“A replacement?! Well, what took you so long? Yes. Send him over.”
She looks back at Jessica, “Not today, though. I’m working out a little problem. Tomorrow. Yes. Tomorrow should be fine. No! No we weren’t engaged. Why? Are you sending me one I could marry, now?” She lifts her chin toward the sky and laughs a loud, witchy cackle. She about stops and then the joke strikes her funny once more. She slaps her knee and cackles until tears well up in her eyes.
“Ooh, I'm sorry. Sorry,” she composes herself, “Talk to you tomorrow, then,” she says and hangs up the phone. She dots her eyes with a handkerchief, chuckles quietly and then picks up a stick for stirring potions laying near a kitchen pot, set next to the phone. She slams it on the table and turns back to drilling Jessica for more answers.
“I’ve got a way to see the truth, ya’ know?”
She shifts quickly from laughter to a much more threatening tone, “So if you’re lying to me, I'm going to know. ‘Be easier if you just tell me what you did, because each time I process up that watching potion, lately, I gotta make a sacrifice. See, a witch's vengeance, won't cost a dollar, but the whole world could go before a witch will change the path she's on. On the path to free my Tyrannomous' good name from this mudslinger! And I am going to know, who did this. I am going to find, through you or through nannybuddy who took away,” and now she almost cries, “my 'beloved' Tyrannomous’ life.”
Although she seemed the type to have killed him, herself, and according to Crucious, possibly did.
Jessica tries to wiggle her arms free. She tries to move her legs, “Wait until my father hears about this! He knows I'm here, you know. This was to be a meeting, uncouth nixie! He'll come for me, and you'll be sorry!“
The Witch interrupts with a curt little rasp, “Because of what you've got in your pocket?”
“How did you know?!” Jessica exclaims, trying to hide the look of shock that must be showing upon her face.
The Witch sneers, “Because I know. Tyrannomous' nair-do-well brother's contribution, I saw it all, because you slipped up, didn't you phlembian? And it got you stuck here with me, didn't it?…”
“I knew it! I should've trusted my instincts,” Jessica says and then repeats, “Wait until my father hears-”
“Now, dearie,“ the Witch suggests, “let's finally make this as civilized of a 'meeting' as you'd like it to be... at least this part anyway, hmmm? Tyrannomous didn't like you, did he?”
Jessica stammers, “I never saw, your, your, what-was-it? We -,” she pauses, suddenly wondering why she never, actually, saw him – when Theopolis did - and for that matter, rarely saw any trolls, at all, on the way to the Castle.
“Wait! I remember!” she exclaims, “One night, I was alone. At the Underworld Castle. We all jumped together, but they – the others I went with - were late. I waited an hour... or more. I became rather upset - I don't know why - waiting there like they were ignoring me, or something, when we had all jumped together. I, um, ended up 'biting' the waiter, later that night. I shouldn‘t have done it, but I was all out of sorts. I had been there a good, long time, alone, you know -”
The Witch interrupts, “You waited? All you slurpers jumped together and yet, YOU waited? Sweet Domina!” The Witch makes fists at her sides. It's like cussing a sacred name to the Witch - all her wretched goodness, frozen in that tree, stuck in the In Between for eternity.
“I ought to check the tightness of your bindings to that chair if you’re Domina's! Rotted corpse could get out of anything. But how could she help you? She was dead! I kicked her off Stygian Downs Bridge myself.” A scowl crosses over that face as she rubs her pointed chin.
She sends the evil eye to Jessica and marvels out loud at the sheer willpower of her late captive, “Somehow, she knows about you!”
“Who knows about me? What are you talking about?” Jessica demands, irritated.
The Witch all but loses her temper at having to explain, “The tree! Near the bridge,“ she pauses - another mood swing - making casual all of a sudden, reaching for and twisting off the top of a can of canned, deep-fried frogs.
“But... I pulled her up, out of that hole. Late at night.” In her mind, the Witch flashes back to the woman-shaped, spread eagle, hole of Domina‘s - just as she’d landed, flat on her stomach, kicked off the bridge by the Witch, sunk deep in middle of the road in town.
In her memory, the Witch, at night, reminisces about creeping toward the hole, looking side to side, to make sure no one is around but the dear, old moon, whom she quickly glances up at and scowls, then pulls several little jars out of her pockets. She sprinkles a bit of this little bottle, a bit of that little bottle, and then waves around a pointed stick. She growls out some nursery rhyme sounding nonsense, otherwise known to witches as their absolute livelihood, and Sweet Domina staggers out. She looks almost tipsy, not able to keep one foot in front of the other, at first, her arms out to the sides and fingers pointed. It was quite a fall, you understand.
Instead, the Witch laughs and jeers, “You look absurd! Stop teetering.” Domina doesn't.
“Fine then!“ the Witch waves her wand, “Spend eternity stuck still, in one place, look to me as look you are, frozen still, a naked star above your head for all to see and yet not know, you are this tree!” At once, Domina disappears.
Did I ever mention, Do Not Piss Off A Witch? That being said, it's almost impossible not to - the unpleasant disposition is one of the characteristics. Just try not to encounter one. That's the best offer I can give as a witch myself, I am not; and, I know of no way to tip-toe around a nonsensical, illlogical, desire-based, psyche with a wand attached. Poor Domina!
At the other side of the Witch’s kitchen, Jessica watches the Witch crunch toasted frogs, one after another, making a mess of the frock she is wearing, explaining to no one, “I couldn't have the merchants, there, where I shop, looking around, wondering, creating some kind of 'who done it' nonsense. You know?
“So, she's a tree? Here, in the In Between?”
The Witch’s voice sounds small, “Basically, yeah. And, it is the only reason that I can think of as to why you would have gone on ahead of the rest of the dark angels,” she swallows and pokes a finger around through the rest of the frogs in the can picking out a juicy one.
Jessica doesn’t want to think the Witch is speaking anything more than nonsense, but her sensitivity about this one fact hits home. She had, in fact skipped the troll gulch on most of her travels to the Underworld Castle, so she innocently asks, “Why me?”
“Put a sock in it!!” the Witch snaps.
“That's a senseless demand. I can't,” Jessica looks down at where her hands should be, reminding the Witch they are tied behind her back.
The Witch looks at her sideways out the corner's of her sharp, keen eyes, “I could do it for you.”
“No thanks,” Jessica sneers sensing another trick of the Witch to be avoided.
“Then give it a rest. You've lured me into revealing enough about myself today,” the Witch sighs.
“What's going to happen to me?” Jessica asks. The Witch glances over and surveys the young vampire tied up in knots to that very same wooden chair where her Tyrannomous had once slumped and Domina had been tied.
She thinks about it, for a moment, then declares, “I’ll probably cook you in a pot, when your accomplice gets here. Probably cook you both together.”
Jessica tries not to throw a fit keeping her wits about her, “My accomplice?” she asks also trying not to sound hopeful that Theopolis will roll in and get her the rotten pence out of here!
The Witch begins to pace like some kind of comic Underworld lawyer and lets her voice sound as though she is delivering opening statements to a lone juror tied to a chair, “He was late. You were waiting. He did it. He killed him. He killed my friend and live-in, Tyrannomous. My treasured helper. My dearest... dearest…,“ she nearly chokes out the word, “love.”
Jessica, hearing the loophole in her argument which Cruci
ous Port had explained earlier conceals her knowledge of the Witch’s lie and asks, “O, you two were married?”
The Witch snaps sharpishly, “Might've been! Anyway, I was mad about him, you could say, captivated.”
Jessica just says, “O,” now that her loop has no hole.
“Until, your blood-sucking Prince Charming up and killed him that devious and nasty day,” she continues.
Jessica having already told her that Theopolis denied the charge, tries a different approach, “I can see that you are distressed by your loss, but why not just get over it? Why kill again? Seems senseless... A little time, your grief will lessen.” The Witch is thrown off guard at first.
“What kind of blood-sucker are you?“ Her voice rises and she slaps something on the table almost in dispair. “You're half Domina's kind, that's what... the only kind of sharp tooth that would care. You must be one, torn-up, little mess. Part vampire, part goodness? O, cruel afflictions, no thanx,” she says.
Insulted, Jessica defends her position in life, “Truth be known, I lead a relatively normal life, in fact I-”
“Complete denial,” the Witch interrupts, putting a stop to Jessica expressing herself.
“No it‘s not!” Jessica protests, “and, she's not my mother, this Domina of yours. My mother's dead. She's not a tree for Piping Pan's sake.”
“No. No. Ofcourse she's not. Your mother is an angel, born of heaven. And I'm just a dirt scum-”
“Well, you are,“ Jessica says under her breath. She looks down at herself in the chair, referencing her tied up position with a glance.
“At least I know who I am, pet,” the Witch shares.
“Well, if you're waiting for Theopolis. He isn't coming. I asked him to come with me - on the way down, here. Yes, I stopped by to see him. He says he didn't hit your… fiancée, if that is what he was? He said to tell you that he never saw him.”
“Liar!” the Witch yells.
“I doubt it,” Jessica retorts, “Isn't it possible it could have been someone else? From a quick glance around I can see, if you two were, in fact, a couple, that you may have had enemies.” The Witch tries not to glance around the little hut too, but Jessica has piqued her curiosity.
She cautiously asks, “How so?”
“That large book, there, on the shelf, ‘Killing Only Your Friends’, Six Simple Spells. The astronomer's pipe - the telescope - aimed directly at your neighbor's house for viewing, in the windows!
“Your point?” the Witch demands.
“Perhaps your troll friend was killed by someone else. Someone closer. Someone more recent. I really don't know what Theopolis has been up to, but my guess would be it's been a very long time since he’s been here, in the In Between, at all.”
“It wasn't yesterday,” the Witch admits.
“What?” Jessica asks unprepared for her Underworld underling to own up to her obvious oversight.
The Witch explains, “It wasn't yesterday that he,“ she motions keeled over with her forearm going from a straight up position down toward the floor, “well, you know.”
Jessica guesses at the signed gesture, “Keeled over?” The witch shakes her head no.
“Hit the floor?” Again, a quick shake no.
“Fell out of the chair?”
“Went dead!!” the Witch yells, “okay?”
“O, since he died?” Jessica asks.
The Witch nearly shrieks, having finally gotten her point across, “Yes! Since he died!”
Jessica is caught a bit off-guard, once again by the Witch’s revealed state, “You're still emotional - too sensitive, to say the words... he's dead?” The Witch puts one boot up on the wooden bench near the kitchen table and leans onto her knee as if exhausted, emotionally blotto.
“I'm a witch, haughty britches on a blood sucker's note. I don't get sensitive.”
Jessica interjects Crucious’ theory bluntly, bold-faced, and straight on, “Then you killed him,” she says.
The bent over Witch exhales into her elbows, resting both now on her knee and stares at Jessica until Jessica becomes uncomfortable and looks away.
The Witch finally takes a deep breath and places her boot back onto the flooring, turning her back on Jessica she mutters, “Now, as soon as your friend gets here, we'll get to the bottom of.. my loss.”
Jessica, feeling a little exhausted herself nearly yells back, “He's Not Coming!”
Chapter Eight
Motion Potion
The Witch gets busy and right to work, brewing up a ‘watching potion’. She explains the sacrifices she has to make to frustrated Jessica who keeps interrupting, making some very good points about ‘vampire status’ and ‘being untied’.
The Witch explains, “This used to be so easy, the sacrifice part of the deal. A warty toad’s job, a ditch digger’s pension, but now, well,” she pricks her finger and moans, “a drop of blood, a puff of smoke, a spoonful of snake oil from a vial of liquid, three stirs to the left, one to the right, and three words,” she tosses another object in while the water begins to boil.
“This, right here’s, one reason a blood-sucker, no matter how mighty, must obey the summons of a witch.”
Jessica mumbles while she's talking, “That's your version – and it is to be ignored from now on. Fake!”
The Witch stirs the pot. She didn't hear Jessica and continues talking, “Or, you must take note, I'd have used your finger sure as I'm standing here.”
Jessica’s voice lightens up, “Because you can't take my blood? Scary, isn't it? A vampire and a daughter of a vampire you don't like. You can't take my blood, can you?”
The Witch talks while she works up the potion, “Because your vampire feeds are my sacrifice, deary - once you're with me. Hence, you are protected from hexes, spells, curses and otherwise very bad ju-ju. Reusable resource. Sustainability. Blood for a cause.” She looks at her and whispers, “Your kind appears less out-of-control. The prestige you vampires like to go on about. No balance uplifted, no door of vile secrets unhinged. O, I once had on my line a notable vampire of such amplitude at enchantment... Ah, the spells I cast, then! I'll live forever!!”
“Hah! But now you'll have me?” Jessica nearly laughs, “you shall surely die!” She gets a slight smile thinking how she'll starve the witch out, being true to the promise she made to her Drew, renouncing her vampire-side - avoiding the feeds which ignite the ancient calling from a vampire’s immortal soul.
Suddenly the boiling water clears and Theopolis can be seen in the watching pot opening a can of soda and putting his feet up on the couch. His toenails are long and curved, pointed and sharp.
The Witch nearly hisses, “He's been hanging…” She looks over at Jessica, “Come look! We'll see who's right about him. This one is no innocent.”
She goes over to the wooden chair and squooches Jessica closer to the watching potion, “There! You see?“ Theopolis is shown upon the potion’s surface, like a screen, biting his fingernails.
Jessica looks at her, “That's nothing.”
The Witch thinks out loud while earnestly fussing about the kitchen hoping to see more, “Well, I'll put something in of my,“ her voice quickly turns from sour to unbelievably 'sweet', “dear, long lost, Tyrannomous, may his soul rest in peace.” She looks at Jessica for a reaction. Jessica nearly rolls her eyes but doesn't. The Witch turns and walks toward the object she decides to add into the watching potion for the next special effect to be witnessed.
Just then, Jessica leans her head forward and opens her fingers out wide, straining to touch a metal spatula. She has but one second to get this right. She looks over her shoulder to her wrist tied to the chair and holds out her fingers as far as possible. The witch reaches up onto the wall where her broom hangs by a hook. Jessica opens her hands, wide, again, and catches the spatula up in her fingers. She begins to rub, as best she can, the metal edge of the spatula against the twine that binds her while the Witch takes the broom off of the hook from which it hangs, bringing the h
ook, rather than the broom, toward the pot. Jessica sees that the 'hook' is actually a gnarled, greyish finger.
“Uu-h! You kept his finger?” Jessica wraps all her fingers ‘round the spatula concealing as much of it as she can.
The Witch nearly hisses again, “Storage. They make good broom hangers.”
Jessica is repulsed, and she cringes while watching.
The Witch snips, “No time for sentimentality here, in these parts, you know. No sense in wasting sinew and materials.”
Jessica lowers her chin and tries not to gag, “Uu-h, that’s rather sick.“
The Witch interrupts, “Shoosh-shoosh!! See here!“ The watching potion with the finger in now shows Tyrannomous and Theopolis running from rock to tree in the dusty In Between gulch preceeding the Underworld.
Finally realizing the depleted soul she is dealing with, here, Jessica begins to bargain in her mind for her life! Forgetting that vampires never show fear, she asks, “You're not going to kill me, are you?”
Again a mock sweetness in the Witch’s tone sets the corners of the old Norse’s mouth upright, “Of course not, little darling... I'm going to wait until Theopolis arrives to rescue you; and then, I'm going to kill him.” The Witch, looking into the potion, snarls.
“Domina!”
Jessica looks up from her misery, “Where? That one? O, beastlies, I've seen that one!” she says.
Suddenly Domina's face appears in the watching potion. She blurts out as many words to Jessica as she can, before the hissing Witch throws in something of her own.
The young woman’s face, who Jessica assumes is Domina (looking a bit like Jessica, herself) cries out Jessica’s name.
The Nebulizer Potion and the Electric Compass (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 3) Page 7
