Night Latch

by Anela Deen

  The door to the roof squeaked open. “This area’s restricted at this hour.” A security guard stood in the entry. “Are you a patient?”

  “Yes, I was just getting some air.”

  “You’ll have to come inside now. This door should’ve been locked.”

  “I’m coming.” I turned back to give Alice a last wave.

  She was already gone.

  Chapter 39

  After I worked through the stack of discharge papers at the hospital, I took a cab home. My truck had been towed as part of the investigation—and won’t that be a treat to get out of impound later? It was just as well since I didn’t think driving was in my immediate future. I could barely put any weight on my injured leg. Walking all those stairs to the roof had turned my knee into an angry supernova. I’d barely managed to check in on Nick before leaving the hospital. He’d been asleep, his neck in a brace, bruises all over his face, but the swelling had gone way down. The nurse attending him said he was stable and scheduled to be transferred out of the ICU around midday.

  I planned to go back to see him—after a long visit with my bed. The hospital had given some painkillers along with my baggie of belongings. As I stepped into my apartment, the empty silence met me at the door. It seeped into my skin and turned solid. A strange feeling, wanting to be alone and lonely because I was. How was it possible to be heartsore and numb simultaneously?

  I decided to shower later. Setting my things on the kitchen counter, I dug out my phone to send my mom a text that I was home and asleep. One thing about my mom, she might be intrusive, but she never burst in if she knew I was sleeping—a mainstay compassion of hers. The woman valued sleep.

  My phone had been turned off. As the screen came up, I twitched in surprise. Twenty-one missed calls, twelve messages? I swiped through to find they were all from Jo. Had something happened to her? As my thumb went to the call icon, my phone buzzed. Jo again.

  I answered it. “Hey, everything okay?”

  “Sam, where are you? Are you safe?”

  “Safe?” She couldn’t possibly know I’d been in the hospital. News didn’t travel that fast. “Yeah, I’m safe. And home.”

  She sighed in relief, a gusty exhale as if she were out of breath. “I need you to get a mixing bowl from your kitchen. Right now.”

  “What’s going on? You sound like you’re running.”

  “I don’t have time to explain. I need you to trust me and do exactly as I say. Do you have the mixing bowl?”

  “I have a cereal bowl,” I said, limping to the sink to grab one from the drying rack.

  “Nothing bigger?”

  “I don’t do a lot of baking around here.”

  “Fine. It doesn’t matter. Put the following things in it, exactly in the order I tell you. Flour—”

  “I don’t have any flour.”

  “Cornstarch will work too or tapioca or potato flakes.”

  “Negative on all that.”

  “Find something!” The panic in her voice put me on full alert. “Something made from the earth and ground into a powder.”

  “Jo, tell me what’s wrong.”

  “You’re in danger. I don’t know from who or when it’ll reach you, and I’m too far away to find out so we have to assemble the spell over the phone.”

  Spell?

  “Jo, listen, I was in danger last night, but everything’s okay now.”

  “That’s not it, whatever it was. This is different. Now, please, find something made from the earth.”

  I rummaged around my almost barren cupboards, tossing aside the microwave mac n’ cheese. The contents in there couldn’t have originated anywhere other than a lab.

  “What about sugar?” Several restaurant packets lurked toward the back.

  “That’ll work. Add in water, pepper, a few strands of your hair, thread from the shirt you’re wearing, and the dirt from the bottom of one shoe you had on tonight.”

  “Just one, huh?”

  “Hurry, Sam.”

  Her urgency worried me, but the days had been too long, tacked on to countless others. I did not have the energy to argue or demand answers. Jo said to trust her and I did.

  “Do I stir it together?” I asked once I’d added everything to the bowl. What an appetizing sight.

  “Not yet. The last thing is a raw egg. Please tell me you have eggs in your wasteland of a kitchen.”

  “I have a couple.” Exactly two, but no need to tell her she was almost right.

  “Okay, put me on speaker and hold the egg over the bowl between your hands. Gently.”

  I followed her instructions, cupping the egg against my palms. Jo spoke. I didn’t understand the words but I felt them. They tingled over my skin. The egg grew warm, then hot. Uncomfortably so.

  “Uh, Jo?”

  “Now crush it and let the remains fall naturally into the bowl.”

  “Shells too?”

  “Yes. Do not rinse your hands.”

  It cracked under the slightest pressure, like a brittle bone. Egg white slimed its way between my palms, an oozing waterfall flowing with little curved shards. Gross.

  “Is witchcraft normally this messy or—That’s weird.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no yoke. It’s all enzyme.” A heavy silence emanated from the phone. “Is that bad?”

  “What date were you born?”

  Ugh, I hated this question.

  “Christmas Day, and please don’t tell me how charming that is because it sucked growing up.”

  Not for any mercenary reason that entailed adults combining the gifts. People always looked at Christmas kids like they were extra shiny, like they were more blessed because of some accident of the calendar when in truth they dealt with the same struggles as everyone else. People lost track of this fact amid the candy canes and Santa beards.

  Jo made no comment on it. “How many shell pieces do you see?”

  I counted them up and gave her the number.

  “Start stirring,” she said.

  I grabbed a spoon with one gooey hand and started in. “As fun as this craft project is, I’d appreciate some details.”

  “In a minute. Is anything happening?”

  “I wouldn’t recommend this for muffin batter, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “This is serious, Sam. I need you to describe it.” She swore. “Why don’t you have a normal phone with Skype?”

  “Calm down, it just looks like street slop stirred together.”

  “Stir harder.”

  I did. Shook my head. “Still the same.” Scarlet bloomed from the bottom of the bowl. “Wait, it’s turning red.”

  Jo sucked in a breath. “Light or dark?”

  “Dark.” It bled across the other ingredients like an open vein. “Very dark. And…It’s getting thicker.” I struggled to pass the spoon through it. Plumes of heat wafted up, barbed with the tang of copper and salt. I jerked my head back. “It—It’s starting to boil. What is this?”

  “Dump it into your garbage disposal! Right now!”

  I rushed the bowl into the sink to the sound of Jo chanting indecipherable words. I turned on the water and flipped the disposal switch as I poured the contents into the open mouth of the drain. A skin crawling screech went up. Something crunched and cracked between the blades, far bigger than anything I’d mixed together. I was out of breath by the time I’d thoroughly rinsed out the bowl, cold sweat at my temples. For good measure, I dumped my cereal bowl in the trash and set the can outside my door. I wouldn’t be eating out of that dish ever again.

  “Is it gone?” Jo prompted. “All of it?”

  “Yeah. Explanations, please.”

  “You remember I’d left early because of a comet passing by that’s important to my coven?”

  I remembered. It came only once in a hundred years.

  “What about it?”

  “It has, in layman’s terms, prophetic properties for us. We channel these properties for glimpses of what’s to
come, typically in terms of our coven.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “It’s not something we normally do for outsiders, but I looked for you. You saved my brother. You saved me and helped my sisters, so I looked ahead for you.”

  My gaze rested on the sink. “I take it I’m not winning the lottery.”

  “These things aren’t always exact. There are interpretations. Sometimes things are symbolic, but after what I saw, I had to be sure.”

  “And are you?”

  “The missing yoke, the number of shells, the color and heat…” She hesitated. “Sam, when you freed the sword from the museum, did anything strange happen afterward? Did you see anything?”

  The tickle of a memory teased the fringe of my mind but evaded my grasp.

  I rubbed my eyes. “I’m not sure. I remember it and don’t. Like a dream I’m not sure happened.”

  “A forgetting curse,” Jo said softly. “Oh no. You must’ve caught their attention when you helped us. This is our fault. I’m so sorry.”

  “Whose attention?”

  “There are two distinct denominations of witches. My coven and the majority of others adhere to elemental power, the path of Gaia and the natural world.” She swallowed audibly and lowered her voice. “The other is of the Arcane. Dark powers. Destructive and corrosive. These are the witches of your worst fairy tales, the kind who lure children to their ovens, the kind who blind lovers, and bottle souls, and trick you into giving your voice away. My people have been in conflict with them for centuries.”

  I found myself edging closer to the knife block on the counter. “What do they want from me?”

  “I don’t know. It’s unusual for them to go after someone outside our circle, especially someone like you. I’m on my way to the head of my coven for help. What you saw in the bowl, these aren’t just signs. They’re confirmations, strong enough they started to take form during the spell.”

  “Confirmations of what?”

  “You’ll see your next birthday, but by the count you gave me, the threat will find you the day before the new year. When it does…” Her voice snagged and my heart thrummed a wild beat beneath my skin.

  “Tell me. I need to know what the comet showed you.”

  “I saw myself,” she whispered. “Screaming. You were in my arms, cut down by someone else. Your blood was…everywhere. Death came for you and I couldn’t stop it.”

  Death came for me. The one Alice couldn’t see.

  “The important thing is we know who’s after you now,” Jo said. “They’ll send one of their assassins—what’s called a Hunter. There are ways to track them.”

  My head was brimming. I pressed my shaking hands flat on the countertop. The cool surface pressed back, solid and steady.

  “Sam, are you still there?”

  “Still here.”

  “These signs, they aren’t good, but they’re not unstoppable. You’re not alone in this. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  Though I felt alone. I’d lost a soul to evil, and nearly my own, gotten four men murdered, and my friend nearly died. Now, I was being hunted by dark witches, and a prophetic comet foretold my gory end before the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve. Quite a weekend this turned out to be.

  I’d never complain about Mondays again.

  When a Christmas wish drops Alice into an unexpectedly mortal situation,

  she knows just who to blame.

  I WAS going to kill Sam. No doubts. No hesitation. I wouldn’t even let him explain himself. Naturally, he wouldn’t be able to since I’d have my hands wrapped around his neck. That locksmith was going to pay for this. Dearly.

  As soon as I figured out which house he lived in.

  Iowa in late December—midnight on Christmas Day to be exact. I’d seen winter a thousand times. More than a thousand. Snow fell. Ice encrusted the roads and the houses, and sometimes the people if they weren’t careful, but I had never known the truth of it until this moment. Deprived of my spectral immunity, the blistering cold gripped my human body in an icy clasp. I wore only a raincoat—a compromise I’d given into because it discomfited the newly dead to be received by Death unclad—but nothing else, not even shoes. Sam teased me constantly about that. Yet one more reason to kill him, if only so he wouldn’t get that vindicated smirk on his face.

  My toes were numb, my feet in agony. The snowy ground felt like a carpet of splintered glass. It seemed an absurd joke. For millennia I had longed to feel the air against my skin once more. Ten minutes outside in an Iowa winter had me vowing never to complain again, silently begging to be released from this frozen hell.

  Where in God’s name was that house?

  After another interminable few minutes shambling along the dark street full of dark houses, I was delivered. The smaller structure next to the house at the end of the block belonged to Sam. What had he called it? A garage? A sanctuary? I couldn’t recall just then, my thoughts addled by my frozen skin and violent shivering. It didn’t matter anyway. It would be warm in there and once I thawed out, I could get to the business of killing Sam.

  When I reached the bottom of the stairs that led to his home, I almost gave up. They seemed endless to my shaking legs. As soon as I had the thought, I grit my teeth, grabbed the wooden railing, and forced my body to move. I was Death. I would not be defeated by a common set of stairs. I would not fold up under a pile of whiney, physical complaints.

  My lungs, however, didn’t comply as well as my limbs to this order. Frosty air crackled in my chest, choking, constricting. My head was spinning by the time I reached the door. I tried to see inside but only caught a dim reflection of my own face, pinched with wrath and cold. I lifted a hand and pounded three times on the window with a numb fist.

  No one answered. No light turned on within.

  Curse that locksmith! When I got my hands on him, I would drag him out of his cozy bed and hurl him into a snowbank.

  I braced my shoulder against the doorframe and tried again, though my arm didn’t have as much force behind it this time. If he hadn’t heard the first knock, he definitely wouldn’t wake up that time.

  To my surprise, a light switched on illuminating the small kitchen just inside. A lumbering shadow moved across one wall accompanied by drowsy steps before the door opened. The light inside blinded me at first and I squinted, eyes watering. I had to tilt my head back to fully see Sam where he filled the doorway. Had he always been this tall? He wore a white t-shirt, boxers, and socks. Slouching slightly from the chill, he gave me a sleepy, disgruntled look I wanted to punch off his face.

  “Using the door, Alice? Are you being ironic or just trying out the novelty?”

  “Y-You…” Blistering rage filled me though it did nothing to warm my body. I couldn’t get anything more through my chattering teeth.

  He stood straighter, frowning. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you shivering?”

  “It’s c-c-cold y-you—” Idiot. That’s what I would’ve said but I shook so hard I almost bit my tongue in the attempt. Instead of trying to explain, I lurched toward him, intent on pushing past him and his befuddled expression.

  Or I would have if my legs hadn’t failed me after the first step. I crashed against Sam who staggered back with a startled ooph. He tripped on the entry rug and we tumbled together to the floor. Moving wasn’t an option for me then, even with the indignity of being sprawled on the tile. The warmth of his living quarters enveloped my skin. Blessed relief!

  “Wait, are you…” Sam sat up so fast I practically bounced off him. He turned me over as he might a frozen fish and stared wide-eyed, face slack with shock. “Is this real? Are you really here?”

  After the bitter cold outside, his hands on my shoulders were like bands of fire and I groaned. He let me go, hopped to his feet and disappeared. I stared up at the light dangling over his kitchen counter, shuddering without any ability to stop. The door slammed shut and Sam’s face, notably paler, appeared over mine a seco
nd later.

  “I don’t know what’s going on but your lips are blue. Explanations can wait until after you’re warm.”

  I would have been happy to explain how this was all his fault but his arms slid under mine, hauling me up, and I lost the thought. After a very awkward, very laborious stumble together to his bed on the far side of the room, he arranged me with my back to the headboard and covered my legs in the comforter. The mattress and blankets were still marvelously warm from when he’d lain in them minutes ago.

  “You’ll need dry clothes too. Can you…” he gestured to the raincoat I wore. “Do you need help to, uh…I mean, are you wearing anything under…”

  I glared back at him, diminished though it was in my current state. I could barely curl my fingers let alone untie the belt cinched at my waist. Why did he look so terrorized?

  He caught my glare and shook his head at himself. “Right. Right. Dumb of me to ask. I’ll help you.”

  It was ridiculous and somehow endearing the way he kept his gaze riveted on the wall behind me while gently removing the coat. He had to lean me forward against him to unthread my arms from it. All the while a flush pooled across his cheeks, crawled up his neck and reddened the tips of his ears. A laugh huffed out of me. Ah, so that was it. I’d forgotten physiological crisis of these situations. It had been so long since I’d been the cause, it had fallen below my notice for centuries. And really, the living had no concept of what it meant to be exposed until they stood before me, shed of their mortal flesh, covered in naught but the truth of a finished life.

  “There, all cozy.” Sam had helped me to don a dark blue sweatshirt he’d retrieved from the dresser against the sidewall. He pulled the blankets over my shoulders, still not meeting my eyes. Was he perspiring? “Don’t sleep yet. I’m going to get something warm for you to drink.”

  He dashed off before I could say a word, but he needn’t have worried. I was already feeling much improved in the warm bed and dry clothes. Cozy indeed. My toes ached but responded when I wiggled them under the covers.