Spring, p.1
Spring, page 1
A war that needed to be finished
Once again Mother Blessing knew the fury of being thwarted by people for whom she had no respect. Those meddling teenagers should have fallen immediately before the might of her creation. Instead, her simulacrum had been defeated by that boy….
So she was angry with them, these children who had defeated her far too often, considering who and what they were. Insignificant insects who muddled along by accident and who needed to be stamped out. They would pay the price, though—once Season was no longer a problem, these others would taste her revenge too, and they would find it painful indeed….
Mother Blessing would not trust a simulacrum to do the whole job this time. So close to Season, she had to be on the scene in person, just in case.
She would leave immediately. This was a war that needed to be finished, and with the Convocation almost upon them, the end had to come soon.
As the seasons change, so does Kerry….
Check out the other installments in the Witch Season series:
Summer
Fall
Winter
This one’s for Michelle, for seeing it through. Thanks, Michelle!
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster
Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2005 by Jeff Mariotte
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Ann Zeak
The text of this book was set in Bembo.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Simon Pulse edition April 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Control Number 2004116260
ISBN 0-689-86726-3
eISBN 978-1-4391-2055-2
Acknowledgments
A lot of changes have come and gone during the process of writing these books. I need to thank those who helped make it all happen and allowed me to keep working on them, including Maryelizabeth, Holly, Dave, Cindy, Larry, Anne, Vince, Christine, Patrick, Chris, and of course all the great people at Simon Pulse, and booksellers everywhere who took a chance on them. Thanks to all of you.
SPRING
Kerry Profitt’s diary, December 26.
It’s hard to describe exactly what I was feeling, standing there beside the road that led down to Berlin, New Hampshire, looking at the expressions on the faces of my friends and realizing that they were afraid of me.
Because we’re talking about me. Not only am I the kind of person who wouldn’t, as they say, hurt a fly, I’m the kind who the fly could probably beat up. Old stringbean Profitt, that’s me. Arms more like Minnie Mouse than Popeye.
Lately, however, I’ve learned that one doesn’t have to be all buff and weight—liftery to be powerful. And it’s that kind of power—the kind that comes from understanding one’s relationship to the ebb and flow of natural forces—that made Brandy, Rebecca, and Scott so afraid of me. They saw me with Season Howe—whom they had known only as a hated enemy—battling Mother Blessing’s simulacra.
And since one of those simulacra had come up from Berlin in the car with my buds, while I was coming down the selfsame mountainside in a car with Season, they unsurprisingly assumed that I had gone over to Season’s side.
Which, to be fair, I had.
But also to be fair, Season isn’t the monster they thought she was. And Mother Blessing, whom they still believed was trustworthy, is a monster.
All in all, a confusing situation. Which didn’t make it any easier to look at their faces and know they feared me.
I did what I had to do at that minute. Mentally and physically drained as I was from the fight, I made like a cross between an auctioneer and Dr. Phil and fast-talked them out of panicking and running away. Then I persuaded them to follow us, in Scott’s car, back up the hill to Season’s cabin. Once we got there, Season made us some hot spiced apple cider while I laid the whole story out for them—starting at the beginning, which was 1704 and the destruction of Slocumb, Virginia. I told them how Daniel Blessing had always been told by his mother that it was Season who destroyed Slocumb, and how when Daniel and his twin brother Abraham were old enough, Mother Blessing sent them out on their quest for revenge. Or her quest, to be more precise. But it turns out that Mother Blessing is a stinking liar, and she’s spent all these years blaming Season for something she did herself. In the process, she cost both of her sons their lives, and got our friends Mace and Josh killed too.
Okay, technically, Season is the one who killed Mace. She doesn’t get off the hook for that one so easily. But the winds of war, I think somebody once said, can shift in an instant. When she killed Mace, he had been hooked up with us and we were hooked up with Daniel and Daniel was trying to kill Season. So self-defense? Kind of hard to argue with.
In the end, I must have been persuasive. Scott and Rebecca were easy, of course—Scott because he majorly crushes on me, and Rebecca because she always wants to believe the best of anybody. Brandy was tougher, as I had known she would be. But finally she came over to my side as well. Season helped—she speaks well for herself, articulate and bright and convincing. By the end of it they had all agreed to spend the night there, in the cabin, with the understanding that we’d move out by first light. It isn’t safe here anymore, Season told us. Mother Blessing had been able to track us this far, had even been able to get one of her magically constructed pseudo-men to join up with them. She was getting too close, and we had to abandon this hidey-hole and go somewhere else.
The hugs and kisses and tears that should have accompanied our reunion—the first time we had all been together since Josh’s death in Las Vegas—came then, at the end of the evening instead of the beginning. We were all wrung out emotionally by then, all exhausted. With the prospect of a very early morning facing us, we went to our assigned sleeping areas—I’m still in the bed I’ve been in since Christmas Eve—to get some shut-eye.
Except of course, me being me, a day like this requires some journaling time as well. But sunup is going to feel awfully early, so I should probably fold up the trusty laptop and actually shut that aforementioned eye.
Both of them, even.
More later.
K.
1
In the morning Season pounded on the door to her room, and Kerry started, as surprised as if someone had lit a firecracker under her feet. She sat up in bed, took stock quickly of where she was, rubbed her bleary eyes. Another four hours of unconsciousness would have been good, another six even better. Christmas day had been relaxing, but it was bookended by days that were anything but, and she was feeling the strain.
She heard the sounds of her friends being similarly roused, though, so she climbed out of bed and dressed hurriedly. She’d showered the night before, knowing from hard experience that any time she could grab a shower she had better avail herself of it, because it might be the last for a while. It meant sleeping with wet hair—and lots of it, given the length of Kerry’s dark tresses. But that was a small price to pay for the pleasure of being able to stand her own company all day.
Even moving as quickly as she could, by the time she made it out, Season had put together one of her signature breakfast feasts. Kerry was a little too sleepy to take full advantage, but she managed an English muffin, a couple of cups of strong black tea, and a slice of bacon. Scott Banner filled his plate with a little of everything—scrambled eggs, hash browns, fruit, two kinds of toast, and bacon.
Brandy Pearson looked at his plate and snorted. “You have eaten before, right?” she prodded.
“Let him indulge,” Season said. “We’re not taking it with us, and I won’t be coming back here again for a good long time, if ever. Might as well not waste it.”
Scott simply nodded at Season’s defense and shoveled another forkful of eggs into his mouth. He’d put on a bulky wool sweater with black jeans and the all-weather hiking boots he had been wearing the day before. Kerry thought he had put on a few pounds since summer, when they had all shared a house together in La Jolla, California. The weight looked good on him, filling out his gaunt cheeks a bit.
Rebecca Levine had taken too many off, and Kerry was still worried about her. She had hoped the redheaded free spirit would stay down in New York—or better yet, back in school at Santa Cruz—and far away from Season and the whole long-unresolved conflict. But here she was, too bighearted to let her friends face danger without being there too.
Brandy was the one Kerry had gone the longest without seeing. Her thick black hair was tied down with a red scarf, and her off-white sweater beautifully complemented her cocoa skin. Brandy had always been a girl who could put herself together, even when trouble was brewing. She shrugged off Season’s defense of Scott and took another bite of the honeydew that, along with a cup of coffee, seemed to comprise her entire breakfast.
“You said before that we have to leave here,” Brandy observed. “I get that. But where are we going? If Mother Blessing could track you guys down here, where will we be safe?”
Season set down her own coffee mug and regarded Brandy calmly. “I wish I had an answer for that,” she said. “The truth is, I don’t know. I can only strategize, but I have no guarantees.”
“Okay, what’s your strategy?” Rebecca asked.
“Here’s what I’ve been thinking,” Season replied. “We need to split up. Together, we’ll be far too easy to find now that she has a line on all of us. Without you, Kerry, or her sons, she has no champions left, but she still has power, and even though we can beat her simulacra, there’s still the chance that they could catch us by surprise. Or she could join the fight herself. I can beat Mother Blessing in a fair fight on neutral ground, I’m sure. But I don’t think a fair fight is what she has in mind.”
“So we all have to go different places?” Rebecca asked. The idea obviously caused her concern, and she didn’t get her hands into her lap quick enough to hide their quaking from Kerry.
“For the most part,” Season said, “I think you should all go back home. You back to Santa Cruz, Scott and Brandy back to Boston. Resume your normal lives and activities, as much as possible. That way even if she does locate you again, there won’t be any advantage to her to harass you, because you’ll be out of it.”
“Will we?” Scott asked. “Because I’m getting the distinct impression that this whole deal is kind of like the mob, or the CIA. Once you’re in you can never really get out.”
Season’s nod was barely perceptible, but it was there. “There’s some truth to that, Scott. I won’t lie and say that you’ll be completely safe. It depends partly on Mother Blessing. But if she observes you and understands that you’re not in contact with me, that you’re just going about your lives, then your chances are that much better. If we all stayed together, then you’d always be in jeopardy.”
“Who is this ‘we,’ then?” Brandy wanted to know. “I notice you didn’t say anything about Kerry going home.”
“Maybe that’s because I don’t have one anymore,” Kerry pointed out.
“Kerry is in this much more deeply than the rest of you,” Season said. “She’s a witch, Mother Blessing knows her well, and she’s a target. She’s probably in more danger because, skilled as she is, she still has a long way to go. If Mother Blessing really came at her, Kerry couldn’t win. She needs to stay with me, for her own protection and training.” Season paused, making eye contact with Kerry. “Does that sound okay to you, Kerry?”
If she had been asked even twelve hours earlier, Kerry would have hesitated. She hadn’t decided quite how she felt about Season. The witch had, after all, killed Daniel, who was the only man Kerry had ever loved. And she had no real proof of her contention that it was Mother Blessing, and not herself, who was behind the slaughter in Slocumb. Her story rang truer than Mother Blessing’s did, but Kerry was no expert lie detector. It was one witch’s word against another’s.
So she couldn’t have said exactly why, but she agreed almost immediately. “Sure,” she said. “I’ve got nowhere better to go, right?”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
Kerry knew there were several other ways to look at it too, but they all added up to the same response. She really was running out of other options. She had made a powerful enemy in Mother Blessing. She had left her Aunt Betty and Uncle Marsh behind too many times, and wasn’t so sure she’d be welcome back there. Her parents were dead, and her best friends in the world were the people in this room with her—the only people who could ever really know what she had been through since August.
And she figured Season was right in her evaluation of Kerry’s abilities. She could do more witchy stuff than she’d been able to a few months before, but that probably meant she was just powerful enough to harm herself and others. She still needed tutelage, a mentor, and if Season wanted to be that, Kerry was happy to avail herself of the opportunity.
“Okay, then,” she said cheerily. “I guess you’re stuck with me.”
Brandy eyed them both suspiciously. “But where are you guys going?” she inquired.
“I think it’s best not to tell you,” Season replied. “Not because we don’t trust you—clearly, Kerry trusts you with her life, and that’s good enough for me. But the fewer people who know, the safer everyone is.”
“I don’t like it at all,” Brandy said. “But I guess I see your point.”
“I’ll be in touch as often as I can,” Kerry promised. “So you guys don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’ll still worry,” Scott said.
Brandy nodded. “Don’t take away Scott’s favorite leisure-time activity. He’s a gold medalist when it comes to worrying about you.”
“I’m fine,” Kerry stated flatly. “I’ve been in a couple of tight spots, but I’ve always come out okay. You don’t need to worry about me, Scott. Especially if I’m with Season.”
“I know,” Scott said, blinking behind his glasses. “I mean, I understand that, intellectually. But it’s not so easy when I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing. I always find myself thinking about the worst thing that could be happening, and assuming that is what’s happening.”
Rebecca laughed, covering her mouth with one hand. “But the truth is that whatever is really happening is usually even worse than Scott’s imagination.”
“Look, you guys.” Kerry really hoped that she could persuade them of her safety, just as she had convinced them last night that she hadn’t turned traitor or fallen under some kind of evil mind-control power of Season’s. She knew what she was doing—okay, maybe that was a stretch. But she had some sense that she was doing the best thing for herself. These days—since the night she had met Daniel Blessing, really, changing her life forever—that was the most she could ask for. “I know I’ve said this before, but I really need you all to support me in this. And that means not worrying too much about me. You’ve all got your own lives to live, and I have mine. Mine is taking me in some directions that I didn’t expect—but I think everyone probably finds out that’s true, at some point or other. I mean, did your parents grow up thinking that they’d be pharmacists or lawyers or whatever? So I’m not taking the usual path. But I’m taking my own path, and you’re taking yours, and we all just have to have some faith in one another’s decision making.”
Brandy snorted. “She’s talking to you, Scott.”
Kerry couldn’t suppress a grin. “Thanks for not taking me seriously, Brandy,” she said. “I could hardly believe that was me talking.”
“It was a little drippy,” Rebecca agreed. “But still—it made sense.”
“Rebecca’s right,” Scott put in. “I don’t mean to freak you out or anything, Kerry. I guess I’m just a worrywart by nature. But I do respect your decisions. If you and Season think you’ll be safer, then Brandy and I will just go home and let you guys go wherever.”
Season had been silent for a long time, just listening and letting the four friends work out their issues. Now she broke her silence. “I do think that’s for the best,” she said.
Kerry was glad the conversation had gone her way. “Sounds like it to me, too.”
Scott looked at Brandy. “You need a ride, lady?”
“I guess I’m going your way,” Brandy said. “If you think you have room for me.”
“There’s always room for you, Brandy,” Scott said. “If you don’t mind the stink of that mud man we had in the back seat.”
Brandy looked as if she was thinking it over. “I guess I can put up with it as far as Boston,” she admitted. “If we can stop at a car wash on the way. But we should probably be hitting the road—I’ll have a lot of explaining to do when we get there .”
Kerry was sorry their reunion had been so brief. One of these days, she wanted time to really catch up with her friends, to find out what was going on in their lives instead of just telling them what was up in hers. This wasn’t going to be that time, though. Season was right—the sooner they vacated this cabin, the safer they’d all be.
