by Alyssa Day
The sympathy in Jack’s voice nearly undid me. I knew he could tell how much this was hurting me, but he was right. There was nothing we could do for Delia. Shelley, though, was different. Olga Kowalski was planning to become a black magic practitioner on the very next night, and she still had custody of the little girl.
And that was something we were going to change.
We drove down the road a mile or so and pulled off onto a wide spot next to a cow pasture. Jack parked his bike and walked over to climb into the car with me.
“What can we do? We have to get Shelley out of there right this very minute,” I said frantically. “We can’t leave her with a witch who’s planning to go to the dark side.”
Jack nodded grimly. “I agree. But it’s getting dark now. Black magic has more power during the night. We’re better off calling in reinforcements and going out there tomorrow in the daylight.”
I slammed my hand on the steering wheel in frustration. “What reinforcements? The sheriff is almost certainly in league with Olga. I can’t trust Susan or Deputy Kelly, even if I wanted to, because they might be under some kind of spell.”
“As much as I hate to say it, it might be time to call in Agent Vasquez,” Jack said slowly. “He can probably get us a P-Ops backup team in place by tomorrow afternoon.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
Jack bared his teeth. “If he doesn’t, we’ll go in ourselves. Either way, that little girl is coming out of there tomorrow, well before midnight.”
We split up then, still determined to keep to our plan. I might be able to find something out at Jeremiah’s, or Jack might learn something from the ex-military guys out in the swamp. I waved to him and tried to smile when he drove off, again pretending to have a lot more courage than I actually felt.
Suck it up, Buttercup, I told myself. All I had to do was search through files at Jeremiah’s house. This was probably going to be the least scary thing I did all week.
Then I turned the volume way up on the radio, locked the car doors, and headed for Jack’s place. I drove very carefully, on high alert—for what, I didn’t know. Hank or Walt with a rifle, maybe. There was hardly any traffic on the road, though, and it was a clear night. After another mile or so, that oppressive feeling of menace that had centered on Delia’s house lifted. Apparently Olga had a limit to the range of her power, at least for now.
I was glumly wondering just how much the Blood Moon ritual would expand that range when the rhinoceros-sized alligator from my nightmares appeared in the middle of the road and charged my car. I screamed and slammed on the brakes, yanking the steering wheel to the left to avoid running into the monster. I was still screaming when my car swerved off the road and slammed into a tree, and then everything went fuzzy for a while.
By the time the cloud of dust from the airbag dissipated, I’d managed to calm down a little. I had to really work at it to get my door open, and when I finally did, I fell out of the car onto the ground. Then my poor, confused brain, which was sick and damn tired of being knocked around, kicked back into gear and reminded me that there was a monster after me. I whipped my head around, clamping my jaw shut to keep another scream from escaping, only to discover that there was absolutely nothing on the road.
I had just had the champion of all hallucinations, and I had a feeling I knew exactly who had sent it to me.
That witch.
Chapter Twenty-One
I stood up, still a little woozy, and started to make my way back to the road. Then I remembered that I needed my phone from my purse, so I trudged back. This time I forced myself to actually look at the front of my car.
It was much worse than I’d thought. I was pretty lucky to be walking away at all.
My sturdy Toyota was now perfectly illustrating the phrase wrapped around a tree. The bottom dropped out of my stomach as I surveyed the scope of the damage. The whole front end was crushed. In fact, I’d hit the tree so hard that the glass in my windshield was threaded through with tiny cracks, probably a hairsbreadth away from shattering.
Suddenly, I really needed to sit down, but I wasn’t about to climb back in the car, even to rest. Instead, I carefully leaned over the driver side and grabbed my purse, which had fallen onto the floorboard of the passenger side. Then I walked back out to the road and kept one eye peeled for any more monsters while I fished around in my purse for my phone. Because, on further reflection, maybe that monster hadn’t been a hallucination.
After all, what did I know about what kinds of creatures black-magic witches could conjure up? Maybe there was a giant alligator lurking in the bushes…or maybe I was just being an idiot from too many knocks on the head in one week. I tried to shake it off—both the wooziness and the panic—and I called Jack. His phone went straight to voicemail. I tried out a few of my favorite bad words, but they didn’t do much to make me feel any better.
Uncle Mike was out of town, Molly was out of town, and I didn’t want to get Dave or Eleanor caught up in this mess. I needed somebody neutral—somebody who wouldn’t cause Olga to fixate on them just for coming out to get me.
Duh. I needed to call Dead End Towing. I called the Pit Stop, and the guy working there transferred me over.
“Dead End Towing, you crash ’em, we cash in,” said the guy who answered the phone. Then he laughed uproariously.
“I don’t really see that catching on as a marketing slogan,” I said dryly.
“I know, but I’m bored and it’s late and what the hell. Who’s this and what do you need?”
“Larry? Is that you? This is Tess Callahan. I had an accident, and I need for you to come out to get me and my car, please.”
Wow. There I was, using my nice words, even after somebody tried to kill me. Somebody give me a gold star.
Maybe I was still a little bit woozy.
Larry’s voice turned serious. “Tess? Are you okay? Where are you?”
I told him where I was, and he promised to be right out. After that, there was nothing to do but wait, and think, and worry.
About monsters and tigers and witches.
Oh my.
By the time Larry showed up about fifteen minutes later, I’d calmed down substantially. There hadn’t been any more monsters, hallucinatory or otherwise, but neither had there been a single other car. I wondered how long that stretch of road had felt like a dead zone, and I wondered why I hadn’t heard anything about it before. Were people protecting Olga? Or were they too afraid of her to talk about it?
The sight of the tow truck was a big relief. Larry pulled up and stepped out, hitching his pants up in the losing battle with his enormous belly. He took one look at my car and whistled, long and low.
“Tess, you’re awful damn lucky to be walking around after that.”
I nodded. “I know. Good airbags.”
“Good airbags and God’s blessing. I’ll deny it if you ever quote me, because I know it’s blasphemy around these parts, but those little Toyotas last forever, and they can take a good bit of damage. Not that much damage, though.” He took another look at my car and then shook his head. “Definitely not that much. I’m pretty sure it’s not salvageable.”
I felt a pain go through me at the thought of losing my little car, but in the grand scheme of things, better the car than me. That old Toyota had given up its life to protect me, if I looked at it from a certain angle.
Or maybe I just had a concussion.
“Do you think you can get it out of there and onto the truck?”
“Not by myself,” he said. “Especially not in the dark. I’ll come back with help in the morning. It’s not going anywhere.”
Captain Understatement.
He waved me into the truck with him, and we headed back to town.
“Do you want me to drop you at your place?”
“Yes. No, wait. Can you drop me at Jeremiah’s place instead?”
He didn’t look at me funny, or ask me why. Larry was an uncomplicated guy. “Sure thing.”
; We drove along for a few minutes, and my eyes started to close in spite of myself. It must’ve been the aftereffect of the adrenaline rush from the accident. We were almost to Jeremiah’s when Larry said something that woke me right back up.
“I think we need to put a caution sign on that stretch of road. I don’t rightly understand why it’s so damn dangerous, but it is. That’s the exact spot where Melody Adler had her accident too.”
I sat straight up in my seat and turned to look at him. “What? Larry, are you sure? This is important. Are you sure that’s the exact spot?”
He snorted. “Of course I’m sure. I towed her car out of there, didn’t I? Saddest thing. Her and both of her parents too. I could only thank the good Lord that that sweet little girl of hers wasn’t in the car at the time.”
“That was a blessing,” I agreed, but then a thought struck. “But it’s also odd. If Melody and her parents were in the car, where was Shelley? It happened in the evening, right? So she wouldn’t have been at school.”
Larry glanced over at me, clearly surprised. “Why, she was over with her cousins. The Kowalskis. Mrs. K was keeping the little girl while Melody took her parents out for a fancy anniversary dinner, somebody told me at the time.”
Icy dread started to zing through my nerve endings. Shelley had been at the Kowalskis’ house. Melody had been killed in a terrible car accident exactly where the monster illusion had run me off the road.
Maybe Melody’s accident hadn’t been an accident at all.
What could Melody have known that had gotten her killed? And could I get confirmation of this information? Larry was a nice guy, but he wasn’t necessarily the most reliable witness.
“Who told you that? Are you sure? That Shelley was with Olga?”
He shrugged. “I think it was Deputy Kelly. It was really bad, much worse than yours. Poor boy was first on the scene, and he was still pale and kind of green in the face from throwing up by the time I got there. I didn’t go anywhere near the car until the ambulance folks had done their job.”
His face, in the dim light from the dashboard, had turned sad and grim. “You just see too much in this job, you know? Too many things you can never un-see.”
I reached over and patted his arm, as much to comfort myself as to comfort him. “But at least sometimes you get to be a hero, like you were for me tonight. Thank you again, Larry. My family is out of town, and it was getting to be a little bit scary being out there by myself.”
I didn’t tell him about the magic or the monster or the witches. There was no point, because there was nothing he could do about it. Also, I just didn’t have the time. I needed to reach Jack, find out exactly what the plan was for the Blood Moon the next night, and call Special Agent Alejandro Vasquez. I had a feeling we were going to need all the backup we could get.
*
After I thanked Larry again and paid him, I watched forlornly as he drove off. Then I let myself in Jeremiah’s house. I had my own key, so I didn’t need to use the one that was taped to the underside of the rocking chair on the front porch. On second thought, I went back and got it, so nobody else could use it either. Once I got inside the house, with the door locked behind me, I started going from room to room, checking windows. Tonight was a night that I wanted to be extra sure that there was no stealthy way into the house.
Although, when I was dealing with the kind of magic that could cause people’s heads to explode from a distance, I wasn’t sure how much help a locked window would be. Still, it was a psychological thing, and I could feel myself relax with every snick of a lock.
When I finished, I filled the electric kettle in the kitchen and switched it on. It felt like a good night for a cup of tea and a telephone call to my friendly not-so-local P-Ops agent. My call went straight to his voicemail, so I left a quick message that didn’t say too much. Just in case somebody unfriendly happened to listen in to the call. But I was pretty sure I’d managed to convey the urgency of the situation.
Okay, basically it was “Alejandro, help. Blood Moon. Black magic. Help.”
Still, I was giving myself points for being concise.
After that, I called Jack again, but his phone went straight to voicemail too. I didn’t start to worry yet, because I knew that cell phone service out in the swamps was horrible. Instead, I drank my tea, checked all the doors and locks again, and then I headed for Jeremiah’s office to try to find anything—anything at all—that might give us some clue as to what was going on in Dead End.
Three hours later, I had torn Jeremiah’s office apart, but was no closer to any kind of an answer. I stood in the middle of the room with my hands on my hips and looked around one more time.
“Think, Tess. Jeremiah was a very smart man. If he had something to be worried about, even though he didn’t tell you at the time, wouldn’t he find some way to let somebody know about it?”
Unsurprisingly, the empty room didn’t answer me. However, my gaze was drawn once more to that photograph. Jeremiah, Melody, and Shelley, all holding cups of colored ice in front of a dolphin tank. It was a lovely photo, and they all looked very happy. So what was it about the picture that felt a little bit off to me?
I walked over and picked it up. The frame was nothing special, just a small wooden frame, the kind you could pick up at the drugstore for five or ten bucks. I turned it over in my hands and looked at the back, but there was no writing on it. Nothing that said CLUE in giant letters, for example.
Nancy Drew would be so disappointed in me.
At this point, I had nothing left to search, so I figured what the heck. I took the frame apart to look inside and, holy crap, there was actually something there.
Maybe, just maybe, I’d finally gotten my first clue.
There was nothing written on the photo, but there was a folded piece of paper tucked between the photo and its cardboard backing. I unfolded it, holding my breath, and recognized Jeremiah’s neat, cramped writing.
Blood Moon ritual? Molder, p. 85.
Now I just needed to figure out who or what Molder was, and find page eighty-five of the appropriate book. It took me a while, but I read the spines of every book in his library. No Molder anywhere. I checked his living room, kitchen, and bedside table for books (there were more books, but none were by or about anybody named Molder), and then finally gave up in disgust and went to the kitchen to get a bottle of water.
I was exhausted, dirty, and worried sick. Neither Jack nor Vasquez had returned my calls. I kept wavering back and forth about calling Susan. I didn’t think she could possibly be in on any evil plots, but if Olga could create giant alligator-rhino monsters, she might be able to perform mind control tricks on deputies. I decided I just couldn’t take the chance, at least not until I talked to Jack or Vasquez.
Jack’s motorcycle finally roared up outside, so I ran into the living room. Before I flung open the door, though, I looked out the window to be sure it was him. At this stage of the game, I’d learned a little bit of caution. Anybody could’ve been driving Jack’s bike. In fact, it could have been a different motorcycle. It’s not like I knew enough about bikes to distinguish between the sounds of their engines.
It was Jack. But he parked the bike practically in a rosebush, and when he dismounted and started toward the house, his walk was…wobbly. I opened the door and stared out at him in disbelief. “Are you drunk?”
He shoved his hair out of his eyes with one hand and looked up at me with a gleam in his eyes that was almost feral. He ruined the effect by stumbling, but at least caught himself by grabbing the porch railing before he face-planted.
“Wow. I can smell the whiskey from here,” I said, not sure whether to be amused or disgusted. “So this is Super Soldier Interrogation Tactics 101? Get them drunk and good-old-boy the information out of them?”
He laughed and flashed his special wicked smile at me. “Oh, Tess. Tess, Tess, Tess. You’re so funny. Funny, and smart, and beautiful. All the best things, wrapped up in a red-haired package.”
Now I was starting to get nervous.
Suddenly, he crouched and then leapt up onto the porch, bypassing the next three steps and possibly the laws of physics. Even drunk, he had a tiger’s inherent grace. While I was appreciating that, he started to stalk me, and his gracefulness suddenly struck me as more dangerous than pretty.
“It’s witches,” he announced, still smiling, but never taking his eyes off me.
I backed into the house, slowly and cautiously. He followed me, step by matching step.
“I know it’s witches. I even know which witch,” I said, continuing to back away from the drunken kitty cat.
Jack stopped and kicked the door shut, and then he started advancing on me again. “Which witch is which?”
This apparently struck him as hilarious, because he repeated it three or four times as he followed me across the floor, until I was forced to stop when my back touched the wall.
“Exactly how much whiskey did you drink?” I put my hand out to stop him from coming any closer.
“Three or four,” he said happily. Then he leaned forward and took a deep sniff of my hair. “You smell so good. Always smell so good. Never like death, or blood, or battle. Always like flowers. My sweet little Tess flower.”
Oh boy.
“Jack, why don’t we go make you some coffee? I thought shapeshifters had superior metabolism. How is it that three or four shots of whiskey did this to you? And why the hell did you drive in this condition? What if you’d wrecked?” I went from amused and anxious to angry and terrified in seven seconds flat.
What if he’d been seriously hurt or even killed?
Jack grabbed my hand and placed it flat on his chest, over his heart. “So pretty,” he crooned, looking down at me with way too much heat in his deep green eyes. “Not three or four shots, lovely Tess. Three or four bottles. And I wouldn’t get hurt, because there’s a secret about tigers.”
“What secret is that?” I could feel his heart beating, slow and steady, beneath my hand, and it was mesmerizing. I realized that I was also curious about his secret, in spite of myself.