by Harper Lin
“What’s the matter?” Aunt Astrid asked.
I didn’t say anything as I pointed to Blake’s car. I let go of my aunt’s arm and headed toward the beat-up old sedan. I looked inside, but no one was in it. I swallowed hard and looked around. Firemen hustled back and forth with hoses, sending arcs of water high into the air to fall on the fires consuming the coven’s hiding places. There was no sign of Blake or Cedar.
Carefully, I walked around the car and nearly tripped over Blake’s leg. He was lying on the ground, hidden by the curb, with a bloody goose egg on the side of his head.
Cedar was nowhere to be found.
24
Master Manipulator
“Blake!” I shouted.
Aunt Astrid hurried to us and peeked over my shoulder as I got down on my knees next to him. The concrete bit through my pants and dug into my flesh as I tried to get close to him. My other knee became cold and wet from the grass I was partially kneeling on. There was no good way to get close to Blake. All I could think was Don’t move him if he has a head injury. But I couldn’t just leave him there. If only Bea was with us, she’d be able to tell if his aura was flowing freely or if broken bones or destroyed nerves were getting in the way.
“Is he breathing?” my aunt asked.
“Yes. Yes, he is.” I gently stroked his face, which was still warm. “Blake? What happened to you? Wake up. Oh, please wake up.”
After a few horrifying seconds, his eyes fluttered. At first, all I saw were the whites as his eyes rolled around, but finally, they opened, and I could tell he recognized me right away.
“This is embarrassing,” he said as he raised his hand to touch the lump on his head. The pain made him wince.
“What happened? Where’s Cedar?” I asked as I struggled to get Blake to his feet.
“I don’t know. The last thing I remember is trying to get that statue from her. She somehow cracked me against the head with it, and down I went.” He swallowed hard as he looked inside his car. “I’ve got to put an APB out on her. She’s a loose cannon.”
“Yeah, and then you’re going to go with one of these EMTs to the hospital,” I said.
“We’ve got to catch her. Cath, she’s dangerous,” Blake said as he sat down on the passenger’s seat and picked up his radio to call in to the station.
“Blake Samberg, you let those men take a look at your head,” Aunt Astrid ordered. “Or else I’ll have to ban you from the café for one year.”
A slight grin tickled the right corner of his lips, and he reluctantly nodded. Aunt Astrid hurried over to the EMTs to inform them Blake had been hurt.
“You are lucky I was here,” I said.
“I am,” Blake said. “How is your aunt?”
“She’s just fine. But now we’ve got to worry about Cedar. Do you think she’s still around here somewhere? Do you think she’ll try anything?” I asked after Blake called in to the station to report on Cedar Kolowonski, aka Cedar Lott, who was on the run.
“I don’t think so. It isn’t like she can blend into a crowd. They’ll find her.” Blake carefully got out of the car.
I could tell his head was really hurting, and I was glad that he’d be going to the hospital, where not only could they look him over, but he could get a little rest.
We walked to the ambulance, and the EMT knew Blake by name. Blake hopped up on the tailgate of the open ambulance and told the tech what had happened. It took a few seconds for the man to tell Blake he would need X-rays and that he’d probably have to stay overnight.
“I’ll come see you first thing in the morning,” I promised.
“Take my car.” Blake handed me the keys. “Get some rest yourself.”
“We’ll go pick up Bea and then head home. Do what the doctor tells you, and don’t bore him with facts about primitive medical procedures like leeches or eating arsenic.” I winked.
Before I could turn away, Blake took me by the hand and pulled me to him. He kissed me in front of the EMT, my aunt, and all the firemen, who were thankfully busy putting out the fires. By the time he let me go and I was walking back to his car, my cheeks were as bright red as the fire trucks.
“What a night,” I said to my aunt, who was grinning at me as if she was picking out a day in May for a wedding to take place. “Oh, stop. Let’s go get Bea.”
“I didn’t say a word,” Aunt Astrid replied.
We drove to the police station, and the place was as active as Peabody Street, with emergency city construction crews sizing up the damage to the part of the building where Sheila had knocked in the barred window. It had to get fixed immediately.
“Look at this mess,” I said.
“What a shame. All this time now to be wasted because of those witches,” Aunt Astrid said. “And don’t think I’m not just mortified that I had to be kept in that cell. I’ll never live it down. Never in a million years.”
“Aunt Astrid, you were not yourself. Those women had done something to you when they cut your hair,” I said as I gently pulled a few of the blond and silvery-gray strands.
“They snuck in, Cath. I never had any desire to join another coven. Some of them are rather prestigious and exclusive, and I know they would be thrilled to have the Greenstone name in their registry,” she said, her chin held high. “Why, the Rothchilds, just a stone’s throw away from being blood-sucking vampires and quite backward in their thinking, will pop up out of nowhere every few years to ask me if I’d be interested in joining their coven. Talk about wanting world domination. I hate to break it to Cedar, but she’s way behind the curve.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Oh yes. But I always thought our little group of three, here in Wonder Falls, was just perfect.” She smiled.
“But why did you want to spend so much time with them? Why did you let them cut your hair? You said it was nice to be with other witches, like Bea and I weren’t nice to be around.”
I hadn’t meant to be rude to my aunt, but I couldn’t understand why she had thought the Sect was so wonderful when they had given me the heebie-jeebies the first time I’d met them. Aunt Astrid was usually such a keen judge of character.
“At first, I thought they were pleasant. To be honest, Cath, I thought it was nice to have found another group of women who shared our special gifts. We are, after all, not like other people.” She winked at me. “But then I started to hear them say strange things, like ‘seeking revenge,’ and they didn’t have any real gifts other than perhaps the gift of persuasion. Cedar was a smooth talker, if nothing else.”
I shook my head as we drove. “Did they ever tell you what they had planned for Bea?”
“No. They told me what they had planned for you,” Aunt Astrid said, her eyebrows pinched together. “What did they say about Bea?”
My chest tightened as I told her what I’d heard them saying about Bea and the baby. Just the thought of anyone hurting that baby—or any baby—made my heart break.
“Oh, Cath. I didn’t know any of that,” Aunt Astrid said as tears filled her eyes. “Sadly, I was under the assumption that they were going to invite me into the coven then Bea. Cedar and Ethel had told me that there was no room for you.”
“Nice,” I replied, not at all surprised.
“It wasn’t until later, when I asked why you wouldn’t be allowed to join, that I realized that they didn’t know you had the gift of telepathy with animals,” Aunt Astrid said as she folded her hands in her lap. “I thought it had been an oversight, that perhaps they hadn’t read the Greenstone history where the lineage of our gifts is recorded. But it became apparent, only after it was too late to turn back, that they were only using me to bring the Kly to this dimension. That demon could see me like I was a lighthouse on a stormy sea. Once he caught sight of me, he’d follow me no matter where I went, devouring everything in his sight.”
“But we stopped them.” I patted my aunt’s hand as we pulled into the police station. “What kind of power did Cedar have? Actually, now that I th
ink about it, what powers did any of them have? I don’t recall there being a display of any kind of witchy power from any of them. I mean, they wore those cheap robes, and the Gingerbread House was decorated on the inside with cheap novelty décor. It was all rather embarrassing.”
“Funny that you say that,” Aunt Astrid said. “Cedar was a master manipulator. And I do believe she excelled at the power of suggestion. That was what helped her get into the minds of all those poor people on Peabody Street and get them to leave their homes, one way or another. I do believe she did the same to the women in her coven. And what she’d done to me. I barely realized it until it was almost too late.”
“So, she wasn’t a real witch?” I asked.
“She was a witch but not in the sense you and I are thinking,” Aunt Astrid replied. “She might have picked up a few tricks along the way. She’d obviously learned a few things about witchcraft and the history of certain sects, and she was very interested in us Greenstones. I couldn’t say why. But she was.”
“Well, of course she was. Who wouldn’t want to be part of our little clique?” I said after I stopped the car and shut off the engine. “Come on. Bea’s probably worried sick.”
We went inside the police station. It was crazy inside as they tried to figure out what had happened in the cell where the wall had been blown in. Aunt Astrid was nervously looking around as the morning shift of cops took the place of the skeleton crew that had been there when she was escorted to the holding cell.
“Don’t worry. We’ll just tell them you had too much to drink and you needed a safe place to dry out,” I soothed as I took her hand.
“Promise? That sounds so much better than the real reason I was here,” Aunt Astrid said with a grimace as if she’d just swallowed a spoonful of castor oil.
“Mom! Cath!” Bea shouted from the break room, a roast beef sandwich in her hand.
We waved and hurried to her before she could waddle across the room. “I was so worried. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Jake had to go on two separate food runs for me. And then he got the call about the fires on Peabody Street, and he nearly fainted from worry.”
“Where is he now?” Aunt Astrid asked.
“He went to the scene,” Bea said.
“Well, he’ll be fine,” I soothed. “The whole brawl has been busted up. Wait until you hear what happened.”
Just then, I felt the soft fur of Marshmallow and Peanut Butter against my legs.
“Where’s Treacle?” they both asked.
“He’s fine. Probably already home by now. How about it? You guys ready to go home too?” I asked and received a chorus of meows in the affirmative.
The police station was no place for the cats to be. Before anyone really noticed, we’d all slipped out of the station and into Blake’s old sedan. And within minutes, we were in Aunt Astrid’s driveway.
But something wasn’t right. I couldn’t put my finger on it. We all piled out of the car and headed into the house. I stood on the porch and looked around at the street, which was completely desolate at this late hour. What was it? What was I feeling?
“Bea?” I called her back outside for a second.
“What?” she asked as we stood in the open front door.
“Do you sense anything? Do you get the feeling something is off?” I looked over the banister of the steps leading up to the porch but saw nothing.
“No.” She shook her head. “But since I’ve been pregnant, I’ve kind of been like a compass next to a magnet. My whole system is off. Why? Do you feel something?”
“I’m not sure,” I mused. “It’s been such a long night.” I took a deep breath and saw Treacle trotting happily across the neighbor’s grass to the porch steps. He climbed up, looked at me casually as he rubbed up against my leg, and entered the house. Apparently he didn’t sense anything.
Bea and I both shrugged it off as fatigue and, in Bea’s case, fatigue and hunger. She went to Aunt Astrid’s kitchen as soon as I shut the front door and slipped the locks into place. Why I didn’t take everyone to my house I didn’t know. It was just across the street, and it would have been safe. Instead, I had brought everyone—Aunt Astrid, Bea and the baby, the cats, and myself—like lambs to the slaughter.
By the time I saw Cedar creeping down the staircase, it was too late.
25
A Real Witch
If I were to describe the face of hatred and insanity, it would have icy blue eyes and long, almost white-blond hair. Any trace of the woman who had gone by the name of Cedar Kolowonski or Cedar Lott was gone. Just her shell remained, and it was brimming with an even more intense revenge than anything Aunt Astrid had heard her speak of prior to this. She was covered in dirt and leaves as if she’d crawled along the ground the entire way from the Gingerbread House to here.
“Isn’t this nice? You’re all here,” she hissed as the huge cutting knife flashed in her hand. She’d pulled it from Aunt Astrid’s cutting block. How long had she been waiting here?
“Put the knife down,” Aunt Astrid said with a hint of fatigue in her voice. “It’s all over. Your plan didn’t work. You didn’t bring about the end of the world with the Kly doing your bidding.”
“Oh, but you are wrong,” Cedar said as she inched closer to Bea, who was still in the kitchen.
Aunt Astrid was half a dozen pieces of furniture away in the living room, and I was miles away at the front door. I could dash out and get help. But if I left, what would become of Bea and my nephew? As much as I hated to admit it, Cedar had us in her power. So I tried to think. And that was a task all its own.
“Cedar, you have no idea what you are doing. Witchcraft isn’t something you can steal. You are not a witch because you read a passage that opened up the portal to another dimension,” I snapped. “Any high school kid with teenage angst can accomplish that.”
“You! You’re the reason we are not marching through town now with the Kly wreaking havoc on this miserable Wonder Falls!” Cedar began to shake as she yelled at me. “But not everything is lost. I want that baby!” She whirled around to face Bea, whose eyes widened.
“No!” Aunt Astrid shouted.
“Don’t you touch her!” I took three steps toward Cedar and stopped.
Cedar thought this was all just one grand joke and began to chuckle at us. She shook her head. Her blond hair had become wild and snarled over the course of the evening, hosting a wide range of twigs and blades of grass and leaves.
“I may not have the same gifts as you do, but I can read. And while I was waiting, I read a very interesting book from your library. In fact, I found quite a few books that spelled out some very interesting afflictions that can be conjured up with just a few household items,” Cedar said. “So don’t tell me I’m not a real witch. What’s a witch, anyway, but someone who takes simple sources around her and uses them to inflict pain or justice on the masses?”
“That’s not what a witch is.” I screwed up my face and shook my head. “Tell me what book you read that in.”
“I want that baby,” Cedar demanded. “You took my coven from me. Why should I let you keep yours intact? You both could have been at my side, but you let this interloper, this fraud, this fake witch, deceive you.” She jerked her thumb at me.
“What is your beef with me, lady?” I snapped.
All Cedar did was snarl at me.
Marshmallow and Treacle swiftly slunk along the floor from one angle, and Peanut Butter did the same from the opposite angle, and they met up in front of Bea. Cedar growled in frustration and anguish as she took half a step toward Bea, only to have the cats hiss and swipe at her. Their ruffled fur had plumped them up, and their teeth and claws flashed like the knife had.
“You’d better tell them to step back,” Cedar said to me. “Or I’ll cut them into tiny pieces for stew.”
“I’m not telling them a thing,” I replied.
Cedar tried to get closer to Bea, but Marshmallow and Peanut Butter stood their ground. Even when she
swung the knife at them, they didn’t back down.
I couldn’t stand there any longer. I picked up one of Aunt Astrid’s pretty decorations, a silver picture frame that had a picture of the three of us in it, and aimed for her head. I managed to hit Cedar in the back again.
“What is it with you throwing things at my back?” she shouted, turning to glare at me.
In that second, Bea picked up her mom’s rolling pin and clobbered Cedar’s arm, making her drop the knife. It clanked to the floor, where Peanut Butter dashed for it and scooted it underneath the fridge with his paw. But before he could get away, Cedar raised her foot behind her and kicked with all her might. Peanut Butter flew into the wall and collapsed to the floor before shaking his head and pitifully limping toward the library and away from danger.
“Now you’ve done it,” I said and marched up to Cedar.
I had no fear. No worry for myself. No care if she had any trick up her sleeve. I’d had it. With all my might, I grabbed her around the collar with one hand and punched her in the face. She looked as shocked as I did when she teetered back and fell to the floor.
Bea got down on one knee and took hold of Cedar by both wrists. At first, she protested, called Bea all kinds of names, and tried to wriggle out of her grip. But Bea held fast, closed her eyes, and whispered a quiet spell that caused Cedar to lose a lot of her fight. As Bea held her wrists, it was obvious the pain on Bea’s face was what Cedar had been feeling.
Aunt Astrid, maneuvering slowly toward Cedar, sat down on her legs as she quickly placed a binding spell on her. Cedar’s eyes popped open wide as she tried to fight them off, only to find that her limbs were hampered by invisible weights, and she could no longer thrash about.
“Calm down, Cedar,” Aunt Astrid said. “Let it go. Let your hatred go.”