by Jill Nojack
I'll just go look out the window for a second to see if I can figure anything out.
I stand at the window and yes! Tom and Gillian are back. They'll take care of it, I'm sure.
But they're just standing there.
Holding hands.
And now they're turning to each other…wait a minute…Gillian doesn't seem to have an actual backside? Tom's hand is squeezing a handful of missing butt cheek like there's something there. And part of the top of Tom's head is missing. You can see right through it to the grass behind him.
I pull my eyes away from that scene, and the two pups are standing on either side of it, their eyes glowing faintly red, like demonic film projectors.
I open the window and shout, "Get the hells bells out of here, all of you! You're not welcome!"
Because sure, that'll take care of it, right?
Both pups look up at me then, and the apparition of the lovers disappears. I feel a little woozy but also drawn to the group waiting outside. I pull a leg up and lift it over the sill. I can step out onto that little bit of roof over the entryway, and then from there, I should be able to sort of slide off into the bushes, which should break my fall.
OMIGOD!
I snap out of it and look for something I can use to try to scare them away. There isn't much. Bedding. A small desk. A bunch of linens and winter coats in the closet.
So, I rifle through the desk and come up with a couple of packs of ball point pens, stationary, and an eraser. I guess I could always write a stirring speech about how I won't be taken.
Or, if I had some kind of bow, I could make ballpoint pen arrows and declare war.
You know, that's not a bad idea. I wonder if I get creative with some of the magic that I already know I could launch a pen toward a target. And there is something I know. I think it through—yes, it's the right kind of energy, I think. It's a simple repelling charm, but if I get it right and can sort of aim it, I think I could shoot a pen in their general direction. I'd have to put enough oomph into it that it would hurt when it hit, though. Enough that they'll think there's some real danger.
It could work. Or I could just run out of pens while they stand there beaming badness at me. Not like I was going to write that speech anyway, right?
I stand at the window and put the blunt end of the pen against my palm, then focus on pushing it outward. I don't blink. I can't take my eyes off it as it flies toward its target. I have to guide it.
It's really moving. This could work.
Nice! It smacks Zelda just below the knee, and she bends down, her hand moving to the spot, giving a little cry. I can't tell if it's surprise or pain.
Time for another shot. I aim for Blackie this time. And again, it's going right for the target, but…oh Goddess, oh no.
Oh horrible. Horrible, horrible horrible.
Blackie drops, blood seeping out of his left eye where the pen went in deep. His howl is low and awful.
I can't look. I cover my eyes and back away from the window.
The pull has stopped, though. I can't feel their presence dragging at me anymore.
I risk another look out the window. Blackie's little body is alone out there, not moving.
I collapse on the bed, tears gushing into the lumpy chenille spread. He was just an innocent little puppy. None of this was his fault.
***
The tears stop when the crashing sounds of demolition in the hallway start. They can't have broken through the wards on the doors downstairs, can they?
Yet the sounds of objects hitting the walls, plaster tearing away, and a humming coming from the door tell me they have. I know that sound. It's the sound of magic thrumming against the the wooden surface. I bet one or both of the witches are trying to open a hole through it. It's what I'd try if wards wouldn't let me open something.
Leaving a loophole like that would be novice witch stuff, though, and Gillian's no novice. She's got that door and all the walls around this room sealed, locked, and overcoated. The windows, too.
But that's what I would have said about all the ways to get into the house. If they can break those wards, they might be able to break the ones up here, too.
My heart races knowing that they're only feet away from me and done with being subtle.
I back into the farthest corner of the room and slide down to the floor. My arms hug my knees, and I work to calm myself.
No, wait…why am I acting so helpless? That's stupid. There's got to be something I can do that doesn't involve cowering in a corner. I've helped beat Anat twice before. I am so far from helpless. Now that I know what I am, as long as I've got sleeves, I'll always have tricks up them. I'm not a frightened kid: I'm a witch!
The mother and daughter bwitches shout my name, telling me to come out or they'll tear the house apart to get me. I press my hands over my ears, refusing to listen to their threats.
And it comes to me; I know what I can do.
I've got something I can use that only a powerful witch could pull off: I think it can get them to back off, or at least hold them off without killing anyone. And I think I can project it through the wards.
I step out of the corner, bring my magically-charged hands down from my ears, and shove them out forcefully in the direction of the door. I hear two loud thumps and a smaller one as three bodies hit the wall at the end of the hall.
I was thinking too small before. I can repel a lot more than a pen.
I hear footfalls charging down the hall as they come back at me, their wails now laced with rage, and I hit them with another wall of wham-bam.
I keep taking out their charges until there's silence behind the door. I don't let myself believe yet that it means they've gone. I also don't let myself believe I've bashed all of their brains out against the back wall of the hallway, because it's too terrible to think of.
At least with the silence, I can relax a little, rubbing at a shoulder and the back of my neck to massage the knots. But it's no good. My body is still tense and ready. All I can do until Gillian gets back to let me out of here is hunker down to wait and hope the attack doesn't start up again.
"Tom! The house…" Gillian gasps as the car rounds a corner and her home comes into view. The front door stands open. When the car pulls into the driveway, my feet hit the ground, and I'm halfway to the front stoop before the car pulls to a full stop.
I force myself to breathe as I pound toward the stairs that lead to Cassie's room. As I climb, my boot heels crunch shards of glass from the pictures that once lined the walls.
At the top, as I enter the hall and turn toward Cassie's room, it's even worse. The door to the room is blackened, sooty, but still standing. The hallway isn't in very good shape. There's not a picture left hanging and the plaster is full of holes, large and small, some breaking all the way through to the next room.
As I move toward the end of the hall, pushing aside clumps of plaster and lath, the plaster dust drifts into the air, and I sneeze, but I keep on going.
"Cassie?" I call, as I reach the door, laying my hands on it, then taking them off quickly when I realize the door isn't just sooty, it's hot. Really hot. "Cass?"
"Tom?" comes her response, quavering.
"You okay?"
"Yes. Get me out."
"I can't. But Gillian's coming. She was behind me." And she is; I hear her breathing heavily as she rushes up the stairs. And then she gasps when she steps into the devastated hallway.
I turn, and she's picked up one of the ruined pictures from the floor—a wedding picture of her and her deceased husband Martin, the good husband, the one that wasn't me, and for a moment I'm sure she'll cry. The picture is ruined. Bits of glass have scratched it beyond repair.
But she sets it down and moves quickly toward me, her face composed now.
"Is she okay?" she asks.
"She says she is. But she wants out."
Gillian does a complicated maneuver that involves some hand-waving, the sprinkling of an herbal concoction from her p
urse, and a few words I don't catch, then reaches for the door handle and opens it easily. I squeeze around her into the room.
Cassie runs into my arms.
"I'm so sorry that I ever doubted you, Tom. I get it now. Those stupid, stupid dogs tried to trick me again, but they didn't fool me a second time."
She unclasps me and goes to Gilly, enveloping her now, too. "And I'm sorry I doubted you, too. I know you better than that. I'm sorry I thought the terrible things about you that I was thinking.
Gilly rubs Cassie's back soothingly, then parts from the hug.
"I'm glad you've forgiven us, sweetheart," Gillian says as she takes in the destruction in the hallway one more time with a turn of her head. "Because Tom's room doesn't have a wall anymore. I expect he'll be needing a more private place to sleep."
***
We begin work to clear up the mess in the hallway, and Gillian tries not to show how upset she is, but I can tell she's one droplet away from letting go a waterfall. When Cass finishes telling us what happened and how she finally got her attackers to clear out, I tell Gilly, "Look, Cassie and I can do this for you. You don't have to help."
"What would I do? Pretend this didn't happen until you have it semi-respectable again? Pretend it doesn't hurt me that my precious images of Martin are gone forever? I knew I should have had them put on disk or that cloud thing all the young people talk about, but I just never got around to it."
I'm not certain I know what she means by a disk, and putting pictures on a cloud? Is that some new witch thing? But nobody understands regret better than I do. "I want you to feel better," I say, dropping my eyes to the plaster-covered floor, my shoulders drooping, "And I don't know how to help."
"I'll feel better when Anat is out of our lives for good."
Cassie drops a piece of broken glass into the trash can. It chimes as it joins the inch of broken glass already in there. "I second that. And by the way, you two are not leaving me out of your plans again."
"No, we bloody well are not," Gillian agrees, her hands on her ample hips, surveying the hallway for her next task. "We'd be fools to lock you up for your safety. It's clear you can take care of yourself. I could never have used that spell to throw two people and a dog down a hallway at the same time."
Cassie shrugs. "I was motivated."
"I think we've found your talent—I wonder if any of your ancestors were warrior witches. If that's the case, remind me never to motivate you. "
Cassie gives her a big smile. "A warrior witch, huh? I did think about ending both of you when I thought Tom was doing the dirty on me."
I look up at her, my eyes wide. Gilly's mouth gapes.
"Seriously, guys?" She laughs when she sees our look of alarm. "Like it's in me to be a killer. Except, you know, Blackie…"
I put a hand on her shoulder gently. "I didn't want to say anything about the dog on the lawn."
Her lip quivers, and she lets loose a big, gasping sigh. "That was an accident. I just wanted them to go away."
Gillian and I look at each other. I know the question she wants to ask. I want to ask it, too.
I try not to sound harsh, but Cassie has to hear it. I say, "You know we may have to kill all of the pups, right? And the mother dog, when we find her? We can't risk Anat still hanging around."
"I know it, but…."
"But what if it comes down to you or them?"
She looks me in the eyes after blinking away the last of the wetness. "If that's the case—if it's me, or you, or Gillian, or Robert, or anybody I care about, that crew is dead doggie meat."
I put the pieces of the map together and tape them in place so that it matches the way I first saw it in Robert’s office.
“Was any of this in color?” Gilly asks, as she looks over my shoulder.
“Yes, some of the lines and letters that were drawn over the top.”
She goes to a big, oak buffet and rummages through the drawers, then returns and hands me a set of colorful felt tip markers. “I hope you were thinking like a warlock at the time and made a mental note of them?”
“Sure, I think I got ‘em.”
I color in the five asterisks around the edges of the map in red. Then I fill in the colors of the letters written next to four of them, as close as I can remember it. A fifth asterisk has no adjoining letter.
When I’m done, I point out the letters. “I think these are initials for each of the witches Anat has under her control. Is that a Z there? If so, that would be for Zelda…and that could be a D or maybe an O? And that’s an R, right?” I look up for confirmation, and both Cassie and Gilly are nodding their heads. “R could be for Robert. And the C, that would be for Cassie, I bet…” I share a look with my girlfriend when I say her name. Her look is intense, serious. “…crossed out at the top with a question mark next to it. But I don’t see an N for Natalie. Maybe that’s what will replace the question mark.”
I move my finger across the page. “Or maybe an N will go over here where there’s no initial. And then at the center—what’s that scribble anyway?”
Gillian pulls the map to a spot on the table before her and brings her hands to her mouth, her fingers folded slightly into each other as she makes a steeple in front of her lips. It’s almost like she’s praying, but I know she’s only thinking. It’s a gesture she’s picked up from Robert, something recent. It comforts me. It feels like Robert is in the room, lending his support.
After a long interval, she says, “That could be a J for Janice. I haven’t talked to her for a while. I felt a little guilty after having to drug her during the…well, you know…so I don’t know if she’s under Anat’s influence or not.” She takes a deep breath and blows it out loudly. “I hate to admit it, but I wish Natalie was here. She has a keen mind. If there’s a pattern there, she’d see it. But if Natalie was going to replace her, I’d think they would have drawn that in. They had her before they lost Cassie.” I’ve been nodding away during this. It all makes sense, and I can’t think of anything to add.
“May I?” Cassie asks, gesturing to the map. Gilly pushes it toward her, and Cassie turns it around to orient it toward her. It makes just about as much sense upside down as it did right side up.
Cassie twirls a long strand of brown hair around her finger while she stares at the map, her cheek moving like a pregnant woman’s belly as her tongue swirls around the inside of her mouth as she thinks. It’s adorable. Who cares what’s happening on the map? I want to take her up to our room right now.
I imagine bursting into flames to get focused on something other than Cassie’s glossed-pink lips that I can’t kiss right now. Doesn’t work at all.
“What do you guys think this is?” She points to what looks like a random scribble. “Why does that look familiar?”
I grab the map and turn it around, taking a closer look. “Sheesh. It’s a hieroglyph. Badly drawn, but it’s a hieroglyph.” I take a closer look at the map. “And there’s definitely a couple more…” I point to their locations. “…here, here, and maybe here. I think that’s it.”
“What do they mean?” Cassie asks.
I point to the one near the crossed-out C. “This one means love. And that one…” I point to the one near the letter R, “…that definitely means judgment. The others, I don’t know.”
Cassie says, “Do you think that the witches themselves symbolize something she plans on using for a spell? I mean, Robert is high priest and mayor, so he will sometimes stand in judgment of others, right? And me…” She looks up at me with a grin, her eyes flicking shyly to the side, “Well, Anat is really pissed that you love me and not her. At least, that’s the sense I got from having to share my body with her. She never said or thought that concretely, but the feel of it was definitely there.”
“Oh Goddess, I can’t believe I missed this,” Gillian says, springing up from her chair to go back to the sideboard. She returns with a ruler and picks up a pencil from the table. Then she lays the ruler down from one of the initialed aster
isks on the map and draws a line. She repeats the lines until what she’s drawing emerges.
I say, “Yep. Looks like you found yourself a pentacle.”
“And…” Gillian says, “the body of the pentacle is almost dead center in the middle of downtown. What Cassie said—there will be something symbolic about it. It has to be a pentagram she’s building for a particular ritual. And I bet that’s where we’ll find Anat when whatever she’s planning happens.”
“So, we’re talking loosely Cat’s Magical Shop, the Diner of Earthly Delights, the Giles Gallery of the Arts, Twinkle Trinkets, Bountiful Bakery, that cluster of shops?” I point to each on the map as I confirm.
“The gallery! Omigod.” Cassie slaps a hand over her mouth and sucks air through it. Gillian and I both look over and wait for the follow up.
“You guys, I know where Anat is. She’s got to be downstairs in the gallery.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “I never told you about my weird experience that day because you were all excited about Robert offering you the diner.”
“What weird experience? What day?”
“I thought the boss was doing some furry role-playing with his boyfriend because I heard growling from the secret room downstairs. I mean, it was kind of scary until I decided it was playtime, but…well, I didn’t think it would be Anat, you know what I mean?” She looks around for support. “And when I was all fuzzy-wuzzy instead of acting like myself, I think Dash and Jon were spending a lot of time down there.” She bites her lip, face tense, thinking. “Yeah, they were definitely in the basement a lot, and there was this feeling I had that there was something down there that was important. But, well…I’m not clear on details and it just never occurred to me…”
Gillian reassures her when her voice trails off, saying, “There was no reason to think it was her, sweetie. As far as you knew, she was gone. We kept things from you. We all thought she was out of the picture.”
“I know…yeah, I know…and then Blackie got to me….” Her look is a mixture of sadness and disgust when she says the pup’s name, but she shakes it off. “Anyway, it’s not like I was thinking straight.”
