Witch

by Kirsten Weiss

  “This is such a bad idea.” I charged through the ward, across the dead lawn, up the steps to Angela's porch. I banged on the door with the side of my fist. “Angela?”

  The door cracked open, and Angela peered out. “Jayce? What are you doing here?”

  “The mountain lion.” I panted, my thumb running along the edge of the purse strap. “I saw it nearby. Can I use your phone?”

  She jerked open the door. “Come in.”

  I rushed past her. Gasping, I braced my hands on my knees to catch my breath and eyed her outfit.

  She was dressed like a stylishly ironic June Cleaver. Fifties-era blue skirt. White blouse. Embroidered yellow apron. “You saw it?” she asked.

  “Right outside.” I motioned to the front door. Another bad idea popped into my head. “Have you got a gun?”

  She blinked, smoothing her yellow apron. “A gun?”

  “A shotgun.”

  “Yes. But you're not thinking of going outside and hunting it alone?”

  A prickle of fear and triumph raced up my spine. “No. No, of course not. We need to call for help. Where's your phone?”

  “In the kitchen.” She led me down the narrow hallway.

  “Where did you get the shotgun?” I asked casually.

  “It was my father’s. I inherited it.”

  “It’s hard to get rid of things, or even to deal with everything after someone’s died,” I babbled. She owned a shotgun. My suspicions had been right. But could I get her to admit what she’d done? “We inherited so much junk from our aunt. I was never so glad Karin’s an estate attorney. She told us so many stories of siblings battling over money and things, that we made a decision not to do that after Ellen died.”

  “David wasn't around when my parents died,” she said.

  “Oh, right. How does that work?” I asked, chest heaving.

  She turned.

  “How does what work?”

  “When David returned,” I said. “I assume he got half. Did he get half of what was left over, or did he get half of the original value of your parents' estate?”

  She stiffened. “That's a rather personal question.”

  I’d gone too far. Did she suspect I knew? “Sorry. I guess I'm a little freaked. You know. Mountain lion outside!” I pointed with my thumb over my shoulder.

  “The phone's over the counter.” She led me into the white-tiled kitchen.

  I swallowed, remembering her brother's blood dripping down the cabinets, his shoes sticking from behind the island. An old-fashioned rotary phone hung on the wall beside a cupboard. “I didn't think these old phones still worked with the new phone tech,” I said, reaching for the receiver.

  She didn't respond.

  I put the receiver to my ear and heard nothing. I jiggled the metal hook. “Hey, Angela? I'm not getting a dial tone.” I turned.

  Angela stood in the kitchen doorway. She aimed a shotgun my way.

  My palms grew slick on the Bakelite receiver. “Hey, only point a gun at something you're willing to shoot. Aim that thing at the floor, will ya?”

  The barrel didn't waver. “How did you figure it out?”

  Dammit. I never should have asked about splitting the inheritance. What the hell had gotten into me? Reckless. Reckless! I cleared my throat. “Figure what out?”

  “Let's take a walk.” She motioned with the shotgun toward the kitchen door.

  Yes, let's get outside, where I have a fighting chance to escape. I dropped the receiver and walked to the door, opened it. A gust of cold air laden with decay flowed into the kitchen.

  “Out,” she said.

  I walked onto an enclosed, rear porch, and a light sprang on. Dusty bicycles leaned against the railings. Chopped wood sat stacked against the side of the house.

  She prodded my lower back with the gun barrel. “Keep moving.”

  I found a screen door and walked down six steps to the backyard.

  She poked me again, and I stumbled forward.

  The porch light turned the dead lawn amber.

  A quiet, snuffling sounded in the darkness, beyond the line where the lawn ended.

  One step, two. From here, I couldn't tell exactly where the protective ward ended. But I guessed I had about twenty feet before we crossed it and became anthrophage bait.

  “Angela, there really is something dangerous out here.”

  “I'm counting on it. Now why were you asking about the inheritance? What do you know?”

  I swallowed. Stall. I halted.

  “Keep walking,” she hissed.

  Baby steps. I swallowed a mirthless laugh and edged forward on the uneven lawn. “Killing Alex first was what confused me. But that's where the trouble began, wasn't it?”

  “The trouble began when that… thing returned and claimed to be my brother.”

  “But David was your brother. The DNA test proved it. Did you ask Alex to mess with the results? Did you pay him off, and he got cold feet? Or did he refuse outright?”

  “He tried to give me back the money. The coward! You can’t trust DNA. Everyone knows it’s not as reliable as the TV makes it seem.”

  “And that made Alex a threat, didn't it?” I slow walked toward the edge of the lawn, and the darkness of the woods beyond. “Alex knew your secret – that you were desperate to get rid of him. That David's bite out of your inheritance was threatening to put your boutique out of business. That you and David fought, and you weren't the doting sister you appeared.”

  She jabbed me harder with the gun, where I’d been clawed by the anthrophage. I arched my back and hissed. That smarted.

  “So,” I said, “you decided to do something clever – get rid of the potential witness against you first, and then kill your brother. But you didn't count on Candace. Or maybe you did?”

  “Alex told his wife about me, and Candace was asking too many questions.”

  “I don't think he did tell her. He might have hinted at it. He was upset about the bribe. But he didn't flat out tell her. If he had, she would have—”

  “Told you? You really should have learned the lesson from Candace. Don't ask. Don't tell.”

  Five feet in front of me, the lawn ended. The ward’s faint, magical buzz raised the hair on my arms.

  The wind shifted, the smell of viscera and musk drifting toward us. My shoulders tensed.

  “You got lucky,” I said. “The construction masked the shotgun blasts at Alex and Candace's house, and David was always playing his loud music. Plus, you attacked during the day, when the neighbors were away at work.”

  “It wasn't luck. I knew exactly what I was doing.”

  We moved further and further from the imagined safety of porch light, and the edges of my vision darkened.

  “But the mountain lion,” I said, “that was luck. The cops figured out the victims were shot, but the animal attacks muddied things.” Praying she wouldn't see, I slowly bent one arm forward, reaching into my purse against my stomach.

  “After what happened to Alex, I made sure to leave the doors open.”

  I passed through the ward, a tingle of energy raising goosebumps on my skin. “Why did you invite me to your house to find David’s body?” I kept walking, crossing onto the narrow path that bordered the woods. I drew out a water balloon. “Was I just a convenient witness?”

  “Yes and no. Wharton told me you'd been nosing around, asking questions. He felt sorry for me and thought I should know that the town cared. You can stop there.”

  I turned. Angela stood just inside the ward, ignorant and safe. No good deed goes unpunished. I never should have set up that damn protective spell. “Did David send those letters to his old high school teammates, or was that you too?”

  A branch cracked.

  “It was David,” she said. “I told you, he wasn't the same when he returned. My brother never would have sent poisoned pen letters. What's that in your hand?” she asked sharply.

  “Oh,
this?” I chucked the water balloon at her. It exploded on the ground at Angela’s feet, and she hopped backward. I spun and raced for the pines.

  Angela swore, her running footsteps thudding behind me.

  The anthrophage howled.

  I dodged behind a pine and reached into my bag, scrabbling for another water balloon.

  Angela's shotgun boomed.

  Another howl. A scream.

  I pulled two water balloons, glowing turquoise, from my purse and stepped from behind the pine.

  Angela racked the shotgun and aimed it at the crouching anthrophage. “What is that?” She shrieked. The shotgun roared, jerking in her hands.

  Claws extended, the anthrophage sprang, knocking her to the ground. The gun flew into the darkness.

  She screamed.

  I threw a balloon filled with the combined power of me and my sisters.

  It soared over the struggling, howling forms and splatted uselessly on Angela's lawn.

  “Dammit!” I ran onto the trail and threw the second balloon. It hit the anthrophage square in the back and exploded in a shower of blue light.

  The anthrophage flew backwards and away into the air. The creature’s edges bled into the darkness, and it vanished.

  A click, like a lock turning. Pure, alpine air flowed down the mountain, washing away the stench of the anthrophage. Clean, gentle energy flowed over my skin, and I knew somehow the anthrophage was truly gone. “Yes!”

  And then I remembered Angela and ran to her, my gaze sweeping the ground for the shotgun. Finding it was easy. I tripped over the gun, accidentally kicking it toward the fallen woman. “Dammit!”

  Angela groaned and shifted in the darkness.

  I dove for the shotgun, grabbed it in a mad tumble that jarred my shoulder in all sorts of bad ways, and rolled to one knee. “Don't move!”

  She gasped, a choking, wet sound.

  I stood and hurried toward her, keeping the shotgun trained on her midsection. And yes, I did know how to use it, though all I'd ever shot were paper targets.

  A large, liquid splotch blackened Angela’s white blouse, scored with claw marks. The splotch raced steadily outward, growing.

  “How badly are you hurt?” I asked.

  “Call nine-one-one,” she whispered.

  “Where's your phone?”

  She reached into the pocket of her apron, and I stepped away fast. Angela tossed a cell phone toward me. It fell on the dead lawn by my boots.

  A point of heat warmed the spot between my shoulder blades. I picked up the phone and turned.

  Two oddly-dressed figures backed into the tall trees and vanished. My lips pursed, my insides jittering. Raven and O’Hare. What were they doing here? And what had they seen?

  I stared at the line of trees for a long moment, and then I called nine-one-one.

  I waited.

  I explained.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “You didn't call nine-one-one,” I spoke slowly, quietly, not wanting to wake Terry in the next room.

  Eyes burning with exhaustion, I watched Brayden. I wanted to walk into his arms, but they were folded tight against his chest, his plaid shirt rolled to the elbows.

  We stood in his neat kitchen. I reached behind me and gripped a metal countertop. The clock above the stove ticked. Two A.M.

  “No one’s going to understand,” Brayden said in a low voice. “That’s why you didn't tell the Sheriff about Maya either.” A sour odor hung about his slumped, muscular form – the combined scents of fear and anger.

  “I didn't…” I looked away, biting my lip. I hadn't known what to say about Maya, and so I'd said nothing. I didn’t know what Raven and O’Hare would say. They’d been there, outside her house, and at Angela’s too. But I was more worried with why they’d been there at all than what they’d tell the sheriff.

  Maybe that was why I hadn’t mentioned their presence to her either. But the sheriff had been too focused on Angela to notice I was holding something back.

  Angela hadn’t been able to stop confessing. The sight of the anthrophage had sent her over the edge.

  “The sheriff released me well past midnight,” I said. “I went back to Maya’s house, and no one was there. I thought you'd gone to the hospital.” I'd rushed there like a maniac and found no one. And then I'd come here.

  “I remembered, Jayce.” His voice twisted with anguish. “I remember everything. What I did. How I hurt you.”

  I laid a hand on his arm, and the muscles beneath his plaid shirt twitched. “It wasn't your fault,” I said hollowly. He would always take responsibility for his actions – and sometimes for the actions of others. I loved that part of him, but I also hated seeing him torture himself.

  His face contorted. “I know it wasn't my fault. She did something to me. I couldn't stop myself, and all the time, a small voice in my head was screaming to stop, to get out.”

  “It was a spell, and it's broken. And Maya's dead.”

  He blinked. “Dead? How? Did you—”

  “No!” My God, how could he think that? “The anthrophage—”

  “The what?”

  “That creature you saw in her house. It killed her and left her body by the creek behind her house.” I stepped away from the metal counter. “I should call the sheriff.”

  “No.” He grasped my arm and released it as if scalded. “Let someone else do it.”

  “I was there, by the creek. My footprints are everywhere. If I don't call the sheriff, she'll wonder why.”

  “Will she?”

  I gnawed my bottom lip. The Sheriff's expression had been wooden when she'd taken Angela's story of a monster in the woods. And she'd bought my counter-story of a mountain lion suspiciously easily.

  “I'll find Maya’s body tomorrow,” he said. “I can say we had a morning appointment to do some work at her Victorian. I'll take care of any footprints.”

  “So now we're covering up crimes?” I laughed bitterly.

  His eyes blazed hard as emeralds. “I need to finish this.” His hands convulsed. “It’s the one thing I can do.”

  “And then what?”

  He wouldn't meet my gaze. “I don't know. This is… I never expected anything like this.”

  “Brayden, what happened wasn’t normal. Of course, you wouldn’t—”

  “I love you, Jayce, but I need time.”

  An ache squeezed my heart. “Okay. I get it. I can't imagine what it must have been like—”

  “No, you can't.”

  “But I do know what happened.” My insides churned with anxiety. I had to make this right. “And I'm a good listener.”

  “It was magic, Jayce.” His mouth twisted as if he tasted something bitter. “I thought what you did… I don't know what I really thought about it. But now…” He shook his head. “I just need some time.”

  The air seemed to thicken. I struggled to draw breath. “What Maya did was black magic. It's not what I do.”

  “But you could do it, couldn't you?”

  “No, of course not.” I couldn't because it wasn't in my character. But if I'd studied, learned the spells Maya had learned, yes, I could.

  And he knew it. Brayden looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, as if seeing something he didn't trust.

  Wet heat stained my face, and I raised my hand to my cheeks, wiped away tears. “I’m sorry if I’ve ever hurt you,” I whispered.

  “You haven’t,” he said. “But… I should check on Terry.”

  My throat closed. I nodded, unable to speak, and walked from the kitchen, walked out of his house, onto the porch. A light snapped on automatically.

  He shut the door behind me.

  My knees folded onto the cold concrete. I gripped my stomach, feeling like someone had punched me, and the tears flowed.

  Then pride kicked in. Jayce Bonheim wasn't the girl who cried on a guy's porch at two A.M..

  I forced my legs to move, and I walked
home.

  The next day I called in sick to myself.

  The Ground staff forgave me. Angela's story was front page news. The reporter had detailed Angela’s murder spree, her attempt to kill me, and her breakdown after a “mountain lion” had attacked.

  At my kitchen table, I roughly flipped the pages, looking for news about Maya. But there was nothing. Maybe Brayden hadn't “found” her body in time to make the morning edition.

  Someone knocked on my apartment’s exterior door.

  Reluctant, I uncoiled myself from my rumpled bed, dislodging Picatrix. I trudged to the door and pulled it open.

  Karin stood on the stoop in a blue turtleneck, jeans, and a sensible parka. She held a paper bag filled with something that smelled like cheese and bacon. “Hi. Can I come in?”

  I stepped from the door, and she walked inside.

  “I guess you saw the news.” I shut the door. Barefoot, I followed her into the open living area and dropped onto the couch in the brick alcove. The beginnings of ivy plants had begun their slow climb up the brick. The idea of boosting their growth now held zero appeal. Karin had warned me about magic. She’d been right.

  Karin ambled into the kitchen and returned with two small plates. A breakfast sandwich lay on each. She handed me one and sat in the chair opposite.

  I wasn't hungry, but I took a bite. I shouldn't have bothered. I couldn't taste a thing.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  I told her about the battle at Maya’s, and about the anthrophage. “It attacked Angela after we left the protection of the ward.”

  “At least you know your wards work,” Karin said.

  “And our group potion.”

  “We’d better keep that recipe, just in case.” Twin lines appeared between her brows. “But why did you suspect Angela was the killer in the first place?”

  “I realized that it had been the inheritance after Angela's parents died that had funded her boutique. David's reappearance cut into that. Her inventory was low, she was laying off staff. And she'd told me David didn't seem like her brother when he returned. A neighbor had told me they’d argued. And then I heard she'd been arguing with Alex as well. At first, I thought she'd been defending David – he and Alex had a history. But then I realized it wasn't about the past, it was about the future, and the DNA testing. It just never made sense why David, the victim, had been killed, rather than another of his tormentors, like Eclectus.”