Chloe beat her there—Piper could sense the woman’s movement halt as she arrived—but only by a few minutes. And then she began to move again. Piper was certain that Chloe had said she wanted to meet at the bakery. Or, maybe she’d just said she wanted to get something from the bakery and meet at the hospital? When she got there, the building was dark, and she could sense Chloe moving away, toward the east end of town.
The hospital was south.
She tried not to be irritated as she texted Chloe. “I’m at the bakery. Where are you?”
It took a couple of minutes to get a message back. “Changed my mind. Going back to bed.”
Piper stared at her phone and the message. Something was terribly wrong. Chloe knew perfectly well that Piper would be able to tell where she was, or at least which direction and how far. She wasn’t headed back to her house, or the caves. And she wasn’t so clueless that she’d attempt to blatantly lie to Piper.
Before she jumped to any conclusions, she texted Chloe again. “Sure thing. Tell Rita thank you for the kind words when you see her tomorrow.”
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel until her phone lit up.
“I’ll do that.”
Cold slid down Piper’s spine. She looked out the window at the bakery. Nothing looked out of place, or broken, or… but was that fog? No, it was too cold for fog here and it was just near the porch, drifting slowly with the slight breeze.
Piper gathered her resolve and stepped out of the car, crossing the empty street to the walkway that led up to the bakery steps. There was a smell—something acrid and floral in a sickly, bitter way. It almost immediately made her nauseous. She paused before she went any further and turned the flash of her phone on to survey the porch.
On the step was a rusty can, wisps of the same smoke curling lazily from one end.
In a panic, she took a step back, and then turned to run back to the car. She fumbled with her phone, almost dropped it, and managed to call Aria. No answer. Of course; her phone would be off in the hospital room. She tried Frances next. Nothing; eight rings and then voice mail. As far as she knew, the Crones had nothing, and Piper didn’t even know how to get into the cave where they lived.
Chloe was getting farther away, and fast.
“What am I doing…?” She asked herself as she turned the ignition and pulled back into the street to follow. As she did, she tried to take stock. What did she have with her? Her phone, which would be useless except to call an ambulance if she needed it; there was nothing useful in the dashboard. She had a small bottle of pepper spray in her purse, but she hadn’t brought it because she’d thought it would be a quick outing, there and back.
She had her keys, which she could slip through her fingers for a makeshift weapon—if that sort of thing really worked. What she wouldn’t have given to have learned just one useful bit of magic right about now.
Following Chloe’s ‘signal’ was more difficult than she expected. There were times when she had to take a right turn but there was no turn to take, and she ended up having to drive up the road before making it only to discover she now needed to double back. Chloe, or whoever had her, wasn’t moving in a straight line, and she couldn’t either. Instead, she had to work her way east with the knowledge that she was losing time and distance.
Ultimately she ended up on the highway; Chloe’s presence was several miles ahead of her, at least, but in a straight line right into the mountains. She pressed the gas pedal to the floor, and kept her eyes and senses peeled while a voice in the back of her head screamed at her to turn around, go home, get help. Piper ignored the screaming voice of rationality—if someone had Chloe, then she might not have long enough. Whoever had her was in a hurry to get her away from Coven Grove. So, maybe the knew that she’d be weaker away from the Caves. That could mean a Faerie. What else was there to worry about?
What she knew for sure was that it couldn’t have been a normal abduction—at least, in as much as any abduction was normal. No regular every day kidnapper would have been able to take Chloe against her will.
She was getting close. Her car’s engine whine with the strain of keeping up speed that it probably hadn’t ever reached before. She expected police lights to start flashing any moment, but none did on a lonely mountain highway in the earliest hours of the morning. The road was empty for a long time—until she saw a pair of red lights racing ahead of her. It was hard to be precise in the dark; but she could feel Chloe’s presence at almost the same distance and getting closer. That had to be it.
So, she thought nervously, what comes next?
She couldn’t just run the car off the road—not as the elevation rose, and the right side of the highway was periodically a steep ravine; Chloe could be hurt. She couldn’t just order whoever it was driving to stop—at best they’d just ignore her, and at worst they might have a gun or, for that matter they might decide they didn’t mind running her off the road and down into a gully she’d never get out of.
That only left one option, and Piper didn’t like it.
She kept her distance, slowing down to match the lights so that they weren’t getting any further away, and followed.
Chapter 28
“Be careful,” Seamus said from the passenger seat of the truck as he watched Chloe Minds’ prone form shift in the bed. “We should have put some blankets back there. Shit… Finn, what the hell did we do?”
Finn threw him a sharp look. “What we said we was gonna do. Hold steady on me, partner. You were doing good there for a while.”
Seamus’ knuckles felt tight, even though he didn’t have anything in his hands. Did he? Something felt off. Like he was in two places at once, almost. And Finn no longer looked quite like himself. There was something familiar and foreign about him at the same time. “I don’t… feel so good. Pull over, I might need to get out.”
“No can do, partner,” Finn said. He was white knuckling the steering wheel like it might try and get away from him any second. “Just try and relax.”
“We took Chloe,” Seamus said. “Do you know how much trouble we’re in?”
“They won’t move on us if we’ve got one of them,” Finn said, “and even if they do, we got more pot-ash and witch-hazel bombs in the bag. All we gotta do is get this one somewhere away from town, and then we can interrogate her.”
“I don’t just mean the witches,” Seamus groaned. “Finn… we just… assaulted and kidnapped a lady.”
“A witch,” Finn spat. “Quit your whining, Seamus. You want to keep your town safe or not?”
Seamus shook his head, “Not like this I don’t.”
“Ain’t you ever gonna stand up for yourself?” Finn sneered. “You don’t gotta be weak all the time. We’re in it now.”
“I changed my mind,” Seamus said. He reached for the wheel.
Finn jerked it a little to one side, but corrected quickly, and his eyes flashed angrily at Seamus. “I want us to work together, partner,” he said, “but if you can’t stomach this, I’ll do it on my own.”
“Finn, pull the damn truck over, now.” Seamus drew his sidearm, and chambered a bullet.
The other man’s expression was amused instead of intimidated though. “Naw, Seamus,” he said. “You got it all wrong, partner. See, you told me I could drive; that I could take over. So that’s what I’m doing. Who are you gonna shoot with that thing? You got no idea what’s happening, do you?”
Seamus squeezed his eyes shut against a sudden pain in this head, right behind his eyes. His ears rang, and for a second he felt untethered, like he couldn’t tell which was was up or down and his mind would fly off the earth if he didn’t hang on to something. “What… what is that?”
“It’ll go away,” Finn said, “just as soon as you relax, and let me run things. Got that? I’m looking out for your best interests, Seamus. If you can’t stand up for yourself, that’s fine—I’ll stand up for both of us. I’m the one that’s gonna get us back home, see? Back where we belong. There’s bi
g reunion coming soon, partner. And these witches want to stop that. They want to keep us away from our family. We’re not gonna let them. Are we?”
Seamus’ eyes grew heavy. His whole body felt heavy. “Just don’t,” he muttered, but never finished the sentence before he passed out.
Finn shuddered as Seamus went to sleep, and readjusted his grip on the steering wheel as he carefully took the pistol away from his temple and flicked the safety back on. He checked the rear-view. Just one car on the road, but it was keeping a distance. He slowed, more comfortable having traffic ahead of him than behind. The car never quite caught up, though.
Seamus knew that meant it could be someone pacing them. Cops, highway patrol, and deputies all did it sometimes, when there was nothing else to do, while they ran plates or waited for someone to swerve or get going a little too fast.
And what Seamus knew, Finn knew.
This car had been behind him for at least six or seven miles now, though. Plates would have been run and returned already unless it was a busy night at dispatch, and that seemed unlikely. So, just some random night time traveller using his tail lights as a beacon in the dark? He glanced back at the unconscious witch in the bed of the truck. That seemed like a bit of a coincidence. The whole reason they’d staked out the Bakery the second they got back was to catch the first witch they found. Maybe they should have waited. Could have been a mistake. Why was this one headed out so late if not to meet another? Clumsy. He should have thought of that. Or Seamus should have.
Seamus was next to useless lately, though. That was the whole reason Finn had woken up in the first place. That, and the wake up call he’d gotten the day the deputies turned into mindless zombies and answered the same call the only way they knew how. Like sheep.
Finn wasn’t a sheep. Neither was Seamus, but he wasn’t ready to hear it yet. No; they were wolves.
And they didn’t like being followed.
Chapter 29
When the lights left the highway, turning onto an exit that was more of a trail into the woods, Piper didn’t follow right away. She could still feel Chloe—though, it had grown weaker even this far from Coven Grove and the Caves—and didn’t want it to be obvious to whoever was driving that she was following them. Instead, she drove some distance ahead and watched the lights disappear into the trees before she made a careful u-turn and drove slowly back to where the vehicle had turned.
Driving up after them seemed dangerous, so she left her car parked on the side of the road and gave her eyes some time to adjust to the dark. At least the cloud cover had broken up a bit; the moon was nearly full, and once she got used to the dark she could see enough to get onto the hard packed dirt path—more of a drive way, she thought—into the woods. She stopped at the entrance, though.
The highway ran through the mountains toward Portland. This wasn’t the countryside near Coven Grove; there were animals in the woods around this region. There were bears, and big cats, and coyotes. Those were just the natural things. The very existence of magic gave a vague suggestion of other unknowns that might be lurking in the dark.
Piper’s feet refused to go any further, and her heart threatened to break her ribs if she couldn’t calm it. She felt like a little girl again, desperately wishing for a night light to drive off the darkness and whatever hid inside it.
“Come on, Piper,” she breathed, “come on… Chloe’s up there… you can’t just leave her.”
She took several deep breaths and then forced one agonizing step after another up the path, careful to stay as quiet as possible. She had her phone in one hand, and if it got too dark under the trees she had the option to turn on the screen to see by—but in this kind of black, it would be like holding a road flare for anyone who might be watching.
Chloe’s presence moved some distance up the path, and then paused, before moving again and settling into place. She’d been moved from the truck, Piper guessed, and that might have meant she was being held somewhere.
It was a long walk, and difficult; it was almost all steeply uphill. Eventually, though, she saw lights winking in and out of existence through the trees. They winked less and less frequently until finally Piper was kneeling behind a large tree on the edge of a rough clearing set with two trailers and an old cabin. Near the cabin was a cellar door, which explained why she sensed Chloe somehow immediately ahead—under the ground. Something was wrong with her, Piper thought. Chloe’s magic was inconsistent, almost… interrupted with some kind of psychic white noise.
Piper surveyed the grounds. They were lit well enough. Maybe the best thing would be to call the sheriff’s department; let them know that Chloe had been abducted and that she’d found where she was being held. But when she touched the button on her phone, she saw just how far from civilization she really was—no service here. There was, incredibly, a wifi network probably centered on the house. One that required a password.
She made a small sound of disgust and put her phone away. That’s when she saw the truck.
Seamus’ truck.
There was a noise, and she ducked behind the tree for a moment before she peeked out around the side and saw Seamus climbing out of the cellar door. He dusted his hands off, and then walked around toward the front of the house. The door to the house opened, and a woman with an eyepatch that looked none too happy to see him exchanged tense words for a moment before she finally stepped back, opened the door all the way and let him in.
Who were these people? Why would Seamus have taken Chloe here? There were no time for questions like those, and no way to get the answers. She spent another minute checking the grounds, looking for any signs that someone might be outside or watching. It looked clear. Someone could come out of the house or the trailers any moment. At least someone in the house was awake, but…
Piper pushed through her fear again. She’d come this far. Just a few steps at a time, she crept out from behind her tree and across the clearing, eyes flickering across the open spaces compulsively until it felt like she couldn’t get them to focus on one spot. Maybe that was best. She made it to the doors to the cellar unmolested, and found the latch hooked through with a lock that hadn’t been closed. Clearly, Seamus was more concerned with Chloe getting out than anyone getting in. Small blessings. If she could just get Chloe to the woods, they could make it back to her car or even just in range of cell service.
For now, she worked the rusty lock out of the latch one grinding centimeter at a time to keep from making unnecessary noise. It took over a minute, at least, to get it free, and then another bone rattling several seconds to swing back the rusted latch before she was finally able to lift one of the cellar doors and slip in.
She waited at the top of the short flight of stairs, listening. All she heard was a whisper of ragged breath. Piper descended the stairs carefully, but they still creaked under her feet. She froze, and listened again, but heard nothing. There was no light in the cellar, which probably meant that no one could see her. Though she could sense Chloe just ahead, she had to turn on her phone and shine the light of the screen into the darkness to find her friend laying still on the floor, her hands behind her back, her ankles tied together. A length of rope snaked out behind her to a stake in the ground.
Piper’s eyes burned, and she looked behind her to make sure no one was there—it felt as if any moment someone was going to walk in on her; the darkness beyond the light of her screen seemed filled with waiting dangers. She swept her phone around, and found the room utterly barren. It was a simple, low cube of concrete, timbers set into the walls to support the ceiling above them. That same acrid smell was here, and she found a bundle of something hanging from the ceiling, smoldering as it gave off a bitter white smoke that drifted around the ceiling.
She didn’t waste time. Before even checking Chloe, she went to the stake in the ground and untied the complicated knot, and then crawled over the dirt floor to gently urge Chloe awake.
Chloe emitted a pained groan, and her eyes opened only long enough
to droop back down again. “Smoke,” she wheezed.
Piper glanced up at the ceiling. There was no time to try clearing out the room; the best option was to try and get Chloe out of it.
Unfortunately, Piper didn’t see how to accomplish that if Chloe wasn’t mobile. Carrying the woman was out of the question—Piper was far to small to just haul someone like Chloe onto her shoulders. She was taller, wider, and the kind of woman that wasn’t concerned about having a flat belly.
“Chloe,” she hissed, “you have to try and get up. I just need to get you up the stairs. Come on, lady, put on your big girl panties and snap out of this.”
It looked like she was trying. But there was a problem. Piper stood to help Chloe up, and a wave of dizziness swept over her. There was a creaking noise, and then several heavy thumps. A light shined from near the stairs, and when it turned from her face down to Chloe’s, Piper saw Seamus holding it, shaking his head slowly. “Now that was just foolish,” he said. “Walking right in here like that. That feeling in your belly there, making your head all swimmy is a little something called witch hazel and pot-ash. This is just a little, really, meant to keep people like you out, keep those sneaky powers under control. Give it a second…”
Piper took a step toward him, or to get between him and Chloe, but her foot didn’t make the entire journey through a single step, and she stumbled, falling forward on to her hands. Her limbs felt thick, and wouldn’t respond like she needed them to.
“Piper…” Chloe said.
Witching You Wouldn't Go (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 6) Page 17