Once A Witch Part 8

"Gabriel?" I whisper, stepping toward him. What have I done?I whirl to look at the man in the long frock coat. I stare intently at him, waiting, waiting, until finally he blinks.

"You're awake!" I accuse.

"What happened to Gabriel?" If possible, the man looks even more shaken than I feel.

"I a.s.sumed you knew what you were doing. "

"Does it look like I know what I'm doing?" I snap. I look down at the clock in my hands, then squint and shake my head. Faint letters have begun scrolling across the bottom of the face, but every time I try to focus on them, they shimmer and rearrange themselves to spell out gibberish. He hesitates, then says slowly, "You don't... no idea . ."

He runs a hand over his mouth, stares at me. Finally, he pieces together a full sentence.

"You really don't know what you've done, do you?" he asks, and there is a darker, more desperate note in his voice now. He steeples his long fingers, presses them to his lips, and eyes me doubtfully, as if waiting for something. I stare at him. Finally, he steps back and sighs.

"The minute is up. The power has pa.s.sed. I suppose the damage could be worse" But it sounds as though he doesn't even believe himself.

"What are you talking about?" I wrap my arms more tightly around the clock and he gives me a half smile, as if too weary to complete the effort.

"Oh no, young lady. You are mistaken. I don't want that clock anymore."

"You did just a minute ago. You seemed ready to kill us over it!"

"Yes," the man agrees.

"But that was a minute ago. That is now ... merely a clock" He tilts his head to one side, adding, "I think your professor will be disappointed. And now"-he straightens up, smoothes the front of his coat-"I must be going. And so should you.

"And with that he's gone. No puff of smoke, no dazzle of lights. Just a sudden and complete winking out of existence.

"Tam?" A weak voice from the couch pulls my attention away from the now empty corner of the room. Gabriel is blinking up at me.

"What happened?"

"You're alive," I say, and to my intense embarra.s.sment my voice wavers and cracks. I set the clock down on a spindly-legged table next to me and then walk over to the couch, sinking down beside Gabriel. His head has fallen back and his eyes are closed. At least his nose has stopped bleeding.

"Are you okay?" I ask. At this he opens his eyes, looks at me.

"Once I did this bar crawl on St. Patrick's Day. Ever do one of those?" I shake my head.

"Right. Well, I threw up beer for hours. Hours. Green beer." I wince.

"At the time I thought the only thing worse than throwing up beer was throwing up green beer in the back of a cab" He glances at the clock again.

"But that was nothing compared to what I just felt" He straightens up and puts his good hand on my knee for a second.

"Let's get out of here. I've had enough of 1899." I nod, then stand and pick up the clock again. A soft rhythmic ticking is coming from it.

"You're taking that?" Gabriel looks at me from the couch.

"Why not? It's just a clock now. You heard him" Gabriel approaches warily but finally takes my hand and closes his eyes again. This time I keep my eyes open.

Colors and light blur past me in a dizzy kaleidoscope. Why can't I, Mama? I hear a petulant voice say, but I never do hear the response because a man is laughing. You will burn as a witch for all eternity, someone else says in a cold, precise voice, and then cutting across anything else that voice might have said is the long and lonely sound of a train whistle. All sound speeds up and I have to close my eyes because I can't close my ears, and then suddenly I feel cool wood pressing against my skin and I open my eyes again. I am lying on the floor, sprawled in Gabriel's arms. Obviously, he's still not feeling that well, because the expected innuendoes are not forthcoming. Instead, his eyes remain closed and his skin has taken on a faint gray tinge. From this vantage point, I can see that Aunt Rennie and Uncle Chester aren't too into mopping the floor. Aunt Rennie and Uncle Chester! I untangle myself from Gabriel, leap up from the floor, and rush to the window. Dusk seems to have fallen and with it a light rain. The streetlamps of Washington Square Park are blazing, and yellow taxis, some with their off-duty lights blinking, swish past. Here and there people shake open black umbrellas while others just run past, wet shoes slapping against the pavement, books or newspapers covering their heads. I turn and look at Gabriel and find that he is sitting up, looking at me. Looking at me differently. As if he's afraid of me.

"Why did that happen?" I ask finally, my voice unnaturally loud in the stillness.

"Why was I able to touch the clock and you weren't?"

"I don't know, Tam," he says at last, and his voice is heavy.

"Yes, you do," I insist.

"There's something you're not telling me. Something you're hiding." He holds up both hands and spreads his shaking fingers wide.

"I don't know, Tam. I don't know why you felt nothing when you touched it. I don't even know what that thing is" His eyes travel to the clock still cradled in my arms. I shake my head.

"It's nothing now. You heard the man. The power has pa.s.sed, whatever that means."

"Wait, what? What are you talking about?"

"You know," I insist and then stop, frowning.

"Did you ... what do you remember?"

"My hand. Burning off. And then you touched the clock and then nothing after that." I think back to the quiet of the room after I lifted the clock from the wall.

"You froze," I say wonderingly. So I try to repeat the conversation, if it pa.s.ses for that, as best I can for Gabriel, finishing with "And then he said the power has pa.s.sed and he disappeared." Throughout my monologue, Gabriel keeps his eyes on the clock. When I finish speaking, he nods slowly, then says, "Maybe that explains why once again I can tell you that that is just a clock. It's not what your professor wants. Anymore.

"We stare at each other and then both of us shift our gaze to the painting above our heads. I frown. Only two people are depicted in the room now, one man and one woman. They are still standing in the same places, but the woman is wearing a deep blue dress the exact shade of a twilight sky and her face is turned away from the wall- which is now empty.

"Gabriel," I gasp.

"It's gone.

"There is a small and heavy silence and then we both head to the kitchen without a word. After some searching, I dig out a copper skillet and examine the contents of the ancient-looking refrigerator. Since Aunt Rennie and Uncle Chester left only five days ago, I decide the enameled white bowl of eggs that I find in the fridge must be reasonably safe. And the block of cheese on the top shelf has only a few sprouts of grayish-blue mold, which I manage to sliver off with a knife before proceeding. While Gabriel wedges bread into the toaster that looks as if it hasn't been cleaned in three years, I grate the remaining cheese and beat the eggs into a yellow froth. Soon enough I'm sliding thick wedges of omelet onto Aunt Rennie's eggsh.e.l.l china plates.

"So," I say, spreading b.u.t.ter on the toast, "what do I do with this clock?" Gabriel shovels some eggs into his mouth and chews for a long time, long enough so that I think he's avoiding my question.

"Who is this guy?" he demands finally.

"A professor at NYU. His name is Alistair Callum. I told you this already."

"Tell me again," Gabriel says, leaning across the table until I'm forced to meet his eyes. I blow on the tea I made since I couldn't find any coffee and taste it. It's still scalding hot.

"Okay" I hold up one hand, begin ticking off facts.

"He came into the store. He bought a book on the local history of the area.

Everything seemed fine. Then he asked me if I could find something for him as he had heard that we often found things for people and-"

"How did he know about that?" I shrug.

"Remember Angus Pinkerton? He has that antiques store-you know, the guy we used to think looked like a damp rabbit?"

"Sweaty guy? Never wanted us to touch anything. a.n.a.l Pinkerton?" I had forgotten about that nickname.

"He always did like Rowena, though," I muse.

"Who doesn't?" Gabriel says, and I give him a glare. He tucks his face lower into his plate but not before I can see him smiling.

"You're such a typical guy. Falling for a pretty face and-"

"All right, all right," Gabriel says mildly.

"I know Rowena's a harpy." I am moderately gratified until he adds, "You've told me about two hundred times. But back to the point. This professor of yours, what exactly did he say about the clock?"

"He said that it was a family heirloom-lost in a card game back in 1887" I turn my empty plate in circles on the table.

"But why . ."

and here my voice trails off. I don't know which why to start with. Gabriel taps his fork lightly against the rim of his plate, then harder until without thinking I reach over and take it from him.

"I think you need to talk to your grandmother about all this," he says. I groan, push my plate aside, and let my head rest on the wide wooden table. Why, why, why did I ever think helping Alistair was a good idea?" Man, I feel like I could sleep for a week," Gabriel says as he stands and scoops up our plates from the table.

"You did find what he asked for. It's not your fault that it isn't what he really wants" He comes around the table and I notice that he gives the clock a wide berth as he heads into the kitchen. Pausing in the doorway, he looks at me and says, "So," and his tone has changed completely, putting me on alert.

"Maybe we should go out sometime. You know? Like dinner, a movie?

Something kind of normal." Feeling positive that my ears are a bright burning pink, I study a particularly fascinating knothole in the table.

"I thought you had a girlfriend. You know, that girl from the club. The one you-"

"Callie? We're just friends. She's cool and all. Not my type, though." I consider this, remembering all the wolf whistles in the bar that night, the way she sang.

She seemed pretty perfect to me.

"So," Gabriel continues, "dinner?"

"I don't know. I mean, you just took me back, like, a hundred years. Dinner would probably be so ... anticlimactic now" There is a small silence and finally I dare to look up at him. One eyebrow jabs upward.

"If you and I went out on a date, the last thing it would be is anticlimactic." My stomach gives a little leap that has nothing to do with the most likely expired eggs that I just consumed. And then, all unbidden, the image of Gabriel in the circle, standing in the place of honor at my grandmother's side as he lit the tapers, comes rushing back to me. The way he walked so easily into my family's house that night, so sure of the welcome he'd receive.

"My family would love that," I say at last. Now both of his eyebrows scrunch down.

"Tam. Can we leave your family out of it for one minute?" I look at him despairingly. How? I want to ask. Tell me how. The silence stretches and pulls between us like a rubber band. Then it snaps.

"No big deal," he says with a shrug in his voice, although his shoulders are stiff.

He turns away. Over the sc.r.a.pe and clink of dishes being washed, I stare at the clock. I picture Alistair's face when I present it to him and wonder if that other Alistair will flash out behind his eyes. I put one finger out, touch the ruby numeral twelve. Somehow I know this is not the last of it. Monday night, after I find myself reading page 143 of my Art After 1945 textbook for a solid fifteen minutes, I slam the book shut. Then I look over at Agatha's side of the room. Her bed is a jumbled sprawl of clothes, books, and notebooks, and in the middle of all this mess she's curled up on one side asleep, her right hand covering her forehead as if in an exclamation of distress. I open my book, slam it shut again. No luck.

She doesn't even twitch. Sighing loudly, I reach for my cell phone and pick it up, and then for extra protection, even though I feel like an idiot, I tuck myself into our closet. After kicking aside some shoes, I wedge myself into a corner and close the door, then nearly jump out of my skin when something whispers against my arm. But it's only this gauzy dress that I bought last year and still haven't worn. Agatha and I were browsing in the East Village when we came across a tiny store. Most of the stuff was junk, and I don't use that word lightly, but in the back we found a rolling rack of dresses from the 1920s and *30s.

Somehow I left that day carrying this rose-colored dress circa 1935 that was perfect for me, not counting the fact that it had a small stain on the hem and that it smelled entirely of mothb.a.l.l.s. Oh yeah, and that it cost way more than I could afford. In the dimness my cell phone keypad glimmers and I dial the numbers. The phone rings once, twice.

"h.e.l.lo?" my mother's voice on the phone is hesitant, as if she isn't really sure she means what she's saying.

"Hi, Mom," I say.

"Tamsin" Now her voice is full of surprise. I brush aside a pair of leggings, which have draped themselves over my head.

"This isn't your usual-"

"h.e.l.lo?" a voice says at the same time-slow, melodic. I grit my teeth.

"On the phone, Rowena," I say brightly.

"Well, well," Rowena drawls.

"What's the occasion? Are you in jail?" I'm sure she can hear the grinding noise I'm making with my back molars.

"Tamsin, what's going on?" my mother interjects. Undoubtedly, the word jail has thrown her into a tizzy.

"Nothing. I just wanted to-"

"Tam," Rowena says over me, "I'm glad you called, actually. I'm coming to the city in a few days and-"

"What? Here?"

"Yes. To. New. York. City" Rowena enunciates each word slowly and carefully.

"Where you live, right? Right," she agrees with herself. I pull the phone away from my ear and check the signal bars hopefully. d.a.m.n. A solid three. No chance of a dropped call.

"Anyway," Rowena continues, "I've made a few appointments with some bridal salons and I'd like you to come along."

"Bridal salons," I repeat.

"Yes" Rowena is back to using her super-slow voice again.

"Remember? James and I? Getting married. Dum, dum da da dum, dum ..."

"Don't call me dumb," I say feebly. It's the best I can do. She sighs, and at the same time my mother begins with "Now, girls ..."

"Even though you and I have wildly different tastes in clothes, I think you should come along. Besides, since you'll be a bridesmaid-"

"Wait, n.o.body told me that," I say, startled.

"Aren't you supposed to ask? And do witches even have bridesmaids?"

"Well, not-" my mother begins again.

"Yes, Mother! They do," Rowena interjects, and suddenly I feel as if I'm eavesdropping. The truth is, my family doesn't really have weddings. At least not like the ones on TV. There's a hand fasting ceremony, but that quickly turns into the same party we have for most any occasion. Dancing, singing, invoking the four elements, burning flowers on a bonfire in the woods. Drinking Uncle Chester's disgusting brew.