“Thanks for coming,” I say because I can’t think of anything else. It feels so weird talking to her again.
“You were really good,” Sara says. She starts to say something else but just shrugs like, I guess that’s it, and wanders away. I almost ask her to come back, but then I catch Stuart staring at me, hard, like he’s warning me not to. So I don’t.
Carrie excuses herself and chases after Sara, I guess so she won’t feel like she’s here all alone. I catch a glimpse of her exchanging hugs with Bo and Ty before the crowd closes around them, swallowing them up. Everyone else hangs out with me and talks about the show, telling me how good the band was, telling me over and over how good I was...
The half hour of — what’d Bo call it? Schmoozing? — flies by. Next thing I know, Ty is tugging at my shirt and telling me the band is getting ready to go grab some Thai food and she’ll give me a ride...
“Be right there,” I say, “I just want to say goodbye to everyone.”
“We’ll be right outside,” she says.
I make my goodbye rounds. I reach Astrid last, and after hugging me, she puts an arm around my shoulders and says, “Let me walk you out. I need to talk to you.”
Uh-oh.
Astrid escorts me out of the cafeteria and waits until we’re in the hallway, clear of anyone who might overhear us. “Halloween is coming up,” she says.
“So?”
“This will be your first Halloween since you were possessed.”
She almost says that like it’s a question, like she wants me to confirm that this will in fact be my first post-demonic-possession Halloween. I think back and yeah, it was — what? January when the thing possessing Stacy Hellfire jumped into me?
“Something bad’s going to happen, isn’t it?” I say. Well duh. Of course something bad’s going to happen. Astrid wouldn’t be all secretive and uber-serious if, like, I was going to wake up on Halloween and discover I had an army of kittens at my command.
Oh, man, a kitty army would be so cool.
“I wouldn’t call it bad, but I wouldn’t call it good, either,” Astrid says. “Hallowtide — Halloween and the two days immediately following — is a time of transition in the magical world. It’s a time when certain energies are at their peak and the barriers separating realities are at their thinnest. For most people, that doesn’t mean a thing. For people like us, however...”
People like us. She means people whose souls have been contaminated by a demonic entity. Jeez, you get possessed by a demon once and you never hear the end of it.
“Our darker natures are going to get stirred up for a little while,” Astrid says. “Halloween itself will be the worst of it.”
“Are you going to do something crazy like lock me up in your basement or chain me to a radiator?”
“Nooooo. No no, nothing like that. And I wouldn’t recommend self-imposed solitude, either. Solitary confinement is the worst possible thing you could do.” Astrid chuckles. “Unfortunately, being out in public is the second-worst thing you could do.”
“Great. So what do I do?”
“You spend the day with me.”
“Um...okay. Want to tell me why that isn’t the third-worst thing I can do?” I say. If we’re both kind of flipping out, I don’t see how spending a girls’ day together would work out well for either of us.
“I have some chores to take care of,” Astrid says. “Keeping busy on Halloween keeps me distracted, which keeps me from tearing anyone apart. Figuratively,” she adds quickly.
“So I’m — what? Going to go grocery shopping with you?”
We step outside. Ty’s car sits at the curb, idling.
“Your friends are waiting for you. Go have fun,” Astrid says, gently shoving me toward the car. “Clear your calendar for next Wednesday. I’ll pick you up.”
I wrinkle my nose at her. “You get off on being all whatchacallit...enigmatic, don’t you?”
Astrid smiles and turns to go back inside. “Enigma by name,” she says.
2.
Dad knows about my secret identity and all the weird stuff that’s happened to me, but that doesn’t make it any easier explaining certain things to him — like why I need to take Halloween off from school so I can hang out with my friend the sorceress. He rolls with it anyway and writes me an excuse note for school.
Since Mom is still out of the super-hero loop, I get up at my usual time and pretend I’m getting ready for school. That’s easy. The hard part is pretending that I slept all night and feel great because I didn’t, and I don’t. I woke up from a nightmare I don’t remember around, like, two, then laid in bed the rest of the morning, wide-awake and wicked antsy. I almost got up to go run around in the woods behind the house just to burn off some nervous energy.
“You okay, honey?” Mom asks. “You seem distracted.”
“M’fine,” I mumble into my oatmeal, which tastes blander than usual today. I grab some brown sugar and dump a couple of spoonfuls in. It barely helps.
“Are you sure?” Mom says.
My grip tightens on my spoon. “I’m fine,” I say, but she knows something is off.
“She says she’s fine, dear,” Dad says casually and not at all like he’s running interference for me. Mom grunts doubtfully but lets it go. Dad gives me a knowing smile.
Breathe. Think of Dad.
I run upstairs, dump my schoolbooks out of my backpack and stuff my Kunoichi outfit in, then run out the door like I’m heading to school. Instead, I head into town and plant myself at a table at Coffee E to wait for Astrid.
I’m not waiting long. She walks in, dressed in her black suit and tie combo and a long leather coat, signals to Jill behind the counter, then joins me at my table.
“Why so grim, honey?” says an old man sitting at the table next to me. His three friends, who’ve spent the whole morning complaining about “those idiots in town hall,” snicker to one another. “You should smile more.”
Astrid turns toward him, slowly, and smiles — like a wolf that’s just picked out her next meal. The old men stop laughing. They turn away and go back to griping about local politics.
“We’re off to a great start,” I say.
“And it’s all downhill from here,” Astrid says. “How are you doing?”
I shrug. “Okay? Maybe? I guess? I don’t know. Didn’t sleep well. Feel wound-up. Little cranky...”
“You’re speaking in short, coherent sentences...”
“That is because I am focused. I am anchoring myself, like the Entity taught me.”
Astrid raises an eyebrow. “The Entity actually taught you something useful?”
“He’s taught me a few useful things,” I say, but keeping myself centered is one of the few tricks I want to use. The Entity knows some wicked scary stuff.
“Huh. I’m both surprised and impressed.” She smiles. Not in a scary way. “And I’m happy for you. If he’s helping you keep your head together...anyway. We should get going.”
“Okay. Uh, where are we going?”
“Where you’d find any self-respecting sorceress and her scrappy ninja sidekick on Halloween,” Astrid says. “Salem.”
We drive back to Astrid’s apartment instead of to Salem “because getting in and out of the city by car on Halloween is impossible,” she says — which is why we teleport in. Astrid takes me by the arm and holds me close, and then the world turns inside out. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s like everything turns into a photo-negative version of itself and the air presses in on me, then it all snaps back to normal, except we’re in a totally different place. One second, we’re in Astrid’s living room, the next, we’re in —
“A cemetery?” I say. “Seriously?”
“Burying Point Cemetery, to be precise,” Astrid says, “the oldest cemetery in Salem.”
I look around, and yeah, this place is old. We’re standing in the middle of a field of gravestones that have been knocked around pretty good by centuries of New England weather. A lot o
f them tilt at bad angles and look like a good sneeze would knock them over. They’re a lot thinner than modern headstones, and they’ve been bleached a funny gray-white color. I’m surprised at how detailed some of them still are. The engravings have been worn down a little, but the inscriptions are still legible.
There are a lot of small gravestones too. Kids’ gravestones.
“I love this place,” Astrid says. “Discovered it while I was in college. Used to come here to clear my head.”
After wandering around a while, Astrid leads me out of the cemetery and into the center of town, which is already crazy-busy with tourists even though it’s Wednesday morning. Almost everyone is in costume. It’s pretty awesome. What’s not so awesome are the guys we run into, like, every fifty feet yelling about what sinners we all are and how we’re going to Hell unless we accept Jesus.
“They’re fun,” I say.
“I made one pee himself last year,” Astrid says.
“Ummm...good for you?”
“Yes,” she confirms. “Good for me.”
We stop for breakfast at a little café. The service is slow because the place is packed, but the food’s good.
“I noticed you and Sara still aren’t talking,” Astrid says out of nowhere.
“Huh?”
“After the concert. Sara was there. You barely spoke to her. Looked like she wanted to speak to you.”
“So? I didn’t want to talk to her, so I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m still mad at her.” Astrid gives me a look. “What?”
“I had a similar conversation with Stuart. He says he plans on never forgiving Sara.” She sips her coffee. “That your plan too?”
“Maybe.”
“Hm. Okay, then,” Astrid says, returning her attention to her food. “So much for feeding your good wolf, I guess.”
I freeze.
Inside everyone are a good wolf and a bad wolf, fighting for control of that person’s soul. The wolf that wins is the one you feed. Astrid told me that once, some advice to help me stay focused when I felt the demon in me rising — and now she’s telling me, in her own weird Astrid way, I’m not doing much to feed my good wolf.
“You think I should forgive her,” I say.
“I think she’s truly sorry for hurting you. And I think you’re not the type of person who holds onto anger for long. What you do with that information?” She shrugs. “Up to you.”
“You’re manipulative.”
“Astrid Enigma. Nice to meet you.”
After breakfast, I follow Astrid through town and then out of town and why does this park look so familiar?
“Recognize this place?” Astrid says, and she points toward a baseball diamond. “The Pelican went down right over there.”
Right. This is where we crash-landed on our way to take down Black Betty. Hm. I guess “crash-landed” isn’t exactly right because we didn’t crash, thanks to Carrie. More like we dropped fast and freaked out because we all thought we were going to die, and Carrie kept us from going splat all over Salem.
Wait. Does that mean...?
It does.
We’re returning to Winter Island.
3.
Astrid and I stand in the middle of an open field and look around. The last time I was here, I was surrounded by trees, bushes, grass...it wasn’t really green because it was January, but there was vegetation. It’s all gone now, incinerated by a hellfire inferno that would have fried the whole city if we hadn’t stopped it. The ground is dry and crunchy beneath my feet, and there’s no sign that nature is even trying to make a comeback.
I don’t know how else to say it. It feels like I’m standing in the middle of death.
Astrid raises a hand like she’s feeling for something. “Yep. The magical energy here is still off,” she says, but it sounds like she’s talking to herself more than to me. “Any wards I throw up will burn out within minutes.”
“I thought everything would be better by now,” I say.
“Far from. I’ve been in touch with city officials since the incident. They’ve tried everything to restore the land. They cleaned up the ash, trucked out tons of contaminated dirt and replaced it with fresh earth, they’ve planted trees and grass and shrubs...nothing wants to grow here. Even the new flagpole is already starting to corrode.”
I follow Astrid’s finger to a small hill at the edge of the clearing, and then up the hill to a steel pole topped with an American flag flapping in the stiff ocean breeze. A sickly gray stain creeps up the white paint job, like the pole is gradually soaking up whatever’s poisoning the land.
“Will it ever recover?”
“Nature is the strongest force in existence,” Astrid says. “It can overcome anything, even blight this deep, but it’ll take time. In the meantime, this site is the magical equivalent of Chernobyl. Salem was already a place of power due to the ley line convergence...”
The what? Oh, right. Astrid explained this to me once. Ley lines are veins of magical energy running all over the planet, and a bunch of them crisscross over Salem, which makes it a great place to cast ritual spells — like the one Kysztykc, Astrid’s father, tricked Black Betty into setting up. The same spell that turned Winter Island into a giant charcoal briquette also poisoned the ley lines.
“The corruption fouls a lot of spells, but it’s lent this location a unique quality that makes it well-suited for certain rituals,” Astrid says. “Add to that the fact it’s Halloween...”
“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? You think someone might try to use this spot for a ritual.” Astrid doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even nod, but I know I’m right. “Like what?”
“Did Stuart tell you about our little outing?”
“Yeah. He said you tracked down some guy trying to sell pages from that spellbook of yours.”
“I didn’t know what the pages were. I’d hoped they might —” She grimaces. Whatever she was going to say, she eats it. “I knew they could be dangerous. I was right. It was a resurrection ritual.”
My mouth falls open and hangs there. I can taste the bitterness in the air, which makes my throat tighten more.
“Resurrection —?” I say. “You mean, like, bringing the dead back to life? But...that’s impossible.”
Astrid hates it when people say that to her. She’s a sorceress. Her whole thing is making the impossible happen, but come on. Resurrection? That is impossible.
“It is impossible,” I say. “Right?”
“That is a matter of some debate. There are a lot of stories about someone successfully raising the dead, but none of them have ever been corroborated. As far as the magical community is concerned, resurrection isn’t possible. Dead is dead.”
“But?” Astrid looks at me. “You have a ‘but.’ Don’t tell me you don’t.”
“This is the Libris Infernalis. It’s ancient lore, stuff that’s been lost to magic users for centuries, and this ritual is rather specific. It’s intended to resurrect an unquiet soul — someone who died in violence.”
I glance around at the ground where nine sorcerers, including Black Betty, died — sacrificed by Kysztykc. I doubt souls could get more unquiet.
“If there’s a right time and a right place to try such a ritual, it’s on Halloween night, on a patch of desecrated earth smack in the middle of a corrupt ley line convergence,” Astrid says. “I’m not saying it would work, but I can’t say for sure it wouldn’t. We’re here to make sure it doesn’t, if the need arises.”
I sigh, annoyed. “You could have just asked for my help, you know. You didn’t have to lure me out here with some story about Halloween making me act all weird.”
“That wasn’t a story,” Astrid snaps, but it’s a defensive response, not an angry one.
“Okay, so you only half-lied to me.” Astrid winces. “Anything else you’re not telling me?”
She hesitates. “I never got the pages back.”
“What? But you said —”
“I never said I got them back,” she says, and thinking about it, she’s right. “The buy went down two days before I got to Castle.”
“But if the pages had already been sold, how you’d know what was on them?”
“Castle told me. He told me a great many things, once I got him talking.” She doesn’t tell me how she got Castle talking, and I’m okay with that. “He also told me who his buyer was: a man known as Lucifer Toomes.”
“And he is...?”
“He’s a necromancer with a major-league grudge against me.” What she says next kind of makes me wish she’d kept lying to me. “And I think he’s coming here tonight to resurrect Black Betty.”
4.
We station ourselves on the hill overlooking the clearing, at the base of the flagpole, and settle in for a long wait. Like, all day long. Astrid doesn’t expect Toomes to show until after dark, but she doesn’t want to count on that, so we sit there under something called a veil, which makes us invisible to everyone but each other.
“Neat trick,” I say at one point.
“Quentin helped me figure it out.”
“You mean Doc Quantum?”
“Mm-hm. She’s been working with Carrie on developing her powers. A while ago they puzzled out how to warp light around her to render her invisible. Quentin explained the physics to me, and I drafted the spell.”
“You two are friends now?”
“We’ve put our differences aside.”
The only time we leave is to sneak off to use the public restrooms at the edge of the parking lot, which look and smell like they haven’t been cleaned in months, and when Astrid teleports into town to grab some sandwiches for dinner.
The sun sets, taking what little warmth we had with it.
The night passes slowly. The veil doesn’t hide sound so we don’t talk, which means all I do is think about stuff. I think about the band and Bo’s idea of playing outside of school, at local clubs and bars, where we can play whatever songs we want and maybe make a little money. I think about the things the Entity has been teaching me, but I don’t think about that stuff for long because some of it is wicked unsettling. I think about Sara, as much as I try not to, but I don’t feel anything.
Action Figures - Issue Five: Team-Ups Page 23