by Isobel Bird
Annie bit her lip. “We really have to call someone,” she said.
Kate nodded. She knew Annie was right. “But who?” she asked. “We can’t call my parents. They would totally freak.”
“Cooper’s dad is a lawyer,” said Annie. “Maybe we should call him.”
“He’s still out of town,” Kate reminded her. “What about your aunt?”
“I’d rather not,” said Annie. “I’d hate Grayson to think that I was dragging his daughter into the middle of a gang war or something. Let’s give him at least a month of living with me before I start calling with emergencies.”
The two of them thought for a minute, coming up with nothing. Then Kate remembered something. “What about Detective Stern?” she suggested.
Detective Mick Stern had been assigned to the case involving the death of Elizabeth Sanger, a girl whose ghost had come to Cooper for help almost a year earlier. At first he had been skeptical about what the girls were telling him, but he’d come to believe them after Cooper had led him to the body and provided other clues to solving the mystery.
Annie and Kate looked at one another, both thinking about Detective Stern and whether or not calling him was a good idea. Neither said anything.
“What’s going on?” Cooper asked, walking up to them. “We thought you guys might have gotten lost or something.”
“We’re talking about whether or not we should call Detective Stern and tell him about what happened,” Kate said.
Cooper was taken aback. “Wow,” she said. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“We have to tell someone,” Annie said. “I know Sasha is worried about getting anyone else involved, but we can’t just pretend Mallory is her sister. What if Ray comes looking for her again?”
“Or what if I killed him?” Kate added, finally able to voice the one thought she’d been trying to avoid thinking about.
Cooper nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “We do need help. And if we have to talk to the cops, I’d definitely prefer it to be Detective Stern.”
“Do we tell Sasha?” Annie asked, glancing down the hallway to where their friend still sat, her pen moving rapidly across yet another form.
“No,” Cooper said. “She’s got enough to worry about. I’ll see if I can get Stern to meet us at the park. You guys go keep Becka and Sasha company while I make a call.”
Annie and Kate returned to the waiting area while Cooper went in search of a pay phone.
“Hey,” Becka said as they sat down. “Good news. Sort of. The doctor came back and said that Mallory—I mean Denise—is awake. She’s still really out of it, and they’ve given her a lot of painkillers. I guess she has some internal injuries they need to look at more closely, and she probably has a concussion.”
“But she’s not going to die,” Sasha said, summing up Becka’s news in one succinct point.
“Right,” said Becka.
“So she’s okay?” Kate said anxiously.
“No, she’s not okay,” Sasha replied. “That jerk did a real number on her. But she’s going to live.” She looked at Kate. “I can’t say I hope the same thing for him.”
Kate looked down. She knew Sasha would be furious if she knew what Cooper was doing at that very moment. But she also knew that it was the right thing to do. Luckily, before anyone could say anything else, Cooper returned. Annie repeated the good news about Mallory to her.
“That’s great,” Cooper said. “Look, I have to run home for a minute. And Kate, you said you needed to get something at your house too, right?”
“Right,” Kate said, playing along.
“Why don’t we go take care of that and grab some food for everyone?” suggested Cooper.
“Good idea,” Annie said brightly.
Sasha had returned to filling out forms. “Social Security number?” she said with irritation. “How should I know that?”
“Okay then,” Cooper said. “We’ll be back in a little bit. Can you guys handle things here?” she added, looking at Annie.
“We’ll be fine,” answered Annie. “Go.”
Cooper and Kate left and got back in the car.
“Did you get ahold of Detective Stern?” Kate asked as soon as the doors were shut.
“Yeah,” Cooper told her. “He’s going to meet us at the park.”
They drove back to the park. By now it was dark, and they were relieved to see that the detective was standing at the entrance to the park, waiting for them beneath a streetlight.
“Well,” he said after they had parked and gotten out of the car. “We meet again.” He looked at Cooper and grinned. “Any ghosts taken a bullet for you lately?” he asked.
“No,” Cooper said. “But there’s always a chance it will happen tonight.”
“So, fill me in,” the detective said. “You were a little mysterious on the phone. Your friend was attacked by some guy in here?”
“Back in the deserted pump house,” said Cooper. “I’ll show you.”
Detective Stern followed as Cooper and Kate walked through the park, telling him bits and pieces of the story as they went. By the time they neared the clearing where the pump house was, he knew pretty much everything. At least everything the girls thought he needed to know.
“We left him right in there,” Kate said, pointing into the pump house. “On the floor.”
“Stay here,” the detective told them.
“No problem,” said Kate. She had no intention of going back inside the building. If Ray was dead, she knew she couldn’t stand to see his body. Already she was having flashbacks to the moment when the rock had collided with his head.
Detective Stern went inside. He emerged a moment later. “There’s nobody here,” he said. “Some blood, but no dead guy.”
Kate breathed a sigh of relief, at least until Cooper said, “He might have gone back downstairs.”
The detective turned around and went back inside. This time he was gone for a much longer time. When he finally came back out he said, “Nothing.” He started to come down the steps when his flashlight picked up something on the steps leading to the entrance. He bent down and touched his fingers to the marble.
“Blood,” he said, lifting his hand to his nose. He shined the flashlight farther down the steps. There was more blood. A trail of it led away from the old pump house and into the woods.
“Looks like you just hurt him,” the detective said, returning to stand beside Kate.
Kate breathed a deep sigh of relief. Then a horrible thought occurred to her. “That means he’s still out there,” she said.
Detective Stern nodded. “Your friend is safe enough in the hospital.” He hesitated before continuing, “You know, technically I should report her as a located missing person.”
Cooper looked at Kate, then back at Detective Stern. “Could you hold off on that for a while?” she asked him. “Sasha is totally freaked out about cops,” she said. “I think she has the right idea about asking her mother to help for now. If we can get Mallory somewhere safe, then we can work on the whole contacting-the-family thing. Okay?”
The detective let out a long sigh. “Why is it that whenever I talk to you I feel like I’m seven years old again and my brother is trying to talk me into lifting gum from Mr. Finnigan’s drugstore?” he asked.
“Just a couple of days,” Cooper said. “That’s all I’m asking for.”
“Fine,” said the detective after a long wait. “I know I’ll probably regret this, but okay.”
“Thanks,” said Cooper. “I knew we could trust you.”
“Coming from you, that’s a major compliment,” said Detective Stern. “Now, before I let you off the hook totally, what can you tell me about this guy? We need to locate him and make an arrest, once we get an official statement.”
“Tell you what,” Cooper said. “We’ll do a sketch of him tonight and I’ll bring it by the station tomorrow.”
Detective Stern chuckled. “You girls are something else,” he said. “Ar
e you sure you don’t want to come work for me when you’re old enough?”
“Sorry,” Cooper replied. “What would Charlie do without us?”
“Charlie?” the detective said.
Kate and Cooper laughed. “You need to get to the movies more often,” Cooper told him.
They walked back to their cars, where they said good-bye. Kate and Cooper drove back toward the hospital in reflective silence. When they were about halfway there Kate said, “I’m really glad I didn’t kill him.”
“Me, too,” Cooper said. “I guess.”
“What do you mean you guess?” Kate said sharply. “Do you want me to be a murderer?”
“No,” Cooper said, not sounding at all sure of that. “But I would like to see Ray get what he deserves.”
“Yeah, well, that I agree with,” Kate said as they pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food place so that they could get the dinner they’d promised the others. “But how? We can’t just hunt him down like a bunch of vigilantes.”
“No,” Cooper said. “We can’t. At least not unless we want to get in trouble. But maybe there is something we can do.”
“What’s that?” asked Kate, getting out and shutting the door.
Cooper looked at her friend over the top of the car. “Maybe we can zap him a little.”
“Zap him?” Kate repeated, not understanding.
“As in ‘so mote it be’?” Cooper said.
“Oh,” Kate said, getting it. “You mean do a spell?”
Cooper nodded. “It’s a thought,” she said.
Kate smiled. “Detective Stern was right,” she said. “You are bad.”
“You love it,” Cooper said as she came around the side of the car and took Kate by the arm. “Think it over. Right now we need to pick up some dinner. You must be starving after the beating you gave that creep.”
“Now that you mention it,” Kate said as they went into the restaurant, “I could use a cheeseburger.”
CHAPTER 12
“We’re meeting at Annie’s house after school,” Cooper told Kate when she saw her at school the next morning.
Kate yawned. She was exhausted. Cooper had dropped her off after the two had eaten and picked up food for the others. She was totally shaken from her encounter with Ray, plus there was no way her parents would allow her to be out much later, unlike Cooper’s mom or Annie’s aunt. Cooper had returned to the hospital and discovered Thea with Annie, Sasha, and Becka. Annie and Becka had convinced Sasha to call her mother and have her come down. Thea had taken control of the situation with the hospital and had told them that Denise, as they were still calling Mallory, was in her charge. Thea was a familiar presence at the hospital because of her work with children’s services, so nobody questioned her.
Cooper had then taken Thea aside and told her about having gone to Detective Stern, and asked her not to say anything to Sasha about it. Thea agreed, and so they had sat as a group until the two doctors who had first looked at Mallory came out to tell them that, for the moment, Mallory was okay. They still needed to do some more tests before they knew the extent of her injuries, but there was no point, they said, in everyone hanging around all night. Sasha had wanted to stay anyway, but Thea had convinced her that she needed to get some sleep. Finally they had all gone home.
“What exactly are we doing?” Kate asked as they got their books out of their lockers.
“I’m not sure yet,” replied Cooper. “Think about it during the day.”
They split up, Kate going to her English class and Cooper heading for Algebra. As the period wore on, Kate tried not to let her tired mind wander too much. But she couldn’t help thinking about what kind of ritual they could do that night. What sort of magic did you work to try to stop someone from doing something bad? They’d never really talked about that in class. Then again, she, Cooper, and Annie had experienced a lot of things that they’d never talked about in class. Kate was sure that they would come up with something good.
Her challenge for the moment was simply to stay awake, and that wasn’t easy. Besides, Mr. Tharpe’s voice was very mellow and soothing. It would be so nice, she thought, to simply close my eyes and drift off.
The next thing she knew, she was standing on the steps of the fake temple, looking inside. It was nighttime, and a silver moon hung overhead. Fog swirled around the steps, and she was cold. She was also, she realized, alone.
Suddenly a black form rushed at her from the back of the temple. She heard an evil laugh, and saw the shape raise its arm, ready to bring the stone in its hand down on her head. “I got her,” a voice said. “I got her, and you’re next.”
Kate woke up just as the horrific shadow reached her. She was still in her seat, and Mr. Tharpe was still talking. No one had seen her doze off. It must have only been for a minute or so, she thought dully as she sat up and shook herself awake.
She knew that the shadow in the temple had been Ray. But it wasn’t the flesh-and-blood Ray; it was almost like all of the badness in him had taken shape. She had seen the part of him that was able to do the horrible things he did, and it had frightened her terribly. Now she knew more than ever that they had to do the ritual that night. Ray had to be stopped.
But how? That was the question they had to answer.
Before she could, though, the period ended and it was time for the next one. She went through the whole day in this way, slogging through her classes and counting the minutes until the day was over. She was anxious to regroup with the others, to see what had happened during the day and to do the ritual.
Finally the last bell sounded and she went to her locker to meet Cooper. “Was this the longest day, or what?” Cooper asked her as they put their books away and grabbed their coats.
“Tell me about it,” Kate answered. “I was so distracted I didn’t even yell at Sherrie once during lab this afternoon. I think that freaked her out more than if I had yelled at her, though, so maybe I’m on to something.”
The two of them left and drove straight to Annie’s house, where Annie’s aunt let them in. “The girls are upstairs,” she told them. “Go on up.”
They found Becka and Annie seated on the floor, looking at Tarot cards.
“Hey,” Annie said. “I was just showing Becka the new deck I got at Crones’ Circle.”
“I take it you didn’t tell your aunt about our little adventure last night,” Cooper remarked as she removed her coat and hung it on the back of Annie’s desk chair.
“Not exactly,” Annie said. “I told her a friend of ours from class had an accident and that we had gone to the hospital, but I didn’t give her details.”
“She didn’t seem to notice all that much anyway,” added Becka. “She and my dad were all wrapped up in figuring out how to rearrange the house.”
“Rearrange the house?” Kate said. “Why?”
Annie and Becka looked at each other. “I can’t believe we forgot to tell you,” Annie said. “I must have forgotten once everything started to happen.”
“What?” Cooper said, echoing Kate’s earlier question.
“My dad and I are moving here,” Becka told them.
Kate and Cooper could barely contain their enthusiasm. “That’s great!” exclaimed Kate.
“Yeah,” Becka said. “They told us the other day, right before we all went to the park to warn Mallory.”
“When are you moving?” Cooper asked her.
“June,” Becka answered. “Right after school ends.”
“But isn’t the wedding in April?” Cooper asked.
“Yes,” said Annie. “But Aunt Sarah and Grayson say they can’t do two such stressful things at the same time. So they’ll get married in April and then Grayson and Becka will go back to San Francisco for a few weeks.”
“We’re going to pack up our stuff and send it up here before we actually come,” Becka said. “That way Dad says when we move it will feel more like we’re going on vacation.”
“Makes sense to me,” said Cooper.
She went over and gave Becka a hug. “Welcome to the family.”
“Thanks,” Becka told her. “It already feels like home here, so I think it will be pretty easy.”
“Now that we’ve told you our news,” Annie said, “we should talk about the ritual. Do you guys have any ideas?”
“What about Sasha?” asked Kate. “Shouldn’t we wait for her?”
“She’ll be here in a little while,” Annie said. “She called from the hospital right before you got here.”
“How’s Mallory?” Cooper asked.
“Pretty much the same,” said Annie. “She’s drugged up pretty heavily because of all the pain, so she mostly sleeps. Sasha said she recognized her, though, so that’s good. And the doctors said that there’s nothing majorly wrong with her. Just a lot of bruises that will take a while to heal.”
“Has anyone talked about what to do next?” Kate said. “You know, about contacting her family or whatever?”
“I don’t think Sasha can think about that right now,” Annie said. “She’s too tired and worried.”
“It can wait,” said Cooper. “Tonight we need to focus on doing this ritual.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it,” said Annie. “We all know that we aren’t supposed to use magic to harm anyone.”
“Right,” Cooper said. “Like the Wiccan Rede says, ‘And it harm none, do as you will.’”
“We can’t do anything to try to hurt Ray,” Annie continued.
“You mean we shouldn’t do anything to hurt him,” Kate suggested.
Annie gave her a look and Kate shrugged. “So I was thinking that maybe we should do a ritual that sort of bends the rules a little bit,” Annie finished.
“Bends the rules?” Cooper said. “I like the sound of that, but what do you mean?”
“Well, the other part of the Rede is that whatever energy you send out comes back to you three times as strong, right?” explained Annie. “So what if we do a ritual designed to make the energy Ray has been putting out there come back to him three times as strong?”
The others thought about what she was saying for a minute. Then Cooper gave Annie an approving look. “You mean do something to hurry along his karmic spanking, so to speak,” she said.
