Please let him be kidding. Kind of.
“I’m just saying. You’re very powerful. You need to pay closer attention to the vibes you’re getting.”
“Vibes?”
“Whatever you call it. The energies you feel. They could save your life.”
I nodded. He had a point. “So, are we thinking this Minerva told him where to find us today?”
“She did seem really nervous,” Annette said.
“She’s always been skittish,” Roane said. “But she doesn’t usually chew her nails to the quick like that.”
“You seem to know an awful lot about her,” I said, ignoring the fact that it made me sound stupid and jealous. She was just a kid.
At least James Vogel’s messages didn’t glow. The one from before still did. Almost brighter now. More urgently. And another message glowed as well.
I knew it had to mean something, yet a part of me didn’t want to know what. I couldn’t get involved. I was leaving soon. I should be packing. Then again, where would I go? I didn’t really want to drive all the way back to Arizona. Maybe I’d stay with my dads in Ipswich for a while. It was only a half hour away.
As Annette scooped up the messages again, one of the two that glowed fell from her grasp. Slowly, the letters started to glow too, like when I made a symbol in the air.
“What is that one?” I asked, pointing without touching it.
She picked it up and flipped it over. “Oh, yeah, it’s from a man who wants a remedy for male pattern baldness.”
“Seriously?” I leaned forward.
“Leonard Quinn.” She held it out. “For the record, do we do that sort of thing?”
I shrugged.
Roane watched us way too nonchalantly, probably taking notes for Ruthie. The traitor.
“Wait, why that one?” she asked, eyeing me carefully.
“No reason.” Why would a message about male pattern baldness be glowing? My powers made no sense sometimes.
“Yeah, right. We need to talk about Love’s reaction to you in her shop.”
“Who says?” I asked.
“Who says what?”
“We need to talk about her reaction.”
A knock sounded at the door just in time.
I lifted a shoulder. “It’ll have to wait either way.”
“Fine. But we still need to talk about it.”
I stood and started for the door just as something brushed past me. I looked down and smiled. “Samuel.”
He ran up to me and raised his arms like he wanted me to lift him up.
I knelt to him and held out my hand.
He put his in mine, but it slid through.
“I wish I could pick you up more than anything in the world.”
When another knock reverberated through the house, he pointed toward the foyer. “Sir.”
I followed him. “Is that who’s at the door?”
He shook his head. When we got to the foyer, he turned to point up to the balcony.
I didn’t see anything.
Neither did he, I guess, because he frowned and gestured for me to follow him.
The knock came louder this time.
“Let me answer the door real quick, okay?” By the time I got the sentence out, his attention had shifted to the cat that sauntered by like he owned the place.
Samuel tried to pet Ink, but the animal darted off. The boy followed. Even a battle-scared cat like Ink didn’t stand a chance with a ghost child taking a shine to him.
Laughing, I opened the door to a familiar face, clenched in a gruesome mess of anger and derision. “Your phone is still unplugged,” said James Vogel as he wedged his way inside.
Seven
When people are dead, they don’t know they’re dead.
It’s the same thing when people are stupid.
-Meme
At least James Vogel tried to wedge his way inside.
The door didn’t budge. He pressed a hand against it to open it farther. When nothing happened, he tried again, harder, this time with his shoulder. Nary an inch gave under his command.
I peeked behind the door to find Percy had barricaded it. I gave him a quick thumbs up behind my back.
When James Vogel stepped closer, trying to barrel through me, I held my ground as well. “Mr. Vogel, if you’ll just tell me what it is that you need—”
“Minerva said you’re different.” If his reddening complexion was any indication, his anger was well on its way to a reprisal.
Seriously, how could anyone live with such volatile emotions twenty-four seven? Maybe it was a hormonal imbalance.
“She told me you could do things the rest of them can’t.”
Or an alcohol imbalance.
“You can do anything.”
He wreaked of cheap whiskey.
“You can bring people back from the dead.”
And the cologne he wore . . . Wait. What did he just say?
“I lost someone.”
Did he just say I could bring people back from the dead?
“There was an accident.”
Like, literally?
“I want her back.” His glare made it clear that saying “no” wasn’t an option.
After a moment of speechlessness, I asked, “Your niece told you I could bring people back from the dead?”
“Yes. She said you did it with Ruthie.”
What the hell? Weren’t covens supposed to be like Vegas? What happened at the crossroads stayed at the crossroads? I just figured it was an unwritten rule.
Minerva made my decision not to help him that much easier. I’d make sure the girl would never join another coven as well, and I would tell Ruthie that as soon as I could. But first I had to get rid of Jason Voorhees lurking on front porch. For realz, he just needed a hockey mask.
I did the only thing I could think of on such short notice. I laughed. “And you believed her?”
Laughing was, apparently, the wrong approach when dealing with the self-absorbed.
He shoved on the door. When it still didn’t give, his face morphed into an angry version of the Jason Voorhees mask. With a glower that could stop traffic, he reached for me, whether to push me back or to pull me out, I didn’t know.
I stepped back and speared him with a glare. “Mr. Voorhees—”
“Vogel.”
Oops.
“You need you to come with me.” His voice sharpened into a scalpel.
“Even if I were practicing right now, which I’m not, and such a thing were possible, which it’s not, I certainly couldn’t do it.”
His beefy hands curled into fists. But before he could do anything with them, something on the ground caught his attention.
We glanced down and watched as vines slithered across the porch like snakes. They curled up the walls and up my legs. To the regular joe, they had to be like a bad acid trip, but James Vogel seemed a little more knowledgeable than most.
He stumbled back with a scowl.
My cue to close the door. I slammed it shut, then peeked around the bay window.
He backed off the porch and studied Percy like he was trying to figure out a way around him. Definitely the creepiest Jason Voorhees I’d ever met.
“Thank you, Percy.” I turned around.
Roane was behind me in the foyer. He’d knelt to pet Ink, but I could sense the tension from where I stood, as though his muscles were coiled, ready for a fight. He smiled at Samuel.
“You can see him?” I asked.
He nodded. “Of course.”
“Thank goodness.” I knelt with him, partly to pet Ink but mostly to get closer to the blond-haired, blue-eyed angel I wished desperately to hold. “I was worried he was a figment of my imagination.” I left out the part where I’d wondered that very thing when I’d first met Roane. For about half a second, anyway.
“He’s not going to give up.” Roane tipped his head toward the door.
I released an annoyed sigh. “He thinks I can bring someone back from th
e dead.”
“You can, but that’s not the point.”
“Ruthie was different. I didn’t do that on purpose. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Still not the point.”
“Okay, mister know-it-all, what is the point?” I tore my gaze off the kid and repositioned it on the deity stroking the cat.
If not for Roane, Ink would’ve bolted. He wanted nothing to do with the kid. In all fairness, Samuel’s touch was a little cool. But the poor kid just wanted to pet the creature. I understood the desire. Sometimes, I just wanted to pet Roane.
“He’s not going to take no for an answer.” He stared at the door, which was now vine-free.
I could see the wheels in his brain spinning. “He’ll get the message eventually.” But like Roane, I didn’t really believe that.
Something brushed past me, and Samuel disappeared.
I glanced up to Ruthie waiting quietly near the staircase, elegantly draped in a new dress that was no less magical than the first. She didn’t look a second past sixty—if that—though I knew her to be closer to eighty.
I jumped to my feet. “You’re out.”
Roane stood too.
“Did you feel that?” She gazed up at the balcony.
“Did you just brush past me?” I asked her.
Confused, she turned toward me. “Where were you just now?”
“Here. We went into town but—”
“What did you do there?”
Annette wandered out. “We met with your coven.”
“You brought something back with you.” But Ruthie wasn’t looking at Nette, she was looking at me. “Something very dark.”
“Oh, well, Jason Vorhees came to the door. He was very angry.”
“No. Not that,” she said absently, missing the reference entirely. Did ghosts even watch horror movies? “Where else did you go in town?”
Roane was eerily silent.
“We went to the Witch House,” Annette said.
“That’s it.” Ruthie’s expression turned grave. “Did you open the witch bottle?”
“Yes.” Nette’s warning came back to me in the form of pins and needles pricking the back of my neck, but I brushed it off. “Why?”
“Defiance, you never open a witch bottle.”
“Ruthie, I can’t imagine I’m the first person in four-hundred years to open that bottle.” And I hadn’t been. Karl had told me so.
“No, but you’re the first witch. Certainly, the first charmling. You set them free.”
Them? Them who? “If you mean the men and women persecuted during the Salem Witch Trials, they were hardly real witches.”
“A witch bottle captures all sorts of malevolent spirits. Not just witches. And they are bound for all eternity to any witch who sets them free.”
Nette gave me an I-told-you-so look.
Which I ignored. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Ruthie said, “that any spirit you set free is now attached to you.”
“Great.” Like I didn’t already have a behemoth of baggage to drag around.
“If there were any malevolent spirits in the bottle, they’ll come after you. You’re the only thing anchoring them to this plane.”
“See?” Fed up, I stalked past her, taking the other set of stairs. “And you wonder why I’m done with all of this.”
Somehow, Ink beat me to my room and lay sprawled out on the bed.
I took out my suitcase and started packing while he watched. I’d come to Salem with exactly five outfits. But while I’d been KOed, my dads had the rest of my belongings shipped here, so at least I had a few outfits to choose from.
“Defiance.” Ruthie stood at the threshold to what was essentially her room. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I just need to get away for a few days to a place that’s not filled with magical powers or malevolent beings that want me dead.”
“Sweetheart—”
“If nothing else, I’ll stay at a hotel for a few days. I just need to get my bearings.” I tossed underwear and a couple of T-shirts into my suitcase. “I’ll decide what to do from there.”
“Sweetheart.” She was beside me, her hand on my arm. “First, you can’t go anywhere that doesn’t have a magical presence.”
“Of course, I can. Most places on the planet don’t have magic hanging in the air like string lights.”
“No, I mean, you can’t. Personally. Because just your being there will change everything. You are the magical presence. You change every place you visit.”
I sank onto the bed next to Ink, holding two bras in one hand and a sock in the other. “I told you, I lost my powers.”
Annette knocked on my open door. “Can I join you?”
I waved her inside with the bras.
She climbed onto the bed to pet the cat, who was not in the mood to be fondled. Not that she let his grumpy disposition deter her.
Ruthie sat beside me. “And second, if there are malevolent beings after you, there’s no safer place on Earth than this house.”
I dropped the bras and socks on the bed and moved to get up.
Ruthie took my hand to stop me. “What is all of this really about?”
I couldn’t decipher exactly what I’d seen in my dreams, but I knew it was bad. I also knew I had to tell her. It was bound to come out, so why not now? Glancing over my shoulder, I worried about Annette’s take on what I was about to say.
“Defiance,” Ruthie said.
I turned back to her. “Something tried to get me while I was”—I waved toward where I’d been suspended above the bed—“out.”
Annette stilled.
“And before you try to convince me I was only dreaming—”
“What kind of something?” Concern knit Ruthie’s graceful brows.
“A dark kind of something searching for me, and I had to hide.” I shifted on the bed. “I think Percy kept it at bay. I think he fought it off.”
She put a hand over her mouth. “No wonder he wouldn’t let any of us in.”
“Not even you?” I asked her.
After a soft shake of her head, she dropped her palm to the bed. “He was probably focusing all of his energies on keeping you safe. On keeping the warlock out.”
A cold dread crept across my skin. “It was a warlock?”
“It had to be.” She stood and paced, her jaw jutting out in anger. “Those sons of bitches.”
I’d never heard her curse, but I liked it. Based on Annette’s struggle to keep a grin in check, she did too.
“Did they find me?” I wilted at the thought. “The spell we did? It didn’t work?”
“It worked. It worked like a charm, for lack of a better phrase. They did, however, find you in the dream world and tried to glean information as to your physical location. But they obviously have no idea who you are or where you are, or they’d already be here. They don’t know you’re my granddaughter. They don’t know to look here. So clearly, they didn’t get much.” She looked up at the vines. “Thank you, Percival.” Then she turned back to me. “And you. Clever girl.”
“Damn straight, she is,” Annette said.
I shook my head, adamant they were wrong. “I didn’t do anything but hide.”
“That was all you could’ve done.” Finished pacing, she sat beside me again. “I don’t know how you managed to keep them away for so long, Defiance, but . . .” She tucked my hair behind my ear. “Is that why?”
I bristled. Not at the hair tucking. That was sort of nice. “Is what why?”
“Is that why you’re insisting you’ve lost your powers?”
“I’m insisting I’ve lost my powers because I’ve lost my powers.”
“And why you’re leaving?” she continued, completely ignoring what I’d said.
I decided to study my boots in great detail. After a long moment, I said aloud what I’d been afraid to even contemplate. “They’re coming for me.”
She squeezed my arm. “I know,
sweetheart. I also know that if you leave, you’ll be a thousand times more vulnerable.”
Samuel came in and sat on the bed, right beside an oblivious psychic, and tried to pet Ink again.
Ruthie melted and put a hand over her heart. “He is adorable.”
He struggled to get a good grip on Ink, who twisted and turned right out of his hold. It was like watching a wrestling match where the underdog never even had a chance. Poor kid.
“Samuel, when you asked me to open the witch bottle, was it because someone was inside?” Because along with the warlock—or seven—after me, I had a malevolent being—or seven—from the witch bottle attached to me. For all eternity. And I was feeling a little overcommitted.
Samuel nodded.
It was interesting that while he seemed to understand everything I said to him, he didn’t talk much, his verbal communication skills clearly still emerging. “Samuel, who was inside?”
“Sir,” he said, before scrambling after Ink, who’d gotten fed up and raced off.
“Hold up there, mister.” I rushed around the bed before the boy vanished again. “There was only one man inside the bottle?”
Giggling at my audacity, he stopped short. “Mm-hm. Sir.”
How bad could one malevolent being be? Even if his name was Sir. “Did Sir tell you to have me open it? The bottle?”
Samuel nodded, feigned to the left, then rushed around to my right.
I tried to grab him, genius that I was, but he disappeared through the wall, genius that he was. “Holy cow, he’s fast.”
“The little boy?” Annette asked, looking on longingly. “I want to see him.”
“Well, as soon as I get that supernatural camera I ordered off Amazon, I’ll set up a photo shoot pronto.”
Annette shot me a fake glare. “At least you haven’t lost your powers of smartassery.”
I laughed and sat on the bed again. “Okay, so let’s do inventory.”
Ruthie sat on a chair that had my robe and a pair of leggings thrown over the back.
“If nothing else,” I said, “I have at least one warlock after me. At least one malevolent being attached to me. And at least one unstable human wanting me to raise the dead. Oh, and let’s not forget the creepy dungeon. We need to figure out where it came from. I mean, is Percy in danger of caving in?”
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