Always a Witch by Carolyn MacCullough Read Free Book Online Page B

violently under the sudden onslaught of the storm. The Domani is burning in my hand, but I tighten my fingers anyway, and then the ground buckles once violently and darkness presses down across my eyelids with a weight that I can't endure. I black out.

Five
    WHEN I OPEN MY EYES it's to find that I'm sprawled under a tree, bands of sunlight criss-crossing my faded black skirt. The sky overhead is a bright aching blue, and golden-red leaves drift like snow through the air. I pull myself to a sitting position, blink, and take in two small, solemn-faced children, a boy and a girl, standing just a few feet away from me. The boy sticks his thumb in his mouth, his eyes wide and round, while the girl holds a large wooden hoop in front of them both like a shield.
    "Hello," I say, my voice cracking a little.
    They both jump, and the boy jams his thumb even farther into his mouth and starts sucking it furiously. Finally, the girl speaks. "How did you do that?" she asks, her voice wavering.
    "Do what?" I ask as I dig a pine cone out from under my knee. I don't trust my legs yet. My head's still spinning and there's a weird empty sensation in my chest as if my heart is trying to drop down into my toes. I take a deep breath. I made it. I think.
    "You appeared out of the air."
    "Oh, that." I wave one hand and the little boy ducks behind his sister. "Listen, never mind about that. Can you tell me the date, first of all?"
    The girl's mouth curves downward and her pale eyebrows scrunch together. "How can you not know?"
    "I just ... don't."
    "October twenty-eighth," the boy said. "Nanny is going to give us candy apples on Beggars' Night."
    "Beggars' Night ... oh, Samhain," I say. Three days before Samhain. Alistair must have just arrived. A stranger appeared in the dying days of the year. There's still time to stop him. There has to be.
    The boy takes a half step out from behind his sister's skirts, and after pulling his thumb out of his mouth he says, "Are you one of them? The ones who walk on Beggars' Night?" He is eyeing me hopefully. "Can you do magic?"
    But now his sister turns her frown on him. "Don't be foolish, Collin. We wouldn't see her in the daylight if she were." Then she turns back to me. "That's what Nanny calls it," she adds suddenly. "Samhain. But Mother doesn't like—"
    "Collin. Eugenia," a female voice sputters, and then a second later, a middle-aged heavy-set woman, dressed in black with a white cap bobbing loose on her head, trundles toward us. "Where did you children get to?"
    "She fell asleep," Collin whispers to me. "She always falls asleep in the park."
    I glance at the woman's sun-scorched face while finally attempting to climb to my feet.
    "What mischief are you at?" the woman huffs as she hurries over to them. A sloshing liquid sound accompanies her movements. Abruptly, she claps one hand over her skirt pocket. The sloshing sound stops.
    "We were talking to the lady. She just appeared under the tree. Like one of your spirits that you—"
    "Hush now," the woman says, glaring at me as if I'm the one who claimed to be one of her spirits. She brushes down Collin's pants with what seems like a little too much force and then produces a smaller and more delicate white cap from her skirt pocket. "I found this on the bench, missy," she says to Eugenia, who scowls again but lets the woman settle it on her head.
    "I told Collin she's not one of your spirits," Eugenia says, her voice thickly smug. As the woman jerks the laces into place under her pointed chin, Eugenia reaches out and gives her brother a pinch on his arm. "I told him that since we could see her—"
    "Hush," the woman says again, and gives me another sidelong glance, her gaze sweeping me from head to toe. "I close my eyes for a second and the two of you run off. Talking to strangers and all. You'll both be the death of me, that's what," she mutters, giving Eugenia's laces one final tug.
    Just then a black and red carriage glides past us, the driver holding the