Never Trust a Dead Man by Vivian Vande Velde

it all the way here without him, as though she hadn't been in the habit of carrying it herself before she met him. With her finger she traced a circle on his forehead. "Seven days before the circle closes," she said, using the voice that he already recognized as her voice of power. She walked around him, her finger still touching so that she made another circle, this one going around his head, from his forehead, over his right ear, around the back, over his left ear, back to his forehead. "Seven days, then you will be drawn to me." She moved the finger down, over nose, lips, chin, and neck, then off to the left, where she made a circle over his heart. "Seven days, and you will have to come to me." She laid her palm over his heart.
    Selwyn felt the beat alter, the rhythm shifting—he suddenly knew without knowing how he knew—to match hers.
    She withdrew her hand, adjusted the backpack, and started walking.
    "Wait," Selwyn called after her. He'd never been here before, on the far slope of the hill that held the burial cave; he'd never heard of this second entrance. But he could get his bearings by the tall hill that was called the Grandfather because it somewhat resembled the profile of an old man with a beard. "Penryth is that way."
    "
Go
that way," Elswyth called, without even looking back. "Come to me in seven days."
    So she wasn't going to stay to get him out of any trouble he might get himself into: He could have guessed that. "But I don't know where you live." Selwyn took several steps to keep her within hearing. "Beyond the wood, did you say?" Not that that helped: The whole area was heavily wooded. The only witch he had ever heard of nearby was in the village of Woldham, but that one was tiny and stooped and gnomelike, by all accounts, and had only one good eye. Elswyth, though white haired and wrinkled, stood tall and straight, and he hadn't noticed that either of her eyes was cloudy.
    "
In
the wood," Elswyth corrected. She turned then to look at him. "You will find me." She gestured toward him, then toward herself, resting her hand against her own heart. Selwyn's heart did an odd, almost-painful flutter. "In seven days, you will be drawn to me irresistibly. You will be unable to
keep
from finding me."
    She let her hand drop, and Selwyn's heart stopped its frantic racing, his head cleared of the buzzing that had suddenly filled it, the muscles in his arms and legs stopped throbbing, and he could catch his breath.
    Elswyth turned once more, and Selwyn would have let her go, but something smacked into the back of his head.
    "I just can't manage those landings," Farold said. "And gnats and midges taste terrible. Have you ever tasted gnats or midges? Why couldn't you have made me a fruit-eating bat? What's the plan? Are you going to let her go before you have a plan? That doesn't sound very smart to me. What if you need her magic again, and you've gone and let her go?"
    Finally, someone had said something that got Elswyth's attention. "
Do
you need another spell?" she asked, coming back.
    Selwyn could guess where
that
conversation was heading. "No," he assured her.
    "Yes," Farold said, settling once more on Selwyn's shoulder.
    Selwyn snapped at him, "You want to deal with her, you make your own arrangements."
    "
I
don't need her magic," Farold said. "
You
do." Before Selwyn could object, Farold continued, "I can walk—so to speak—right into Penryth, and not a person is going to recognize me. Is that your plan? To have me listen outside people's windows and hope to overhear someone saying to himself, 'Ho hum, last Tuesday 1 murdered Farold and nobody knows it What will I do for fun next Tuesday? Maybe I'll murder Bowden,' and then I can tell Bowden that whoever-it-is is going to murder him and we can lie in wait and catch him trying, and then he'll admit to killing me, and so everyone will know you weren't the one, and you can come back? Is that your plan? Because as soon as anybody sees
you,
how do you think they're