by D V Wolfe
The woman was even with Lucy now and coming up behind Noah.
“Noah,” I said, my voice warning.
“Shut up Bane,” he said. “I’m not through. I want you to listen to me for once. Everything is not about you!”
“Excuse me,” The woman barked. “How dare you come to my town and-”
Noah turned on his heel and grabbed the woman by both of her upper arms and gave her a little shake. “Hey!” He barked in her face. “Hey lady! We’re having a conversation here! Take a fucking number!”
The woman’s face crumpled in pain and I saw smoke coming from Noah’s hands.
“Noah!” I shouted, lunging forward to pry his hands off of her. As if coming to his senses, Noah released her and she stumbled back a few feet. The sleeves of her pristine white sweater had burned away. The skin under the sleeves was red and angry where Noah’s hands had been. A spot of black skin in the shape of a crescent moon was visible on her right arm. She looked down and reached a hand up to touch it and the skin fell off, revealing a darker red skin underneath.
“Shit,” Noah said. “I’m so sorry.”
The woman screamed and flicked her fingers at us.
Nothing happened. She reached in her bag and pulled out something, throwing it in our faces. It smelled like cat litter. I closed my eyes as she threw a second handful.
“What the,” I heard Noah screech next to me. I opened my eyes to see that she looked as surprised as Noah. I couldn’t help the grin that crossed my face as I took a step towards her and put an arm around her shoulders. She stiffened, but in her shock, she didn’t move away.
“Hi there, Bewitched. We met a friend of yours last night,” I said, grinning at Noah. His eyes widened and he looked from me to her and back to me. I nodded and continued. “Noah, will you get the holy water out of the seat?” Noah nodded and leaned into the truck to get the bottle. He unscrewed it and handed it to me. I stepped back from her and poured a good measure of the holy water on her exposed skin. She whimpered in pain and I patted her on the back. I handed the bottle back to Noah. “I bet you’re wondering right about now why none of your black magic mojo is working. Let me ask you, how are you feeling?” She didn’t answer so I pressed on. “A bit weak in the legs? Arms too, maybe? Head feel light? A blanket of doom on your shoulders?” She nodded vaguely. I continued. “See, my colleague here just burned off your mark. You know, the moon-shaped one your demon overlord gave you when you joined his mailing list? Well, the mark was how you channeled all that baddie power from downstairs. It’s gone now, so you might want to look into changing professions.”
“But I sold…,” She said faintly.
I nodded again. “Your soul. Yeah, see that’s the bad news. I’m pretty sure that you won’t be able to get a refund on that. I know these fuckers and they hoard souls like teenagers hoard porn. So all I can say on that front is, good luck.” I looked down at the angry flesh on her arms. She was starting to shiver. I sighed. “You’re going into shock now so we’re going to give you a lift home. You can come get your car later. Noah,” I looked at him. He was stock still and just staring at me. “Can you get the burn cream out of the glove box?” He moved mechanically and put the bottle of holy water back in the truck cab before opening the glovebox. He handed me the tube of Mary Kay night cream. I held it up for her to see. “I know that you’re in cosmetics. I’m not sure if your company carries anything like this, but if not, they’re missing a valuable market.” I handed her the tube and she numbly dabbed it on as Noah and I helped her into the truck cab. We motored her away from the station and back to Vine Street. We helped her out of the truck and then we watched as she slowly dragged her feet up the driveway and unlocked her front door.
“I didn’t expect that kind of reaction,” Noah said as we watched her push her door open and stare inside.
“Yeah,” I said as she shuffled over the threshold and slowly closed the door. “It’s the realization that she’s going to hell. Not sure what she’ll do when the shock wears off.”
“Did you feel like that?” He nodded at the house. “When you knew you were going to Hell?”
I snorted. “No, she probably has years before she has to make the trip downstairs.”
“How long did you have?” Noah asked.
“About nine hours,” I said.
“What? Why?” Noah asked.
I shrugged. “I had a freshman reading level and Latin wasn’t a course taught at Ashley High School. I didn’t know I was selling my soul on a rapid lay-a-way plan. Salesman had the advantage, but I did say that I’d do anything and he took that as consent.”
The cab was filled with a tinny buzzing. Noah and I dug around in the seat.
“Here it is,” Noah said, passing my cell phone over.
I flipped it open. “How’d the necro-witch wasting go?”
“Oh hi, Rosetta,” I said, glancing over at Noah.
“Well?” She said. “I’m waiting? Did she liquefy? Did you have to shoot her in front of her neighbors?”
“No and no.”
“I’m waiting,” Rosetta said.
I took a breath and decided to just jump in with both feet. “Noah burned her mark off.”
Silence. I grimaced at Noah.
“That’s impossible,” Rosetta said. “Because I know you put that kid on a bus this morning. Right?” My turn for silence. “Right!?” Rosetta barked.
“We were in the process of negotiating the bus ticket when the witch…” I glanced back at Noah. “...interrupted.”
Rosetta sighed. “And I suppose he’s back in the truck with you now.”
“Yep,” I said.
“Shit, Bane…” Rosetta started.
I had to stop her before she got a full head of steam while reaming me out. “Rosetta, was there a reason you called besides tearing into me?”
I could hear her infamous mile-long sigh across the phone. “I wanted to know when you would be dragging your sorry ass this way.”
“Did the Huckleberry Buckle just come out of the oven?” I asked. For some reason, Rosetta’s food didn’t taste like ashes. Maybe it was because it was homemade. I hoped it was because it was homemade.
“No,” Rosetta said. “I got a phone call.”
I waited. “And?” I finally said.
“I don’t want to give specifics over the phone. When will you...two... be rolling into town?”
I pulled the phone away from my face to look at the time. “Well it’s 10:30 now, it’s about a six-hour drive from here to Ft. Hope, so I guess we’ll be there for early supper.”
“Good,” Rosetta said. “And Bane...”
“Yeah?”
“Drive fast.”
I hung up and looked at Noah. “Any objections to going to visit Rosetta?”
Noah shook his head. “No, sounds good to me.” I nodded and changed lanes as we merged with the highway. “Hey, Bane.” I looked at him. “How did the witch know where we were?”
“Well, she was at the Motel 6 last night,” I said.
“Jesus, really?” Noah asked, his face going white.
I nodded. “Yeah. Of course, I didn’t know it was her at the time. I saw her when I went out to get the guns.”
“What made her come to the Motel 6? Do you think she used a pendulum or something to find us, like how we found her?”
I shook my head. “My guess is that she was still connected to the corpse’s head by part of her spell and she was able to track where it went.” Noah swallowed hard and I continued. “Then, she knew our faces from ‘seeing’ through her huntsman last night, so it was probably just some sleuthing work on her part.”
“Why didn’t she come to the cemetery to stop us? When we were burying her huntsman’s body parts, I mean,” Noah asked.
“Consecrated ground,” I said. “Witches can’t step foot on it.”
Noah was quiet for a minute and then he asked, “Holy water gives you blisters. How were you able to stand on consecrated ground?”
I glanced over at him. “Holy water is a concentrated rite that purifies. I’m kind of...an abomination, so holy water and I don’t get along. But, I’m also connected to the pit and I’ve been dead….several times, so things like cemeteries don’t really have an effect on me. Now if we’d camped out there, I’m sure I would have eventually developed hives or something.”
After that, we didn’t talk much on the road. Apparently, there wasn’t any more to say according to Noah when I’d tried to bring up the Greyhound ticket again. Rosetta was going to skin me alive the second we arrived for still having him with me. But what was I supposed to do? There were a lot of unsaid things about why I didn’t just leave Noah in a gas station restroom. Where would he go? He had a little change from the money I’d given him over the last couple of days for grub, but that was about it. And from what he said, his hometown would be waiting for him with torches and pitchforks. He’d mentioned his mom. Was she worried about him? Had she declared him missing? Were they searching for him? I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to these questions right now. At the moment, I was guiltily enjoying the sound of Noah’s whistling snore in the cab and the old rock on the radio.
We rolled into Ft. Hope at about four, and I parked under the crooked horse-chestnut tree behind Rosetta’s house. We’d just climbed out when her back gate banged open and she glared out at us. “Oh boy, Noah. Brace yourself.” I actually heard Noah’s gulping swallow beside me as we stood stock still waiting for the tornado to hit us.
“Well don’t just stand there like lemmings on a cliff,” Rosetta said. “Get your hind ends in the house.” She turned on her heel and stomped back into her backyard.
Noah and I looked at each other. “I guess we jump off the cliff?” I asked.
We shouldered our bags and followed her inside. “Hey, the house looks great,” Noah called after Rosetta as we followed her up the porch and into the kitchen. “Much better than the last time...” I squeezed my eyes shut. Not a good idea to bring up last time.
“You mean when the Hellgate was open and that bratty poltergeist was throwing a tantrum? And Bane destroyed my kitchen window and then shot up my stairs?” Rosetta barked, glaring from Noah to me.
“Well, yeah,” Noah said.
“And you decided to take a page out of the poltergeist’s book and throw a tantrum of your own at breakfast the next morning if I remember correctly,” Rosetta said, fixing him with her patented Bible-School-Teacher-If-You-Lie-To-Me-You’re-Going-To-Hell stare.
Noah cowered under it and I cleared my throat. “Did you have Arch Dempsey come in and replace your windows?”
“Oh shut up, Bane,” Rosetta said, stomping across her kitchen and pouring herself a cup of coffee. “I shouldn’t even let you in here after what you did to my stairs.”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you going to tell us what’s really got your hackles up or are you going to keep blaming your poor home-buying decision on the two of us? I mean we can absorb abuse with the best of them, but we do it better if there’s a point.”
Rosetta turned slowly and leaned back on the counter, keeping her gaze on the black liquid in her mug. “Sit down. Both of you.”
I looked at Noah and shrugged and we pulled out chairs at the kitchen table. Rosetta cleared her throat and fixed her eyes on Noah. “Sonnie,” her voice was calm but firm. “You have got to get away from Bane.” Her statement hung in the air and I saw Noah’s face turning beet red from the corner of my eye.
“You’re the one, huh?” Noah slammed a hand down on the table. “Damn it, Rosetta. What is wrong with you and Bane? You both decided that I can’t be a part of the super-secret hunter club, what, because of my age? Well, I’m eighteen. Ok? I am an adult, sometimes more of an adult than she is!” Noah shouted, pointing at me.
“Hey,” I said. He and Rosetta turned to look at me, challenging my objection.
I sighed and Noah continued. “If this is what I freaking want to do with my life, then this is what I’m going to do. Ok? I’m volunteering for the hunter corps, or whatever this is.”
“But what about your family?” Rosetta said. “I mean the rest of us don’t really have any. Bane of course is the only one in her family, I’m a widow without kids, Stacks grew up in foster care and Taggert’s family is all...gone.”
I was shocked to see a single tear tracing a path down Noah’s face. His gaze held Rosetta’s. His expression was angry but also pleading. “You can add my name to that list,” Noah said. He looked down at his lap. “My mom...kicked me out. When the…” He lifted his hands and set them on the table, palms up. “When this happened.” He looked up and his eyes were pleading with Rosetta. “Please. Don’t ask me to leave.” His voice was quieter now. “I...wanna stay with you all.”
I cleared my throat to try to say something, anything. I wanted to say something he would mock or banter with me about. I was trying to remember what it was like to have a mother. I couldn’t imagine having one that would kick out their own kid. I wanted to let him know that things were going to be ok. But I couldn’t lie to him. Hell, I couldn’t even promise to keep him alive through tomorrow. How was staying here with us better than going it alone? Rosetta was alone, Stacks was alone, Tags, me. And then it dawned on me, as usual, much later than it should have. It was better because we still had each other. We were our own weird little family.
Rosetta was moving quickly and her arms were around Noah’s neck faster than I could find anything to say. Noah looked at me, his eyes wide in fear over her shoulder as she hugged him to her. I just grinned and shook my head. He was on his own. After a few minutes of this I said, “Rosetta unless you want to spend your evening digging him a grave in the hard-as-hell dirt in your backyard, you better let him breathe.”
“Yeah, I don’t want to be buried this close to a Hellgate,” Noah wheezed.
Rosetta released him and crossed her arms, glaring at both of us. “Bunch of comedians, aren’t you.” Her eyes softened for a moment and she looked back at Noah. “Well Noah, the only thing I can guarantee you from all of us is that we won’t kick you out.” Noah raised an eyebrow at her. Rosetta rolled her eyes. “Anymore. Ok? We’ll stop trying to put you on a Greyhound if that’s what you really want.”
Noah nodded. “Thank you.”
“It’s still a suicide mission,” I said.
“Yeah I know,” Noah said. “I’ve seen how you drive.”
“Well,” I said, straightening up in my chair. “Sounds like the old Noah is back with his sidekick Sass, so,” I turned to Rosetta. “The phone call.”
Rosetta looked really guilty now and my antennae went up. I had a sneaking suspicion that she’d been using self-righteous anger to propel her forward and now all the wind seemed to have gone out of her sails.
“Rosetta?” I asked.
She sat down in the chair farthest away from me. “I got a phone call.”
“Yes,” I said. “So I’ve heard.”
Rosetta’s gaze met mine. “The caller said that Sister Smile’s tribe was on the move. They saw them moving through the backstreets of Harrisburg. All those black Town Cars with tinted windows and headlights off, and...screaming coming from inside.”
I nodded. “That’s the party train.” I got to my feet. “Well, Harrisburg is a good sign. It means they are heading back towards their old stomping grounds.”
“Bane,” Rosetta said. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”