by L. J. Smith
Blaise dropped a black silk teddy. “Did I what? What are you talking about?”
“He’s dead.”
“And you thought I did it? Thanks a lot, but it’s not him I want to kill.” Blaise narrowed her eyes and Thea felt cold. Then she tilted her head. “So how did he die?”
“He was strangled. Somebody murdered him.”
Blaise just raised her eyebrows and murmured, “Hm. I wonder where Randy is?” She held a shirt up, considered it, and added, “Do you want to come stay at Viv’s with me? It’s better than staying here by yourself.”
“I don’t know. Do I have to watch you to make sure Eric doesn’t end up like Kevin?”
Blaise gave her a scorching look. “When I go after a boy, I get him first. I don’t strangle him before the fun begins.”
She slammed her suitcase closed and stalked out.
Thea sat on the bed.
In spite of her sharp words, Thea now knew Blaise hadn’t done it. Her cousin had been genuinely surprised.
And Randy? I suppose it could have been, if he somehow got out of wherever they’ve taken him. He had a reason to hate Kevin. But…
The alternate explanation slid into place so quickly that Thea realized it must have been in her mind all along.
The spirit.
She sat there for an endless time, trying to think. It was like trying to find her way through a thick fog.
Gran’s gone…and if she’s sick I can’t bother her anyway…of course, Blaise won’t help…but I need to trust somebody.…
Dani gently pushed the door open. “Can I come in?” When Thea nodded, she walked in and sat down on Blaise’s bed.
“They left. I told Tobias to go too—he had a girlfriend he wanted to see. I’ll stay here tonight, if you want.”
Thea took a shaky breath. “Thanks, Dani.”
“Look, Thea, I don’t want to pry, but…are you okay? I mean, you’re as pale as a corpse—” Dani bit her lip. “Sorry, bad choice of words. But I am your friend, and if there’s anything I can do, I’d like to help.”
Another breath. Then Thea made her decision.
“I worked a forbidden spell.”
Dani looked shocked, but not appalled. “Which one?”
“Calling back the spirits.”
When Dani didn’t scream or faint, Thea told the whole story. All about her summoning—everything except why she’d been doing it. “And now I’m scared,” she finished. “I let something out yesterday, and today Kevin gets murdered. Blaise didn’t kill him. She thinks Randy may be involved, but…” Thea shook her head.
“But, Thea, be logical. Why should it have anything to do with your spell?” Dani’s rational voice was soothing. “You let someone out, not something. The elders summon the ancestors all the time without anything bad happening. You just feel guilty because you know you weren’t supposed to be doing it.”
“No. Dani, I can’t explain it, but the thing I let out—it wasn’t friendly. It knocked Blaise and me down. None of the spirits I saw the elders summon ever did that.”
“Well…” Dani looked doubtful. “But why would one of the ancestors want to murder a human?”
“I don’t know.” Somehow talking about it had cleared Thea’s mind. She said slowly, “But…maybe the book would tell us.”
Ten minutes later, they were sitting side by side on Thea’s bed, with the iron chest on the floor and the book between them.
“First, could you tell anything about the amulet that fell in the fire?” Dani asked in scientific tones. “Like, if the hair was gray, it could mean—”
“The witch was old.” Thea caught on immediately. “No, it wasn’t gray or white. It was dark—sort of like mahogany.” She closed her eyes, trying to remember. “It all happened so fast—but I think it was long. It was doubled up lots of times in the clay.”
“So maybe a woman.”
“Yes.” Thea read for several minutes. “Wait a minute. Look at this.”
“‘Suzanne Blanchet,’” Dani read with difficulty. “‘Born sixteen thirty-four in Esgavans on the day that they made bonfires for the peace between France and Spain. Tried sixteen fifty-three at Ronchain, prisoner at the court of Rieux.’”
“And listen to the charges,” Thea said grimly. “‘Bewitching men’s corn, killing cattle, bringing hunger into the country, and strangling babies at night with her long hair.’”
“Strangling,” Dani breathed.
“She denied it, so they tortured her. Listen: ‘Being a little stretched on the rack, she screamed ceaselessly that she was not a witch, but being more tightly stretched, said that it was true.’”
“And then they tortured her family,” Dani said, her finger skimming the lines. “Oh, Isis, look at this. She had a ten-year-old brother named Clément and a six-year-old sister named Lucienne. They tortured them both.”
“And burned them.” Thea had begun to tremble involuntarily. The room wasn’t cold, but she had a feeling like ice deep inside her. “Look. ‘The children having been promised the mercy of being strangled before burning, but the executioner not having been paid, they were committed alive to the flames…’” She couldn’t finish.
“‘…before the eyes of their sister,’” Dani whispered. She was shaking, too, and huddling close to Thea. “How could they do that?”
“I don’t know,” Thea said flatly.
“I mean, no wonder Night World laws are so strict. No wonder we have to keep ourselves a secret—look at what they do to us when they find out.”
Thea swallowed—she didn’t want to think about Night World rules. “And then they burned Suzanne,” she said quietly, keeping her eyes on the book. “‘Being consigned to the fire, she uttered several exclamations, crying out upon revenge.’”
“I would too,” Dani said, her soft voice threaded with steel. “I’d come back and kill them.”
She stopped and she and Thea looked at each other.
“And maybe that’s just what she did,” Thea said slowly. “Only she couldn’t get to her torturers. But she found something that looked similar—a reproduction torture chamber. And there was Kevin, doing something to a witch dummy—hanging it, maybe. Maybe treating it in some way that reminded her of…” Thea nodded toward the book. “Anyway, doing something that made her lose it.”
“And kill him. By strangling him—what she’d been accused of doing. Thea?” Dani grimaced, then went on. “When you saw Kevin’s body—was there anything around his neck?”
Thea stared at the window curtains, trying to remember. That awful bloated face…the protruding tongue…and dark bruises on the throat.
“No,” she said softly. “There were marks—but whatever strangled him was gone.”
“She took it with her.” Dani shivered, then put both hands on the book. “Or maybe not. Look, Thea, this may make a great bonfire story, but, really, it’s all speculation.”
Thea was staring at the yellowed page beneath Dani’s fingers. “I don’t think so,” she said quietly. “See this symbol by Suzanne Blanchet’s name? I recognize it. I saw it for just a second—on the amulet in the fire.”
“You’re sure?”
Thea looked away. “Yeah. It’s her, Dani. And it’s my fault. I let her out…and now she’s killing people. Because of me, somebody’s dead.”
It was only when she said it that the full realization hit—as if forming the words had somehow made it true. Kevin was dead. He wasn’t going to school anymore, he wasn’t going to get a chance to repair his Porsche. He wouldn’t ever smile at a girl again. He’d lost everything a person had to lose.
“And I just—I just feel so bad,” Thea said. The ache in her throat rose up in a sort of spasm, as if she were going to be sick. But what came out was tears.
Dani held her while she sobbed. And at last, when Thea was crying more quietly, she said, “You didn’t know. You didn’t mean to do anything bad. You were just playing around, and it went wrong. You didn’t know.”
“
It doesn’t matter.” Thea wiped her face on her sleeve, sitting up. The ache in her chest was duller now, and she was slowly realizing that something else was there, something that felt hot and bright. A need to act.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said again. “I still made it happen. But I’ll tell you one thing—I’m not going to let it keep happening. I’ve got to stop her. Which means I’ve got to send her back.”
“I’m with you there,” Dani said, her small jaw set in determination. “But how?”
Thea stared at the wall a moment, then said, “I have an idea.”
CHAPTER 10
“Gran told me that the only person who can send a spirit back is the one who called it up,” Thea said. “But the problem is that you have to be able to see the spirit, you have to be close to it. Then you can do the sending-back spell.”
“Okay,” Dani said, nodding. “But—”
“Wait, I’m getting to it.” Thea got up and began to pace the few steps between her bed and Blaise’s. She spoke slowly at first, then more rapidly. “What I’m thinking is that this can’t be the first time this has happened. Sometime, somewhere, somehow, some witch must have called up a spirit and let it get away. And then had to go out and get hold of it again.”
“I’m sure that’s true. But so what?”
“So if we could find a record of how she did it—how she tracked the spirit down—we might be in business.”
Dani was getting excited. “Yeah—and it wouldn’t even have to be a case of a summoned spirit. I mean, some spirits just won’t go to the other side at all after they’ve died, right? Maybe there’s a record about how one of them got sent across the veil.”
“Or a story. Or a poem. Anything that would give us a clue about how to get them to stay in the same room with you while you do the spell.” Thea stopped and grinned at Dani. “And if there’s one thing Gran has lots of, it’s records and stories and poems. There are hundreds of books in the workshop.”
Dani jumped up, dark eyes snapping. “I’ll call my mom and tell her I’m staying over tonight. Then—we find it.”
After Dani called her mother, Thea called Eric to make sure he was okay. Now that she knew there was a demented spirit on the loose she was worried about him.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” he said. “I mean, I still feel awful about taking you to that place. I wanted—well, I’d like it if we could see each other without something terrible happening.”
Thea felt as if someone had squeezed her heart. “Me, too.”
“Maybe we could do something tomorrow. If you’re up to it.”
“That would be good.” She didn’t dare to keep talking to him with Dani around. It would be too easy for anyone listening to guess her feelings.
The first thing Thea noticed in the workshop was that Blaise had taken her new project with her.
She must be close to finishing it.
“I’ll start here,” Dani said, standing in front of a large bookcase. “Some of these look really old.”
Thea picked another case. There were books of every kind: leather-bound, paper-bound, cloth-bound, suede-bound, unbound. Some were printed, some were handwritten, some were illuminated. Some were in languages Thea didn’t know.
The first shelf yielded nothing except an interesting spell titled “HOW TO MAKE AN ELIXIR OF ABHORRENCE, which works quite as well, or perhaps a little worse than the traditional Elixirs of Loathing or Detestation, and is less delicate and expensive than the Elixir of Odium used by royals and members of the nobility, and will also keep extremely well for a very long time.”
Hmm…
Thea put that book aside. She’d looked through another half a shelf when Dani said, “Hey, I found your family tree.”
Thea scooted over. “Yeah, that’s the one Gran keeps. It doesn’t go anywhere near back to Hellewise.” She laughed.
“Who’s this guy?” Dani put her finger on a name. “‘Hunter Redfern.’ I thought the Redferns were that hotshot vampire family.”
“Lamia family. I mean, there’s a difference, you know. Someone who’s made into a vampire can’t have kids.”
“But what’s the lamia guy doing in your family tree?”
“He’s the one who did a kinship ceremony with Maeve Harman, back in the sixteen hundreds. She was the leader of the Harmans then. See? And we’re all descended from their daughter Roseclear.”
“She did it with a vampire? Creepy.”
Thea smiled. “She did it to stop their families from fighting—they had a feud going on. And so now all of us modern Harmans have a little vampire blood.”
“I’ll remember to watch out if you start looking at my throat.” Dani traced a finger down the tree. “It looks like you and Blaise are the last of the female Harmans.”
“Yeah, we’re it. The last Hearth-Women.”
“That’s a big responsibility.”
It was almost exactly what Gran had said. Thea suddenly felt uncomfortable with family trees. “Yeah. Um, I guess we’d better keep reading.”
It was several hours later when Dani said quietly, “I’ve got it.”
“What?” Thea went to sit by her. The book on Dani’s knees was bound in green with a crescent moon and three stars on the front—a Night World symbol for witches.
“It’s a book of humorous stories, but they’re supposed to be true. This one is about a guy named Walstan Harman back in seventeen seventy. He died, but he didn’t cross over. He just hung around town playing jokes on everybody—appearing at night with his head under his arm and stuff like that. He never stayed in one place long enough for them to catch him, though.”
“So how did they track him down?”
Dani flashed a triumphant smile. “They didn’t. They lured him in.”
Light dawned for Thea. “Of course—I’m so stupid. But how?”
Dani’s slender finger swept down the page. “Well, first they waited till Samhain, so the veil between the worlds would be thinnest. Then Nicholas Harman had this big feast prepared, this huge table piled up with Walstan’s favorite food.” Dani made a face. “Which happened to be mince pie made with bear meat and pumpkin, with a cornmeal crust. They have a recipe for it here, too. Gah.”
“Never mind that. Did it work?”
“Apparently. They set up the table with the pies in an empty room, then they cast a circle around it. Old Walstan was attracted to the food—I guess he just couldn’t resist taking a look, even if he couldn’t eat it. And when he came down to check it out, they opened the door and nabbed him.”
“‘Sent him speedily and conveniently through the narrow path to the airy void,’” Thea read over Dani’s shoulder. The story sounded genuine—only someone who’d actually seen a summoning or a sending-back would know those words.
“So now we know how to do it,” Dani said. “We wait until Halloween and then we lure her. We just have to find something she likes—”
“Or…something she hates,” Thea broke in as an idea struck her.
They stared at each other.
“Like what she saw at the old gym,” Dani breathed. “Something that reminded her of what they did to her.”
“Yes, except…” Thea stopped. Her mind was racing on, but she didn’t want to share her thoughts with Dani. Except that the humans might already be doing something on Halloween, something that would attract Suzanne. If the police opened the old gym, the Halloween party would be an incredibly strong lure. All those horror booths…
So if I wanted to draw her somewhere else, I’d need to be doing something even worse, something that would remind her even more of what happened to her. And I’d need bait, somebody she’d want to kill. A human. Somebody who’d work with me, who’d be willing…
Not Eric.
Her thoughts came up short as she realized where they were leading. She found that her hands were icy cold and her heart was pounding slowly.
No. Not Eric, no matter what. Not even to save lives.
She pushed
the thought from her mind. Of course there was some other way, and she’d find it. There was time….
“Thea? You still with me?” Dani was watching her.
“I was just trying to figure it all out.” Thea forced herself to speak calmly, to focus on Dani. “Um, listen, there’s one good thing I just thought of—we may have a little time. If Suzanne is still watching the old gym, it could work for us. As long as the gym is closed up, people won’t go in there, and she won’t be able to get anybody.”
“I hope so,” Dani said. “I mean, I understand why she’s upset, but nobody deserves to die the way Kevin did. Not even a human.”
Late that night, while Dani was breathing peacefully in Blaise’s bed, Thea lay and stared at the faint glow above the window curtains.
It wasn’t just visions of Kevin. Her mind kept returning to what Dani and Gran had said about her responsibility.
Even if I send Suzanne back, even if Gran gets well, even if I manage to keep Blaise from killing Eric…where am I?
I’m a renegade witch. And there’s no future for Eric and me…unless we run away. But that would mean him leaving his family forever—and us being hunted wherever we went. And me betraying the Hearth-Women and the Night World.
One last thought glimmered before she could force her mind into blankness.
There’s no way everybody is going to come out of this happy.
The next morning Thea was late for school. And she had a hard time tracking down Blaise—it wasn’t until lunchtime that she and Dani found the Circle Midnight witches in the front courtyard.
“Please let us see it,” Selene was saying as Thea and Dani walked up. “Just one peek. Please?”
“I want to do a trial run first,” Blaise said, looking very pleased with herself. She took a drink of iced tea, ignoring Thea and Dani.
“How’s Gran?” Thea broke in without preamble.
Blaise turned. “Better, no thanks to you. Why didn’t you call this morning?”
“I overslept.” After terrible nightmares about strangled people.
“We were up late last night,” Dani said. “It’s not Thea’s fault.”
