The Witch's Christmas Wish

by Rebecca Lovell

  “I don’t really—-”

  “Here’s the car,” the patrolman interrupted. He pointed to a four-seat police sedan and Gard opened the door for Terra.

  “Thank you.” She pulled the door closed and Gard went to the other side to let himself in. While he was outside, she bit her lip. All her life she’d said that she hated babies and children, but secretly she’d wondered if she would be a good mother. Her work kept her so busy that there didn’t seem to be enough time to raise children, and she wouldn’t let them be raised by a nanny. She’d decided that a woman who had to work as hard as she did just to be recognized as competent wouldn’t make much of a mother, so she’d continued to tell everyone that she didn’t want to have children. It was easier that way. She could put it out of her mind and continue to work.

  “Something the matter?” Gard frowned at her and Terra realized that she had been staring silently out the window for a few minutes. She shook her head.

  “No, I’m all right. Just thinking about something that doesn’t bear thinking about. I’m sorry if I missed something you were saying.” She was surprised when Gard took her hand.

  “I thought you might be having a vision,” he said, lowering his voice so that she had to strain to hear it. “I didn’t want to interrupt if you were.” Terra smiled at him and laced her fingers through his. The patrolman had his hands full keeping his eyes on the road and maneuvering through snow, so he couldn’t see them. “I really don’t know how that works.”

  “Pretty much the same. Only I wasn’t having a vision this time, I was thinking about the past.” She leaned her head back on the seat, once again putting her hat in danger. “I don’t know where or when my vision of my brother takes place. I don’t know when I’m supposed to save Tommy.”

  “I guess it’s hard to know. Maybe you already prevented it without realizing it. He’s gone this long and been fine, right? Does everything you see come true?” Gard rubbed the side of her finger with his thumb.

  “Almost everything.” Terra had to stop herself from touching her abdomen. The vision she’d had in school of a crying baby in her arms hadn’t come true, and she was long since past the age she had been when she saw it. No children, she reminded herself. Not for me.

  “Well, let’s hope this one has already passed. I’ve only met your brother once and he seemed like a nice enough fellow.” Gard grinned at her. “I doubt this is what he meant by me taking care of you, though. I’d hate to make him mad.”

  “You wouldn’t. Tommy’s been after me for years to find myself a man. I think he’d approve of you. He already trusts you with me, apparently.” Terra looked at Gard, who seemed to be grinning even wider. “What?”

  “So I’m your man now?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” Terra said, her face turning bright red. “We’re here to find out who tampered with the train and killed those people, not—-” She was interrupted by Gard leaning down and giving her a light, quick kiss on the lips. Terra hadn’t thought her face could get any redder but she was wrong. “Gard!”

  “Shh, don’t interrupt me. I’m composing my first letter to you in my head.” He looked up at the roof of the car with a boyish blush on his face that made his freckles disappear.

  “Here we are,” the patrolman said. “You need me to wait?”

  “No, we should be fine from here, thanks.” Gard got out of the car and Terra opened her own door, not wanting to look weak in front of the patrolman or anyone who might see them. “Let’s find the rail police, they can probably tell us what we need to know.”

  “I think we should check the trains,” Terra said as she walked beside him. “We should do that before we do anything else, just in case one has been tampered with.”

  “You’re right. The rail police should be able to delay the trains so we can take a look.” Gard walked faster and Terra hurried to keep up with him. They reached the rail police’s office in record time and burst through the door so forcefully that they startled the officer inside.

  “Who on earth are you?”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Gard said, showing the man his badge, “but we need you to delay the trains for a few minutes. We believe someone has tampered with the engine on one of them.”

  “All the trains? That’s ridiculous! We can’t stop all the trains!” The officer looked at his watch, clearly flustered. “But what do you mean, tampered?”

  “We’ll explain later,” Terra said, looking up at Gard. “If you can’t stop all the trains, how about the ones going to Roanoke? Those are the ones we’re worried about.”

  “That might be possible. Come with me.” The officer got up and led them out into the bustling hallway. “Roanoke. That’s where the accident was a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t it?” Terra nodded and he whistled. “So you two must be the detectives. If it’s a police matter, I’m sure we can get you in to look at those trains.”

  As it turned out, there were only two trains that stopped in Baltimore on the way to Roanoke and the rail officer was able to keep them at their platforms. Terra could hear passengers grumbling as she made her way through them with Gard. She couldn’t have cared less what they were saying about her at that moment. As long as no one else died, that was all that was important to her.

  The first train that they checked was the one scheduled to go out immediately. Terra knew the moment she stepped into the engine that it wasn’t the one. Still, she and Gard went over every inch of the engine compartment to make sure nothing had been broken or filed on any of the vital levers and switches, or the furnace tampered with.

  “That’s a relief,” Terra said as she stepped out of it to meet the rail officer. “This train is fine. You can let it go ahead.”

  “Thank goodness. I’ll get the passengers on while you go look at the other.” The rail officer held up his hands and started speaking to the crowd while Terra and Gard walked down to the third platform where a train that looked very similar to Tommy’s was sitting.

  “What if this one hasn’t been touched either? Then what?” Gard led her to the engine and helped her up the steps.

  “Then I try my best to get some sort of vision.” Terra looked around the engine compartment. “I usually can’t force them, though. Maybe once or twice I have, but it’s quite hard.” She went to the brake lever first and her blood ran cold. “Gard, look. It’s the same.”

  “The lever?” He turned quickly and went to her side, then knelt down. “Well, I’ll be. This one’s almost cut through from the underside. The engineer might not have seen it but it would have snapped the second he tried to brake.” Gard stood up and went down the steps while Terra stayed in the train and put her hand on the brake lever.

  Much to her relief, an image came to her of a man in an engineer’s uniform using a small hacksaw to cut through the metal. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming, then tucked the saw in his pocket and left as if he had always belonged there. Terra let go of the brake lever, then ran after Gard, who was searching for the rail officer.

  “I saw his face,” Terra said. “He had a black mustache and a cut on his chin. He pretended he was the engineer, that’s how he was able to get on the train to do it.”

  “That’s great, but how do we explain what you saw? We can’t just tell Detective Brooks that you had a vision of the man who caused the accident and almost caused another.” He narrowed his eyes. “Unless we could get Mrs. Lovett to try to remember what he looked like.”

  “We’d have to go back to Roanoke for that,” Terra said. “When the man who did this sees that the train is cancelled, he’ll know that he’s caught. He might just disappear in the time it takes us to go home and come back.” Terra realized that she had just referred to Roanoke as home, but pushed it aside for the time being. There were more important things to worry about.

  “Right now, let’s just get this train out of commission before someone gets hurt.” Gard’s attention turned to the rail officer that he saw coming toward them and he
waved. “It’s this one,” he called. The rail officer started running until he met them.

  “This one? There’s something wrong with it?”

  “The brake lever has been cut almost all the way through,” Terra said. “If the engineer tried to brake, it would snap off and he wouldn’t be able to stop. Just like the other train.” She shook her head. “Thank goodness we got here in time.”

  “You two are some sharp detectives, I’ll give you that,” the rail officer said. “I’ll go call for some help if you want to wait here, or you can come with me.”

  “We’ll wait here.” Terra looked up at Gard as she spoke, and the officer hurried away. Once he was gone, she pulled Gard closer to the train. “There’s something about Roanoke. The two trains that had been tampered with were ones that were going from Baltimore to Roanoke. Someone wants the station at Roanoke either damaged or put out of commission for some reason.”

  “You think they came all the way to Baltimore just to make Roanoke look bad?” Gard rubbed his forehead. “I believe you, but why?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked back at the train, then at the building itself. Terra was hesitant to leave her place by the engine for fear someone would come and get on or try to cover their tracks, but she went toward the wall of the station with a glance over her shoulder at Gard. The smile on his face told her he would stay, and she nodded.

  There were hundreds of people moving through the station, all talking at the same time. Some of them were laughing and excited, others already mourning a loved one’s departure. The noise was a background buzz to Terra, who went to the wall that hundreds, if not thousands, of people had touched or brushed, and put her hands on it. She could feel the power of the station thrumming underneath her palms, the electricity and machinery that kept it running smoothly. It mixed with the nonstop flow of the voices around her and cleared her mind entirely.

  When she closed her eyes, it was as if she opened them at the same time. A man in a conductor’s uniform was taking it off in the locker room with his back to her. With a furtive look around, he took an engineer’s uniform out of the locker and put it on as quickly as possible. The people who knew him would know he wasn’t an engineer and report him for sure, so he had to do this fast. Terra saw his black hair from the back, badly in need of a trim. He turned and she saw the same mustached face, this time with a piece of toilet paper stuck to his face where she’d seen the cut. No doubt he’d cut himself shaving. He brushed it away, put on the engineer’s hat, and hurried out the door. The vision started to fade but she forced herself to maintain the connection. If she could get close enough she could see the name on the locker. She’d seen it for no more than a second when a flash of the Roanoke station came to her and she snapped out of her trance.

  The noise of the station rushed in on her from all sides and she gasped as if she had been holding her breath. Gard, she thought. I have to get to Gard.

  With her teeth chattering from the icy waters of her vision, Terra pushed her way through the people in the station, losing ground when someone pushed her back and gaining when they moved aside. Once she got to the platform she saw that rail police had marked the area as a crime scene and the officer they’d been following was talking to Gard. He looked very serious and Terra made her way through the crowd that had formed to gawk at the train.

  “Sorry, miss, you can’t get through here,” one of the rail officers said, and Terra shook her head.

  “I’m supposed to be over here, I’m with Detective Lewis.” The man in front of her didn’t budge and she stretched herself up so she was over his shoulder. “Gard,” she called as loud as she could. “Gard!” He turned toward her, held up a finger to the officer, then jogged over to Terra.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They won’t let me through.” Terra shot the officer a dirty look and he looked at Gard instead of her.

  “What’s the problem here? She’s part of the investigation,” Gard snapped at the officer, surprising Terra. She hadn’t thought he was capable of such behavior, but it didn’t put her off in the least. “Let Dr. Rendon in here this instant.” The officer stepped aside with a dubious look and Terra walked with Gard up to the platform. “Sorry about that. Guess we shouldn’t have split up after all.”

  “Never mind him,” Terra said, shaking her head. “We have to go back to Roanoke immediately.” She looked back at the wall she had just been touching. “The man here was a conductor who dressed up like an engineer so he could get in the train, but that’s beside the point.”

  “Then what is the point?”

  “I saw the man’s name who did it.” Terra’s eyes flicked toward the other officers, then she lowered her voice so only Gard could hear it. “The nameplate on his locker said D. Keats.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  On the train ride back to Roanoke, Terra couldn’t seem to sit still. She got up and down in the compartment, alternately pacing and muttering to herself. It was making Gard tired just to watch her but he didn’t want to interrupt her when she was clearly trying to think things through. He knew she would make an excellent detective if someone would give her a chance, but he thought she’d probably have to work for a private firm if she did that.

  After half an hour of watching her go back and forth, Gard reached out and grabbed her arm. “Terra. Sit down for a minute, will you?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking out the window. “I just want to get to Roanoke before the police at the station in Baltimore scare Keats off. Though I don’t think he’s particularly worried. He’s not an engineer after all, they won’t be looking for him.”

  “I can’t believe Mr. Keats is the one who did this.” Before she could get up again, Gard pulled her over so she was sitting beside him. “He seemed like a nice old man.”

  “You’re the one who said that he was probably being pushed out of his job.” Terra turned in her seat so they were face to face. “He also said he wanted to say goodbye to us before he resigned but he didn’t seem particularly happy about it.”

  “But doing this, sabotaging trains and getting people killed, why would he do all this over being forced to retire? And if he’s retiring, who’s ‘D. Keats’?” Something struck Gard as strange. “Why would a guy like him resign rather than retire, anyway? Seems like you’d lose your pension that way.”

  “I don’t know. It does seem a little off. As for D. Keats, it’s probably his son, judging from the age.” Terra shifted in her seat and Gard could tell she was getting impatient. “It wouldn’t be too hard for him to talk his son into helping him out. As for why, I don’t know. People get attached to their jobs, though. It becomes your whole identity and once that’s taken away by force, then who are you? Maybe he’s just mad at the fact that he won’t be a conductor anymore.”

  “All right, so let’s say Keats is the one who set all this up. He was the one who asked for you to come down from New York. Why would he do that if he knew you’d be able to figure out how he managed to tamper with the trains?” A thousand things were still rolling around in Gard’s head and Terra looked the way he felt.

  “That’s an easy one,” she said. “He didn’t expect me to. From the way he treated me once I was here, he probably searched for a woman engineer so that when I had to give up and leave the case unsolved, he could say that he did something about it without actually trying to find who did it.” She scoffed. “Men never believe women can do anything, much less help solve a mystery.”

  “That’s just because they’ve never met you. It seems to me like you can do anything.” He took both of her hands and she smiled, then pulled away and took off her gloves. Even though it was cold on the train, Gard did the same and they held one another’s bare hands. Gard wondered what Terra could see, or if she was seeing anything at all when she held his hands. Either way it felt more intimate than anything he’d ever known. “Are you really related to Tilly?”

  “I don’t know. She says I am. I don’t know much about my grandp
arents, though.” Terra smiled. “All I know is that I feel safe around her. Like I’ve known her all my life.” She scooted closer to Gard. “I’m thinking about staying in Roanoke. I’ve never wanted to leave New York because I’d be away from my family, but it turns out I have family right here. Family that accepts me the way I am.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “He comes through here regularly enough that I’d still see him.” Leaning her head against Gard’s shoulder, she sighed. “Most importantly, I’d be able to stay with you.”

  “I don’t want you to make any big decisions based on knowing me for two weeks. Besides, you have your job to think about. You can’t just quit.” He put his arm around her. Though the compartment had windows, it felt private enough that he felt comfortable doing it. “Even if you go back to New York, I’m not letting go of you. I’ll write you letters every day.”

  “I’ll go back to New York,” Terra said, closing her eyes. “But only to get my things and quit my job. Surely there’s some way I can protect Tommy from here. There may be a university, or a company where I can work. Somewhere they’ll respect me.”

  “If you’re really set on staying here, I’ll do whatever I can to help. Just think about it once this case is over. You might not even be that fond of me once we don’t have this case to focus on.” The thought had nagged at him the last few days but he’d been afraid to give voice to it. Terra gave him a lopsided smirk, then pulled herself to her full height and kissed him.

  They were almost the same height when they were sitting down and as she kissed him, Gard’s mind was completely consumed by Terra. He didn’t care about her job, or New York, or anything else. All he wanted was to keep her there with him and wake up with her beside him for real. Most of all, he wanted to tell her that he loved her. It didn’t matter that two weeks ago they had been strangers, Gard knew how he felt. He wouldn’t tell her that, though. He wanted her to choose to be in Roanoke because she wanted to, not because she felt she had to because he’d told her how much he cared for her.