Banish

by Nicola Marsh

  Last thing I felt like doing was taking part in a spell. But I saw the worry in her eyes, the concern pinching her mouth, and I didn’t want to add to it. Besides, it couldn’t hurt. I might not believe but perhaps Angie had enough belief for the both of us to banish the bad stuff happening to me.

  I took her hand and she tugged me into the middle of the room. She released me and slid the double-edged straight knife from her pocket, casting a circle around us with her althame.

  “Visualise white light surrounding the circle and filling it.” Her low monotone sent a ripple of something otherworldly through me.

  Not willing to tempt fate by disobeying, I visualised a candle, the light from its flame expanding around me.

  Angie spread her fingers wide and turned to our right. “I call to the quarters. Air from the east.” She turned clockwise. “Fire to the south. Water to the west. Earth to the north. And spirit to keep us safe.”

  I stood perfectly still, not feeling much beyond exhaustion.

  “I call upon the goddess to protect us. And to banish the evil dogging Alyssa.”

  Her eerily blank gaze focused on me. “We need to ground and centre. Envision yourself a tree, stretching up to the sky and down to the ground.”

  Tree visualisation. Got it.

  “Close your eyes and do it,” she said, her tone as devoid of emotion as her stare. “Focus on our goal, the eliminating of evil.”

  Couldn’t agree more. I did as she instructed, closing my eyes. The tree thing? Not such a great success, as visualising trees made me think of Noah, the gazebo, and the maple trees surrounding it.

  “Goddess of kind and good,

  Banish evil as you would.

  May trust and safety reign?

  Rid our mortal sphere of pain.

  Keep evil at bay,

  Keep Alyssa safe every day.

  So mote it be.”

  I’d heard better poetry in my Lit class but hey, if it did the trick, who was I to argue?

  After several moments’ silence, Angie thanked the quarters and dismissed them, then thanked the goddess and bid her farewell.

  “Now imagine the light you envisaged fading and the circle will open,” she said, closing her eyes while I felt a fraud for making my imaginary candle vanish around the time of the impromptu poetry.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, sending my own prayer heavenward that the psycho taunting me would drop off the face of the earth and leave me the hell alone.

  When Angie touched my shoulder, I jumped.

  “Now we talk.”

  I gulped, not wanting to divulge the necklace or the doll. If she’d panicked over the death signs, she would have a conniption over the rest. But I’d told Ronan the truth. Was it time to completely trust Angie too? The thing was, despite my vehement defence of her when Ronan questioned me, a tiny part of me couldn’t dismiss the possibility she could be doing this.

  Simply, I didn’t really know her. She’d been kind in taking me in and impressively non-interfering in my life during the past six months. But I couldn’t forget her persistent attempts at converting me to Wicca over the years. Which made me overly suspicious now, considering she’d majorly backed off since I’d been living here. Would have made more sense if she’d stepped up her efforts to sway me once I was living under her roof. Instead, the opposite had happened. Thoughtful? Or a cunning ploy?

  “Have you made any enemies here?”

  I shook my head, glad that I could answer one of her questions truthfully. “I keep to myself at school. Kids are fine, they don’t tease me or anything.”

  “What about that Seth kid you mentioned? What’s his story?”

  “Seth’s my friend, not my enemy.”

  Her expression darkened. “Friends can be two-faced.”

  Couldn’t disagree with her there. My so-called friends, the ones I’d known since preschool, had turned on me as fast as the rest of narrow-minded Broadwater after Noah’s suicide.

  “Seth’s pretty cool. We study together, we hang out at school.”

  He had hooked me up with Tabitha…but only after I’d told him about the dead body, so he was trying to help. Jeez, my life would really be unbearable if I started suspecting every person I knew of having it in for me. I’d end up like Mom, unable to function because of the constant persecution by people she couldn’t identify.

  Angie’s eyes narrowed, carefully assessing. “You’re still seeing that musician?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Her fingers clenched on the counter. “Why? This all started with that damn music clip. What if he’s the one—”

  “He’s not.”

  The irony wasn’t lost on me: Ronan had his suspicions Angie was the culprit and vice versa.

  “You’re that sure?”

  Tired of the interrogation and of this whole freaking mess, I threw my hands up. “I’m not sure of anything. But no way am I going to treat every person in my life as a suspect.”

  The barb hit home and she flinched. “You think I’ve got something to do with this?”

  She couldn’t fake the hurt that made her voice wobble. Or could she?

  “No.” I swiped a weary hand over my face, desperate to go hang out in my room. “This is getting to me and dissecting every aspect of it is driving me insane.”

  With a heavy sigh, she laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, honey, I know this is a lot to deal with. But we’ll get through it.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, tolerating her comforting for ten seconds before faking a giant yawn. “Think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Okay, ’night.”

  I half expected her to add, “Don’t let the bedbugs bite”.

  The way my luck was running, bedbugs would be the least of the scary creatures wanting to bite me.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE MOMENT I closed my bedroom door, I crossed to my desk and booted up the laptop. Receiving those death sign thingies had triggered a nasty thought.

  The dead body had been the start. What if that dead body was meant to be me? The strawberry blonde hair had been the same, though I’d like to think I had better fashion sense.

  I drummed my fingers on the desk, waiting for my inbox to load so I could check the music video again. I spied the tiny envelope in the bottom right corner as the inbox opened. My sole email. From Ronan. With another music clip attached.

  This time, I wasn’t taking any risks. I rang him.

  He picked up on the fifth ring and my nerves instantly eased upon hearing his drowsy “’Lo?”

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  I heard a crash and a muffled curse, imagining him knocking over his bedside lamp in an effort to sit up.

  “What’s wrong? You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine.” As well as can be expected with a psycho stalking me. “Did you send me another music clip?”

  “No, not after the last one.” The pieces clicked into place. “Fuck, has someone sent you one from my IP address?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t open it, not ’til I’m there.”

  I liked his protectiveness but no way could I have him rock up now—Angie would freak—and I couldn’t wait till after school tomorrow to open it, so…

  “It’s after midnight, you can’t come over now.”

  “I’ll be there in under thirty.”

  I hesitated. How to phrase this without sounding ungrateful? “I’d love you to be here but my aunt’s a bit touchy at the moment with this whole business.”

  And she thinks you’re part of it.

  He sighed. “She still thinks I’m behind this, huh?”

  “Doesn’t matter, you know what I think.”

  “Yeah, I do.” His warm tone sent an appreciative quiver of longing through me. “I’m here for you, Lys.”

  “Thanks, it means a lot.”

  And it did. Having him know the truth—well, most of it considering I hadn’t mentioned the death signs yet—made me feel less alone and a little less crazy.


  “You’re going to open it, aren’t you?”

  Another plus: he knew me so well despite our limited time together.

  “Yep.”

  “Sure you don’t want to wait?”

  “I can’t let this creep beat me,” I said, my finger toying with the mouse plate. “I’ll call you back if I need to, okay?”

  “Okay. But we’ll get together first thing after school tomorrow and I’ll try to find out who’s hacking into my account.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The line crackled from his stubble rubbing against the phone. “Lys, please be careful. I care about you.”

  His unexpected declaration made me feel warm and fuzzy. Until I remembered what I potentially faced with that email. “I will. And right back at you.”

  I hung up before he could talk me out of this and clicked open the attachment.

  There was nothing left of my cuticles after the past few days but I picked at my ragged thumb regardless as I leaned forward, studying every angle. The clip was identical to the first: Ronan’s song for me, then the slight fuzziness before panning into the new room. I jiggled in my seat as the camera focused on the bucket seat, the chest of drawers, the oblong calendar set to the date now two days away.

  “Hurry up,” I muttered, for as much as I didn’t want to see that body again, I needed to see it to confirm my suspicion.

  That I was the intended victim.

  I held my breath as the camera panned to the floor and there she was, the blonde mottled in crimson. My chest constricted and I rubbed it, willing air into my lungs, the impact of the macabre scene still startling. This time something was different. The positioning of the body? The angle of the lens?

  I squinted at the image, getting as close to the screen as I could without blurring it, and that’s when the camera switched into a wide frame, full frontal.

  I saw the girl’s expression transfixed in wide-eyed horror.

  Her mouth a perfect shocked grimace.

  The bruises around her neck, the skin mottled with yellow and purple finger marks.

  And the jagged, vertical slash bisecting her torso, ending in a horizontal cut across her abdomen where she’d been gutted.

  I wanted to look away but couldn’t. Because seeing the brutally slain girl wasn’t the worst part.

  I broke out in a cold sweat, my finger sliding over the keys in desperation, trying to freeze the shot, hoping I was mistaken.

  I couldn’t make the freaking thing stop as it faded to black.

  But I didn’t need to.

  I knew her.

  Knew the girl still tormenting me, even in death.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I’D DISLIKED SAMANTHA Van Cleave from the first moment we’d clashed in home ec. in eighth grade. She’d deliberately bumped my desk, sending brownie mixture splattering all over the floor. I would have ignored her if it wasn’t for the fact my mom was addicted to chocolate—next to vodka—and I’d been looking forward to presenting her with the treat after school.

  So I’d stood, calmly walked around my desk and bumped her back, hard enough her feet shot out from under her. In her scramble for purchase, the soles of her ballet flats made contact with the brownie mixture. The result? She’d floundered for a second before going down, her butt caked in brownie mix.

  Mrs Mac had been busy with the ovens and hadn’t seen a thing. With the class in uproar, I had the smug satisfaction of having kids trail around Sammy for the rest of the day chanting “shitty pants”.

  From that day, it had been game on.

  Sammy’s animosity knew no bounds—from having my name scrawled on bathroom walls to some of my ­assignments mysteriously vanishing from my locker to blatant gossip-spreading, she had it in for me. I ignored her for the most part, counting myself lucky most of the other kids did too. Sammy was a liar and the majority of people knew that pretty early on, so I didn’t have to face the wrath of the popular kids ganging up on me. The geeks and nerds ignored her. And the rest of us did the same.

  Then there’d been Noah…

  According to Sammy, I’d stolen her boyfriend.

  Noah’s version had been far different. He’d seen her hitchhiking in the rain one day on the road between our towns. He’d stopped and given her a lift. When he’d dropped her home, she’d put the moves on him. She’d kissed him, and he’d rejected her in the nicest possible way. That’s it.

  No-one really believed I’d stolen Noah off Sammy, yet somehow after his death those stories recirculated, adding to my humiliation and censure.

  I didn’t like Sammy; I never had. The ultimate irony had been being paired with her for a semester in biology. Had I been nervous working alongside her while she held a scalpel in her hand? Hell yeah. But we’d managed to survive dissecting frogs and been civil enough to each other to score a respectable B on our assignment.

  We would never be buddies but working together for those weeks had eased the animosity between us and I’d even ended up respecting her a tad for how much effort she’d put into our work.

  Seeing her brutally murdered…no one deserved that. Until now, I had dismissed the body in the clip as a hoax. But now I’d seen Sammy…shock made me shake as I contemplated that maybe this wasn’t some lunatic’s pathetic attempt to drive me crazy. Maybe this was all too real.

  “Crap,” I muttered, hitting replay on the clip and not surprised when the film faded to black at the end of Ronan’s song.

  Not that I wanted to see Sammy’s grotesque body again, but I needed to scan for a clue of some kind. Anything.

  I watched the clip again.

  Twenty times.

  Nothing.

  I flipped the laptop shut and closed my eyes to think. Whoever was doing this was one sick puppy. And had an intimate knowledge of my past. Out of all the unlikely suspects in my current life, including my aunt, no-one would know about my feud with Sammy.

  No-one in my current life…

  But what about the kids at Broadwater High? Was one of them behind this?

  It was the only thing that made sense…until I realised Noah’s necklace and the death signs had been hand delivered and the voodoo doll had been planted.

  Unless one of the kids had ditched school for the last few weeks…

  Only one way to find out.

  I had to head home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ANGIE TOOK MY intended leaving well, agreeing it would be good for me to spend a few days in Broadwater, away from the evil dogging me.

  But I had to see Ronan before I left. He’d texted me first thing in the morning, asking about the clip. I couldn’t dump everything on him over the phone so I arranged to meet him at his place in an hour, giving me time to pack and arrange a bus ticket.

  I’d mentioned I was heading home for a few days and would tell him everything. He’d told me to hurry.

  Angie had hugged me goodbye earlier but when I emerged from my bedroom with duffel and backpack in tow, she’d left me a farewell present on the kitchen benchtop: a pocket-sized book, this one on the protective power of crystals, a small heart-shaped rose quartz pendant on a thin silver chain and three Hershey blocks for Mom.

  Touched by her thoughtfulness, and increasingly guilty that I suspected her, I stuffed her gifts into my bag, gave Persephone a scratch behind the ears and set off.

  In a small town like Broadwater, a teenager lugging a duffel and shouldering a backpack would have garnered suspicious looks as a possible runaway. In New York, people jostled me on the sidewalks, not giving me a second glance. I loved that about this city, the anonymity. Along with the crowds, the delis, the coffees, and the constant buzz any time of day or night. I would miss it. But I’d be back. As soon as I’d checked on Sammy, whether or not she deserved it.

  An image of her bloody corpse flashed in my mind and I grimaced. This could all be some elaborate Photoshopped joke, but I couldn’t take that chance.

  I had two days to discover the sicko playing these games. And hopef
ully put an end to this once and for all.

  Ronan was waiting for me on his top step, mussed and wind-ruffled and worried. He leapt from the fourth step to the sidewalk, relieving me of my bags and kissing me at the same time.

  “Talented,” I said, managing a smile.

  “With baggage handling or kissing?” His crooked grin made my heart twist.

  “Both.” I nudged him with my elbow and he laughed.

  He hoisted my bags higher. “Come on, you’ve got some explaining to do.”

  Just like that, my momentary good mood vanished. He wouldn’t like me traipsing off to Broadwater on some psycho hunt, yet I couldn’t not tell him after my phone call last night.

  He dumped my bags inside the front door and swept me into his arms for a squishy hug that squeezed the breath out of me.

  “That’s for making me stay up the rest of the night worrying about you,” he mumbled against my hair, as I buried my face in his chest and wrapped my arms around him tight.

  Security, something I’d craved my whole life. It made me feel warm all over and I wished I could capture this feeling like a snapshot. I had an inkling I’d need it over the next few days.

  When we finally broke free, I glanced up at him, amazed anew that this cool, gorgeous guy liked me. “What do I get if I keep you up for a week straight?”

  He growled. “Don’t even think about it.” He guided me towards the sofa. “Now tell me what was on that music clip.”

  “No soda?”

  “You want one?”

  “Nah…”

  “Quit stalling.” He sat next to me, took my hand. “Start talking.”

  Threading my fingers through his, I hung on tight. “The clip was a copy of the first.”

  “With the body at the end?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He glanced down at our hands where I was cutting off his circulation and I eased back on the death grip. “There’s more,” he coaxed.

  “Yeah, this time I could see the girl’s face.” An unexpected lump formed in my throat and I cleared it. “I know her.”

  “What the—”