by Deanna Chase
Beyond the large picture windows at the back, I could see the ship’s balcony, flanked by a bright red railing. According to the emergency exit map, three floors rose above river level, one below. And of course, we had Ant Eater’s mysterious visitor on the main deck, right above the massive, red water wheel.
A slot machine whirled and chimed, odd since the plug was nowhere near the electrical outlet. Instead it swished like a three-pronged tail. “Two in one day!” The machine’s Lucky 7’s spun around and landed on 7-7-7. “Tell me, young lady. You feelin’ lucky?”
I hoped it was a pre-programmed voice. “Are you talking to me?” Please don’t be possessed. I didn’t have the time.
“Funny you should ask. Nobody’s ever asked me that before. But I tell you, it’s been lonely around here. Just the other day, or was it year? I was—”
Enough. I plucked a Freeze Spell from behind the roulette wheel and chucked it at Lucky 7. His voice, thank the heavens, groaned to a stop.
I made my way through the casino and toward the main deck, plucking magic from behind the round, Dixie Queen life preserver and under poker tables. I learned to avoid Itch Spells, got caught up in a few Transport Spells. I had my suspicions about who planted those, since they always sent me to the men’s john. And eyow—Love Spells tended to bite.
The main deck seemed empty. I was almost disappointed. I would have liked to see what they had going up here, friend or foe. Ever since I’d faced down the black souls, I felt pretty good about my odds with the average human. A gooey spell clung to the underside of the huge, red paddlewheel. I leaned under the railing to snag it with my fingers.
“Stop!” A pair of shiny red pumps clacked across the back deck of the ship.
I snapped upright. Oh my word. My voice dried up as I stared at a cheap imitation of my adoptive mother. The woman wore the same fashionable crimson glasses, as if she’d decided to be Hillary for Halloween. She’d styled her hair into blond waves, like Hillary. Her gray pantsuit, although not as expensive as Hillary’s (I hoped) accented her figure. Unlike my adoptive mom, it looked like this woman could put away a cheeseburger. Still, I noticed an unsettling resemblance, right down her French tipped fingernails. A green and white flecked Choking Spell zoomed for her neck.
“Watch out!”
She flicked it away and I watched it land with a plop in the river. “Oh don’t worry,” she said, misjudging my open mouthed horror, “it can swim.”
I felt my concentration falter. The gooey spell tried to sneak behind me. It’d be heck to catch if it made it under one of the tables. I lunged for it.
“Lizzie, no!”
Terror seized me as I watched my hands disintegrate. There was no pain, only a horrible numbness. Blood poured from my wrists. It too faded, along with my forearms, my elbows, my—oh my God!
“Elizabeth Gertrude Brown! Stop that immediately!”
The spell blew away on the breeze. Bit by bit, like a macabre puzzle, my hands came together again. I swallowed hard and flexed my fingers, trying to get a grip on what happened.
I stood there for a long moment, stunned.
“I’m sorry I yelled, but you should be immune to those spells. I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” she scolded.
It couldn’t be. “Mom?” I asked shakily, forcing myself to tear my eyes away from my arms and hands. How else would she know my middle name?
A single tear slid down the ruddy blush line on her cheek. “It’s me, baby.”
Chapter 18
This was so not the Oprah-style family reunion I’d dreamed of as a kid. I stood slowly, apprehension prickling up my spine. “I thought you were supposed to be hiding.”
She wiped at her cheeks. “I was,” she said, reaching into her pocket, then thinking the best of it. She withdrew her hand slowly.
I froze, every nerve on high alert. The devil takes on many forms.
“How do I know you’re my mom?”
Her expression softened. “Do you still have that strawberry birthmark on the back of your left thigh?”
Cripes. “What are you doing here?” It came out harsher than I’d intended. Blame it on shock, or pure self preservation.
“You’re leaving with me. Come on,” she said, heels clickety clacking as she tried to lead me off the main deck.
Say what? I held my ground. “I don’t think so.” She couldn’t just show up after thirty years, from the dead no less, and expect me to start following orders. The witches certainly didn’t want her here—not if they were trying to hide her. And what about I missed you, Lizzie. I love you, Lizzie.
I regret abandoning you, Lizzie.
She turned, her hands thrust on her hips. “You have no idea what kind of danger you’re in,” she said, desperation mixed with annoyance.
And she did? “Why are you in such a rush to save me?” I asked. After Xerxes the demon, imps, werewolves, black souls, Harley witches and a lying…whatever Dimitri was, “Why now?” I asked, reaching for my switch stars. The cool metal began to vibrate as I worked my fingers around the holes.
“I thought I’d hidden you from this kind of life. These people. And those terrible switch stars. Please stop spinning that.”
“What?” I glanced absently at the switch star on my finger. “Wait. You knew where I was all these years?” When Hillary put me in a fat camp for being five pounds overweight, when I wasn’t allowed to wear jeans, even in the house, when I had to pose at those stupid society picnics when all I wanted to do was run around like a normal kid.
I’d dreamed about this moment—about meeting my birth mom. And it sucked.
“Lizzie,” she said, and held up her hand. “We have to leave. Now.” She made her way toward the pilot house, beckoning me to follow. What? Was she going to try and launch the ship? I could see us now, sailing down the Yazoo, mother and daughter on a bewitched boat.
I followed, mainly to bag a particularly nasty looking Lose Your Keys Spell. I plunked it in the jar. If only we could rid the world of those things. I’d be willing to bet they reproduced like rabbits.
Oh, who was I kidding? I had a question I’d been wanting to ask for decades.
Mom said a few incantations over the door and the lock clicked open.
Now or never. The question burned in the pit of my stomach. “Why did you leave me?” I asked. Please let it be because you loved me.
She paused, doorknob in hand. “We don’t have time for this.”
“We do,” I told her, my voice sounding steadier than I felt. “Because I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers.” No matter how much it hurt. She owed me a heck of a lot more explanations than this one.
She shifted from one sky high pump to the other, the thick, humid breeze blowing her over-stylized hair up in wings around her head. “Lizzie, you have to understand. I gave you up precisely so I’d never find you again. And these people wouldn’t, either. Do you know what they want you to do? Of course you do. You draw those switch stars like a gunfighter. But it’s not fun and games. You could lose your soul.”
The thought made me shiver despite myself. I didn’t want to think about what I could lose. “They’ve got Grandma.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I felt it when they took her.”
“We have to fix it.” Together, we’d have a better chance at defeating Vald.
“No, Lizzie. We’re getting out of here. End of story,” she said, snagging the Hot Foot Spell that hovered at her ankle. “Gertie chose her path, and now she’s living with the consequences. You can still have a normal life.”
“But Grandma saved you,” I protested. How could mom just leave her like that?
“Lizzie,” she barked. Boy, it didn’t take her long to find her “mom” voice. “I didn’t ask her to save me and I don’t owe her my life.” Mom held on to the doorknob of the pilot’s house, as if she didn’t want me to see what lurked inside. “You don’t owe her yours, either. You can still have a normal life.”
I couldn�
��t believe she wanted me to abandon Grandma. “Like you?”
“Yes.” She squared her shoulders. I write a small society column for a newspaper in Freeburg.”
Where was a good Choking Spell when I needed it? “You can’t just barge in here, scare the pants off me and try to get me to abandon the only real family I’ve ever had.” Yeah, I knew it probably hurt her, but I wanted to at the moment.
She cocked her head. “Drop the switch stars. Leave this place. Come live with me in my condo in Freeburg. I’ll take you to the Lone Star Café and we’ll talk about how you can have a new life without fifth level demons, black souls or werewolves.”
Poor Fang. “So you saw that too?” I asked, noticing a Frozen Underwear hovering near her left hip.
Her eyes softened a bit. “I’m so sorry it ended badly.”
“Me too.” I caught a Giggler and sent it to join the mustard-colored smoke drifting skyward.
She sighed. “I had no idea they’d blame the poisonings on you.”
Say what? If she wasn’t my mother, I think I would have hurled a switch star. “You poisoned the wolves?”
“I had to get you out of there,” she said, as if that was any kind of excuse. “You were too close to completing your training.” She pursed her lips, then said, “Do you know it took your Great Aunt Evie a decade to master the Three Truths? Granted, she started at the age of nine, but still! She sat around for the next eleven years, waiting to turn thirty. And you, you zip right through and want to go face a fifth level demon? For crying out loud, Lizzie, I wouldn’t be surprised to see you go after the devil himself. And for what? You don’t need this. It’s a horrible, horrible life.”
She’d sent me to join Cliff and Hillary in their perfect world, then she’d gone on to create a similar nirvana for herself. I couldn’t have turned out any more different from each and every one of them. But it didn’t matter now. We needed to focus on fixing this thing with Vald. “Help me save Grandma. You don’t want to lose her. I know you don’t.”
A sad smile played across her features. “I’d rather lose her than lose both of you. I’m sure she’d say the same thing, Lizzie. She wouldn’t want you going down there unprepared and you’ll never be good enough to face a fifth level demon.”
Okay, that stung. She looked at me like I was the most pitiful thing she’d ever seen.
“But I’m a demon slayer.”
“So was I.”
My brain buzzed as I tried to process that last thought.
“You what?”
She waved a hand. “That’s beside the point.”
“Oh no, no, no. Tell me right now what you’re talking about or I’m going to leave you and this conversation right now.”
“I’m the chosen one,” she said, as if she was about to tell me I needed to have a root canal. “I mean, count it out. Take it from your Great Aunt Evie, who was actually your Great, Great, Great Aunt. Then her twin sister Edna, but we don’t count her because a demon stole her soul right after training. Skip three generations and you have me. And then, well, by accident—you.”
Nobody had ever put it that way before.
“What do you mean I was an accident?”
“I was smarter than them,” she said, a little too deviously. “I studied everything they gave me, and I did more. I talked to everyone I could—visiting sorcerers, black magicians, warlocks. They thought I was a prodigy. And I learned things all right,” she said with a wicked smile. “I learned how to beat it.”
Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the mule. She foisted her destiny off—on me?
“It’s the only way,” she insisted, daring me to judge her.
I couldn’t believe it.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, rubbing my temples to keep my head from pounding out of my skull. “You were overwhelmed with your enormous powers, powers your loving family had trained you to use. So you left them to die, dumped your powers onto me and then scuttled me off to an adoptive family while you ran?”
She didn’t even pretend to look guilty. “It was the only way.”
“Bullshit.” I needed to get off this boat. I stormed for the main staircase, nearly tripping over a Stubbed Toe Spell. Mom chased me, setting off three Frozen Underwears. Served her right.
She ignored them as we clattered down the ornate iron staircase. “Stop being unreasonable, Lizzie. I thought if I hid you, you’d never know what I was or what you are. It didn’t work. I admit that. We can still be a family and figure out a way to end the slayer line for good.”
I came to a halt on a small landing, tears welling in my eyes. For the love of Laconia, I couldn’t let her get to me. As a kid, I’d daydream about what it would be like to meet my real mom. She’d be beautiful and strong and not afraid of anybody. Instead, she was everything I feared I’d become.
I didn’t know if I had the strength or the courage to defeat Vald. But unlike my mom, I knew I had to try.
“Run with me,” she insisted. “We can find a way for you to reject your powers.”
As much as I never wanted this. And as much as I’d always wanted my real mom, I couldn’t have it this way. I needed her and she’d abandoned me. I wasn’t about to leave Grandma in the same position.
“No, Mom,” I said, wiping my runny nose on Dimitri’s T-shirt. “I’m going to face Vald. You want to make a difference? Help me.”
She fiddled around in her purse, her makeup cases clacking together while she rifled through lipsticks and who knew what else? “Here.” She jabbed a lipstick smeared hankie at me. “Wipe your nose.”
Ew. These germ magnets should have been outlawed as soon as Kleenex was invented. But Mom seemed ready to wipe my nose for me if I let her. I found a clean looking spot and dabbed to be polite. The hankie smelled like jasmine with side of pickle relish. Strange. Mom drew a fragile breath, as my world went black.
Chapter 19
Ant Eater shook me hard. “Wake up, miss giggle spell.”
I dragged my arms over my eyes, fighting the hangover of the century. My skull felt like an anchor on the hard, wooden deck. I was with my mom and she…son of a submariner, she drugged me. “Watch out for Phoenix,” I muttered. “She has a hankie.”
“Did you hit her with a Brain Stealer?” Frieda demanded.
“Oh, I’d like to hit her with a lot worse than that,” Ant Eater countered, poking me in the shoulder. I squinted my eyes open. The sunset cast low shadows over the deck of the Dixie Queen. Ant Eater, Frieda and about six other witches crouched over me, forming a circle of curious faces. A white bandage tented Ant Eater’s nose and gauze stuffed each swollen nostril. She must have beat the Giggle Spell into submission. She glared at me from under two black eyes.
My heart thumped. I could feel my pulse throbbing through my body, against the moldy deck. Mom hadn’t stolen me away. Thank God. I didn’t know what I would have done if— “Where’s mom?”
Even Frieda managed to look annoyed at that. “She had a transport portal set up in the pilot’s room. Lucky for us she decided to suck you down feet first. Sorry about your shoes. Ant Eater here hit her with a Hairy Ball.”
“I was saving it for a special occasion,” she grinned. “There’ll be Big Foot sightings in Freeburg for sure.”
“I don’t even want to know,” I said, struggling to sit up. Pain spiked through my head, making my mind swim for a moment. I’d lost my oxfords. Socks too. “Thanks for stopping her.” I didn’t know what I’d do if she’d kept me from Grandma.
Ant Eater sniffed, then winced. “Don’t thank me, sugar lips. He’s the one who got us up here.”
Just when I didn’t think my head could feel any worse, Dimitri stepped into my line of vision, his travel bag slung over his shoulder. Of course he hadn’t taken the time to throw on a shirt. Damn the man. The hard plane of his chest disappeared in to the dirty jeans slung low over his hips. Hurt, disappointment, heaven knew what else churned into a heavy black lump in my stomach. He looked contrite, sad, serious, all of t
he things I’d expect. And it pissed me off anyway.
“We were going to do a quick ceremony to polish up your aura,” Frieda said, squatting down to brace me in a sitting position. “But we didn’t see any possum on the way over.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. It was a sad, sad day when this sort of stuff started making sense. “Don’t worry about it, Frieda,” I said. I’d hoped for whatever help they could give me tonight, wanted it. But in the end, it came down to one thing. I had to trust myself. I had to let go, accept my powers, trust the universe.
I also had to watch out for my mother, or a hairy version thereof. Something told me I’d be seeing her again.
Scarlet popped a hard, red candy in my mouth. It tasted like strawberry cream soda and danged if it didn’t work wonders on my magical hangover. As the throbbing eased and the cobwebs cleared, I lurched to my feet. “How much time do we have?” I asked, purposely avoiding Dimitri’s gaze.
Ant Eater furrowed her thick eyebrows, suspicious—as she should have been—at my asking. “It’s almost six o’clock now…” She added in her head. “Just over an hour.”
That couldn’t be right. “I thought our window of opportunity opens at midnight.”
“That’s hell central time,” she said, winding her watch. “We’re five hours behind.”
Naturally. “Well, in that case, I have something to do.”
Frieda knitted her brows. Ant Eater scowled. And Dimitri? I didn’t give a flying fart what he thought as I sauntered barefoot off the Dixie Queen and made tracks for my Harley.
***
“You went shopping?” Pirate had chased my bike for the last quarter mile as I made my way back to the Dixie Queen. Pirate dance in place as I yanked off my helmet and climbed off the bike. Strings of lights illuminated the decks of the Dixie Queen as it bobbed in the ominously swelling current of the Yazoo River.
