by Rob Cornell
All of them, like Wendy, were dressed as if they had just woken up an hour ago. Along with the sulfur, I thought I could smell the maple and flour scent of a pancake breakfast.
Wendy clapped her hands. “Girls!”
The pale girl closed her book and plucked the ear buds from her ears. The gamers paused the game, one of them in mid-kill. The chess players twisted to face Wendy, the game forgotten in a blink.
All eyes turned to Wendy.
Wendy gestured toward Sly. “This is the dude with the old lady problem.”
Their gazes shifted, almost in unison, to Sly. The dark-haired girl with the pale face curled up one side of her mouth, the look in her eyes almost predatory. Thankfully, the rest of the crew had normal, curious expressions. I took a mental note to keep my eyes on the pale one.
Sly seemed to shrink back from all the attention. “Hello, ladies.”
Then Wendy pointed at me. “That guy is the old lady’s son.” She grinned. “He’s also—”
“The Unturned.” The pale girl appraised me with that predatory gaze of hers, times ten.
With all the girls now staring at me, I understood Sly’s reaction. It was like getting hit by a strong tide of magical energy that pushed and pushed against me so that I felt I might get carried away on the waves like a piece of driftwood.
I tried to smile, but I don’t think it turned out right.
“Hi,” I said. “My name’s actually Sebastian. ‘The Unturned’ sounds too portenty for my tastes.”
The gamer girls on the couch giggled. Now that they faced me, I realized they were twins, each with bright orange hair and a generous spray of freckles.
“So where’s the old lady?” the Pale One asked.
I really wished they’d stop referring to Mom as the old lady. “Her name’s Judith.”
“Sorry. Where’s Judith?” I couldn’t tell if her tone was mocking or sincere. But I felt confident the ambiguity was on purpose.
I turned to Sly.
He glanced at me, cleared his throat, and scrunched up his face as if readying for a bomb to go off. “That’s why we’re here. She was taken.”
Wendy raised an eyebrow. “Taken?”
He nodded. “By an old vampire.”
Wendy crossed her arms and cocked her head. The red lock in her blond hair hung over one eye. Her other eye stared directly at me. “What’s with you and the vamps?”
“I wish I knew.”
“When you say old, how old are we talking?”
“The oldest,” I said. “At least in Detroit.”
She shifted her gaze back to Sly. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“No,” he said. “We’re desperate.”
“I thought you wanted us to dig up the old lady’s—”
“Judith,” I snapped.
She curled her lip. “Fine. Judith. This…I don’t even know exactly what you’re asking. You want us to cast something to lead you to her?”
Sly drew his shoulders up. He opened his mouth to answer, but I decided to rescue him.
“We want you to help us get her back,” I said.
That pulse of energy doubled as they all gaped at me. The pressure from it made me stagger backward. I knew the Maidens by reputation only. The last thing I had expected was the equivalent of a college sorority. But feeling their collective power, I would be loath to underestimate their abilities no matter how harmless their appearance.
Wendy slowly shook her head. “You are crazy. What on Earth made you think we would join you to go up against Logan Goulet?” She held up a hand. “Never mind. Just get out of here.” She aimed her flaring gaze at Sly. “You of all people should know not to make a joke of the Maidens.”
Sly slipped his knapsack off his shoulder and held it out to her by the strap. It didn’t look like there was much inside. Definitely no fat stacks of cash.
Wendy eyed the bag as if Sly were holding out a sack of shit. “Don’t bother. You don’t have anything I could possibly want. Get out of here and never come back.”
“Just take it. Look inside. If it’s no good to you, we’ll hightail it outta here.”
She narrowed her eyes. I could see the gears turning in her mind. She couldn’t imagine what he had that would convince her to help. I knew that’s what she was thinking, because I was thinking the same thing.
Finally, she snatched the bag from Sly. She hesitated a second before pulling the flap back, and another second before peering inside.
She gasped. Her eyes went wide. She even trembled slightly.
Her reaction made my stomach turn. These were black witches. Whatever kind of thing could excite one as much as this did, it couldn’t be good. I glanced at Sly, but he kept his gaze locked on Wendy.
“Is that worth your time?” Sly asked.
Eyes still full of wonder, she reached into the knapsack and drew out a small glass bottle shaped like a tear drop. A ghostly wisp of something swirled within. Wendy caressed the glass with her fingertips.
At some point, the rest of the girls had gathered around us. I had been too focused on Sly’s transaction with Wendy to notice. Every one of them shared the same look of amazement as Wendy.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. “What the fuck is it, Sly?”
The Pale One smiled at me with that hunger in her dark eyes. “You don’t know?”
“Should I?”
She laughed. “It’s only the most precious ingredient to any spell.”
A knot in my gut pulled so tightly, I thought I might have to double over at any second. I looked back at Sly. “What is it?”
He swallowed. “Brother, you need to relax. Got it? Don’t fly off the handle.”
“I’m not making any promises.”
Wendy removed her gaze from the bottle long enough to address Sly. “You want me to tell him?”
“I don’t care who tells me. The more you dodge the question, the sicker I feel about this whole thing.”
Sly reached over and put a hand on my shoulder. It felt like he was about to tell me he was terminally ill. Turned out worse than that.
“It’s a piece of my soul.”
I blathered for a few seconds before I could pull together some coherent words. “No. No way in hell do they get a piece of your soul.” I reached out to Wendy. “Hand it back.”
She drew it against her breast. “It’s not yours to give or take.”
I spun on Sly, pointed a finger at the bottle. “Take it back, Sly. We are done here.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “We need them, brother. And they ain’t gonna help unless we give them something big.”
“Not your soul,” I shouted. “This is full on Faust shit. It’s beyond insane.”
“There is nothing Faustian about it. It’s just a piece. And there’s no contract. It’s a simple exchange.”
I could not believe he was talking about his soul as if it were some kind of currency. “Mom would never approve of something like this. Never.”
Sly pressed his lips together and gave my shoulder another squeeze. “It’s not up to her,” he said. “And it ain’t up to you.”
I stared at him with my jaw hanging open. My eyes felt like they might pop out of their sockets. “You can’t do this,” I said with a rasp.
“It’s already done.” He looked to Wendy. “That is, if the Maidens think it’s a fair trade.”
Wendy moved her gaze from girl to girl. Nobody said a word, but I knew they were communicating plenty. Her attention lingered a moment on the Pale One. The Pale One’s eyes shone. She ran her tongue along her upper lip. Wendy nodded. She raised the bottled piece of soul, squinted one eye, and peered through the glass at Sly. “We’re in,” she said. “We’ll even fix the old lady’s head when we get her back…no extra charge.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Now I just had to convince Fiona I wasn’t out of my mind.
I had called and given her the Maidens’ address without telling her the price for their services. If Sly wanted
her to know, he could break it to her.
I met her outside. It was four in the afternoon, but a gray overcast made it feel later. A chilly breeze burned my cheeks. Fiona wore a pair of tight fitting jeans and a thick wool turtle neck. As a shifter, she ran a little hotter than mortals. She was probably sweating under all that wool, but she tried to dress appropriately to blend in with the human world. I had yet to see her endure the winter. Even in a steady snow, she could have probably felt perfectly comfortable in what she had on now.
She looked up at the apartment building and wrinkled her brow. “This is the place?”
“Yep.”
She shook her head. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Again, she had surprised me with her willingness to not only accept my questionable choices, but to support them no matter how stupid. And there was no question, joining forces with a black witch coven was pretty damn stupid. But I would lower myself to outright imbecile if it meant getting Mom back.
We went up to the apartment, and I made introductions. Fiona didn’t seem at all surprised that the coven looked like a crew of college students with their Xbox and their posters of bare-chested male celebrities on the living room walls. In fact, the girls warmed to her immediately, including the Pale One, whom I had learned was named Angelica. Of course her name was Angelica. She was the only one of the group that resembled the more stereotypical look of a dark witch, and she had the name to match.
With intros out of the way, we gathered in a circle around the plain wooden coffee table littered with nicks, scratches, and a few cigarette burns, which must have come from a former owner since no hint of tobacco smoke lingered in the air. Just the faint sulfuric scent, and now a cinnamon haze from burning incense.
The witches had shoved their sofa against the wall to give us room, making the space into a sort of boardroom with the coffee table in the center, but no continental breakfast or metal coffee urn next to Styrofoam cups. Our boardroom table carried only one item—my father’s pocket watch.
“If I had to guess,” Wendy said while looking down at the watch, “it’s probably a summoning spell inside, ready to trip. You haven’t opened it yet?”
“No.”
“That’s probably the trigger then.”
“So I flip it open and Goulet appears?”
She lifted her gaze to me and looked at me as if I were the dunce in the corner of the classroom. “No. It will likely bring you to him.”
Sly grunted. He had his arms folded across his chest, his lips pursed. “He could lead you anywhere. We’d have no idea where. Even if we set up some kind of tracking spell, I doubt we’d get to you in time before he…whatever he wants to do.”
He knew what Goulet wanted to do, even if he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
I looked around the room. “Thoughts?”
“Sly’s right,” Wendy said. “You open that watch, you’re all his.”
Angelica raised her chin and looked down her thin nose at me, more hunger in her eyes than ever. Though I started to wonder if that was just the way she looked all the time, terminally starved. But starved of what?
“What if it isn’t you who opens it?”
“Heh.” I smirked. “You volunteering?”
“Not on your life.”
“I’ll go.”
All eyes turned to Fiona, who stood next to me. Like Sly and myself, she appeared to shrink back from the weight of all that witchy attention.
“No way,” I said. “Not even an option.”
“Why not?” Angelica asked. She eyed me and Fiona for a second, then cracked a wide smile. “Oh. A shifter and a half-vamp. Star-crossed lovers. I might have to write a novel.”
Fiona threw Angelica a dirty look. “How do you know I’m a shifter?”
Angelica rolled her eyes. “Please.”
“Never mind,” I said. “She isn’t touching that watch. We have to figure out another way.”
Nobody said a word. The magical energy in the room turned like sour milk and filled my stomach with nausea.
“What?” I asked.
Wendy shrugged. “You’re feeling a collective disgust. A woman offered to go, but you’re too much of a chauvinist to let her make her own decisions.”
“I’m not a chauvinist. I just don’t want to put her in danger for my sake.”
Wendy laughed. Angelica rolled her eyes. The rest of the witches shook their heads.
“You are putting us all in danger by asking for our help.”
I looked to Sly for some support. He hitched his shoulders. “I guess it could be me,” he said. “But I can’t turn into a tiger. She can hold her own, brother. You wouldn’t love her if she couldn’t.”
Fiona took my hand and threaded her fingers between mine. “You asked me to help. So let me help.”
Every cell in my body screamed for me to say no.
I turned to Wendy. “So Fiona opens the watch, ends up with Goulet, and then what? What’s to keep him from holding her hostage, too?”
Wendy smiled like a predator creeping in on easy prey. Maybe that kind of look was a witch thing.
“I have an idea.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Fiona clutched the watch in her hand. “I’ll be fine.”
I stroked a strand of her hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear. “We just got started. I wanted at least a hundred more dates before you risked your life for mine.”
She laughed, but her smile quickly faded. “I love you,” she said. “For real.”
“I know.” The troubled look in her eyes worried me. The shine of tears in them worried me even more. “What is it?”
“Forget it.” She backed away, set her jaw, and uncurled her fingers from the watch, letting it rest in her outstretched palm.
“No kiss goodbye?”
“I’ll kiss you when I get back.”
“Promise?”
A little bit of her smile came back. “Cross my heart.” Then she flipped open the watch.
A flash of red light exploded from the watch’s face. My vision filled with bright red, blinding me to anything else. The blindness only lasted a second, but when my vision cleared, Fiona was gone.
The following silence weighed on me more than the pressure of the dark energy from the witches encircling me.
Sly clapped my shoulder. “She’s going to be all good, brother. Keep the faith.”
But after an hour and a half without any word from Fiona, I let go of the last of my faith. I paced the living room, hands jammed in my pockets to keep them warm. The room felt like the inside of a glacier. I couldn’t stop shivering no matter how much I paced or fidgeted.
The witches, on the other hand, had returned to their lives as if none of it had happened. Sly and I could have passed for furniture with how little attention they paid us. And no one else looked the least bit cold.
A few times, Sly would offer a comforting word or try to get me to take a seat. No dice.
Wendy came into the living room, the smell of something cooking trailing in from the hallway behind her. “I’ve got frozen pizzas in the oven. You want one?”
I waved her off and carried on with wearing a path in the carpet.
“You should eat,” Sly said. “The stuff I gave you will have worn off by now.”
I ignored him.
They kindly left me alone after that.
Two hours after Fiona’s departure, with dusk fully settled, my cell rang. I wrenched it out of my pocket and checked the screen.
Fiona.
My trembling hands nearly dropped the phone before I could get it to my ear.
“He’s agreed to the terms,” she said, voice tight.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t sound okay. She sounded like she was in pain.
“Did he hurt you?”
But I was talking to a dead line.
Chapter Thirty
We set up the meet at an abandoned elementary s
chool in East Detroit. The empty hallways smelled like a dying rain forest—rotten vegetation and moldy dirt. Between the permanent shadows and the cinderblock walls, the trapped air was twice as cold as the outside. Vague strands of moonlight streamed through the windows that hadn’t been boarded up. Otherwise, the school felt like an oversized tomb.
We commandeered one of the classrooms on the opposite side of the building from the gymnasium where Goulet was supposed to meet us. Granted, he would probably have the school surrounded by his GQ vampire crew, but we had an inside room without any windows exposing us.
Sly had brought in a pair of floodlights on stands. The white light cast strange shadows through the school desks scattered in the room, their frames like the skeletons of hunchbacked creatures who had gathered here to die. The Maidens had cleared the center of the room to make way for their planned ritual. Angelica had drawn a pentagram on the floor with chalk, and lit candles of various sizes in the pentagram’s center. Among the candles sat a stone bowl with something smoldering in it that smelled like road kill with a dash of sage.
One Maiden sat at each of the pentagram’s five points, completely skyclad. I got to see that the twins’ freckles covered a whole lot more than their faces. I tried not to stare at any of them. But since I stood in the center with the candles and smoking bowl, I had a naked girl in every direction. I managed to keep my gaze above their heads, only occasionally forgetting myself and glancing down.
Angelica sat in front of me, and she grinned at my every accidental glimpse.
Off to my right, Sly had pulled a pair of the small desks together and laid out a cloth across them. He had a duffle bag at his feet that he had acquired from his paranormal weapons dealer. He pulled out a shot gun, a pair of handguns, three silver stakes, and silver ammo for the guns. Last came a long silver sword that made me think of my grandfather. He’d had one of those, and it had come in handy during a scuffle a number of years back, before he passed on.
Once Sly had all the weaponry laid out on the cloth, he carried over one of the handguns and offered it to me.
I took it and tucked it in my waistband at the small of my back. “What good is this going to do me?”
“Not a bit if all goes as planned.”