by March, Lucy
“Disappeared? Like witness protection disappeared, or Jimmy Hoffa disappeared?”
He looked at me. “I don’t know. But it’s not a chance I’m willing to take.”
I sat back, feeling dizzy. “God, Tobias, I’m so sorry.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Me, too.” He sat there for a while, his eyes on me, and finally said, “Do you understand now?”
“Of course,” I said. “But you were a kid. It was an accident. You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m going to help you finish this thing with Davina. I’m going to see you safely through to the end. Then you’ll go to Europe, or stay here. Whatever you want to do. But when it’s done, I’m leaving.”
I felt a stab of panic run through me. “Why? Have they contacted you?”
“No. I’m gonna contact them.”
“Are you going to say good-bye first?”
“Does that matter?”
“Did you get to say good-bye to your family?”
He watched me for a long moment, and then shook his head.
“Then you should know it matters.”
He sighed. “Yeah. I’ll say good-bye first.”
With that, he grabbed his duffel bag and went upstairs. I watched him until he was gone, and then stared at the space where he had been for a while, my mind drifting over a million things, but never able to focus entirely on one.
Then, quietly and without the slightest question as to what the hell I thought I was doing, I snuck down to the basement, walked over to the cement steps that led out the exterior bulkhead doors, and walked into town.
Alone.
*
I barely noticed where I was on the three blocks into town. I was on autopilot, my body moving while my mind wandered around elsewhere, thinking about Tobias, Millie, Peach. It was as though my brain was in a jumble, too distracted to recognize what the body it was attached to was doing. I didn’t regain consciousness of my surroundings until I made it to the town square, and saw her, sitting on one of the benches, just … watching. She looked so harmless sitting there, like a benevolent matron, surveying the activity at Grace and Addie’s antique shop, the opposite corner where a crew was working to fix the damage done by Frankie Biggs … and she was watching CCB’s.
She didn’t look up, but I knew she knew I was there. My mind seemed to snap back into place, and I had an instinct to run but what good would it have done? There she was, maybe ten yards from me, just a few blocks from my house. In daylight, the time when I was supposedly strong, and she was supposedly weak. I realized then that it didn’t matter what I did; this woman was in charge, and we both knew it.
So, I went and sat down next to her.
“I see you’re recovering nicely,” she said after a few moments, still not looking at me.
“What do you want?”
“Well, I think you know what I want,” she said. “Now we got all our cards on the table, what are we going to do about it?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
She nodded. “Well, I have an idea about what we might do.” And finally, she looked at me. “You want to hear it?”
“I’m all ears.”
She leaned a little bit closer. “I have played this game before, and I have won. And the secret to winning is really pretty simple. I find out what it is you love more than anything, and I use that to get your compliance.”
Tobias, I thought, with a catch in my breath, but then, as though reading my mind, she shook her head a bit and said, “Bigger than just a man, baby. I’m talking about this whole stinking, fetid town, and every sad soul in it.”
She met my eye and I blinked, trying to wrap my mind around what she was saying, exactly.
“Don’t worry. I’m not ready for any serious destruction yet. It’s going to be a few days. But once I get my full strength back, I’m going to call for you, as I did just now. And if, somehow, you work up the strength to defy me, I’m going to take something in this town.” She shrugged. “Or someone. Depends on my mood.” She pointed to Grace and Addie’s antique store. “I’ll burn that place to the ground.” Her finger moved in time with a busload of kids from the local elementary school. “I’ll send that bus plummeting off an overpass.” Then she looked at me. “I’ll sneak into your precious Betty’s apartment and choke the life out of her with her own apron strings.” A cold smile broke over Davina’s face. “And I can do it all without leaving the comfort of my bedroom. Isn’t that amazing? No one will know what’s happening to this town. Well, no one except you, and no one except me.”
My heart clunked around in my chest, in response to the chunk of ice that had settled inside me. “So what is it you want from me?”
“You know what I want,” she said, her voice going light. “Your magic.”
“I’m not going to give you that. I’ll die.”
“Well, probably, but better you than a busload of kids, right? Honestly, baby, I never had you pegged for such a selfish type.” She tsked and shook her head. “Very unattractive quality, that.”
I sat in silence for a while, and then I said, “Cain’s going to kill you.”
She chuckled. “Cain’s going to try. But here’s the raw truth, just between us girls. He doesn’t have it in him. If he did, he would have done it the night I killed your sister.”
I gripped the edge of the bench in my hands, wanting to do something, anything … but what? Turn an acorn into a snail? With all my power at my disposal, and her weakened and only able to rely on whatever premixed potions she might have in her bag, she was still more powerful than me.
“See,” she went on, “Cain had his chance, and he lost it, because the man—for all his wonderful qualities—is not a person who can seal that particular deal.” She reached out and put her hand over mine, her skin feeling cold and alien. “And neither are you. And since the only way you’re going to stop me is to kill me, then we’re going to have to find another way to settle this little problem we have.”
I pulled my hand out from under her grip. “If I give you my magic, who’s to say you won’t just go ahead and kill everyone anyway?”
She looked at me, her face shocked and almost hurt. “Oh, come on. You know why I’m doing this, don’t you?”
“Ummm … because you’re insane?”
She turned her body toward mine, leaning forward as if we were still friends. “Do you have any idea what this would mean to the Magical community? I’d be able to protect people. I’d have the power to keep them all safe from police, scientists, politicians. You think witch hunts are a thing of the past? Just look at Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; they paint it over with nice little slogans, but bigotry and fear are real, and they are deadly. If I had this power, no one would be able to harm another Magical again. We’d be on top, for once.”
“And that was worth killing the man you loved?”
Her eyes flashed with emotion, and my heart sank. It had just been a hunch, both that Davina had loved my father, and that she had killed him, but her speed at regaining her composure didn’t keep me from seeing what I was looking for.
“That’s none of your business,” she said, but I could see that I’d gotten a hit in on a tiny patch of soft underbelly, so I kept going.
“You loved my father,” I said. “And he trusted you. That’s how you knew who he was, what he was.”
Her fists clenched, but she didn’t say anything.
“You killed him when you tried to steal his magic,” I went on. “You didn’t mean to, but you killed him.”
Her eyes met mine, cold. “Who told you this?”
“In the newspaper article, they mentioned that when they dragged you half-conscious from the woods after you killed Holly, you were calling for him in your delirium. There’s only one reason I can think of why you would do that.”
Her eyebrows raised. “Nice work, Sherlock.”
She carefully
smoothed her skirt over her legs, her eyes locked on her strong fingers, and then she turned a cold smile to me.
“I’ve already lost everything,” she said, her voice quiet and oddly cold. “This is the only way to make it mean something.”
“You’re going to kill more people, including me, so you can get the power to save other people from being killed? To give my father’s death, also at your hands, meaning? Your logic’s missing a piece there.”
“My logic is not your problem. Saving this town is your problem. The only choice you have to make is how many people die. Just you, or you and a whole bunch of others.” With that, she stood up, tucked her purse over her shoulder, and landed cold eyes on me. “As you can see by this chance meeting, I can get to you whenever and however I choose. I will call you again, and when I do, you’re going to want to heed that call. Because if you don’t, I will rain such hell down on you and yours that you will wish you’d died the other night, the way you were supposed to.”
She blew me a quick kiss, then turned and walked away. I sat on the bench, shaking, a potent cocktail of fear and rage running through my veins. After a few moments, it occurred to me that I should get up and go back home.
That’s when I saw Tobias standing at the edge of the square, watching me with a stony look on his face.
18
I waited for Tobias as he walked toward me, knowing I should get up but unable to move yet. He got to me, his eyes never leaving mine as he flipped out his cell phone and hit speed-dial. A moment later, he said simply, “I got her,” and flipped it shut again.
“Let’s go,” he said, his voice gruff and angry.
I tried to get up, then said, “I can’t yet.”
His expression morphed into concern. “What happened?”
I stared up at him. “I don’t know. I just walked out of the house without thinking, and the next thing I knew, I was here.” I swallowed. “I think she put the whammy on me.”
Tobias sat down next to me on the bench and ran his hands over my arms and legs.
“I’m not injured,” I said, my voice quivering. “I just can’t move. I keep thinking, ‘get up,’ but I can’t.”
“It’s okay.” He pulled me into his arms and held me against him. “It’ll pass. Just give it a minute. Calm down, and breathe. It’s just a head game.”
I rested my head against his chest. “She did the same thing with Nick the other night, when Millie attacked Peach. At least, I think it’s the same thing.” I sighed. “I don’t know. I just … I swear, I didn’t mean to do this.”
“I believe you,” he said quietly. “We’ll just make sure you’re not alone again.”
I shuddered, even in the heat, and pulled back to look up at him. “If she wants me, she’ll get me, Tobias. I think she’s just proven she can do that.”
“No,” he said, determination in his voice. “She can’t. We won’t let her.”
We stared at each other for a while, and then I lowered my eyes, unable to deal with it all anymore. “Can we just go home?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He got up and held out his hand to me, and I took it. I rose from the bench easily, naturally, the residual effects of Davina’s power over me fully dissipated. Tobias released my hand and stepped aside for me to go ahead of him. We made our way back in silence, walking side by side.
Cain was on the porch when we got there, and he darted down to meet us on the sidewalk.
“What the hell do you think you’re—?” he began, but Tobias said, “Leave her alone,” and I was allowed to walk into my own home on my own power.
I went inside to see Betty and Stacy in the foyer, looking tense.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just…” I shot a look at Tobias. “I needed some air.”
“That’s okay, honey,” Betty said, but her eyes were tight with worry.
Stacy shook her head. “If you need air, you get air, Liv. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”
“Davina was there,” Tobias said, and I shot him a look.
Cain stepped closer, looming over me. “Where is she?”
“She’s gone,” I said, then shot guilty eyes at Betty. “I don’t know what happened. I just suddenly wanted to go outside. I didn’t think about it, I just … went. And there she was.”
Betty made a grim face. “Well, I guess that confirms our suspicions about Nick. She’s exerting some kind of mind control.”
“The coffee,” Cain said, and I looked at him.
“You think she slipped me something else in that coffee?”
He gave me a dark look and nodded. “Tell me what happened.”
I took a deep breath. “She said it would be a few days, and then, if I didn’t come to her and let her take my magic, she’d systematically start destroying the town.”
“That’s it?”
“Well, she was more flowery about it but … yeah. Them’s the CliffsNotes.”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “We’re out of time. We move tonight.”
“Wait,” I said. “She told me it would be a few days, that she wasn’t strong enough yet—”
“If she’s exerting her will over you in the daytime, she’s past strong enough,” he said. “She’s waiting for you to get your strength back, and then she’s going to strike. I say we don’t give her the chance.”
I shivered and rubbed my hands over my arms. “Well … what are we going to do?”
Cain took in a breath, thought for a moment, and said, “You said she had someone under her control? Who was it?”
I glanced at Stacy. “Well, there’s Millie.”
“Can we get to her?” Cain asked.
Stacy tensed up. “What do you mean ‘get to’?”
“If Davina’s got a conduit,” Cain said, “we can use that against her.”
“Use Millie? How?”
Cain sighed, as though he was annoyed at having to explain everything. “Running a conduit gives power. She feeds off the extra life force. But it also takes power; we cut that off, it siphons that power away from Davina. It’ll weaken her, buy us some more time.”
“Cut off? How?”
Cain thought for a moment. “You could take her as a conduit, too. Feed her some potion, take control, maybe siphon off some of Davina’s power through her.”
“Maybe? You’re not sure?”
“It’s magic,” Tobias said. “You can’t ever be sure.”
“And would this maybe include hurting Millie?” I asked.
Cain huffed. “It’s not like we’ve been testing this stuff in a lab. It’s all maybe.”
I looked at Betty. “What about Amber Dorsey? That thing with Frankie Biggs was exactly what Amber would do if she was under Davina’s control. I can spare Amber Dorsey. She stuck gum in Millie’s hair in the eighth grade.”
Betty shook her head. “She went to stay with her sister in Syracuse.”
“Then it’s gotta be Millie,” Cain said.
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “Besides, it’s not like I could get her to take potion anyway. She’s under Davina’s control at night. She’d never say yes.”
Cain looked at me like I was an idiot. “She doesn’t have to say anything. You drop it in her drink when she’s not looking, the way Davina did.”
“No. Millie’s my friend. I’m not dosing her with anything without her knowledge. Jesus. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Cain advanced on me. “Look, you can play nice or you can win. You think Davina had even a second thought about dosing your little friend?”
I took a step forward, getting in his face. “I’m not Davina. I don’t work like that.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
Tobias took me gently by the shoulders, pulled me back, and stepped in between me and Cain.
“What other ideas do you have?”
“None that involves getting permission first,” Cain spat, eyeing me with disdain.
“Oh, screw you, Dr. Doom,” I muttered.
&nb
sp; “Enough.” Tobias looked at me, and his expression told me he meant business, so I backed off a bit. He turned to Cain. “Is there anything less risky that you can think of?”
Cain eyed him for a moment, then shrugged. “Less powerful.”
“What is it?”
“I can put something together that will impede all magical influence,” he said. “That’d take a chunk out of Davina, for a little while.”
“But she’d still have to sneak it to Millie?” Stacy asked.
I sighed. “If it’s returning her free will to her…” My stomach turned at the thought, but then I relented. “I could sneak something like that. I guess. You sure it won’t hurt her?”
He met my eyes. “Sure as I can be.” Cain looked at the clock. “Okay. We got five hours till sunset. I got work to do.”
“Wait, sunset?” I said. “We’re going at night?”
He nodded. “The connection to the conduit is only open when she’s got power. That’s night.”
“But won’t Davina … I don’t know … kill us all?”
“Not if you leave me alone, let me get some work done.” And with that, he grabbed his backpack off the floor, and headed toward the basement.
Betty, Stacy, Tobias, and I stood in silence, just looking at each other for a while, and then Stacy nudged me and said, “I’m sorry, how can you not think that’s totally hot?”
*
We went to CCB’s a little after closing. The plan was fairly simple. I had called Millie and asked her to meet me there for coffee, and to talk. When Millie wasn’t looking, I was supposed to dose her coffee from the small vial Cain had tucked into my pocket.
Simple, as long as I didn’t let the idea of dosing my best friend without her consent bother me.
I waited at the counter for Millie, while Cain hid out in the kitchen, and Betty, Tobias, and Stacy sat outside in Stacy’s car, ready to charge should it all go to hell. I waited for nearly twenty minutes after our designated time, but finally, the bells on the door jingled, and Millie stepped into CCB’s. This time, her dress was black, creating a dramatic contrast with the red shoes, lipstick, and fingernails.
“Hey, there, Elvira,” I said.
Millie smirked and headed for the counter. She dumped her purse beside her, and leaned on her elbows, exposing cleavage, which, in the twenty-odd years we’d been friends, I had never seen. Even her bathing suits had been modest.
