The Promises of Demons (The Witch of Whitebridge Book 1)

by Keith Keffer

  "I don't know," said Morgan.

  "Visualize it," said Bob. "Feel it. Want it more than anything. And you better be quick about it. Officer Stalker just stepped out of the hospital. You need to blow those tires now."

  Bob squeezed her hand tight. "Do it. Do it. Do it." He kept chanting the same thing over and over. He sounded like a college student getting her to chug her first beer. He believed in her. He knew she could do this.

  She focused on the tires of the car. "Pop, damn you. Pop." Like Bob, she kept repeating the same thing. The two of them fell into a rhythm. Her eyes hurt. They started to tear up. The sun was so bright that sweat started to roll down the back of Morgan's neck.

  The tires seemed to swell in the heat as a light blue glow flowed around them. Morgan had one hand on the steering wheel. Her other caught in Bob's fist. Her knuckles were white from squeezing so hard. It was amazing she didn't hear bones cracking in the demon's hands. She was going to do this.

  "Now! Do it now!" shouted Bob. "He's coming!"

  The demon's shout sounded like an explosion inside the car. Morgan jumped away from him, banging her shoulder against the door. There was no sign of Office Jimmy in the parking lot. He still stood inside the entrance to the hospital. Someone was standing next to him. Judging by the white coat it was someone on staff, and they seemed to be talking.

  "What the hell, Bob? He's not coming. You scared the crap out of me." She jerked her hand away from him. There was no pop. The tires were still inflated. She wanted to smack the demon in the back of the head. Instead, she dug out her car keys and shoved them into the ignition.

  "I had it." Muttering to herself, she refused to look at Bob as she turned the key and listened to the engine roar to life.

  "You were so close," said Bob. "You just needed a push to make it happen. I thought that would do the trick."

  "You thought scaring me to death would help?"

  "If you knew you were running out of time, I hoped it would drive you to push even harder. I didn't expect you to jump like that."

  "Then maybe you shouldn't have screamed so friggin' loud."

  "Yeah. Sorry about that. It was a little louder than I expected."

  Morgan shook her head as she pulled out of the parking space. "We're leaving," she said.

  "Moda," said Bob.

  Morgan turned her head to look at him. "You know, I almost had it."

  Bob was standing on the seat, his head just barely above the bottom of the window. He wasn't watching her. He was looking out the window. Slowly, he turned to face her. A huge smile plastered on his face.

  Morgan snapped at him. "What are you smiling about?"

  "Look at his car."

  She stopped at the exit to the parking lot and twisted in the seat to look over her shoulder. All four tires on the police cruiser were losing air. They were deflating as she watched, and she couldn't take her eyes off them until they were completely flat with the rims pressing into the ground.

  "I did that?" she asked, eyes wide.

  "Yeah," said Bob. "Pretty awesome, isn't it?"

  CH 9 - The Scene of the Crime

  Hours later Morgan was still pumped about what happened in the parking lot. She had used magic to flatten the tires on Officer Jimmy's car. It hadn't been a spell that she found in a book. The magic had come from her with a little guidance from Bob. He said that magic that comes from a person is called a Hex as opposed to the Rituals that she had found in the spellbook. A Ritual would be more controlled and often more powerful, but it also took more time to prepare. A Hex is something a witch could do on the fly, and the more rushed the spell, the more erratic the results.

  Which is what happened with the tires. The Hex didn't exactly work the way she had planned. She had envisioned the tires popping like balloons, but flat is flat. However it happened, it got the job done, and she wasn't going to complain. There had been no sign of Officer Jimmy since they left the hospital. In fact, they had only seen one other black and gold patrol car all day, and that officer had been busy writing someone else a ticket.

  Still, Morgan didn't want to take the chance that someone might spot her car. She parked it in front of a coin operated laundromat, about a mile from the library, and walked the rest of the way. In her left hand she carried a gym bag. It wasn't large, big enough for a change of clothes, a towel and a couple of water bottles with a little room to spare. Except the bag didn't hold workout gear. It was loaded with the equipment from Bob's list.

  Bob hid in his usual place, inside the pack strapped to her shoulders with the spellbook and a shiny new phone. That hadn't been on his list. Morgan picked it up on impulse and threw in a cheap set of earbuds so that they could talk without the demon hanging his head out the top of the pack for everyone to see. The phone was the cheapest she could find with a monthly, pay as you go, plan which meant it didn't have cool apps for Bob to try out. A fact that he was currently complaining about.

  "Honestly, I don't know why I couldn't have kept your phone while you used this one," said Bob. "It's not like you are going to be playing solitaire while we are walking down the street."

  Morgan had her wireless earpiece in her right ear, and her phone sat nicely in the front pocket of her jeans. So far, using the phones to talk to each other had been working great. She could hear Bob and no one else could. She smiled at his whiny tone. There were moments when Bob seemed like the wise, old mentor, and then there were times when he acted like a little boy. This was one of those latter moments. "You shouldn't be playing games either. I need you to be my Yoda and guide me."

  "That'd be a lot easier to do if I wasn't sitting in the dark in this tiny backpack." That was another sore spot for the little demon. Morgan had opted out of getting the larger backpack for him to stretch his legs.

  "It's only until it gets dark. You are too noticeable in the daylight. I don't know why you are complaining anyways. I'm the one walking an extra mile to make sure we aren't being followed. This gear you wanted us to get isn't exactly light. For that matter, neither are you. Try to sit back and enjoy the piggyback ride while you can. Every time that you move, I get poked in the back."

  Three sharp pokes to the back immediately followed her comment. "You mean like that?" Bob's voice dripped with fake innocence, and for a second Morgan considered stopping to rest against a telephone pole. They would find out how he liked it when she leaned against the pole, squishing him inside of the pack.

  She walked past the pole without stopping. Bob might be whiny now, but it wasn't like he didn't have a good reason. He'd been cramped inside the backpack for at least thirty minutes. She'd have been complaining too.

  "Shh," she said. "We're almost there."

  Bob sighed so loudly that Morgan didn't need the earpiece to hear it. "Finally," he said. "Let me know what you see."

  Morgan described everything she noticed as they approached the library. There was nothing unusual. A few cars parked on the street. A gray-haired woman walked a tiny dog that looked like a fluffball on the other side of the road. Piles of leaves lined the front of the yards.

  She had to switch the gym bag to her other hand as she got closer, and she stopped for a second to flex the fingers of her left hand to get the circulation going in them once more. It also gave her a chance to look toward the trees next to the library. There it was. The yellow fog that she had seen this morning.

  "That yellow haze is still here. It's a lot bigger now." She turned her head to see if anyone was nearby. Even the old lady and her dog had moved out of sight. "I can't believe no one else is seeing this."

  Bob's voice came to her through the earpiece. "Even those with the power have to be looking for auras to spot them. For the rest of the world, it just isn't there." She felt Bob squirm in the pack. "Is there any chance I can come out and take a look?"

  It wasn't dark yet, but they were alone. That was probably good enough for now. "Sure," said Morgan. "Give me a second to get closer and take the pack off."

  The bag ma
de a clanking noise when Morgan dropped it. Which reminded her to be more careful with the backpack. She slid it off her shoulders and gently leaned it against the gym bag. The zipper slid open as soon as it came to rest on the ground, and Bob climbed out. He popped the earbuds out and dropped them along with the flip phone he had been carrying back inside.

  "Wow," he said. "Definitely bigger. We must be closer to the time of the original casting." The little demon circled around the yellow haze, his attention focused on the ground while Morgan fished a water bottle out of the side pocket of the pack and took a sip. If anyone did come by, she could always claim that she had stopped to take a break from carrying the bags. Sipping from the bottle also made it easy for her to watch the street. Her job was to be the lookout as Bob searched the area.

  "There," said Bob. "That's what we are looking for. Moda, come here and take a look at this. Tell me what you see." The little demon was standing near the trunk of an old tree. The roots poked out of the ground and ran along the surface for a few feet before disappearing from view. He was pointing to something right in front of his feet.

  It glowed a slightly darker shade of yellow than the mist, but with Bob standing right over it, Morgan couldn't have missed it. Someone had scratched a symbol into the ground. Now that she was looking, she could see the other symbols. They formed a circle about three feet in diameter.

  Ritual magic had been used here.

  "Some of those symbols look like the ones I used to summon you and to banish that Hunter," said Morgan. She circled around the spot, trying to make sense out of the spell that had been used. "Someone opened a portal here, didn't they?"

  Bob smiled at her. "Very good, and we should be able to follow the magic to wherever the portal leads. Do you think you can cast the same spell?"

  "I think so." Morgan went to the gym bag and pulled out a notebook and a brand-new pack of pens. She sat down close to the spell circle and started to sketch the symbols. "Keep an eye out for strangers while I'm doing this," she said. "I want to make sure I get the symbols right before trying to copy the spell."

  "Aye, aye, captain Moda," said Bob with a crisp salute before he scurried over to the stack of bags. They were high enough that he could easily hide behind them while keeping a watch on the street in front of the library.

  Morgan put down her notebook and looked at Bob. "This won't work. I have no way of knowing what was said. I can replicate the patterns, but not the actual spell."

  "One thing at a time, Moda," said Bob. "We'll tackle that next, once you have all of the symbols."

  One problem at a time. That approach had been working pretty well so far. Might as well keep going with it. Morgan sat down with her notebook and practiced drawing the symbols, pausing every now and then to compare her work to those scratched into the ground. After about ten minutes she looked up from her work. "I've got them. Now what? Do I trace them on the ground?"

  "No. Not yet," said Bob. "We don't want to trigger the spell before we are ready. Now, I need you to sit in the middle of that circle. That's the heart of the magic. The remnants will be strongest there."

  Being careful not to step on any of the symbols, Morgan followed Bob's instructions. She stepped into the circle, sat down with her legs crossed. Her notebook rested on her lap.

  "Now what," she asked.

  "This is going to be a little like how we first started searching for Henry. Consider it the level two version of the same spell. I need you to close your eyes and try to visualize yourself sitting in the circle. Feel the fading sun on your face, the grass under you, the wind blowing across your skin."

  Bob watched her for a few seconds, then he turned to rummage through the backpack, pulling out the flip phone that he had discarded earlier. "Now, image when the circle was being drawn on the ground. See yourself as the one casting the spell. Your hand is scratching out the symbols. Your voice is chanting the words."

  The flip phone didn't have many features, but it could snap a picture or record a video. Bob aimed the camera lens at Morgan and pressed the record button.

  "Trace the symbols with your fingers as you draw them. Repeat the words as you say them. Look back into the past."

  Morgan could hear Bob's words, but they were coming from a distance. Listening to his deep voice it was easy to forget the tiny, misshapen demon who was uttering them. His tone helped her to relax.

  Then the words were gone. So was the cool breeze and the warmth of the sun. With a start, she realized she was no longer sitting on the ground. Her eyes snapped open, and she was alone. Morgan called out for Bob, but nothing came out.

  She couldn't speak. Not only that, but she was hunched over, scratching at the ground. Her hands were wrinkled with twisted knuckles. The skin was a blue gray covered in brown spots. The rest of her arms were covered with long, brown sleeves that hung loose at the wrist. In her right hand she held a stick covered with carved runes. Morgan used it to finish one symbol in the circle before moving onto the next.

  Except it wasn't Morgan marking the ground. Somehow, Morgan was seeing through the eyes of the person casting the spell. She wanted to twist around to see if she could identify the person, but Morgan was unable to control the body. Her vision was limited to whatever spot the witch was focusing on, and at the moment that was the spell circle.

  The witch finished the last symbol and stood up, slipping her wand into the belt wrapped around her robe. Morgan was getting nauseous. The witch moved so quickly it was like riding a roller coaster with no idea where the track was going to take you. If Morgan threw up in this state what would happen? Would it affect her body, which she assumed was still sitting in the middle of the circle with Bob watching over her, or would it trigger the same response in the witch?

  Before Morgan had to find out, the witch stood up and stopped moving around. The wrinkled hands rose with a slender book held between them. The symbols on the page matched those that Morgan had sketched from the circle. It was a spell book, just like the one that she found in Henry's room. Her nausea was immediately forgotten. If she had any control over this body, she probably would have jumped for joy, or done a happy dance, or at the very least do a fist pump. The words on the page weren't just strange symbols and meaningless gibberish. She could read the spell. They were right. It would create a portal. Morgan had no idea where the portal would lead, but she was sure it would lead somewhere. Anyone passing through the spell would find herself somewhere else.

  As Morgan studied the page, the witch she was hitching a ride on, or was it in, began to chant the words of the spell. The voice was high pitched and raspy, but she spoke the words softly. There was no need to shout for the magic to work. The symbols on the ground flashed, and a yellow haze rose out of the center of the circle. It spread out until it touched the edge of the circle, then began to rise into the air. It was like watching a glass being filled.

  The witch finished the spell and closed the book. She jerked her head toward the road where a young boy was walking alone. The white Batman symbol stood out in the center of this black t-shirt.

  "Henry," said Morgan and the witch at the exact same time. At first, Morgan hadn't even noticed that the witch had spoken. Not until she spoke again.

  The witch called to the boy. "Henry, come here. I need your help."

  Morgan screamed, "No! Stay away," but nothing came out. Her words were only an echo in her mind. They never reached Henry as he smiled and waved, picking up his pace.

  "Hi, mom. What are you doing here?"

  CH 10 - Cottage in the Woods

  "Henry! No! No!" Morgan flailed her arms and jumped to her feet, staggering as the blood rushed back to her legs in a wave of tingling pain. Unable to support her weight, her legs collapsed, and she fell down. Her butt just missed the symbols on the outside edge of the circle. Bob rushed to her side, his cell phone still recording in his hand.

  "Moda," he said. "It's alright. Henry's not here. You're safe. Everything is under control."

  "Screw th
at," snapped Morgan. "Everything is definitely not alright. I saw Henry. It was Aunt Helen. She was the one casting the spell."

  "No way," said Bob. His mouth hung open as he took in what Morgan was saying. He stepped back and turned off the phone. "No way," he repeated. This time sounding more sure of himself. "There is no way that the woman we saw in the hospital did this. She's... She's way too nice."

  "Do you think I don't know that. She took me in otherwise I would have grown up in a foster home. She's always been there for me, but that doesn't change what I heard. She called to Henry. He called her mom." Morgan made no effort to control the tears running down her cheeks.

  Not again. She couldn't bear the idea of being betrayed again.

  "Stop it," said Bob. "Slow down and take a deep breath. Tell me what you saw. We have to be missing something. Tell me everything."

  Of all the things Morgan had in her bag of tools, tissues weren't one of them. She sniffled loudly and followed Bob's advice. A deep breath in then out. She focused on her breathing until her tears stopped. There would be time to deal with this later, after she got Henry home. Sitting on her butt wasn't bringing her any closer to doing that. It was time to get up, figure out how to recast the spell she had overheard, and go bring him home.

  "It was weird," she said, trying to focus on what she had seen. "It was like I was her. I could see what she saw and hear what she heard, but I had no control of anything. I thought I was going to be sick. It was like sitting too close to the TV when someone else is controlling the video game."

  "We need to get you a crystal ball or a mirror," said Bob. "It will help keep you grounded in the here and now. That will keep your stomach from doing flip flops. Tell me, what did you see?"

  "She had a spellbook. I could see it, and I was there as she cast the spell." Morgan leaned over and picked up the notebook she had been sketching in. Fortunately, she had clipped the pen to the front cover and it hadn't gone flying when she fell down. She flipped open the book to a blank page and started writing everything she remembered from the spell. Bob shifted around so that he could see what she was doing, letting her work without interrupting.