by Ira Bloom
Esme gave up on the note. She flipped it back and forth, front to back to front a few times, to see if anything else caught her eye, but it was hard to focus on. Norman’s letter was some pathetic attempt to get her attention. But there was P.S. on the back of the letter, and her heart felt like it had just crashed into a wall and flattened out and splattered inside her chest:
P.S. Wilson said he saw your sister Veronica ditching first period today with Zack and getting into his car.
By three thirty that afternoon, there were only two cars left in the student parking lot: Esme’s Subaru and Norman’s Denali. Norman drove the huge SUV out of necessity, for the size, though he was aware that the thing killed about a polar bear a mile from all the carbon emissions. His father had hired an auto-body shop to move the driver’s seat back an extra eight inches. Norman had come to Esme’s car and rapped on the window when the last straggling students had left the parking lot, but she would not acknowledge him. She kept fiddling with her phone, messaging Veronica, emailing her, calling her, texting her. Somewhere in Middleton, Ronnie’s phone was beeping and buzzing and pinging and tumbling, but she never picked up.
It was after four when the Mercedes sedan pulled into the parking lot. Norman was there beside it before it had rolled to a stop, trying to yank the passenger side door open. It was locked. He gave the handle a tug that showed he meant business. It rocked the entire car. It was a wonder the door didn’t come off the hinges.
Esme was beside Norman. There was an audible click as the door unlocked, and the giant yanked it open instantly. Norm had no business meddling whatsoever, but Esme was glad he was there. Ronnie was going to catch an earful from her big sister, and then Barry would be brought into it and Melinda, and Veronica would be grounded for the rest of eternity.
Esme was just about to give Ronnie a piece of her mind, trying to figure out how to sound mature and responsible in front of Zack without appearing a nag. Norm looked like he might erupt at any minute. “I need to talk to you, Zack,” he said forcefully. “Alone.”
“You two go ahead,” Esme improvised. She’d give Ronnie hell in private, and Zack would never be the wiser. “I need to talk to Ronnie.”
Zack casually unfolded himself from the driver’s seat and stood. Next to Norman, he was tiny, but he held his poise perfectly. The two crossed the parking lot, away from the girls, toward the bleachers. The field was deserted. The Timberwolves’ season was over. There would be no regionals, for the last-place team in the division.
Esme turned her attention to her deliriously giddy sister. “Ronnie, have you been drinking?”
Veronica spun around, arms extended, like Julie Andrews in the Alps. The parking lot was alive with the sound of music. “Not drinking, silly,” she reported, giggling. “Kissing.”
Apparently, Ronnie was not racked with remorse about missing school. “Do you know what Dad is going to say when I tell him you ditched school to ride around with a boy?”
“I don’t care,” Ronnie said petulantly, if it’s possible to be petulant and blissed out of one’s skull at the same time. She spun around a few more times, then teetered into her older sister, who caught her before she fell dizzily to the asphalt. “Oh, Esme, I had the most amazing time of my life. You are happy for me, aren’t you?”
Before Esme could respond, which might easily have involved hair pulling and the clawing out of eyes, she was distracted by an altercation. Norm’s voice was carrying over the parking lot, and he sounded angry. “C’mon, Ronnie,” she yelled over her shoulder.
“I know what you’re up to!” Norm yelled.
“You’re barmy, mate,” Zack said calmly.
“I’m only going to tell you this once,” Norman said, looming. “You leave Veronica alone. You don’t touch her, you hear me? Or Katy, or Esme. They’re my friends. Think of them as my sisters. And I’m their overly protective, psychotic older brother.”
“Really not your business, mate,” Zack replied amiably. “Anyway, we were just snogging.”
“I don’t care what you were doing, cut it out,” the giant warned, taking another step forward. Esme had seen this dance before. Zack hadn’t given ground last time, but this time he did, a little. Norman was that intimidating. “If I hear about you going near any of them again, you’re going to have to answer to me.”
“Now wait just a minute,” Esme objected. “Who the hell do you think you are, Norman? Do you have any idea how insulting that is, you coming on with your macho crap and trying to protect me? I’m an independent woman, and I can take care of myself. And my own baby sister, too, who’s too young to date, by the way, Zack. So just butt out, Frank N. Stein.”
“You tell ’em, sister!” Veronica chimed in. “But not the dating thing. I’m old enough,” she reassured Zack with a wink that involved both eyes. She couldn’t coordinate just the one.
“Esme. You’re not thinking right at the moment. And I’m not going to let this … this monster … ” Norm practically spat. “If he comes near you, I swear, I’m going to take him out. I don’t need your permission. This is between me and Zack.”
“Get stuffed,” Zack returned. “I don’t care how big you are, I’m not intimidated by you. Back off!” Then Zack did something that looked entirely stupid: He shoved Norman, who was nearly three times his size, with both hands.
Norman bent over a little at the shove, and had to take two quick steps back to keep his balance. Zack’s shove had been lightning fast, and his strength was uncanny. In response, Norm backhanded the smaller boy with a hand like a steam shovel. Zack tried to duck away, but the hand sent him sprawling.
Zack came back at Norman with fists in a blur. There was no way to defend against it, so Norman took body blow after body blow, and every strike was bone-shaking. Norm scrambled to get a punch in or defend himself or grab Zack, to no avail. And all the while, Esme was screaming “Norm! Stop it, don’t hurt him!”
Me? Hurt him? Norman thought, as Zack continued to pound away at him with sledgehammer blows and near impunity. He took punch after punch, until he recognized a pattern and caught one of Zack’s fists in his left hand in a grip like a bear trap. If Zack wanted his arm back, he’d have to chew off the hand at the wrist. Zack continued to punch with his right hand and kicked at Norman’s shins. Norman felt those kicks. They were agony. Norm was trying to reel Zack in, but the smaller boy was elusive. Zack jumped up, gaining leverage, and pounded Norm hard with a downward strike to the temple that would have felled a bull elephant. Esme had seen a punch like that once. It had put Danny Long in a coma.
Norman reeled. His eyes rolled up in his head, but he held on to Zack’s hand, and now he brought his own right hand in to slap at Zack’s neck, except he held on and wrapped his huge fingers around the smaller boy’s throat, squeezing. Esme was screaming in Norm’s ears, pulling at him, and Veronica was pounding on his back, but it was like two flies buzzing around. Norm squeezed harder still. It would have been the end of almost anyone. But not Zack.
Zack used his free hand to pry Norm’s thumb off his windpipe. Norman felt the thumb bend back. If there was one thing Norman was confident of, it was that he had the strongest grip on Earth. A hydraulic jack shouldn’t have been able to move his thumb from Zack’s throat. But Zack pulled it back with enough strength to break the bone. Something had to give, and soon.
Norm threw Zack to the ground. Zack was back on his feet in a flash, coming back for more, tapping at his neck and looking at his hand. “You bloody tosser,” Zack snarled. “You cut me!”
“Oh, sorry,” Norman replied. His anger of a few minutes before was dissipating. Norman looked into his palm and fiddled with something. “My ring, it has a sharp edge inside. Here, I’ll take it off.” The ring was a huge affair of braided copper and brass bands. Norman worked it off his finger and put it into his jacket pocket.
But as he did, Zack attacked again, enraged. He’d gone entirely feral. He moved like a mongoose striking a cobra. In one move, he had a straight razo
r in his hand. He wove into Norman’s space, around the left arm on the outside, leaping and spinning, and slashed down at the giant’s neck with the blade. His movement was so fast, Esme and Veronica never saw the knife. Zack slit Norman’s neck, deep. Blood poured out, soaking Norm’s collar. He slapped his right hand over the wound, trying to hold the blood in.
“Norman, stop!” Esme shouted.
Norm staggered back, holding his neck. In that moment, Esme and Veronica were in front of the giant, facing him, arms extended.
“Norman, get out of here,” Ronnie screamed. “Leave Zack alone!”
Norm looked imploringly from Esme to Veronica. How could they side with Zack? The sisters were looking at him like he was some kind of monster, with their arms out to protect the actual monster from him. The wound to his throat was nothing compared to the betrayal he felt. Behind the girls, Zack was pacing with a feral glint to his eyes. He wanted more! Yet there was still the intelligence there. He wasn’t going to attack, because he knew he’d won. In the battle for Esme and Veronica, Zack had won.
Norman wheeled his SUV into the parking lot of the clinic recklessly, steering with one hand, the other clutched to his throat, dizzy from loss of blood. His shirt and jacket were soaked with the stuff. He staggered into the living room. “Dad,” he yelled, slamming through the swinging double doors into the clinic proper.
His father came running out of the lab in hospital scrubs. “Exam room one, stat!” he bellowed, grabbing an emergency kit from the nurses’ station.
The wound was deep, but very clean. After stopping the blood with pressure, Dr. Stein sutured his son’s neck. “I never meant for you to take risks like this,” he chastised, trembling. He had to stop and pull himself together to continue stitching. “This could have been a fatal wound. Don’t ever do anything like that again.”
“Yeah, I think he was going for the jugular,” Norm acknowledged. “Bet he didn’t expect to run into titanium rebar. Man, he is fast. And strong! Superhuman, no question.”
“I spent the morning at the police station,” Dr. Stein said. “We’ll get no help there. Everyone I talk to gets this glazed-over expression if I mention Drake Kallas or his son. Post-hypnotic, almost a drugged effect. All the cops can say is what great citizens they are, and how they had nothing to do with the disappearance of those girls.”
“So if they mesmerized the police to believe they had nothing to do with the disappearances, we can conclude that they’re responsible for the disappearances,” Norm inferred.
“Almost certainly,” said his father. “Norman, I don’t want you confronting Zack anymore. I talked to the coroner; there’s nothing left of the Sharp family to examine, but he confirmed what your friend Wilson mentioned, that the dog was found with a broken neck in the dog run outside. There was an open dog door leading into the house. The dog was a retired police canine; it would have warned the family of the fire, if it hadn’t been a murder.”
“Yeah. We should probably sleep with one eye open.”
“The clinic is relatively secure. Remember, there used to be a pharmacy here, so there’s a very high-tech security system.” Dr. Stein finished suturing his son’s neck and leaned back to inspect his handiwork. “You’ll have a scar,” he advised. He laughed at the absurdity of the statement. It was like telling Lydia the tattooed lady she’d have a smudge. “Anyway, I hope it was all worth it.”
Norman reached into his jacket pocket and removed the very large copper-and-bronze ring he’d constructed out of twisted wire. On the inside of the ring was a small surgical lance, with a one-quarter-inch blade. Attached to the inside of the ring beneath the lance in a wire basket of copper was a small vial with a rubber stopper in it. In the vial was about a half ounce of Zack’s blood. “Totally worth it, I think,” Norm said.
Esme’s bedroom was starting to look like a sci-fi lab from a B movie. She still had the old door and sawhorses in her room, from the dinner party that now seemed like years ago. On top of this large workspace she’d set up her lab equipment, and now things were bubbling and distilling and infusing and smoking. A little theremin music to set the mood was all she needed.
Esme had test tubes and beakers from an old chemistry set her parents had bought for her eleventh birthday, but she’d supplemented this equipment with some sophisticated glassware from a lab supplies website. There were several Bunsen burners feeding off the propane canister from her father’s grill. There were bell jars over smoke infusions of aromatics, and burettes with pinchcocks slow-dripping extracts of botanicals onto mounds of powdered minerals and dried animal parts in crystalizing dishes. There were mortars and pestles for pulverizing herbs and making poultices to be processed into infusions and extracts. There was distillation apparatus slow-cooking concoctions that had taken Esme days to prepare. There was a round-bottom borosilicate distillation flask feeding into a copper coil that dripped a greenish ooze into a glass separatory funnel with a stopcock.
Kasha walked up and down the length of the table, sniffing at everything. “Becky used to brew up a love potion in ten days flat in a couple copper pots and a big cast-iron cauldron.”
“I intend to make a science out of this,” Esme replied. “I’m going to study biochemistry and molecular neurology at Stanford, and bring alchemy out of the dark ages.”
“Yeah, like you could get into Stanford now, with your grades.”
“I have a demon cat for a familiar, it shouldn’t be too hard to finagle something,” she countered unconvincingly, gnawing her lip. She was wearing goggles and pouring the contents of two test tubes into an Erlenmeyer flask, watching for the color of the liquids to change as they reacted. “Hey, is this supposed to turn black?”
Kasha examined the flask, sniffing. “It’s supposed to be brown, but darker is better.”
The potion was taking forever because of Esme’s obsessive inability to simply follow the instructions in the grimoire on faith. She insisted on knowing precisely what each herb was for, what the properties of all the ingredients were, and how they were used in other potions. The cross-referencing and research took forever. Kasha argued that Esme was too skeptical to ever be a good witch, that she had to throw caution to the winds and just go for it. Katy never thought twice about her magic, she just did it, he explained, and that was why magic worked for her. Esme overthought everything. She researched every incantation to the Latin roots of every word. She insisted on knowing what spirits she was invoking and how the eldritch forces affected the results in every step. Her argument was that once she knew the properties of every ingredient and the way the material and spirit worlds interacted, she’d have the building blocks to create her own potions and spells, and improve on the ones in the grimoire. Esme was giving herself an education not only in the practice of magic but also in the underlying fundamentals. Kasha could not sway her with his demonic mumbo-jumbo.
Esme went to the computer to research whether a specific Roma phrase, which she’d tracked to a Hindustani root, was invoking an elemental, a nature force she felt she could trust, or a spirit that might have malignant intent. She was disturbed by a soft but persistent rapping at the door. She went and opened it a crack. Veronica, looking exceedingly anxious. She’d driven her sister home after the fight at school, and Ronnie had been insufferably blissful about all the smooching she’d done with Zack that day. Esme hadn’t ratted the girl out to her father, though, on the theory that Katy’s retaliation was likely to be punishment enough.
“Esme, did you take the grimoire back?” Veronica asked nervously.
“Not I. Must be Katy. She was home all day with cosmic farts, for some reason. Didn’t you set wards in your room?”
“No. What are wards?” Veronica craned her neck to get a look into Esme’s room. “What are you doing in here with all the lab equipment?”
“Science homework,” Esme lied.
When they’d gotten home that afternoon, Esme had reconstructed the fight blow by blow for the benefit of poor Katy, who again
had missed out on all the violence. Katy had been on the toilet all day with the grimoire, searching for counter-charms, and had finally come up with an antidote in the early afternoon.
“Oh, it’s not over,” Katy had promised Esme with cold, calculated intent. “Veronica Silver has crossed the line this time. I’m going to teach her a lesson she’s never going to forget. She’s going to beg me to lift this curse. And my price will be that she never speak to Zackery Kallas again.” Esme had to take a step back from Katy. The girl was clearly crackling with static electricity. Her eyes were glowing.
“This isn’t like you, Katy,” Esme had pled, scared for Ronnie. “Maybe I could talk to her? And you two could stop this hexing and cursing.”
“Sure, sweetie,” Katy said, walking past. She touched Esme on the cheek. Esme nearly jumped out of her skin at the shock. “But after. Trust me, it’ll all be over in a couple of days.”
Outside Esme’s bedroom door, Ronnie was shivering. “Esme, I’m scared. Do you have any idea what Katy’s planning?”
Esme stepped out of her bedroom to the strip of hallway at the bottom of the stairs, closing the door behind herself, then took Ronnie in her arms and hugged her, brushing her hair back from her face. “I have no idea, honey, but be prepared for the worst.”
“I don’t know what came over me. You know I love Katy, don’t you? It’s just … I can’t explain how desperately I need to have Zack. She’s never even kissed him. And she’s trying to take him from me. It’s so awful, why would she do that to me?”
“Honey, maybe she wants him just as much as you do, did you think of that?” Do you ever think of anything except yourself? Do you even care that your oldest sister loves the same boy?
