by Zoe Arden
“Stop talking,” Margaret yelled at me.
“You mean they got Slater because of you?” Polly seethed.
“It would never have worked out between the two of you anyway. He didn’t even like you.”
“We could have worked things out!” Polly screamed.
“She wanted Sheriff Knoxx to get you, too. She never intended to share the ritual’s power with you; she wants it all for herself. Think about it. She gave you that knife to kill him with, but it didn’t kill him, did it? He was out of the hospital the next day. She was hoping he’d get you and bring you back to Wormwood.”
“Why would I get you out of prison if that were true?” Margaret asked.
“So you could blame the murders on her,” I said. “Polly, you were supposed to be Margaret’s scapegoat.”
Polly let out a long, loud cry and
lunged forward. Margaret’s arms flailed in front of her to no effect. The knife dug into Margaret’s shoulder. She let out one loud yelp then sank to the floor.
“She’s unconscious,” I said, thinking that beetle balm—whatever it was—was fast-acting stuff.
“She’s dead,” Polly replied.
“Dead?!”
I looked at Margaret again and realized she wasn’t breathing.
“Now,” Polly said, “we can finally start.”
The sun that had peeked through the cracks in the blinds was long gone. I couldn’t see the moon, but I knew it was there. The Wolf Moon.
“He has to go first. Oh, Lover,” Polly said, sliding the knife she’d used to kill Margaret gently over Damon’s torso.
His eyes fluttered open. “What’s happening?”
“Damon, don’t move. Don’t let the knife touch you.”
He eyed the knife in Polly’s hand. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could hear his breathing. He was scared.
“Don’t worry, I can’t use this on him. It would ruin everything.” She bent down and retrieved a bloodstone similar to the one lying on my chest. She touched his forehead with it, then each foot, then set it firmly over his heart. He tried to shake it off, but it stayed glued to him.
“It burns,” Damon said.
“That means it’s working,” Polly said.
I yanked so hard on one of my wrist cuffs that I felt my shoulder pop. A sharp pain ran through every inch of my body, blinding me with pain.
“Cabara cabara,” Polly began to mutter.
“Stop!” I cried. “Damon, close your eyes.”
“Russsssss.” She tightened her lips and made a long hissing sound that she held for what felt like hours, but I knew couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.
“Damon, I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I love you.”
Damon didn’t respond. I thought maybe he’d passed out, but when I looked, I could see his foot twitching nervously.
“You don’t need him,” I said to Polly. “You already have a fourth sacrifice. Melbourne.”
“Melbourne wasn’t a sacrifice. I don’t know who killed him or how, but it had nothing to do with the ritual.”
My heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to escape. Polly took some sort of oil and began to dab it over Damon’s face. He tried to shake her off but it was no use.
There was a loud crash from the back room.
Polly stopped and turned toward it.
“Ava?” Colt cried out.
“Colt! I’m here! Hurry!”
Polly picked up the knife dipped in beetle balm.
Oh, no.
“Look out!” I screamed as Colt pushed the door open. The second he was in sight, Polly threw the knife at him.
* * *
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
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T he knife missed Colt’s face by less than an inch. I saw the wind whip a stray strand of hair dangling over his forehead as the blade whizzed by him. Colt went into autopilot, lifting a hand to deflect the next blade that might come his way.
“Colt, the knife’s poisoned!” I warned him. “Beetle balm!” I still had no idea what that was, but from the expression on Colt’s face, I knew that he did.
“Warthogs!” Polly muttered.
“Ava, are you okay?” Colt asked, looking in my direction.
“I’m fine, just be careful.”
Without her knife, Polly began searching through the spilled items on the ground. The briefcase had clearly belonged to Margaret. Polly frantically sifted through things, uncertain as to what some of them were. She grabbed a length of rope and tossed it aside. Something that looked like a pincushion caught her eye. She held it up to the light, examining it, then tossed it aside as well. There was nothing left that interested her.
Colt wasn’t about to wait for her to make up her mind. He ran toward her at full throttle. Just before he tackled her, Polly grabbed something long and thin from the pile of junk.
“Look out, Colt, she’s got a...” I squinted, trying to make out just what she’d grabbed, “...pencil,” I finished.
A pencil? What is she gonna do with that?
But of course, I was once again forgetting that nothing on this island was as it seemed. I knew Polly had no powers to cast charms or enchantments, but when the object itself was already enchanted, she could still use it and whatever powers it had been imbued with. She pushed the eraser on the pencil in like a button and the thing suddenly unfolded much like that knife I’d seen earlier. I wondered where that had gone to and hoped she didn’t come across that next.
Instead of ducking him or trying to run from him, Polly ran straight at Colt with her three-foot long pencil with a point sharp as a knife. I hoped it hadn’t been dipped in anything because this time there was no way for her to miss. The tip of the lead was at least a foot long all on its own, and it looked strong.
Colt didn’t even blink an eye. He stood facing her, perfectly calm and composed. He pulled the super wand from his buckle and spun it three times in the air. The crystal tip lit up, emitting bright orange light all around the shop. I could feel the energy it gave off. Everything in the room took on its orange glow and my body heated up, but not to an uncomfortable degree. It was like standing in the middle of a warm summer wind.
“Ahhhh!” Polly screamed and covered her eyes. “Make it stop.”
I had no idea what she was going on about. The light and the warmth were pleasant. She was acting like they were burning her from the inside out. I didn’t particularly care if she was in pain, though. Not after everything she’d done. But then Damon screamed, too.
“Damon?” I yelled, growing anxious. “Are you okay?”
He screamed again.
“It’s hurting my eyes!”
Whatever the light was doing to them, it apparently didn’t affect witches and warlocks. Damon and Polly were in agony. Colt and I were fine.
Colt thought that he’d won. I could tell by the satisfied look on his face. I didn’t blame him. Polly seemed completely immobilized. Until she started swinging.
Her knees buckled. Her eyes watered. But she didn’t fall to the ground. She swung blindly around her with the pencil, catching Colt completely off guard. He’d expected her to fall and stay down. When she hit his face with the pencil, I saw the surprise in his eyes. She felt her triumph and swung again. Even though she couldn’t see, once her target had been established, her accuracy was deadly.
Polly swung a third time and this time drilled the razor-sharp tip of the pencil directly into Colt’s chest.
“Noooo!” I screamed.
She walked slowly to him as he sank to the ground. One of her eyes was swollen shut. The other was as red as Rudolph’s nose. Apparently, that orange light Colt’s wand had emitted acted as some sort of pepper spray for non-witches.
“Polly, it’s not too late to stop this,” I pleaded with her. “I’ll tell them it wasn’t you who killed Anastasia. Or any of the others
.”
She either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. Holding the pencil with one hand, she stood over Colt and aimed it directly at his heart. I couldn’t watch. I closed my eyes. There was a loud thud, and Polly screamed.
“Get off me!” she cried. “Don’t you dare touch me!”
“It’s all right, Miss Peacock. Don’t you worry now. I’m Deputy Otis. Otis Winken.”
I opened my eyes to see Otis holding Polly, who’d been placed in handcuffs.
“Otis!” I cried. “Where’d you come from?”
“The sheriff’s station,” Otis said.
“Where’s Sheriff Knoxx?”
“Right behind me.”
As if on cue, Sheriff Knoxx stepped into the room. He looked at Colt still writhing on the floor, at Otis holding Polly in handcuffs, and at me and Damon on the tables.
“I should have stayed another night in the hospital,” he murmured to himself, shaking his head.
“Here you go, Sheriff Knoxx. I got her for you.” Otis handed Polly off to the sheriff. She had stopped struggling, the combination of fatigue and whatever it was Colt had blasted her with finally giving way to surrender. Sheriff Knoxx dug the key out of her pocket and unlocked first me, then Damon.
Damon sat up on the table but said nothing.
“Good job, Otis,” Sheriff Knoxx said.
“Thank you, sir. Tadpole helped. He has a real nose for danger. Led us right here.”
“You mean Tadpole told you I was here?” I asked.
“Well, not in so many words. He told me he smelled danger again coming from inside the bakery, and I kinda figured things out from there. Every time he smelled danger, Margaret was around.” He looked at Margaret’s limp body, unmoved from where it had fallen. “I guess she’s not dangerous anymore.”
“Why did Colt get here ahead of you?” I asked.
“We split up,” Sheriff Knoxx said. “We agreed we could cover more territory that way.”
Colt groaned from the ground. “You are in such trouble when I get out of here,” he said, and I knew his comment was directed at me. “From now on, I’m installing tracking devices in all of your clothing. That way you can never get away from me again.”
Otis laughed, but I didn’t think Colt was joking.
“So, if you split up, how did you know to come here?” I asked Colt.
Colt sat slowly up and leaned against the wall. His eyes weren’t the same, sweet shade of gray I’d come to love. They were a dull mud color. “You owe Snowball a whole lot of tuna when you get home.”
“You mean Snowy got my messages?”
“Loud and clear,” Colt said. “Practically ran me over when she finally caught up to me. Between her and Tadpole there, you don’t need me or the sheriff.”
Tadpole’s head popped out of Otis’s satchel at the sound of his name. He blinked at us and scanned the mess we’d created. He watched the garden slug, who had made his escape during the fight, make its way toward the front door. It slunk through a crack and freed itself, back to the outside world. Tadpole let out a loud squeak, sank back down, and curled up inside the bag.
If what Otis said about Tadpole was true, then I would have to buy him the biggest bag of potato chips ever. He deserved them.
* * *
CHAPTER
FORTY
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I lay in my hospital bed, nurses swarming in and out of my room every five minutes, checking this or that. My father hadn’t left my side all night.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Go home. Get some sleep.”
“Could you sleep if it was me in here?” he asked.
I smiled and assured him I could. He saw right through me.
“How’s Trixie doing?” I asked Eleanor.
“She’s getting by. She and Melbourne had grown quite close in the last few weeks. I think she’s just shocked that he’s not here anymore. When you’re friends with a vampire, you have the impression that they’ll always be around.”
I nodded. “I could see why she might think that.”
There was a knock on the door and another nurse came bouncing in. She had short red hair, milky skin, and was wearing pale pink lipstick. She was about the same age as my dad. Her nametag read Sadie.
“Time to check your blood,” Sadie said, smiling brightly.
“Again?” I asked.
“We just want to make sure that nothing got by us. Dr. Dunne is being extra thorough on this one.”
“Hmmph.”
“You may be grouchy,” Sadie said to me, “but you are far from the grouchiest patient I have today. That friend of yours is ten times worse.”
“Colt? Can I see him?” I asked.
He’d been hurt worse than any of us—other than Margaret, of course. Despite not having her powers, Polly had managed to break Colt’s nose in three places and give him a rather large bump on the head. It was pure luck that the enchanted pencil she’d used to kick his butt hadn’t been dipped in anything poisonous. There were two other pencils in that briefcase, and both had been dipped in beetle balm.
“No,” Sadie said. “Not Detective Hudson. That other one. With the dark hair. He looks like a musician.”
“Damon,” I said.
Eleanor and my father exchanged a look. So far, Damon had refused to see me. We’d been in the hospital for two days, and he had returned all but the first letters I’d sent to his room and told Dr. Dunne to keep me away from him.
“He’ll get over it,” Eleanor said, sensing my thoughts.
“In this lifetime?”
Sadie frowned. “Are you two fighting or something?”
“Sort of. I guess. We must be. He won’t let me near him.”
“Well, if you want to talk to him, now’s your best chance.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Nurse Carrie just gave him a shot to make him sleep. It also has the effect of loosening people up. If you can catch him before he zonks out, he might talk to you.”
I hopped out of bed.
“Whoa, slow down there,” my dad said. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To talk to Damon.”
“I’m going with you then.”
“Dad, I can’t talk to him with you there,” I said.
“Um, excuse me,” Sadie said. “Wheelchair.”
The first day here, they had made me stay in bed. This morning, they’d brought me a wheelchair and told me I could use it to get around if I wanted to explore. As if the hospital was full of adventure.
“I don’t need that thing,” I told her.
“Hospital rules. If you want to see your boyfriend, you need wheels.”
I stood with my hands on my hips, trying to stare her down.
“If you don’t use it,” she said, “then I’ll have to seal the room with a lock spell.”
“You wouldn’t,” I said.
“Try me.”
My dad rested one hand on my shoulder. “Honey, why don’t you let me wheel you to Damon’s room?”
I finally relented, much to the satisfaction of both Nurse Sadie and my father. Eleanor said she was going to pay a visit to Colt. He hadn’t had any visitors yet, and she felt bad for him.
“I guess he doesn’t have many friends at the Council. It’s sad, really. He’s a nice young man,” Eleanor said. I thought I might like to pay a visit to Colt myself, after I saw Damon.
“Aunt Eleanor, can you do me a favor? Grab that box on the dresser and take it to Colt’s room with you? But don’t let him open it. Not till I get there.”
“It’s a pretty big box,” my dad observed. “What’s in it?”
“A surprise.”
Outside Damon’s room, I knocked on the door.
“Come in.” His voice sounded distant.
I got out of the chair. My dad put a restraining hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down.
“Hospit
al rules, remember? You wouldn’t want to get Sadie in trouble, would you?”
I sat back down and wheeled myself into the room, not really caring about Sadie but wanting to get out from under my father’s thumb.
“Hey,” I said as I wheeled toward Damon’s bed. I checked behind me to make sure the door was closed. Hospital room doors didn’t have locks, so there was nothing I could do to ensure privacy, but from the way Damon was looking at me, maybe that was a good thing.
“You better get out of here before my mom gets back,” he said and yawned.
“She’s still here?” I asked.
“Of course, she is. What do you think? That human mothers care less about their kids than witches?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said defensively. “I just haven’t seen her in a while is all.”
“You’re hardly her favorite person, Ava. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for her to call on you.”
Damon’s face was pale except around his eyes, which were still puffy.
“My eyes are still burning,” he said, going to rub them but stopping himself.
“When Colt fired that off, he wasn’t thinking about you,” I said. “He was just trying to stop Polly.”
“Yeah, I doubt he’d think of me even if he had a brain.”
If Damon had really received his sleep aid already, they were gonna have to try again and double his dosage, because this wasn’t working. He was just as mean and unpleasant as ever.
“Look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the way this all went down,” I told him.
“Yeah, I know you are. You know what else I know?” he asked. I was afraid to answer. “I know that I don’t care. Not one flying beezwitch.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying everything between us is over, Ava. I can’t handle this lifestyle. I wish I didn’t even know that witches existed.”
My eyes began to burn as tears formed at the back of them.
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m really not, but... I never want to see you again.”