by Amy Boyles
I nodded. “You too.”
As soon as Axel was gone, Betty turned to Rufus. “Give me a list of everything I need.”
Rufus spouted off a laundry list that included just about everything except spider leg hairs. There were frog’s eyes, bat breath, chicken feet—lots of really delightful ingredients that were to be used.
“I think that’s everything,” Rufus said. “If it isn’t, we’ll know.”
Betty pointed to his groin. “If it isn’t, snip snip.”
Rufus grimaced. “It is! I promise. It’s everything. I think.”
Betty rounded up Cordelia from the kitchen. “I need you and Amelia to come with me to get all these ingredients.”
“What?” Amelia shrieked. “I’m not going out there! Not with the spiders on the loose.”
Betty rolled her eyes. “We’ll transport.”
I scoffed. “Why didn’t we do that earlier? Why’d we have to walk through town?”
“Because it takes a lot of power to do that, Miss Priss, and I don’t like to waste my magic.”
I rolled my eyes in response.
Betty clapped her hands. “Okay, this will be easy peasy. Amelia, Cordelia, I just need y’all to hold up a light while we search Argus Amulet’s shack for a lot of these ingredients. We shouldn’t be gone more than five minutes.”
I sank onto the couch. “Don’t worry. I’ll guard Rufus. He does anything, I won’t hesitate to shoot him.”
“Such lovely ladies,” Rufus said.
Betty clapped her hands, and the three of them vanished. Paige came in from the kitchen, Hugo following. She glanced from Rufus to me.
“If you want to take Hugo upstairs and play, you can,” I said.
Paige nodded and crept up the stairs, leaving me all alone with Rufus.
Just then the power snapped off, casting me in pitch-blackness.
“Crap.”
“Use your hands and make a light,” Rufus said.
“How?”
“I don’t know. Imagine you’re a freaking candle,” he snipped. “You have the power. You can do it.”
I stared at my finger, trying to figure out how to light it.
“For goodness’ sake, I’ll do it.”
A glowing ball appeared on the coffee table between us. Rufus stretched out one leg and sighed.
“Cramps.”
“You deserve it,” I said.
“And you don’t deserve to have even an ounce of your power,” he shot back.
He was in for it now. All this crap was Rufus’s fault. Yes, I knew I had a lot of blame in it, but ultimately it was because of him that we were stuck in this mess.
“You gave me your stupid gorgon power. That’s really why you came here, isn’t it? So that you could fool Mythica, get the curse off you and be done with it. It had nothing to do with you wanting to save Magnolia Cove.”
“I didn’t want any harm to come to you,” he said quietly.
“Because then you wouldn’t be able to steal my powers for yourself.”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Sadness washed over his face. Something pinged in my stomach, like guilt. What the heck did I have to be guilty about? Nothing.
But in the candlelight Rufus’s face didn’t hold the normal rude smugness it usually held. Instead it held sadness.
Stupid sadness. If I didn’t try to help him, I’d feel guilty. Stupid guilt.
Crap. Now I’d have to find out what was wrong.
I scrubbed my head in frustration. “What is it? You didn’t want any harm to come to me. Why?”
When his dark eyes landed on me, a shiver the size of a tidal wave zipped down my spine.
I swallowed the egg in the back of my throat.
“I didn’t want any harm to come to you because—yes, your powers. All right. You’ve got power that I want, there’s no doubt about that. But there’s something else about you. You care about people. You really care, as if you have a heart or something.”
“I do have a heart, Rufus. You do, too. It’s what’s beating right now, dingbat.”
His head dropped to his chest. “But sometimes I don’t think I do. There are times when my goals are so real I can taste them. I’ll do whatever it takes to achieve success. Destroy a town, see if a person can be transformed into a vampire. It becomes so all-consuming I forget about others. But you”—he paused, watched me again—“you have all this raw power at your fingertips, and you don’t even seem to want it. Forget being able to use it. It doesn’t matter to you.” When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper. “I envy that. Your simple way of being.”
Was he really reaching out looking for a problem, or was he just blowing off steam? “You could be like that. There are more important things than power and money.”
“Like what?”
Seriously? Was I honestly about to give a humanities lesson to Rufus Mayes? “Like…well, like family and friends.”
“I was tortured in school.”
“Of course you were… Okay, then. Pets and animals. They’re great. You don’t have to be a head witch like me to know that. They’re simply wonderful.”
“I suppose.”
I couldn’t win with this guy. “What do you want? What is it? What would make you happy?”
“To know you,” he said quietly.
The words slammed into me. “Wait. What?”
“To simply be free to understand you. There’s something so easy and wonderful about you. Surely you know that. You confuse me, Pepper Dunn. You really, honestly confuse me.”
He laughed bitterly. “For so long my life’s goal has been world domination in the form of sorcery. I thought if I took you, you would want to be beside me, wielding your power to the utmost. We could be like Magneto and Dark Phoenix in that X-Men movie. You and me. But now I see you’d never be happy doing that. You’re simply too good.”
Holy crap. Was Rufus Mayes revealing that he had a crush on me? Dear Lord in heaven, I hoped not.
I clicked my tongue and shook my head as if his offer was so tempting. “Yeah. As much as I’d love to do that… You know, world domination has always appealed to me on some level. I’m just not sure I’ve got it in me to do it justice. But you’re doing such good now. Helping with this potion so I can get rid of my gorgon stink eye. You’ve really turned out to be better than I thought. Not just out for yourself.”
“I am tied,” he said.
“But you’re not in jail. Look at the bright side.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry about the gorgon eye.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“No, but I did come under false pretenses. I’m sorry I lied to you. I won’t do it again.”
Our gazes locked. “Yes, you will. You’ll lie.”
“No. No, I’m turning over a new leaf. From now on I’ll help people. I can do it. I can think of others instead of myself. It will be a new me. A new Rufus Mayes. I’ll be allowed back into decent society again and won’t have to travel at night to avoid detection. I can do it. For you, Pepper Dunn, I will do it.”
“Wait. For me?”
Whoa. I did not need Rufus Mayes dedicating his life to me. I had enough crap on my plate without adding a renegade sorcerer’s conscience to that list.
I opened my mouth to talk him out of it when a knock came from the door. There was enough light to see my way across the small room.
“Don’t move,” I said to Rufus.
“Where would I go?”
Wilma stood on the porch, a wide smile on her face and a pot of tea in her hands. “I made that tea for you, Pepper. Try some. You’ll love it.”
FOURTEEN
I stared around Wilma and saw the giant spider still in the corner. The creature blinked at me. I shuddered.
“Your tea,” Wilma said, pushing it forward.
“Come on in,” I said. “Betty should be back in a few minutes.”
She followed me in and set the serving tray on the table. �
�You should drink it while it’s hot. It will soothe you.”
I poured a cup and sat. Wilma eyed me eagerly. Must have been gold in the tea or something.
I brought the cup to my lips just as a snap, crackle, pop sounded in the room. Betty and my cousins reappeared.
“Why’s it so dark in here?” Amelia said. “It’s spooky enough outside. We don’t need it any more spooky in here.”
“The power’s out, moron,” Cordelia said.
Even in the darkness I could see Amelia giving our cousin a dark, heinous look.
Betty clapped her hands. “Let’s get some power going in here.”
Lights flared as if the power had never been off. “How’d you do that?” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Magic, kid. Magic.”
I glared at Rufus. “Why couldn’t you do that?”
He shrugged.
“We got everything,” Betty said. “Every last ingredient. Now all we’ve got to do is get her cooking and voila! You’ll be all ready to go.”
I glanced at my watch. “How long will it take?”
“About six hours,” Rufus said.
My stomach dropped. “Six hours?”
He nodded. “The ingredients need to simmer together. You know, mingle. It works better that way.”
“This isn’t beef stew,” I stammered. “This is my life.”
Betty hipped her way over to the hearth and poked the everlasting fire. “Rufus is right. A potion like this will take hours to set up and make perfect. By the time you return from watching Axel, it should be ready.”
Panic seized hold of me. “What if I accidentally turn him into stone? What if I turn someone else into stone?”
“Can the dramatics, kid.” Betty snorted. “If you haven’t turned anyone to stone by now, you should be fine.”
I peeked at her under my bangs. “You sure?”
“No. Well, sort of.” She waved the air. “You’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
Amelia grabbed her cast-iron skillet. “Come on, Pepper. Cordelia and I will go with you to watch Axel. Oh, is this tea?”
She picked up the cup sitting on the table and brought it to her lips.
Like lightning, Wilma rushed over and slapped the cup from her hand.
“No. That’s Pepper’s.” She stared at the liquid pooling on the floor. “Sorry. I make my teas special. For each person.” Wilma grabbed the cup and pot and clutched them to her chest. “Let me get this mess cleaned up. Then I’ll help with the potion.”
She snapped her fingers. The stain vanished. Wilma scurried from the house, slamming the door behind her.
“That was bizarre,” Amelia said. “I only wanted a small sip.”
Cordelia tossed a sheet of hair over her shoulder. “Come on. We’ll get you some tea before we leave to guard the werewolf. There’s nothing like creature sitting to work up a thirst.”
Amelia had a tumbler of iced tea in one hand, her long cast-iron skillet in the other. We stood on the front porch, ready to take flight. That creepy spider rose on its spindly legs and eyed me.
“Thing gives me the creeps,” Cordelia said.
I gripped my skillet’s handle. “Join the club.” I looked at the arachnid. “We’re leaving. You can stay here.”
But like a dog that didn’t understand a word of what I said, the spider stretched and ambled forward to follow us.
“Hurry. Go,” I said.
We took off, jetting into the air on our cushioned rides. The three of us sailed over the mess that was still downtown—spiders, ghosts and the like.
“We’ve got to get that time watch fixed,” Amelia said.
“As soon as I get rid of these gorgon powers, we’ll get right to that. Should be tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“I hope so. Maybe then I won’t be locked in prison for stealing it.”
I tried to reassure her. “Betty doesn’t seem worried. If she’s not worried, we shouldn’t be either. Of course, there is a gorgon on the loose turning people to stone. That’s another problem.”
“Don’t remind me,” Cordelia said. “But I figure as long as we stick together and avoid all strangers, we’ll be fine.”
“The town’s full of strangers,” Amelia yelled frantically. “They’re everywhere.”
“Well, just avoid eye contact and it should be okay.”
I glanced down and saw Garrick herding a horde of spiders into a pen. “Looks like the police are trying to calm the frenzy.”
“Yeah. It looks like all they’re doing is bandaging a bad situation,” Amelia said.
“They’re doing their best,” Cordelia said defensively. “They can only do so much.”
“Ever since you started dating Garrick, you’ve gotten so touchy about the police,” Amelia said.
Cordelia sniffed. “I’m not touchy.”
Amelia and I exchanged a glance.
“Whatever,” Cordelia said coolly. “I’m only looking out for him, okay?”
“Like a good girlfriend,” I said.
“Shut up.”
“So,” I said, trying to change the conversation. The houses were becoming sparser as we hit the border of the Cobweb Forest. “Rufus Mayes and I had an interesting conversation.”
Amelia’s eyes glittered with interest. “About what?”
“I think he has a thing for me.”
Cordelia snorted.
“I’m not surprised,” Amelia said. “Rufus always wants your power, but why?” She made it sound mysterious, like it was the question of the century.
“Because he’s an evil genius who craves attention,” Cordelia countered.
“No, I don’t think that’s it at all,” Amelia said. “I think old Rufus has a thing for Pepper. I’ve thought it for a while now. Yes, I think originally when he met her, all he wanted was her power. But then as he got to know her, he realized the depths of her brilliant personality.”
“As he got to know me? We’ve never spent any time together.”
“And yet he yearns for you,” she said dramatically as if this was some sort of epic romance.
I shook my head. “No, no. Rufus Mayes is not allowed to have a thing for me. That’s weird and creepy. He’s weird and creepy.”
“Yet you bring it up,” Amelia said.
I clenched my jaw. “I was trying to change the subject. I thought y’all would get a kick out of it. But I see now my words have been twisted and you think I have a thing for him, too.”
“No one said that,” Amelia said. “You said it, Pepper.”
“You insinuated it,” I practically yelled. “You wanted me to say it. Besides, I care about Axel. I have a serious yearning for him.”
I did. I do.
Crap. I was all confused. How could I be confused?
Wait. What was going on?
Axel. Yes, the man I loved.
Loved?
Whoa, Nelly. Where’d that come from?
It didn’t matter where that came from. Axel cared about me, but he didn’t love me. He didn’t hold that depth of feeling in his heart.
Did he?
He didn’t. No. I knew he didn’t. Our whole relationship had started as a joke. In the beginning we always said it didn’t mean anything.
But now it did mean something. It meant a lot of somethings. Apparently I thought I loved him. I laughed to myself. Axel didn’t feel that strongly about me. I knew that. That was true. It was true.
Right?
I pushed it out of my head. I didn’t have time to think about this sort of crap. Right now the town was in an emergency situation. Halloween had gone haywire, and it had to be stopped.
But first we had to make sure Axel stayed chained up all nice and neat in the forest.
“So I’m assuming by your silence we’re not going to talk about Rufus anymore?” Amelia said.
“No,” I snapped.
Darkness bathed the trees as we approached a clearing only a few yards away from the slab of concrete that became Axel’s be
d one night a month.
Grass crunched beneath my feet as I hit the ground with a thump. My cousins landed silently.
“Still working on my landings,” I said.
“It takes a while,” Cordelia said.
I got off and walked my skillet around a huge hedge—like a twelve-foot-tall hedge. A thick, corded chain was welded to a ring on a slab of concrete.
My cousins and I stalked over to a corner.
“Who’s got the shotgun?”
Amelia and Cordelia exchanged worried looks. “I thought you had it,” Cordelia said.
“No. Didn’t one of you grab it from Betty?”
Amelia showed me empty palms. “No.”
I shrugged. “Oh well. I’m sure we won’t need it.”
I swoosh came from the opposite corner. A second later Axel strode out. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, though he’d shuck out of those soon enough. You couldn’t wear clothes and become the size of the Hulk. It simply wasn’t possible.
I skipped over to him. “Hey there.”
A smile quirked his lips. “Hey, yourself.” He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from my cheek. Heat blazed on my skin. “You look beautiful.”
“Nothing like a little werewolf guarding to dress up for,” I joked.
His blue eyes shimmered as if his heart was full of emotion. Love? Surely not. We hadn’t known each other long enough.
His hair was wet from the shower. I dusted a strand from his eyes. He snatched my hand and kissed the inside of my wrist. My knees quaked.
“We don’t need to get started on that,” I joked.
He studied me with an intensity that made my core quiver. A shaking breath escaped my lips.
“Did Betty get the ingredients?”
I nodded. “She’s working on the spell. Should be ready first thing in the morning, when you’re back to you. I can drink the potion, we can fix the time watch and everything will go back to normal.”
“Let’s hope so,” he said darkly.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling. Something isn’t right.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and tipped my chin to him. “Everything’s going to be fine. Things are already so bad. It’s not as if they can get worse.”