Always a Witch Read online

  Always a Witch

  Carolyn MacCullough

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  For Frankie and Ella

  Clarion Books

  215 Park Avenue South

  New York, New York 10003

  Copyright © 2011 by Carolyn MacCullough

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Clarion Books is an imprint of

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The text was set in Horley Old Style MT Light.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  MacCullough, Carolyn.

  Always a witch / by Carolyn MacCullough.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Haunted by her grandmother's prophecy that she will

  soon be forced to make a terrible decision, witch Tamsin Greene risks

  everything to travel back in time to 1887 New York to confront the

  enemy that wants to destroy her family.

  ISBN 978-0-547-22485-5

  [1. Witches—Fiction. 2. Time travel—Fiction. 3. Ability—Fiction. 4. Good and evil—

  Fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.)—History—1865–1898—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M1389Al 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2011008148

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  4500297831

  Acknowledgments

  A big thank-you to my family and friends for putting up with me during the writing of this book. Thank you to Alyssa Eisner Henkin, whose enthusiasm and guidance on this project was very much appreciated! And finally, I was lucky enough to have not one but two very wonderful editors for this book. Thank you to Jennifer wingertzahn for getting the ball rolling, and thank you to Daniel Nayeri, who picked up so seamlessly where she left off.

  Prologue

  I WAS BORN ON THE NIGHT of Samhain. Others might call it Halloween. Born into a family of witches who all carry various Talents. Others might call it magic.

  Except for me.

  I alone in my family seemed to have no Talent. No gift to shape me or to grant me a place in my family's circle around the altar to the four elements. All I had was the prophecy that my grandmother made to my mother in the first hour of my life. "Your daughter will be one of the most powerful we have ever seen in this family. She will be a beacon for us all."

  And then for reasons still unknown, my grandmother spent the next seventeen years making sure I doubted that prophecy at every turn. It took the return of an old family enemy, two episodes of time travel, and one very dangerous love spell that nearly killed my sister before I learned three things. First, I can stop anyone from using their Talent to harm me. Second, I can absorb a person's Talent if they attempt to use it against me three times. Third, I apparently have a choice ahead of me. A choice that will explain the mysterious workings of my grandmother's mind and why she raised me in complete denial of my Talent. A choice that's vaguely hinted at in my family's book. A choice that will fulfill the prophecy my grandmother made all those years ago.

  Or destroy my family forever.

  A choice that will be so terrible to contemplate that I'd just rather not encounter it at all.

  One

  "I LOOK AWFUL," I SAY, staring at myself in front of the dressing room mirror. The dress I have just struggled into hangs like a shapeless tent down to my ankles. Okay, actually, it clings to the top half of me a little too tightly before suddenly dropping off into the aforementioned shapeless tent. And it's gray. Not silver, not opalescent mist, as the tag promises. Gray. Concrete gray.

  My best friend, Agatha, scrunches her eyebrows together over her bright green eyeglasses as she examines me from all angles. "You do look awful. Perfectly awful, in fact," she finally confirms.

  I stick my tongue out at her. Agatha loves the word perfectly just a little too much. "Yeah, well, that was probably Rowena's intention all along," I mutter, struggling to find the zipper. The overhead lights of the narrow boutique are suddenly too hot and glaring.

  "Here," Agatha says, and with swift fingers she yanks the zipper down.

  With a sigh of relief, I slip back into my jeans and flowered T-shirt, then step into my fringed wedges that I found in my favorite thrift store last week. I can't resist them, even though my ankles start to throb after more than five minutes of wearing them.

  "Why can't you wear your rose dress?" Agatha asks again as she arranges the hated gray tent back on its hanger. Rowena had pronounced it "ethereal" when she had been in the city a few weeks earlier and had left me three messages on my cell to come to the store "at once." However, I never picked up the phone. Caller ID is one of the best inventions out there.

  "Because Rowena wants silver. And what Rowena wants, Rowena gets."

  "Bridezilla, huh?"

  "She gives new meaning to that term." I refasten my pink barrettes to the side of my head; useless, I know, since they'll be falling out in about three minutes. My curly hair defies all devices invented to contain it.

  "Too bad," Agatha says as we exit the dressing room. "That rose dress is so pretty and you never get to wear it."

  "Yeah," I say, keeping my expression noncommittal, while inwardly feeling the familiar pang. Oh, how I wish I could tell Agatha that I already did wear it. I wore it when Gabriel and I Traveled back to 1939 to a garden party in my family's mansion on Washington Square Park in New York City. But if I told her that, I'd have to tell her who I really am. what I really am. And the truth is, I don't know who or what I really am. For most of my life I thought I was ordinary. The black sheep who got stuck in a very extraordinary family. Not until I left my hometown of Hedgerow and came to boarding school in Manhattan did I learn not to mind that so much. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who had no idea that just enough powdered mandrake root mixed with wine can make a man want to kiss you. But too much can make that same man want to kill you. It felt good to be among people who thought I was just like them. It felt normal. I felt normal. I felt like one of them.

  And now that feeling is gone. And I can't decide if I'm happy or sad about that.

  I gaze at Agatha for a moment and contemplate how to tell her that I don't really have a hippie crunchy granola kind of family, as she likes to think. Instead, I have a family of witches who actively practice their Talents but who still manage to live relatively obscure lives. I have a mother and grandmother who offer love spells, sleep spells, and spells for luck, good fortune, and health to the town residents who come knocking on the back door after night falls when they can't be seen by their neighbors. I have a father who controls the weather. A sister who can compel anyone to do anything just by mesmerizing them with the sound of her voice. My g
randmother's sister who can freeze someone where he stands just by touching his forehead. A boyfriend who can find anything and anyone that's missing. A whole bunch of other people I've been taught to call "uncle" or "aunt" or "cousin" who are all Talented in one way or another.

  If I told Agatha any of that, she'd look at me like I was speaking in tongues. If I showed her that I could shoot fire from my hands or freeze people into statues with one tap of my finger, she'd think I was a freakshow.

  Or worse, she'd be afraid of me.

  Agatha's one of the first and relatively few people who made me feel normal in my life. Back when I thought I didn't have a Talent at all, when I first came to boarding school in Manhattan, it was okay omitting certain things about my family life. It was okay to blur the line between the truth and a lie. But now that I've discovered I do have a Talent after all, it feels harder.

  "So what are you going to do?" Agatha asks, breaking into my headlong rush of thoughts.

  "What?" I blink at her until she flourishes the dress through the air. "Oh. I'm not buying that thing!"

  The saleslady who has been hovering around the dressing room apparently overhears me. She takes the dress back from Agatha, stroking it like she's afraid its feelings just got hurt. Her long pink nose twitches once, reinforcing my initial impression of a rabbit. "Well," she says, her tone frosted over. "Your sister did say that was the one she wanted. She specifically asked me to put it aside for you even though it's really not our policy to do that here. Not for more than twenty-four hours and it's been three weeks already." The saleslady blinks a little as if suddenly wondering why she did break store policy.

  I try not to roll my eyes. Apparently Rowena has won over yet another heart. People seem to want to throw themselves in front of speeding buses for Rowena. Part of her Talent and all. Not that she ever would abuse that. Oh, no.

  "You know, she is the bride, after all. It's really her day," she says.

  "No kidding," I reply sweetly. "She's been reminding us all of that for three months now."

  "Still," the saleslady says, fluttering the hem at me. "I'm sure it looked lovely on you. Perhaps if you put on a bit more rouge and—"

  The doorbell chimes softly and I look up to see Gabriel stepping into the store. Okay, I know it's lame, but my heart still does this weird fluttery thing sometimes when I see him. When the afternoon sunlight is hitting his cheekbones the way it is right now. when he smiles at me—that smile that makes me feel safe and not so safe at the same time. When he gives me that look that spells out, I know you, Tamsin Greene. I know exactly who you are.

  Thankfully, someone does.

  I smile back and manage to pull my gaze away long enough to shake my head at the saleslady. "I'll tell her it didn't fit me."

  "Yeah, she was bursting out of it anyway," Agatha adds in helpfully. She makes a motion toward my chest.

  "Really?" Gabriel says, interest streaking through his voice. "And that's a bad thing?"

  Agatha bobs her head up and down. "You should have seen how—"

  I clear my throat loudly. "Okay, thanks, everyone, but I think—"

  Just then the door opens again and another woman shoulders past Gabriel, a look of desperation on her face. She swings a little black purse by a tasseled cord and I notice Gabriel take a step back to avoid getting hit in the jaw. "Do you have the new Dolce Vita dress in purple? It has to be purple. I've looked everywhere!"

  Instantly, the saleslady's face assumes an expression of sorrow. "No," she whispers, her gaze wandering to a spot above the woman's shoulder as if eye contact is too much to bear during this difficult moment. "I'm so sorry. We only carry the Dolce Baci line."

  "Oh!" the woman gives a muffled little shriek. "No one has this dress and I have to have—"

  "Try Lily Lucile on Spring Street," Gabriel says helpfully. "They're carrying it. The purple one that you want."

  A small silence fills the room as all eyes land on Gabriel. He turns his palms skyward, lifts his shoulders in a shrug. "Don't ask me how I know that," he murmurs. And then, "Ah, Tam, I'll wait outside for you," he says, and ducks out.

  Dusk is falling by the time Gabriel's front tires hit all the usual potholes of my family's driveway. The house is blazing with light and smoke tinges the air from tonight's bonfire, which I know is already burning behind the house. A small clump of my younger cousins chase each other across the snow-dusted meadow into the darkening woods beyond the house and fields.

  "How pastoral," Gabriel says, grinning sideways at me.

  "Yeah, until you look closer," I say, grinning back and leaning toward him. My seatbelt presses into my hip and I fumble to undo it, then decide not to bother.

  Just then the air is split open. "Mother! I said I wanted peonies, not posies. Posies are ridiculous in winter. Who ever heard of a bride carrying posies anyway?"

  Gabriel turns his head. "Are those Rowena's dulcet tones that I hear?"

  I shift back into my seat just as my sister storms around the side of the yard, heading toward the house. The porch door opens and my mother steps out. She takes one look at my sister's face, then another look at my father, who is trailing Rowena, a bunch of yellow flowers drooping in his hand.

  "Mother," Rowena yells again. "You need to explain something very important to my father." She flings one arm back to identify our father as if our mother is unclear on just who this man might be. "You need to tell him that I am getting married in three days. Three days and... Mother!"

  I grin. The porch door remains closed, but middiatribe, my mother has simply vanished. No doubt she's zoomed into another part of the house at her usual lightning speed. Rowena skids to a stop, and for once her flaxen hair has escaped from its perfect chignon. She whirls around and looks at my father, who shrugs and begins slowly backing up toward his greenhouse, probably wishing right about now that he also possessed my mother's Talent of moving at warp speed. Then Rowena pivots again, her gaze narrowing in on Gabriel's car.

  "Tamsin," she calls, her voice imperious as she starts down the driveway.

  I sink down the length of my seat and begin picking at a tuft of foam that protrudes from a rip in the upholstery.

  "Piece of advice?" Gabriel offers, his eyes tracking Rowena's progress toward us. "Don't tell her you didn't buy the dress."

  As we step into the kitchen, carrying our bags, my mother, who is standing at the counter, looks up with a startled expression. "Tamsin," she says, her voice vibrating with relief. "And Gabriel," she adds, and offers us both a smile before turning back to the heap of glittering silverware that's piled on the counter. "You're here." She examines two butter knives, and then suddenly raises her head again like a hunted animal to glance behind us. "Where's Rowena?" she whispers.

  "I froze her," I say, setting down my backpack and stretching my arms to the ceiling. "She makes a great statue in the garden."

  Gabriel snorts and ducks his head into the open refrigerator as the knives slip from my mother's grasp and crash back on the pile of silverware. "You did?" she asks, a note of hope throbbing through her voice. Clearing her throat, she tries again. "I mean, you did what? You can't just freeze your sister."

  I shrug. "It'll wear off. In a week or two. Is there anything to eat here?" I ask, and bump Gabriel with my hip as I join him at the fridge. We spend a few seconds in a shoving match as cold air billows in our faces.

  My mother makes a noise like a teakettle coming to boil. "Tamsin—"

  "Relax, Mom. I'm kidding," I say, stepping back, ending the fridge war. "She's chewing Aunt Linnie's ear off. Something about the tablecloths not being the right shade of cream and how Aunt Linnie has to dye them again. Or the world will come to an end."

  "Is this all wedding food?" Gabriel asks, and I peer over his shoulder at the rows and rows of little iced cakes. His hand hovers over one with a chocolate flower on top of it, but I can understand his hesitation. It's never wise to eat just anything in our fridge, as who knows what recipe (read: spell) my grandmother and mot
her are concocting next. Then again, since no spells will work on me, I figure I'm safe and scoop the small cake out from underneath his hand. I bite into it.

  "Mmm," I say, licking icing from the corner of my mouth. "It's so good. Even if it probably is poisonous. Go on, I dare you."

  Gabriel narrows his eyes at me, then takes the remainder of the cake from my fingers and eats it in one gulp.

  "Some of it," my mother answers, inspecting a fork. "And stop hanging on that door," she admonishes absently. "It'll break again and I'm tired of having Chester fix the refrigerator. The last time he fixed it, it sang 'I'm a Little Teapot' every time I opened it. It drove me insane."

  Gabriel inhales on a laugh, then begins choking on cake crumbs. Alarmed, my mother whirls around. "Which one did you eat?' she cries.

  "The chocolate flower one," I say. "Will he live?" I help myself to another cake, this one covered in sugar violets. "Is this one okay?" I ask, and then pop it into my mouth.

  My mother closes her eyes briefly. "Yes."

  "Yes I'll live or yes the second cake that she just ate is okay? It's kind of important that you be specific here," Gabriel says.

  "Yes to both questions." She opens her eyes again and glares at us before adding in a more casual voice, "Some catalogues came for you, Tamsin. And a letter from California."

  Suddenly, the cake is too dry in my mouth, and I struggle to swallow it down. Gabriel raises an eyebrow at me.

  "A thick letter or a thin letter?" I say at last.

  "A letter letter," my mother answers distractedly. "Why?"

  "Because I applied early admission to Stanford and it could be an acceptance or a rejection," I say, and brush my hand, sticky with crumbs, down the side of my jeans.

  My mother turns, holding three forks aloft. "Stanford? what is this about?"

  "It's a college in California," Gabriel says helpfully, then takes a step back as my mother glares at him.

  "I know what it is. But why? I thought you were set on going to NYU. I thought you were staying in New York. Why would you be going all the way to California?"