Reckoning

2. Contact

December 17, 1944

The ghosts have been getting more and more wild. They break things regularly. Mother and Father wrote to some specialists from Boston who came last night to examine the house for signs of haunting. They did seem to detect a strange energy, but they couldn't pinpoint anything that could help us identify or deal with our poltergeist. Some experts!

When I am initiated in a few months, I will have access to the family library. Right now I don't even know where it is— it's carefully protected by layers of spells. Our store of knowledge is said to be most impressive of any coven in the area. Surely we must have something there that would help guide us and solve this problem? I feel strongly that this is so… I can barely explain it. My anticipation grows everyday.

— Aoibheann

Mary K. and I had settled ourselves in her bedroom after school (with a huge assortment of snacks, of course), she gave me all the latest on Mark, the current object of her affection. She'd finally worked up the courage to ask him out, and of course he had said yes. Mary K. is perky and adorable, and she drives the menfolk crazy, unlike myself. They had a date set up for Friday. I listened distractedly as she ran through all the possible options for the location of the big event.

"So," she concluded, "what do you think?"

Oh, man. I hadn't been paying attention. I vaguely remembered hearing something about going to Colonel Green's, the new there restaurant that had just opened near the mall. It was supposed to look like and old sportsmen's club, and it had a handful of little secluded tables with curtains around them, perfect for a first date.

"Dinner," I said, grabbing a handful of chips. "Good idea. Colonel Green's."

"You were completely tuned out," she said, but not angrily. "Weren't you?"

"Kind of," I admitted. I took a deep breath. "I need to talk to you about something."

"What's up?" she said, concerned.

"You asked me what's been going on recently, why I've been so distant."

"I've been worried about you," she replied, popping the top of a bottle of iced tea and setting the cap on the ground for Dagda, Morgan's kitten, to bat around.

Okay. Just come out and say it.

"I'm a witch," I blurted. "Just like Morgan."

Mary K. flinched just a bit, then seemed to try to ignore what I was saying by going through the contents of her bag. "I know you were in that thing she goes to… that Kithic thing."

"It's more than that," I explained. "My mother was a witch. I'm a blood witch."

She looked up at me, frozen.

"What do you mean, your mother was a witch? What's a blood witch?"

"Do you remember that book Morgan had here the other week?" I asked. "The one I kept staring at? That book was my mother's Book of… her diary."

"How could Morgan get your mother's diary?" she asked shortly. "That is ridiculous. Do you hear what you are saying?"

"I know what I'm saying," I said with a sigh, "and I know how it sounds. But it's true. My mother was a blood witch. I can… do things…"

"You're trying to tell my that you have magickal powers?" she said. "Is that it?"

Oh, God.

"You've been sick," she said agitatedly shaking out the entire contents of her baf onto the floor. "You're stressed out about what's happening with your dad."

"I wish that was it," I said. "I wish I was just imagining all of this. But I'm not. This stuff is real. It's not some dumb high school trend or some kind of Ren Faire spin-off club. Witches are real. I have the book here. I'll show you."

I reached into my bag to get my mom's Book of Shadows. I always carry it with me. She held up her hand, indicating that I shouldn't bother.

"I don't understand," she said, her brown eyes blazing. "We were going to write that letter to the paper. Now you're telling me that you're back into this witch stuff, just like that, and that somehow Morgan had a book that said your mother was a witch?"

"Look, I didn't mean to upset you." I hung my head. "I would give anything for this not to be true. It's not a choice."

We were both silent for a few minutes. The only noise came from Dagda trying to chomp in the bottle cap.

"Alisa," she said sadly. "I'm sorry, but I don't know what to do with this."

"Neither do I," I replied, running my finger along the seams of her lemon-colored comforter. She took a pretzel out of the bag and dropped it on the floor. Dagda pounced in excitement. "I should probably go," I said quietly.

Mary K. looked unhappy, but I think we both realized that our conversation was over. There was just a lot of dead air between us, and it was making both of us uncomfortable.

"My parents aren't home yet," she said. "Neither is Morgan."

"It's nice out," I said. "I'll walk home."

We looked at each other; then she turned her attention to her books, her face drawn. I quietly let myself out.

Morgan drives the weirdest car I have ever seen in my life, some kind of monster from the early seventies. It's huge and unbearably ugly, with a white body and a blue hood, and she treats it as if it were her very own child. She was docking this scary ship into the driveway when I came out of her front door. I stopped, and she stepped out of the car and looked at me.

"What's wrong, Alisa?" she said, eyeing my slumped shoulders.

"I just told Mary K. the truth," I said flatly. "That I'm a blood witch like you."

She exhaled loudly and leaned back against the car.

"How'd that go?" she asked.

"It sucked."

She frowned. At least she understood what it was like for me. I knew that when she'd told her family, it had ended up being a royal mess. Things had improved for her, though… maybe they would for me too.

"How about a ride home?" she asked. I nodded my thanks. She climbed back into the car, and I got in on the passenger's side.

"Mary K. will come around," she said, trying her best to cheer me up.

"No, she won't," I said, playing with the window crank. "You know as well as I do. This isn't something that people come around to."

"Want to have an informal circle?" she asked. "It might clear your mind a bit. How about we go to Hunter's?"

Morgan's boyfriend in Hunter Niall, the leader of Kithic. Hunter had really intimidated me until very recently. He's an imposing guy—very good looking and tall, with chiseled features and piercing green eyes. He's always, always serious. To top it all off, he's British, with this exacting accent. But I had gotten to know Hunter a bit better recently, and I'd seen that he wasn't so scary after all. Even if I'd wanted to go and have a circle with them, though, I couldn't.

"It's all right," I said wearily. "I have to pack up my room or I'll be grounded until I'm twenty."

"Pack up your room?"

I explained Hilary's master house-arranging plan, and Morgan gave me a sympathetic look.

"This hasn't been a great month for you," she said.

"For you, either."

"No," she agreed. In the process of dealing with the dark wave, Morgan had confronted her father—a very powerful, and apparently evil, witch named Ciaran. Morgan had assisted Hunter and some others in catching him and stripping him of his magickal powers. From what I'd heard, that had been pretty awful. "I guess not," she said with a sigh. "Maybe it's never easy to find out you're a blood witch. That's something Hunter and the other witches can't quite understand. They don't know what it's like to have a regular family members and witch blood. We're unique."

How about that? Morgan and I, two of a kind.

"So," she said, pulling up to my house, "see you on Saturday for the circle? I can pick you up at seven-thirty if you want."

"That would be great," I said. "Thanks."

I ran through the door and straight to my room, trying to avoid contact with the Hiliminator. While I didn't see the woman herself, she had left a stack of folded boxes, tape, and markers by my door as a sign of her presence. How very kind it was of my stepmonster-to-be to provide me with moving supplies. It made me feel warm all over. I pushed the pile through the door and shut it behind me.

My first thought was to check my e-mail. I expected nothing, but there was a little envelop on the corner of my screen when I logged on. I quickly opened the note. It read:

Alisa,

Sam Curtis is indeed a member of Ròiseal. I forwarded your note to him. He seemed very excited to hear from you. You should be getting a response soon.

Blessed be,

Charlie Findgoll.

At last, one single piece of good news.

That night I dreamed of the mermaid again. The dream was almost identical to the one the night before. This only increased my conviction that there was something going on in Gloucester that I needed to find out about.

At school on Friday, Mary K. seemed standoffish, so I ended up eating lunch alone and going home by myself. When I got there, I found that Hilary had bought rattan boxes for diapers, new sets of shelves, and a lamp shaped like a baby giraffe. I noticed there was nothing new planned for the closet down the hall—no swatches, no carpet sample, no new pieces of furniture. She had gotten me some more folded boxes though.

After taking these to my room, I hurried to my computer and got online. There was another note. I saw that the sender was Sam Curtis. I couldn't even open it for a moment, and I just sat there, staring at the name. Then, my hand shaking slightly, I clicked on the note.

Alisa,

I could barely believe it when Charlie sent me your note. I usually don't like e-mail, but this was a major exception! I am so happy to hear from you! I think about you often, and I want to know all about you.

I only have a computer at work, so here is my phone number and address. Write, call, visit… or all three.

— Sam

I didn't know quite how to respond. I'd acted so quickly in sending the not that I hadn't really come up with a concrete plan about what to do if Sam actually wrote back. If I called him, my father would question the long-distance charge. Visiting—that sounded great, but how was I going to go to Gloucester, especially without my father knowing?

Quickly, hands shaking, I printed out the note and tucked it into my mom's book. Then I trashed the note from my inbox. I didn't want anyone finding the letter by accident when they were going on-line. My father didn't know anything about my mother's heritage, and Hilary certainly didn't, either. This was private, between my uncle and me.

At dinner (a pregnancy blue plate special: cold soba noodles and baked lentil burgers) Hilary actually looked worried about me when I left my plate untouched. She offered to get me whatever I wanted—pizza, burgers, anything. It was my father who said that he wasn't going to give in to my "moods". When he ordered me to stay in for the night and work on my room, I went along with it quietly. I was too preoccupied, and too afraid of being grounded, to argue.

The next morning, the beginning of spring break week, I was still fully engaged in this process. Admittedly, I spent most of my time unearthing old magazines and reading them, sorting out old piles of letters and birthday cards, sifting through clothes and shoes I didn't wear much and moving them around. The boxes sat in the corner, still folded.

I could tell Hilary had no idea what to say to me. She was starting to lose her patience, and she made frequent passes by my door. On the one hand, every time she looked, I was working. She saw me shuffling things around. On the other hand, nothing was really being accomplished. All of my posters and pictures were still on the walls, and the contents of my drawers were spread all around. In fact, my cleaning had only resulted in a huge mess. By six o'clock that night all I had managed to do was put my socks into a laundry bag and move them to the other room. I was dressed and ready for Kithic's weekly circle a half hour early, though.

"You know," said Hilary, leaning in my door and staring at the massive pile of magazines and loose papers at the foot of my bed, "we're going to need to start moving this furniture on Monday. Things don't quite look ready."

"Oh," I said, thanking God as I heard Das Boot's engine, signifying Morgan's approach. I grabbed my purse and headed for the door. "They will be. I just had a lot of junk to go through. It will all be in boxes tomorrow. You'll see."