by Alyssa Day
Jack’s hand jerked, knocking the tower of jam over, and he started building it again. “Thank you for that, by the way. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to take that off your shoulders.”
“I was happy to do it for him,” I said honestly.
I glanced around the room while Jack built Mount Jam. More than a few people were staring at us, which didn’t really surprise me. But a lot of them were giving Jack really dirty looks, and that did.
When Lorraine came back to the table with our salads, I asked her about it.
“Oh, that blowhard Lawless was in here this afternoon, stirring up trouble. He was hinting really broadly that he suspected Jack of having something to do with that poor girl’s death. I tried to set him straight, but he told me I was just a waitress and didn’t know what I was talking about, so I spit in his lemonade,” she said, smiling so broadly I was afraid her false teeth would fall out.
“I kind of love you right now, Lorraine,” Jack said, grinning right back at her.
“You hush that talk. I’m at least ten years too old for you.” Lorraine—who was seventy if she was a day—winked at him and headed off to her other tables.
“So, nothing at all in Jeremiah’s office that might give us any clue as to why all this is happening?” I started moving croutons to the side of my salad, out of my way.
“You don’t like croutons?”
“Bread’s evil cousin,” I told him.
Jack gave me his “there’s something seriously wrong with you” look, but then he shook his head. “No. Nothing at all. There was one thing that I found odd, but I don’t know how it could have had anything to do with his death.”
“What was that?”
Lorraine and a helper showed up with our plates of food just then, so we waited until they unloaded everything onto our table and left.
“Jeremiah had a framed photo on his bookcase of himself with Melody and Shelley Adler at SeaWorld. Did you know anything about that?”
I slowly put my fork down, staring at him. “He what? He took them to SeaWorld? No, I never knew anything about that. I knew he liked the two of them—Shelley, especially—but nothing like that. And if he kept a photo of them, the day must have meant something special to him. I never noticed it when I was in his office with Mr. Chen.”
Jack finished the chicken on his first plate, slid the mashed potatoes and corn from plate one onto plate two, and set the empty plate aside, all without breaking stride in our conversation. It was quite impressive, really.
“He mentioned her a few times to me when I called, now that I think about it. I didn’t really pay any attention,” Jack said.
“Maybe he had hopes that when you came back to settle down, you’d settle down with Melody, and you could all become one big happy family,” I said, trying to think it through rationally. “He did like to tell me how much he wished he could have grandchildren one day, and how much he would spoil mine.”
Jack looked flabbergasted. “Me and Melody Adler? I can’t even imagine that he would think that it was a possibility.”
By the look on his face, he seemed intrigued with the idea, though. I stabbed my chicken perhaps a touch too violently, because Jack’s eyes widened.
“Moving on to exploding heads,” I said.
“You really are a strange woman, aren’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
He pointed to his plate, and I rolled my eyes.
“Okay, fine. If you’re going to be squeamish, we can wait and talk about exploding heads over pie and coffee,” I said, shrugging.
Jack shook his head. “Ruby would be so proud.”
“Shut up and eat your chicken.”
Chapter Twenty
We didn’t have any major epiphanies during pie and coffee, unfortunately, except the knowledge that Beau’s still had terrific pie.
“It had to be black magic,” Jack finally said, putting into words what neither of us had wanted to say before.
“But why? Why him? Unless maybe he killed Chantal, and somebody was getting revenge? But if that’s the case, why would they wait until he was in jail to do it?”
“Unless they didn’t know where he was until then,” Jack pointed out. “He’s a biker. He travels around. Pretty handy to wait until he was confined in a cell to cast an exploding-head spell on him, don’t you think?”
I could feel my face scrunching into a grimace. “I don’t think the word handy should ever be used in the same sentence with exploding-head spell.”
“You might have a point. Any thoughts about what we do next?”
“I think we need to go talk to a witch and find out how this all works, but I don’t particularly want to go see Mrs. Kowalski and get caught up in any stupidity with Hank or Walt.”
“Do you know any other witches around Dead End?”
“Actually, I do. A woman I went to school with. She cuts hair at Sassy Shears, but they’re closed on Mondays. I know where she lives, though, with her husband and daughter out on Birdsong Road. Are you feeling up for a drive?”
Jack stood up and tossed enough money on the table for our dinners and a substantial tip, but I was ready for that. I handed some of his money back to him, and replaced it with my own. “I can buy my own dinner, Jack. It’s not a date.”
I started to regret my word choice when he got a speculative gleam in his eyes, but thankfully he let it go. We waved goodbye to Lorraine and headed out into the cold evening air.
“I’m going to follow you there, because I have plans for later this evening,” Jack told me. “I found some former military guys who live out by the swamp. I’m going to buy a case or three of beer and take it up there and see what I can find out.”
I swallowed a slight twinge of hurt that he wasn’t inviting me along, but he must’ve noticed the expression on my face.
“Tess, these are not guys who would talk to me if you were there. They probably wouldn’t even come out of their houses if you were there. Just let me do this, and I’ll head over to your place afterward.”
I shivered and zipped up my jacket. Jack wasn’t wearing one, of course. He never did. Eating three chicken dinners at a time must keep a person’s body temperature up.
“Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go to Jeremiah’s. Maybe there’s something I can find that you missed. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try.” I didn’t want to offend him, but I probably thought more like Jeremiah, after all those years of working with him at the shop.
Jack nodded. “That’s a great idea. So let’s head out to see the witch—”
“Delia Roth, not ‘the witch,’ please.”
“And after we see Mrs. Roth, we’ll split up and see what we can find on our own.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
I noticed he sped away from his parking space before I could back out of mine. He was learning.
*
Delia Roth and her family lived in a small, pink house. That’s how I knew where to find her. She’d cut my hair before, and we’d chatted about a little bit of everything, as you do at the salon, and she’d mentioned living in a little pink house on Birdsong Road. The only pink house on Birdsong Road, she’d added, laughing. Delia had been cheerful in high school, and she’d grown up to be a cheerful adult. She enjoyed her life and her job, and she showed everyone pictures of her cute little daughter all the time. Just a normal, happy wife and mother in every way, except for the fact that Delia was a witch.
I’d asked her once when she’d first realized she could do magic, and she’d paused, holding a strand of my hair in one hand and her scissors in the other, and looked at me in the mirror.
“Do you know, that’s the first time anybody ever asked me that,” she said slowly. “I’d like to say it was something showy, like I turned my pet cat into a pony, but that’s not true. I just had a feeling that developed over several years that there was something different about myself, and I was right.”
She hadn’t seemed offended by my que
stion, so I’d thought it was okay to ask her to explain. “Different how?”
“For me, it’s a case of feeling like I’m more in touch with nature than other people seem to be. More in tune with the Earth. I know that sounds all touchy-feely, but I don’t know how else to explain it. I can feel the magic of the seasons when they change, and I delight in it. It fills up a tiny, dark place inside me with light and sound and air.”
She’d paused then, and laughed. “Sometimes I can make magical things happen, of course, or I wouldn’t be classified as a witch. Small things. Positive things. But mostly, it’s just a matter of feeling all my senses opened to the natural world in a way that normal people—non-witches—don’t.”
She’d changed the subject then, so I’d let it go, even though I didn’t fully understand. I figured it was like my visions. I’ve never been able to properly explain them, either.
The minute I stepped out of my car at Delia’s house, I felt it. An oppressive silence. The air itself had a dark, greasy feel, as if we were walking through a kitchen that nobody had cleaned in months. I suddenly realized that it was peculiarly silent for dusk, as well. I didn’t hear any birds singing, or even the chattering of insects discussing their evening plans. It felt wrong. Like some kind of dead zone.
I wanted to get out of there with every fiber of my being.
Jack pulled up behind my car. After he removed his helmet and swung his long leg over the bike, he sniffed the air. Then he made the same face that I could tell I was making.
“My tiger side feels like his fur is standing straight up. There is something wrong about this place.”
I shuddered. “I know. I feel like I’ve brought a knife to a magic fight, except I don’t even have a knife. You don’t happen to have a spare, do you?”
Jack gave me a look. “I never carry knives. Tiger, remember?”
He held out one hand, and his fingers shifted into claws right in front of my eyes.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said, relieved and a little bit freaked out too. “Let’s go see Delia and get this over with. I want to get out of here.”
We walked up to the house, and the spooky feeling climbing up my spine intensified until I could feel my shoulders hunch up around my ears, and I forced myself to relax. The place was dismal. The grass in the yard was dead, and there were a few toys scattered about, overturned and abandoned. Delia’s pink house wasn’t even pink anymore. It was a sort of dull rose gray, and it looked tired. Faded. As if the house itself had succumbed to the menace in the air around it.
I took a deep breath, pretended I was a brave person, and marched up to knock on the door. No answer.
Jack, still in the yard, took a few steps and glanced around the side of the house. “There’s a car over here under the carport. A little yellow VW. Is that hers?”
“It must be. Her husband’s a big guy; I doubt he drives a small car like that.”
“That doesn’t mean that the whole family isn’t out somewhere in his car,” Jack said.
He had a point, even though it was a disappointing one. But as I turned to step down off the porch, the curtain in the front room twitched.
“I think she’s in there.” I knocked again.
Still no answer.
“Delia, I know you’re in there,” I called out. “I just want to talk to you. If you don’t open the door, I’m going to sit on your porch all night until your husband comes home.”
It was an empty threat, because the three ice water refills that I’d had at Beau’s were already working their way through me, but Delia didn’t know that. I heard the sound of multiple locks being unlocked, and she opened the door and stepped out on the porch.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said in a hopeless voice, and the sight of her was so shocking that I couldn’t even speak.
Delia was maybe a few years older than me, but she appeared to have aged twenty years and lost thirty pounds since I’d last seen her. Her glossy hair—always her pride and joy, which made sense, since she worked in a hair salon—was dry and ragged and had three inches of dark roots showing. Her face was terribly pale, as though she hadn’t seen the sun in months. And her eyes were dark holes of despair, set too deep in her gaunt face.
“If she finds out I’m talking to you, she’ll kill me too,” she whispered hoarsely. “She’s out of control, and I can’t escape. I sent my family away to my husband’s parents up in Montana. I had to keep them safe. But she won’t let me leave, because she needs me for tomorrow. You have to go away, Tess. Get out while you still can.”
“Who’s out of control, Delia? Who are you talking about? If you’re this terrified, we should call the sheriff right now and get some help. I know Susan Gonzalez, and she—”
Delia’s hand shot out and caught my wrist, and a bolt of pain clawed through me. The gloves. I’d always made her wear gloves when she cut my hair.
She kept talking, but it was like the words were coming to me through a deep, dark tunnel. “No police. Especially not the sheriff. Don’t you know that he’s in on it with her? He’s there all the time, and he’s as bad as those sons of hers. You need to leave right now.”
I wanted to leave. I’d never wanted anything so badly in my life. But distantly, I realized that I wasn’t going anywhere for at least a few minutes, because I was falling into a vision of Delia’s death.
It was daytime, and she was outside, chanting. In fact, she was part of a group of chanting witches who stood in a tight circle around a tall woman. The tall woman turned to face Delia, and the shock of realization arrowed through me.
That was Olga Kowalski, and somehow—impossibly—it seemed like she could see me through my own vision.
“I don’t think so, little girl,” Olga said, and her voice was deeper and darker than I’d ever heard it before. She took a step closer to the Delia in my vision, pointed one long bony finger at her/us, and Delia started to choke to death.
And I felt every second of it.
I screamed, and lost the connection with the vision. Then I staggered back and almost fell off the porch, but Jack was there to catch me.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
“No. Not okay. Not okay at all. We have to get Shelley away from Olga,” I said, and Delia—the real Delia, the one who was still alive and standing right in front of me—gasped and took a step back.
“Are you a witch too?”
I shook my head. “No. What I’ve got is a different kind of magic—or something. I don’t know. I don’t have time to talk about it. You need to get out of town. Go find your family. Go to Alabama—I don’t know, go to the moon. Just get somewhere out of town and away from Olga Kowalski.”
Jack let me go, but stayed close. I could tell he was afraid I’d fall down again, but I didn’t have time to fall down.
“The farther the better,” he told Delia. “Just until this is over.”
Delia shrugged helplessly. “If I could get away, don’t you think I would? She’s getting stronger and stronger, and once she completes that ritual at midnight tomorrow during the Blood Moon, she’ll be unstoppable. If I don’t show up to be part of her circle, she’ll take me out the way she did that man in jail. I can’t get far enough, fast enough.”
I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. But she was a grown woman, and it seemed like she could have at least tried to reach out for help before now. Shelley was a nine-year-old child, and she was trapped in the home of a crazy, power-mad witch. It had unpleasant shades of “Hansel and Gretel.”
“What about Chantal? Was she tied up with the coven too?”
Delia looked confused. “What? No. She was dating Hank, though, and his mom didn’t like it much, but she’s not the type to run around shooting people.”
Jack finally spoke up. “What about my uncle?”
Delia shook her head. “I never heard anybody say anything about Jeremiah. I never saw him out at her place, either. Look, you really need to go. Right now. Before something worse
happens to any of us.”
“It’s already worse,” I said. “Delia, you have to find a way not to be part of that circle tomorrow. I had one of my visions—I know you know what I’m talking about—and I saw Olga killing you.”
Her face drained of what little color it had left, and then she uttered a hollow laugh. “You’re right, I do know about your visions. I know they show somebody’s death. But you warned that woman about her husband and his shovel, and it happened anyway. So it doesn’t matter what I do, does it? She’s going to kill me, one way or the other.”
“We don’t know that that’s true,” I said urgently. I forced myself to reach out and take her hands in mine, in spite of all my instincts screaming at me not to do it. I’d already touched her once; what did it matter?
“Please. Please try to get away. We’ll go—we’re leaving right now. She’ll never know we were here. And I’m going to call a friend we have in the FBI to see if he can send someone to help you. But please, Delia, get in your car and go. Now.”
“I can’t, Tess, but thank you for trying. And maybe…maybe this will help.” She reached out and touched my face before I realized she was doing it, and a tiny, tingling warmth spread through my bruised cheekbone and the area around my eye. When she lowered her hand, the dull headache I’d been fighting all day was gone.
“Tess. Your bruises—they’re gone,” Jack said. “She healed your face.”
“It’s my turn to thank you, Delia,” I said. “Please, if you’re afraid to be on your own, please just come with us.”
“No. No, I can’t. Please go. Just go now.” With that, she went back in her house, slamming and locking the door behind her.
I looked at Jack, mutely pleading for his help, but he shook his head.
“She made her decision, for better or worse. She’s an adult, and we can’t force her to protect herself. It’s a hard lesson that I’ve had to learn time and time again. You warned her, and that’s more than most people would do. It’s more than she had an hour ago. We should go. Every minute we stay here, she’s becoming more and more terrified.”