“It’s a through-and-through,” Sid announced, after checking Maya’s wound as Brent had ordered. “She’ll be okay but she needs a hospital. She’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Cuff them,” Brent said to Marcy. “We’ll send help once we’re safely away.”
“They’ll be sitting ducks for the spirits, Maya especially,” I said. I didn’t exactly have a lot of love for the two, but I couldn’t see trussing them up and leaving them to die defenseless if the Salem Strangler or some other disgruntled ghost should wander by.
“Well … crap,” Brent answered.
In my peripheral vision, I could see ghost-Jenny flinch at the language, but, really, that summed it all up.
“Maybe they’ll both fit in the trunk?” I said.
“You mean the one with the big hole in it?” Brent asked.
“Oh, right.”
16
We left Sid and Maya their phones, their clothes, and little else. We’d confiscated all weapons and lashed ’em up with duct tape. It had a lot more give than zip ties, and we figured they’d have themselves out in an hour or so. It would have to be good enough. We couldn’t either leave them to die or let them free to organize a state-wide manhunt. We’d have to throw it open to fate. It was more of a chance than they’d give us.
It meant we didn’t have a lot of time.
We crowded into the Crown Vic—Ulric driving, my boy Bobby mashed in the back between me and Olivia so he wouldn’t be anywhere near the door handles and there’d be instant bail-out should he pump up the crazy. Marcy and Brent were up front, sharing the passenger’s side of the bucket seat, and the ghost girl was doing a ride-along in the amulet. I could feel her warmth in my pocket, almost like a kitten curled up to sleep. Olivia phoned her people, who told us that they’d “let” the authorities squeeze some rumors out of them—about something strange going on at the wharf earlier—and sent them to investigate. With any luck, the cops would find Rebecca passed out on shore, exhausted from her swim. But luck, good luck anyway, hadn’t put in an appearance since we’d hit the haunted city.
If only Sid and Maya had joined the cops on that wild goose chase, they wouldn’t be cluttering up my list of concerns.
“You think they’ll be all right, right?” I asked anyone who cared to answer.
“Right,” said Marcy.
“Any agent who can’t get out of those bonds isn’t worth their salt,” Brent added.
“Still, I wish we could have cast some kind of protection or no-see-um spell over them, just to be sure.”
“If only it worked that way,” Olivia said. “I can’t just cast spells with no prep or supplies.”
“So you need stuff to cast spells?” Marcy asked, fascinated. “Like ingredients—‘Double, double, toil and trouble’ and all that?”
Renfield-Bobby took the lines and ran with them, turning them into a sing-song. “Double, double, toil and trouble, take the world and make it rubble.” Then he cackled to himself like he’d made a wonderful joke.
“I didn’t know you knew Shakespeare,” Brent said to Marcy, ignoring Bobby’s insanity.
Marcy gave him a blank look. “Shakespeare? That’s Looney Tunes.”
It was Brent’s turn with the clueless look.
“Witch Hazel,” she explained, exasperation in her voice.
“Oh, uh, right.”
Olivia looked at them both like they were nuts. “Witches call the power that exists in all things and focus it toward whatever they want to accomplish—healing, change, whatever. That’s how we work. Different ‘ingredients,’ as you call them, help achieve different results, call different energies.”
“So when you say the amulet is bound to Rebecca by blood, what kind of result is she going for?” I asked.
“That’s some way-darker magic than I mess with, but based on what’s happening, I’d guess there was probably some kind of power stored in that amulet. You can do that, you know—store up power for later. Rebecca probably used her blood to unlock it.”
“To call spirits?”
Olivia shrugged. “She might have been going for one in particular. I have no way to know.”
“Tituba,” Brent said. “Or maybe Tituba’s daughter. She wanted that Book of Shadows pretty badly.”
“Wants,” I corrected, because I just couldn’t see Rebecca going peacefully. She was too much the drama queen. And it took one to know one.
“Whatever. But Tituba didn’t die in Salem. Rebecca wouldn’t have had any luck calling her spirit.”
“Maybe she put out a kind of magical APB,” Ulric
suggested. “Calling all spirits, calling all spirits: Be on the look-out for a Book of Shadows.”
We all stared at Ulric. He shrugged. “Hey, it’s a theory.”
I yelped as my pocket started to burn. Jenny was no longer a warm fuzzy kitten but a hot coal … or maybe that was the amulet itself, trying to tell me something. I fried my fingers as I grabbed it, but as soon as I touched it, I knew what to do.
“Stop!” I called.
Ulric stopped short, throwing us all forward, making Renfield bang his knees on the seat in front of him and me almost slide off onto the floor at his feet.
We were in front of Red’s Sandwich Shop. A plaque on the outside wall announced:
The London Coffee House
ca. 1698
Meeting place of Patriots
before the American Revolution
“What was that all about?” Ulric asked, as a car horn blasted displeasure behind us. The driver flipped us off as he went around us.
“The amulet’s nearly burning a hole in my pocket. I think we must be close to the Book of Shadows.”
“But look at the plaque—the shop was founded too late in time,” Brent protested. “The witch trials were in 1692.”
Jenny materialized outside the car, a very faint wisp in the glow of the streetlights, as if formed from the mist of the amulet’s heat hitting the icy air. She beckoned me.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said to Brent. “Apparently, we’re here.”
Jenny put a hand on her hip, impatient with the delay, every bit like a modern-day child.
Renfield was the only one of us who didn’t have to be told twice. He scrambled right over Olivia and let himself out. On the street, he did an odd sort of hop-skip-pirouette, like a demented court jester. Everyone else skirted around him as they got out, leaving Ulric to park.
Marcy looked ready to suggest, again, that we leave Bobby behind, but with the big gaping hole in the trunk, we had nowhere else to put him. Besides, they said to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. When your enemies and friends were one and the same …
“Come on,” I said.
Jenny beckoned again and disappeared behind Red’s Sandwich Shop. If we didn’t hurry, we’d lose her.
“I’ll wait for Ulric,” Olivia offered.
I chased after Jenny and found her floating beside the back entrance to a nearby cedar-shingled building. The others caught up to us in no time.
“In there?” I asked, following her ghostly finger pointing the way.
She nodded.
“Is there a tunnel entrance inside?” I asked again.
She gave me a wow, adults sure are dense look. I tried not to crack a smile. “Why did you ask for my help if you didn’t think I knew anything?” she asked reasonably, her voice like the wind—there and then gone.
“Sorry!”
Brent stepped up to the wall and put a finger to it, as though afraid to commit a whole hand. Instantly, he drew back, looking at it almost in awe.
“A lot of history here,” he said. “Plus, it’s hollow.”
Jenny’s glow got a little brighter. “Well, of course. It’s a bolt hole. Ma and Da said they were built way back when people were afraid of religious per-suh … per-suh … perspecution. There were tunnels and secret entrances between some of the houses. People even sometimes used them in bad weather. Then later, the p
atriots used them to … patriate.”
“Was that her?” Brent whispered. “I think I heard her.”
“Me too,” said Marcy. “She’s like a walking history book. Bobby would love her.”
We all looked at Renfield, who’d gone and pressed his ear to the wall as if he could hear inside … or as if he was trying to hug it. “Yes, oh yes!” he said excitedly. “It calls to me!”
“Uh, guys,” I said, “we may want to get out of this alley before someone sees us and thinks we’re trying to rob the place or something.”
“Ah ha!” Renfield cried. He leapt toward the door and grabbed the handle, which turned miraculously in his hand. It didn’t seem very likely that the door had just been unlocked the whole time.
Which meant that Bobby’s ride-along had found a way to access his powers.
We were all in serious doo-doo if … when … Renfield turned on us.
We all stepped inside, cautiously waiting for our eyes to adjust. Jenny showed up more brightly in the total darkness of the store, especially once Brent, who took up the rear, closed the door behind us.
Renfield clapped his hands together in glee. “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, grant this wish I wish tonight … ”
Jenny stepped back from him like he might hurt her, her eyes wide and her light flickering.
“Stay with us,” I begged her. “Please. Show us how to get into the tunnels.”
“Keep him away from me,” she ordered. “He—he’s got bedlam eyes. Like before.”
“Before what?” Olivia asked.
I’d almost forgotten Olivia was there, just like she’d promised way back at the pub. Jenny’s eyes shot to me, as if afraid I’d make her answer … afraid she’d have to remember. Something bad had happened to her down in the tunnels, I was almost sure of it. Someone had hurt her.
She flickered out for a second and I panicked, suddenly afraid that she was gone, but not to peace—hidden away in a huddle of misery instead.
But then she flickered back again, her eyes all confusion. “Where did I go?”
Olivia’s eyes welled with tears. “Nowhere, honey. You just blinked and came back to us.”
I hated myself in that moment, because I knew I had to get us back on track, and that might mean causing Jenny pain. I squatted at eye level with the little ghost. “Jenny, you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, but I promise I won’t let anything hurt you ever, ever again. You don’t have to go down into the tunnels with us. Just point the way.”
She looked around, as if she could see perfectly in the pitch-dark store. I tried, but her dim glow didn’t do much to illuminate anything around her, and even vamp eyes needed some light to work.
Brent solved this a second later by turning on a flashlight app on his phone.
I was no expert, but with the books on the shelves closest to me labeled things like A Moon for Me and Everyday Witch A to Z, it seemed pretty clear to me we were in a magic shop.
“Ah, Solstice,” Olivia said, “I love this place. Didn’t recognize it from the back.”
Jenny faded a bit in the light, but the confusion on her face was still clear enough. “So much has changed!” she gasped. “This is … my mother wouldn’t like me to be here.”
“Has it changed too much?” I asked.
Brent went to the wall and risked touching it again, waiting for it to give up its secrets.
Jenny bit her lip and her gaze went unfocused, as though she were looking straight through the bookshelves and racks and doodads, back to another time. She also approached the back wall, skirting wide around Brent.
“When Missy Farraday lived here, there was a catch, right … ” She reached a hand into a cubby full of colorful scarves and rooted around for a minute, her face a study in frustration. “I can’t get the catch.”
“Can you feel it?” I asked.
She nodded. “But I’m too short. Missy always had to trip it. Or Sarah.”
“Can you show me?”
She nodded again and took my hand when I offered it, as tenuous as spider silk. The small, wispy fingers guided my hand past the scarves and slid back to my wrist when she couldn’t reach any farther, showing my fingers where to go. I felt around a tiny crevice, like a gouge in a section of mortar.
There was a click, and I held my unused breath, but nothing happened. No wall slid dramatically out of the way. No Batcave suddenly appeared.
“Everything’s in the way!” Brent said. “Even if this is the original wall, the display spaces have been built over it. The passage probably can’t open.”
“Bam!” Renfield said, making me jump. Before we could react, he’d launched himself at the shelves like he had at the outer wall, but this time he acted as a one-man wrecking crew. Scarves flew everywhere. Sweaters fell to the floor. Books and brightly colored jars, crystals, and worry stones, even a beautiful mortar and pestle made from a stone that looked like alabaster, went flying past my head.
“Stop, Bobby!” Marcy cried. “Stop!”
Amazingly, he did, breathing hard as if he needed the air. A human mindset in a vampire body.
“Done!” he said cheerfully. Then, under his breath, “Master will be so pleased. No, Mistress, she says. Always Mistress. Dumb. Dumbdumbdumb.”
He started to beat his head on the wall, and it gave way beneath the pressure to reveal a narrow little door. Window, really, because it was about chest-height, like a cosmetics counter.
Brent broke the stunned silence. “Probably used to be a dumbwaiter.” He pushed Bobby out of the way so that he could check it out, taking his light with him.
“That’s not a waiter, it’s a window,” Marcy said, echoing my thoughts exactly.
Brent peeked back into the room, with just enough light for us to see him roll his eyes. “A dumbwaiter was like a rope and pulley system, to deliver food and drink to another floor without having to carry it up the stairs.”
The light went on in Marcy’s eyes, “Oh, like a food elevator. I’ve seen those.”
“Right, but it’s gone now, and we’re here. Can we get a move on?”
“Wow, it’s like Maya passed the stick. I thought it was permanently implanted up her butt,” Marcy said as she passed me to follow Brent into the tunnel. She pushed Bobby-Renfield ahead of her as she went so she could keep an eye on him.
Ulric and Olivia watched each other, not wanting to dive for the opening at the same time. “After you,” he said, sweeping her a bow.
She smiled at him tentatively. “Thank you.”
Wow, feel the love.
I held back for a second with Jenny.
“Thank you for taking us this far. But really, we can take it from here if you want to rest.”
She gave me another one of those you crazy adult looks. “I want to find the treasure!”
“Uh, okay.”
I climbed through the hole in the wall and Jenny drifted along behind me. Then she reached up to tap a section of wall to close the gap. She looked like she’d been given a gift when it worked.
“I’m getting stronger!” she cried, clapping her hands together and whirling around. There probably wouldn’t have been room for all that spinning if she were actually constrained by the physical walls, but as it was …
She did seem to be sharper around the edges, but I couldn’t tell how much of that had to do with the darkness of the small space and how much was due to the proximity to the amulet. But if the amulet was the cause, wouldn’t she have been a lot clearer sooner? Could it be … ?
“Lead the way,” I said, keeping an eye on her as she moved ahead of us. Everyone flattened themselves against the walls of the narrow bolthole as if she needed the space. Or maybe they did—I remembered the coldness of her hand and could only imagine what that would feel like, passing right through my physical form … like the chill of the grave.
It might have been my imagination, but I thought she got brighter and brighter as she went along.
I reached up to tap Marcy on
the shoulder. She whirled with a stifled shriek.
“Watch this. Tell me what you see,” I whispered in her ear, pulling her aside. Then, “Jenny, come back here a second.”
It was subtle, like the difference between eggshell and off-white, but it was there.
“What am I supposed to see?” Marcy asked.
“Did you notice how she grew fainter as she came back toward us?”
“Oh, yeah, that. So what?”
“Well, the amulet grew hot when we first got near the tunnels, and presumably closer to the book. Now Jenny seems to be getting stronger and clearer, the closer we get. It’s like that game we all played when we were kids—hot and cold. Jenny, do you feel any difference between here and over there?” I pointed down the corridor.
Her brows drew together. “Should I?”
“Nevermind. You just lead on. Take us to any passageways you know.”
“Okay.”
Renfield tried and failed to tug Jenny’s ghostly flowing hair as she went past. “Sugar and spice, parsnips and mice, that’s what little girls are made of,” he cackled.
Nobody corrected him.
We all followed, and after a while, I heard Ulric whisper to Brent, “Is it just me or is she getting brighter?”
If it was clear enough now that even human vision was picking it up, then there was definitely something to my theory. Jenny glowed more strongly with every step until we no longer needed the light from Brent’s phone. She tapped out a little beat on the walls as she went, with more enthusiasm than rhythm.
There were way too many people between us now for me to see more than her glow, but I could imagine her glee. For a minute I considered the fact that stealing away the Book of Shadows, and breaking the enchantment on the amulet or draining it of its power—whatever we had to do to keep the town safe—would also kill our girl. Okay, not kill, because she was already dead, but steal her spark, sap her strength again. To be able to influence the physical world—play a rhythm, flip a switch—and then suddenly have that stolen away …
I could only imagine it would be like living in hell on earth. Worse even than an eternity without tanning or photo ops.
Fangtabulous Page 19
