Reckoning

1. Omens

June 14, 1942

The ghosts are angry today. They smashed a vase in the front room, and they knocked over a lamp. The lamp almost hit our cat, Tady. He ran and hid under the sofa. Mother told us to be brave and not to cry, so I have been trying very hard. I have not cried once, even though the ghosts started banging the door of my room open and shut. My little sister, Tioma, is not as brave as I am. She hid in her closet and sobbed. She does not understand that we must prove to the ghost that we are not afraid. That is the only way we can get them to leave.

— Aoibheanm

Finally, some peace and quiet.

Hilary, my father's girlfriend, is pregnant. Since she'd moved in a few weeks before, I had been more or less treated like a pet or a piece of furniture, just something to deal with or moved around while they were getting ready for the «real» child to come.

Among her many awful ideas, Hilary had major redecoration plans. These included taking up a lot of the carpet, painting all the walls in a color called "aubergine dream" (also known as "scary purple"), and putting our sofa into some kind of white bag. My father was letting her redecorate to her heart's content, and I had to stand back and watch as everything familiar to me vanished. Despite my protests, she'd recruited me to help. All of my free time seemed to be spent helping Hilary with her painting, her relentless scrapbooking, and the wedding plans. It was like being forced to dig my own grave.

But tonight—a reprieve. They'd decided to go out and see a movie. I lived for nights like this one, when they were out of the house. I was supposed to be doing our homework, but I had to savor the time I had one my own. It was far too precious to waste. So instead of doing math, I watched reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When I heard the car pull into the driveway, I switched off the TV and pulled my algebra book into my lap—the classic I've-been-studying-all-night trick. No one falls for it, but everyone tries it, anyway.

The door opened, and my dad came in making faces talking baby talk to Hilary, and of course she was talking baby talk right back. It was probably the most awful thing I'd ever seen in my entire life, and let me tell you, I'd seen some bad stuff recently. When they turned and saw me gaping in horror, they looked genuinely surprised.

"You're home…," My dad said, suddenly looking embarrassed. "You're up."

Well, hello? It was nine o'clock on a Wednesday. Where did he think I'd be?

"Yeah," I said, reaching for a pencil, which I was considering using to poke out my eyes so I wouldn't have to witness any more of this unbearable cuteness. "Just doing my homework."

"Have you cleaned out your room yet?" Hilary asked.

"No."

"You know we have go get it ready," she said, dropping her spreading butt onto the bagged couch and picking through her crocheting.

Another sore point. Because it was next to my dad's—or their room—Hilary had set her sights on turning my bedroom into a nursery. She wanted me to move to the little room at the end of the hall.

"I'll do it when I have time," I said, suddenly finding my factoring exercises totally engrossing. "I have a quiz tomorrow."

"I know you don't want to switch rooms, Alisa," Hilary said with a sigh, "but when the baby comes, I'll need to be able to get to him or her quickly in the middle of the night. This is as much for you as it is for me. The room at the end of the hall will be less noisy."

She had to be kidding. The room at the end of the hall was a glorified closet. In fact, it wasn't even glorified. It was pure, plain closet. It had a tiny window, too small for normal blinds or curtains. It was more like a vent. I looked at my dad for support, but he just folded his arms over his chest.

"Hilary's been asking you about this for over a week now," he said, getting into his stern voice.

"I said that I'll do it," I replied, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. Algebra never looked more appealing.

"You'll do it after school tomorrow," he said, "or you're in all weekend."

I definitely wasn't going to let myself get stuck in the house with Hilary. Rather then say something I would later regret, I nodded, grabbed my things, and got out of there as quickly as I could. At that moment Hilary's pregnancy scrapbook tumbled off the table, scattering photo's and papers everywhere.

"Oh, no!" Hilary said bending over to pick up the scattered contents. My dad swooped down to help her, and I left the room. Fortunately they had no idea I had anything to do with it. I hadn't meant to do it, either. These things just kind of happened to me. Objects fall off walls, fly across rooms, and tumble off tables when I'm around.

See, I'm half witch.

A few months ago I didn't know real witched existed. Even a month or so ago I had been terrified of magick, of Wicca, and of anyone who had anything to do with it. But everything had changed in the last couple of weeks, after I discovered my mother's Book of Shadows at Morgan Rowlands's house. I read it and realized my mother had been a Rowanwand witch from Gloucester, Massachusetts. She was afraid of her power as I was—so much so that she actually stripped herself of her magick in order to lead a normal life. She died when I was three, so she never had a chance to tell me this herself.

A blood witch is the child of two witches, descendants of the Seven Great Clans of Wicca. Since my father was a non-witch, I was only half. Technically this meant that I wasn't supposed to have power. For some reason, I did—in abundance. To top it off, I had a whopping bad case of uncontrollable telekineses. Even in witch terms, I was really strange. Because I was such an odd case, I was able to withstand the more serious effects of a dark wave spell that had been cast against our coven Kithic, a few days before. While all of the other blood witches became incredibly ill, I only got a slight headache. I was strong enough to perform the spell that defeated the wave that would have killed all of the members of our coven and their families.

My father didn't know about any of this, and he certainly wouldn't believed me if I had told him. He probably would have sent me to a therapist, claiming I was making a really weird cry for attention.

Once safely in my room, I switched on my computer to check my e-mail. There was a note waiting for me from Mary K., Morgan's younger sister and my good friend.

Hi, A.,

What have you been up to? You seem kind of out of it lately. Anything wrong? We should hang out. Gimme a call or send me a note.

— M.K.

I'd been wondering for a while what to do about Mary K. She's Catholic and completely turned off by Wicca. Just a couple of weeks before, I'd been trying to help her persuade Morgan to give up magick. Everything was different now. I was a witch; I had powers. And I'd seen the good that magick could do, how it could be used to fight evil.

I knew I'd have to tell her the truth at some point—that I was back in Kithic, that I was a Wiccan, that I was a blood witch. Mary K. was going to freak, there was no question about that. I was going to have to do it, anyway. I sent her off a note, suggesting we meet after school at her house the next day to hang out. It was a ruse, of course. Devious of me. I would have to think of some way to break the truth to her once I got there.

I switched off the computer and climbed into bed. I took out my mother's Book of Shadows and the collection of letters written to her by her brother, Sam. I paged through these every single night before going to sleep. It was reassuring. Here was her entry about Sam putting her bike up on the widow's walk of the house. Here was the one about looking at the lilacs in the window of the flower shop and the one about passing her driver's exam. Except for the magick parts, my mom's life sounded so nice and normal, so fun…until the later parts of the book, when her brother performed a spell that accidentally produced a deadly storm. I usually didn't read that far in. I stayed near the beginning.

Sighing, I put the book and the letters in a big pile by the side of my bed and turned over to go to sleep. A strange dream overtook me instantly.

The sky was yellowish green, pulsing with energy of a storm about to break loose. I was on a rocky shore. There were buildings just behind me. This was a town, not a desolate stretch along the water. Somehow I understood at once that this was Gloucester, Massachusetts, my mother's hometown.

The weather had whipped the ocean into a frenzy. High, dangerous waves were crashing down just a few feet from where I stood. Any one of them could have snapped me up and taken me out to sea, killing me in a moment. Instead of running for cover, though, I was looking at something far down the beach— a woman, sitting calmly on a large rock, waving to me. I started to walk closer to her, and I could tell as I approached that she was not an ordinary woman. The top half of her body was normal, though unclothed. The bottom half of her body was a steel gray finned tail, which flicked and twitched whenever the water lapped against it. She was a mermaid.

The distance between us sometimes grew when I should have been getting closer. Finally I was just close enough to be able to see her face, but she spun around to hide herself with her long hair and dove straight into the water, vanishing from my sight. At the same moment a wave hung above my head, poised to crash down on me.

And I woke up. My alarm was going off.

Shivering I crawled to the bathroom for a shower. The water reminded me of the rain shower on the beach, and I swore I could still feel the cool sand under my toes. I'd heard that witches' dreams could sometimes be very powerful. Sometimes they were signs, visions. I started to think about this.

I'd stumbled onto my mother's Book of Shadows: the chances were one in a million that it would turn up at Morgan's house, yet it had found it's way to me. I'd discovered my uncle's letters that had been hidden for years in the trap compartment of my mother's old jewelry box. And now I was dreaming of Gloucester—and dreaming so vividly that I could taste the salty breeze. Sky Eventide, one of the blood witches in Kithic, always says that there are no coincidences. What if that was true? The things that had been happening to me were so strange, so unlikely. What if this was all a series of signs, telling me to do something?

Like what?

Well, there was my uncle, Sam Curtis, for a start. I hadn't even known I had an uncle. But now, I'd found the letters, and now I knew he existed. I also knew he loved my mother. Maybe he would want to know about me. Maybe I could write to him. Unfortunately my mother only kept the letters, not the envelopes with the return address. There was a mention of a post office box, but that had been set up in the early seventies. I doubted that Sam had kept it after my mothers death.

E-mail. Maybe he had an email address.

By the time I had finished drying myself off, I had a plan. I went straight back to my room and switched on my computer. I knew that my mother's coven's name was Ròiseal, so I did a search. To my amazement something popped right up. It was a Web page for a magick shop called Bell, Book and Candle, in Salem, Massachusetts. The person who made the page listed himself as a member of Ròiseal. At the bottom was a link to contact the Web master. I clicked on it, and a black e-mail popped up. What would I say? I had no idea who this person was or how well he knew my uncle. I had little to say, so I had to keep it very simple.

Dear sir or Madam,

I'm trying to get in touch with my uncle, Sam Curtis. If he is still a member of Ròiseal, could you forward this note to him? I would really like to meet him or speak to him, but I do not have his address or phone number. This means a lot to me, so I would really appreciate the help.

Many thanks,

Alisa Soto.

Turning off the computer, I had a huge sense of satisfaction, a deep feeling of release. It was really strange, since all I'd done was act on an impulse. Of course, this pleasant feeling evaporated quickly if I didn't get to school in the next eighteen minutes. I pulled on my clothes and ran for the door.