I dropped Debbie off at her house, and then headed home. It was time for a council of war.

Grandma had scanned my mind as I pulled in the driveway. My “public” mind was available, and she knew I was upset, but she couldn’t get through to my “private” mind, and she couldn’t figure out why.

“Emily? What’s wrong, hon?”

“Grandma, I’m not sure that anything’s really wrong-in a way, everything’s all right. I need to get Mom and whoever else I can together. I have some information that’s gonna rock your socks off!”

“Gwen and Debbie are on their way, do you want to have a full coven meeting?”

“As many as possible, this affects everyone.”

She looked unfocused for a second, then looked back at me,

“I asked Gwen to call as many as she could reach.”

I could easily feel Grandma’s fear, but how could I reassure her-maybe she wouldn’t believe me?

“Emily? You seem very different, and I’m concerned you might not be yourself.”

“I know you’ll have a hard time believing me, but I’m fine, I think the only way for me to do this is to show you what happened today. I’m going to let you in, so you can really see what happened. I have to tell you, some of it isn’t pretty, okay?”

“All right, honey.”

I sat back and relaxed, then dropped my shields and reached out to her, both mentally and physically. She held my hands, and my world changed, forever.

Suddenly, we were connected almost completely. We didn’t need to talk, we knew almost instantly everything we were going to say. We realized that this was due to the strange amplification from my ring. We maintained our individuality, but we shared information at a fantastic rate. In that exchange, I became an adult.

The hardest part, for me, was when I touched her memories of Grandpa. I can’t put into words what she showed me, it was almost too much for me. I thought what I felt for Tim was true love, but what I realized was that we had only scratched the surface. Real, true love isn’t something you find. It takes a lifetime to develop. I felt all their joys, their pains, the way they treasured each other and the tremendous loss swhe felt when he died. Even the slight desire to die, to not feel the terrible emptiness she felt without him. The waiting to be with him again, which was only bearable because of my mother and her family. I had never before realized how important we were to her.

We shared a vision of my future, with Tim and our children. It was beyond beautiful. But was it real?

I later learned that we had only been holding hands for less than a minute. I can tell you, it felt much longer than that. I opened my eyes, and I saw Grandma looking back at me. We were both in tears.

“Are you both all right?” Mom asked “What happened?”

“Emily wanted to show me what happened today. What we both forgot to consider was the ring. We ended up sharing so much more than we had planned.”

“Like what? Emily?”

“All I’m going to say, Mom, is that you sure were a beautiful, precious baby, and I love you more than I ever have.”

“You shared...everything? Oh, my God.”

“Not quite everything, Mom, although I think it might have been possible. I’m still Emily, and Grandma is who she always was, but we both changed, a little. I thought I had absorbed the minds of the three 'bad' witches, but that was almost nothing compared to this.

I just...downloaded almost a life time of memories-so many that I can’t comprehend all of them just yet. When I focus on something, the memories are there, almost like looking through the best library that there ever was.

“It was awesome, Jenny.” Grandma said. “It’s too much to describe, but the important thing is that we know what is going on now.”

Debi and Mama Gwen, along with a few other ladies of varying ages, began to arrive and we sat down in the living room. Mom grabbed a few other chairs, so everyone could sit down. When we had all settled, I began.

"Ladies, some very important things have happened today, and I need to show you all what occurred.

I had everyone take each other’s hands, and with Grandma helping with my control, we were able to show the coven everything.

When I forced the energy out of Grace, I was able to send a part of myself along, following the retreating energy. Everyone was surprised that I could even do that. I showed them how I went into the minds of the three “bad” witches, and how I absorbed all of their memories. I had then taken their minds, linked them together, and then I angrily twisted. The pain drove them unconscious, but most importantly, I left them in such a confused state that they were nearly in comas. I was sure they would recover fully, except that their ability to use magic was gone, completely. They would be healthy, but completely normal.

After my little “show” we talked about what I had taken from the three ladies. Once again, we linked, and I showed them the face of our enemy, the driving force behind all the bad things that had happened, lately. To their complete surprise, it was a man!

I didn’t know his real name, but he calls himself a shaman, and people called him Thomas, the restorer. He had taken the common desire for these conservative women to reclaim the good old days, back to when witches were considered leaders, teachers and guides for the common people. They weren’t wicked, but they were deluded and deceived by a man who claimed to be a sorcerer who had stepped forward in time, someone who had existed before the decline of men with magical abilities. Personally, I suspected a mutation.

He had a very powerful personality, and he had played these women, building himself a huge power base of several hundred women, all of them giving him complete access to their magic. His power rivaled mine, and he knew a lot about me, while I had only a smattering of information about him. I did know that he was fairly handsome, and that he liked the things of the good life. He planned to subjugate every coven, forming a power base that would be unbeatable.

He was angry at the way I had interfered with his plans. He knew that I was amazingly strong, but had very little experience or self-confidence. He was doing his best to deny me allies, and to steal my power. What he didn’t know was that between absorbing the three witches who tried to control Grace, and the umm, thing with Grandma (calling it a mind meld sounds so geeky, so Star Trek-ish), I had a world of experience, and new abilities that I had known nothing of before.

Here I had thought we were up against a force of evil women, and they turn out to be mostly just a bunch of deluded older women who were being scammed and used. Some of them were quite aware of everything he did, but they didn’t have the will or the power to do anything about it.

As I saw it, the problem was that we had to be careful to protect these women, while stopping them from allowing this magical con man to access their powers.

Can’t life just be a little easy, once in a while?

The general feeling around our coven was to do exactly as I had with the witches who tried to possess Grace. Attack small groups, remove their ability to fight or support this asshole, and bring down his power to a level that he could be defeated and controlled.

What we didn’t want was a face to face conflict with him at his full, stolen power. We didn’t really know how strong he was, or if I could stop him in a “one on one” fight.

Well, okay, so I wanted to rush right at him and take him out. I was so much stronger and wiser than I had been even this morning, and my confidence was at an all time high. No one, not even Grandma, would support me though.

Mom show me that it was foolish to go into a fight blind. If he somehow was able to possess me, the fight was pretty much going to be over. No one would be able to stand against us.

So that was where I backed off. I was going to be no one’s mind slave, especially when it was unnecessary. Okay, so we chip away at his power base until he’s really low on power, and then I can try the frog spell. Okay, I’m kidding, there isn’t really a spell like that.

Is there?