Loretta’s push, as slight and as isolated as it was, had been executed with deadly force. It wasn’t deadly but it had been intended to be. That was what still moved a great number of subatomic particles, in this case as a wave, rippling after Loretta had pushed them.

Those particles oscillated at a particular frequency at a wavelength very unique to Loretta and her lineage. With the exception of a high frequency receiver turned exactly to her and a trio of woman connected by their bloodline and located at Langley, only three other people could “feel” or receive Loretta’s push.

Loretta’s bundle of particles traveling at right angles to each other circled the earth in harmonic waves just a tad bit under the speed of light or 186,282 miles per second. In that second of time for Loretta’s unique push, felt more as a pulse, her particles traveled 24,900 miles. Those particles passed through Loretta’s mother, grandmother and great grandmother 6 times before they dissipated over the ether.

500 years before Columbus, near the time the Norse explorer Leif Eriksson discovered America, Loretta’s relatives settled near London. Following the purge most of Loretta’s family were captured and killed. By World War II a few still survived. Three at the end of it. Their papers would show they came through Ellis Island.

It would be a family irony, and worth a laugh or two still that they’d chose a site at the Southwest tip of Salem Massachusetts. It wasn’t that far from Salem Woods and a bit isolated and somewhat dilapidated and that facade was to die for. If you were a witch and wanted a house that might look like a house a witch would own, this was the house.

It even had a local history for connections to witches. The realtor told them of witchcraft and trials. When it came time to buy it was a nearly perfect marriage of seller and buyer. Even the neighbors loved the idea of two women and a child living there. Hide in plain sight someone once said as renovations began in 1945. By 1946 life was being lived and Loretta’s mother, a little girl then, was riding the bus down Highland Ave to school.

So it was that the only real home Loretta’s family had ever known suddenly came alive as Henretta’s hand jerked. Henretta was sitting at a 200 year old high wooden writing desk deep in the mansion they owned for over five decades now. The hand carved leather bound book she was writing into was her second and nearly half full since it began.

The first sat on a pedestal designed for it. Like the second it had been done with ink crafted from a thousand year old Chinese firm in a black that looked like glass even after it dried on paper also handmade. Henretta had been using Japanese paper only because it too was handmade.

Of course the paper was also acid free, resisted bugs and had those long smooth fibers that made it feel like silk. Henretta sighed as she stood and sat the homemade quill down. She came up slowly allowing the muscles in her back to catch up, warm up and stretched.

Henretta was Loretta’s maternal great grandmother and she felt the pulse first. It was her age that gave her those dozen milliseconds of advantage. She knew exactly what happened as she gently put the vintage quill pen down. It wasn’t a magical pen but some things were special. The book had much of her family history in it.

Henretta had been writing down the spells she’d been taught. A project twenty years long so far. She opened and closed her hand. It was not quite a shiver, more like a slight tremor and Henretta got hold of it quickly. She was still looking off into the distance as her daughter Geraldine, Loretta’s grandmother, and Rosaline, Loretta’s mother, came rushing in.

“You felt it,” Geraldine asked noting her mother’s hand still shaking slightly for that instant.

“I did,” Henretta said as she added, “it was Loretta”.

“My granddaughter just pushed,” Geraldine said turning in shocked amazement at Rosaline.

“I know,” Rosaline said easing into the room to stand between her own mother and grandmother.

“We’ve got to know why,” Henretta said softly extending her aging hands. Her daughter and granddaughter took hold stopping, for a time that shiver with a loving handclasp. One of their own was in trouble.

All three immediately joined to strengthen their image of Loretta. Their viewing might seem magical but it wasn’t much more complicated than the focusing effects of what the CIA had been working on since 1956 with their near-field magnetic induction communication systems. It was one of the reasons they even knew about witches and their ability to “push” or “pull”.

Henretta, Geraldine and Rosaline closed their eyes as an appendage near the base grew warmer and together began using their inherent ability to find the best magnetic lines flowing over the earth. They began following a series of soft repealing folds in that fabric of electromagnetic lines of flux into a path. Those same particles the Earth held from a constant bombardment from the Sun coalesced and sped off to where Loretta was.

If you had the advantage of fluoroscopy coupled with thermal imaging and turned it on the women you’d see their brainstem portions where it touched the cerebellum begin to radiate. At the bottom of their cerebellums that appendage wiggled and twisted more as it communicated with several parts of their own hypothalamus. The very source of the Push was also the attractor for the Pull as it became fully awake.

The roadmap became as clear as if they were migrating birds aligning themselves to travel the globe to any point they desired. They couldn’t fly. In spite of the rumors, witches don’t fly, but Henretta, Geraldine and Rosaline did the next best thing and simply moved together exponentially. With their consciousness linked they found the lines they needed and rode along them with blinding speed.

They arrived within the blink of an eye and shimmered over Loretta and what they were sure was a young man. Loretta was walking him across a parking lot. He appeared doubled over as if injured. All three viewed Loretta and that young man but their view gave no reason why Loretta had pushed.

They lingered above, moved around them, but gained nothing from watching. They shifted, circled again, and watched a moment more. They spread over the parking lot, Rosaline maybe twenty to thirty feet above the pavement. They moved higher joining into what witches call a spin to see outwardly from where Loretta was.

Nothing?

They spun three hundred and sixty degrees twice, all three sets of eyes and their senses fully open. If Loretta was in danger they would see that connection, those lingering lines, but there was nothing. They waited just in case. Still nothing? Nothing at all. They began to slowly let go, then fully, and they were back.

“Who was that,” Rosaline asked back in the room in her corporeal form.

“I don’t know,” Geraldine said.

“Nor I,” Henretta added.

“She was confessing to him,” Henretta noted in desperation as the words had vibrated through the aether.

“I could hear,” Geraldine noted as she said, “why is she using the aether?”

I don’t know,” Henretta noted. “It may have been for our benefit?”

“But you know if we can hear so can the Agent at the Agency,” Geraldine said.

“I know, but only if they are listening,” Rosaline noted.

“Do you think she wanted them to hear her,” Geraldine asked to no one in particular.

“I’m wondering that now myself,” Rosaline said.

“They are listening. You know they are. She got their attention when she pushed. They are going to seek her out sooner or later and that young man she pushed. Most likely sooner,” Henretta noted and added, “one of us needs to go to her before that happens.”

“I’ll go,” Rosaline said in a whisper just after the viewing as she added, “she’s my daughter. Odd, that it’s a male and he’s definitely not a familiar?”

“Why would she be doing that,” Geraldine asked to no one in particular.

“I don’t know,” Rosaline said and added, “but I’ll definitely ask her when I see her.”

“Hurry,” Henretta said turning to her granddaughter Rosaline. Geraldine also nodded her approval as they shook free of their séance and viewing. Rosaline turned for the stairs. She would pack for her trip as Geraldine dialed for her familiar. Hilda was also doing duties as her secretary

“Hello,” Hilda answered,

“Witches don’t fly,” Geraldine said saying the first part of her password to Hilda confirming who she was.

“Unless it’s first class,” Hilda answered with the second part confirming who she was.

That second part connected to the first gave both permission to converse freely. Hilda typed in the information as Geraldine spoke. Witches were a practical race and had followed and embraced technology faster than anyone.

Hilda, Geraldine’s familiar, scanned the link that hooked to the airlines and found the information that would put Rosaline in Loretta’s city directly. When Geraldine hung up the phone she looked at the old grandfather clock and calculated that Rosaline had three hours before her flight.

Glen, Geraldine’s driver handyman and another familiar, picked up the estate intercom in the garage and answered. Geraldine would need him to drive Rosaline to the airport she said suggesting the Bentley for its speed.

The Bentley also had the electronic jamming installed for the interstate cameras that tried recording license plates to ticket those that drove too fast. The Embassy plates gave them a little leeway with the state police and highway patrol and if traffic got too difficult there were also lights and sirens.

Glen acknowledged Geraldine’s request, hung the service phone up and removed the canvas apron he was wearing while polishing the Rolls-Royce. He had been a follower of the Wiccan faith before the fall that injured him. He had been with Loretta’s family under a generous pension ever since.

Hilda called Hertz next and Hyatt Regency in Loretta’s city putting the information onto a print out with her tickets and boarding pass. She folded everything into an envelope to give to Rosaline as she came down the stairs for the ride to Boston’s airport

“Best speed Glen,” Rosaline said looking out the window and wondering what her daughter was up to.

“Yes ma’am,” Glen said and then added, “GPS shows us clear all the way down 107 to Logan International. Thirty-one minutes to the gate. I’ve got you going in on a diplomatic visa.”

“Thank you Glen,” Rosaline said.

Glen pressed a switch, then set the cruise control. The small high speed drone that left the bottom of the car, created at Cal Tech under a grant with DARPA had found a lot of use in Afghanistan. It now flew down the center of the freeway at 90 miles per hour just ahead of the Bentley. The drone radar was pin pointing every law enforcement vehicle with a GPS system. At twenty mile increments it found a light standard and hovered above it to wait for Glen to catch up.

Each police car, as the Bentley approached, got a radio call that notified it there was an emergency diplomatic vehicle traveling at high speed to Logan International Airport. No interception.

Rosaline’s 31 minute drive took 20 as she said goodbye to Glen and walked into the airport. Airport security looked at Rosaline, her diplomatic visa for a moment, wondered about the lapse they had, and decided he would turn in earlier than normal as he waved her through. Rosaline boarded an electric cart arriving a minute earlier for the VIP they were told was coming in and rode it to the gate.