It had taken her many years and a whole lot of luck she’d never be able to repeat to establish the basic commands for conjuring. Now that she had it down, however, she should be able to alter the rules.
The chanting started up again. Latin. An oldie. That one could do some damage.
Veronica grabbed her Walkman cassette player, cranked Grand Master Flash, and set to creating a modulating counter-pulse of magic. It put off their rhythm for her to be in a different sonic reality, and she loved how the Grand Master Flash guys boasted about their prowess. She liked their winning attitude. A lot of people hated them, too, but did they care? Hell no.
FIVE MINUTES TO MAX time. The witches had punched through two layers of warding and the last ward was getting ragged.
She’d turned off the music; she was fighting them with pure energy now and it wasn’t going well, even with her warding head start. It would be hell fighting them in the open if it came to that. She felt cold already. Power dwindling.
And she wanted to kick herself for not having Jophius arrive first. To let her neediness guide her like that was an unforgivable error. Hopefully Max would take a few minutes to collect himself when he remembered his death. Then Jophius would appear, smell the Council witches, and tear down.
“Snooty Veronica,” Witch-ascendant Tami called, in her sing-song voice. “You had promise, but now you’re merely sad. You see how we’re shredding your walls? Your computer tricks are mere smoke and mirrors.”
She could feel their enjoyment. The Council was on a hunt, and she was the prey.
“My smoke and mirrors are about to blow your mind.”
If only she could hold out. She was at the last of her energy. She closed her eyes, weary of fighting, longing to see Max’s face.
Chapter Four
IT WAS JUST LIKE THE FIRST time and all the times after that. One second the camera bulbs were flashing in his face, the next he was on her doorstep.
And then the memories of this timeline came crashing in. Except this time the memories were violent. Painful. He hadn’t blinked out after seven days like he usually did; he’d been shot in the head. They’d killed him.
Max pulled out his Glock and flattened himself to the side of the door, heart pounding, breath puffing out in white clouds.
Jesus.
It would’ve gone down a day ago. More memories. The plan had been for her to hole up in her lab and wait for him. He’d left two of the Kite brothers and those witches alive.
Faint boot prints were visible along the front of the house, made maybe an hour ago, judging from the rate of snowfall. Good. It meant they were still around, and that meant she was still in there, waiting. She’d be frightened as hell and pretending she wasn’t, even to herself. Probably giving them an earful. She always talked big when she felt small.
He peeked in the window. Candles burned. Electricity out. The place looked empty. The Council witches would be downstairs going for the lab, but the Kite brothers could be elsewhere.
Max turned the handle and pushed the door open, quiet as a mouse. Clear. The wood floor was covered in dark footprints—dried blood. He crept across and stopped at the doorway to the kitchen, feeling ill when he realized that this was likely his blood. Some of it, anyhow. His dead body was around here somewhere.
Not me, he told himself. I’m here.
Or was he? He sometimes wondered if these re-ups of him had a soul. Max wasn’t frightened by much, but he definitely didn’t want to learn the answer to that one. He’d asked Veronica once, then stopped her when she was about to respond. He didn’t want to know.
The faint strains of a song started up. Singing in the basement? No—witchy chanting. Trying to break through. He took a breath and snuck smoothly around the entry into the kitchen where more candles burned. No bodies. Just a lot of blood splotches, footprints, and drag tracks. Hell, you could barely see the yellow linoleum for all the blood around. In the darkness of the mudroom beyond, he could make out a large heap. That would be the bodies, he thought with a start—his and three of the Kites. Piled up and already starting to stink. Better than outside, he decided, where the crows and raccoons would go at them.
The door to the basement steps was cracked open. The stairs would be a bitch—they creaked something awful unless you walked on the sides of the treads, and even then it was chancy. Murmurs. A man’s voice. So at least one of the Kites was down there with the witches.
He crept down in the darkness, gun in hand, putting as much weight on the wooden rail as possible. Two silent steps, three, four. So far so good.
The front of the basement came into view. Candle glow from beyond. More like a blaze. A lot of candles. They’d be around a corner, in the back part of the space near where the lab was. The candles would help him, lighting his enemies while he stayed shrouded in darkness.
Five steps. Six.
Creak.
The chanting ceased. He banged down the last steps and flattened up against the wall. Even in the darkness he could see that Veronica’s normally orderly basement had been turned to chaos, like a tornado had hit it.
“A man.” A woman’s voice said with disdain. “Deal with him.”
He heard the clicks of guns being cocked. Both remaining Kite brothers present, then. Good.
He sucked in a breath. Something clattered onto the floor. Lighting flickered, dimmed; they were blowing out the candles. Time to move. He grabbed a paint can and hurled it toward the opposite wall, toward the pile of shelving and glass that had once been the canning area, creating a ruckus. Then he jumped out, both barrels blazing.
The men scrambled. The women kept chanting, ignoring him. Karl Kite fired at him from behind a concrete pillar. Kurt Kite popped out from behind a water heater and got off a shot while Karl ran for Max. Max opened fire and got Karl in the belly. The man was down, but he kept shooting, crawling toward Max, who took cover behind a different pillar. Kurt burst out and ran at him. Max shot him in the head. Kurt was down, but Karl still went, shooting, looking freaked. Maybe from being shot. Maybe from seeing a dead man come back to life.
Max leaned out for a shot and got one in the chest instead.
Oof. The blast knocked him off his feet; a vest didn’t protect you from the impact, just the penetration. He lay dazed for a split second, unable to catch his breath when Karl came at him, all bloody and swearing. The witches increased their volume. Max tried to lift his gun. He got off a shot that stopped the man. Then he heaved in a breath, rolled over, and filled Karl with the last of the bullets. The wall behind the witches began to waver.
Veronica was coming to help him.
“Stay in there!” Max shouted.
A furious pain kicked up in his head. What was wrong with his head? He hadn’t been hit in the head.
“No, you don’t!” Veronica was out now. She scuffed furiously at the floor—going after the symbols, he guessed. He tried to move, but the pain wobbled him.
The Kites were dead. He stood uncertainly, focusing on Veronica, who was trying to pull something from the tallest one’s hand, saying something. Tami, she called her at one point.
Another witch fell onto Veronica, punching her. The witches looked much bigger and stronger than Veronica with her lame leg.
“Leave her,” Max bellowed, but again he was hit with that pain, like somebody was squeezing his brain from the inside. He collapsed to the floor. Veronica was thrown up against a wall, as if by a mighty wind.
“Stop it!” Veronica screamed.
“You have been quite the inventor, Veronica,” the witch called Tami said, lighting a candle. “Brava. You crossed the seventh gate and hid it from all of us.”
“You’re killing him!” Veronica screamed as the vice grip of pain tightened.
“Yes, I am,” Tami said dismissively. “Oh, Veronica, what made you get involved in mob business? Look at the trouble you brought on yourself. You pull a cop out of the umbra, create life, break every law of the universe…not that I don’t approve, but l
et’s do face facts. And you would get hung up on petty mob stuff? Why not just kill the guy? Was it worth it?”
“Screw you,” Veronica snapped.
Max felt a popping inside his ear.
Veronica let out a frustrated yell, high and animalistic, a tone he’d never heard out of her. She forced an arm outward, uttered nonsensical syllables.
“You can’t take us,” Tami said. “Not even you.” She seemed to be the leader.
Another witch spoke now in some other language. She lifted the candle.
Veronica’s yells sounded strained, like her throat was being squeezed. Smoke filled the air. Something electrical spit sparks across the dark space. The witches chanted and babbled. Veronica squirmed and struck back, crashing a shelf. Wind roared. Candles flickered and flared.
Max shut his eyes tight, trying to counterbalance the squeezing inside his head. He was dying again, he realized suddenly. He flashed on his little girl. Teresa. And here was Veronica, fighting like hell. He clawed the ground, pulling himself toward her, struggling through the pain to get to her.
He wanted to stay. Even if he didn’t have a soul, he wanted to stay.
He fixated on Veronica’s desperate syllables, a streak of sound.
“You cannot!” One of the witches bellowed. Something clanged to the concrete floor. “You will not!” More yelling. Roaring in his ears.
The squeezing intensified. The roaring blotted out all sound.
And then it stopped.
Max collapsed, spread eagle. The pain was gone, but he wasn’t quite right, as through the squishing and releasing of his brain had jumbled things. He opened his eyes and saw dark, swirling shapes. It was as if he’d pressed his eyes shut so hard he could only see inside his head now.
The place stunk of molasses and sulfur. More shapes came into view. Max blinked and pulled himself up, shaking off the stupor. He could make out the Kite boys, sprawled in pools of blood. One of the witches lay in a corner, eyes wide, face a rictus of agony. The others were slumped on the floor, looking alive but dazed. Finally he spotted Veronica, curled in a corner.
He scrambled over to her. “Veronica!” He touched her hand. Cold. He felt for a pulse. Weak, but there.
“Run,” she whispered, looking alarmed.
He heard the chanting start up again just as the pain pounded back into his brain. Tami and the other witches were at it again. A crash and a roar sounded from upstairs. More witches? He grabbed his gun as a frothing, seething little monster tore down the stairs and right past them. It went at the witches, snarling rabidly.
“Jophius!” Tami screamed. “What have you done, Veronica?”
The monster seemed to be tearing at the witches…was it eating them? He heard agonized cries, frantic chants. The pain was gone…but Jesus! The thing was eating them alive. He pulled Veronica into his lap.
“A friend,” Veronica whispered. She trembled violently.
“Baby.” He pressed his lips to her hair, cradling her. He’d never held her before. She never would’ve allowed it. “That’s a friend?”
She mumbled unintelligibly, teeth chattering. He held her closer, trying to still her. She was sometimes cold after using too much power, but he’d never seen her like this. And what was that thing? It was brown and scaly, like an aardvark, but thick and muscular, with a pug nose that was now covered in blood. And very sharp teeth, clearly. Reinforcements, he supposed.
“Okay,” he said. “What do you need?”
A long silence. Had she dozed off in his arms? “I’m cold,” she said.
“Come on.” He stood up with her in his arms.
“No,” she panted, pushing at him, weak as a kitten, but he was already moving, stepping over Karl’s body. She wouldn’t like being carried; she preferred to be the badass. Well, she was the badass who needed help now.
“Let me…” she protested.
Was it that unpleasant to be held by him?
“No go,” he said as he mounted the stairs, taking care not to bang her feet on the narrow passageway, putting distance between them and the gobbling, crunching sounds he didn’t want to think about.
She’d conjured a monster.
He carried her through the bloody kitchen and into the living room. He liked holding her, liked carrying her. He didn’t know why he should be surprised she was so light; she was a small woman. It’s just that there was so much substance to her. He set her on the couch facing away from most of the blood, and tucked a blanket around her feet. “You think you can drink some hot tea if I make it?”
She shook her head no.
“I’ll heat some water just in case.” She often rejected small kindnesses, but later changed her mind. He started the water, then he built a fire in the fireplace. After that, he went up to her room, grabbed her thick wool socks and the thickest leg warmers he could find and brought them down, setting them on the radiator to warm as she often did.
She groaned. Another protest, as though he was fussing too much. She lay there on the couch, glaring up at him like a beautiful, wounded panther.
“Is the thing going to eat all the bodies?”
She shook her head. “Council only.”
“A taste for the Council.”
She nodded.
“Looks like you retained your title as Bitch Queen of the Witch World, baby. You brought a monster to eat them. You are the baddest.”
A smile in her eyes. She liked to be called bad. It came from the music she always played, where bad meant good.
“And I don’t think you even needed the thing’s help. Looked to me like you were doing pretty well against them on your own.”
She sniffed.
He tucked the blanket around her feet. He had to get the electricity back on. And he’d need to get rid of the bodies the thing didn’t eat. The smell was getting bad. “How much of a friend is that thing? Can I leave you alone with it?”
“He’ll…protect. Very loyal.”
Max felt a wave of irrational jealousy. He was there to protect her.
“The bodies…wait for…” She wiggled her fingers. Lord, she was weak.
“I’m not waiting for you to glamour them. You think I can’t sneak through town with five corpses? Or…make that six.” Because his corpse was one of them. That Max wasn’t set to blink out for a few days.
Another feeble protest.
“You gonna be okay while I send these bodies down the river?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
This was the dance they did with Johnny Salvo. Kill the hit man and send the corpse down the Mississippi.
“Though six is a lot to send. One body, okay. Six is gory. Maybe a boxcar, huh? That goes to Chicago, too.”
“Yeah, Max,” she said casually, as though nothing at all was wrong. “I like that better.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m fine.”
Max nodded. Unlike Veronica, he preferred a bit of jawing when things got rough. Back in the precinct they had counselors for you to talk with when you took a life. He’d always appreciated that.
He threw another log on the fire and stood, wishing he didn’t have to leave her so cold.
A photo of Veronica and her niece, Alix, sat on the mantle. The little girl looked to be about eleven years old, just a few years older than his Teresa. The photo showed Veronica and Alix knitting in front of that very fireplace. He’d asked her about it early on, because he’d thought she was estranged from her family.
“Oh, I am estranged from them,” she’d said dismissively. “They hate me, of course. I grabbed Alix from a swim team photo in the Minneapolis paper. I wanted a visit from my little niece.”
“You grabbed her from a photo? You mean you conjured her? The way you conjured me?”
“That’s right.”
“You made a duplicate of her to visit you?”
“More or less.” Max could still see Veronica’s frown, hear her defensiveness. “What? I wanted a r
elationship with her.”
“It’s not a relationship when you blink people in and out like toys. And wasn’t she confused?”
“I made up a story. It’s not like she’ll remember in her real timeline,” she’d added. She’d offered to conjure his Teresa, then.
The idea had both tempted him and repulsed him. To make his little girl smile. Play her favorite games. His throat felt thick. “I don’t want you conjuring Teresa. Ever.”
“It’s perfectly harmless.”
“Don’t you ever, ever conjure my girl,” he’d warned.
Max shoved at the logs. Veronica looked happy in that photo with her niece. It made him sad, because she deserved better. She deserved something real. Not that he couldn’t understand the impulse—his wife had died when Teresa was a baby. Back then, he would’ve conjured her if he could’ve. It would’ve been a mistake, but he would’ve conjured her over and over just like Veronica conjured him.
And it would’ve stopped him from living.
He set the fire screen in place and turned to Veronica. She lay there on the couch, too feeble and too all-powerful, both at once.
“Is that monster gonna let me grab the Kite brothers’ bodies from down there?”
“Jophius has no beef with you.”
It had a name. Great. Max pulled a pair of gardening gloves from the pantry and went down to the basement.
The thing was curled up in a corner, sleeping. Its triangular brown ears stood straight up and blood covered its stubby snout.
It opened one brown eye as he began to drag out Kurt’s body.
“Don’t mind me,” Max mumbled.
Twenty minutes later he was pulling the truck around back. He carried the bodies out from the mudroom, slinging them onto a tarp in the back. Rigor mortis had set in on the ones from yesterday, making them difficult to carry, and they got caught on things when you dragged them. It was grisly for sure, and he struggled to stay objective to the sights and sounds and smells of the scene, one of the tricks from his cop days for when things got ugly. A smell was just a smell. Cold skin was just a sensation.
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