Witches (11 page)

Both Amanda and Jane had noticed whenever Amanda came over, he’d hang on every word she spoke, asking a hundred questions, and attend to her like a devoted puppy dog.

“Miss Givens,” he pressed shyly. “Maybe I could come out to your place sometime and clean up the yard for you? Do chores? For free?” He’d liked Jake and he was trying, in his own way, to ease her sorrow.

“Maybe, sometime. Soon,” Amanda answered, hugging him, moved by his caring. “I’ll talk to your mom about it. Okay?” That seemed to satisfy him.

Amanda figured she was his first crush.

They were great kids. All of them. Jane was so lucky to have them.

Amanda would have done anything to have had Jake’s child by her side now. A little boy with Jake’s face and her powers. For years after she and Jake had married she’d fantasized about what their child would be like, but it’d never happened and the fantasies had faded with the years. Now they were dead, like Jake.

By the time the sun had started to go down, they’d eaten supper, broken the news about the town party to the kids, and Jane was heading out to drop them off at the village hall for the night. She’d pick them up at eleven. The boys had talked her out of going, saying that it’d make them look like mama’s boys. Instead, unbeknownst to them, she’d come early to pick them up and socialize then.

Amanda was no longer upset. The meal, the laughter
she’d shared with Jane and her boys had scattered it away. Ned had hugged her, and Jonny had even given her a shy kiss on the cheek before they’d left for the party.

Amanda was feeling pretty good as her eyes followed the children skipping off into the shifting twilight with their mother. There were other shadowy forms to greet them. Giggles haunted the crisp night air. The sharp tang mingling on the cool breezes brought back memories of when she’d been a child. The golden times before she’d realized how the world hated witches. How nasty people could be. How many enemies a white witch could have.

Halloween had always been special to her and her family. They’d spend the early part of the evening giving out candy to trick-or-treaters or going to parties and the later part would be for all the family to gather and talk over what they’d done in the last year, to thank God for their gifts and blessings. This night was when Amanda missed her sisters and her dead mother the most. She’d thought of witching herself to where her sisters were, but she didn’t know where Rebecca was, somewhere on her book tour, she thought. She’d be partying tonight for sure. She could call her cell but Rebecca was always misplacing or losing it and the answering machine was usually what Amanda got. She knew Jessie would be wrapped up in her own family. It’d been years since they’d been together on Samhain.

No, she’d better get used to spending it alone. Or else give up and move back to Boston to be near Jessie, which didn’t sound like such a bad idea at the moment. Maybe it was time for a visit.

“You want to leave these two other pots here, Amanda, and I’ll glaze them and fire them again for you?” Jane offered later when she’d returned and Amanda was slipping into her jacket. They’d had one last cup of coffee together in the quiet house and had snacked on freshly made caramel apples. Amanda was pleasantly tired and it would feel good to go home, build a fire, and cuddle up before it with the good book she was reading, a science fiction tale called
The Fall of Hyperion,
by Dan Simmons.

“No, I’ll take them home and glaze them myself. It’s a special glaze I’ve perfected,” she explained. “If it’s all right, I’ll try to get here next week sometime to fire them. I promised Ernie his would be done soon.”

“I’ll let you know when the kiln’s available.”

Amanda collected her two pots, shifting them in her arms a little.

She strode out into the dark to her scooter, with Jane behind her, and loaded the pots into the cart. She threw her leg over the seat and settled down on it as a group of chattering trick-or-treaters ran by.

“Amanda, I’m glad you came. Glad we had a chance to visit. I’ve missed you,” Jane confessed as Amanda revved up the engine. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

“Wasn’t your fault,” Amanda responded, tilting her face up to the night sky. The cool air nipped at her flushed cheeks. The wound, even the swelling, was gone. Jane swore it had been the ice.

“See you next week.” With a wave, Amanda drove off.

She stopped a ways out of town and buttoned up her jacket. Yanking a heavy sock cap from one of her saddlebags, she shoved it down snugly over her head. Glad as she rode down the dark winding road that she had warm clothes on. It was getting colder by the second, especially in the valleys, as the shadows of night crept down around her. She shivered and sped up, anxious to get home. The little wagon bouncing along behind her. She hoped her pots were all right.

Amadeus must be wondering where she was.

The woods towering around her were ominously hushed. There were no small animal or bug sounds. None at all.

She switched on the scooter’s bright headlights. An owl began to screech somewhere, and the hair stood up on the back of her neck.

Something wasn’t right.

She decided to magic herself and the scooter home and a moment later, she was parking it behind her work shed.

Eerie white lights moved through the gloom of the forest, elusive, but if she turned her head quickly enough, she could almost catch them at the corners of her eyes. Wafting about like lost ghosts.

She could hear strange moans and twitterings deep in the woods.

All Hallow’s Eve. The spirit world...magic...the supernatural was at its strongest on this night. Things walked this night that the spirits never allowed to walk any other night. Legend also said that on this night a witch could cross over to the fairy world, join in the festivities of the Fairy Queen’s ribald court. Throughout the ages, history rumored that witches and fairies were close. Fairies were mischievous troublemakers, though, that would often slip through the barriers this night and bring woe to humans and witches alike.

That was another thing. Lately she’d seen an abundance of fairy rings...mushrooms growing in perfect circles. Some people believed it was a place where fairies could cross over into their world, but Amanda knew there was a scientific explanation. Something about two fungi deep in the soil reacting to each other during a bout of unseasonably warm weather. The mushrooms were larger this year than she’d ever seen them. Giants.

She went in, changed into her usual clothes, and made herself something to eat. All the while, a premonition was battering at her that danger was close.

She paused at the door and gazed at the huge harvest moon ascending into the night sky. Strange blood-tinged clouds scudded across its huge face, yet the winds were still. Bad omens. Amanda frowned at her muted reflection in the glass and inhaled deeply. Outside, the blood from the moon was coloring the inky world.

She sent out a silent call for her familiar. If something was about to happen, if something was out there, she wanted him home. He didn’t come.

Building a roaring fire in the front room, she tried to shake off the gloominess from her mind.

She nervously stared out the window.

Then she heard it. Far away, but coming closer. A cat crying, as if it were fighting for its life, hissing and screeching as if it were in pain.

Amadeus!

She grabbed Jake’s jacket, which was still hanging on the back of a kitchen chair, and dashed outside into the woods in a frantic search for the cat. One last high piercing wail. She muttered an invocation, and there he was...at her feet, twirling madly in a frenzied circle, his back up and his fangs and claws showing, glaring back at the edge of the woods. Enraged.

“Amadeus!” she ordered, and he was in her arms, shivering and mewling like a lost kitten. Something sticky came away on her hands, and she discovered he was covered in blood.

“How?”

Witch coming...

Black witch.

With a moan of despair, Amanda felt the shape of him gently with her fingers. There were deep cuts all over him. One of his ears was missing.

She felt sick and then felt the anger rise up from deep inside her like bile.

As she held him cradled in her arms, the wind began to moan around her, the trees to sway. A pale luminescence was moving through the night woods toward them. Frost rippled along the trees and ground before it.

Amanda wove a strong spell of protection, an invisible bubble, and cloaked her and Amadeus.

A tall, floating woman in dark clothes surrounded by a misty light stood before her, barring her way to the house. Its arms outstretched toward her.

Rachel?

The specter bombarded Amanda with feelings of wrongness. This time the evil was so tangible it was an entity in itself.

What Mabel had said about Rachel flooded back to her. She was suspected of having great powers, of being her lover’s and her children’s murderess, of being evil.

After what Amadeus had said, and what the apparition had done to him, it could all have been true. Only a black witch would harm others.

The figure wavered in and out of reality.

“Get out of my way, Rachel. Begone! You have no right to bother the living,” Amanda commanded, facing the ghost. Her breath freezing on the air before her.

It didn’t leave. It was grinning vindictively at her. A ghostly hand sweeping back ghostly hair. Her eyes bottomless black holes glittering at her.

Help me, Amanda, to stay. I need your powers.

The wraith solidified for a second. The face turned human in the moonlight...the countenance beautiful, the eyes haunted. She had flowing raven-black hair to her waist, and dressed in what Amanda thought were seventeenth-century clothes: a high-collared gown that skimmed her feet, a lot like the one Amanda wore.

Amanda felt Amadeus grow motionless in her arms. He needed her attention. Familiars could die. They could live for centuries or longer, but weren’t invincible. She tried to walk around the ghost but it kept pace easily with her.

“I can’t help you, Rachel, it’s not allowed,” Amanda said between clenched teeth. “I wouldn’t even if I could, after what you’ve done to Amadeus. You’re evil.”

The spirit laughed wickedly. Its shoulders moving up in a shrug. It was changing even as Amanda watched. Its beauty melting into unearthly hideousness.

It’s only a familiar and a weak one at that. I could conjure you up one that would astound you.

Rachel’s ravaged face gazed at her in the pulsating light, wispy and inhuman. Blackened tree shadows danced behind her, framing her half-formed image.

“A demon?” Amanda said. “Something from hell. No thank you.”

I can give you anything you want.

Amanda was tired of games. Amadeus needed her help.

“Then go away. Leave us alone.”

Look.

The ghost pointed, and Amanda turned and looked behind her.

Jake was standing there. Her Jake. Alive and solid, tall and handsome. Smiling that smile at her. So real. In the same clothes he’d had on that last day. Jeans and a sweater.

Amanda’s heart nearly stopped. She almost ran into his opening arms before she accepted it wasn’t him. It was an incubus. A demon that took human form to entice humans to its bed. Amanda’s magic could see through the beautiful exterior and into the nefarious corruption of the creature. It was a loathsome
thing
.

It wasn’t her Jake.

Amanda’s face went hard in the moonlight.

“That isn’t Jake.”

One arm still holding her cat, she
raised her hand at the unnatural incubus and whispered the words that would rid the earth of it.

“Go back to hell where you belong!” she ordered.

The evil spirit screamed, covering its face with claw like hands as its shape began to shift and dissipate until only an outline remained, and then even that scattered into the night like loosened marbles.

Amanda turned to Rachel’s ghost. “Now you
.
Back to hell where you belong. I command it!”

Foolish woman. My power is growing more each day. I can force you to obey me. I can hurt those you care about...hurt you...kill you. Take your magic.

Amanda closed her eyes, her anger so hot she could feel it burning like boiling oil under her skin. She began to say the words of one of the most potent spells she knew. One that if used for the wrong purpose or by the wrong person could backfire and the user would find herself tumbling into hell along with the demon she had directed it at.

At first, it seemed it wasn’t going to work. Amanda felt her strength draining as she came to the end of the incantation, but Rachel was still standing there. Smirking at her.

The ghost was fighting her.

Stunned, her knees buckling beneath her and her head woozy, Amanda began again.

Rachel’s ghost screeched and her image wavered.

The face was melting, the eyes becoming empty holes, the figure, white bones. A skeleton stood before her and then crumpled into dust.

The noises of the night returned but the cold didn’t leave.