by Zoe Arden
"He's trying to push it out," I said. "We have to help him."
"We need to distract it," Eleanor said.
"Wait a second," Trixie cried. "If he's not controlling the trickster, who is?" We looked dumbfoundedly at each other for a moment.
"I don't know," I said, "but it doesn't matter if we can get the trickster to show its corporeal form, right?"
"Well, that's true technically but we'd still need to figure out who called it up to begin with or they can always bring it back."
"Fine," I said, "we’ll figure that out later. For now, let's just get rid of the thing."
Warden Banks, or whatever was in him, must have understood what we were saying because it suddenly leaped over the counter and lunged for us. Trixie, Eleanor, and I all split off in opposite directions, just missing getting rammed by the warden's body. Warden Banks had a solid build on him and I was pretty sure that getting tackled by him would hurt.
"Warden Banks, fight it!" I yelled, hoping somehow, he'd hear my words and they would spur him to push the thing from him. They only seemed to make things worse.
Warden Banks grabbed a napkin dispenser from off a table and threw it at me. I ducked just in time to avoid being struck with it. It hit the glass display case I was standing in front of, leaving a giant crack.
"Ava, stay down!" Trixie shouted. I ducked as she began wielding a tin of cookies at him, one by one. Each cookie bounced off his head, leaving tiny crumbs behind. He grabbed the next one before it could hit his face, catching it out of the air with eerily perfect accuracy, then shoveled it into his mouth. He devoured the thing, and, when the next cookie sailed his way, he did it again.
Wilma groaned on the floor. I turned my attention to her, my heart skipping a beat when I realized she was still alive. I knelt and gently patted her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered open. "Ava?" she asked.
"Yeah, Wilma, it's me."
"Oh, good." Her voice was weak but her eyes were waking up. "You know, I think that Warden Banks might be possessed by that trickster. He was just in here and asked if he could buy a giant bucket of chicken wings. I told him I would never dream of selling such a thing in my bakery. He got so angry he threw a brownie at me."
A cookie sailed over the counter and landed near Wilma's head. I looked around and saw that Warden Banks had his own tin of cookies now and was alternating between pelting my aunts with them and eating them. It went on that way for several minutes. Pelt. Eat. Pelt. Eat. Eat. Eat. Pelt. Apparently, the trickster had a sweet tooth.
"Is he still here?" Wilma whispered.
"Yes," I told her. "Stay down. Let me and my aunts get this." I didn't have to try too hard to convince her. I stood up and waved to Eleanor and Trixie, mouthing the words, "I have an idea." I wasn't sure whether they saw but I hoped they'd catch on even if they didn't.
I grabbed as many trays from the display case as I could hold and carried them around the counter and to a table. The trickster was still too focused on my aunts to notice me. Then I took a can of whipped cream, shook it up, and sprayed quarter-sized dollops on a tray of brownies.
"Hey! Warden!" I shouted.
He looked around at me. His eyes popped open when he saw the brownies with whipped cream. I sprayed some directly into my mouth, making a production out of it. Over emphasizing every move and sound I was making so that it seemed like this whipped cream was the best thing in the world. Then I picked up a brownie and shoved it into my mouth. Drool was beginning to fall from the warden's mouth.
"Want some?" I asked, toying with him.
I offered the can to the warden, who nodded greedily. I tossed it to him and he caught it easily. He began pumping the whipped cream into his mouth.
"Now!" Eleanor shouted. Eleanor and Trixie began uttering some sort of binding incantation. I listened a minute then followed along. Warden Banks turned to us, eyes still black, and ran toward the table where Trixie and Eleanor stood.
"No!" I shouted and hurried forward. I managed to trip him up. He went sprawling on the floor, flipping over a table with a loud thud. Eleanor and Trixie aimed their fingers in his direction and finished their spell. When he didn't stand back up, I kicked gently at his shoe.
"I think he's out," I told them and Trixie sighed with relief.
"Thank goodness," she said, kneeling to check.
"Ava?" Wilma was standing up now, her face still pale not nearly as bad as it had been. She was looking toward her back room. I followed her gaze. My eyes widened when I saw what she was looking at.
"Lizzie?" I asked. "What are you doing here?"
Lizzie Rambler stepped out of the shadows and into the light. Her eyes were not dark as the warden's had been; they were bright and intelligent. She shook her head.
"You never get it right, do you, Ava? Too bad you couldn't just leave well enough alone. If anyone else dies now, it's on your head."
* * *
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
.
.
.
* * *
* * *
.
Lizzie moved toward us. Her feet made soft clopping sounds on the tile as she walked. Her skin had a strange blue glow, like she was being lit from within. It filled her and then vanished almost as fast as it had arrived. She was fingering the small crystal pendant around her neck. I'd never noticed before how dark her eyelashes were but now they seemed impossibly long, impossibly black. They sat around her eyes like an awning, protecting them, covering them.
Wilma instinctively cringed away from her. Her eyes were wary and tired. Though her body moved away, her eyes did not. Instead, Wilma's eyes focused more intently on Lizzie, as if she had some sort of X-ray vision and could see through her if only she looked hard enough. I didn't know what she was looking for but if it could help then I hoped she found it.
"Where is it?" Trixie cried, her attention focused not on Lizzie but on the mess around us. It was hard not to look at the warden's body. He was still breathing but just barely. "Where's the trickster?"
Trixie's head swiveled from side to side in a frenzied attempt to spot the trickster before it could jump into one of us. She did not even seem cognizant of the fact that things in the bakery had just taken a strange turn. She was barely paying attention to Lizzie, Wilma, or anyone but the vacant space around us.
"Where is it?" she cried again, desperate now.
"I don't know," I told her. "I don't see it." I shot a glance back at Lizzie, whose soft pink lips had formed an eerie smile. She was looking at me and my aunts with a contempt I had rarely seen before. "Um, Trixie..." My voice trailed off as Lizzie began to glow again. It lasted a second or two, no more, then faded into oblivion.
"You're not going to find it," Lizzie said, her voice low and thick with hatred. Hatred? I asked myself, not sure that was quite the right word. Enmity, perhaps? Malice? Whatever it was, it was palpable. The air felt ten degrees warmer just from her presence alone. Lizzie Rambler was a much more powerful witch than I had ever given her credit for.
"How do you know we won't find it?" I asked her, already knowing what her answer would be.
"Because I won't let you," she said.
Trixie stopped looking around and finally focused her attention on Lizzie. Eleanor did the same. I caught a glimpse of them from the corner of my eye. Their mouths were hanging open as the truth of the situation began to sink in. "I can't have it getting caught until its job is done."
"And what precisely is its job?" I asked her, my breath hitching in my lungs.
"To kill. To blame others for its bad deeds."
"So, it's been you all along?" Trixie asked, an incredulous look on her face. "Shoot, I would've bet everything that Warden Banks had been responsible."
Lizzie stepped closer to us. Each of us instinctively stepped back. I almost fell when I tripped over the warden's body. Sweets n' Treats was a mess. There were cookies, brownies, and pastries everywhere, not to mention crumbs, sugar granules, and a host of other tangible
items that had turned the place less into a bakery and more into a disaster area. I had to remember not to step anywhere without looking first.
"I only summoned the trickster and asked it to run a few errands for me." Lizzie laughed, thinking she was being funny. 'Errands' was certainly one way to phrase it. I would have said something more like destruction. Death. Things like that. "It did the actual dirty work, you understand. I only pointed it in the right direction."
"But why?" Trixie asked. "Why would you do such a thing?"
"Yeah. What could you possibly have to gain from doing any of this?" I asked her.
Lizzie's eyes blazed. "Warden Banks," her voice cracked, "—Myron—has never gotten over Anastasia Peacock. It's been over two decades but she was his first love. You never get over that, do you? You never stop loving that person, not completely."
I didn't know what to say or do, so I stood there motionless, hoping she would continue talking and give me time to think of something. A new plan. One idea. Anything.
"I loved him but I wasn't enough. Do you know what he told me once? That he liked me." She laughed. "Liked. As if that was the same as love. As if that should have been enough to make me happy. We only went out a few times, I know, and he insisted on keeping it a secret, but I was certain that he would come around." She heaved a sigh. "But I was wrong. Myron's heart was broken the day Anastasia died. He never recovered from it. And he never stopped blaming Polly for the death, even when everyone knew Margaret Binford was responsible."
"But why conjure the trickster to kill Trevor?" I asked. "He never hurt you. He never hurt anyone."
"It was supposed to look like Polly did it," Lizzie said. "Everyone was supposed to think that she was guilty so that she would have to go back to Swords and Bones. It was the one thing Myron wanted. It was so important to him that Polly stayed in jail. It was more important than me... than us... than everything." She took a deep breath. "I was so sure that if things went according to my plan, Myron would realize how much I loved him. I mean, it's not every woman who will conjure up a trickster for you, is it? I thought once he understood what I'd done for him, he'd be able to love me back."
"So, what happened? When I walked in on you two in his office, it seemed like your plan must've worked. You were kissing."
She shook her head. "I kissed him but he never kissed me back. I told him what I'd done and he was horrified. I thought for sure he'd be pleased but he wanted to lock me up. Me! Can you believe that? After everything I'd done for him? I had no choice. I sent the trickster to inhabit his body. It wasn't what I wanted but there was nothing else to do. I couldn't let him tell President Ashby about me. He threatened to do that, you know."
"I'm sorry," I said, hoping to gain her trust by empathizing with her. "It's really not fair."
"Darn right it's not fair!" she shouted, wiping away the tears that had pooled in her eyes.
"I loved him, I still do. Why can't he see that?"
"Because he's a warthog," Wilma promptly replied, trying to help. Lizzie shot her a look. Apparently, she'd forgotten Wilma was there.
"If you'd died just now like you were supposed to, maybe things could've still worked out. Imagine the headlines: Polly Peacock's aunt found murdered. Polly Peacock blamed. She'd be locked in Swords and Bones the rest of her life. Calista Woodruff could join her. No one would agree to a prison work release program after an incident like that."
"B-But I didn't die," Wilma said.
"There's still time," Lizzie said, her eyes lighting with hope. "It's not too late." She shot a look to my left and I turned my head to see Eleanor's eyes completely consumed in black.
* * *
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
.
.
.
* * *
* * *
.
Wilma screamed at the top of her lungs as Eleanor ran toward her. I couldn't blame her. Eleanor looked like something out of a horror movie. Her gypsy skirt had gotten smeared with gobs of brownies and cookie crumbs. They clung to the fabric, giving her the appearance of a homeless person who hadn't showered in a month. If I'd stepped closer to her, I was almost certain that she would have smelled as bad as she looked. Her eyes were consumed in blackness, and her mouth was twisted up in a snarl rather than a smile.
Wilma lifted her hand in a defensive stance and shot a stream of light directly at Eleanor's chest. It hit her just above her heart.
Eleanor's face froze for an instant, her eyes locked into place. They bulged from her sockets, giving her a ghastly, sickly look. Her mouth opened, closed, then opened again.
"Eleanor!" I cried, pushing Wilma down before she could kill her. The stream of light broke contact with Eleanor's chest. She stood there a moment, trying to breathe, but I could see she wasn't getting any air. Her eyes were just as dark as they had been a moment before. Whatever Wilma had done had had no effect on the trickster, only my aunt's body.
"What's wrong with you?" Wilma asked.
"You're killing my aunt," I cried. "That's Eleanor."
"No," Wilma cried. "That's a trickster who's possessing Eleanor. She's not in there right now."
"I won't let you kill her," I shouted back at her perplexed face. "There must be another way."
Eleanor was breathing normally again now. She took several deep breaths then ran at us. Wilma and I barely made it out of the way in time. Wilma almost tripped over Warden Banks' unconscious body.
"We have to do something before she kills us all," Wilma said. "I'm sorry. I like Eleanor, too, but that thing is inside her now."
I glared at her, ready to kill Wilma myself for suggesting that we let Eleanor die.
"It won't matter if Eleanor is killed anyway," Trixie said, suddenly the voice of reason. "The trickster will just jump into one of us next." She looked directly at Wilma. "Do you want us to kill you if that happens?" Wilma bit her lip and shook her head. Relief flooded me. "The only way to stop it is to send it back to where it came from."
"But how?" I cried. "Whatever you tried before obviously didn't work."
"We have to stop Lizzie," Trixie said.
Eleanor let out a loud roar and hurled herself at us once again. Her hand scraped against my arm and I felt my skin burn. I looked down to see red welts forming on my forearm. "Oh, my roses," I said, terrified that my own aunt could have done that to me just with her touch.
Lizzie was sitting on a counter, her legs swinging back and forth as she munched on some sweets. It looked like she was watching a movie instead of an attempted murder. Every now and then, she fingered the crystal pendant around her neck. I watched as it glowed a soft blue. I suddenly realized that the light I'd thought had been coming from within Lizzie was actually coming from the necklace around her neck. I had no idea what that crystal was but I remembered how she'd lunged after it at my party when it had gotten ripped from her neck.
"Get her necklace!" I yelled. Trixie and Wilma looked confusedly at me for a moment, then turned to Lizzie, whose face had gone white. Her smile had dropped. She let go of the pendant she'd been fingering and stared at us. Her feet stopped swinging. She set them firmly on the floor and faced us.
I ran at her, my arm already reaching for the chain before I was even close. Eleanor grabbed me around my waist and pulled me back. Instead of letting Eleanor go, though, I clung to her skirt, gripping it tightly in my hand. She stumbled then fell to the floor with me. Trixie and Wilma ran at Lizzie and each grabbed an arm, forcing her back against the wall.
"Let me go!" Lizzie cried, trying to get away. Trixie's hand was on the crystal when the door to the bakery opened. Sean stepped inside.
"What the—" he said, his voice getting cut off by Lizzie's scream.
"Sean!" she cried. "Sean, help me!" She looked at him with pleading eyes no man could resist.
I had no idea why he was here. The last I'd seen him, he'd been on his way to Whisper Crossing with Colt. Maybe his presence here meant Colt was on his way back,
too. I could only hope so.
"Don't, Sean," I yelled, scrambling away from Eleanor. "Lizzie's the one controlling the trickster."
He looked from me to Lizzie, his eyes taking in the mess around him. He scratched his head. "What in the witching world is going on here?" he asked.
I groaned. Why couldn't anything ever be easy?
"Lizzie is the killer," I said, trying to put things as plainly as possible for him. I was beginning to suspect that he wasn't exactly the brightest bulb in the drawer.
"What do you mean?" Sean asked, looking at me wide-eyed. "Who did she kill? You're not making sense."
I let out another groan.
"Sean, help me," Lizzie cried, her eyes watering. "They've all gone crazy. The trickster possessed Ava and her aunts. They almost killed me."
"That's not true," Trixie cried. "You almost killed us."
"They killed the warden," Lizzie said, shooting a look in the direction of Warden Banks' body.
Sean's eyes froze.
"Warden Banks isn't d—" Eleanor knocked the wind out of me before I could finish.
"Let her go," Sean told Wilma and Trixie, deciding he'd rather believe the woman he'd been crushing on for months than us. Wilma and Trixie were still holding onto Lizzie even though her struggles were starting to get the best of them. "I said let her go!" Sean cried again but they refused. Finally, Sean reached into his vest and pulled out a superwand. Colt must have loaned it to him, unless he had one of his own. He shot it in Lizzie's direction, missing her completely but hitting Trixie and Wilma. They sank to the ground.
"No!" I screamed.
"Relax, it's just a stun spell," Sean said, his voice laced with irritation. Eleanor ran at them but he stunned her next.
Lizzie ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him. Sean looked shocked, then happily kissed her back. I couldn't watch. It wasn't Sean's fault that he had no idea what he was doing.