by Catie Rhodes
“Bitch,” he hissed at me. That’s when I decided he was getting the hag if it was the last thing I did.
"Your mama.” I smiled.
Bullfrog chuckled in the corner of the room. I glanced at him and remembered Tubby’s boiled frog story. Again, I puzzled over the way Priscilla had stood next to him, seemingly guiding his words. An idea flashed. Before it could take root, I used some of my precious energy to put up a wall between the hag and me, so it couldn’t see what was coming.
Priscilla Herrera’s spirit came into the room with a blast of cold air. She hovered near, wordlessly offering her energy. I drew from her and first unbound the hag. Then I set loose just a few of my spiritual fire ants to crawl all over the hag.
The entity shifted but dug in tighter. “That’s not going to work.”
“There are two hosts in this room for you to choose from. Go now.” I gave it a shove, wishing it would see reason and not turn this into a cat fight.
“Never. I want you.” The thing’s purr raised the hair on the back of my neck. I added a few more ants to the first wave. The hag laughed at me. I ignored it and kept adding ants until they covered the hag. Then I poured all the energy I had into making their bites sting like the wrath of God.
The hag bounced around inside me, trying to find somewhere safe. I blocked off the deepest parts of me and held on tight. It felt like there was a tennis ball bouncing around inside me. Then a heavy weight formed in the bottom of my throat and began working its way to my mouth. It scraped against tender membranes and ripped open spots to claw its way higher. It blocked off my airflow. I tried to cough, hoping that would push it out. My lungs began to scream for oxygen.
“I will never forget this betrayal, you duplicitous witch. One day you will know my power. I will find a way to… What’s she doing? Make her stop!” The hag actually sounded scared.
Long skinny arms went around my sides, and I smelled a mixture of sweat and Hannah’s perfume. “It’s okay,” she breathed into my ear. “You’re not going to die.” Her fingers touched my belly button. She formed a fist, rolled it up, and then pushed in and up.
The hag flew out of my mouth and went straight for King, attaching itself to his face. I slumped with relief and took a deep breath. For the first time since the hag had bestowed itself on me, the air I breathed felt fresh and clean. My mind, clear of the hag’s hate and poison, calmed. My thoughts untangled and quit hurting so much.
The seeds of destruction the hag planted, the wishes for my own death, glowed fire hot for a second, then died down. They stayed out in the open. The hag had promised they would. But maybe I could control them. At least I’d have a chance to be okay. I took my focus off myself and watched King’s little show. A nasty smile grew on my face.
King staggered around the room, clawing at the hag, which had shrunk in size to barely as big as a Barbie doll. King kept his lips pressed shut against the hag. I needed to get that mouth open so the hag could get in.
“Where’d you hide Barbie’s murder clothes, King?” I came close but kept up my magical defenses to keep the hag out of me. Surviving another round with it was beyond my pay grade. “I need those clothes so you and Jesse can exchange places in the pen.”
King ignored me, eyes rolling wildly in their sockets. He must have realized that opening his mouth was doom. There had to be a way to get him talking. I remembered Tubby telling me the only thing King cared about was his motorcycle club. “I guess this is the end of the Six Gun Revolutionaries. I killed most of those pussies back at your compound. Now all that’s left are you and Corman. You're going to prison. Corman’s too stupid to run things by himself.”
“Stop right there,” Hannah yelled. I twisted to see her pointing a pistol at Corman. He lunged, and she fired. Corman clapped one hand over his midsection and sank to his knees, his face going ghost-pale. “You shot me, you stringy whore.”
“You deserved it, syphilis breath.” She didn’t miss a beat and kept the gun pointed at him in case he wanted another one. This tough Hannah had her uses.
I followed King, talking to the back of his head. “Scratch that. Corman’ll probably die. The Six Guns’ll die with him. You know what I’m gonna do before the cops get here? I’m gonna piss on all your jackets and burn the motherfuckers.”
Of all the things I'd said, that was enough. King spun to face me, took his hands off the hag, and reached for me. “No, you ain’t. I’m gonna kill you.”
The hag slid into his mouth. King bent at the waist and let out a deep, coughing retch. I gathered the mantle and lent power to the hag as it burrowed deep in King’s soul. I leaned into King’s face. “I hope you two assholes enjoy each other.”
Realization brightened King’s eyes with hatred, but it was too late. The damage was done. He tripped over Corman and sprawled on the floor with Trench Coat’s corpse. He lay there panting, eyes rolling in fear.
I staggered away from them, but Dillon rushed over and got in King’s face. “You really wanna confess to the cops. Tell them where the tape is. Where the clothes are. You don’t want Jesse Mace in prison no more. You know it’s your turn.”
King stared at her, hand still on his chicken-skinned throat. She repeated her message again and again until he began to nod. He took out his phone and pressed three numbers.
Corman raised his head. “What are you doing? Don’t call them. Call the damn doctor.”
King ignored him and pressed the phone tighter to his ear. Corman struggled with his father.
Tubby rose and snatched Hannah’s gun away from her. He must’ve gotten the handcuff key from the floor and freed himself. He slammed the gun into Corman’s head. He did it again and again, the clank of metal on skull just as disconcerting as it had been when Corman had done it to him. All the while, King spoke into the phone, eerily calm, explaining the day he’d helped Joey Holze cover up Paul Mace’s murder, telling them where the tape and clothes were and how to find us. I hoped the 911 operator was recording the whole mess.
Tubby’s arm went back for another slam at Corman’s head. I caught it midair. He turned to me, lips pulled back from his teeth, frightening and fierce.
“Help me tie them up. In a few minutes, King won’t want to confess.”
Tubby nodded and went back to where Bullfrog was sitting against the wall, hands still cuffed behind his back. Tubby’s handcuffs lay on the floor. He kicked them at me without turning away from Bullfrog.
He raised the gun and spoke to Bullfrog. “You went behind my fucking back. I can’t trust you no more.”
So it had been Bullfrog and not Tubby who’d betrayed us to the Six Guns. Shame filled me. I’d thought the worst of Tubby the first chance I got. I owed him an apology.
“But I saved us…” Bullfrog’s icy eyes tracked around the room. Before Bullfrog could continue, Tubby shot him in the head. The man’s body jumped once and slumped over to the side. Bullfrog’s eyes blinked as the blood pooled around his head. Tubby leaned over the dying man, unlocked his handcuffs, then shot him again in the chest.
Shock rooted me to my spot. I stood there, ears ringing, handcuffs dangling from my hand. Seeing Tubby do what came naturally to him chilled me several degrees. He was what he was, friend or not. I needed to never forget that. Dillon took the handcuffs and gently convinced King he wanted to handcuff himself. He set his phone down and did exactly as she asked.
Tubby went back to Corman’s unmoving form, cuffed his hands behind his back, and turned to glare at me. “Had to kill Bullfrog. He’d ’a done it again.”
I couldn't do anything but gulp in response and take as narrow breaths as possible. The room reeked of two violent deaths. Light shimmered in the corner nearest Trench Coat’s body. Right. Mohawk expected delivery of Trench Coat’s spirit in the next few hours. I shoved what I'd seen Tubby do into a dark little room in my mind and locked the door on it.
I approached Trench Coat’s spirit. The spirit, scared and confused, backed against the wall. Across the veil, moans a
nd screams echoed, coming closer with each second. No bright light would come for Trench Coat’s spirit. The darkness would claim him and drag him into whatever afterlife waited for lost souls like his. I uncapped the spirit bottle and said words that made me sick inside. “Hear that, Trench Coat? It’s the darkness coming to claim you. Come with me, and you won’t have to go.” My stomach churned at the wrongness of what I was doing.
My talent was helping the dead move on, not condemning them to slavery at the hands of a shapeshifting monster. But choices existed in shades of gray. I’d started this quest to save friends and family. This was what had to be done to finish it.
After I coaxed Trench Coat’s spirit into the bottle, capped the bottle, sealed it. Hands shaking, I dug in the dead man’s pockets and chose a focus object. He’d had a keychain with a wicked looking spike fastened to the loop. I figured it would do fine.
Now I could take care of the most important thing. I knelt down in front of King. “Where’s Wade?”
King’s lips stretched in a slow smile. His eyes glittered. “Dead. I shot him in the head right after I sent you that video.”
The world narrowed into a pinpoint focused on King’s ugly, malicious face. The ringing in my ears blotted out all other sounds. I got up from the floor, stumbled into the kitchen, opened a drawer and found a butcher knife. It would do.
Back in the living room, I stood over King and adjusted my grip on the knife. I’d have to stab hard if I wanted to hit his heart. I raised the knife over my head. Behind me, someone was screaming for me to stop, but I didn’t have time for them. Putting all my force behind the knife, I let it swing downward.
A strong hand closed around my wrist and jerked me away from King. The hand squeezed harder, grinding the bones of my wrist together. I yelped and dropped the knife. Tubby let go of my wrist and cupped my chin, fingers digging cruelly into cheeks.
“Did you hear what Hannah said?" he screamed.
The world snapped back into focus. Hannah stood on the other side of me, red-faced, sweaty, and panting.
“Did you see Wade’s ghost?” she managed between deep breaths.
I bent to grab the knife and get back to my task. King needed to die. He'd hurt too many people. Hannah curled her fingers in my hair and yanked my head back so we were face to face again.
“Did you see Wade’s ghost?” she gritted out through clenched teeth, her grip tight on my hair.
The pain in my scalp snapped me out of my rage. I thought about her question. “No. I didn’t.” And Wade would have come to say goodbye, maybe even offer some last advice. A tiny glimmer of hope sparked.
“I didn’t see him die.” She raised her eyebrows.
“You think King is lying?” I didn’t. He’d never lie about something so hurtful.
“I ain’t lying,” King bellowed. “I shot that motherfucker dead.”
“We have to find him.” I ran to the only other room in the cabin, the bedroom through which Corman had entered the room. The bed was mussed, but nobody was in it.
I raced to King. “Where is he?”
He worked his mouth and spat at me. I went back to where I’d dropped the knife.
Dillon hurried alongside me, talking fast. “Forget him. The cops’ll be here soon. Wade might still be alive, but he’s probably running out of time. If we wanna find him, we gotta go now.”
20
I raced out of the cabin to the van that had brought us here, yanked the door open, and saw Trench Coat had taken the keys with him. I dug in my pockets and retrieved the spike keychain I’d stolen from his corpse. The first key didn’t fit. Neither did the second one. Frustration built in me.
“Those are the wrong keys,” Hannah said from behind me. I spun. She handed me a keyring with one large key on it. I climbed into the van’s driver’s seat and started it up.
“Wait a minute. I’m going too,” she said over the rumble of the engine and went around to the passenger side and climbed in. Dillon clambered into the back, Tubby right behind her. I did a U-turn in the cabin’s tiny front yard and flew down the little dirt road, ignoring the screeching of limbs dragging against the van’s sides and the sound of the van bottoming out on the road from time to time. I came to the highway and stopped. I didn’t know where to go.
Hannah seemed to read my mind. “Okay. Slow your mind down. Think about that last video King sent, the one where Wade was calling your name.” I moaned, my body aching with the misery he must have been in. Hannah gripped my arm. “No. Put that part away. Think about what you saw.”
I saw the smoke blackened walls, as though the room had burned at some time. “King’s house. The Six Gun Compound.” Even as I said the words, they felt wrong. I searched my mind, but no better answer came. Wade could be running out of time. I screeched out onto the highway and drove toward the compound. The feeling of wrongness continued, growing stronger and stronger. I let off the gas and pulled onto the side of the road near a row of rural mailboxes.
“What is it?” Tubby's voice came from the darkness behind me.
“I’m wrong. I can't tell you why, but I know it.” Sweat ran into my eyes, burning, and I swiped at it. I patted my pockets, looking for my phone, even though I’d already noticed the absence of its familiar weight. Trench Coat must have taken it, and it was probably back in that cabin in the woods, the one with no electricity, at the Six Gun Revolutionaries’ compound. “If I could watch the video again…” I didn’t even finish the sentence.
Next to me, Hannah opened the glove box and dug around in it. She began setting phones on the van’s dashboard. I stared at her, openmouthed.
“They used to do it to me all the time. Take my phone away so I couldn't leave.” She stared into the darkness as she said the words. “Sorry I didn’t think of it sooner.” She picked her phone out the jumble and stuck it in her jeans pocket.
I grabbed my phone, went straight to the text messages, and played the video again. Hannah unbuckled her seatbelt and crowded next to me.
“You’re right,” she said. “That’s not King’s house. See the walls? King has that cheap eighties wood paneling. Even burned, it wouldn’t look like this. This is some kind of log cabin. See how thick the wood is?”
I played the video again, this time muting the sound so I wouldn’t hear Wade’s pitiful voice calling me. Hannah was right. The walls had rounded humps like a log cabin’s walls. “Maybe the bunk house?” I had never been out there.
Hannah shook her head. “It’s sheetrock out there.”
Tubby and Dillon crowded next to our seats. I played the video again. Dillon leaned so close her breath fogged the screen. I started it over.
Tubby and I spoke at the same time. “The smokehouse.”
Hannah made a face. “The one beside Long Time Gone?”
Without answering, I spun the van around and sped in the other direction. After too many minutes, I bounced across the parking lot of Long Time Gone and jerked to a stop next to the smokehouse. I fell out of the van, scrambled to the smokehouse door, and flung it open.
The smell of infection hit me, sharp and sour. A dark shape lay still against one wall. I forced myself to approach it. “Wade?”
It was so dark inside the tiny room I couldn’t see if it was him. Someone pushed a flashlight into my hand. I turned it on.
“Oh god,” Hannah moaned and backed out of the room. Her running footsteps sounded over the dirt as she fled.
“Hannah?” Dillon called after her and trudged off, grumbling.
I couldn’t move or breathe. I couldn’t even process what I saw.
Wade lay still, dark circles under his eyes, his face pale around his beard. Near his hairline on the left side was a spattering of black dots surrounding a dark pit. Blood had matted his dark hair to the side of his head. I put my hand on his chest, expecting to feel nothing but stillness and chilled skin. But fever warmed my palm.
“He’s alive,” I said to nobody in particular. I called to the last bit of my power, tr
ying to remember Wade’s healing words but realized they didn’t matter. Only intent mattered.
“Wade Hill, I call this infection out of your body and back into the earth from whence it came. I call for your head and brain to heal any damage.” Unlike Wade, I couldn’t look into a body and see the sickness. I didn't know how bad the head wound was. Still I pulled for everything I was worth. Maybe I wouldn’t kill him in the process.
The wood the smokehouse was built from, old wood grown right in this pine forest, came to life, its gentle vibration working its way through my shoes and up my legs. I drew on its power, and the spark of magic mixed with science in the flashlight’s glow. It flickered and buzzed like a dying bug. “I call the infection and the injury to come out of this body.”
Wade stirred. His chest heaved. He choked. I knelt on the nasty floor and pushed on him. Tubby appeared next to me and helped, both of us grunting. It was like trying to push a car out of a mud bog. I pulled on the magic again, the sore muscles crying out for mercy. Wade finally rolled. I stroked his filthy hair, most of it stiff with dried blood. “Go on. Let it go.”
He coughed again but nothing came up.
Magic. I needed more magic to get the sickness out of him. Dillon should have stayed. I could have combined our magic. Too late to call her back now. I focused on the little breeze in the room until it ran in a steady warm stream. “Infection and injury, come out of Wade Hill.”
Wade coughed again, gagging this time. He puked up a gout of foul smelling pus. The shakes hit him. Tears began to leak out of my eyes, and I began to pray even though I doubted there was any help out there for someone like me. Please, please. Let him live.
Wade’s hand closed over my wrist. He rolled his eyes, bright with fever, up to mine. “I’m dying. Call my sister, Desiree. My phone’s in the garbage can in King’s office inside the bar. Her number’s in it.” He swallowed, and his eyes fluttered.
“Peri Jean?” Hannah’s voice came from the doorway. I twisted, afraid to take my eyes off Wade. She swigged from the bottle of vodka she gripped before she spoke. “I’ve called Dean. Told him to get out here now. The bag with the murder clothes was in the safe inside King's office. So was the tape.” Her eyes lighted on Wade and flicked away. “I'll go get Wade’s phone out of the trash. I saw it and wondered what it was.”
