by Cate Martin
Charlotte stood over me with menacing fists, waiting for me to get up again. She was clearly psychopathic, but not the sort of psychopath who would kick you in the kidneys when you're down. Which was good for me since I couldn't get my diaphragm to calm down and stop spasming.
Then I saw my wand under the desk that sat between the two windows. I scrambled for it, but Charlotte caught me by the hair and drew me up short. Then she pulled me to my feet. She was quite a bit shorter than me, so rather than standing, I was mostly bent over, trying to get her fingers out of my hair.
She let me go with a push that sent me stumbling forward to the window. Before I had quite recovered, she was tackling me again, this time low at the back of my thighs. She got underneath me and heaved me out the still-open window.
I was lucky my neck hadn't snapped like Thomas'. But my head had plowed through the snow mounded up against the house and struck something hard and rock-like underneath. I rolled away from the window and tried to get up on my hands and knees to crawl, but my vision was nothing but darkness and exploding stars. I only had the vaguest sense of where I was going.
Then my hand landed on Thomas' icy cold ankle. No one had moved his body, although I felt a blanket that might have been draped over him at some point. The wind had blown it half off him.
The band was playing again, and I could hear voices chanting in unison. The countdown. Nearly midnight.
I heard Charlotte's feet hit the snow as she jumped out the window after me. What had taken her so long? I shook my head to clear my vision then looked back at her.
She had my wand in her hand. I felt a wave of revulsion. As if it hadn't been sullied enough already.
She tromped through the snow until she was standing over me, still on my hands and knees in the snow next to Thomas' body. She raised the wand with a look of triumph on her face. I almost wanted to laugh. Clearly, she thought that it would be just like the key, that having it meant she could use it. She looked genuinely confused when nothing happened.
"It needs words too, I suppose?" she said to me.
"It needs more than that," I said.
"Pity," she said and tossed it aside. It plunged into the snow somewhere far from the patio lights.
I got to my feet but still needed my hands to keep moving, stumbling past a row of ornamental trees wrapped in canvas for the winter to the deeper parts of the garden.
"I don't need spells to kill you," Charlotte said, plunging her hand into the snow and coming up with a rock from the landscaping. I ducked, putting my arms over my head and trying to turn away. It struck my shoulder and bounced high into the air. I could feel blood welling out of a gash just out of my line of sight, running down the back of my gown.
I kept moving. I don't know that I had a destination in mind. Perhaps there was a way to get over the wall and escape to the charm school.
But to my delight, I saw that past a second row of ornamental trees was a long, narrow skating rink. Someone kept it neatly brushed of snow, and the ice sparkled even in the inadequate light from the house through the trees.
I could hear Charlotte running up behind me, looking to tackle me again. But I wasn't just going to stand there and take another hit. I pushed off from the snowbank and slid out onto the ice, turning as I slid to see Charlotte draw up short.
My shoes only had little kitten heels, but it was more heel than I was used to skating in. And it had been more than a year since I had been out on the ice at all. But my muscle memory was strong. I kept myself sliding, moving backward so I could keep my eyes on Charlotte.
She tried to step out onto the ice after me, but her first step sent her feet up into the air and the rest of her down hard on her butt on the ice. She yelped, more angry than hurt.
I don't think I laughed out loud. I might have smirked. But whatever I did, Charlotte was purple with rage as she got back to her feet. I couldn't quite make out what she was grumbling, but I'm sure if she were a comic strip character it would be written all in grawlix.
"Magic isn't my only talent," I said.
"I have talents as well," she said, still seething. She was feeling all over her skirt, although I couldn't tell if she was searching her pockets or checking for bruises.
"Yes, you're quite the little pickpocket," I said.
"Yes, I am," she said and drew up straight before aiming a gun at me.
"Where did you get that?" I asked.
"Somebody's pocket," she smirked.
"Don't," I said, holding up my hands. As if they could stop a bullet.
The gun went off with a surprisingly soft bang. Then my ear was on fire. The bullet had only grazed me, across my cheek and over the top of my ear, but it was bleeding like crazy, and the pain was searing.
I had to straighten up. I had to get running before she fired again. But I couldn't make myself do it. I couldn't even take my hand off my bleeding ear. She was going to fire again, and there I was without even my traitorous wand to protect me.
The world was going dark again, but this time there were no exploding stars. It was like something was generating clouds of darkness, inky blackness that swallowed the world around me.
Wait, I was the one generating the darkness.
"You're in a sticky spot here," a voice said. I looked up, still clutching my ear. The voice wasn't coming from where Charlotte was standing, still aiming at me, although she appeared to be frozen in time. And it wasn't coming from the house behind her.
I looked to my left, towards the charm school. I could see the ethereal glow of the time bridge that dominated its back yard. The soft pulsation of its threads was stronger than ever now. Then something was emerging from it, a being of light walking towards me without leaving a mark on the mounds of snow.
"Juno," I said.
"I can help you," she said. "I can always help you and always will. You have only to ask."
"No," I said. "I'm good."
"Are you?” Juno said, tipping her head as if to get a better look at my ear.
"I don't need your help," I said.
"No, that's true," she said. "I saw what you did just a few months ago. The power you drew on then, it was impressive. Won't you reach for it now?"
"No," I said. "I don't need that either."
"Really?" Juno said. "You're going to do what exactly?"
I had no idea, and I was sure that the smile I gave Juno was more than a little manic. "Just watch me," I said.
"Always, my protégé," she said. She raised her arms and tendrils of threads from the fabric of the bridge caught her up and pulled her back into the bridge itself.
But I knew she was still watching me. She was always watching me.
The moment I blinked and time started moving forward again the gun went off. I flinched, but this time the whistle of the bullet passed by me.
Charlotte looked at the gun as if it were the gun's fault. She gave it a shake then straightened her arm to take aim again.
But by that time I was already halfway back across the ice. She tried to adjust her aim, but I was jinking back and forth too aggressively for her to get a bead on me. And she waited until too late to think about backing up.
I launched off of the ice with a scream and caught Charlotte around her waist, tackling her back into the snow. The gun went off again, but this shot was truly wild. The air left her in a whoosh when she hit the ground, and the gun went flying out of her hand.
I sat down on her chest, pinning her arms down with my knees. She was struggling like a wild thing, and it took all of my attention just to stay on top of her.
There was nothing to do but wait for her to tire herself out. She wasn't going to be able to dislodge me.
"I say, is someone out there?" a man called.
It took three gunshots in the backyard to draw everyone's attention? What was the point of bait if you weren't keeping an eye on it?
I could hear multiple footsteps coming out of the house, running over the swept patio then into the deeper snow and fin
ally rustling through the trees.
But the first to burst out into the open space around the skating rink was Stuart. He took one look at me pinning Charlotte down and not letting her move. Then he looked at the gun laying in the snow within reach of either of us.
And from the way he narrowed his eyes at me, I knew he had come to the exact wrong conclusion.
Chapter 22
"She's got a gun!" Stuart cried as other officers started flowing in through the trees. I leaned into my knees to keep Charlotte pinned down, but I raised both my hands as a dozen men surrounded me with their own guns aimed at me.
"She took it from one of you," I said. "She shot me."
Stuart looked skeptical, but he was standing on the right side of me. McConnell on my left grimaced.
"Get off her!" Stuart commanded.
"Don't let her get away," I said. "She's the killer."
"She's just a kid," one of the other officers said.
"Get up!" Stuart said again.
"If she runs, she'll disappear," I said. "She knows this house better than any of you."
"Pull her off the girl," Stuart said. Two of the officers holstered their weapons then took hold of my arms, pulling me back off of Charlotte.
Who immediately popped up and bolted for the house.
"Catch her!" I screamed, but no one made a move to stop her. They were all still aiming their guns at me. "McConnell! Go after her! Don't let her get away!"
"Isn't that Mary's kid sister?" one of the other officers behind me asked. The other turned to answer him, and while their attention was momentarily off me, I slipped out of their hands and ran after Charlotte.
Charlotte let out a very convincing scream of terror that ended in panicked sobs. She ran faster towards the door off the patio, but the adrenaline surging through my body gave me a burst of speed. By the time her hand was on the doorknob, my hand had caught the back of her dress.
She shrieked in panic as if I were about to kill her.
Then hands were on me again, pulling me back until the back of Charlotte's dress slipped from my grasp. But my fingers still had a hold of something that snapped.
I was flung down onto the cold patio flagstones, and once more I had the breath knocked out of me.
Then I was buried under half a dozen bodies, all grabbing my arms and legs and holding me still. Too many of them were on top of my chest, and I was already laboring to breathe. I was going to be smothered.
My consciousness was slipping away when I blinked and found myself in the world of threads. All of the officers piled on top of me, their own threads glowing invitingly. I could move them aside with just a few tugs and pulls.
But I didn't. They didn't understand what was happening and had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but only because Stuart had led them there. And looking at his form now I saw that he wasn't being actually malicious. He just had his baseline suspicions of me set way high, so high that everything seemed to reinforce them in his eyes.
But something under that pile of police officers was glowing in the way only magical objects glowed. Not the key; Brianna had that. And not my wand, lost in the snow.
The necklace. I had torn it from Charlotte’s neck when I had grabbed at her dress, and I had it still, clutched tightly in my hand even as I fought to breathe. Definitely magic. Who had given it to her? What had it been meant to do?
That last question I could make a guess at. Our spells hadn’t found Charlotte or any sign of her angry, dark heart. Not after she had seen us on the stairs. At some point after that, she must have met another witch. A gift-bearing witch.
I looked to Charlotte. She had moved to the inside of the doorway but was still there, watching me struggle under all those bodies. And I could see her so clearly now.
Her threads were like snakes, a writhing dark mass of twisted, tangled aims. Maybe part of her did believe she did what she did for the sake of her sister. But I could see that deep down that wasn't really true.
She had wanted to kill. It was a desire she had nursed inside herself for a very long time. She had only been waiting for an opportunity. And she had seen it on the balcony when Ivy made such a tantalizing target. Only a little push was needed. With the McTavets involved with each other, Edward and Thomas scuffing, and Coco so blinded by the lights she had lost track of where Charlotte was even standing, it was all too easy.
Then she had gone after Thomas. And then after me.
Next would be Coco. I could see it there, the blackness she was pouring into the threads that connected her with the girl who had been meant to be her friend.
I felt at the threads that radiated out from her form. They were loathsome to touch, but I swallowed down my revulsion. I had to do something, but what?
If I reached inside her and severed those threads, would her desire to kill Coco end?
Maybe, but the desire to kill someone would remain. Those dark threads ran all through her form, strangling the few light ones she still had left. I didn't know how I could take the darkness and not kill the light.
I did know how to stop her heart. And maybe she deserved that. But maybe there was a way to save the light inside her that didn't rely on magic. Maybe she could get some help. I doubted she'd ever be an upstanding, contributing member of society, but some small measure of redemption could still be found for her.
I was still holding those dark threads, uncertain what to do when I suddenly had the acute feeling that I was being watched. There, in the world of webs, eyes were on me.
I expanded my awareness, first back towards the time bridge. When Juno failed to appear, I went wider, encompassing the house, the block, the neighborhood.
I found no one, and yet I still felt watched. Someone, or rather several someones, wanted to see what I would do.
I looked down at Charlotte's heart threads there in my hand. It would be so easy.
But Coco had asked me for justice. And a summary execution without a trial was not justice.
I released the thread and moved away.
The watchers drew closer around me. I couldn't see them. They weren't part of the web of threads, and yet I felt them there. What strange new magic was this?
Then, one by one, they winked out. One of them, neither the first or the last to disappear, first reached down and somehow plucked the glow of the necklace from out of my hand.
When the last was gone, I realized that as much as I had tried to keep count, I had lost my place somewhere. I had no idea how many they were, not even an approximation. The harder I tried to focus on it, the more random the number my brain threw back at me.
I couldn't narrow it down more than to say it was more than one, less than infinity. Clearly more magic at work.
I settled back into my body and opened my eyes to find I was still under a pile of bodies, although my body hadn't been moving the entire time my awareness had been in the world of webs.
"Get off her!" McConnell was yelling. "You're going to crush her. Can't you see that she's innocent?"
"Let her up but cuff her," Stuart said. The weight of their bodies moved off of mine, and someone helped me to sit up. I would have preferred lying down a bit longer. My whole body felt bruised, and the blood from the bullet graze across my cheek had gotten all over my face while under the hog pile.
I opened my hand, but the necklace wasn’t there.
"Don't let Charlotte go," I said. My voice came out hoarse, little more than a croak, but McConnell heard me. He looked towards the house in alarm, and I waited for him to say that she was gone.
"We've got her, Amanda," Otto said. I raised my head to see him and Edward coming out of the house, each holding one of Charlotte's arms. She struggled against them, but they held her fast.
"This is nonsense," Stuart said. "She's just a kid."
"You don't think she's strong enough to throw Ivy over a railing? Come hold this arm, then," Otto said as Charlotte pulled him nearly off his feet.
"But why?" Stuart asked.
&n
bsp; "She's crazy," I said. "Have her evaluated. I'm sure you'll find she's not sane enough to stand trial."
"Don't listen to her!" Charlotte shrieked, nearly pulling both men off their feet as she struggled to free herself. "Don't you know what she is?"
"Yes," Coco said. She was standing in the snow between Sophie and Brianna, the footprints behind them leading back to the parlor window. Coco looked ineffably sad. "You told them before, but they didn't believe you."
"She's a witch!" Charlotte yelled, trying to point an accusing finger at me. Otto changed his grip on her arm, twisting it up behind her back.
Stuart looked at me as if trying to see if this were true.
"She did say so before," McConnell told him. "She told the chief. Apparently, she caught these three doing spells at the top of the steps."
"Before the murder?" Stuart asked.
"No, after," he said.
I held my breath, but my fingers were tingling as if I could feel the threads without even moving to that other level of consciousness. If things got bad, I might need to do something drastic to get us all out of there.
But Stuart only handed me his handkerchief and made a little gesture towards my face.
"They are witches!" Charlotte screamed. "I can prove it! She has a wand! I threw it over there in the snow. Go find it! You'll see I'm telling the truth."
Stuart gave a nod to two of the men who scuffled off through the snow to search. Of course, there were lots of ways to explain away a polished bit of wood, including denying it was even mine, but the idea of yet another stranger touching it was threatening to bring the nausea back.
Then Brianna caught my eye and patted the beaded bag she was holding clutched tight to her belly. I could see the shape of her wand in there. But of course, it would have the same shape even if there were two wands in there. She gave me a nod and held up two fingers as if she heard my thoughts.
"What's going on here?" the chief demanded as he and Reilly pushed past the struggling Charlotte to step out onto the patio.