Suddenly Ruth screamed, and I felt a rush of extreme heat cutting the chill. As if it had been stirred by some unnatural breeze, the dire in the fireplace leapt out, blue with heat. It reached for Charlie, licking at his clothes, his skin. I felt a fear rising up through me. Charlie was going to be hurt—badly.
No, I couldn't let this happen.
Water… I thought, my body standing itself up and my hand raising without my willing either to do so. I pointed at the caldron, and it lifted itself from its resting place. Time was slow now—I was unaffected by it. The water would do what I needed it to do; I had to ask it. Once again words came to me from the recesses of my mind, in an echo of a woman's voice, a voice I couldn't quite place.
"Cuir as a srad," I said, moving my pointed finger to indicate Charlie. "Doirt air."
The caldron sailed through the room, past Charlie, and smashed itself against the smoky brick of the fireplace, spilling all of the flowers and water onto him. He stumbled back as it thundered to the floor and rolled back and forth before the fire.
The crash brought me back in step with everything else, and I lurched forward, as if I was in a car that had skidded to a halt. Charlie quickly rolled away from the fireplace and looked down at himself in shock. He was soaking wet and covered in soggy flower pieces. His hands were singed, but the water had protected him somewhat, keeping his clothing from igniting.
"I'm okay," he said, patting his body down and checking for injuries. "I'm okay," Brigid and Ruth descended on him, dragging him off to the kitchen to attend to the burns. The whole thing had happened in less than a minute.
"Goddess," said Kate once they had gone, "did everyone just see that?"
I became aware of the fact that everyone left in the room was staring at me. My hand was still outstretched. I jammed it behind my back.
Charlie's father was next to me. All traces of cosmic goofiness were gone from his face.
"Thank you," he said, reaching out to squeeze my arm. His face was pale with shock. "I've never seen anyone do a deflection that quickly before."
"You're welcome," I mumbled. "I mean… I just did it."
Sometimes I just blow myself away with fancy talk.
"You do know," he said seriously, "that you moved the cauldron almost simultaneously with the flame, killing its progress—don't you?"
"I did?" I said, feeling very dull-witted.
"You gave a command spell," Charlie's father said. "Very simple. The energy was channeled through the water. The Gaelic charge was basic. But it was very, very fast, and you brought up a lot of energy within a moment."
I wobbled, and Sam gently helped me to sit down. Evelyn, I noticed, had returned and was looking at me up, down, and sideways.
"You have powers," she said.
She didn't sound happy, or amazed, or impressed, or grateful. She sounded suspicious.
"She not only has powers," Charlie's father added, "she's strong. Quite strong. And fast. And she has a rather shocking command of spell language."
"Have you been studying with someone?" Kate asked, pulling up an ottoman and sitting close to me.
"A Seeker," I said, looking around nervously.
"A Seeker?" she said. "Goddess. For how long?"
"A few weeks. On and off over the last few months."
"A few weeks?" she repeated me again. "That's it?"
"So," Evelyn said, "you have powers—somehow—and you've been studying with someone from the council."
Evelyn hadn't exactly been sending valentines to the council. I realized that I'd just made another huge mistake in her eyes.
"He's from the council," I said, trying to defend myself, "but he's not teaching me as a representative of the council. I mean, he's just my coven leader…"
Ruth looked through the doorway.
"Charlie is fine," she said. "The burns on his hands are minor. I treated him with some aloe. We'll add a preparation of calendula and cantharis. Brigid is mixing it up now."
There was a murmur of relief from everyone. I felt like I needed air. I was in emotional overdrive. I tugged on Sam's sleeve, hoping he would understand the can-we-go-message. Fortunately, Sam is perceptive.
"I think," he said, standing and pulling his keys from his pocket, "that we should call it a night. Alisa's still kind of worn out from last night, and this has been a long day."
I nodded in conformation. It was an awkward and hasty exit, but then, this was the House of Strange Happenings. Sam said nothing—just took me home and let me spend some time with my thoughts. I certainly had enough of those.
After Sam had gone to bed, I found that I was still wide awake. I stared at the phone for a while, trying to will it to ring. I thought about calling Charlie, even though he'd indicated pretty clearly that he didn't want to talk to me tonight. Bad idea.
I was going to go crazy if I didn't think of something to do. First I tried scrying again, but I was even less successful than I'd been the night before. Giving that up, I went for my bag and pulled out Máirin's book. I set it down next to the scrying bowl and started to read. As I did so, Astrophe jumped into my lap, causing me to flinch. My elbow struck the bowl, causing it to splash water on the pages.
The ink began to run. I almost screamed.
I scrambled around, grabbing for paper towels, anything to blot the water. I couldn't find anything. Everything must have been used up in the cleanup the night before. Frantic, I ran back to the book to try to brush the water from the page with my hands, only to make an amazing discovery: Something was there that hadn't been there before.
It came into clearer focus as the water ran over it. There was writing there, scribbled all over the margins, squeezed into every available inch of space. There were combinations of runes, symbolsm bits of Gaelic, and words in English—uncontrollable magick—Rowanwand—stabilization of energies, provided that the…
The water was bringing it out. If I wanted to fill out the passage, my only choice would be to drip on more. Using a spoon, I tried this very carefully, working drop by drop. By doing this, one passage became clear enough to read:
…this plague of uncontrollable magick, the roots of which are all too human, forged by the dark spell of our poor tortured ancestor. Being Rowanwand, we pride ourselves on our ability to master knowledge and control our destiny. Pride, of course, is well known to be one of the deadliest vices. Fear is another. Both were at work when I destroyed the pages in a fit of rage. I was fifteen years old at the time. I hope now to rectify my mistakes and add to our store of knowledge…
It went on in Gaelic and symbols. I saw the occasional word in English here or there, but no passage was entirely clear, and I was worried about actually destroying the book in my attempts to extract the information.
Even though I felt guilty about making a long-distance call without asking Sam first, I knew I had to tell someone about this right away. This was huge. Besides, it was after nine. The rates were cheaper. I called Hunter. Much to my irritation, thought, he wasn't home, and neither was his father. I left a garbled message for him, frantically trying to explain what I had seen.
Now what? I knew this was important. Someone had to see this. Maybe even… Evelyn?
Sam kept a bike on the side of the house. If I used that, I could be to Evelyn's and back in no time. The hills would be a pain to go up, but I'd get back really quickly. Since this seemed to be my big week for impulse behavior, I decided to go for it. Compared to what I'd done so far, taking a bike for a midnight ride was nothing. I put the book in my messenger bag and let myself out.