by Dani Lamia
Phoebe realized in that moment that her body was not reacting to the redhead as it had before. There was no powerful rush of lust this time, no feeling of need, and no passion. Oh, my God. This amulet works! She broke the kiss and smiled as she pressed her hands on Dzolali’s shoulders and gently applied pressure.
The hint was taken, and Dzolali loosened her grip and backed away. She arched her eyebrow and stared into Phoebe’s face. “What’s wrong?” Dzolali asked.
Phoebe knew from Dzolali’s flat tone that she already suspected the answer was around Phoebe’s neck. The fact that the charm had an effect at all was a great breakthrough for Phoebe, but the anger within her rose to the top. The realization that Dzolali had invaded her dreams, had tortured her and tricked her into feeling love for her, and then had swooped in to take full advantage, was all too much.
“Get out,” Phoebe ordered and stepped to the side, pointing out into the hallway.
Dzolali tipped her head back and put on a condescending grin as she looked down her nose at Phoebe. “What’s this all about, little one?”
Phoebe took Dzolali by surprise by striding right up to her, placing her nose just inches from the taller Latina’s. She kept her voice low, but it trembled with rage. “I can’t prove it, but you’ve been in my head since I got here. You made me dream about you, tortured me in the night with some sicko fuckin’ nightmare you probably think was some romantic fuckin’ gesture. Well, it wasn’t. What you think of as a spell, I consider a curse.”
Dzolali was not intimidated. She was physically stronger than Phoebe, and had Phoebe been anyone other than a Pyncheon, she would have knocked her teeth out. Instead, she smiled. “You really want me to leave?”
“Yes,” Phoebe said, though the remnants of Dzolali’s bewitching made her regret the words. She stepped to the side and fought hard to keep from eyeing her longingly. Having been so close to the woman, Phoebe had taken in her scent, which Phoebe had formed an almost Pavlovian response to in a short time.
Phoebe reached back and slapped the door shut. Her knees were weakened by the encounter, but she smiled at herself. She had won out over her desires, fueled by nefarious means or not.
She touched the medallion that Holgrave had lent her. It’s all true. Witches, spells, all of it. They’re all true. To Phoebe’s reckoning, this was the only answer to it all. Hester’s enslavement of the artist, her own attachment to Dzolali, the encounter with the ghost of Alice, and all the strange happenings in White Lake that were thought to be coincidence, all of these things and more were quite real.
Twice now, the simple-looking, decorative amulet had come to her rescue, saving her from more of Dzolali’s seduction.
“I’ve got to get the hell out of here,” she whispered to herself as she began to extricate herself from Dzolali’s dress, which suddenly disgusted her. After removing it, however, Phoebe put it on the hanger carefully and put it in the closet. Despite her outrage with the garment’s owner, there was no reason to subject the inanimate object to her angst.
Phoebe slipped on her t-shirt and jeans and stuffed any items of clean clothing into her garbage bags. There were two outfits of hers that were in the laundry at that moment, and with her only having a little over fifty dollars to her name, Phoebe knew she needed every stitch.
Looking out into the night through her borrowed room’s three windows, Phoebe decided her departure would have to be put off at least until the morning. She may have to go through the motions of stripping beds and laundering bath towels to reclaim her clothes, but it would be worth it.
But where do I go? she asked herself as she sat at the writing desk. She opened the laptop and logged on before remembering there was no Wi-Fi. Phoebe sighed.
She considered simply going to bed, but instead, since she had the laptop open and was far from tired, it was the perfect time to do some writing. She settled into the chair and continued the story.
Phoebe found it difficult to get her mind off the goings on at the House of the Seven Gables, but in time, she caught her stride, and the words began pouring out of her, appearing on the screen, it seemed, even before she felt her fingers tapping the keys.
Page after page went by, and Phoebe, stopping every once in a while to read back a paragraph here and there, felt pride in her work. She had missed her long, late-night writing binges. The long-unchecked clock of her laptop read a few minutes past midnight.
The house was quiet, and for the longest time, all Phoebe heard was her fingers clicking on the keyboard and a gentle breeze against the windows. As she continued her work, Phoebe didn’t notice that the breeze had increased to a stout wind. Soon after, rain began pattering on the glass.
Phoebe glanced up at the windows, her fingers still tapping away. This was the first time it had rained during this visit, and hearing rain strike the house took her back to her childhood, when she would rush into the house after school to get out of the rain, but once she was sheltered from the weather, all little Phoebe could think of was leaving.
The rainy days were the longest, she thought. Phoebe took a break from typing and stood. She stretched out her stiff back and stepped to the windows, which, being so old, allowed the smell of the rain into the room, even closed.
The sounds and smells of the weather sent a pleasant chill through her body, and Phoebe closed her eyes to it. In the distance, beyond the trees, thunder rumbled, and she reopened them. A reflection in the glass sent her screaming. She spun around so fast, she twirled to the floor, landing hard on her backside, with her spine pressing into the window bench.
There was no one there. The door was shut, and she was quite alone. Phoebe peeled herself from the floor and realized what had happened. She took the place where she had just been standing and peered again into the window.
The reflection was that of a wrought-iron lamp, set upon a hutch next to the door. The dark brown lamp shade made quite the image in a reflection upon glass with water cascading down the outside.
It looked like a man, Phoebe thought in relief. The tall skeleton in the dark hood.
She laughed at herself and returned to her computer. It was late, but she wanted to get more work in before she went to bed.
Phoebe fell deeply into her creativity, typing at what might have been a hundred words a minute. The story was flying along like never before. Phoebe stopped and reread often to make sure she was making sense, and she was. Her prose was well-sculpted, and the story flowed right along. After a time, she realized that it was going along so well because she had freed her mind from Dzolali’s influence with the help of Holgrave’s amulet.
It was either the charm or my determination, I can’t tell which.
A flash of lightning caught her eye and she turned to it, cringing as she did so. The thunderbolt came to earth just beyond the glass, or so it sounded. The crack was a shock to her ears and powerful enough to rattle the windows. Phoebe covered her ears and let out a small cry of discomfort as she watched the world light up. The white glow of the electrical strike gave way to a lingering yellow. One of the dead trees was hit and caught fire. The rain was falling hard enough that it was extinguished almost immediately.
Another lightning strike, this one further off, knocked out the power. Her room was lit only by her laptop screen. Phoebe uncovered her ears and turned her attention to the laptop, tapping the save button out of habit-formed paranoia.
When the lights came on, a hooded figure was standing at her left.
Phoebe screamed once again and left the chair, knocking it over as she backed away. By the time she hit the floor and spun around, he was gone. The closet door was open, as she had left it, and the colorful dresses that Dzolali had given her were within.
What the hell? Phoebe took a deep breath. She reasoned that there had been no man at all, but the light returning to her eyes had caused an optical illusion.
Still, real or not, the d
amage to her nerves had been done. There was no hope to get to sleep anytime soon, she felt certain of that. She stood, backed up her work on her thumb drives, and powered the computer down.
Phoebe slipped it into her backpack and zipped it shut. At the first hint of sunlight, she would be out the door. The rhythm of the rain soothed her nerves, but not enough for her to stop pacing the room.
She wondered if Holgrave was awake. Before she made a conscious decision to do it, she left her bedroom and climbed the stairs to the third floor.
***
Dzolali, with her mind’s eye, followed Phoebe Pyncheon out of her room and to the stairs. “It’s working.”
“Very good,” commended Hester. She released Dzolali’s hand from her left and Glendarah’s at her right and stepped away from them. Hester was in her youthful form, hair black as night, her skin tight and flawless, and her posture youthfully straight as she took a seat in her great high-backed chair.
Dzolali wore a smile of triumph and turned to face the door, waiting for Phoebe’s knock. She was confident that her methods of seduction had worked as they always had.
Glendarah, not convinced but hopeful, stood behind the cushioned chair near the fireplace. She had also transformed herself, shaving decades from her appearance and turning her hair a golden blonde. She watched both Hester and Dzolali in silence.
***
Phoebe stepped lightly along the hallway, though not nearly as carefully as she would have a day or so before. Now, she didn’t really care if she was discovered heading to Holgrave’s attic suite.
She noted the ray of light passing beneath the master bedroom’s door and couldn’t help but tiptoe past it. Phoebe halted at the end of the hall, however, and turned to watch the door.
Phoebe felt an energy focused on the heavy wooden portal and frowned in confusion. It was as if someone inside, and more than one person from the feel of it, was expecting her arrival.
She looked down to Dzolali’s bedroom door. There was no light and no energy coming from it. The coven’s having a meeting in Hester’s room, she surmised. She moved on, quickly but quietly, past Onenspek’s rooms, where the studio lights were on and the bedroom’s off.
Phoebe got the chills as she approached the next turn. She put her hand to the back of her neck and sped up, suddenly convinced that someone was watching her—and from quite close by.
By the time she got to the attic staircase, her imagination was fired up, and she looked all around the corridor. She was expecting to find something: a bird, a bat, some winged creature stalking her. But there was nothing.
Phoebe opened the door and went in. Closing it behind her, she felt as if she had shut something out. She climbed the stairs and knocked on the door.
***
Dzolali let out a cry of frustration through her teeth. She had followed Phoebe through the hall, her mind’s eye remaining close to her ear as Dzolali tried calling to her in that fine plane of existence, where the voice could not be heard by an ear, but the suggestion may be received by the subconscious.
Instead, Phoebe simply moved faster, covering her neck as if she were cold. Once she reached the door to the attic, however, it was over. For some reason, Dzolali could not make her mind’s eye slip beyond the door.
“What’s happened?” Hester asked, a trace of impatience in her voice.
Dzolali returned her full consciousness to the moment and turned to face her high priestess. “It hasn’t worked, Hester,” she said, bewildered.
“You said she was on her way here,” Hester reminded her harshly and left the chair. Her watery blue eyes were wide and angry.
“I’m sorry, High Priestess,” Dzolali offered. “But she went to see Mr. Holgrave.”
“Holgrave? Whatever for? What are they doing?” Hester drilled as she came closer to the Latina witch.
“I can’t see, Hester, my High Priestess,” she answered quietly, though her eyes did not look away.
“How is this possible?” Hester pressed.
Glendarah answered for their youngest coven member. “We’ve all sensed the man’s strength since the day he arrived. You’ve felt it yourself, Hester, my love.”
Hester turned to Glendarah. “So, you’re saying he’s protected himself?”
“It would seem so.”
Hester looked to Dzolali and softened her anger. “Do not worry, dear Dzolali. You’ve done what you could. We will have to confront Phoebe together. Soon, she will be one of us.”
“Thank you, High Priestess,” Dzolali answered, clearly relieved.
19
The Search
Phoebe didn’t wait for Holgrave to answer the knock before sailing through the door. She closed it behind her and said simply, “Hi.”
Holgrave looked upon her, intently confused, so it appeared. “Good evening, Ms. Pyncheon.” He came closer, inspecting her face oddly.
“Yeah, hi,” she repeated. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Holgrave blinked and stepped back. “Oh, no reason.”
“Uh-huh,” Phoebe said, not believing him. “Anyway, it’s been a spook-fest in my room tonight, which is too bad, because I was working, and on a roll, I think. And then I just had to get the hell out of there, and I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Indeed.”
“Yeah.” She nodded vigorously. “And then I started packing, because, like, as soon as the sun comes up, I’m all ass, sneakers, and smoke, let me tell ya.”
“Oh,” he allowed. His eyes shifted as he tried to translate her words. “Does that mean you’re planning on leaving?”
“Betcher ass, buddy.”
“Ah.”
Phoebe became aware that she had been rambling, so she took a deep breath to calm herself before continuing. “Sorry. It’s just this storm was bad, and then the lights went out. And, like, twice, I could swear some guy was in my room. Once in the reflection in the window when I was looking out and then when the lights popped back on. But it was just the closet.”
“I see.”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a crazy person,” she said and crossed her arms. “I’m not Looney Tunes. No one was there, but it freaked me out.”
“I understand.”
Phoebe looked around the suite. In shifting her feet, she noticed the sweeping sound from her sneaker’s sole. “Hey! Is that salt?”
“Indeed, it is,” he answered. “Salt protects against evil spirits.”
She bent down and touched her finger to a large granule. “This is the Himalayan stuff, man. Not cheap!” she scolded and stood, showing the pink crystal to him. “Will Himalayan even work?”
Holgrave blinked, taken aback at the question. “I hadn’t thought of that. I hope so.”
She noticed for the first time that he had a candle lit and a bundle of some sticks perched on a deep plate set upon the table. The bundle was smoking.
“What’s that?”
“Sage,” he answered. “I’m burning it as part of a protection spell.”
Phoebe turned to look at the door. “Oh!” A white pentagram was drawn upon it.
“Don’t worry, it’s only white grease pencil,” Holgrave said. “It will come off.”
“I don’t care,” Phoebe assured him. “Like I said, I’m outta here in a few hours. What’s the spell for?”
Holgrave stepped to the fireplace but kept his eyes on Phoebe as he explained. “It wards against black magic. I had to have something since I lent you my charm.”
“If you’re worried so much, why don’t you just leave?”
“I’m still searching for the stock certificates.”
At that moment, Phoebe recalled the encounter in the basement. “You think Hester’s keeping them in the basement? There’s a safe in the
master bedroom you know.”
“I know,” Holgrave answered with a sly look about him.
“You cracked it? Searched there already?”
Holgrave nodded.
“Talented man,” Phoebe granted. “What is in there?”
“Papers. Deeds. Some properties I recognize as being once owned by my family,” he explained. He walked to the window and watched the rain as he spoke. Phoebe followed him. “A great amount of cash, and—” He turned to her and looked down into her face. “—some ancient paper with what I believe to be spells written upon them.”
“Did you take any of it?”
“No.”
“My gosh! Why not?” Phoebe exclaimed and shrugged. “Sounds like they owe you and your family big time.”
“I’m only after what was taken,” Holgrave answered.
“Okay, Mr. Honorable.”
Phoebe wandered to the table where Holgrave kept his cameras and photo albums. Apparently, he had been inserting the pictures he had taken of the House of the Seven Gables. Many were strewn about the table, the largest of which was the black-and-white photograph of the east side of the house. She picked it up with care and looked to the strange figure in the window of Holgrave’s attic suite.
“Holy shit.”
“What?” asked Holgrave, at her side in a second.
Phoebe swallowed hard. There seemed no point in denying anything anymore. Simply claiming coincidence would not suffice. “This woman in the window.” She pointed to the figure. “I think that’s Alice.”
“Alice?” Holgrave uttered with a gasp. He leaned forward to get a closer look.
Phoebe nodded and gave a surrendering sigh. “Yes, the spirit from the séance. Her name’s Alice.” Phoebe noticed Holgrave’s expression of shock. It was more than just the sudden knowledge that Phoebe had acknowledged the ghost’s existence, it was recognition. “You know her?”
Holgrave looked up from the picture. “Are you certain of this? This is Alice?”
Phoebe cast her eyes to the ceiling. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but, that’s what the ghost said her name was.”