Chapter 4

"Now, why on Earth would you think I'm a witch?"

Tilda decided to take on the role of calming the panicked kidnapped victim. "The most obvious reason is that if you weren't a witch you would be curled up in a ball on the ground, paralyzed with fear."

"What are you talking about?"

"Walker Bay is protected by wards that have been reinforced through the years. If a non-paranormal tries to get through the borders they are struck with a feeling of dread and they can't help but turn away. You don't seem to be paralyzed by dread or fear."

"I think you're underestimating your grandmother's effect on me. And anyway, what kind of a name is Walker Bay for a magic town? Shouldn't it be something like Bewitched Cove or Cauldron Falls?"

Tilda smiled tightly. I could tell she was having a bad day, but at this stage I wasn't inclined to go out of my way to make it easier. "It's called Walker Bay because the first paranormal who settled here was Marion Walker."

"That seems to be a bit of an underwhelming story."

"Just because we're magical doesn't make us that different from everybody else. We're just trying to live our lives the best way we can."

"And that includes dragging me here against my will."

"You're right," Maude said unexpectedly.

"I am?" That surprised me.

"We shouldn't have taken you the way we did. We should have asked you for help."

"What is it you want from me?" All of a sudden, I knew that I didn't care about the rest. I was going to put the whole paranormal situation into a box and revisit it later. Much later. What I really needed to know was why I had been taken from my quiet, peaceful life and dropped into the middle of a freak show.

Maude clasped her hands together. "As we've told you, we are all witches."

That was the part I wanted to ignore for now, so I nodded, as if in agreement.

"We belong to a coven that's based here in Walker Bay. There are two covens in this town, but we are considered the strongest and our leader sits on the Council."

"What's the Council?" I asked.

"Kind of like our governing body," Tilda said. "The Council is made up of paranormals who are considered leaders of the various races. They run this town. It is considered the ultimate honor to be on the Council. Flora Harstone is our coven leader and she has a strong voice on the Council. It gives our coven a position of authority, not just here in Walker Bay, but in all the paranormal communities in the country."

The fact that there were more of these towns out there and this wasn't an anomaly, was another thing I was going to put in that box. "That still doesn't explain why I'm here."

Maude took in a breath and I was surprised to see a sheen of tears in her eyes. "Over the last couple of months Flora has been deteriorating both mentally and physically."

"Okay, I'm still not seeing how that is my problem."

"Two weeks ago, we believe she overdosed on a sleeping potion."

"Accidentally or on purpose?" I asked.

"Accidentally, of course," Maude replied, her lips quivering.

"You're not sure, are you?"

Tilda put a comforting hand on her grandmother's arm. "No, we're not sure. Sometimes powerful witches are prone to mental issues. We had some concerns that might have happened to Flora."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"She's still unconscious." Tilda's eyes were bright with unshed tears. "In these situations, where there's a possibility of a deliberate overdose, we need to find somebody with a link to her to take part in a healing ceremony."

"What kind of link?" I couldn't help the suspicion coloring my voice.

"A magical link. Usually it's a close friend or a family member. Sometimes it's just someone with a certain kind of magical power."

Okay, this had gone on far enough. "I'm really sorry about your friend, and I wish I could help, but I have never shown any kind of magical ability in my life. What made you think that I was the person you were looking for?"

"You can help us," insisted Maude. "I'm sure of it." She paused for a moment. "Does anyone in your family have magical ability? It's usually strongest through the female line."

I shook my head. "I've never suspected that witches that could do magic actually existed. I thought people who called themselves witches were all nature-loving hippie chicks who needed an excuse to dance around naked under the full moon."

"Oh, we do that," Margot interrupted.

I looked over at Tilda who was grimacing. "It's a choice. Not all of us do it."

"Until today I had never seen anything that made me believe that the paranormal could possibly exist. To be honest, I'm still not sure this isn't some hallucination caused by hitting my head."

"Let's go with the theory you're not hallucinating." I could tell Maude was trying to be patient with me. "Even though performing most magic is a learned process, witches need to have some innate ability that they are born with. Usually this ability manifests itself during your teenage years, but in rare cases it can happen later with a bit of help. Have you ever realized you knew something that you couldn't possibly know? Did you get minor injuries which seemed to heal quicker than they should have? Were there slight weather fluctuations based on your mood?"

"I have had nothing like that. Right up until you kidnapped me, my life was perfectly normal."

"Did you ever see your mother do anything that you couldn't really explain? Just think carefully. It could have been something small."

I shook my head. "There was nothing." I could see Maude was getting frustrated, but I just couldn't give her the answer she so desperately wanted.

"It could be your father," mused Tilda. "Although magic usually runs through the female line, sometimes it can come through the male line, just not as strongly."

I grimaced. "My father was one of that special breed of men who would sneak out on a one-night stand before the sun had come up."

"Oh," Tilda said quietly. I could see she was trying to come up with an appropriate response. "Those guys suck."

"That they do," I replied, remembering the incredibly awkward conversation I'd had with my mother about how I came to bless her life. Her words, not mine.

"Did your mom know anything about him?"

"He told her that his name was Jasper, but I'm not putting a great deal of faith in his ability to be honest about even the most basic of details."

"He could have been telling the truth about that," Maude interjected.

I noticed the sudden gleam in her eye. "You know who he is." I tried really hard to keep the interested tone out of my voice. I had long ago given up on ever finding out who my father was. Mostly, I didn't care to know. Hard to see the good side of a man who didn't even have the guts to stick around for his sexual partner to wake up. Despite that, there was still a small part of me that was curious.

Maude settled into her seat. "Flora was the youngest of three sisters. She was a surprise for the family, and for witches surprises are pretty damn rare. Collette was seventeen when Flora was born, and Dinah was sixteen, so they didn't really have much interest in the new baby in the family. Flora's mother Bessie was leading the coven at that stage, so she didn't have a lot of time for a newborn. Collette and Dinah were starting their own lives. As a result, Flora pretty much raised herself with a bit of help from my mother."

"Where was their father?" I asked, curious at the way the men seemed to be ignored in this story.

"Bessie's husband died when Collette and Dinah were young. Nobody has much of an idea who Flora's father was." Maude took a breath. "Collette was always expected to lead the coven after their mother stepped down. She was trained for it from the first day she could utter an incantation. Succession in a coven is always planned out meticulously. A coven without strong leadership is at best, ineffectual. At worst it is dangerous. On the night Bessie Harstone was to turn over leadership of the coven to Collette, the Seer stepped in and named thirteen-year-old Flora as the leader."

"What's a Seer?" I interrupted.

"A Seer is a witch who has the gift of prophecy," Tilda took over the story. "Fortune telling is a pretty standard skill for witches. You want to know if you'll get that promotion or land the hot guy in class, any witch with basic skills can tell you that. The thing is that fortune telling is personal and fluid. It is your future if you continue on a set path, but it can be affected by little things. Your fortune tells you you're going to land that promotion, so you feel confident enough to be a little less circumspect about your behavior at work. HR gets involved. Next thing you know, promotion's gone. Seer's are rare and very different. They see the big picture and when they have a prophecy it stands as a kind of landmark that the rest of the world rotates around. When a Seer proclaims a prophecy, witches follow it to the letter."

"Are you telling me that despite Collette having trained her whole life for the position, she was passed over for a teenager? And the coven just went for it?" I was having a little trouble understanding witch politics.

Maude took up the story again. "Nobody expected it, least of all Collette and Flora. I was there that night. Collette kept saying that it had to be a mistake. She was livid. Imagine spending your whole life training for your destiny only to have it ripped away at the last moment and given to a child."

"How did Flora react to it?"

Maude smiled as she remembered. "She was serene, the way Flora always is. She wasn't grasping for it, she simply accepted it. The rest of the coven descended into chaos. It fractured that day. Some stayed and others left, afraid that the coven would be compromised by being led by a child. Collette and Dinah were the first to leave." Maude blinked back a couple of tears. "The way everything disintegrated broke Bessie's heart. She died soon after and Collette and Dinah left town straight after the funeral."

"How does this relate to my father?" I asked.

"Collette took her family with her, including her nine-year-old son, Jasper. That was forty years ago which would fit in with the timeline we're looking at."

"You think this Jasper could be my father, and that would mean Collette would be my grandmother."

"And that would make Flora your great-aunt. It explains why I felt your magic would match Flora's."

I scrubbed my hands over my face. "So, let's get this straight. My mother is human..."

"As far as we know," said Tilda.

"That woman worked two back-breaking jobs to keep me fed and clothed. Trust me when I say there was no hint of magic in our lives."

"Okay,"

"If I have any magic in me at all, it must come from my father, and you've already told me that males are not as powerful as the female line."

"True," murmured Maude.

"If that's the case, my magic, if we can even trigger it to manifest in me, will most likely be so diluted to be almost useless." I put up my hand as Tilda tried to interrupt. "I'm being realistic. You're scraping the bottom of the barrel here."

"I think you're wrong," Maude said quietly. "Margot and I had no reason to go to Georgia. There were no other people on the list anywhere near you, but we were drawn there." She grasped my hand in hers. "As soon as I saw you coming out of the library, I knew you were the one that we needed. I felt it, deep inside. It's one of the reasons I was able to talk Margot into just grabbing you, rather than talking to you like we tried with the rest of the candidates."

"Like it would have taken much to talk Margot into participating in a kidnapping." The exasperation in Tilda's voice indicated that despite her annoyance, she was not entirely surprised at the events that led to my current situation.

"What's this list you keep talking about?" I asked.

"When Flora first got sick, we came up with a list of family members who might be able to help. We've been visiting those that are close by asking for assistance." Maude had a distasteful look on her face.

"I'm guessing none of them were willing to step up to the plate."

"You could say that," Maude spat out.

"Collette threatened to call the police on us," Margot added.

"Great," said Tilda. "The woman who's likely to be her grandmother threatened to call the police when you knocked on her door and asked for help. If Collette finds out you kidnapped her granddaughter and brought her from Georgia to Maine in the trunk of a car, she'll call in the National Guard."

"I think you mean FBI," I interrupted. "The FBI works on kidnapping cases across state lines."

Maude rolled her eyes. "Didn't know how many states we passed through, but you can tell me about federal law enforcement jurisdiction."

"Are you going to help us?" asked Tilda.

"I don't know if I can. What you're expecting of me seems so much bigger than what I am capable of doing."

Maude smiled gently. "You need to have faith. We were drawn to you for a reason."

They kept saying that, but I still had my doubts. I took a deep breath and looked around the room at the three women who seemed to believe that I could achieve the impossible. There was fear in their eyes, and I could see they were terrified that I would say no. To be honest, a part of me was tempted to do just that. I had no business being anywhere near a magical community. This was so far outside my sense of normal as to be ridiculous. But what if it wasn't? What if this woman really was my aunt? The part of me that had watched as my mother, my only family member, was lowered into the ground, ached to know the truth. It was possible I needed these people as much as they needed me.

"Maybe you're right, but before I decide, I think I should meet Flora Harstone."