So I stood inside yelling while he pulled out his hammer and screwdriver and sure enough, it only took him a few seconds to get the hinges off the screen door, and another moment to lift the whole thing aside and lean it carefully against the stairwell and even less time to grab the front door knob.
While I went on shrieking, “No! Don’t! No!”
Tarvik flew back across the narrow space at the bottom of the well and crashed into the concrete wall. He landed on his ass, his legs sticking straight out in front. Stared up at me through the window, those blue eyes wide. He’s short and muscular and incredibly cute, with a mop of blond hair, and there’s a pale line of freckles across his elegant nose. Another major charm is his smile but, gotta tell ya, he wasn’t smiling now.
“It’s warded,” I mouthed. I’d been screaming and got nowhere so now I did the slow pronunciation thing.
He pulled himself up and came over to the window. “What about the window?”
“It’s okay. The only problem is the door. It can’t be opened. And there isn’t any other outside door.”
“You can’t stay in there all night.”
Well, I could. And if I had to be stuck someplace all night, a bookstore wasn’t the worst place. And it did have a washroom. However, it lacked a bunch of stuff, like food and my own nice soft bed.
“I need Nicotiana. Do you have her number?”
Honestly, I hated to ask. She would not want to come downtown. However, as fast as he’d got here, Tar must have his car nearby. He could always drive back and get her.
And yes, he knew her number, not that he had a phone, which was a real shame. How can I explain this? All the older women in the neighborhood are nice enough to me, possibly some of them even like me. Tarvik they adore. If he phoned and asked, she wouldn’t say no.
With a shrug, I poked in the number Tar told me. It rang quite a while. “She must be out in her garden,” I shouted and Nicotiana said, “Who is this?”
“Oh!” I brought my voice down to a normal level and explained my predicament. I could hear Nicotiana clucking her tongue.
“Oh dear. Oh dear me. Oh dear. Claire, I can set wards. But, umm, I can’t break someone else’s wards.”
I mentioned the local mage. He is more powerful but he has a big problem. It’s called agoraphobia or something like that. He never leaves his house for anything less than a death of a friend, and he considers me more of an annoyance than a friend and also, I wasn’t dying.
“Breaking other people’s wards is extremely difficult. I doubt that he could,” Nicotiana said.
With visions of Tarvik swinging his hammer at the large window, I said, “There must be some way to open this door. Wait. Would it be possible to phone Zack’s mother and get Zack’s home phone?”
Did Nicotiana laugh? Her voice sounded a little odd. “Yes, you can try. At least it isn’t raining.”
She gave me the number and it wasn’t until I was dialing Zack’s mother, a witch I knew only by reputation because she was in many ways more secretive than the mage, that I took a look out the window and up the stairwell. Enough light to mean the sky was clear.
After a long wait a voice said, “Yes?”
Nothing more. And I could not for the life of me remember Zack’s mother’s name and why hadn’t I thought to ask Nicotiana?
“Uh, this is Claire Carmody and I am really sorry to bother you but I need to get hold of Zack and I was wondering if possibly you have his phone number, not the one at the store but maybe his cellphone or something?” I rattled because I knew her reputation. And yeah, she kind of scared me.
“Carmody,” she said slowly. “Oh. Yes. Of course. The girl. Yes.”
The girl. Right. I am the only female in my generation. My one cousin is a ditzy guy.
“Why do you need Zack?”
Lying to a witch is pointless. Besides, maybe she thought I was stalking him and I sure didn’t want her thinking she needed to protect her son because witches can get a little crazy about stuff like that.
“I’m in his store and he’s gone and the door is warded.”
“He was in a hurry tonight, I know that, leaving town for a camping trip with a friend. He won’t be back for a few days.”
If she had been anyone else, I would have shrieked. Instead, I tried to convey my question with raised eyebrows while staring at Tarvik through the glass and pointing toward the door. He did figure out I wanted him to look at something. He went to the door, leaned toward it without touching it, then rushed back and oh yeah.
“There’s a sign on the door!” he shouted. “Be back Tuesday!”
“I can’t get out of here for three days?”
In my ear the voice said, “That won’t do. All right, stay where you are,” and she hung up.
“I think she’s gone for help,” I mouthed at Tar.
“I could break the window.”
Three days? Would an alarm go off in a police station if Tarvik broke the window? We couldn’t leave it open, but we could come back and board it up. A lot of bad karma mixed in there, right?
Trying not to tear my hair, I shouted, “Wait a bit! Maybe she knows how to locate Zack.”
“Wait how long?”
“A half hour?”
“All right. And then I break the window.”
When I opened my mouth to scream at him, he did his kissy face, so there wasn’t much to do except make faces back at him. He leaned against the outside of the window and I leaned against the inside and we could talk and hear each other a little bit. We talked about stuff that didn’t matter, like what we’d have for supper when we got home, and what shows were on TV, and anything at all except the possibility that we might actually have to break the window to get me out. And right after that, would we spend the night in jail?
Tar tilted his head and stared at the sky. He held out a hand, palm up.
In a matter of minutes the stairwell turned almost as dark as the inside of the store.
“Looks like rain,” he called.
Rain. Nicotiana had mentioned rain, which made no sense because, unusual to Seattle, we were having a dry spell. A dry spell in Seattle means four days in a row without rain. And nary a cloud in the sky.
But yeah, Tarvik was right. I could see drops bouncing off him, big fat drops that soon started sliding down the window and leaving tracks in the dust.
A woman called, “Are you a Carmody?”
Tarvik looked up the stairs. “No, lady, the Carmody is the one stuck inside.”
“Ah.” I saw her coming down, first little boots with heels, the kind of boots that barely come up over the ankles, black, with laces, and the heels were maybe two inches high. Above the boots were slim legs wrapped in black stockings with a lattice pattern. The skirt started at mid calf.
She stopped a couple steps above Tar and at that spot she was the same height. He’s five and a half feet tall. I kind of doubted if she made it to five feet, but maybe with the heels she did. The black dress was frilly and seemed to swirl around her by itself, with ruffles at the wrists and neckline. She leaned to peer in the window at me. Her face was elfin, a little heart shape with pale eyes, and her hair was a mass of reddish brown. She rapped with her knuckles on the glass and shouted.
“How did you get in there, Carmody?”
I shouted back. “The store was open. Zack let me sit in the back to read one of his reference books and I guess he forgot I was there.”
She shook her head and for that brief moment, she did look like any mother annoyed by her child’s carelessness.
“Can you remove Zack’s ward?” I shouted.
“Eventually.”
I didn’t get a chance to ask the time frame of eventually.
The rain came down in ribbons. Tarvik backed into the far corner of the stairwell. In no time his fluffy hair was plastered against his head. His tank top and jeans were pasted to his body.
The witch stared up at the rain. It ran down her face but it didn’t flatten her hai
r or even seem to dampen her dress. Instead, her hair and her skirt swirled around her.
The rain came down in sheets and she smiled up at the sky. And raised her arms. Next thing was a flash of lightning followed by a roll of thunder.
Tarvik held his hands against his forehead to shield his eyes. The witch started laughing, not at him but at the sky. And then, as wind whipped the rain until it fell at a sharp slant, her voice rose. In those few minutes, while I stared through the glass, I remembered another question I had asked my grandmother.
“But why does the witch wail?” Even back then, I knew enough to keep nagging when I wanted answers.
“She draws power from the storm.”
“What if it’s not storming?”
Gran had shrugged. “When she wants a storm, she gets one.”
Don’t know which came first, but gotta tell ya, they were both out there now, the storm and the wail.
Within the wind another sound rose, almost part of the wind but sharper. Increased in loudness. Increased in pitch. The witch tilted her head back and her voice became a high screech, like wind whistling through a crack in the door, higher, sharper, and definitely a wail. On and on, weaving through the howling storm. What Gran forgot to tell me was how to close my ears when a wailing witch wailed.
Tarvik did a small wail himself, pointing at the staircase. It was fast becoming a waterfall, the kind in parks where water drops from step to step in a fancy fountain. These steps weren’t fancy. They were plain old grit covered cement, and by the time the water reached the bottom, it was gray. It swirled in front of the door, a filthy pool. Tarvik jumped up on the lowest stair. Within minutes the water covered it and he had to go up another step to keep the water from filling his shoes.
I tried shouting, asking her what she was doing. The wind and rain and wailing drowned out my voice. At the rate the water flowed, there were a lot worse things it could drown. So I pounded on the glass.
She finally heard me and looked at me. And let her wail drop to a keening and then to nothing. And then her face smoothed and she gave me a grin and shouted, “I think that’ll do it!”
The next bit was stuff I’d seen Gran do, a lot of hand waving while her mouth worked in what was probably a chant. When she stopped, she pointed at Tarvik and waved him toward the door. He sloshed on down through the water.
He grabbed the door knob at the same time I shouted, “No!” but yeah, I was too late.
He opened the door and let in a river.
“Shut the door!”
He did. I raced to the wash room and grabbed the roll of paper towels off the wall. We both got to work and mopped away until there was a loud banging on the door. I looked up expecting to see the witch.
Instead, I saw a policeman.
My choices were limited. I could open the door and stand in the doorway and let in a flood.
Or I could say, “Tar, I’m ducking out fast to talk to the officer,” and not give him a chance to object.
I opened the door the minimum, slid through and pulled it closed.
When I looked up at the officer, rain hit me in face. “If I open the door far enough to let you in, we’ll get water in the bookshelves.”
“What are you doing in this store?”
I did a quick glance up the staircase. Nobody here but me and the policeman. “We started to close up and then this downpour began and there’s water all over the floor so we’re mopping.”
“Why is the screen off its hinges?”
I glanced at the screen door. It leaned against the end wall of the well. “Lost some screws and the workman was just starting to repair it when this storm hit. So I have him inside doing clean up.”
“With the interior lights out?”
By now my hair was plastered to my head and clinging in long soppy tendrils across my face. “Listen,” I said, “you can come inside and discuss this and I will show you my driver’s license or whatever else you want, and then you can help mop up the water you let in, okay?”
“Excuse me, ma’am, but do you work here?”
“I’m a personal friend of Zack and he left early to go on a camping trip so he left me to close up.”
His expression changed, can’t say exactly from what to what, but right then I realized the problem. Zack must have told the cop on the beat he was going camping. It didn’t say that on the sign. So when I knew where Zack had gone, the policeman accepted my explanation of why I was in the store.
He sloshed back up the stairs and I sloshed back into the store. Tarvik had found a rag mop in the storeroom and was busy soaking up water and wringing the mop out into a bucket. I found paper and pen by the cash register and wrote Zack a short note.
You left me in the back room. Your mother came and broke the wards. Claire.
I didn’t figure there was any need to explain the water.
Tar finished mopping and then we agreed there was no point hanging around. We couldn’t possibly get any more wet. So we set the spring lock and pulled the door closed behind us and dashed up the stairs to the street and stopped for one awful minute to stare.
Traffic was a jammed mess. The street was a river, water up to the hubcaps on stalled cars. At a far corner I saw a traffic cop waving his arms while the rain continued to fall in sheets.
Tarvik grabbed my hand and led me around a corner and down a block and by the time we reached the place where he had parked his car, the rain had stopped. No, that wasn’t right. The car was dry. The street was dry. The buildings were dust-covered.
Tarvik pulled his tank top away from his body and tried to wring some of the water out of the hem.
“Maybe we should take a slow walk in the sun before we get in the car,” I suggested.
“Going to take a while to get our clothes dry.”
Going to take more than a while to get my brain dry. My thoughts were a soggy jumble. Except one.
“Tarvy baby, next time there’s a choice between a broken window and a wailing witch, go ahead and break the window.”
END
Based on characters in the Mudflat series by Phoebe Matthews, http://phoebematthews.com
Phoebe Matthews writes the EPIC award-winning Mudflat urban fantasy series published by BookStrand.
Mudflat novels
Tarbaby Trouble
Welcome to Mudflat, Baby
Mudflat Toy Boy
Mudflat Spice and Sorcery
Goldilocks in Mudflat
Wicked Good Short Story Collections
Nine Horoscope-in-Catsup Stories
Steampunk Man and More
Steampunk Widow and More
Sunspinners novels
Demonspell
Demonhold
Demonprice
Turning Vampire
Vampire Career
Vampire Disaster
Guard Dog? Page 3