Arno’s face went blank. “Is that an order as my brother or my sire?”
“Please. I love her.”
“You know the rules. She didn’t ask me.”
Kristoff bundled Red out of the van, delicate with her even as he snarled at his brother. A murderous glint flashed in his eyes. “Go back to Portland!”
---
Awareness crept on her like a pickpocket.
First was the smell of the hospital and the too-bright light of the fluorescent fixture above. Loose straps bound her arms, protecting the IV tubes connecting her to medical equipment. Her bleary eyes squinted at Kristoff. His voice finally penetrated the dull numbness of her pharmaceutical haze.
Red couldn’t move, her mind floating into awareness while her prone body ignored basic commands. She wanted to take his hand, comfort the conflict and confusion in his gaze.
Head bowed, he debated himself at her bedside. “You’re going to live, but how am I going to forgive my brother? If you had…Did I spoil him too much after Mom died?”
“Maybe you did,” Arno said, walking into the room. “I’m sorry, Kristoff. That was rotten of me. I shouldn’t have let my…If this will make you happy, I can turn her now.”
Smiling ruefully, Kristoff stood, shaking his head. “I panicked. I didn’t appreciate the defiance, but Red will when she wakes up.”
Arno paused at the foot of the bed, hand on the rail. “When the time comes, I won’t let you down again.”
Kristoff pulled him into a hug. “I know the world is changing around us, but we stick together. She doesn’t change that.”
Arno grinned. “Bring your human around more, and I might get used to the idea of her being family.”
Red convulsed on the bed, toes curling, breath shortening. She strained against the straps. The heart monitor beeped a shrill warning too late.
Arno checked her medical chart, flipping through it frantically. “They gave her the wrong dosage! The treatment has to be done in a precise sequence.”
“Are you sure?” Kristoff asked.
“I did better my second time in med school. She needs a shot of—” Arno cursed and rolled up his sleeve. “There is no time. Don’t drink from her. She’s toxic.”
Kristoff slumped into his chair. The color faded from his face, leaving him looking truly dead. He nodded and hunched over her bedside, squeezing her hand.
Arno cut his forearm, placing it to her lips, forcing the blood down her throat. “Don’t worry, duchess. I’ve done this procedure before.”
“No!” Vic’s panicked yell ripped through the hospital room. He rushed inside with Zach. Raising his handgun, he fired. The blast shook the room. It was a clear shot through the heart.
Arno crumbled to bones, clattering on the linoleum.
Kristoff became a shadowed blur as he leaped for the hunters.
Like a stage curtain, darkness fell on the chaos.
9
Time Loop #91 – July 3, Late Afternoon, Charm, Oregon
Red screamed in the front seat of the Millennium Falcon.
Vic swerved on the highway exit ramp into Charm. “Jesus! Did you have a nightmare or see a spider?”
She braced her hands against the door and the dashboard, sweat dripping down her forehead. Holy shit. Heart palpitations rippled down her heaving chest. She pressed the pulse in her neck, grateful to feel it.
He parked on the nearest shoulder, calling after her as she bolted from the car.
Red dry heaved behind some bushes until she was certain that she wouldn’t spew in the van. She’d almost become a fucking vampire! Would that have stopped this time trip or been another reset? It was the worst-case scenario for her relationship with Kristoff.
She knew he wouldn’t let her die horribly, but intellectualizing the fact was different from living it. Arno had played an unlikely stopgap on the idea. It made her like the guy.
Her head ached as she slunk back into the van, processing her last death. “That was rough, man.”
Vic handed her a water bottle from between the seats then restarted the engine. “I told you that gas station taquito looked funny.”
“I usually bite it quicker than that.” She added, shivering, “No pun intended.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, face scrunched up. “Is that a double entendre?”
“What I’ve been talking about all day.” She cursed when all he did was blink at her. “When the hell am I?”
“Outside Charm.”
“Not where. When.” She checked the dashboard clock. After 5 p.m. They were right on time, but the anomaly was becoming more unstable. Had she somehow skipped back to a past loop? “Tell me about our morning in Vegas. I need to orient myself.”
“Um, we had breakfast,” Vic said. “Hannah thankfully didn’t cry about her breakup. We went into the portal, then it was a whole lot of highway tunes. Are you going to tell me why your short-term memory doesn’t work now?”
“What about Basil?”
“He went off to meet some Gendarme. Ortega, I think her name was.”
“Am I back in the original timeline?” She rubbed her temples, the beginnings of a stress headache trumpeting its arrival. “Does that mean I’m closer or farther behind?”
“Now this is where you explain.”
“Time has made me its bitch.” Deep in thought, she pressed her hands against her head, palms tugging her cheeks. Both the mirror and Vic’s expression told her how crazy she looked. “I need to do this differently. Can you drop me off at the diner? I’m done with the Bigfoot business.”
He squawked, “What kind of explanation is that?”
“Shush. Stace isn’t in town yet, but Olivia and Callaway can help me set up something like a magical Faraday cage for the statue. Then we cut its connection to me. It’s too bad that I didn’t loop back to Vegas; then I could try and steal that skull.”
Vic narrowed his eyes, tapping on the steering wheel. “There’s a statue causing the time anomaly, and you’re grave robbing now?” He shook his flattened palm. “Maybe a little nutty too?”
“Hey, you’re keeping up pretty well.” Red gave him a thumbs-up. “I didn’t need to painstakingly explain all those other time loops.”
“Why am I not coming with you then?”
“Because you need to help a Bigfoot or stop a cryptozoologist. I haven’t figured out which. The cryptid hunter has killed me at least once that I know of.”
“Oh shit, is that how you reset?”
She patted his shoulder, smiling sadly. “You make the same face every time you ask.”
---
At Lili’s Diner, the dinner rush was in full swing. Supernaturals sat inside while humans waited in their cars for takeout.
Red walked past a parked dark gray sedan. Inside it, the plain-faced woman in a black suit seemed familiar. She wasn’t a local. Had she been at the diner before in the real timeline?
Maudette waved as she trotted a bag to the parking lot. “Zach isn’t here.”
“I’m waiting for Olivia and Callaway. Could you keep an eye on the out-of-towners for us?”
“I always do.”
Leaving the waitress to her work, Red ducked into the diner behind a couple of regulars and made a beeline for her usual booth.
The dining area was more than half empty. A black-haired woman, the one who’d tried to hire Red in the bathroom, was at the bar with a notebook, trying to write despite old Herman peppering her with small talk.
Red didn’t have time to shrug the supernatural off, so she hid behind a menu.
Olivia strutted inside in designer jeans and a striped blouse with a uniformed Callaway behind her. The two gave each other a polite nod as they joined the table.
Smiling lightly, Red glanced around for listeners and dropped her voice. “I’m going to make this short here and explain more later. I need help sealing an enchanted object up in a sea cave with a makeshift prison box. Then we need to do the strongest cord-cutting cere
mony that we can on me. I know the theory, but you can guide it, Olivia. We’ll need rosemary, cold iron powder, and all the sage you can find. Tonight.”
“I have it at my house,” Olivia said.
“Good,” Red said. “We can go now. I shouldn’t say too much out in the open.”
“Sure,” Callaway replied, “It’s been quiet enough that I can delegate to the deputies.”
“Why is she here?” Olivia asked, eyeing the cop. “It sounds like a witch job.”
Red leaned over the table. “Because last time I went there, I was shot.”
The other women shared looks of matching surprise as they checked her out for an injury.
“You’ll want her guarding our backs. We have four hours until sunset. You won’t want to be there after dark.” Red let them marinate in her ominous statement as she stalked to the exit.
The two followed her out of the diner, waiting until they were out in the parking lot to start their interrogation.
Callaway demanded, “What’s at the sea caves?”
“What enchantment is on this thing?” Olivia asked.
Red shushed them, noticing the driver of a dark sedan watching through her open car window. A memory finally clipped onto the face in her mind. It was the woman who’d ordered breakfast at Lili’s tomorrow morning. Where had she gone afterward?
“We’re taking your broomstick, Olivia. Aisha, drive behind.”
“I’m not far,” Olivia said to the sheriff and hustled Red toward her teal car. “I moved into my great aunt’s old place by Sycamore Row. Her greenhouse has everything.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” Red got into the passenger side. “Now, this is where it gets weird. It’s the god’s honest truth. Maybe not the god that you’re thinking of.”
Olivia rolled her eyes, buckling her seat belt. “I’ve lived in Charm all my life. You don’t need to ease me in.”
“Okay then.” Red chuckled. “You ever heard of a time anomaly? What about a God Trap?”
“Hecate at the crossroads…” Olivia wheezed. She drove onto the road, hunched over the wheel, with none of her usual snappy remarks.
“I’m getting the feeling that you’ve heard something.”
“My great aunt loved history. Obscure and gory details were her favorite. Perfect for children, in her mind. She told me about Nicholas Flamel, but not his immortal life. The woman liked the unusual takes on a topic. She said his last invention was a God Trap.”
“Did she know what it looked like?” Red asked. That wasn’t in the standard academy lore.
“These were bedtime stories! She mentioned he was perfecting the druids’ work, but not how. That was for background flavor. Sometimes the details changed, but the last act was the same. He died. My aunt always ended the story on a question mark. Did the gods bring him down for his hubris?”
“The last invention, eh?” Red had heard the story of how Perenelle and Nicholas Flamel achieved the philosopher stone, but eventually he’d decided to expire over a century ago. At least that was the official story. “This could have been stolen from the alchemists, then?”
“That’s all I know. Just a story from when I was a kid. Couldn’t tell you what book she found it in. Or if someone told her the story. Doubt she’d even remember; her mind is going.”
“Do you think it can be done?”
Olivia huffed. “I was raised a pagan, not a heathen. I know to respect the gods. And fear them.”
---
When they reconvened, Red explained the situation to Callaway as they walked to the backyard greenhouse. She finished anticlimactically with a shrug. “Weird, huh?”
“That’s why I came to this town.” Callaway rubbed her hands. “I saw that Tom Cruise movie, so I get the idea.”
“Good, because I want to sleep tonight and wake normally tomorrow.” Red showed the other women the rough map of the shoreline on her phone, describing how she had gotten to it before. “This cave must have a back entrance. That has to be how the statue got in there. I didn’t see any openings at the base of that cliff section. Wherever it is, we need to seal it.”
“I found one of those hatches as a kid. The door hinge was so rusty that I couldn’t open it,” Olivia said. “It was in a different place though. Not the same one. I could scry for the statue, but it won’t be precise. Charm’s own magic and whatever this God Trap is giving off will throw my senses off.”
“That’s why we have technology.” Callaway walked over to a cluster of brooms and shovels in the corner. She lifted a metal detector. “We’ll scan the area for a manhole cover or something. I got the rundown on the sea caves when I became sheriff. Old smugglers added to nature’s design all over this area. Most of the tunnels are short. The entrance should be close to the cliff top. How far could one guy haul a ton of rock, anyway?”
“Good idea, Aisha.” Olivia smiled. “I can get a crane from the family business to remove it and have the terrace bricked up later.”
“Now we’re cooking,” Red said. “Makes me wish I’d brought you two in the first time.” She looked down at her phone.
They might just finish this before she was supposed to meet Kristoff.
---
The return to the sea caves made dread dance with anticipation in her stomach. It wasn’t Red’s company—Callaway and Olivia worked surprisingly well together once they got started. She could almost believe it might work. Would this finally be the day? Had she cracked the code?
Heavy backpack tugging her backward, Red pointed out the trail zigzagging down the cliff face. “It’s that way.”
“I can feel it from here,” Olivia said, gritting her teeth and straightening her shoulders under her pack. “We should have brought more sage.”
“Scope out the trail first,” Callaway said. “Whoever shot you might have been casing this place for a while, trying to figure out how to get in themselves. I’ll start with the metal detector.”
Red walked in front, but Olivia stopped her yards before they reached the hidden outcropping to the terrace. The power of the statue stuck to them like syrup.
The other witch looked nauseous as she said, “I’m starting to believe my great aunt’s story.”
Callaway called down to them, “Hey, I found it!”
Red’s heart squeezed with worry when she didn’t see the sheriff immediately.
A few yards into the trees, Callaway stood from a crouch behind a thorny blackberry patch. “It’s covered in brambles, but the trapdoor is there. You wouldn’t see it from the clearing.” She waved them over. “It’s unlocked.”
Walking around the blackberries, Red studied the ground, barely able to detect Callaway’s tidy passage.
Flattened grasses and broken twigs marked the other side of the bush in a trail leading to the forest. Was it from moving the statue? A fresh scrape on a nearby tree stood out on its dark trunk. There were no wheel marks. Disquiet settled on her. How had a single delivery dude moved a life-sized marble statue?
The hatch looked like the entrance of a root cellar, so weather beaten it blended in with the dirt. Red opened it, careful to remain out of range of anyone lurking inside. Energy wafted out in a plume that made her flinch along with Olivia. “There is at least one body in there.”
“I don’t want any more.” Handgun ready, Callaway stepped forward. “I’ll go first.”
Red pulled a flashlight from her backpack, aiming it in the sandstone shaft. It started with a sharply declining ramp, stairs cut into one side. “I don’t sense any auras waiting for us.”
Olivia hugged herself. “How could you, over that force?”
“That’s what we need you to take care of,” Callaway said, descending below with her gun raised.
Red followed next with the other witch in the rear. The low ceiling rose as they reached the end of the ramp. Her flashlight caught the pockmarks in the stone corridor. It widened as they walked, allowing the witches to walk side by side.
Johnny 1925 had been scra
wled into the wall. Prohibition graffiti, maybe. How long had this tunnel been sealed up as if waiting for this particular July day?
Olivia asked, “What was this place made for?”
Red answered, “Must have run barrels of booze here back in the day.” Her whisper echoed; the sound was strangely distorted as if traveling through pudding. She gulped.
There was only one set of footprints on the floor ahead. Dried blood in eerily straight drips marked the dust. It led into the darkness in a grim vindication that this was the correct path.
Olivia paled under her makeup. “Is that blood?” She scrunched her nose. “Why am I asking in a town like this? Of course it is.”
Callaway shushed them.
The statue’s heavy presence weighed Red down with each step, her pace matching a funeral dirge. Inevitability snapped at her heels. Distant waves beckoned them closer. The tunnel was a straight shot into the cave.
After circling the cavern, Callaway gestured them forward. She put her gun away to approach the facedown dead man at the base of the statue. Crouching at his side, she inspected the bullet wound on his delivery uniform. “He might be a day gone, at most.”
Red walked around the wall to peek out of the terrace, keeping herself hidden behind the grasses and ferns clinging to the cliff. The collapsed brick rail made her flash back to her first death on the pebbled beach below. “We can start here and work our way around the room. The sacred oil for the sigils should be dry by the time your deputies investigate the body.”
“I spent enough time in the LAPD to read a shooting.” Callaway stood. “He was shot in the lower shoulder; must have died last night or early this morning judging by the rigor mortis. The blood splatter on his back looks like he rested against the wound momentarily then was propped upright. The area around him is pretty clean. He must have been shot elsewhere and moved here. There was only one set of footprints in the tunnel.”
“No wheel marks,” Olivia said, unnerved by her own observation. “For the statue.”
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