I heard more groaning. The huge man I'd freed from the wall was getting to his feet, aided by Chet.
Next, Chet went over to help Rob get upright.
The wall's hissing and complaining was reaching a fevered pitch.
The guys noticed, and the big one came over to scoop up my body.
We all headed toward the door.
Something went bang, like a firecracker going off inside the house. The three men stopped in their tracks.
Someone new was in the attic. Standing in the doorway was a curvy female figure. It was Josephine Pressman, holding a gun.
“Freeze,” she said, bringing the gun around to point at Chet's head.
The big guy lunged for her.
She reacted quickly and shot him in the leg. No hesitation. He went down, along with my unconscious body, and fell in a heap.
“Easy now,” Chet said. “Nobody needs to get hurt today.”
Judging by the blood spurting from the big guy's leg, it was a bit late for a non-violent confrontation, but I had to give Chet credit for trying. And now I would help him further by gently removing the gun from the woman's hand.
I tugged at the gun. Nothing happened. I pulled harder, focusing as intently as I could.
Josphine Pressman let out a low laugh. “That tickles,” she said. “Is that one of the meddlesome Riddle witches?”
Chet answered, “Zara is here, but she's completely harmless and unconscious, no thanks to you. Now let us go so we can get medical attention.”
“I don't think so.” She shifted the barrel so it was pointing at my head on the floor. “Riddle witch, I can sense you in here. Have you made yourself invisible? Show yourself now or your boyfriend is going to eat a bullet.”
I didn't know how to show myself, and she was using some sort of force field to keep me from touching her gun.
What could I do?
Josephine was standing in front of a window, so I shattered the glass in the window. I gathered the glass shards from the air, whipped them up to the peak of the attic roof, and showered them down on her.
She shrieked, “You witch!” Something flashed, and the glass whipped away from her, spraying the walls of the attic.
The fleshy thing on the walls began making a new sound, a chorus of small yet unearthly wails, like that of a thousand insect-sized banshees.
Josephine was still armed, but I'd caused some damage to the monstrosity. I was feeling pretty good about my magical moves before I realized that the smaller guy, Rob, had dropped to his knees. He'd been hit by the shards of glass. Large pieces were partially embedded in his chest. I was so horrified by the unintended side effect of my attack, I nearly wished myself far away. But I stayed.
What I needed was protection for Chet, his men, and my body. A shield. There were chairs in the attic, and loose bits of machinery, but nothing bullet-proof. I could move the people to safety, but I could only move one at a time.
I shifted closer to the woman, until I was right in front of her, staring into her eyes as she looked through me.
“I can feel you, witch,” she spat. “Don't you want to know who I am?”
You're the devil, I thought clearly. You're pure evil, Josephine Pressman, and that's all I need to know.
Her face cracked into a grin. “I'm not Josephine anymore,” she said. “Didn't you notice my new hairdo?”
Her hair had changed. It was still black and straight, but now she had bangs. The bangs were noticeably crooked, as though she'd cut them with a butcher knife in a hurry. And she'd done something else that was unusual. Her hair was split into two braids, like a little girl's hair, or in the style of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Once upon a time, I'd known a real estate agent who dressed up as the fairy tale girl for her promotional materials. And that woman was currently in a vegetative state. Or at least her body was.
Dorothy, I thought.
The woman with the two dark braids tipped her head back and let out a cackle. “It's the hair, isn't it? I look exactly how I always wanted to be, and I'm so much younger now.”
Is it really you? If you're not Josephine Pressman anymore, say your full name. Say it out loud.
She looked right through me and said, “Dorothy Tibbits.”
You stole my body and now you're stealing Josephine Pressman's?
She pointed to my limp body, tangled up with the big guy's and getting soaked in his blood.
“Oh, that? No, that wasn't me in your body. That was somebody you do not want to mess with.” She shook her head. “That was my boss. You didn't think I was working alone this whole time, did you? You didn't think I was trying to get that red witch house of yours just so I could live in the sad, old rundown thing, did you?”
I didn't know what to think.
All I knew was I had to get out of there. Between the banshee screaming of the clockwork monstrosity on the walls and the freshly reincarnated Dorothy Tibbits, I knew things were only going to get worse. I had to get Chet and the guys plus my body out of there. Preferably without any more bullet holes.
Chapter 26
While I'd been having my awkward reunion with Dorothy Tibbits, the evil real estate agent who murdered the previous owner of my house, Chet had disobeyed her command to freeze. He was fastening a tourniquet around the big guy's bloody leg when Josephine—no, Dorothy—wheeled around to point her gun at his temple.
“Easy there, wolf boy. Hands behind your head, please and thank you.”
Chet finished tightening the knot and slowly raised his hands behind his head.
“Dorothy Tibbits,” he said.
“Chet Moore,” she replied cordially.
“What do you want, Dorothy? Give me your demands, and I'll see what I can do.”
She licked her lips. “Look at you, with all your hunky muscles hanging out of your ripped clothes. Can you turn into a puppy for me?”
Through gritted teeth, he said, “I'm injured.”
“You think you're injured now, you'll be wishing—ack!” Her face contorted, her body twitched, and she howled, “Get out of me! Leave me alone!”
Chet watched her but didn't make a move.
The woman cried out, “Help me! I'm Josephine Pressman! You've got to help me and my father!”
“Drop the gun,” Chet said.
The woman shook her head and recomposed herself. The gun remained aimed at Chet's head.
Calmly, in Dorothy's eerie voice, the woman with the crookedly cut bangs and two braids said, “Pay no attention to silly Josephine. She'll be erased, soon enough, and then I'll have this body all to myself.”
“Erased?” Chet glanced at the machinery on the wall and then back over to the woman. “Is that what you're doing with this abomination? You're going to erase Josephine so you can take over her body?”
She replied in a mocking tone, “That's why we call it an Erasure Machine, dummy. It's for erasing things, once we get all the bugs worked out.” She cackled cruelly. “Get it? The bugs?”
“This machine has been causing the magic surges around town.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Dorothy, you don't have to do this. You can still put the gun down and walk away. Nobody else needs to get hurt today.” In a softer tone, he said, “Please don't erase Josephine. She's innocent.”
“Oh, don't look so horrified,” Dorothy said. “You would do the same thing, if you could. You could raise that weird kid of yours to eighteen, make him eat all his vegetables to keep his body strong, then simply wipe him out at the first sign of him disappointing you, which is exactly what he'll do.”
The muscles in Chet's jaw rippled as he bit back his words.
“Children are always a disappointment to their parents,” Dorothy said. She patted her body with her free hand. “Do you know why this one's living here with her father? No, I suppose you didn't bother to ask when you and your goons barged in here tonight, with your underpowered technology and useless clickers that only fired up the Erasure Machine's appetite
for destruction. Well, let me tell you about Josephine Pressman.”
Her face contorted again, and she coughed, choking on her words. “Let me go,” the girl trapped inside her own body cried. “Let me and my father go.”
The woman whipped her gun hand up and cracked herself across the face with the butt of the pistol. The blow split her lip. She spat blood onto the floor with a cruel laugh.
“Tell me about Josephine,” Chet said. “Tell me what she did that makes her deserving of erasure.”
The dark-haired woman wiped at the blood on her chin but succeeded only in smearing it. “Josephine Pressman thought she was special. She thought she deserved better than Wisteria. Five years ago, she packed her designer suitcase and headed to New York City. She went to pursue her dreams, but then she fell for a musician and ended up working dead-end jobs to support his dreams. As of two months ago, all she had to show for her five years of pursuing her dreams was a pair of dishpan hands and something else that required penicillin. So, back she came to mooch off her spineless father. He was willing to help her get back on her feet, but even his penny-pinching ways weren't enough. She owed money to some people in New York who weren't so nice. Old Perry had to hook up a machine he'd been dabbling with for years but hadn't dared use.” She grinned. “He finally found the courage to hook it up.”
Chet nodded at the wall of pulsating goo and gears behind him. “This thing? What exactly did he hook it up to?”
“Himself,” she said plainly. “It runs on meat.”
“And it erases things? How was that supposed to help his daughter's money situation?”
“It's built on the workings of an old German-made printing press, of sorts. They used it to wash low-denomination bills and then print them with higher amounts.” She shook her head ruefully. “They even printed a few novelty bills with odd numbers, like thirteen. The idiots had no idea what they were messing with.”
“Until you came along.”
Dorothy shrugged, wiggling the gun. “Actually, it was a friend of mine who made the discovery.” She glanced down at the body of the redhead on the floor. “I'd introduce you to my boss, but you were very rude and knocked the lights out of that body.”
“Who is your boss?”
Dorothy mimed zipping her lips with her free hand.
“Is your boss Perry Pressman?”
“Hah,” she laughed. “You tell me. Come out here, Perry.”
At her command, Perry Pressman stepped out of the monstrous wall. He was coated in dark, ashy goo. I hadn't seen him there.
Perry moved slowly, but jerkily, like a marionette. His front looked normal enough, but as he turned, the horror revealed itself. His back was all hollowed out, nothing but gears and glistening tubes of flesh. The back of his head was a mass of tentacles—a mass that had been hidden by a hat on the night Zinnia and I paid him a visit.
Perry Pressman seemed to look right at me. “Kill me,” he croaked. “Ki-i-i-ll me-e-e.”
“As you wish,” Dorothy said, and what was left of Perry Pressman was obliterated by a bullet to the skull. He crumpled to the ground in a heap.
A wisp of smoke swirled up from Perry's body and swirled through the room. Was anyone else seeing the smoke? The big guy slumped over my body had his eyes closed, apparently passed out from pain or blood loss. The smaller guy, Rob, was on his back, facing the ceiling. His eyes were open, but he was breathing shallowly, focused simply on staying alive. Chet had his eyes locked on Dorothy, and Dorothy was staring back at him.
Dorothy waved her gun. “Now that Perry has been relieved of his duties, I really must ask you to return to the machine.”
Chet stood his ground. “Not gonna happen, Dorothy.”
She took one deliberate step to the side, and aimed the gun at my limp head, on the floor. “Chet Moore, you have until the count of ten to return to your spot on the wall, or I'm going to play target practice with your girlfriend's freckles.”
“Dorothy, you're better than this,” Chet said. “You had a bright future once. You can have it again.”
“Inside a jail cell, serving a life sentence for murder?” She shook her head. “Oh, Chet. You must think I'm a bigger idiot than your father. How's he doing, anyway? I hear you two spend an awful lot of time arguing over how many vegetables the man eats, which is ironic, as he's just going to turn into a vegetable anyway.”
Chet growled.
The smoke continued to swirl around the room, as though looking for an exit.
Dorothy said to Chet, “Get yourself moving. Back to that wall, or I give this witch a makeover that involves a bunch of bullet holes. Count of ten. Ten. Nine. Eight.”
Still growling, he began backing up.
“Seven. Six. Five.”
I grabbed hold of the smoke, pulled it together into one tight plume, and sent it straight into my limp body on the floor. Straight up my left nostril.
“Four. Three.”
My body didn't move. Perry Pressman was supposed to animate my body and attack the woman who'd killed him. But he wasn't doing anything.
“Two,” Dorothy said.
I delivered a magical slap to the face of the unconscious redhead.
Chet was surrendering to the wall, merging with it slowly. “You promise you'll let Zara go?”
“I promise,” she said.
He stepped backward into the wall. It made a slurping, skittering noise, and enveloped him.
“One,” she said.
The room was silent. The monstrosity had stopped shrieking.
Something clicked.
“Oops,” Dorothy said, shaking her gun over my body. “Out of bullets already.”
She turned away to reload.
Beneath her, a pair of hazel eyes flashed open. The body of Zara Riddle was reanimated. But who was at the controls?
Whoever it was, my eyes looked angry. My body shoved the big guy aside like he was made of popcorn, got up, and grabbed the gun from Dorothy, who hadn't been paying attention as she reloaded her gun.
She may have had a spell that protected her from my telekinetic powers, but not an old-fashioned grab. She whirled around and faced the person animating my body.
The animator raised the gun with one shaking hand and spoke, voice wavering, “Josephine, I know you're in there. Honey, you've got to fight.”
The woman answered sweetly, “Daddy?”
“Is that you? How do I know it's you?”
The woman began to sob. “I'm so sorry, Daddy. This is all my fault.”
His arm shook as he took better aim. “You're not my daughter!”
She blinked. “Daddy? Why would you say that?”
“My Josephine was far from perfect, but I loved her anyway. Josephine would never apologize or blame herself for anything that went wrong in her life. It was always bad luck, or someone else's fault.”
The woman smirked. “Children can be disappointing like that.”
He began to cry. “I just want my daughter back. I don't care that she's not perfect. She's my daughter, and I love her.”
The woman frowned. “That face. It looks so pretty when it's crying. I like the freckles. Maybe I want that body, not this one.”
My body? Mine?
Dorothy Tibbits wanted to erase my mind and take over my body?
OH, HELL NO.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
I spotted the lump in the pocket of my skirt. The bookwyrm. Using my magic, I yanked it up and out of the container.
Dorothy Tibbits was too busy scoping out my body as a new home to notice.
Her spell prevented my magical assaults, but she wasn't prepared for every possible attack.
I placed the bookwyrm in Perry's hand, which was technically my hand, but for the purposes of this attack, it was his hand.
Perry Pressman, you've always tried to help others, I thought powerfully and clearly. I can't save your life, but I think we can still get your daughter back. All we need is one good shock, one power
ful blow to her electrical system.
Either Perry heard my thoughts or he did what came naturally to him once he felt the warm, vaguely damp bookwyrm in his hand. He wound his arm back like he was about to throw out the starting pitch for a ball game, and he tossed the wriggling bookwyrm right into the dark-haired woman's mouth.
She convulsed and shook as the blackness spread out from her mouth, across her face. She collapsed on the ground, still shaking. With one final shudder, she violently spat out the bookwyrm. Squealing with what sounded a lot like glee, the bookwyrm flew across the attic and landed in the midst of the pulsating fleshy wall of machine.
The monstrosity began screaming again.
Chet struggled to break free and let out a roaring battle cry.
Smoke filled the room.
And then there was pain.
I was gagging, choking on smoke.
I coughed and rolled onto my knees.
My lungs were filling with smoke, and there was good news and bad news.
Good news first: I was back in my body.
Bad news: The bookwyrm had set off a chain reaction of explosions in the fleshy monster wall, and we were all going to die.
But wait.
There was more good news.
Chet's backup finally arrived. They stormed in wearing gas masks and hazardous materials suits.
My head was reeling. The punch Chet had delivered turned out to be a real skull-rattler. I was concussed and losing consciousness.
“Chet,” I croaked, hoarse from the smoke. “He's trapped in the wall.”
A mechanical voice replied, “Madam, don't try to talk. Don't worry. Everything's going to be okay.”
“Chet,” I croaked again.
I was being picked up, moved somewhere.
All around me, there was pandemonium.
I saw a familiar face. Zinnia. She had deep gashes down her cheek and bruises around her eye.
There were whirling lights, sirens, and smoke everywhere.
I tried to hold onto my consciousness, but...
Fade to black.
Chapter 27
One nice thing about being a witch is you do heal quickly.
When Chet knocked my body into unconsciousness, he shook my brain inside my skull and caused a moderate to severe concussion. When the blast in the attic threw my spirit back into my body, I had a bad sense of equilibrium and blurred vision. An ordinary person would have gone to the hospital to have herself checked out, but the crew of people who stormed into the house had their own protocols.
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