Something Wiccan This Way Comes

by Emma Harrison

  “What?” Phoebe wailed, standing up. “Paige, tell me!”

  “She said she was honing her powers and that she would show them to me when the time came,” Paige blurted out. “It sounded so menacing at the time, but then I thought it was just Jasmine being Jasmine—”

  “So maybe this is what she meant by showing you,” Phoebe said. “Maybe she took Piper.”

  “And she said that thing the other night about Craig getting what he deserved….” Paige squeezed her eyes shut, confused by a jumble of thoughts. “I don’t know, maybe she was helping the Anubi or something.”

  “And she could have gotten past our spell last night because she wasn’t beyond our trust,” Phoebe added. “I mean, she’s annoying, but we were friendly with her.”

  Paige stood up, shaking from head to toe. “Phoebe, I could have prevented this. I should have told you guys what she said last night.”

  “Paige, it’s not your fault,” Phoebe said, reaching out to take Paige’s hand. “No one would ever have thought she was the kidnapper. We thought we killed the kidnappers.”

  “But Piper wanted to go home last night, and I whined until she said she’d stay,” Paige continued, her eyes welling up with tears. “If we had just gone home…”

  “I did some whining of my own,” Phoebe said. She squeezed Paige’s hand and looked her in the eye. “There’s nothing we could have done, but there’s something we can do now. Let’s go find Jasmine.”

  Paige crossed the room and shoved her feet into her sandals, then she and Phoebe took off across the campground, still dressed in their pajamas. The camp was just starting to stir, but Paige barely noticed that there was anyone else around. She just hoped and prayed that Jasmine hadn’t cleared out yet. That girl had some serious explaining to do.

  Jasmine’s side of the campground was completely still and silent. Many of the covens that had pulled out of this area of the camp hadn’t come back for the festival. Phoebe pushed aside the flap door to Jasmine’s tent, and Paige walked right in. She paused for a moment inside the door, stunned. The tent was a complete wreck. There was a circle of melted candles at the foot of Chloe’s bed, which was right in the center of the room. The colorful wax had streamed together and hardened into a swirling pool right at Paige’s feet. There were clothes and scarves and beads strewn everywhere, and crushed cups from the celebration littered the floor.

  Chloe was asleep with her head at the foot of the bed, snoring loudly. Annie was in a cot on the right side of the room, turned toward the wall. Paige glanced at the cot to the left, caught a glimpse of Jasmine’s curly hair, and walked right over to her. The girl was wearing a black satin eye mask, and her curls were spread perfectly over the pillow.

  “Jasmine!” Paige said loudly, not caring if she woke the whole camp. “Wake up, we need to talk to you!”

  Chloe groaned in her sleep on the center cot, rolled over, and pulled her blanket over her head, probably coping with a serious hangover.

  “Jasmine!” Paige shouted again, hovering over the girl’s bed.

  This time Jasmine sat up straight so fast Paige had to jump back. Jasmine whipped her eye mask from her face and blinked against the sunlight.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, glaring at Phoebe and Paige. “What the hell are you doing in my tent?”

  “What the hell were you doing in our tent last night?” Paige shot back.

  Annie stirred and looked over at the trio, confused. “What’s going on?” she asked, pushing her straight hair away from her face as she lifted her head from the pillow.

  “We just want to ask Jasmine about her powers,” Phoebe replied, crossing her arms over her chest. Paige marveled at the fact that her sister could look threatening even in light blue cloud pajama pants and a tiny white tank top.

  “My powers?” Jasmine asked, narrowing her eyes indignantly. “You woke me up at this ungodly hour to ask about my powers?”

  “Yeah, is one of them the ability to silently kidnap innocent people in the middle of the night?” Paige demanded.

  “Is someone else missing?” Jasmine asked, fear lighting her eyes as she held her hand to her chest.

  Paige looked at Phoebe. That seemed like pretty genuine emotion. But still, the girl could just be a good actress.

  “Nice try,” Paige said. “You better show us what you can do right now, or we’re going straight to the police.”

  “The police?” Jasmine repeated.

  “Or maybe we’ll just deal with you in our own way,” Phoebe added, looking down her nose at Jasmine. Paige knew that Phoebe would never hurt Jasmine unless she absolutely had to, but the idle threat seemed to work.

  Jasmine pushed herself out of bed, the hem of her long black nightgown tumbling to the floor, and lifted her chin. “Can I please speak to you outside?” she asked. Then she swept past Phoebe and Paige and out the door of the tent. Paige couldn’t believe the girl had the gall basically to give orders at a time like this. Didn’t she realize when she was snagged?

  When Paige and Phoebe walked outside, Jasmine turned to them with a completely new expression on her face. Gone was the cockiness and the confidence, replaced by fear and desperation. She reached out and pulled Phoebe and Paige by the wrists until they were all a few yards away from her tent. Then she checked over each shoulder quickly, scanning the deserted camp area. When she looked at Paige again, she tucked her chin close to her chest, so that her hair fell over her face.

  “I don’t have any powers,” she said so quietly Paige could barely hear her.

  “What?” Paige demanded, her eyes wide. “What was all that crap last night about honing and…and not wanting to scare the wanna-be freaks?”

  Jasmine let out a pathetic, indignant squeak and tipped her head back. “I was just…I don’t know. I just…“

  “You wanted us to think you had power so we’d think you were cool,” Phoebe said bluntly.

  “Like I care if you guys think I’m cool,” Jasmine spit back.

  Phoebe raised one eyebrow at her and stared her down until she cracked.

  “Fine, if that’s the way you want to put it,” Jasmine said, shaking her head and rolling her eyes as if Phoebe had just accused her of something she didn’t do. “But everyone in my coven thinks that I do, so don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  “But what about what you said the other night about Craig getting what he deserved?” Paige asked desperately, ignoring Jasmine’s plea. Part of her wanted Jasmine to be the culprit. At least she was standing right in front of them and she was something they could deal with. If Jasmine hadn’t taken Piper, then they were going to be completely lost.

  “You think I had something to do with Craig’s death?” Jasmine spit out, shocked. “Wasn’t he, like, drained of all his blood? I mean, eeeew!”

  Paige and Phoebe exchanged a look. This girl was just too much.

  “I just said that because Craig totally hit on me our first night here,” Jasmine continued. “He was completely gross.”

  “Can’t say I disagree with that one,” Phoebe said under her breath. “Though he obviously didn’t deserve to be killed for being a pig.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Paige said, throwing up her hands. Tears of frustration threatened to spill over, and she turned away from Jasmine so she wouldn’t see and ask a million questions. Paige didn’t have time for a million questions from the biggest fake wanna-be of them all. She had to find her sister.

  “Come on, Paige, let’s go,” Phoebe said, wrapping her arms around Paige’s back and turning her away from Jasmine’s tent.

  “You guys won’t tell anyone, right?” Jasmine called after them. “About my…powers?”

  “Whatever,” Paige said. Jasmine’s rep was the last thing on her mind right now. There was only one thought dominating her brain as she and Phoebe made their way back to the tent. If Jasmine hadn’t taken Piper, then who had?

  • • •

  “Okay, I’m at a loss. I have no idea who’s doing this,�
� Phoebe said as she followed Paige back into their tent. She glanced at Piper’s bed and then immediately turned away. Just looking at it made her sick. She could practically see Piper struggling, see the fear in her eyes. It just made Phoebe want either to sit down and cry, or to punch something really hard. But at the moment neither of those options was going to help them.

  “We have to call Leo,” Paige said, picking up Piper’s pillow.

  “He’s going to lose it,” Phoebe said, her heart pounding rapidly in her chest. She couldn’t even think about how Leo would react when he heard this news. It made her chest hurt even worse than it already did.

  Against her will, Phoebe looked at Piper’s bed again, and something deep inside of her snapped. She walked over and snatched Piper’s pillow from Paige’s hands, intending to straighten the bed so that the evidence of the struggle wouldn’t be right there in her face anymore. But the moment she touched Piper’s pillow, she was seized with a vivid vision.

  Piper was on her knees, her hands tied behind her back, and her mouth gagged with a long red cloth. She was in the middle of a circle of similarly gagged and tied people, all of whom were consumed by fear. The fear was so great Phoebe could practically taste it. An altar was being prepared at the front of a large room, with black candles, a bowl of some kind, and lengths of purple and black gauze. Suddenly Piper’s eyes opened in fear, and Phoebe saw someone approaching her sister with a large, glinting knife….

  “Oh, my God,” Phoebe said, snapping out of her vision. She grabbed on to Paige’s arm for support before her knees went out from under her. Her head was swimming, and for a split second she was sure she was going to faint, but she held on. She had to stay focused. If she didn’t, Piper was going to die.

  “What did you see?” Paige asked, helping Phoebe to Piper’s bed.

  Phoebe sat down, trembling, still clutching Piper’s pillow with one hand. “Some kind of ritual,” Phoebe said. “There were a lot of witches and someone with a huge knife.” She looked at Paige, squeezing her arm tightly. “He’s going to kill Piper,” she said.

  “All right, that’s it,” Paige said. “Leo! Leo! Get your butt down—”

  Before she could finish her rant, Leo appeared in front of them in a swirl of white and blue sparkles.

  “What’s up?” he asked casually, looking around. “Everything okay?”

  “No, Leo, everything is not okay,” Paige said, trying to sound calm. “Maybe you should sit down.”

  “Why?” Leo asked, freezing. Then realization dawned in his blue eyes. “Did something happen to Piper? Where is she?”

  “She was kidnapped sometime in the middle of the night, Leo,” Phoebe said, pressing her hands into her thighs. “I’m sorry. We didn’t hear anything.”

  “Wait a minute, she was kidnapped?” Leo blurted out. “But you guys vanquished those—”

  “We know,” Paige said. “But apparently there’s another kidnapper out there. Someone who wants to perform some kind of ritual.”

  “What are you talking about?” Leo asked. “How do you know this?”

  “Because I had a vision,” Phoebe said, avoiding eye contact with him. “Someone has a lot of witches…including Piper…and he’s going to kill them all.”

  All the blood drained from Leo’s face as he took in this information. “I’m going to her,” he said. “She hasn’t been taken to the underworld. I can sense her.”

  He started to orb out, but Paige jumped up and stopped him. “Wait!” she shouted, causing his white lights to stop swirling. “We’re going with you. You don’t know what you could be orbing into. You may need the Power of Three.”

  “Fine,” he said, pulling Paige to him. He looked down at Phoebe and held out his hand. “Let’s go,” he said firmly. “I just hope we’re not too late.”

  Somehow Phoebe managed to get to her feet and take Leo’s hand. She was still shaky from the vision, but she knew what she had to do. She had to get her strength back. It was the only hope Piper had.

  She wrapped her arms around Leo, and the three of them orbed off.

  Chapter

  12

  The moment Phoebe’s feet hit solid ground, she widened her stance and raised her arms, ready to take out anyone who stood in her way, fear-fueled adrenaline rushing through her veins. But when she got a look around, her taut muscles relaxed a bit. She, Paige, and Leo were standing in a tight passageway, surrounded by huge, hulking shelves filled with wooden crates. The shelves stretched as high as the ceiling, which seemed to be miles overhead, and the smell of sawdust thickened the air. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

  “Where are we?” Paige asked, confused as she eyed the crates. She walked past Phoebe, running her fingers along one of the steel shelves and coming up with a thick layer of dust. “Ugh,” she grunted, wiping her hands together to clean them. “Whatever it is, it hasn’t been cleaned in a while.”

  “It’s some kind of warehouse,” Leo said. He lightly touched the rough surface of the nearest crate and looked at Phoebe. “So, where is everyone?”

  “This can’t be right,” Phoebe said, tilting her head back. “The warehouse I saw was huge and empty. I don’t remember any of this stuff.”

  Suddenly Phoebe heard a voice as low as a whisper, and her heart caught. She raised one finger to tell the others to be silent and listened closely. Soon enough it came again. One low but powerful voice. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the crates to her left.

  “Follow me,” she whispered.

  The sneakers she’d slipped on that morning made no sound as she crept along the passageway. Phoebe looked down at her feet and realized both she and Paige were still in their pajamas—not exactly the most menacing clothing, or the most practical for a fight, but they would have to do. She paused as she came to the edge of the shelves. Moving as slowly as possible, she looked around the crates. She could tell that on the other side of these shelves the room opened up, but she still couldn’t see anything.

  The voice, however, was louder now. They were getting closer. Phoebe pressed her back up against the crates at the end of the shelf. Leo and Paige did the same, then they edged their way along until they came to the corner. Phoebe’s palms were sweating as she flattened them against the splinter-riddled crate behind her.

  “Okay, nobody move,” she whispered.

  Phoebe took one peek around the side of this last row of crates and froze. A huge area of the warehouse had been cleared and was set up for the ritual she had seen in her vision. But there was an added detail she hadn’t seen—Christian was standing against the far left wall, his hands behind his back, wearing a tight black T-shirt and looking around the room with an expression Phoebe would never have thought possible on his normally sweet face.

  He looked threatening—even evil. He looked like he was in charge.

  The rest of his coven lined the walls, each in the same position as Christian, each a few feet away from the next man. Their faces were set like stone as they glared at the circle of bound Wiccans before them.

  “It’s Christian,” Phoebe whispered, reaching her hand out to clutch Paige’s. “He must be the one who’s doing all this.”

  “Christian? How is that possible?” Paige said.

  “I have no idea,” Phoebe replied, her mind racing. Christian had seemed so surprised when she told him about the whole most-powerful-Wiccan aspect of the kidnappings. He’d seemed concerned. Was he just that good of an actor? And what did Craig’s death and the Anubi have to do with all of this? It was all too much to take in.

  “Do you see Piper?” Leo asked.

  “Not yet,” Phoebe replied.

  Sixteen witches were arranged in a large circle, each on his or her knees and each gagged, just as Phoebe had seen in her premonition. Their hands were tied tightly behind their backs with thick lengths of rope. They were not blindfolded, so most of them were looking around the room wildly as if they were anticipating something awful. A red-haired girl closest to Phoebe was silentl
y weeping. She looked pale and weak, and Phoebe wondered if she was one of the first Wiccans taken. How long had Christian and his friends been holding her?

  Piper was nowhere in sight, but Phoebe saw Keisha—the witch she had heard about when she and her sisters had questioned Wiccans for Daryl—kneeling on the opposite side of the circle. Her dark skin was covered in a sheen of perspiration and she seemed to be looking right at Phoebe. Suddenly Phoebe recalled that Keisha could see through solid objects, and she shook her head ever so slightly, trying to tell the girl not to give them away. Keisha immediately looked down at the concrete floor, but not before Phoebe saw the hope in her eyes.

  There was a black candle on the floor between each witch, and a pentagram had been painted in red in the center of the circle. The altar Phoebe had seen stood at the far end of the room, decorated with the purple and black cloth. Two people stood on either side of the altar in black hooded cloaks, their backs to the circle and to Phoebe.

  “Bring in the final sacrifice,” Christian said suddenly, his voice clear and strong.

  A group of people emerged from the shadows behind the altar. As they came into the light cast by the candles Phoebe saw that it was two of Christian’s brethren and that they were dragging a struggling Piper between them. The more she kicked and pulled, the tighter they seemed to grip her arms, until her face contorted with pain.

  “Oh, my God,” Phoebe gasped, her grip on Paige tightening.

  Leo instantly stepped out from his hiding place to see her, but Paige pulled him back. Phoebe held her breath as her sister struggled all the way to the center of the circle, straining against her gag and wrenching her hands to try to get them free. Her eyes were wet, but she never shed a tear. She was forced onto her knees in the center of the pentagram, and she tossed her hair back from her face defiantly, glaring at the people by the altar.

  Maybe I have it wrong. Maybe they’re the ones in charge, Phoebe thought, turning her attention to the hooded figures. Were they more members of Christian’s coven?