the Priscilla curtains billow outward with the soft morning breeze. Smiling, she walked to the window and looked out. She could see the faint outline of the ocean in the distance along with the seagulls and she could hear other birds singing. It was a perfect early autumn morning. Everything was as it should be.
Her gaze went to her mother’s prized rose garden and she gasped when she saw the familiar outline of her mother with her wide-brimmed straw hat and gardening gloves. Spooked almost out of her skin, she was about to back away from the window when the unthinkable happened. As if her mother could feel her watching her, she looked up, met her gaze and called up to her. “I’ve got pancake batter in the fridge. Your father should be home shortly, along with your brother. We can all have a good old-fashioned breakfast together.” Her mother’s words carried to her faintly on the wind. She couldn’t quite believe it but her mother looked the same as she remembered, and yet she seemed different as well. She was far older than Dallas remembered. It was almost as if she was seeing Bryony Hyde-Redgrave as she would have appeared had she not died all those years ago. “Well don’t give me such a goofy expression, Dallas. Go and freshen up and meet me in the kitchen in ten minutes.”
“No,” she whispered. “This can’t be real, so why does it feel so damn real? Why does everything smell the way it should and feel the way it should? I’ve gone half-mad, that’s the only explanation. It has to be the only reasonable explanation. The witch hunter’s torture broke something inside me and fractured my mind—that has to be it.” She sped through the house, marveling at the way everything looked so fresh and remarkably dust-free. It seemed as if the house had been cared for in a way she had never had the heart to do—or the money, if she was completely honest.
The stories she wrote for the local gazette didn’t exactly keep her flush with funds. She was usually just lucky that she could stock her fridge with the necessary items, and she was extremely lucky that her father sent money back home every month to keep what he could up and running.
When she entered the kitchen she noticed the fresh lavender in a vase on the middle of the dinner table. She looked to the calendar that hung on the fridge. It was the same date as it should be and yet…she felt as if she’d stepped into another dimension.
She moved to the fridge, opened it and gasped again as she saw the bowl with her mother’s famous pancake batter, covered with plastic wrap. “No, this can’t be happening.” Where were Finley and Oliver? Nothing made an ounce of sense.
The front screen door banged shut and she heard her mother removing her shoes. “We’re having lovely early autumn weather, Dallas. I can’t wait until the fall colors are at the height of their beauty.”
She backed away from the sound of her mother’s voice. Someone had put another whammy on her. Somehow those witch hunters had come back and they’d figured out the very worst way to torture her.
“It’s a little hard to believe that your brother is getting married tomorrow. I just don’t know if we’re ready for it… The time has just flown by and the fact that you are not included in the wedding party still galls me.
“I wish I could put a hex on Adrian’s bitch of a bride. I also don’t know how Lacy is going to fit in with us. She’s always looking at me like I’m going to turn her into a frog. I guess I just hoped that Adrian would find himself a nice little witch to settle down with. Lacy just isn’t like us at all. I can totally understand why Anya isn’t going to make it. Damien wouldn’t be able to handle her attitude. He probably would turn her into a frog—or something worse.”
“You know who Damien is?” Dallas asked, her heart drumming loudly in her chest.
“Of course I know who Damien is,” her mother said, going to the sink to wash her hands. “And so do you. We were all at the wedding, remember, you silly goose?”
Dallas shook her head. No, she didn’t remember at all. She had never been away from Earth.
“I wasn’t at Anya’s wedding, Mom. She got married on Vanguard Prime, and I never