out refused, he would kill me on the spot. But if he thought I was considering it…

  Father Death watched me closely, interpreting my silence. “It’s not as though you serve much purpose here, among the human race,” he said. Ouch. This guy really knew how to cut close to the bone. “I look at you, a powerful witch repressed by their kind, with no inkling of how to use your own magic--I could teach you things you cannot imagine. Things beyond your reckoning. You could become the second most powerful being in the world.” Second to him, obviously.

  “I could take the face of anyone you like,” he continued. He waved a hand over his face. He looked exactly like Peter. “Imagine never having to lie to the one you love again.”

  It was horribly unsettling, seeing Peter in the shop and knowing it wasn’t him. He was physically identical to the Peter I knew and loved in every way, except for his eyes. They were twin black bottomless wells, the eyes of Father Death. He could never replace Peter. No one could.

  A plan was starting to form in my mind. It was a questionable, haphazard, and risky gambit that was likely to blow up in my face, but compared to the alternative of losing everyone I knew and loved and humanity being ruled by a crazed time fiend, it seemed like a no-brainer.

  I pretended to think about it, silently mulling it over. To agree too easily would be far too obvious.

  “Could I still see my family?” I asked. “Will you take Suki’s heart, instead of Tamsin’s? And let my friend Cameron go free?”

  He looked surprised. Surprised, and also pleased. “Of course,” he said, smiling with the same easy charm as Peter. I tried not to look away. Seeing this monster with his face made me feel like my brain was melting. Like I’d stumbled into an evil, alternate dimension. Which was exactly what Father Death wanted to create.

  “Okay,” I said with a determined little nod. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Wise decision,” said Magdalena, the first she’d spoken since oozing into the shop. “You will never regret serving alongside Father Death. He is the most powerful being of all.”

  “It is heartwarming to see a witch make a decision that both makes sense and benefits everyone involved,” he agreed. “A sight as rare as a comet.”

  He gave a wave of his hand. I looked down, startled, as the same blue bands that covered the exits formed around my body, immobilizing me.

  “Just in case,” he said, smiling pleasantly.

  I tried to move. It was like being encased in steel. Had I honestly thought he would be stupid enough to roam around, sharing his plan for world domination with his back turned to me? Honestly, yes. I was kind of planning on hitting him in the back of the head with the lamp next to the register. I guess that was out.

  “Now what?” I knew I sounded kind of pissed off when I was going for compliant, but I was deeply annoyed at my new blue prison and hard-pressed to conceal my feelings.

  He continued to smile, as if my defiance pleased him. “Your former allies should be here any moment,” he said. “I will take the heart of the time witch, as I promised. It will reassure you to know that I always keep my promises. I will destroy my remaining opponent. Then, you can use your considerable powers to help me perform the ritual, proving your loyalty to me. How does that sound?” His expression was expectant and excited, as if he had suggested we go get ice cream.

  “Great,” I said. “I can hardly wait.”

  Father Death laughed. I could tell he enjoyed making me commit these atrocities alongside him unwillingly even more than he would if I had readily agreed. It made my skin crawl.

  Father Death tilted his head as if he heard something. Magdalena rose from the floor and re-formed her legs, standing at attention. I heard the distant sound of wind chimes.

  “Well, well,” he said. “If I’m not mistaken, here come our guests of honor now.”

  29

  A Witch of Time

  Sam. Sam, can you hear me?

  It was the voice of Suki. I realized that the sound I heard wasn’t wind chimes, but the sound of a clock chiming. It was the clock in the corner of the store: it was a quarter to midnight. Fifteen minutes until the witching hour.

  I can hear you, I thought. Father Death’s bonds didn’t prevent me from hearing Suki or her from hearing me. I glanced up. He was still listening to the air, head tipped back, ears twitching, eyes alert--awaiting their imminent arrival. He couldn’t hear us.

  When we arrive, he will be distracted. Janice will perform the necessary magic to defend you and free you from your bonds while I fend off Father Death’s attack. While he is distracted, you must stop the clock prior to the witching hour. Only this will stop Father Death and stop the ritual from taking place.

  How do I stop time? I thought, panicked. Suki was, as usual, typically presumptuous about my abilities. Or lack thereof.

  She began what I can only describe as playing a movie in my head: she replayed my own memory of Father Death saying, The time witches are not the only ones who can stop time when they deem it necessary. I realized then that whatever my telepathic abilities, Suki, again, was operating on a whole other level. I told myself that if I ever got out of this alive, I would ask her for some tips.

  I barely had time to register the instant replay sequence happening in my brain when a beam of bright gold light split the sinister atmosphere of the shop. I saw Suki, or Sister Moon as Father Death referred to her, encased inside of it. He raised his hand and shouted something, energy crackling between his fingertips. He aimed what looked like a sizzling silver fireball at the gold light encompassing Suki. It bounced harmlessly off of her like a beach volleyball. I wondered why he thought she would be so easy to subdue.

  “Samantha Hale.” I heard a quiet voice very near my shoulder and turned. A soft hand at my back sent a feeling of goodwill and what felt like a bright warm light coursing through me. The blue bands that comprised my prison dissolved. I saw Janice standing behind me.

  “Stay still,” she cautioned me. She placed her hand on my forehead and began to hum. The light intensified. A halo of gold light formed around my head and spread until I was encased in a similar beam to Suki’s. I understood this would protect me as it protected Suki. She had scarcely finished performing the spell when Magdalena oozed up behind her.

  “No!” I shouted as the nightmare enveloped her whole. Magdalena’s shadowy

  form swallowed her in darkness, and I thought of how she had left herself unguarded in order to protect me. Just as I thought that Janice was lost forever, the shadow burst into
a hundred glittering fragments and disintegrated. Janice re-emerged, unscathed.

  “Go,” she said as she went to fight at Suki’s side.

  At first, I had no idea what to do. I hadn’t trained for a hundred years to become a witch of time. How were they were so certain I could do what they did? Or what Father Death planned to do?

  My first thought was of the clock in the corner. When time froze, before mine and Cameron’s very eyes, it started with the grandfather clock. It happened when it chimed midnight. But Suki said that I had to do it before midnight, before Father Death’s ritual could commence.

  I ran to the clock and stood looking up at its gold face above me. I remembered the bright golden glow it issued just before time froze. For lack of any other idea, I reached up and pressed my hand against the face of the clock.

  As before, it was warm. It grew warmer beneath my hand, the warmth spreading through me. I tried to focus on stopping everything around me: the deadly magical fight taking place at my back, the possibility of Father Death’s ritual, the looming prospect of our shared demise. As I held the face of the clock in my palm, a curious thing happened.

  It was as if I became aware of an underground current pulsing beneath the floor under my feet. Tamsin’s voice echoing in my mind: it wasn’t just the clock. It was also the place. I sensed the magic that lived there. Could I harness it and use it?

  I’d try to will it back on...like closing my eyes and saying ‘let there be light,’ you know? I remembered Cameron’s description of the day he’d sensed the magic there and tried to use it. I closed my eyes and willed the power beneath my feet to flow upward and allow me to direct it. At first, it was so frightening I wanted to stop: I felt like I was caught in an undertow, like a massive riptide was ripping up from beneath the floor and threatening to drown me. Then I felt it flow through me like a river, into the face of the clock. I felt like a high-voltage power line, as if an endless line of electricity was coursing through my body.

  The face of the clock grew warmer. I felt my heartbeat slow. In my mind, I was hit with a rush of memories, like the memory from moments ago that Suki had played in my mind, but my whole life in a montage: every birthday and holiday, every school year, every season. I watched the flowers bloom, then wilt and die; I watched the leaves fall and the snow fall, then melt so that everything could bloom again.

  I was afraid to break my contact with the surface of the clock, but I was more afraid that if my heart beat any more slowly than it already was, I would drop dead in the middle of the shop. I stepped away, but the feeling didn’t leave me. I turned to see one of the oddest things I’d ever witnessed in my life span.

  At first I thought that Father Death was frozen, along with Suki and Janice, just like he’d frozen Cameron and Tamsin in the back room. But as I drew closer, I saw that they continued to move: infinitesimal movements, as if they were in super slow motion. They looked like they were underwater as they launched themselves at one another.

  Janice stood in front of Suki, her hands raised, as golden light flowed out of them. I could see each particle suspended in the fiery beams of light that lit the shop from within. Suki, her face contorted with rage, jumped straight in the air, her feet rising above the floor millimeters at a time, her palms facing outward as a jet of silver light shot towards Father Death. He had crossed his arms in front of his face as if defending it, head down. What looked like black liquid smoke shot from his fingertips directly at Suki and Janice.

  Only I moved normally--well, not exactly normally, but I wasn’t slowed down at all. Instead, I felt like I moved at a rate that was neither fast nor slow, nor somehow anywhere in between. I could still hear my heartbeat, slow and methodical, ticking like a metronome in my chest, but I felt like I was outside of time. I felt like I existed in the space between breaths.

  I glided over to the face-off, feeling as though my feet barely touched the ground. I remembered all the times I’d seen Father Death as Cristo and wondered how it was that he barely seemed to touch the floor. Now I knew. He existed outside of time.

  I reached up and grasped Father Death’s hands and turned them toward his own

  face.

  He still wore the face of Peter, and I wished that I could change it back to any

  face but his--Lindy’s, Cristo’s, Amelia’s; not Peter’s. As I looked at him, his features seemed to morph and reform into a gaunt, skeletal face with high cheekbones and cavernous black eyes. His skin was waxy and gray. His face was lined and ancient. His true face.

  Had I willed him to reveal it simply by wishing Peter’s face away from his? It alarmed me that the magic flowing through me could be that powerful, and I didn’t have time to speculate on it.

  I went back to the clock and touched its face again, willing time to resume its normal ebb and flow. The clock’s face glowed brighter, the light warm and golden beneath my hand. I felt my heartbeat resume its normal pulse. The hands of the clock jumped forward to twelve. The clock chimed the hour, and as the ringing sound sliced through the store, the flow of time resumed.

  I turned to see Janice and Suki’s twin pulses of light surge forward, hitting Father Death square in the face. Simultaneously, his own black magic blasted from his fingertips directly into his ruined face. He screamed.

  Beams of light blasted from every direction, ricocheting off the floor and ceilings, hitting every surface. I threw myself to the floor and crawled under the nearest clothing rack. As I watched, Father Death flew apart into a dozen shadowy pieces that lay like obsidian fragments on the carpeted floor.

  As I watched, the many streams of light flowing through the shop all faded. “Quickly!” Suki yelled. “The receptacle!”

  I thought at first she was talking to Janice, but then an image appeared in my head of the hourglass I bought from their estate sale. I wasn’t even sure if Suki had placed it there or if it was my own memory reiterating it for me. I felt at one with them.

  I reached up around my neck to the thin chain adorned with the empty hourglass at the end. I wondered briefly if they’d known all along it would come to this moment when they’d given it to me. The things I’d experienced since I returned to the shop made me feel as though time wasn’t real at all; as if all things occurred simultaneously and it was only our perceptions that made it feel as though there was a past, present, and future: a beginning, middle, and end.

  I crawled out from under the rack and over to Janice’s extended hand, removing the necklace from around my neck. It swung ponderously for half a second through the air, like a pendulum, then Janice wrapped her hand around the chain.

  She spoke in a deep and powerful voice that sounded nothing like her own. She chanted words I’d never heard and didn’t understand, the same five syllables over and over again: ohnee, ahvee, ohn. It sounded unearthly, like nothing I’d ever heard anyone in my family utter. I understood then that they practiced a very different kind of magic.

  As she spoke, the crystals melded together into a solid black mass. They liquefied and oozed across the floor, much the way Magdalena had before Janice had blasted her to bits. When the blob reached the floor in front of Janice, it ascended from the floor in a tiny tornado. She extended her hand and moved it across the air in front of her. As she moved her hand, the black funnel moved with it, cycloning into the empty hourglass, where it disintegrated into ten thousand grains of black sand.

  When she finished, the hourglass swung from her hand on its chain. I thought that I had just witnessed the most powerful act of magic I had ever seen. I rose from my graceless crouch on the floor. I was surprised and confused to see that Suki’s expression was not one of triumph, but of shock and anguish. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted. Tears tracked down her cheeks and stalled as if time had not quite fully resumed its normal function.

  I turned, following her eyeline back to Janice. The time witch's face wore a smile. It was the expression of contentment at the certainty of a job well done. My eyes tracked down where the hourglass sp
un, aloft, adjacent to her heart. From her chest protruded a single shard of obsidian.

  A parting shot from an evil being.

  As she fell to the floor, the hourglass remained in the air. It levitated above the ground, held in place by the final traces of magic in her fingertips. Her eyes closed, but the smile on her face remained.

  30

  The Way Back

  Suki ran to Janice’s side, plucking the hourglass from the air as she went. She was still huddled over her as I approached. I had neither magic nor medicine that could heal whatever had happened to her.

  “She’s gone,” said Suki without looking up. “You should check on your friends.”

  I could sense that she needed a moment alone and it would be best if I left her to deal with the immediacy of her grief. As devastating as it was to see a witch lose her life to a monster like Father Death before my very eyes, I was anxious to see if Tamsin and Cameron were all right. I hoped their state in the back room had protected them from the battle, but I needed to see for myself.

  They were sitting on the floor of the stockroom, alive and well but looking utterly confused. I rushed to their side, checking to make sure they were uninjured.

  “Did you forget something?” asked Cameron.

  “What?” I said, bewildered.

  “You were just here,” he said. “You just left.”

  “No, wait--there was someone here,” said Tamsin, looking wildly around. “I heard someone come in. I looked, but then--” She broke off, confounded. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “It was Father Death,” I said.

  “Is he still here?” she asked, jumping to her feet.

  “No, he’s dead,” I said. “Well, not dead, exactly. Captured. Suki and Janice showed up, and--” I found myself unable to continue. I had only met her twice before tonight, but it didn’t make explaining her sacrifice any easier.