Once A Witch Part 12

"Remember? Big house, fields, garden, goats" Gabriel looks at me sideways but makes no comment. I shift in the pa.s.senger seat and an empty c.o.ke can spins away from my foot.

"I don't want to go home," she says predictably, and I sigh, digging my nails deeper into my thighs.

"Yes, I know. It's only for a little while. Then we're coming back. Okay, Rowena?"

I crane my neck, try to smile at my sister. But she won't return my smile, won't even look at me. Instead her face and hands are pressed to the rain-smeared window and I have a sudden absurd flash of what she must look like to other drivers and pa.s.sengers on the highway. Her fingers twitch restlessly on the gla.s.s, her nails tapping out a Morse code message of distress.

"He doesn't want me to go," she whispers so softly that it's like a thread of sound, practically lost over the rush of wheels and rain.

"He needs me" At last she turns a fretful face to me and says, "I need to go back. I know it. I know it here," and she thumps her chest so hard that I almost feel the vibration in my own body. She shifts in the back seat but then immediately lurches forward again, her mouth stretched into a narrow slash.

"Listen, Rowena," I beg, barely clear on what I'm saying.

"We just need to go home for a little while. Just a little, little while. And then we're going back. I promise" In the same breath I mutter to Gabriel, "Can't you go any faster?" Gabriel looks sideways at me again and answers in the same muttering tone.

"I'm pushing eighty-five. That's about all this piece-of-c.r.a.p car can do."

"He wants me back!" Rowena shrieks suddenly, slamming her hands into the back of Gabriel's headrest.

"s.h.i.t!" he exclaims, and we lurch around a car in our lane, just sc.r.a.ping past.

"Rowena," I say, reaching out to grab her hands. She twists away as the pale point of her tongue darts across her upper lip. Her eyes, which seem all pupils right now, grow darker.

"We're going to go back. But it's good this way. Really," I babble.

"It's good to play hard to get. Guys get more intrigued this way. Right, Gabriel?

Gabriel?" He looks in the rearview mirror, regarding my sister like she's a rabid animal.

"Um ... oh, yeah. We ... love that stuff. Gets us really hot. "

I nod maniacally as my sister's eyes flicker to me. For one brief instant her face is blank and then she shakes her head.

"What do you know, Tam? What do you know about love?" Swallowing hard, I silently acknowledge that the words, at least, are pure Rowena, even if the tone-blank, emotionless-is all wrong.

"I know this isn't love," I say, all pretense of remaining calm gone.

"This is something, but it sure as s.h.i.t isn't love" I wrap my hands around my knees- otherwise I'm afraid I will reach out and attempt to slap my sister back to sense.

"Easy, Tam," Gabriel murmurs, reaching out one hand, and I take it, feeling the comforting squeeze of his warm fingers. But Rowena's next words drive all that from my head.

"He told me you would say that. That you wouldn't understand. None of you."

"Oh, really?" I say, my voice dripping with scorn.

"And what did he-"

"We need to turn back," Rowena says again, and now her voice has smoothed, stretched into its familiar sweetness.

"He wants me to come back. To him" I stare at her, helpless.

"Gabriel," my sister singsongs, ignoring me now.

"Turn the car around. At the next exit you are going to turn around and head back to New York City."

"Tam," Gabriel says slowly, dreamily, "maybe we should go back. "

"What? No! Are you crazy? Don't listen to her!"

"Yes, listen to me," my sister adds, her voice supple and beseeching.

"This is what you have to do. Turn the car around. "

"Okay, okay," Gabriel agrees, his voice brightening as if he is only too happy to oblige my sister. I punch him. Hard.

"Ow! What the h.e.l.l?" He shakes his head briefly, his fingers tightening on the wheel, and then he gives me a look.

"Tam, what do I... I feel-"Rowena leans back against the seat.

"That's it, Gabriel, " she purrs, her voice looping and twirling through the car like warm b.u.t.terscotch taffy.

"You're doing the right thing," she encourages as Gabriel flicks on his blinker and heads into the right lane. A truck's horn blares at us, its headlights slashing through the car.

"Don't kill us in the process," I snap.

"Don't listen to her," Rowena says.

"She doesn't understand. Anything." Ignoring her, I reach across Gabriel's lap and crank down the window. Rain splatters through, soaking us both.

"Shake it off," I tell him.

"I can't... she needs me to do this," he murmurs. His fingers tighten even more on the wheel, but we're heading for the exit too fast. Tick, tick, tick. The sound of the blinker seems unnaturally loud.

"Calm down, Tamsin," my sister says.

"Stop trying to tell Gabriel what to do. " Her voice is b.u.t.ter rich, starting to reverberate warmly inside me, like ripples spreading outward across the surface of a lake. She hasn't used her Talent on me in years, but I remember that this is what it feels like. And then I get the weirdest sensation. It's as if the widening rings of Rowena's voice hit a stone wall inside me and shatter on impact. Just like that they go silent. Without pausing to think, I lean forward and tap Gabriel on the shoulder.

"Stop listening to her. Stop" I stare at my sister, who is staring back at me.

"Enough," I say quietly. Gabriel blinks and twitches as if he's received an electric shock.

"What was that?" he whispers. In the next instant he flips off the blinker and we glide past the exit.

"Noooooooo!" Rowena screams, pounding the seat next to her in fury. I think I've never heard anything so sweet. An hour and a half later we grind to a halt.

"Home sweet home," I say, and for once I mean it. Rowena seems to be asleep in the back seat, although every once in a while a spasm crosses her face and she moans as if in pain. Gabriel switches off the ignition, leans forward a little, and rests his head on the wheel. With one hand he rubs at his neck, his fingers circling the blue moon tattoo.

"Aren't you glad you came back?" I ask after a few seconds. He gives me a look, one side of his mouth hooking upward in what I hope is a smile, but he doesn't answer. And I don't have time to thank him because the door crashes open and my mother is flying down the driveway, her hair struggling free of whatever she's managed to stick in it. In the next second she disappears and then flickers into view in the back seat of the car.

"Hi, Mom," I say, my voice somewhat m.u.f.fled as she has me enveloped in as much of a hug as she can from the back seat. My head is smashed into her shoulder and my neck is starting to develop a serious kink. Her skin smells of lavender and sage, its heady perfume thickening all around me.

"Um ... Mom, can you-"

"Oh, Tamsin," she says, her arms releasing me suddenly. I gulp in air.

"You found her. Thank the earth and stars above" Her face is so sharply drawn and so blotchy from crying that I feel a terrible pang that I didn't think to call her from my cell sooner than I did. Then again I was dealing with a maniac.

"About that, Mom," I say, pulling back a little.

"I've just made a couple of interesting discoveries." But my mother's gaze is pinned to Rowena as my sister stirs and opens her eyes. She peers at all of us, blinking several times as if we are apparitions from the wrong dream.

"Where is he?" she murmurs. Her hands comb through her hair as though she's searching for answers there, and I have to turn away. Movement flickers at the edge of my vision and I look out the window to see my father and Uncle Morris heading down the driveway.

"Where's James, you mean? He's coming. He'll be here right away" My mother speaks in a loud, extra-careful voice, the kind people seem to reserve for non-native speakers and children.

"Uh, Mom," I begin.

"She doesn't-"

"He wants me back," Rowena frets.

"He certainly does," my mother agrees too quickly.

"We all do, sweetheart. You haven't been yourself these past few days. You . ."

The little rush of my mother's words tumbles to a halt. She has found the marks on Rowena's wrist, and now she smoothes her fingers over and over them, her mouth working with the weight of what she can't or won't say. Rowena stumbles out of the car and my mother almost trips in her haste to follow. Gabriel and I look at each other.

"What did it feel like?" I ask him finally. He wraps his fingers around the keys still dangling in the ignition and pulls them out but says nothing.

"Back on the highway, when-"

"I know when," he says abruptly.

"It felt like I had to do this. Like I had to turn the car around or I would ... I would die or something" He snorts, but I notice that he's clutching the keys.

"I just knew I had to do this. That it was the right thing to do. And then ..."

"And then what?" I whisper.

"Then it stopped. When you touched me. When you told her to stop." He is staring at me now.

"What exactly did you do?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" I gulp under his fiercely incredulous look.

"I swear I don't. I felt something, too, and then ... it stopped. I wanted it to stop and so it did." I stare out the window. Rowena is staggering down the driveway, her arms outstretched as if reaching for someone, while my mother bobs beside her. As I watch, my mother reaches out to grab my sister's shoulder, but she shakes her off with an impatient movement. My father, holding an uprooted plant aloft, is trailing behind them. And Uncle Morris simply stands in the driveway shaking his head.

"Why don't they do something?" I whisper.

"I don't know. I don't think they can" Then his voice sharpens with excitement.

"But maybe you can, Tam." I shake my head and say automatically, "I can't stop Rowena" In the quiet of the car my words spin like a coin and slowly come to rest. I stare at Gabriel.

"She's... I did stop her. From persuading you. You really didn't do anything?"

"I couldn't," he says simply. Then he taps the keys on my knee as if to get my attention.

"Tam, don't you get it? You stopped Rowena. She wanted me to turn the car around and I would have-"

"She can do that," I murmur in a daze.

"She can make anyone do anything she tells them to-"

"Apparently not," Gabriel interrupted, slapping at my knee again.

"And what's more, you stopped that man from killing us in 1899."

"I did?"

"Yes, you idiot! Don't you see? He was going to kill us. With the clock-"

"I remember," I say.

"And stop shouting. I'm right here" But something is unfurling deep inside me and I feel as if I too might start shouting at any moment. Something like, Take that, everyone who said that it was really such a shame about me. In my mind I can see the proverbial rooftop and me climbing up there to make the announcement to all the stunned faces below.

"And you touched the clock. And nothing happened to you. Twice is too much of a coincidence, Tam," Gabriel is saying, and I look at him dazedly.

"You have a Talent."

"But why? Why now? Why didn't I know any of this before? Why didn't my mother or my grandmother or anyone know this?" I break off to look at Gabriel, who is suddenly not looking at me. Instead, he reaches forward, picks up a loose CD, and slips it back into a cracked purple case.

"What? What is it?" But before he can answer, a navy blue Saab roars up the driveway with no care for the potholes. It comes to a stop in a spray of muddy gravel that echoes against the side of Gabriel's Volvo. A second later James is tumbling out of the car.

"This is about to get ugly," I murmur and exit the car, aware that Gabriel has done the same. The rain has softened to a drizzle as I stand next to James. I've always thought of my sister's fiance as my sister's fiance. Everyone knew they would be a match someday. Personally, I think it's because they're both arrogant and opinionated. Even when we were kids, he never seemed like one.

I think it's because of his Talent-he's able to absorb words and store them like a cactus stores water. He can read a book once and years later recite it page for page. I think all those words line the walls of his brain and smother any desire to speak with us lesser mortals. Or maybe we smothered that out of him long ago when we refused to listen to his vast stores of knowledge for more than two seconds before running off or stuffing him headfirst into one of the barrels outside the barn that collected rainwater. In my defense I never did that. I just served as lookout whenever anyone else did. Who knows what he talks about with Rowena or if he ever gets a chance to talk when he's with her. But he does burn with this kind of cool fire, an intensity that seems to serve as an eloquent foil for my sister's beauty and brightness. Now, however, his face has a pinched white cast to it, like a man who is standing in a blizzard.

"Hi, Tam," he says dully, staring down the driveway. My mother is holding Rowena by the shoulders, and my father has come to stand next to them as if blocking Rowena's escape. My sister twitches under my mother's hands like a dishcloth pinned to the line. I wonder suddenly when Rowena last slept. Or ate.

"How long has she been like this?" I ask.

"A week," James answers in a hollow voice.

"I was hoping that when your mother called ... when she said you were bringing her back ... that Ro would be ... better" The last word breaks and I lower my eyes, staring at a thicket of bristlebright weeds blooming in a particularly deep pothole. Gabriel whistles between his teeth.

"What do they think?"