Witches in Wonderland

by J. D. Winters

  It was a knife. Not any knife, but a curvy, creepy Medieval-looking thing that fit the description I’d heard of the knife found in Gordon’s collection. In fact, this could have been the very one that had been the real murder weapon for poor Kenny.

  Clarissa eyed me knowingly, and said just what I was thinking. “Ah hah! The real murder weapon. Now we just have to—”

  A scream cut off what she was saying, coming from right inside the house. We glanced at each other, then we each took off, racing to the front steps.

  I got to the door first and twisted at the knob, slamming into it with my shoulder. I nearly fell inside, but somehow kept myself upright, and face to face with the terrible scene.

  It was like the night of the murder was playing itself over again, but with a different victim. Phyllis was there, in the place of Kenny, on the ground, laid out on the pentagram. There was, thank heavens, no knife sticking out her chest, but she was moaning and the grim and terrible figure of Hector stood over her. I knew without having to be told that he had knocked her down the stairs and this was where she’d ended up. He’d shoved her down, just as he had bowled me over the other night. And now I could see hate gathering in him, hate and power.

  Phyllis moaned again, and her eyes blinked like she was waking from a dream. He growled and his lips pulled back revealing ugly, jagged teeth. He beat his chest like a gorilla, yelled and spittle came down like rain. He was going to hurt her. His intent was obvious and harmful. He raised his arms and snarled and I knew I had to do something to stop him.

  “No!” I shouted, and I broke the law again. I put all of my power into my voice, and my hands, and pushed. Using magic without the words, without the written spells and without the ingredients might kill me one day, but I wasn’t going to let somebody else die in my house.

  Everything I had, I put against that ghost.

  Only, ghosts don’t have a lot to push against. They’re not people, so a collection of force that would have knocked a man, even the size of Hector, into the next county, pushed the ghost just a couple of feet. It’s like wrestling with a cotton ball. A murderous cotton ball, but still.

  I was the one who fell over--from exertion. Clarissa came in just as I fell. I watched her like it was slow motion, my brain was so overloaded from what I’d tried to do, and failed. Hector took a step forward, stopped… and waited. Not like he was thinking (and can ghosts even think? Not the time for that question) but like he was…

  Waiting for orders. Whose orders? Who had any power over him? That was the question. Clarissa had said she needed me to help her control him and get him where he had to be. So here I was. And who was controlling him now?

  “Haley, hold on,” Clarissa said, standing just inside the doorway, holding out her talisman from one of her little lengths of the scarfing, pulling out the rest of them as she extended it. I saw so many of those small things I’d seen before, but I was staring at one, a set of beads. Did they remind me of something?

  “I don’t know if I can hold him back,” Clarissa said, strain in her voice. She looked like she was pushing against a wall… but Hector just stood there. His face had become slack.

  “What happened?” I said as I got up. “Why is he angry with Phyllis? And why is Phyllis even here?”

  “Getting rid of evidence, of course. Don’t you get it? Gran Ana probably sent her. She threw that knife into the bushes so the cops would eventually find it here and not in her possession—or Gran Ana’s. And they can both claim not to have been here at any time relevant to the murder. It was just luck she decided to go inside and that Hector was here. Or else…”

  I looked at Hector. Where was his rosary? I looked quickly at Clarissa. Weren’t those rosary beads she was clutching? Yes. Was that how she was controlling Hector? Then what was all this pretense of holding him back with her own brand of magic?

  I waited for it. Clarissa grunted, and fell back a step. Hector stepped forward. His hands also came up, and clutched, listlessly. Looking at a ghost, seeing through it and not seeing it at the same time, was a particularly mind-bending experience, which made it hard to take in details like his expression. Or what he wore.

  “Or else what?” I pushed.

  “Or else Gran Ana made it happen,” she said, giving me a crafty look. “Haley, I can’t keep this up. You go on, run, I’ll do what I can. Get the cops.”

  “Oh, I will,” I said, looking at her with a bit of outrage in my gaze. I think Clarissa caught the sudden shift in my tone right away, because all at once her pretending to be pushing so hard faded. She glared at me, the look on her face half anger, half impressed.

  “I was wondering when you’d figure it out,” Clarissa said. “Good, now you won’t have to have an accident with Hector. But Phyllis will.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d figured much of anything out, but I did know that Clarissa was evil--scary evil. It seemed to ooze from every pore. But I also knew that she was powerful, much more powerful than I was. So I was going to have to tread lightly here. What now?

  She had that twisted dagger in her hand and she was speaking in some strange language, maybe Mandarin, maybe something else. Her words didn’t matter, the repetition and rhythm were enough to put a normal person into a mesmerizing spell. Luckily, I wasn’t normal.

  I watched as she repeated her magic words, then suddenly, the knife she still had in her hand flew up to the ceiling. It was pointed downward, right at the still prone body of Phyllis beneath. I gasped, fully expecting disaster.

  Clarissa turned and looked at me with a challenging glare. “Do you want to do the honors?” she said.

  What was she thinking? And why was she still talking to me like we were partners?

  “Oh, come on,” she said, as though she’d read my mind. “I know that you’re chaffing under the tyranny of Gran Ana. And the cops telling you when you can and can’t do magic. You ought to take over this haven town on general principle. You were born to it. It’s yours to take.” She laughed softly, looking sly. “Except you’re not strong enough yet. You’ll need help to overthrow your grandmother. And that’s why I’m here.”

  My mind had seriously boggled at that point. Clarissa was here to stage a coup d’etat? She planned to knock my grandmother out of power, even frame her? --and take over for herself—meanwhile pretending to be doing it for my sake—and all in order to get me to help her? Was she crazy?

  Or was I?

  I hesitated, not sure which way to move, not sure I had a prayer of defending myself against her superior power, but completely sure it had to be done. It was all clear now. Clarissa was indeed a sorceress. She had attached herself to Kenny’s little band of merry filmmakers in order to gain access to this haven. If she’d announced who she was from the start, no one would have allowed her to come in.

  Only one sorceress is allowed. One at a time. Anything else brings on rivalry and rebellion—and murder.

  Did she really think I would help her against my own grandmother? Think again, Clarissa!

  But my moment of indecision seemed to convince the sorceress that she was getting somewhere with me. She was smiling now, and she began to amplify her appeal.

  “Don’t you see how it can work for both of us? I have the superior strength, so I do what must be done and let you have free reign where you prefer. When I get sick of the haven life, you get the top slot. I won’t plunder everything, don’t worry. There will be plenty left for you.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” I said, staying calm. It seemed to be a good time to let her play out her hand. That way I could get a plan of my own together. “What do you mean?”

  Clarissa rolled her eyes. “Okay, first things first. How did you find me out? What gave me away? I mean, no one else had really suspected me of the murder. Not yet, anyway.”

  Wow, I hadn’t thought she would so directly confirm what was just a suspicion. If only all murderers confessed so quickly… except most murderers didn’t have such an obvious and incredible mag
ical talent. Her willingness to talk about it showed she thought I was no threat to her. That didn’t make me feel any better.

  I swallowed hard. “I was suspicious from the start. But right now, when you found the knife and called it the ‘real’ murder weapon, I got that proverbial bolt from the blue. That pretty much gave you away. How would you know that the kitchen knife wasn’t the real murder weapon, unless you were the one who switched it?”

  She nodded, considering what I’d said. “Not bad. But I couldn’t really be blamed. It was a bit sloppy, as murders go. I wasn’t planning to get rid of him so soon. Oh, I wanted him gone, just on general principles. What a jerk. But my plans got speeded up. There he was, sneaking around with his idiotic cameras, recording everything, and I was trying to get my potion prepared.”

  “You mean when you burned the herbs on the second floor landing?”

  “Exactly. He came out and caught me at it, yelling and screaming about fire danger. But first he got footage of me messing with magic on tape. No dummy there. And he was revving up to use it against me, for sure. Not to mention planning to use it in his show. I couldn’t allow that.”

  “Did you do something to his camera?”

  “Sure. I put a hex on it. I couldn’t let that footage get out. But I might have been able to deal with Kenny himself and convince him in other ways, until Hector got involved. The big dummy went a little crazy at all the arguing and he ran through the area yelling, “No, no, no!” and suddenly there he was, shoving Kenny down the stairs, and I thought, well, why not take advantage of the situation and get rid of the fool? So I did.”

  “Oh!” Even though I was pretty sure she was guilty, I wasn’t prepared for her to be so blasé about it.

  “Besides, I could use his life force to enhance my regeneration spell. So it all worked out for the best.”

  She was nothing if not cold-hearted. Poor Kenny. He didn’t have a chance. “But you switched the knives? Why?”

  “Sure. This is a special dagger, imbued with centuries of magic. I wasn’t going to leave that around for the cops to lose in their evidence room. Besides, I was saving it for the grand finale. Which we are acting out right now.”

  “I see.” I was desperate to find a way to keep that knife from coming down on Phyllis.

  “I knew you’d catch on eventually. I left enough magical clues around here that I thought you would pick up on it earlier, but maybe you just haven’t been trained right. I’ll fix that. Once we get Gran Ana nice and convicted.”

  “You really think you can put the blame on her that easily?”

  “Sure. You’ve laid the groundwork for that yourself. Telling people you thought Gran Ana was controlling Phyllis to get things done. Oh yes, dear. I do hear things I’m not supposed to.” She chuckled. “Hey, how did you like it when I got that ghost to pretend to be your Aunt Tina and had her tell you bad things about your grandmother? I had to do a lot of research for that one, but I thought I set that up rather well. That numbskull Derek fell for that one too.”

  This woman was even more diabolical than I’d thought. How was I going to combat her power?

  “So now we kill Phyllis, blame it on Gran Ana. And just stand back and let the good times roll.”

  “How…how are you going to frame Gran Ana?”

  “Easy. Gran Ana ought to be here in about…” She consulted a watch attached to one of her scarves. “Fifteen minutes. Don’t worry, she won’t see us. But she will see Phyllis, killed with a magic dagger, and your cop will come in just in time to catch her trying to pull it out and escape with it. Don’t worry. He won’t see us either. But we’ve got to get going.”

  “Wait.” I was terrified she would release the dagger and stab Phyllis with it no matter what I did or said. It was poised perfectly, trembling as though eager to do it’s terrible deed. How was I going to stop it?

  “What about the beads,” I said a little breathlessly, pointing at the scarves and their many decorations. “That’s a rosary. It used to be on Hector’s wrist. I saw it in a video and in a dream. How did you actually take something like that from a ghost?”

  “Wasn’t easy,” she said. “But I’m one of the most powerful sorceresses in the world. Watch.”

  With a flick of her wrist the knife flew down—aimed right at Phyllis’ heart, right in the place where Clarissa had stabbed Kenny. What could I do? No time. I tried to gather all my magical strength, found nothing, and then just threw my denim jacket in the way.

  My timing, at least, worked. I whipped my jacket out, and the bulk and weight of the fabric knocked the knife off it trajectory. But it was moving like a fist, and slammed into the floor inches from Phyllis’s face, pinning my jacket like an animal skin to the ground.

  “Oh, boy, that was a mistake,” Clarissa said, her voice very quiet, her eyes blazing red again.

  “What’s the point? She doesn’t have to die!” I spit out, crouching close to her.

  “Sure she does. She dies, we testify about how Gran Ana was controlling her and needed to get rid of the evidence, the council gets in the way, and I, as the only qualified sorceress take over.”

  She took a step back, and weirdly seemed to grow. The lights seemed to dim, and I could feel the magic coming off of Clarissa like waves of heat. Yikes.

  “And I only had half a hope that you would join in. If that didn’t work, I was going to console myself with devouring your life force, like I did with Kenny,” she said, taking a step forward. “After all, a girl can’t have too much regeneration, can she?” Suddenly, she looked as ugly in wildly exaggerated ways as any woman I’d ever seen.

  The lights got even darker. The scarves around her neck seemed to quiver, as though they were suddenly alive, like snakes. All kinds of magic shimmered around her.

  “After all, you don’t get to 152 without having a little help from generous life donors, like yourself.”

  With a whispered word, the knife flew up, and then suddenly Hector was behind, me, holding me in the chilling grip of the undead. I was caught, and this woman was going to steal my life and magic away from me—that life which Gran Ana had bought at such a high price. It couldn’t be, and yet it seemed to be happening. I felt a horrible dread build in my chest, and an aching sorrow begin to flow through my veins. I was desperate. I had to find a way…

  She lifted her hand up, and her expression was like a mad woman’s, filled with a wild glee. She was a force for destruction and she was in her element.

  But suddenly, her face became confused, and her back arched.

  “What the—” she cried, twisting in place, reaching toward her back, slapping at it.

  ‘What the’, indeed. It had to be…it looked just like… Oh, I almost broke out into hysterical laughter.

  “Ouch. Get away! There’s something in my—” She shrieked just as a tiny animal wriggled incredibly quickly up out of her collar and scrambled to the end of her hand. Shrimp gave me a cute look. Then he opened his mouth. He might have looked like a Disney character, but he had a very real set of rodent chompers.

  And he chomped, right on the wrist that held the dagger.

  Clarissa shrieked and reeled back, dropping the dagger on the ground. It bounced happily, ending up on Phyllis’ chest, almost as though mocking Clarissa’s intentions.

  Meanwhile, Hector seemed enchanted with watching Shrimp. He forgot all about me and his grip loosened. I slipped out of it and got a distance away.

  “Get the dagger!” I heard Mandy shriek, but I saw the red fox leap into the doorway to plant her own teeth in the sorceress’s ankle.

  Clarissa screamed. The house seemed to shudder. There would be maybe a second where I’d have a chance to do something, then her greater magical power would coalesce, and all three of us would be sacrifices to her long life and happiness.

  So I leaped…

  Not for the dagger, which had landed on Phyllis. I leaped for Clarissa, who had flung Shrimp away and had a foot up, ready to stomp on the little red fox. I grabb
ed at the rosary beads, and yanked them away from her.

  They were tied tightly, and when I pulled, throwing my weight backwards, the entire ring of scarves they were secured to cracked open from my effort. Scarves flew everywhere, like brightly colored banners of rage.

  I fell on my back, and Hector looked down at me while Clarissa screamed in horrible anger. I held up the beads, making my grip loose. Those bone cold hands reached through them, and somehow the beads themselves became ghostly and transparent.

  Hector’s raging expression calmed for an instant, then was back as it turned on Clarissa, who surely was ready with some sort of assault. I hoped I’d bought us enough time…

  Except she wasn’t readying a spell, or grabbing the dagger or doing anything threatening to cute animals. She was whipping around in space, clutching at the broken glass scarf ring around her neck, the ruby red peacock. Something like sand was pouring out of it, and as I watched the sand go, I saw wrinkles form in her skin. She desiccated on the spot, all that stolen life force leaking out of her.

  In a matter of seconds, she was crumpled up, withered, small and unable to stand.

  But she was not dead.

  She looked at me, her eyes filled with burning hatred, and fierce life.

  Then she looked away and muttered, in an impossibly dry, ancient voice, “Cheater.”

  Chapter 20

  My hands were shaking as I tried to put in a call to Shane. My breath was coming so hard, I almost wondered if Hector had done something to my lungs. I knew we didn’t have much time. Clarissa was down but she wasn’t out. Given a moment or two, she would begin to gather her magic back in ways that would be hard to fight. She was already hissing and rolling around on the floor. I had to get this right. I’d come this far and I didn’t want to lose the advantage. I needed back-up--fast.

  But my fingers wouldn’t cooperate and I swore softly, trying to get the number right, and then suddenly, Gran Ana was there and she snatched the phone out of my hands.

  “Relax,” she said, surveying the situation. “You don’t need the police. Not yet. I’ll handle this.”