by Harper Lin
But it wasn’t going to work. Cedar and her hatred had become one. To separate them would mean certain death. All we could do was bind her to make sure she didn’t hurt anyone else before the police could come and get her for attempted murder, kidnapping, and cruelty to animals. She was on the floor, straight as a board and unable to move, when I left the room.
Peanut Butter was alone. I hurried to him and found he was hiding under the chaise longue.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“It’s hard to breathe. But I think I’m okay,” he said as he slowly inched his way out from under the chair.
“That was a really brave thing you did for Bea back there,” I said as I gently stroked his head. As I lightly ran my hands along his ribs, I tried to feel if anything was broken. Peanut Butter winced but didn’t cry out or scratch my hand away. I was hopeful he was just a little bruised. Bea would be able to confirm it.
“She’d have done the same for me,” he purred.
“You’re right. She would have,” I replied.
“Plus, the baby can’t wait to meet me. He kicks and bounces in her belly when I curl up and purr next to it,” Peanut Butter bragged before gingerly sitting down.
“Do you know it’s a he?” I asked, since all of Cedar’s witchy wherewithal had been called into question. She and the coven had said the baby was a boy, but perhaps they were just guessing. Or maybe they’d made their prediction based on one of those old wives’ tales.
“It’s a boy all right.” Peanut Butter looked up at me. “I felt him do the same thing when you entered the room and started talking.”
“You did?” I felt tears sting my eyes.
Peanut Butter didn’t do anything more than purr and rub his head against my hand. I scratched him behind the ears and told him to remain in the library until our guest was gone. Then Bea could check up on him, and hopefully we wouldn’t have to take him to the vet.
When I went back into the kitchen, Cedar was lying on the floor, her eyes frantically searching for something to bash all our heads in with if she got just one chance to do so.
“How are you feeling?” I shouted to her as if she were hard of hearing.
“I’ll get you for this,” she growled at me.
“Well, let’s see. I think we should do a little light reading while we are waiting for the cops, who will undoubtedly take you back to Chicago.”
I picked at her as Aunt Astrid called the police. She said, in her sweetest and most sincere voice, that she’d caught an intruder in her home and to please let Detective Jake Johnson know that his wife was doing just fine.
In a matter of minutes, we had a parade of police cars in front of the house, and Jake was leading the charge. He burst in and was at Bea’s side instantly.
“I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?” he asked as he kissed her on the cheek while the two uniformed cops helped Cedar to her feet and slipped a set of stainless steel bracelets onto her wrists.
“I’m all right. Thanks to Peanut Butter,” Bea said. “She kicked him. So now that you are here, I’m going to go check on him. Cath said he was all right, but I just want to make sure.”
“She kicked my cat?” Jake growled.
Bea hurried to the library, patting her belly the whole way.
I stepped in front of Jake before he could go and give Cedar a little taste of her own medicine.
“Bea held her wrists. It took a lot of fight out of her, and Aunt Astrid put a binding spell on her,” I said out of the earshot of the uniformed officers. “I think you better let Aunt Astrid give you and your men a quick spell of protection. Cedar isn’t like the Greenstones, but she’s got a way with words, and I’d hate to hear any of your guys fell under her spell.”
“Yeah, okay. And what was your part in all this?” Jake asked as he let out a deep breath.
“Oh, yeah, well, I punched her in the nose.” I shrugged.
“You did what?”
“I know. It’s not very witchy. I should have said ‘abracadabra’ or ‘hocus pocus’ before I did it. I just wasn’t thinking.” I took a deep breath and kept a straight face as Jake started to laugh. “I can also say, Detective, that I fail to see what’s so funny about the situation.”
“Wait until I tell Blake. You know, I expect the Greenstones to do things a little differently—take away Cedar Kolowonski’s ability to speak or maybe make the muscles in her legs turn to rubber.” Jake put his hand on my head as if I was his kid sister, which was how I always felt with him. “But a good old-fashioned punch in the nose? I never saw that as part of your repertoire.”
“Apparently, neither did she.” I polished my nails on my shirt.
Aunt Astrid casually put a protection spell on all of them as they took Cedar to the police station. I wondered where they were going to keep her since the primary holding cell was under construction. Well, it didn’t matter. Since Aunt Astrid and Bea had bound her persuasive powers and taken away some of the fire in her belly, I wasn’t worried she was going to get out again.
26
A Conspiracy
The next morning, as soon as the sun was up, I went to the hospital to check on Blake. I could hear him arguing with the doctor about the severity of his injuries and saying that men had gone through battles during World War II with more severe wounds and survived just fine.
I peeked into the room. It looked like a hotel room, with a big window to take in the street view, soothing sage paint on the walls, a comfortable love seat in front of the window, and an extra seat in the corner beside a tiny round table. The only thing that made a person realize they were in a hospital room was the weird bed with wheels on it and the computer and monitor next to it that blipped and beeped and flashed while displaying a heartbeat line, a blood pressure line, and a couple of other lines that all indicated the patient was alive. The television was mounted on the wall across from the bed, and Blake had obviously been watching some home-improvement show, which was now muted as he spoke to the doctor. Or maybe it was more that he complained to the doctor.
“I understand, Detective, but we aren’t in a war, and we have the luxury of keeping you here until you are really better. That means you will not be discharged until the doctor who examined you last night gives you the okay, and as I said, he won’t be in until nine.” The poor night-shift doctor looked tired and frustrated as he spoke with Blake.
I could say that throughout our history together, there had been times I felt the same way he did after chatting with Blake. I knocked on the door and carefully peeked in.
“Well, the cavalry has arrived,” Blake said. “You’re here to spring me, right?”
“If Doc says I can.” I smirked.
“It’s a conspiracy,” Blake muttered without emotion on his face.
I said good morning to the doctor as he left the room and then looked at Blake, who had a big white bandage taped to his forehead just a hair in front of his temple.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Better now that you’re here to help me pass the time until my doctor comes on duty.” He smiled with his eyes.
“I brought you something that might help pass the time,” I said, handing him a yellow gift bag.
When he looked inside, he immediately chuckled. “How did you know this was what I wanted? A Thomas the Tank Engine coloring book.” He shook his head. “Oh, but we have a problem here. So, this is what you think of me? I’m only good enough for the eight pack?” He pulled out the pack of Crayola crayons and stared at me. “I’m not good enough for the sixty-four pack of crayons with all the fancy colors?”
“What do you expect? You’re leaving in a few hours. I didn’t think your injury warranted the sixty-four pack.” I giggled. “What did the doctor tell you?”
“Mild concussion. Nothing serious.” Blake cleared his throat. “I already got a call from the station saying I was on mandatory leave for three days in order to rest and recuperate.”
“You say that
like it’s a bad thing,” I said as I hopped up onto the bed next to him.
“Do you have any idea the mountain of paperwork that will accumulate in those three days?” He shook his head. “How can I rest knowing all that is there?”
“I’m sure Jake will pick up some of the slack for you,” I said as I smoothed out his hospital gown. “This is a nice look on you.”
“Very funny.” He kissed me on the cheek and took my hand. “Jake already called me this morning. I heard you had some excitement at your house. I’m sorry. If it weren’t for me, that wouldn’t have happened.”
“What do you mean if it weren’t for you? Cedar Kolowonski did it. She’s responsible for her own actions, you know,” I huffed.
“Yeah, but I saw she had that statue in her hand. I was going to take it from her, but she just started talking and rambling on, and my thoughts just got a little muddled.” He touched the bandage on his head.
“That’s not your fault. It’s her thing. She messes with people’s heads. Look what she did to my poor Aunt Astrid. Made her cut her hair.” I clicked my tongue. “But Astrid snapped out of it and managed to put a binding spell on her. She won’t be working her magic on anyone else. Not that she knows what she’s doing. She’s a bit of a hack.”
“Yeah, well, Jake called last night and told me that the women they arrested at the house showed not one lick of devotion to Cedar and rolled over on her quickly,” Blake said as he opened the coloring book, took out the blue crayon, and started coloring.
“Really? That’s news,” I said.
“They both admitted that Cedar was the brains of the operation. They had no idea she was going to do what she did, and they claim Cedar threw Ethel Beggins into the fire as well as Sheila Montgomery.”
“Sheila Montgomery? That creepy old hag’s name was Sheila Montgomery?” I muttered.
“Why? Do you know her?” Jake asked.
“Not at all. I just thought a woman with a face like that wouldn’t have such a plain last name. I thought she was more like a Sheila the Prune Face or Sheila of the Gray Skin. You know, a little more witchy.” I shrugged.
“Yeah, they said she was the leader and that they had no idea that joining her coven meant they were going to hurt people. They thought it was more like a girls’ club with costumes, and any strong witch’s brew was that way because it had alcohol in it,” Blake said, his eyes on his coloring masterpiece in front of him.
“Will they be going to jail?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It was Cedar’s hair that was found at each of the homes on Peabody Street where the homeowners died,” Blake said. “There were also a couple of partial fingerprints that matched her prints from her crimes in Chicago.”
“I guess she wasn’t all that smart,” I said. “You went outside the lines there.” I pointed to his coloring, where the blue strayed slightly outside the top of Thomas’s smokestack.
“She’ll be locked up for a good while before she’s even returned to the Windy City for the crimes she committed there,” Blake said. “And I meant to color outside the lines.”
“Well, all’s well that ends well, I guess.” I hopped off the bed and walked to the window to look outside. It was a beautiful overcast day that made the flowers in the courtyard in front of the hospital pop in vibrant reds and yellows.
“You look real pretty today,” Blake said.
“Yeah, you too,” I replied.
“Come back over here.” He patted the spot on his bed where I’d been sitting.
“What for?”
“So I don’t have to shout while I’m talking to you. It is a scientific fact that hospitals are kept quiet for a reason. Because it is calming for most patients,” he said. “Plus, it prevents the patient—me—from exerting myself by shouting halfway across the room.”
“That’s not true.” I smirked as I strolled back to the bed and hopped up next to him again.
“Do you have any scientific proof to dispute my theory?” he said as he leaned closer.
“I’m sure I could find it.” I crossed my arms.
“If anyone could, you could,” he said as he leaned in for a kiss.
“You’re obviously not that injured,” I said.
“I think it’s my pride that’s hurt the most, since I did let a chick get the best of me,” he replied.
I smoothed his hair back and smiled up at him. “Hey, like I said. Cedar had a manipulative streak, and it worked on the best of them.” I cleared my throat and scooted a little closer.
That was when Blake slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me to him. “I wasn’t talking about her,” he said and kissed me once more.
27
Demon Babies
“I don’t understand any of it,” I said to my aunt before taking a big bite from my everything bagel with cream cheese and cucumbers.
We had all slept in at her house. I was the last to wake up after smelling coffee brewing. Now we were in the library, eating brunch while reshelving the books Cedar had torn through in her attempt to find something she might understand and use against us.
“What’s to understand?” Aunt Astrid said as she sat on the chaise longue, her hair clipped back in a French twist. She was wearing the satiny muumuu that made her look so elegant.
“Well, they all got together to take over some houses in order to revive a dead doomsday cult and take over the world. It’s pretty simple,” Bea said as she added a huge slab of lox to her bagel.
“Yeah, but what exactly was Sheila? She had superhuman strength, and her face could stop a clock,” I said after a sip of coffee to wash down my bite.
“That’s easy,” Aunt Astrid said. “She was nothing more than an old crone.”
“She punched the window in at the police station. There was rubble all over the ground.” I swallowed hard. “And you went with her.”
“Well, you have to understand that throughout that ordeal, I was trying to heal myself. I don’t remember that part of the incident. The next thing I knew, I was witnessing the arrival of the Kly,” Aunt Astrid said as she took a sip of her tea.
“I guess it just sort of freaks me out that a woman who wasn’t a real witch was able to summon up a Kly and have it eat one of her sister witches as well as the crone it was supposed to marry. I don’t get that.” I shook my head.
“Well, had Cedar been a real witch, she would have known that the term ‘marry’ is not always what we think it is,” Aunt Astrid said. “Now pay attention, girls. This is your history lesson for the day, and there will be a quiz.”
“Ugh.” I rolled my eyes as Bea straightened excitedly in her seat. She was always a much better student than me, even in pretend school like this.
“When a passage reads that a pair is to be ‘merged,’ it doesn’t necessarily mean married. It can mean one entity blends into another literally or figuratively. It can also mean that one entity will devour another, thusly becoming merged,” Aunt Astrid said. “You see, only a seasoned witch would know to research words like that. Had I not disappeared from the scene, this Kly would have eaten all of the coven and you and me before it headed out into the street to continue the limitless buffet.”
“But there was a real cult called the Sect of Symmetry?” Bea asked before taking a big bite of her bagel, which held tomato and onion in addition to the lox.
“Oh yes. And the symbols Cedar’s coven had were valid. They had an occult meaning that, had the ceremony been able to continue, would have brought about an irreversible chain of events that would have caused a lot of destruction. You were right, Cath, about the placement of the houses creating that Masonic symbol. That was a good catch. I’m glad to see you did learn something growing up with me. Your mom would be proud.”
“What would have happened if the houses hadn’t burned down?” Bea asked.
“Well, according to folklore, the Kly would have filled every room in the houses, spilling forth onto the streets in a never-ending chain of horror.” Aunt Astrid cleare
d her throat. “At least, that’s what they say. Those bits of property each belonged to a different member of the coven. They would have been the overseer of those Kly.”
“Nice. Nothing more than glorified babysitters for ugly, fiery demon babies,” I said, shaking my head and having another sip of coffee.
It took us into the late afternoon to get all the books back in order. Once we were all done, I saw a look of worry on Aunt Astrid’s face.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“One of my books is missing,” she said. “Oh dear. It was a good-sized book with a font of information in it that could become dangerous in the wrong hands. Oh, if Cedar managed to abscond with it somehow, we could be facing this challenge again.”
Then it hit me: I had taken that exact book and had been planning to take it with me so Bea wouldn’t read the diabolical plans the Sect of Symmetry had had in store for her little bundle of joy.
“Nope. She doesn’t have it,” I said, happily trotting to the bookcase by the door. There it was, just an old, nondescript book that blended in with all the others. I brought it back and handed it to my aunt, shaking my head and telling her it was a long story.
“What do you think of the name Steve?” Bea asked out of the blue.
“For the baby?” I said. “How about Elvis?”
“Are you serious?” Bea asked.
“Yeah, Elvis is a cool name,” I replied.
“I think Trevor is a nice name,” Aunt Astrid piped up.
“Trevor sounds like a piece of farm equipment. ‘I gotta jump on the old Trevor and get to the fields pronto or the crops ain’t gonna grow.’” I sniffled and cleared my throat.
“I agree with Cath on that one,” Bea replied.
“How about Rudolph?” Aunt Astrid asked as she got to her feet and smoothed out her muumuu.
Bea and I both looked at her as if she had lobsters coming out of her ears.
Just then, my eyes fell to an astrology book, and I snapped my fingers.