by J. B. Lynn
“You can’t beat me,” Zippy taunted. “The child is mine.”
I glanced at my watch and realized we only had a few minutes left.
As I stirred the ingredients that I’d brought with an oversized hand-carved spoon, Ann began to add liquids from different jars, and a handful of herbs, and something that looked like ash to the mixture. It began to smell even worse. Then it began to bubble.
“Keep stirring,” she urged.
I did, even though I could barely see from the stinging tears in my eyes. I could barely breathe because of the stench, but I kept at it.
“You’ve put your faith in the wrong person, Maggie,” Zippy taunted. “You never could do anything right.”
I concentrated on going around and around with the spoon. The mixture was changing color, starting to look like a pastel rainbow. Different colors, in waves, took over the texture. “Spit!” Ann yelled.
Thinking she’d said something else, I looked around to see what was going on. Nothing looked out of place. The door was still closed, with the mask in place. RV was still standing there watching, holding her injured hand. Zippy was racing around in his crate.
“Spit into it,” Ann instructed again.
Realizing what she wanted, I did my best to comply.
“Now stir,” she told me. “Keep spitting and stirring.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m not great at spitting, so the effort of trying to spit and stir seemed futile, not to mention the fact that I looked ridiculous.
Still, I spit and stirred, spit and stirred.
Ann, waving her hands overhead, started chanting something that made no sense. “Oong jar ba da, Oong jar ba da.”
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I became convinced she was going to start singing the chorus of “Hooked on a Feeling.”
I glanced over at RV nervously, and she just shrugged at me, which I did not find comforting.
Suddenly, there was a flash of rainbow-colored smoke, which caused me to jump back and drop the spoon. It clattered onto the floor, causing some of the mixture to splatter onto Zippy.
“Perfect!” Ann yelled, then she repeated her chant three times. “Oong jar ba da, Oong jar ba da, Oong jar ba da.”
Bending to pick up the spoon, I was startled to see my grandmother’s face level with mine when I stood back up. Holding the spoon like a fencing sword I could defend myself with, I took a step back.
“Whoa,” RV murmured from behind me.
Again, I didn’t find that comforting.
“Go away!” I yelled at my grandmother. “Leave Katie alone!”
“You are banished,” Ann said in a shaky voice.
I glanced over at her and saw that her eyes were wide with fear.
My grandmother turned on her, and in her most cutting tone, just like she’d used when she was alive, she said, “Amateur. You forgot the sacrifice.”
Ann trembled.
“Did you?” I asked Ann as my grandmother’s apparition seemed to grow more solid every moment.
Ann nodded. “A life to bind a life force,” she murmured.
“You could use the lizard,” my grandmother suggested with an evil grin.
My whole body went cold, and I breathed shallowly.
“That would work,” Ann agreed. “Any life would work.”
God pulled himself out of my bra and perched himself on my shoulder. “If it means saving Katie…” he whispered in my ear, “do it.” He ran down my arm and settled himself into my palm. I closed my fingers around him and he didn’t make a peep about sensitive skin.
“Just drop it in,” Ann urged.
My grandmother cackled.
I shook my head. I only killed bad people, not my friends. Not God. Not even when he’d been insufferable the past few days.
“It’s the only way,” my grandmother taunted. “You trade the life of your best friend for your insipid, beloved niece.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
She scowled. “To get what I want,” she said. “I’ve always deserved to get what I want. I wanted Herschel, I wanted daughters…”
“And how did that work out for you?” I pushed back. “They all hate you.”
“No spell is perfect,” my grandmother said with a shrug.
“You’re running out of time, Maggie,” Ann warned.
I knew she was right, because my grandmother was almost solid now. I didn’t know what that meant for Katie, but it certainly looked like she was gaining strength, and that couldn’t be good.
My grandmother fixed her gaze on RV. “You know what it’s like,” she said. “Mildred cast her own spells.”
I glanced in RV’s direction just in time to see her nod her head.
“You’re in for a lifetime of misery,” my grandmother said, her lips curling with delight. RV raised her chin. “If I lift the curse on Mildred, I’m free.”
I saw my grandmother hesitate, something she hadn’t done often in life, and I knew, in that moment, that she was beatable.
“The lizard,” Ann urged.
“Do it,” God said, trying to scramble out of my grip. “We have to save Katie, that’s what you and I have always been about.”
Knowing he was right, I stepped closer to the bowl, which was bubbling and smoking and making weird gurgling noises. Closing my hand around the lizard, I started to raise him toward it.
“Hurry,” Ann urged.
I held him over the bowl, my heart breaking at the thought of losing my best friend.
“Don’t,” my grandmother said suddenly. “It won’t work,” she said. “You’ll lose them both.”
I hesitated, wondering if she was telling the truth for once or trying to trick me because she knew this would save Katie. I looked to Ann for guidance.
“It’s the only way,” the witch urged.
“I’m willing to die, Maggie,” God said. “Both to save Katie, and to help you.”
The truth of his words hit me, and I realized something. Sure, he’s always been a superior, snarky know-it-all, but his heart has always been in the right place. At least, up until a few days ago. “You infected him,” I said to my grandmother. “That’s why he’s been more insufferable than usual lately.”
She blinked. “You’ve gotten clever in your old age, girl.”
I nodded. The reason God had been so nasty to me lately was because he’d been absorbing her evil energy, just like Zippy and Herschel.
“I won’t do it,” I told my grandmother. Even though my hand was over the bowl, I wasn’t going to let him go. “I won’t sacrifice someone I love.” I blinked away the tears streaming down my face. “You’ve sacrificed everyone who could have ever loved you, and where has that gotten you?”
She threw back her head and laughed at me, the noise echoing in the shed. An unseen force struck my hand and I almost let go of the lizard.
Realizing that she had attacked me with some sort of energy, I whirled away from the bowl and clutched him to my chest.
“If she wants him sacrificed, it must mean the potion will just make her stronger.” Ann paced the length of the table, holding her head in her hands. “I don’t understand, a sacrifice should make this work.”
“Love can always be exploited,” my grandmother mocked in a tone that gave me chills.
“Don’t do it!” Ann warned, wild-eyed. “Don’t let the lizard die!”
Another wave of energy slammed me against the wall of the She Shed, causing me to drop the lizard, who skittered away.
Turning her attention from me, my grandmother tried to catch the lizard. I tried to tackle her, but went right through her, even though she looked more solid.
Meanwhile, God was racing toward the door.
While my grandmother and I battled over his life, Ann began to chant again. Reaching the door, God scrambled up it.
“Please be right, Armani,” I muttered under my breath. “Be right.”
The little lizard went through the eye of the mask and dis
appeared.
My grandmother roared her disapproval, and everything in the shed began to move. The mask was ripped off the door. Anything not weighted down, blew around. Everything else began to rattle.
Ann, eyes closed and arms overhead, was still chanting.
Another body-slam of energy, knocked me off my feet. I lay on the floor, pinned, gasping for breath as my grandmother focused her rage at me.
“Here’s your sacrifice!” RV shouted over the din.
My grandmother and I both turned in the direction of her voice, just in time to watch her drop Zippy into the bowl.
35
I let out a scream as Zippy disappeared into the rainbow-colored smoking gurgling muck.
Sure, I hadn’t liked him when he was possessed, but it had never occurred to me to sacrifice him.
My grandmother let out an awful moan and began to be dragged, against her will, toward the skull. “No!” she screamed. “I can’t…”
I don’t know what else she was going to say because the skull seemed to suck her in with one resounding slurp.
Everything that was moving stopped. Papers fell to the floor, herbs pretty much covered everything, and I could finally move. I slowly got to my feet.
Ann lowered her hands and opened her eyes.
RV leaned heavily against the table. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.” Ann smiled at me. “She can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
Too emotional to speak, I nodded my thanks. Other people had tried to kill me before, but knowing that my mother’s mother had wanted to had left me feeling like a raw, open wound. It hurt to even breathe.
Ann focused on RV. Her hand was still bleeding from the railroad spike. “Let’s put something on that.”
“It’ll be okay,” RV said.
“It still won’t hurt to get a little first aid,” the witch replied bossily. Moving slowly, she opened the door and led the way out. “When was your last tetanus shot?”
“Does anyone ever really know the answer to that question, let alone someone with amnesia?” RV asked, following her out. She paused in the doorway and looked over at me. “We did it.”
I nodded, trying to swallow the lump in my throat.
“You’re braver than you look, Maggie Lee,” she said with admiration. “And loyal, too.”
With that, she stepped out of the shed and followed Ann toward her house.
“Are you there, God?” I called out, worried that when the mask had blown off the door God had been injured. Or worse.
“Well, I’m going to bruise,” the lizard said from a dark corner. “But thanks to you, I’m going to be okay.”
Overcome with emotion, I sank to my knees. The little lizard made his way over to me, crawled up my leg and up my arm so that he could perch on my shoulder.
“You did it, Maggie,” he said. “I knew you could. You saved Katie. Again.”
I wished, at that moment, that he was big enough so I could have hugged him.
“I missed you,” I choked out.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You know I would never willingly be so…so…horrible to you.”
Realizing that the little guy was just as choked up as I was, I said, “I know.”
“I love you.”
“I know that, too.”
“Bath!” a familiar voice yipped.
Startled, I turned toward the bowl, which was one of only two things that hadn’t moved in the room.
“Bath!” the little voice barked again.
“Zippy?” I scrambled to my feet.
“Cowabunga!” the lizard yelled out, holding on to my hair.
“You watch too much TV,” I told him, moving toward the bowl.
Looking inside, I saw the little dog. He really didn’t fit in it, his tail and two hind legs were hanging out.
He looked at me with wide, dark, trusting eyes. “Bath?” he whined pitifully.
Considering that he smelled like gorilla poo, I agreed that he needed one. Still, I was so overjoyed to see that he was still alive that I scooped him up and hugged him to my chest.
“Are you okay?”
“Ache head,” he moaned, resting his head against my shoulder.
I didn’t even care that he was getting his stench all over me. I could bring him back to Herschel. Life could resume as normal. As normal as my life gets.
I brought him out to my car.
“He’s good now,” I told the pig as I lowered him into the back seat.
She did not look convinced.
“Hi,” Zippy barked happily. “Zippy.”
“Matilda,” she said, turning up her nose.
“Bath!” he barked.
“You certainly need one,” she agreed.
I waited a moment to see if the two animals were going to get along before I closed the door.
“Despite the misconceptions out there, pigs are known to be clean animals,” God told me.
“The same can’t be said about you,” Ian teased from a few yards away.
I smiled at him. “Gorilla poo.”
He tilted his head. “Everything worked out okay?”
I nodded.
“I’m going to head home then.”
“Hot date?”
He grinned bashfully. “I like her, Maggie.”
“I can see that. Have fun.”
With a wave goodbye, he jumped into his truck and drove away.
I caught a whiff of myself and realized I was going to have to burn the stinky shirt I was now wearing. I let out a heavy sigh. It had been a long couple of days.
I looked up the street and saw a man leaning with his back against his car. His shape was familiar.
I held up a finger, indicating he should wait for me, then jogged back to the magical She Shed and grabbed the skull. The only thing besides the bowl that hadn’t blown around.
“This’ll make Delveccio happy,” I told God.
“All your problems are solved,” he replied dryly.
Taking the skull to Gino, I said quietly, “I’m done with it now.”
He scanned me from head to toe and then back up again. “You’re okay?”
I nodded. “Better than I’ve been in a while.”
“Because, to be honest, you stink.”
I chuckled. “I need a bath. The dog needs a bath. My car’s going to need a bath,” I told him. “You think this’ll get my dad off the hook?”
“For now,” he said. “But, no offense, your pop does things that always gets himself in trouble. That some kind of genetic issue or something?”
“My family’s cursed.”
He raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment on that statement. “You owe me a date, Maggie.”
I nodded.
“Try to stay out of trouble until then.” With a wink, he casually tossed the skull into his car and drove away.
By the time I got back to my car, RV, her hand bandaged, was coming out of Ann’s house.
“Ready to go?” I asked.
“I need you to do me a favor.”
“Drive with the windows open?” I asked with a grin.
She shook her head. “Something more important.”
36
“I need to go back to that jewelry store,” RV said.
I glanced first at the night sky, then at her. “I don’t think they’re open.”
“But I think it’s ready,” she said.
I frowned. We’d almost gotten caught being grave diggers, I really didn’t want to get caught as an accomplice to a jewelry store robbery.
“You owe her,” God reminded me.
I started the car and began to drive. “How’s your hand?” I asked her.
“I’ve had worse,” she said.
“Did you know she needed the railroad spike for you?”
“Nope.”
I sighed in exasperation. She wasn’t exactly the forthcoming type.
“What curse did you break for her?” I asked.
“I told you my mother-in-la
w was a witch. Apparently, she’d had some beef with Ann, and Ann needed to rid herself of the curse Mildred had put on her.”
I wanted to ask her what kind of curse, and if she, herself, was cursed like my grandmother had said, but I didn’t dare.
We drove the rest of the way to the jewelry store in silence, except for the snoring of both Zippy and the pig.
When we got there, I pulled up to the store. “Do you want me to go in there with you?”
“It’s closed,” she pointed out, confused.
“But we’re here,” I said. “I assume that means we are going to break in.”
She shook her head. “I just want to see if I can find the bike.”
She got out of the car and looked back at me. “Can you open the trunk?”
I did as she asked, and got out. She pulled out a headlamp and offered me one. I took it, not knowing what she wanted me to do with it.
“It’s tiny,” she said. “It’ll fit on this bracelet.” She held up her wrist and shined the light on it, so that I could see the plain silver chain bracelet that she seemed to favor wearing.
Holding the light in her hand, she walked to the jewelry store and began to search the area. I went to the opposite corner and began to do the same. You have no idea how much glass and aluminum is scattered around the pebbles surrounding the average storefront. My light kept glinting off of it. Every time I thought I spotted a piece of metal, it ended up being garbage. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw RV drop to her knees and reach with trembling fingers toward something.
“You found it?”
She nodded and picked something small up out of the dirt. I moved closer so that I could see it. As she’d said, it was a small silver bike charm. She stayed there for a long moment, kneeling on the ground.
“Do you need help getting up?” I asked, considering she, too, had endured a long couple of days. I held my hand under her elbow.
She turned her head so that our eyes were almost even, and I could see that hers were glimmering with unshed tears. “Thank you, Maggie,” she whispered.
“I didn’t do anything,” I assured her, hauling her to her feet.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “Because of you, I’ve got the first.”
“First what?” I asked.