Reckoning

15. Ròiseal

February 3, 1955

The baby will be coming any day now. At the Imbolic celebration last night, all of Ròiseal performed a ritual to ensure a safe birth.

Just as I knew Sorcha was a girl. I know this is a boy— a rascally little boy, at that. From the way he kicks, I tend to think that he will give his sister no peace! He's so feisty! We have decided to call him Somhairle.

Sorcha seems to know that something is going on. I can tell by the look in her eye. She likes to run up and touch my stomach, then she giggles and runs away way. She'll sometimes drag Hugh over and point it out to him, her eyes full of wonder. My little girl—she's so full of the Goddess!

— Aoibheann

"Looks like we're the last ones here," Sam said as we parked between Charlie's volkswagen and red motorcycle. Just the sight of Charlie's car turned me into jellyfish woman, with wobbly legs and a googly stare, but I managed to pull myself together enough to be able to walk to the front door like a normal human.

Sam let us right in and headed for the living room, where everyone was already gathered. A fire was going strong in the fireplace. In the middle of the room there was a cauldron filled with cool water and flower blossoms. Ruth's birthday cake was set on a small table, uncut.

It wasn't exactly a rocking party. Brigid, Ruth, and Evelyn sat together on a long sofa, all looking uncomfortable. Ruth's heavy cast was obviously itching. Brigid looked tired and pensive. Evelyn was her usual sparkling self. The three of them were having a quiet conversation with Kate Giles. Ruth and Kate each gave me a hug when they saw me. Brigid and Evelyn each gave me a thousand-yard stare.

After giving Ruth her gift, Sam settled down across the room, where Charlie was sitting with an older man. Tried to look casual as possible as I joined him there—my mind, however was constantly replaying our kiss. I had the DVD version going, with multiple angles, the trailer with the highlights, and the full director' cut. Charlie eyed the bruise near my eye, and I nodded to indicate that I was really all right.

The man next to Charlie was dressed kind of formally in a neat gray suit with a light cream-colored sweater underneath the jacket. He was just as tall, but heavier. He looked like Charlie, with the same kind face and the mischievous peaked eyebrows, and though his hair was shot through with silver gray, it curled defiantly. I knew instantly that this was Charlie's father.

"You're Alisa!" the man boomed, looking straight at me. He spoke so loudly that it startled some of the others. No drawn-out introductions needed here. Everyone should have a weird witch vibe. It makes things so much easier.

"My dad," Charlie said.

"I understand you were raised by nonwitches, Alisa! I'd love to know what that was like," his dad added. Charlie's eyes went wide, then rolled back into his head in comic grief.

"My dad," Charlie repeated, containing an exasperated sigh. "Right at the point."

"Did I say something wrong?" His father asked innocently. From Charlie's description of his father, I could easily see that he might have some strange people skills.

"It's okay." I laughed. "If you have a few days to spare, I can tell you the whole story."

"I'm not sure if I have a few entire days," he said, sipping his tea and honestly thinking it over, "but I'll check my schedule. Perhaps we can do a few blocks of time over the course of a week."

Okay. He was very literal, too, but he seemed nice enough. I couldn't imagine Charlie coming from a family that wasn't nice.

"I was just going to get something to drink," Charlie said, standing up. "Would anyone like anything?"

He ended up getting orders from almost everyone in the room, so I immediately sprang up and offered to help, praying that I didn't look too obvious and scheming. However, I did notice Brigid slipping me a steely glare as I left.

I followed Charlie into the kitchen. He was at the counter, setting down the glasses. He looked so good, just simply dressed in a dark blue button-down shirt and jeans. He seemed extra tall, so much more adult looking than me. There was no way I could have kissed him. I must have been delusional.

"Hi," I finally said. That was the best I could do. Words were failing me.

"Hey," he said, giving me a little smile—not his usual light-up-the-room beam. "How are you? Are you okay?" I thought I saw his hand moving, as if he was going to reach out to me, but he pulled it back and moved the glasses around instead.

"I'm fine." I nodded. "Thanks for coming last night, I felt a lot safer knowing that you protected the house. Sorry I was, um… unconscious."

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I guess it was that whole getting hit-on-the-head-with-everything-in-the-kitchen thing."

"Something like that," I agreed.

I could see the coppery freckles under his eyes in the warm glow of the kitchen light. I felt warmth coming from him but also something else—pain, maybe. Definitely stress. It made me want to… I don't know, give him a big hug or something. He wasn't himself.

"Maybe we could talk?" I said.

"This really isn't a good time," he said, opening the refrigerator and pulling out some drinks. His smooth brow furrowed, as if he really, really had to concentrate on sorting out the beverages.

"Is everything okay?" I asked.

"Everything's fine."

That wasn't true. I could see that. "You're not supposed to lie to witches," I said. "Remember? You're not even supposed to tell half-truths to half witches."

"Right." He sighed, putting the drinks on the counter and leaned against the refrigerator. "Good point. Sorry."

"So," I said, "what's up?"

"Look," he said, as if he was searching for the words, "I can't talk right now."

"Okay," I said uncertainly. "Do you want to give me a call later?"

"I'm going to be busy tonight." He sighed again. "Maybe tomorrow, okay?"

With Brigid. That's what he wasn't saying. He was going to be talking to Brigid. His girlfriend. The person he was supposed to be talking to.

"Oh, sure," I said. Though I tried to keep smiling, I felt my face fall. I was rapidly coming to my senses. Why had I followed him? What had I been expecting him to say? Did I think he was going to jump up and down with joy and tell me that he'd ditched Brigid? At best, our kiss had caused major problems. At worst, he was regretting he ever met me. Although who could say? Maybe there was something even worse than that.

I turned and started filling glasses quickly.

"Alisa…," he said. Again I saw his hand moving, as if he wanted to take hold of me. Again he held himself back. There was a rush of frustration coming from him.

"It's okay," I told him, fixing the limp smile back on my face. "Tomorrow or whenever you get a chance. Just give me a call."

I saw that he was about to reply, but I scooped up some of the glasses and headed out. One more word and I knew I would be bawling, I couldn't risk it.

Back in the living room, I passed around the drinks and sat down next to Sam, who gave me a strange look. I knew he must have realized I was upset about something, but he probably assumed that it was related to Evelyn. He inched closer to me, and I felt a little better having him by my side. Charlie followed a moment later and gave out the other cups.

"It's a little chilly in here," Ruth observed, pulling her sweater around her uncasted arm.

Since Charlie was next to the fireplace, he reached down and put another log on the fire. I was sitting next to the fireplace, and he glanced up and caught my eye for a moment. I couldn't meet his gaze, so I threw my attention across the room. Of course, I looked right up at Evelyn. She was staring at me. The room was cold. Very cold. And the force of her stare made it even colder.

Suddenly Ruth screamed, and I felt a rush of extreme heat cutting the chill. As if it had been stirred by some unnatural breeze, the dire in the fireplace leapt out, blue with heat. It reached for Charlie, licking at his clothes, his skin. I felt a fear rising up through me. Charlie was going to be hurt—badly.

No, I couldn't let this happen.

Water… I thought, my body standing itself up and my hand raising without my willing either to do so. I pointed at the caldron, and it lifted itself from its resting place. Time was slow now—I was unaffected by it. The water would do what I needed it to do; I had to ask it. Once again words came to me from the recesses of my mind, in an echo of a woman's voice, a voice I couldn't quite place.

"Cuir as a srad," I said, moving my pointed finger to indicate Charlie. "Doirt air."

The caldron sailed through the room, past Charlie, and smashed itself against the smoky brick of the fireplace, spilling all of the flowers and water onto him. He stumbled back as it thundered to the floor and rolled back and forth before the fire.

The crash brought me back in step with everything else, and I lurched forward, as if I was in a car that had skidded to a halt. Charlie quickly rolled away from the fireplace and looked down at himself in shock. He was soaking wet and covered in soggy flower pieces. His hands were singed, but the water had protected him somewhat, keeping his clothing from igniting.

"I'm okay," he said, patting his body down and checking for injuries. "I'm okay," Brigid and Ruth descended on him, dragging him off to the kitchen to attend to the burns. The whole thing had happened in less than a minute.

"Goddess," said Kate once they had gone, "did everyone just see that?"

I became aware of the fact that everyone left in the room was staring at me. My hand was still outstretched. I jammed it behind my back.

Charlie's father was next to me. All traces of cosmic goofiness were gone from his face.

"Thank you," he said, reaching out to squeeze my arm. His face was pale with shock. "I've never seen anyone do a deflection that quickly before."

"You're welcome," I mumbled. "I mean… I just did it."

Sometimes I just blow myself away with fancy talk.

"You do know," he said seriously, "that you moved the cauldron almost simultaneously with the flame, killing its progress—don't you?"

"I did?" I said, feeling very dull-witted.

"You gave a command spell," Charlie's father said. "Very simple. The energy was channeled through the water. The Gaelic charge was basic. But it was very, very fast, and you brought up a lot of energy within a moment."

I wobbled, and Sam gently helped me to sit down. Evelyn, I noticed, had returned and was looking at me up, down, and sideways.

"You have powers," she said.

She didn't sound happy, or amazed, or impressed, or grateful. She sounded suspicious.

"She not only has powers," Charlie's father added, "she's strong. Quite strong. And fast. And she has a rather shocking command of spell language."

"Have you been studying with someone?" Kate asked, pulling up an ottoman and sitting close to me.

"A Seeker," I said, looking around nervously.

"A Seeker?" she said. "Goddess. For how long?"

"A few weeks. On and off over the last few months."

"A few weeks?" she repeated me again. "That's it?"

"So," Evelyn said, "you have powers—somehow—and you've been studying with someone from the council."

Evelyn hadn't exactly been sending valentines to the council. I realized that I'd just made another huge mistake in her eyes.

"He's from the council," I said, trying to defend myself, "but he's not teaching me as a representative of the council. I mean, he's just my coven leader…"

Ruth looked through the doorway.

"Charlie is fine," she said. "The burns on his hands are minor. I treated him with some aloe. We'll add a preparation of calendula and cantharis. Brigid is mixing it up now."

There was a murmur of relief from everyone. I felt like I needed air. I was in emotional overdrive. I tugged on Sam's sleeve, hoping he would understand the can-we-go-message. Fortunately, Sam is perceptive.

"I think," he said, standing and pulling his keys from his pocket, "that we should call it a night. Alisa's still kind of worn out from last night, and this has been a long day."

I nodded in conformation. It was an awkward and hasty exit, but then, this was the House of Strange Happenings. Sam said nothing—just took me home and let me spend some time with my thoughts. I certainly had enough of those.

After Sam had gone to bed, I found that I was still wide awake. I stared at the phone for a while, trying to will it to ring. I thought about calling Charlie, even though he'd indicated pretty clearly that he didn't want to talk to me tonight. Bad idea.

I was going to go crazy if I didn't think of something to do. First I tried scrying again, but I was even less successful than I'd been the night before. Giving that up, I went for my bag and pulled out Máirin's book. I set it down next to the scrying bowl and started to read. As I did so, Astrophe jumped into my lap, causing me to flinch. My elbow struck the bowl, causing it to splash water on the pages.

The ink began to run. I almost screamed.

I scrambled around, grabbing for paper towels, anything to blot the water. I couldn't find anything. Everything must have been used up in the cleanup the night before. Frantic, I ran back to the book to try to brush the water from the page with my hands, only to make an amazing discovery: Something was there that hadn't been there before.

It came into clearer focus as the water ran over it. There was writing there, scribbled all over the margins, squeezed into every available inch of space. There were combinations of runes, symbolsm bits of Gaelic, and words in English—uncontrollable magick—Rowanwand—stabilization of energies, provided that the…

The water was bringing it out. If I wanted to fill out the passage, my only choice would be to drip on more. Using a spoon, I tried this very carefully, working drop by drop. By doing this, one passage became clear enough to read:

…this plague of uncontrollable magick, the roots of which are all too human, forged by the dark spell of our poor tortured ancestor. Being Rowanwand, we pride ourselves on our ability to master knowledge and control our destiny. Pride, of course, is well known to be one of the deadliest vices. Fear is another. Both were at work when I destroyed the pages in a fit of rage. I was fifteen years old at the time. I hope now to rectify my mistakes and add to our store of knowledge…

It went on in Gaelic and symbols. I saw the occasional word in English here or there, but no passage was entirely clear, and I was worried about actually destroying the book in my attempts to extract the information.

Even though I felt guilty about making a long-distance call without asking Sam first, I knew I had to tell someone about this right away. This was huge. Besides, it was after nine. The rates were cheaper. I called Hunter. Much to my irritation, thought, he wasn't home, and neither was his father. I left a garbled message for him, frantically trying to explain what I had seen.

Now what? I knew this was important. Someone had to see this. Maybe even… Evelyn?

Sam kept a bike on the side of the house. If I used that, I could be to Evelyn's and back in no time. The hills would be a pain to go up, but I'd get back really quickly. Since this seemed to be my big week for impulse behavior, I decided to go for it. Compared to what I'd done so far, taking a bike for a midnight ride was nothing. I put the book in my messenger bag and let myself out.

The town was beautiful at night. I rode along the water. There was plenty of light from the ships and reflections of the moon on the harbor. The breeze was moist and heavy, cold but not biting. I couldn't help but notice that the view looked a lot like my last dream, with the dark, calm sea and the waxing moon hanging in the sky. Of course, there was no mermaid.

The last hill up to Evelyn's was horrible—I would feel it in the morning—but I needed the exercise, anyway. The house was completely dark. I walked the bike up to the porch, looking above me for falling branches or tiles or posts. I carefully put the book between the screen and the door and hurried back to the bike and rode away, trying to get back as quickly as possible.

I woke up at eight in the morning to the sound of the phone ringing. Sam called down from his room to tell me that the call was for me. There was a strange note in his voice. Cautiously I picked up the phone.

"Alisa."

It was Evelyn. Yikes.

"Yes?"

"I want to talk to you. This morning, can you be here at ten?"

"Sure," I said, quaking.

"Fine. Good-bye."

And that was that. I was left staring at the phone.