by AJ Myers
I took the napkin from him but didn’t immediately reply. I knew the B&B he was talking about. Winters Bed & Breakfast was kind of an urban legend in Moonlight. Hell House. That’s what they called it. According to the story, no young woman ever walked out of it alive.
Over the years, several young women had disappeared in the area near the boarding house and it was widely whispered that their disappearances were somehow linked to the boarding house itself. I had never believed that crap, of course, but then Alana Price, a girl from my school, had gone missing while she was out jogging one afternoon my freshman year. Rumors said she had called to tell her parents that she had twisted her ankle and had called a friend to pick her up. It was the last time anyone heard from her.
The number she had called from had been listed as Winters Bed & Breakfast.
“Is this place…safe?” I asked Tyler, worried that I was about to make another wrong move and land myself in even more trouble than I was already in.
“You’ll be perfectly safe, you have my word,” he said, smiling at me again. “Just stay right there, I’m going to go call you a cab. Try not to hurt any of these poor sots before I get back, all right?”
“I’ll do my best,” I promised, smiling. “Oh! And thanks, Tyler.”
“Anytime, beautiful,” he said with another wink. With that, he disappeared through the swinging door behind him, already pressing his cell phone to his ear.
Feeling a little better since I knew I had some place to go—scary house of horrors it might be—I leaned back and took a sip of my soda. I had twelve hours to prepare myself to face Jack. Twelve hours before I either got my life back or lost it altogether.
I can do this, I thought. I can banish him. I’ve done it a hundred times.
But there was still that nagging little doubt in the back of my mind. What if I couldn’t do it? What if he was stronger than the others or knew some trick the others didn’t know. What if Nathan was right and I wasn’t ready?
Oddly enough, it was the thought of Nathan’s constant reminders that I wasn’t strong enough or capable enough to face Jack that steeled my resolve. I was ready. I was going to banish Jack to the lost plane and get my life back. And I was going to do it all by my helpless little self. I wasn’t going to be a victim anymore. It was my life, and I was going to take it back. I didn’t need Nathan or anyone else to help me do it.
“Mac said it might be a while,” Tyler said when he came back from calling my cab. He looked me over and I saw an almost sympathetic flash in his pretty, golden-colored eyes. “You want something stronger than that Coke? You look you’ve been through the wringer, beautiful.”
In answer, I held up my X-marked hand and smiled.
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” he said, grinning.
“Nah, not tonight,” I told him, waving off his offer of a stiff drink. I was going to need a clear head to take on Jack. “Maybe some other time, though.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said with a grin just as an extremely drunk soldier started banging on the counter to get his attention. Rolling his eyes, he turned and yelled over his shoulder, “Keep your bloody knickers on! That tequila isn’t going anywhere, genius!”
With that, he went back to fixing drinks and joking with the soldiers, and I sat there surrounded by horny guys with grabby hands and felt perfectly safe. I was starting to wonder if the cab was ever going to get there, though, when Tyler pulled his phone out and glanced at it before smiling over at me.
“Your cab’s here.”
“The driver sent you a text?” I asked, smiling as I slid off the stool and started picking up my luggage.
“Yeah, Mac and I are mates,” he said, hopping over the bar and taking the suitcase from me. “Come on, I’ll walk you out and hold off this lot of predators while you make your escape. You’re the prettiest thing to walk in all night. They’re not going to be happy to see you go.”
I rolled my eyes at that but smiled, anyway. With a single glance around the room I could have pointed out ten girls who were prettier than me. It was sweet of him, though, so I didn’t call him on the exaggeration like I usually would have.
“New lovey, Ty?” the cabbie asked in a really bad imitation of a British accent when Tyler and I finally made it through the crowd and out the door.
“That old wreck of yours break down again, Mac?” Tyler countered with a grin.
“Bessie?” Mac asked in mock outrage, patting the trunk of the ancient car that made up the entire fleet of cabs in Moonlight. “Now, Tyler. Be nice. She’ll hear you…and she’s sensitive.”
I smirked at that. The thing was a death trap, and the old man knew it as well as anyone else who might be looking at it. There wasn’t a soul in Moonlight who hadn’t seen him stranded on the side of the road as smoke billowed from beneath Bessie’s hood. He’d been YouTubed more than once kicking the poor thing and damning it to the darkest pits of Hell.
“Besides, didn’t you say there was no hurry?” Mac asked, snapping my attention back to him. He was grinning at Tyler—whose cheeks were looking more than a little pink.
“No, of course not…” Tyler stammered, running a hand through his hair and smiling sheepishly over at me. “Okay, well maybe. Bloody hell, this is embarrassing. What can I say? When I said the boys in there wouldn’t be happy to see you go, I was kind of lumping myself in with them.”
“Good night, Tyler,” I said, smiling and shaking my head as Mac slammed the trunk of his clunker shut—a process he had to repeat numerous times before it finally latched.
“Good night…” Tyler said, letting his voice trail off as he frowned. “Wait. What’s your name?”
“Ember,” I said, walking toward the cab and the door Mac was holding open for me like it was a limo and I was royalty. “Ember Blaylock.”
“Well, good night, Ember,” Tyler said, backing toward the door of the bar and the crowd of drunk soldiers waiting for another round. “I’ll see you at breakfast. Sleep well.”
Not likely. Sleep was not on my agenda for the evening. I fully intended to have Mac stop so I could stock up on energy drinks…and tablets…and gum…and anything else they might have. Jack might have agreed to my terms, but I didn’t really trust him to keep his end of the deal. If he didn’t, I was going to need to be alert and ready. I’d sleep later, when he was nothing more than a fading nightmare.
“I heard you say your name was Blaylock,” Mac said once we were on the road and cruising at the high speed of twenty miles an hour. “You’re the doctors’ kid, aren’t you?”
“No,” I said stiffly. Not anymore, I finished silently.
“Weird, you look just like her.” Mac said, looking disappointed. “My daughter swears by their books, says they really help her understand my grandson, Joey.”
“Tell her she should burn them,” I grumbled, turning my head to stare out the window, “They know about as much as Bessie about raising a kid.”
Mac’s eyebrows went up at that, but he didn’t press the issue any further. I had him stop at the first open store we saw, where I bought an entire case of energy drinks and all the stay awake tablets they had on the shelf—hell, I even asked if they had more stashed in the back—and hauled them back to the cab. Mac looked at me funny, but he didn’t comment on my choice of beverages, either. When we pulled up in front of the B&B, though, he couldn’t keep silent any longer.
“You sure you wanna stay here, honey?” he asked, giving the house a wary look. “Tyler’s one thing, he’s a guy, but you’re…well, not a guy. Bad rumors about this place, you know?”
Honestly, no, I didn’t want to stay there. I’d heard the same stories and had the same misgivings about the house. It wasn’t that it was sinister or anything. It was actually a really pretty Victorian. An old, weathered sign hung just inside the front gate that read ‘Winters Bed & Breakfast’. A smaller, newer sign beneath it read ‘Vacancy’. The landscaping was amazing. Given that it was the beginning of October, I was surprised
to see that there were flowers literally everywhere. They were even climbing the walls on the side of the house. I could smell roses and a few others—none of which should have still been blooming in October.
Yet, there was something kind of eerie about it. Then, all old houses like the B&B have that eerie factor. A hundred years or so of history being stamped on every brick and board kind of has a tendency to leave its mark.
“It’s just a house, Mac,” I said with a forced smile, trying to convince myself as much as him.
“All right, then,” he said on a sigh, putting Bessie in park. “I’ll go up with you and make sure you get inside all right. That okay with you?”
That was more than okay with me. The thought of going up to that house alone kind of made my skin crawl. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell Mac that, though, so I just nodded and threw my shoulder against the rusted old door to get it open.
“I wonder how she does it,” Mac muttered as we made our way around the side of the house to the back, like Tyler had told me to. When I gave him a questioning look, he waved his hand in explanation. “The flowers, hon. They shouldn’t be blooming anymore, you know. I’ve driven by this house in the dead of winter and saw them flowers growing like it was June. Kind of strange if you ask me.”
Wishing he hadn’t told me that, I forced myself to keep going. When I got to the door, though, I couldn’t seem to make myself knock. I lifted my hand to do it, but I chickened out halfway there. I tried again with the same results. Chewing on my lip, I let my hand drop and stared at the arched oak door before me. Before I could tell Mac I’d changed my mind, though, he reached around me and banged on the door with his gnarled old fist like he was the damn police or something.
“What?” he asked when I turned and glared at him. “You didn’t look like you were going to get to it tonight, and my tired old bones are wanting a soft bed.”
“Thanks,” I muttered just as the light over the steps popped on and the door creaked open an inch or so before it was thrown open wide.
“Shea?” a little old lady gasped, lifting one quivering hand to her lips as she stared at me.
I stared back, totally confused, and was surprised to find I was actually looking down at her. I’m short, but this woman was actually tiny. From the tips of her yellow carpet slippers to the top of her tightly curled gray hair, she couldn’t have measured more than four foot ten. Her voice had been whispery and cracked with age and her face was deeply lined. Her emerald green eyes, on the other hand, sparkled with vitality and intelligence…and, at that moment, a fair amount of fear.
“Um…no, ma’am,” I said, frowning. “My name is Ember.”
She looked at me for another second, like she was trying to figure out if I was telling her the truth. It wasn’t until she really looked me in the eye, though, that I saw her confusion clear. Shaking her head like she was embarrassed, she held the door open for me with a smile, gesturing for me to come in.
“I’m so sorry, dear. You took me by surprise,” she said with a weak laugh. “You look like an old friend of mine. You must be the granddaughter she talked so much about.”
“You know my grandmother? Shea O’Hare?” I asked, frowning and considering running back out the way I’d come in. Mac was obviously having the same thoughts. I could see the uneasy look on his face as he carried my bags in.
“Oh, yes, everyone knows Shea,” she said, looking me over again. “Now, dear, what can I do for you?”
“Um…Tyler said you might have a room?” I hadn’t meant for it to be a question, but my nerves made it come out that way, anyway. Then again, it might have been that as I was asking about the room, I was also asking myself what the hell I was doing there.
“For you? Of course I do,” she said, patting my arm. “Darling boy, that Tyler. And rather handsome, too, don’t you think, dear?”
“Uh…I guess,” I said before biting my lip. What was this, the Bachelorette house?
“You gonna be okay here, hon?” Mac asked. I turned to find him already backing toward the door again. His eyes never left Mrs. Amelia and I almost wanted to laugh when I realized he was actually scared of the tiny little woman.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I told him with a smile. “Thanks, Mac.”
“Any friend of Ty’s and all that,” he mumbled, looking ready to bolt. “Call me if you need anything.”
With that, he turned and practically sprinted out the door. I rolled my eyes at his theatrics, amused that a grown man could be so creeped out by a little old lady who didn’t look like she could swat a fly, let alone hurt anyone.
“Such an odd little man,” Mrs. Amelia commented, shaking her head and frowning at the door Mac had just used to make his hasty retreat. “Now, dear, come with me. You look exhausted. Let’s find you a bed, shall we?”
“I don’t mean to sound rude,” I said as I followed her through the house, “But, how did you know I was Shea’s granddaughter?”
“You’re the spitting image of your grandmother at your age,” she explained, reaching over to pat my hand again. “Shea and I have known each other for ages and ages. In our world, everyone pretty much knows everyone else.”
Our world?
“Bandraoithe, dear. Blood witches,” she whispered, seeing the confused look on my face and leaning toward me like it was our little secret. “You truly are new to this world aren’t you?”
Not as new as I wish I was, I thought, remembering how blissfully blind I’d been only a week ago. Given a choice and a time machine, I would have gone back to that time and left Nathan right there on the side of the road with his demolished car. Listening to Kim whine for the next twenty years because I’d melted her dolls suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
“I should tell you, Moonlight is not at all what it appears, dear,” Mrs. Amelia continued, her weathered face looking very solemn suddenly. “There are forces in our quaint little town that could be very dangerous, especially to a powerful child like you. You really shouldn’t be out on your own, unprotected. Surely Shea told you that?”
“No, she didn’t,” I muttered. “She never told me anything.”
For the first time since I had walked out my door, I began to cry. Mrs. Amelia, without missing a beat, gently pushed me onto a bench in the hallway and sat down beside me, taking my hand and patting it consolingly. I don’t know if it was the gentleness of her touch or just that I needed to tell someone, but the whole terrible tale came spewing out like word vomit, from Nathan kidnapping me to my mother saying she was glad to be rid of me to Jack making me think I had just survived a bombing, and I couldn’t seem to stop it. Mrs. Amelia didn’t say a word, just let me get it all out. When I was finished, she patted my hand again and handed me a snowy-white linen handkerchief before rising to her feet again.
“You poor thing,” she crooned, putting an arm around my shoulders and helping me from the bench as I wiped my eyes. “I can’t fix all of that, but I can give you a safe place to rest. It just so happens that the artist who was renting my attic moved out a few days ago. You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you like.”
“Really?” I asked, still sniffling.
“Of course, sweetling,” she said, squeezing my arm gently as she led me into the main entrance to the house.
I loved how cheerful and colorful the place was. The furniture wasn’t new, by any means, but it was in good shape and was covered with brightly-colored slipcovers. There were a lot of antiques scattered around, but I couldn’t name any of them, never having had much interest in that kind of thing. Sheers hung at the windows to let in the maximum amount of sunlight during the day. White walls were set off by cherry woodwork and some really great art. The freshly waxed wood floors were scattered with brightly colored area rugs and highly polished woods could be found everywhere the eye landed.
“My room is in the back of the house, near the kitchen,” Mrs. Amelia said, smiling at the delighted look on my face. “I used to have the main room upstairs, but my
knees aren’t what they used to be. One of the many joys of old age, I’m afraid. There are only four other regular tenants, three on the second floor and one on the third, so it’s fairly quiet here. Your room is actually an entire floor. Go to the end of the third floor hallway. The door will be on your left.”
She took an old skeleton key from the ring she pulled from the pocket of her robe and held it out to me. I took it with about as much enthusiasm as I would have taken a loaded gun in a game of Russian Roulette, knowing I had just accepted a key to the room where I would either succeed or die.
“Go. Get some rest,” Mrs. Amelia said, smiling at me kindly when I just stood there staring down at the key in my hand. “We will talk in the morning over breakfast.”
I nodded and thanked her again. She brushed off my gratitude and squeezed my hand before gesturing toward the staircase. Guessing I was probably keeping her from her own bed, I forced a smile and began to lug my bags up the staircase.
By the time I reached the second floor landing, I had to sit down and rest. When I reached the third floor, I was practically in tears and my body was screaming for me to just sit down somewhere and stay there. Something about that didn’t seem right to me. I was in pretty good shape, after all. Yeah, I’d had a rough night, but that shouldn’t have sapped every bit of strength I had. Then again, it hadn’t just been one night.
It had been a series of several pretty bad days.
“There had better be plenty of hot water,” I grumbled, getting to my feet and continuing down the hall. “That’s how this whole mess started. All this because Dad couldn’t get a decent plumber.”
I was still muttering to myself when I felt the air take on a distinct chill right in front of my face. I stopped when the hair on the back of my neck began to prickle, long-ingrained instinct telling me to remain still. After a second or two, the chill faded as if it had never been and I continued on my way without thinking about it again.