by Brian Harmon
“So you just stare at a bowl of hot water?”
Again, she smiled. “Pretty much, yes.”
“I like the theatrics of cauldrons and broomsticks, myself.”
Finally, Delphinium turned and stood up from the table. For the second time that day, she embraced him, this time planting a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you for bringing back our Holly.”
“Sure,” he said, feeling extremely uncomfortable again.
Now she let go and turned to Holly. “I’m so happy you’re safe.”
Holly stepped forward and hugged her. “I missed you,” she told her.
“Me too.” She pulled back and looked into her face for a moment, her eyes filled with deep sadness. Then she turned and looked at Eric again. “May we have a moment in private, please?”
Eric nodded and turned to leave the room, but Holly grabbed his arm and handed him back his phone. “Don’t forget Isabelle.”
He gave her a smile and then left the room, pulling the door closed behind him.
“What’s wrong?” he heard her ask Delphinium and he promptly walked back to the front of the house, where Jude sat waiting in one of the chairs.
This was the part where she told her about Regina and Marie. He didn’t think he wanted to overhear any of that conversation. It pained him to think of how the poor girl might react to such tragic news.
Eric sat on the couch, right where he’d sat the first time he was here and looked around at the stark, undecorated walls.
Jude shook his head. “Lucky.”
Eric looked up at him. “What?”
“Dirty Bunny.”
“Oh.” The strip club. Of course.
“Did you get to see her dancing?”
Eric stared back at him. He couldn’t seem to erase the image of Holly squatting down in front of him on stage, openly revealing herself to him and inviting him to slide the bill into her garter. “No,” he lied. “I didn’t see anyone on stage. Must’ve been between shows.”
Jude looked crushed. “Bummer.”
“Yeah. Bummer.”
This kid was a real piece of work. He remembered the way he sat there in the kitchen, staring at Karen in nothing but her Packers tee shirt and felt an urge to stand up and slap him upside his head.
But he was a high school teacher and therefore a master of repressing that particular urge.
Instead, he changed the subject and asked him something that had been bothering him since he arrived here. “You talked about your grandfather like you never thought anyone could beat him. Was he really that powerful?”
“Oh yeah. He was the best.”
“What could he do?”
Jude shifted in his seat and shrugged. “I don’t really know. He never showed off for us or anything. Mostly, he just made everything okay. He’d make sure there was money when we needed it. He’d make us better if we were sick. If anyone ever gave us any trouble, he made them go away.”
Eric raised an eyebrow at this.
“Not like that,” Jude assured him. “He actually made them go away. He could just…convince them…or something.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. I swear he knew everything.”
“Did he teach your mom that trick about the hot water?”
“And plenty more.”
Eric considered this. There were definitely some strange things going on down here, but he still wasn’t convinced it had anything to do with magic. On his first outing into weirdness, he encountered a frightening man with the ability to shift himself and other things into different planes of existence, produce ghostly, residual images from times past and conjure terrifying monstrosities. According to Isabelle, these were spiritual and psychic powers, not magic.
But now that he was thinking about it, maybe they were all one and the same. After all, what did he really know about any of it? He didn’t even know why he was so reluctant to believe in magic. He’d already come to accept so many things.
“But the magic man was better,” said Jude. “He swept through our home like a tornado and took Grandpa away from us.”
Eric leaned forward. “Can you tell me about that night?”
He shrugged. “I guess. I mean it all happened so fast. I was asleep when he entered the house. I woke up to this loud racket. I hadn’t even gathered my wits when the smoke detectors started going off. I ran out into the hall and Mom was shouting for everyone to get out. It was all chaos and smoke.”
“So you never saw the magic man.”
“None of us did. Except Sylvia.”
“Sylvia?”
“One of the girls. Sylvia Dodd. She said she saw him in the confusion, all dressed in black, hooded like a reaper and dripping fire from his sleeves. Mom said she was lucky to get away if she was close enough to actually get a look at him.”
“Sounds like it.” This was the second time he’d heard the magic man described, and the second time the image gave him a chill all the way down his back. This sounded like a bad guy worthy of his own horror movie franchise. “How did he get out of the house?”
“Nobody knows. Magic, I guess.”
“Of course.” Eric recalled the chaos that erupted at the club. Margarita described a mysterious explosion—a fireball, she’d called it—at the bar. That clearly fit this guy’s modus operandi.
But what the hell was that thing that attacked the minivan?
Eric’s thoughts were interrupted by his phone. It was Karen again.
“What’re you doing?” she asked without waiting for him to say, “Hello?”
Eric stood up and walked out onto the porch. “I’m with Jude, back at his place.” Or whoever’s place this was, anyway.
“Did you save the girl?”
“I did. Brought her home safe and sound. Just in time, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone torched the place as we were leaving.”
“Oh my god… Was anyone hurt?”
“No. But if I hadn’t gotten there when I did, I’m pretty sure Holly would be dead by now.”
“Holly?”
“The girl I was there to rescue.”
“The stripper?”
“Maybe. I didn’t ask. Seemed rude to ask a girl if she was a stripper.”
“Isabelle already told me she was prancing around on stage while you were there.”
Eric doubted very much that Isabelle used the word “prancing.” “All I said was I didn’t ask.”
“Right. Well she’d better keep her clothes on the rest of the night.”
“She’s off duty now. Probably out of a job altogether.”
“Now she can find a respectable job.”
“Right, because there are so many jobs in this economy.”
“Why are you defending her?”
“You’re not being fair. She’s a sweet girl. I think you’d like her.”
“Right.”
“Don’t judge her just because you’re mad at me.”
“I have Isabelle watching you.”
“I know. She told me.”
“Stay out of trouble.”
Before Eric could respond, he heard her hang up.
This was getting a little old. He knew that she was mad at him for taking off right before their anniversary trip. He didn’t even blame her. He’d done this two other times and both times he’d come back bloody and bruised and exhausted. And Jude’s little stunt in the kitchen that morning had put her in a foul mood right from the start (which he also couldn’t blame her for). But she was taking this business with Delphinium and Holly way too far. It wasn’t like her to hold a grudge so long. He was beginning to worry that she was really upset with him.
I DON’T THINK SHE’S AS MAD AS SHE’S PRETENDING TO BE, texted Isabelle.
“No?”
BUT SHE DOES SEEM TO BE MORE UPSET THAN USUAL
“You don’t think she really believes I enjoyed visiting that place, do you? It felt sleazy. I’ve never been so uncomfortable.”
I KNOW
“I mean, if anyone knew I was there… I’m a teacher for Christ’s sake. I had no business being in a place like that.”
YOU HAD EVERY BUSINESS. YOU PROBABLY SAVED HOLLY’S LIFE
Eric sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
IT’S OKAY. YOU’RE IN A BAD MOOD TODAY, TOO
“What?”
YOU AND KAREN BOTH HAD AN IDEA OF HOW YOU WANTED TODAY TO GO. NEITHER OF YOU GOT IT
That was true. All he’d wanted was to go back to bed with his wife.
I’LL TALK TO KAREN AGAIN. YOU GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME AND SAVE THOSE GIRLS. THEY NEED YOU
He nodded. “You’re right. Thanks.”
NO PROBLEM
Eric stuffed the phone into his pocket and gazed out at the empty farmyard. That was the Isabelle who’d grown wise beyond her physical years.
As he turned and stepped back into the house, he found Delphinium and Holly emerging from the hallway. Holly’s eyes were wet with tears, but she stood straight and composed.
“I need you to find Sylvia next,” said Delphinium.
Sylvia. That was the girl Jude just mentioned. The one who’d actually seen the magic man the night he murdered Grandpa. Maybe she could help shed a little more light on all this.
“She’s in Dacksey, about twenty-five minutes from here, in a little motel. I don’t think you’ll be able to miss it.”
Eric nodded. “Can I expect another encounter?”
A look of distress passed briefly over her face. “I don’t know. It’s all a little murky right now.”
“Did you know he was on his way to the strip club when you sent me?”
“I had a feeling.”
“That’s why you sent me there first.”
“It’s one of the reasons,” she admitted. “But if he is on his way to Dacksey, you have to hurry. Holly knows the way.”
Eric looked from Delphinium to Holly and back again.
“I’m coming with you,” said Holly.
He opened his mouth to protest, but Delphinium cut him off. “You’ll need her.”
It seemed he had no choice. But he had no intention of liking it. Now he had to drive around with the cute stripper riding shotgun? Karen was never going to stop being mad at him.
“You should let me have your cell number, too,” she added. “In case I learn something that I need to tell you right away.”
Eric gave her his number and then asked, “What about the thing that attacked us on our way back here? What was that?”
Delphinium looked confused. “What thing?”
Eric described the small creature that ran out into the road and scurried onto the hood in a seemingly suicidal attempt to attack them.
The deep look of concern on her face as he told her this was troubling. “It sounds like an imp,” she told him.
“An imp?” That was great. He could add it to his collection, right between the golems and the jinn. At least it seemed there were a few things he could count on to remain constant. What next? Elves? Leprechauns? Hobbits?
“I never thought they were real. It would take a tremendous amount of magical power to conjure one… How did I not sense it?”
A tremendous amount of magical power? To create an ugly little creature too stupid to know better than to leap onto a moving vehicle? He’d seen men conjure much bigger and more terrifying things than that.
“I need to think about this. Meanwhile, please hurry and find Sylvia.”
With that, she turned and fled back to the little bedroom.
Eric watched her go and then turned and looked at Holly. She gave him a bright, bashful smile and said, “Ready whenever you are.”
Chapter Ten
Twenty-five minutes sounded like a very long drive while sitting next to a young woman he’d now seen completely naked in spite of the fact that she was only slightly older than many of his students.
He knew he should just shrug it off and focus on the task at hand, but it was difficult to not think about it, especially when Karen was so mad at him.
“I’m sorry,” she said as they turned off the gravel road and headed east toward the little town of Dacksey.
“What?”
“I know you didn’t want me to come.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is.”
Eric looked over at her and found her staring back at him with those pretty eyes again. “Well, maybe,” he was forced to admit. “But it’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It bothers you that I take my clothes off to entertain people.”
Eric opened his mouth, but he wasn’t sure what to say. Of course he didn’t like it. She was just a girl. She couldn’t possibly even be old enough to drink yet. Was that even legal?
But then again, it wasn’t his place to judge.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I’m just not comfortable with it. It seems demeaning. And you’re such a nice girl.”
She smiled at him. “It wasn’t a bad place. They took care of us. They respected us. Anyone who didn’t was always asked to leave.”
Eric raised an eyebrow. “‘Asked to leave?’ Did they say please?”
She giggled. “Okay, maybe they weren’t asked to leave so much as…”
“Forcefully ejected?”
“Yes.”
“With or without their legs broken?”
She gave him a cute little awkward shrug. “Might have depended on how disrespectful they were.”
Eric laughed. “Norval sure seemed protective of you.”
“Yeah. He’s a teddy bear.”
“He kind of looked like a teddy bear.”
Again, Holly giggled. It was impossible not to like her. She was one of the sweetest people he’d ever met. There was just something so endearing about her. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something profoundly special about her.
Part of it was certainly that she reminded him of Isabelle. The only difference was that Holly seemed to have that youthful naivety that Isabelle had lost during her years confined to the Altrusk house.
“Also,” she told him, “I may not look like it, but I can take care of myself.”
Eric glanced at her again. “I suppose you probably can.”
“I’m cute, but don’t forget that I’m also a little witch.”
“Right. I keep forgetting.”
“I can always tell when someone’s being honest with me.”
He recalled the way she stared into his eyes while they sat together in the booth. Had she scanned him in some way, searching his very mind to ensure that he was telling her the truth? He didn’t think he cared for that. It felt like a violation.
But on the other hand, it was good to know that she wouldn’t have been fooled by someone who intended to do her harm.
“Is that your magic?” he asked her. “Mental background checking?”
She gave him that adorable smile again. “It’s one of them,” she replied. “I tend to know things about the people I interact with. Like you. I knew you were honest and nice. I knew you wouldn’t let anyone hurt me. And I knew that you didn’t like that I was a stripper.”
“Mostly it’s my wife. I was kind of uncomfortable seeing you naked, but she was…”
“Pissed about it. Yeah, that happens. I hope I haven’t caused you too much trouble.”
“She’ll get over it.” Eventually.
“I hope so.”
He glanced over at her again. “So how did you end up in Delphinium’s little coven, anyway?”
“My mom died in an accident when I was nine. I got shuffled through foster homes for a couple years after that. It wasn’t a good life, but it wasn’t the worst. Then one day I found myself in a new house with new foster parents and just had this awful feeling about the dad in that family. I could tell he was a bad person. He wanted to hurt me. It was terrifying.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“I didn’t give him the chan
ce. I ran away. After that, I kept out of sight. I learned to use my talents on the streets. I trusted my instincts. When they told me to stay away from someone, I did. When they told me I could trust someone, I took advantage. I lived off the charity of kind strangers. I’d stick around for a few days, let them feed me, give me a warm bed. I knew it was selfish, so I’d try to do something nice to repay them. Then I’d leave again. It wasn’t so bad. I never had to sell myself or anything.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“I know. A few of the other girls… Well, they weren’t as lucky. Some of them had to make tough choices.”
Eric wasn’t even sure how to respond to that. He couldn’t imagine it.
“I probably would’ve ended up like that too, eventually. But when I was fourteen I met Del. I thought I found her. You know, just another kind soul I could take advantage of. But it turned out she’d found me. She actually came looking for me, like she knew I was out there somewhere and only had to home in on me. She took me in and taught me about my talents. She showed me I could do things I never knew I could do. And then she taught me to do new things. Amazing things.” She stared off through the windshield for a moment, smiling. “She gave me a home. And I never felt the need to run away again.”
“Sounds like a happy ending.”
“It was. Until the magic man came and took Grandpa from us. Then we couldn’t be a family anymore. Then we all had to run away. Suddenly, I was all alone again. I had to find a way to survive.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
She nodded. “Luckily, I’m not a kid anymore. Even before the magic man showed up, I started dancing at a local club to help pay the bills, so it wasn’t hard to find work. And whatever anybody might think of it, I kind of liked the work. I knew who to trust and who to be wary of, so it was safe. And I got paid to be pretty and dance.”
Eric supposed she was right. Having the ability to peer into someone and know their intentions would make it hard for her to be taken advantage of. The club’s owner was obviously a man who took care of his employees. And the bouncers, like furry Norval, genuinely seemed to care about keeping the girls safe from whatever perverts frequented the place.
For a troubled foster kid, she seemed to have things pretty well figured out.
