Innocently, she kissed my nose. "There. It's the only clean spot on your face." All at once, the darkness lifted from my shoulders and my breath returned, no longer burning in my chest.
"Let me catch up," I said. "I'll cleanup my face first, though."
"Be quick," she agreed. "Judy's looking for you." Estelle and her friend scampered off, having no idea how powerful her simple blessing had been.
"Wait," Maggie said, running after them. "Any food up there?"
"Of course, silly," Estelle called over her shoulder.
With my face washed off, I walked into the camp. For some reason, I didn't find the myriad of semi-naked women of various ages dancing freely in the moonlight to be anything but refreshing. Ordinarily, I'd have been distracted and careful not to allow my glance to linger. I was a man after all, and I'd been taught from an early age to appreciate the human form in whatever shape it was found. To be fair, this wasn't a stretch for me. Tonight, however, was different. Having walked in my own darkness, the beauty surrounding me was much more a balm than anything else.
"There you are," Gabriella found me. "I was worried you'd run into trouble."
I turned and found that she was indeed dancing in the buff. Her long silver hair, still with lilies woven in, was her only cover.
"Uh, gosh," I managed with a weak smile. Ordinarily, Gabriella was an expert at knowing when I had a problem. This time she didn't inquire, most likely because the visage of her in the moonlight had all but blanked my mind.
"This place." She smiled. "Tonight."
My eyebrows shot up. I worked to bring them back into position and swallowed hard.
Judy approached us. "Felix. There you are." I felt a little bad seeing her wearing a semi-sheer gown. It had been a compromise we'd made several years before. I would deal with all the other women as long as she covered somewhat. It was one thing to have confusing thoughts about her friends, but I couldn't reconcile any confusion where she might be concerned.
"Petaluma is ready," she said.
"Dolly is okay with the trade?" I asked.
"Dolly is okay not losing her daughter."
As things often are, the actual ceremony was somewhat anticlimactic. The hard part had been getting Petaluma to accept the change and it turned out she was considerably stronger than the curse. With thirty witches joined together, supporting her, Petaluma released the book to me and it withered beneath my crushing shield. The effort required on my part to destroy the book was nothing more than it would take to crack an egg.
"That was a beautiful thing," Gabriella said, wrapping her arms around me, drawing me back to the blankets she'd set aside for us.
"It was," I agreed. "I didn't have to do anything. Petaluma rejected it and it just disappeared."
Gabriella smiled. "Take a little credit. You might not have done much at the ceremony, but your talk with her set the stage."
"I'll take that, but in the end, it was all Petaluma and the witches of the mountain," I said.
"Of which she's now one."
Gabriella fell back into the blankets and lay supine, gesturing for me to join her. I smiled. Nothing would I enjoy more and I allowed my excitement to grow.
A low thwup, thwup, thwup sound echoed over the forest and I turned, when all of a sudden, a bright light shone from above as a helicopter flew over the peaceful glade. Downwash from the rotors sent material flying through the once serene setting as women and children screamed. The sound of ATVs and off-road vehicles joined the chaos as headlights illuminated the forest around us.
"This is the FBI." I gritted my teeth as I recognized the voice on the other end of the loudspeaker. "For your safety, do not move. I repeat. This is the FBI …"
The helicopter slowly descended.
Leotown
"Where are your clothes?" I shouted over the noise, just as the bright beams of an ATV illuminated my chest. We'd chosen a remote location at the edge of the glade to spend the rest of the night.
Gabriella's mouth moved and her arm pointed, but the only thing I heard was the high-pitched whine of small engines. I stood and crossed to where I believed her clothing was.
"Freeze and put your hands up," a man's voice ordered.
I stopped and raised my hands slowly to about shoulder height and turned.
"You there," another voice commanded. "Get up."
I watched helplessly as Gabriella rolled from our impromptu nest and rose to her feet more gracefully than I could have managed. She took some care in covering her form with a blanket.
"What's going on?" I asked, shouting over the ruckus.
"Hands behind your back!"
I saw the struggle in Gabriella's eyes. To comply would cause her only cover to fall away.
"She can't," I yelled. "No clothing."
"She doesn't fit either description," the second officer, who'd advanced to a few feet from Gabriella, offered.
"Put some clothes on," the first demanded. "And you. Hands over your head. Turn around."
Gabriella nodded at me, willing me to comply. I'd had a tough enough night and the thought of resistance flitted through my mind. In the short time since they'd arrived, I'd seen at least a dozen agents, so confrontation probably wasn't my best course of action. I turned slowly and complied with the officer's commands as he roughly snapped cuffs on my wrists.
When we arrived at the center of the glade, those who'd decided to stay the night had been corralled - mostly witches and their daughters. The scene was so different from even an hour before, where the same people had been joyfully celebrating life and welcoming Petaluma into their sisterhood.
"What the fuck's your problem, Farha?" I asked, once I came within earshot.
He turned from one of the coven leaders and grimaced.
"Shut up." The man behind me pushed the butt of his rifle into the small of my back, trying to send me away from Jardeep.
"Uncuff him." Jardeep turned to a female FBI agent who wore a dark windbreaker. "This isn't her." He gestured to the woman whom he'd just been talking to.
"Uncuff Gabriella first," I said, turning toward the state policeman who'd freed me.
"Back off, buddy," he said. "I'm just following orders."
"The girl is fine too," Jardeep said. He sounded tired, which I didn't see as a stretch, given how exhausted I felt. I'd been so looking forward to crawling beneath the warm covers with Gabriella and sleeping.
"Where's Anderson?" I asked, turning on Jardeep.
"Have you seen Althea Sanders?" he asked, ignoring my question.
"Yeah. When you guys carted her off to wherever you take witches who've gone astray," I said.
He let out a loud breath. "She escaped."
"Bullshit, you're fishing for something."
"She overpowered two guards and put an agent in the hospital," he said. "I assure you, we're quite serious about this."
"So you attacked a group of peaceful women and their daughters?" Gabriella slipped her hand around my arm.
"We got a tip that she was out this way," he said.
Gabriella’s face grew angry. "That must have been quite some tip."
"Sir?" A younger agent interrupted. "You need to see something."
"Can it wait?"
"I don't think so."
"Come with me," Jardeep said, gesturing to Gabriella and myself. I was ready to throttle the man and he was acting like we were simply part of the team. For whatever reason though, I found myself following him.
We were led back, close to where Gabriella and I were to have slept and then another forty yards into the forest. In the wash of an ATV's headlights was a tarp, lying over several suspicious lumps.
"What's going on?" I asked.
Jardeep crouched down and pulled the tarp back, exposing the dead forms of two of the men who'd been attacked by the panther in the forest. If the slashes on their torsos were any indication, the panther had found them again and this time, finished the job.
"Looks like a wild animal kill,"
the agent explained. "Big cat by the looks of it."
"You know these men?" Jardeep asked.
I considered lying, but decided against it.
"They're from Eppy," I said. "Maggie and I found them snooping around our camp about four hours ago."
"And?"
"And nothing," I said. "Last time we saw them; they were headed back to Eppy on the path."
"Your sister didn't happen to have a part in their demise, did she?"
"Can't see why," I said. "She went back to the house after midnight," I said.
Jardeep turned to the officer. "Send someone to Judy Babcock's house and have them check her story."
"Copy that," the man answered. "What about these DBs?"
"Wrong place, wrong time," Jardeep answered. "Forest can be a dangerous place."
"What's this really about?" I asked, once Gabriella and I were alone with Jardeep.
"Like I said, Althea Sanders escaped."
"Since when do you need two dozen agents and the state police to arrest one simple witch?" I asked.
"We don't think she was alone," Jardeep answered.
"Someone helped her?" Gabriella asked.
"No. It was the demon," I said, closing my eyes as I heard the truth leave my mouth. It bothered me that the ghrelin had gone down so easily. I looked back at the two of them "It jumped into a willing host. That's why Willum was scared at the end. He was no longer possessed and had to pay the price for the demon's actions."
"I think that was its plan the entire time," Jardeep said. "Althea Sanders has no criminal record and we can't tie her either directly or indirectly to any of the murders. All she needs to do is lie low for a couple of months and the FBI will drop it as a priority. If Willum Gordon had escaped, we'd have chased him to the ends of the earth."
"What now?"
"This was our only lead," he said. "We're back to square one. Tell me something, Slade. You been in touch with your mother, Atronia?" He peered intently at me as he asked the question.
"No." I shook my head. "Why would you ask that?"
"Sort of thing we used to get her help with," he said.
"According to Maggie, you arrested her and tried to lock her up," I said.
He didn't respond other than to dig in the pocket of his windbreaker. He extracted a sparkly chain and held his fingers out to me as if to drop something in my hand. I accepted his offering, which turned out to be the necklace holding the crystal Judy had given me. "Figured you were missing that."
"What will you do now?"
"Question is, what will you do," he said. "I'd stay clear of that Faa girl. That demon wanted her for some reason. Whatever it is, I wouldn't put long odds on her making it through the next round."
"You're a cold-hearted sonnavabitch," Gabriella said, surprising me with her cussing.
Jardeep shrugged and started to walk off.
"We done?" I asked.
"Like you said, she isn't here." He pulled out his walkie-talkie. "Wrap it up. There's no sign of the fugitive."
"Do you think Maggie had anything to do with those dead Eppy boys?" Gabriella asked, once Jardeep was out of earshot.
"She wasn’t in good enough shape to change again," I said.
"She’s been eating hard all day."
"There was a panther in the woods," I said. "Maggie and I both saw it. It looked a lot like her cat form, but it definitely wasn't her."
"What are the odds of that? These men get attacked by a panther who looks like Maggie and are later found dead."
"What are you driving at?" I asked. "I know for a fact it wasn't Maggie."
"You're probably right," she said. "Jardeep was lying when he said he was looking for your mother for help with the demon. "
"How?"
"Not sure, but when he said they used to get help from her, he was leaving something important out," she said. "We should go back and help clean up. I doubt anyone is going to want to stick around after all this."
***
The sky grew lighter in the pre-dawn hours as we finally saw the last of the weary revelers off. Exhausted, we threw blankets on Judy's family room floor and fell asleep. It was well after noon when the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen woke me.
"Where are you going?" Gabriella lazily pulled at me as I extracted myself from the mess of blankets.
"Gotta do the needful," I said.
I finished up my business and padded my way into the kitchen where Gia was humming to herself and busily working at what looked like food for an army.
"Coffee?" she asked cheerfully as I slid onto a stool.
"Please," I said accepting the cup.
"Quite a night last night," Gia mused, tipping a large pot and pouring gravy into a serving bowl. "Imagine you'll be taking off shortly?" She phrased it as a question, but I knew better than to hold anything from her. She was more than intuitive on matters like this.
"We’re endangering you by sticking around," I said.
"Seems to me the FBI would have shown up last night no matter what."
"Thea is loose," I said. "She escaped FBI custody. She'll be coming for me or Lace."
"Why Lace?" Judy asked, entering from the hallway.
"Farha believes the demon jumped to Thea," I said.
"That what you think?" Gia asked.
"Only thing that makes sense," I said. "We'll stay the night, but I want to head home in the morning. Maybe she won't find us there. Either way, things will settle down here once we're gone, especially all of the FBI attention." I pointed out the window to where a nondescript sedan was parked on the gravel road.
"Witches don't find it hard to locate people they know well," Gia replied. "She'll find you wherever you go."
"That's what Felix is counting on," Judy said. "He's looking to draw Thea away."
Gia slid a plateful of sausage, eggs and home-style hash browns, all covered with gravy, across the small island. It afforded me the opportunity not to respond.
"What smells so good?" Maggie asked, blearily blinking back sleep and sliding into the seat next to me, blanket still wrapped around her shoulders. I pushed my plate in front of her and she shoveled the food in with abandon.
"Child. Where have you been all my life," Gia asked, smiling at Maggie. "I'd have loved cooking for you."
"You always made the best bread," Maggie said, waggling her eyebrows. "Your mistake was cooling it next to the window."
"That was you?" Gia asked as she doled out plates to the late arriving Gabriella and Lace.
"I've probably said too much." Maggie smiled like a Cheshire cat as she slid her empty plate back toward Gia.
"I'll tell you a secret," Gia said.
"What?" Maggie asked.
"I have two loaves for you to take back with you tonight," she answered. "That is, if a curious magpie doesn't pull them from the window."
"Perhaps we should close the window," Maggie accepted a plate, once again filled with breakfast food covered in a thick tan gravy.
"All of God's creatures need to eat," Gia answered.
***
"Home sweet home," Gabriella sighed as we crossed onto the old steel bridge. The Missouri River flowed beneath us and the wheels of the Suburban sang as only the ancient bridge could make them. The river marked the city limits on the northeast side of Leotown. I had to admit, I was tired of traveling and looked forward to sleeping in my own bed and showering in the recently renovated bathroom of my family home.
"I can't wait to see Clarita," Maggie said, bouncing in her seat, causing a pile of chip bags and soda cans to topple to the floor behind me. I winced at the stains I knew she'd leave behind.
"Might have to be tomorrow," I said. It was one-thirty in the morning and tomorrow would be a workday for both Kelli and her husband, Andy.
"Kelli said to stop by, no matter how late," Gabriella said. "We're an hour earlier than I told her we'd be, so I don't see a problem."
"Works for me." I rolled down the window as we pulled off the
main highway and onto a street that would lead us to the Brandlemeir home. It had been hot today and I smelled freshly mown grass as we wound our way through the older neighborhood where they lived. The streets were quiet and I appreciated the peace of the night and the sense of homecoming.
When we pulled up, Kelli, Clarita and Kelli's son, Nelson were all dozing on a wooden porch swing that had lost its momentum. Bugs jumped around the single porch light that illuminated the quiet trio who were protected by nothing more than a light blanket. I smiled, appreciating the serenity I so often associate with late night.
"Who-who-who." The staccato call of an owl caught my attention from just overhead. We'd apparently disturbed its evening hunting and it was expressing displeasure.
"Sorry, buddy," I whispered, stretching to restore circulation to my extremities.
"Felix?" Gabriella's voice carried concern, so I quickened my pace around the front of the truck. "Who's in the house?" She pointed through the window at Thea's unmistakable figure, sitting at Andy and Kelli's dining room table, talking animatedly with Andy.
"Get Clarita and Kelli in the truck," I whispered harshly and slid out of the light that shone from the living room window.
A large form sailed from the tree above and swooped down, startling me as it landed on the house. The owl was reacting to our activity and wasn't pleased. At the same moment, the tinkle of aluminum soda cans falling to the pavement made me wince and duck, the overload of too many simultaneous events.
"Hey. You're back," Kelli announced sleepily as we stepped onto the porch. The groan of old lumber sagging beneath our feet caught her attention. Gabriella pressed her finger to her lips, trying to quiet her coven sister. "Oh, have they fallen asleep?" she asked, misinterpreting the requested silence.
"Kelli – there is danger," I whispered. "Take Nelson to the truck. Gabriella will take you to my house where it's safe."
"I don't understand," she replied, confused. "What danger? And what about Andy and your friend?"
"You have to keep Nelson safe." I intentionally tapped into her protective instincts as a mother. Until the kids were clear, Andy would have to fend for himself. As a witch, Kelli immediately saw through both my deception as well as recognized the truth behind my statements.
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