“Willow?” Karen said. The youngest member of the coven, the one that resented Karen. She looked as mad as hell. Karen had been expecting a visit from someone in the coven, but she’d figured it would be Boden or Avandale.
“What have you done to us, you bitch?” the girl yelled, causing many of the departing theater-goers to turn their way.
Part of Karen wanted to bolt, but she had known that such a confrontation was coming and had decided it was best to get it over with. She reached out to take Willow’s arm, but the girl pulled away as if Karen’s touch might be virulent. With a jerk of her head, Karen indicated the girl should follow and led her underneath the branches of a nearby magnolia, away from the crowd but still within sight just in case the girl got any crazy ideas.
“How’d you know where to find me?” Karen asked.
“It was easy enough to find out which dorm you were in—just checked the online student directory. I went looking for you there, and some girl on your hall said she thought you had gone to the play. So I just waited outside for you.”
“Well, aren’t you just a regular Sherlock Holmes.”
“What did you do to us?” the girl asked again, her voice lower but more lethal.
“You know what I did. The same thing you did to Penelope and tried to do to me.”
“All of us? You couldn’t have bound all our powers by yourself.”
Karen shrugged casually. She didn’t want to get cocky about her strength, but with Penelope constantly telling her she had more power than any other witch she’d ever encountered, it was hard not to let it go to her head at least a little.
“Undo it,” Willow said. “You have no right.”
“But you had a right to do it to us?”
“That’s different. You and Morgane are planning to do something unnatural and dangerous.”
“We’ll just have to agree to disagree,” Karen said with a defiant smile.
“You don’t know the whole story. There’s a boy, someone Morgane tried to use before, when she moved here she had him moved to a local hospital. His name is…”
“Pete Huston, and she wants to use his body for Bobby.”
Willow was momentarily rendered speechless. Then, “You know?”
“Yes, she told me.”
“And you still want to go through with it?”
“She explained everything to me, how Pete wanted to do the spell but botched it, and now his body is just lying there, devoid of a spirit. Bobby needs a body, and Pete’s isn’t exactly being used.”
“Waste not, want not, is that how it is?”
Karen didn’t respond to that one, considering she’d said something very similar to Penelope when she’d first learned about Pete.
The girl balled her hands into tight fists at her side, as if she wanted to punch something. “Just…undo the binding spell. Please.”
“I will. After the equinox, after the spell is complete. Just another month and a half, and you guys will be good as new.”
Willow was trembling, and tears leaked from her eyes. “You’re perverting everything we believe in, everything we stand for. Why can’t you see that?”
And Karen picked up on something. She couldn’t exactly read minds, but she could glean certain information from time to time, especially if the person was upset and not adept at guarding their thoughts. She turned to Bobby and said, “Her mother doesn’t know she’s here.”
Willow frowned toward Bobby’s direction, her eyes not training on him. Of course, with no talisman she couldn’t see him there, and with her powers bound she probably couldn’t even sense him.
“In fact, no one from the coven knows you’re here, do they?” Karen said, focusing her attention on the girl.
Willow looked stricken. She opened her mouth to speak, but only a squeak emerged and she closed her mouth again.
But Karen still had more to say. “They’re afraid, aren’t they? They think they’ve done everything they can and that it’s time to step back. Where does your mother think you are? The library? At a friend’s? She’d be upset to know you went to visit the Big Bad Witch on your own, huh?”
“Big Bad Bitch is more like it,” Willow said, but her voice quavered.
“You better run on home to your rundown little studio apartment. That was yours, right? You and your mother, what do you do, share the bed, or does one of you sleep on the sofa?”
The girl mouthed the words “Stop it,” but no audible sound accompanied it.
“Go home,” Karen said with steel in her voice. “Before I turn you into a toad. Or maybe a slug. Yeah, I think I like that better. You’d look good as a slug.”
Willow’s hand lashed out viciously slapped Karen’s cheek. It stung like a sonofabitch, but Karen just laughed. Crying, the girl turned and ran toward the parking lot. Several bystanders had stopped to watch the little catfight, but Karen stared back at them until they found other things to focus on.
“Was that really called for?” Bobby asked as they started back toward the dorm.
“What did you expect me to do? Release the binding?”
“No, but you were pretty mean to her there, making fun of where she lived and all.”
“I was just trying to rattle her,” Karen said, but she wondered. The truth was that if the binding spell had been successful, there was nothing the coven could do. They weren’t a threat. All she’d faced was a young girl’s histrionics. She could have simply walked away. She didn’t have to hit below the belt, kick the girl while she was down.
But she had, and if she were being honest with herself, she’d also derived a wicked pleasure from it.
Which wasn’t like her at all.
* * *
“She’s changing,” Bobby said to his mother.
It was late, and they were in Penelope’s office at the library. “She’s just coming into her power, and that’s a good thing. We’ll need it for the spell to work.”
“But it’s making her cruel.”
Penelope dismissed this with a flip of her hand. “She’s just getting her first real taste of power, the first time in her life that she’s felt totally in charge of her own destiny. It’ll take her a while to adjust to it. That’s all you’re seeing right now, an adjustment period.”
“I just…I don’t want her to lose herself just to get me back.”
“She won’t. We’re all going to walk away from this winners.”
“But what if she finds out about Derek?”
Penelope’s eyes narrowed and her body tensed. “Have you said something to her about that?”
“No, of course not, but still….”
“She’s not going to find out. You’re not going to tell her, no one in the coven knows or even suspects that I’m aware of, and even when my powers were bound, I still managed to build a wall around my thoughts and emotions that Karen, with all her power, couldn’t penetrate. So there’s no possible way for her to find out, is there?”
Bobby paused. “You keep your secrets well, don’t you, Mother?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Tell me what happened to me, how I died.”
“Is being dead all these years finally driving you insane? You know how you died.”
“No, I only know what you’ve told me, but what you’ve told me wasn’t a hundred percent true, was it?”
There was a telling pause before Penelope said, “What makes you think that?”
“Karen had looked up an article about the accident. It said that I didn’t die instantly like you’ve always claimed. It said I lingered for a while in a coma.”
Penelope got up from her desk and crossed to one of her bookcases, plucked a book at random, flipped through it without looking at the pages, then placed it back on the shelf. “What does it matter?”
“What does it matter? It’s my death we’re talking about. Why would you lie to me about the particulars?”
“It was very upsetting for me,” Penelope said, her voice shrill.
It was after hours and the library was deserted, so no one was likely to hear her. “I was watching my only child wasting away before me. It would have almost been a blessing if you’d died instantly. At least it would have been a clean break, but instead I got the pleasure of waiting for my sweet boy, the most important thing in my life, to die. It was the most traumatizing experience of my life, and excuse me if I didn’t exactly want to relive it for you.”
“Maybe not right after, but all these years you’ve never thought maybe you should have mentioned it to me?”
Penelope went to her desk, snatched some tissue from a dispenser next to the phone, and wiped her eyes. “Maybe I should have, but I just wanted to forget.”
“Well, I guess that isn’t exactly easy to do with your ghost-son with you all the time.”
Penelope chuckled, then blew her nose.
“How long?” Bobby asked.
“How long what?”
“How long was I in a coma before I finally died?”
“About two months.”
“And I finally died from my injuries from when the car hit me?”
“Yes…more or less.”
“More or less? What does that mean?” When Penelope didn’t answer, Bobby yelled, “Mother, tell me the truth!”
Penelope sat at the desk, picked up a pack of Post-it Notes and began flipping one end of them like an old-time book of illustrations that would move like cartoons when you flipped through them quickly. “Technically, you died from heart failure.”
“So, what? My heart was damaged in the accident?”
“Not exactly. The doctors discovered that you had a genetic heart defect that no one knew about.”
“So I died because of this heart defect, not the accident itself?”
“It’s not that simple. They weren’t mutually exclusive. Yes, the heart defect killed you, but your weakened state due to the injuries sustained in the accident brought on the heart failure. If you hadn’t been hit by that car, the heart defect—”
“Wouldn’t have killed me at that time? But if left undetected, it would have killed me eventually…right?”
“We can’t know that. If not for the accident, we might have found out about the defect in time to do something about it.”
“So now you’re predicting an alternate future?”
“No,” Penelope said, and tears were in her eyes again. “I’m just saying that the accident exacerbated the condition, so that you would not have died at that time if you had not been hit by that car.”
His mother’s pain affected Bobby and made him want to comfort her, but he had pain of his own. “So that explains why you didn’t want to tell me about the coma and the heart condition. You’ve been justifying what you want to do with the rationale that a death by anything manmade is not natural and therefore it is okay to reverse it. But turns out my death was natural. Whether the accident brought it on sooner than it might have otherwise occurred, the simple truth is that I died because of a faulty heart. So not only have you been lying to me all these years, you’ve been lying to yourself.”
Penelope rose, coming toward Bobby with her arms outstretched as if to embrace him, even though she knew such a thing wasn’t possible. Regardless, he wouldn’t have let her hug him at this moment.
“You’re my son, my world. I can’t just let you go. I have to do everything within my power to get you back, to give you another shot at life. Where’s the sin in that?”
“Everything within your power? Only it’s not your power you’re using, is it? It’s Karen’s. Are you going to tell her this, or will it be yet another thing you hide from her?”
Regaining her composure, Penelope said, “Go ahead and tell her if you wish. At this point, I don’t think it would make any difference. She’s in love with you.”
“The same way Pete was in love with me. You failed to mention that to Karen as well, also the way you had me play up to him as if I loved him. The way you had me do with Karen.”
“There’s one major difference. You actually are in love with Karen. I can tell.”
Emotion welled inside of Bobby, and he wished at that moment to be flesh and blood so he could cry. “So I guess you have us both right where you want us.”
Chapter 16
They were in the circle again, Penelope and Karen facing one another across the altar, Bobby outside. There was tension between mother and son, but Karen had been unable to get to the root of it. Then again, as the day approached when the spell would be cast, Karen felt pretty damn tense herself, so it was understandable.
“It’s time,” Penelope said. “There is a crucial ingredient needed for the spell to work, and you must locate it.”
“You don’t know where it is?” Karen asked with a frown.
“I know where to search, and I will help you retrieve it, but I do not have the power to find it. You do.”
“You’ve completely lost me. What is this ingredient?”
“I need the skull of a seer.”
Whatever Karen had been expecting, that wasn’t it. “What?”
“A seer. Someone who can divine the future or delve into the past.”
“I know what a seer is, like a psychic.”
Penelope shook her head. “Wipe from your mind those charlatans you see reading palms and tarot cards at carnivals or the obvious fakes that prostitute themselves on TV talk shows. I’m talking people—usually women, though I’m not sure why—with serious power. Rarely do they embrace their power, for I understand it can seem more like a curse than a gift, and they typically try to keep it quiet, to bury it.”
“And you need a seer’s skull for the spell?”
“We need it. It will be ground to a fine powder and mixed into a potion.”
“And how exactly do you expect me to find this?”
“An individual with a great ability leaves a residue. It will be something someone like you can feel, even after they’ve moved on. I’ve tried it with little success. I do not have enough natural power in me. You, on the other hand….”
“I could be like a metal detector?”
“Something like that. You simply need to wander a cemetery, preferably a large one since that will increase the likelihood of finding what you’re after, and when you feel it, you’ll know. Just as you knew Pete had departed his body when you felt it. Trust your instincts.”
“And once I’ve located the grave of a seer, then what?”
“We’ll dig up the grave and retrieve the skull.”
Karen couldn’t suppress a bark of a laugh. “Grave robbing? Could this get any more ghoulish?”
“I agree, but we need the skull.”
“And what if we get caught? How are we going to explain that to the police? ‘Oh, sorry officer, but this woman could see the future so I need to grind up her skull so I can bring my friend back from the dead.’”
“That’s why we’re going to be extra cautious not to get caught. The secret is picking the right cemetery. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to use Springwood because after what happened to Derek the police regularly patrol there. Plus it’s downtown, with way too much activity and traffic. However, I believe I know of one that would be perfect.”
When Penelope paused, Karen knew she was being baited, but she still had to ask. “Where?”
“Fredrick Memorial Gardens in Gaffney, just north of us. It’s large but also isolated, outside the city limits. It’s ungated. I’ve spent some time scoping it out, and there seem to be no nightly patrols. It’s also deep, so if we can find what we need far enough from the road, no one will ever know we’re there.”
“And what if I can’t locate a seer there, or what if I do and she’s buried next to the road?”
“Then we’ll search elsewhere. But we need to start soon so we can ensure we have what we need in time.”
Karen took a deep breath, glanced at Bobby, then back to his mother. “Fine, tomorrow is Saturday and I’m all caught up on my schoolwork so we can go then.”
* * *
They weren’t alone in the cemetery Saturday morning. Several people were visiting graves, with more just wandering, using the cemetery as a place to walk. Which was good—it made them seem less suspicious.
They decided the smartest thing to do was to split up since they had so much ground to cover. Penelope took the west end of the cemetery, Karen and Bobby the east. Karen didn’t ask Bobby to come with her; he just fell in step beside her, and that thrilled her. Plus she was happy to be with Bobby, away from his mother, so they could talk.
“Is everything okay?” Karen asked as they walked among the tombstones, Karen opening up her senses for any traces of the residue Penelope had described.
“Everything’s fine,” Bobby said, but for a ghost he was a terrible bluffer.
“Really, because you and your mom just seem…I don’t know, strained.”
Bobby shrugged. “I guess being dead doesn’t mean you stop having arguments with your mother.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
He seemed to consider for a moment. “It’s just…she clings to me so hard. She’s been clinging to me ever since…no, it was before the accident. She was always overprotective, never wanted to let me out of her sight. After I died, oddly it became worse. Maybe because she felt she wasn’t protective enough, didn’t keep me safe, so I’ve become her obsession. Sometimes I just wish she’d let me go.”
Karen paused, turning to him with a frown. “Let you go?”
“If the spell works, and I’m alive again, I cringe to think how she’ll be with me. I’ll be in Pete’s body, which after the coma is sure to have plenty of problems. My mother will be my nursemaid. She’ll probably never let me out of the house. I just want to be free.”
“You’ll have me,” Karen said, not daring to meet his gaze. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Bobby smiled at her, that bright smile that lit up his whole face, but she sensed nothing but sadness from him. “You’ll do anything to help me, won’t you?”
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