“Wait,” she said. “I have the perfect thing, and I have it with me at all times. We can awaken the ashes with a few drops of my saliva.”
He glared at her.
“Don't stop now,” she said, craning her neck to look pointedly at Fung. “We're almost there. Come on, Jesse. I'm keeping up my end of the bargain.”
“Okay. What do I have to do?”
“Gather another handful of ashes and bring it over here.”
Slowly, glaring at her the whole time, he did so. He held a handful of Annette's ashes under her face.
“Spit,” he said. “Do it now or I'm out of here.”
She paused, as though stalling for time, even though she didn't need any more time. She was ready.
Zinnia said, “As soon as I give you your mother's name, you're going to call an ambulance, right?”
“Yes. Just do it already.”
She opened her mouth and flicked her tongue over her lips. “My mouth is so numb from the witchbane,” she said. “I can't tell if there's any saliva coming out of my mouth. Can you look? We don't want too much. Just a few drops.”
He leaned in over his hands, his gaze on her mouth. “Go ahead.”
She felt a bead of saliva fall from her mouth to the ashes. Oops. She hadn't meant to do that. He started to pull his hands away, but she said, “Wait. We need three drops.”
He growled and held the ashes steady.
She took in a deep breath, and then, instead of spitting, she blew as hard as she could. She blew with all the hate and grief and fury in her body. The ashes flew up into his face and eyes.
Jesse howled and stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet as he retreated. He landed heavily on his butt, groaning from the impact. From his seat on the cement floor, he dug at the gritty ashes that had filled his eyes.
“You witch!” he howled. “You'll pay for this!”
“You're the one who wanted to meet your mother.” She powered up her voice for the big one. The whopper. The secret revealed. “Jesse, your mother is in your eyes. She's on your filthy basement floor. She's all over you. Your mother's death is on you. Her ash is in your face. Her blood is on your hands.”
Zinnia wriggled and pushed down the top half of her gray cocoon. She was nude from the waist up, except for her bra. Her long-sleeved floral blouse was still sticking to the tape. She brought her hands around to her front, both of them free of their bonds. Blood sprayed from one hand, the most mangled one, but she paid it no attention.
Jesse groaned and continued rubbing his face. He didn't know that Zinnia had her arms free. She couldn't move very far with her lower body taped up, but she could move enough.
He moaned, “Annette was my mother's best friend. What are you talking about?”
“Annette was your mother. She was her own best friend, and her own worst enemy. That was the gimmick in her book. The main character was pretending to be two people, so she could get some distance, because the truth was so awful.”
“But why?”
“Because your father was a monster, and she was worried you were one, too.” Zinnia grabbed the urn containing the remainder of Annette's ashes, raised it high over her head, and struck Jesse on the skull.
A mighty crack reverberated through the damp basement. Ashes flew everywhere.
Zinnia toppled over from the exertion. She had poor balance with her lower body bound this way. But she managed to hold onto the metal urn. She got to her feet again, and raised her weapon once more.
The bare light bulb illuminating the basement flickered. The air compressed around Zinnia, becoming viscous. All around her, the basement crackled with juju. Heaps of juju, good and bad. The viscous air thinned again, and a breeze stirred up from out of nowhere.
Zinnia lifted the metal urn high over her head. She was ready to strike. The death blow. Fung wasn't watching. Her arms trembled but did not move. Something was stopping her. Not weakness.
The opposite of weakness.
There was a force suddenly coursing through her. Power. Like when Margaret had stood behind her and they'd shared powers for the tandem lightning spell.
Was her magic back? Witchbane didn't disappear that quickly, and yet, she felt no pain whatsoever. Only strength.
If she brought the urn down again, she would keep going until she'd killed her captor. And she wanted to. But the rational part of her mind, the part that was not boiling with white-hot rage, was asking a question. Where was this magic coming from?
The breeze that could only be magical ruffled her hair and evaporated the sweat on her face.
Something strange was happening to the ashes on the floor around her. The breeze was swirling them. The ashes were rising up, taking form, just like the darkness that had taken form inside Zinnia's kitchen.
The breeze kept swirling, until the ashes formed a body. The body stood between Jesse and Zinnia.
It was Annette. Standing there. Made of ash. Facing Zinnia.
The form was silent as she leaned forward and patted Zinnia on the shoulder. Zinnia felt nothing but power and peace. The form gently took the urn from Zinnia's mangled, bleeding hands, and placed it on the ground. Zinnia dropped her arms to her sides. She kneeled. She brought her bleeding hands together in a prayer position.
Ash-Annette smiled at her. She was Annette, and she was also someone else.
The holy name sounded in Zinnia's mind. Mahra. The spirit of Mahra was with them in that dank basement. Zinnia felt the peace radiating from her raw, unprotected heart. Spreading to the rest of her like pure white light. She was broken, and yet, she was whole.
And then the woman of ash turned toward Jesse. He was also down on his knees, reeling from the blow to the head but still conscious, rubbing his eyes and squinting up at her.
All at once, the dust pulled away from his eyes and merged with Annette's form. He stopped rubbing his eyes and dropped his hands to his sides.
Jesse stared up at her, blinking, eyes watering. “Annette?”
She did not speak. She patted his head.
He began to smile. He beamed up at her. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “I didn't know it was you. You're my mother?”
She nodded and kept patting his head.
“I love you.” His eyes darkened. “But you shouldn't have said those lies about my father.”
She pulled her hand away.
“My father never left me,” Jesse said. “He never abandoned me. But you did.”
She slowly shook her head. Zinnia couldn't see the ash woman's face, but she knew the body language. Jesse didn't understand, and he never would.
His face, which had been gentle for a moment, contorted back to rage. “I'm glad you're dead,” he said, spitting the words with venom. “You would have only insulted my father's memory with that stupid book of yours.”
She kept shaking her head, but moving faster now. Ashes broke free from her form and swirled around them. The air in the basement ceased being damp and chilly. The heat was rising. The concrete space was rapidly becoming a boiler room.
Jesse snarled, backed up, and shifted once more into a cougar. The big cat growled at Annette, teeth flashing brightly under the single light fixture.
Ash-Annette stood her ground. Zinnia couldn't see the woman's face, but she saw the ashy fists ball up at her sides.
The big cat pounced, passing through her middle.
The ashes flew out, swirled, and reconfigured. Ash-Annette was still there, but her form was less stable. The temperature in the basement rose a few more degrees.
The cat jumped at her again.
The ghost woman's center washed out once more. Her form was slower to reform this time.
The cat swished its tail, preparing to leap again.
Ash-Annette made a gesture that Zinnia had seen in martial arts movies. It was the come-get-some gesture.
Cougar-Jesse jumped, but before his paws and snarling jaw could connect with the ashes, Annette flew up all at once and spread across the ceiling. She
still looked vaguely human up there—a face in the midst of a flattened puddle of ash.
The cat paced below, growling at the ceiling.
And then, all at once, the ashes came down. They snaked down in the shape of a tornado, narrowing as it reached the cat.
Jesse-cougar opened his jaws to growl, and the tornado snaked in through his mouth. The ashes funneled in until they were all gone, every last gritty speck, consumed by the cat.
Zinnia whispered, “Jesse. Don't—”
Her warning was late. Far too late.
The big cat's tawny coat turned gray. Then black. Then red, like hot coals. There was a rumbling sound, like that of a volcano about to explode.
Zinnia wormed her way over to Fung and covered his face with her own.
The cat exploded, blown up from within.
Red ashes fell down around Zinnia, hissing as they touched the exposed skin of her bare back.
A minute passed. All was quiet except the hissing and popping ashes.
Zinnia slowly pulled her head up and looked around.
Jesse was gone. Steaming chunks of burning flesh and ash surrounded the two captives.
Jesse was dead, and the ashes were spread across the basement floor, and yet, Annette was still there.
Annette Scholem stood at Zinnia's feet. No longer ash. No longer corporeal, but visible. She wore her green dress. The one that brought out the bright flecks in her big, brown eyes. Her chest and neck were intact. She was radiant. She was the embodiment of one of the original Four Eves. Mahra. Mother and destroyer.
Annette mouthed something that looked like thank you.
Zinnia was dumbfounded, but she managed to ask, “For what?”
Annette only smiled. She leaned down, placed her hands on Zinnia's bound feet, and then disappeared in a flash of bright light.
Some of her light remained, and worked its way up over Zinnia's body. The thick, sticky layers of duct tape that bound her lower body fell away like tissue paper. She was free. She was shirtless, wearing only her bra, but she was free.
Zinnia looked around on the dirty floor for something. Her thumb. The one she'd ripped off so she could free herself from the handcuffs. She found the thumb, grabbed an empty jar from her purse supplies, and tossed it in.
Then she picked up the vial of Tracing Ink. Half the liquid remained. It actually wasn't ink at all, let alone the tracing kind, since such a thing didn't exist, as far as she knew. She'd promised Jesse she wouldn't poison him, but she hadn't promised not to lie.
She ran to Ethan, crouched at his head, and carefully dripped a few drops of the dark liquid into Ethan Fung's slack mouth. He was still breathing. The dark drops disappeared when they touched his tongue. The potion would keep his heart beating, but not forever.
Zinnia grabbed her cell phone and immediately dropped it. She'd forgotten about the missing thumb. Thumbs come in handy for holding things like phones. She switched the phone to her other hand, and redialed the emergency number for the DWM.
Chet Moore answered again.
Zinnia said, “Unless you want me to blow all your secrets out in the open, you'd better get your best medical crew to my location in two minutes. Can you do that?”
There was the sound of typing on a keyboard. “Will three minutes be okay?”
“It'll do,” Zinnia said. “It'll have to.”
“They're on their way.”
“Do they have black scarabyce blood in their supplies?”
“What's that?”
“Never mind. I have something I can use.”
Zinnia ended the call and took a seat under the basement's single light fixture. She dug through her purse, found a salve she hoped would do the trick, and reaffixed her thumb. She'd lost a lot of blood. There was so much of it on the floor. Hers. Ethan's. Jesse's.
She wiggled her reattached thumb. The angle wasn't quite right, so she yanked it off and tried again.
She paused to check on Ethan. Still breathing. She considered dusting him with her remaining body buoyancy powder so she could carry him upstairs, but decided against moving him. If medical assistance didn't arrive within three minutes, she would carry him to her car and start driving. But she did have some faith in Chet Moore's promise.
Now, for the next order of business. She looked at her thumb. It wasn't quite right. She adjusted it once again. Straight? No. But thumbs weren't straight anyway. The repair was good enough.
She retrieved her blouse from the pile of unsticky duct tape and dressed herself.
Then she went upstairs to open the door for whomever—or whatever—the DWM was sending.
Zinnia walked out the front door and sat on the step. The night air was cold, but she barely felt it. She glanced over her shoulder at the house. It didn't feel menacing anymore. Whatever bad juju had infested the walls, it had been vanquished, along with...
Zinnia stopped her thoughts. Now was not the time to think about Jesse Berman.
She peered down the street. Unlike pots of water on the stove, which don't boil any faster or slower when watched, watching for a bus or other vehicle does make it come sooner, if a witch is doing the watching.
There was no sign yet of the DWM emergency crew.
Zinnia looked down at her thumb. It was rapidly healing.
She cast a spell to make the moonlight in the vicinity brighter. It worked. A little too well. She dimmed the moonlight back to regular levels.
Then she took a seat on the front step and waited, looking up and down the street periodically to help the crew arrive sooner.
She picked absently at a ridge of white glue that had remained stubbornly stuck to the cuff of her blouse. Annette had cast the spell for unsticking the duct tape almost perfectly, nearly as well as Zinnia had cast the same spell a few days earlier.
Annette hadn't known she was a witch in life, but she'd been a quick study in death. She must have been haunting around the office the day Margaret and Zinnia had battled in the supply closet. That must have been how she'd learned that spell. After her death, Annette must have seen everything they did, heard everything they said. Of course she'd stuck around the office. The people there were her family. One of them was her son. That was why Annette had always organized the group to spend time together outside of the office. She wanted to be near her son. She wanted to be near...
Zinnia's back tickled. She reached under her blouse and pulled out a smoldering chunk that had embedded near the edge of her shoulder blade. She studied the smoking chunk, which was about the same size as Margaret's lucky marble. Had Annette arranged through her cousin to have Jesse pick up her ashes so they would be here, at the house, when Zinnia needed them? No. Zinnia shook her head at her thoughts. Annette's spirit couldn't have known. Could she?
Zinnia was still thinking about how little she knew about ghosts when the unmarked vans pulled up and the crew rushed out.
Chapter 29
Six Days Later
Zinnia Riddle woke up, climbed out of bed, and cast the first spell of the day. Her bed made itself with no sass or fuss, not even from the pillow.
Next, she retrieved a feather duster from her linen closet. Overnight in her dreams, she had finally remembered the spell for dusting. She twirled the duster up into the air, pink feathers fanning out, and set it in motion with quick hand gestures. Off it flew, flapping like a tiny, pink flamingo, magically dusting the tops of doors and window frames.
She took an ice-cold shower, reveling in the refreshing water. She shut off the water, and then didn't touch the decorative towels she'd hung on the towel rack. She dried herself by magic—her third spell of the day, cast with perfect syntax, but who was counting?—then went to her closet to look over her wardrobe. Several newly purchased blouses hung at the ready in Zinnia's closet, along with a new floral skirt. She'd considered buying some plain blouses to wear with the patterned skirt, but decided against it. Life can get dark sometimes. We all need more of the bright flowers that come after the rain.
Zinn
ia was approaching the hospital's front doors when she saw a familiar, friendly face. Another woman her age was holding open the door for her, and the woman had the chin-raised posture of someone anticipating a pleasant exchange. Ah, life in a small town.
Zinnia quickened her pace so as not to keep the woman waiting. Her name was Kathy Carmichael. Kathy had a compact build, medium-brown skin, and medium-brown hair that coiled in ringlets. She was dressed in conservative, earth-toned clothing, and wore an old-fashioned pair of wire-rimmed glasses on the bridge of her narrow, sharply pointed nose. Zinnia had known Kathy for many years, but she had not yet determined if Kathy had any magical abilities. Kathy dropped plenty of hints from time to time, but the two had never come into the sort of calamitous situation that forced a supernatural woman to reveal her true self.
“Good afternoon, Kathy!” Zinnia said brightly. “How are things at the library?”
“Wonderful, thank you, Zinnia. Frank mentioned he saw you recently.”
“Frank?” Zinnia's mind fired a blank. She thought of the name Fred and promptly went blank again. How was it she could name any herb in existence, yet certain people's names and faces wouldn't connect in her mind?
Meanwhile, someone else was approaching the entrance of the hospital. The two women instinctively moved away from the doorway. They both stepped inside, even though Kathy had been on her way out. They carried their conversation over to an unpopulated waiting area.
“You know Frank. Our children's librarian,” Kathy explained. “An older gentleman with bright pink hair. You can't miss him.” Kathy winked a golden-brown eye behind her round glasses. It was a slow-motion wink, very controlled, which made Zinnia feel for a moment like she was making small talk with an owl.
“Yes, of course,” Zinnia said, recovering graciously. “Frank Wonder. One of my coworkers also lives at the Candy Factory, so I happened to see Frank there last week.” Had it only been last week? It felt like a hundred years ago.
“The Candy Factory.” Kathy shuddered and rubbed her arms through her puffy winter jacket. “That old building gives me the creeps. Did you know it used to be a prison for the criminally insane?”
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