by A. L. Tyler
I cocked my head, hardly able to take her implication seriously. “They’re plants, Lyssa.”
“She only taught me the basics!” Lyssa threw her arms up, and then let them fall into her lap. “Just a few things to keep the place running. But she always told me that life was life—plants are just as alive as humans. And one time—I swear to God—I saw her bring a dead coleus back to life. From shriveled and dry to leafy and healthy. Swear to God.”
I stared at Lyssa in disbelief, but with a dash of skepticism as well. “A zombie plant?”
“Swear to God!” Lyssa repeated.
“And your position is that, because she could raise plants from the dead, she must have done herself, too?”
Lyssa seemed to finally get that I was poking fun at the idea, and her eyes narrowed.
“No,” she said irritably. “What I’m saying is that if she could raise the dead, then… yeah, maybe. Tricking us all into thinking she had died was probably a minor spell for her. I’m not saying she did or she didn’t. I’m just saying she could have, that’s all.”
I looked away into a corner, not sure what to make of the information. I still wasn’t sure if I trusted Lyssa, though the fact that Charlie hadn’t come barging in to give me a director’s cut about what he thought seemed to indicate the sage was working. I still wasn’t sure that I was sane, because it felt a lot like I was slipping away into the early stages of schizophrenia.
After that, we agreed to disagree about Kendra, and focused on Gates, Jennifer, and Charlie instead. There had to be a way to get him to undo what he had done, and then to banish him after.
As it turned out, Lyssa had hidden away her own, much more organized, version of the notes in Kendra’s books. She explained that she knew the most potent spells were broken across the books, because Kendra had hoped to discourage anyone from trying to duplicate her efforts, so she had written down everything she needed on her own.
“Do you know anything about demon banishing?” I asked.
Lyssa looked up at me like a doe in the headlights. “Annie, I don’t know anything about demons, except that they’re trouble. Kendra wouldn’t teach me.”
I shook my head; if Lyssa didn’t know anything about demons, how was she possibly going to fend against someone as savvy and adept as Charlie?
“You don’t know about demons?” I asked, startled. “But you’ve met Charlie, right?”
Taking another deep breath, Lyssa shook her head. Her eyes were wide. “Kendra always kept a lot of sage and cacti around to discourage them coming here by chance. That’s all I know.”
I felt my voice go up an octave in annoyed desperation, because I had thought that we were getting somewhere. “Then how could you possibly know that he killed her?”
“She couldn’t, because I didn’t.”
We both jumped and turned, scurrying into the far corner of the office. Lyssa pushed me behind her and refused to move.
“You’re not wanted here,” she said in a surprisingly low and calm voice. “Go now.”
Taking two steps toward us, Charlie smirked as he raised his hands and touched his lips, palms pressed together.
“Lyssa Hawthorn…” he said, grinning wider. “I do remember you…” Glancing down at the smoking tea mug, he clapped his hand over the top of it and put out the flame. “But you were much younger when we met. Kendra was only starting to vet her apprentices. It looks like you made the cut, so good for you. I’m vetting apprentices as well, now.”
“She doesn’t want to be your apprentice,” Lyssa said quickly.
Charlie’s gaze wandered to me, and I saw his eye give an involuntary twitch. “If that’s the case, then I’ll leave now. But I’m warning you that her friends, the cat and the vegetable, will both remain how they are. Scratch that—because it isn’t looking so good for the vegetable at present.”
“You said you wouldn’t kill anyone!” I protested.
“And I didn’t,” he replied, giving me a grave look. “Her parents are debating taking her off of life support, and that’s none of my doing.”
I swore under my breath, and Charlie shrugged his shoulders as he looked back at Lyssa.
“It’s entirely up to her,” he said. “But I can’t help those girls unless she makes a deal.”
“You mean you won’t help them,” Lyssa accused. “Kendra told me about you, Charlie. Even when you were bound your trickery was more trouble than it was worth.”
Charlie’s expression soured as he looked at her like a fly in his soup. He crossed his arms.
“Spoken like the true apprentice of Kendra,” he said bitterly. Giving a little nod, a tiny malicious grin touched the tips of his lips. “And if you thought my trickery, so-called, was bad when I was bound, then let’s see what I can do for my reputation now. If you want to see your daughter again, you’ll learn to stay out of my affairs unless you are invited.”
I didn’t need to see Lyssa’s face when Charlie said it. Lyssa shrieked, and Charlie’s eyes moved back to me with a satisfied grin as he dissipated into smoke.
I saw tears running down Lyssa’s brave face as she dived across the desk to get to her cell phone. She dialed Josh and frantically demanded to know where Rosemary was. Too used to handling the horticultural binders while she spoke in the office, she accidentally hit the speaker phone button in her urgency. Josh said that he could hear her playing in the living room.
But when he went to find her, she was gone.
“Rosemary?” he asked, and then again more urgently. “Rosie?”
“Dada!”
We heard her knocking toys around as she ran to him, but there was something wrong with the way Josh was breathing into the phone.
Lyssa’s eyes were wandering wildly. “Is she okay?”
“She’s…” Josh sounded like he was terrified. “She’s…”
Charlie’s words floated back to me. If you want to see your daughter again…
“Invisible,” I whispered. More tears slid down Lyssa’s face, but she swiped them away in anger. “She’s invisible.”
~~~~~~~~~
We stayed in the office for a long time after, but a customer finally came knocking.
“I’ve got it—”
Lyssa grabbed my arm and clung to me like a bird of prey, digging in her fingers like talons. “No, Annie, you can’t go out there—”
“—it’s okay,” I said to her, patting her arm. “It’s okay. Josh and Rosie are going to be here soon, and we’ll figure it out. He made a deal with me, and I’m safe. You don’t have to worry about me.”
But she didn’t let go, instead clawing her way up to my elbow as she stared at me. Her cheeks were tear-streaked.
“You have to bring Kendra back. If she’s alive, I mean,” she said in a whisper. “If that’s what he wants you to do, then you need to do it. She outsmarted him the first time, and she can help us now. Annie, you have to bring her back…”
I met her eyes, and we shared a long look. When Lyssa finally licked her lips and looked away, letting go of my arm, I knew she had realized how crazy she was acting. I sat down in front of her on the floor, and waited for her to look at me again.
“I can’t work against him,” I said quietly. “I’m going to do what he says, because he can read my thoughts. I can’t fight him. This is all my fault, and I’m going to fix it, Lyssa. I should be the one paying. Not you, and not Rosie.”
She shook her head, but she seemed to realize I was right. She nodded, and whispered back. “I’m going to find a way to help you.”
I stood and straightened out my clothes, and then went out front. It didn’t surprise me in the least that Charlie was already at the register, checking out the customers with a friendly smile. It sickened me beyond words to see him taking money and thanking people for their business after everything that had just happened.
When the queue was clear, he gave me a little nod toward the back room.
“I promised to keep the shop for you, Annie,” he
said with a quick smile. “You’ve got your own lessons to attend to.”
The deadpan look in his eyes was nicely complimented by the cheerful voice of an older woman approaching the register with a large calla lily. She remarked on what a good older brother he was to be looking after my education.
“Oh, I only wish she was my sister, but I’ve known her about that long…” he said to her with a kind smile. “I’m just a friend of the family.”
I turned and went into the back, and then leaned on the table as I stared at the piece of quartz in the middle of the marigolds and wax.
There weren’t enough breathing exercises in the world to calm and clear my mind now. If the serenity exuded by the Dalai Lama could have been bottled and distributed in pill form, an entire case wouldn’t have been enough.
I sat down with my back to the spell working materials and tried to breathe.
I had to fix this before anyone else got hurt. But I had no clue how I was going to do it.
Chapter 7
Charlie only stayed for an hour or two, and then he disappeared and I was left to tend the customers on my own. It was beginning to strike me as strange that he would leave me alone, ever, if he was so desperate to have me summon Kendra.
I wondered where he was going and what he was doing. What could be so important to interrupt his interludes in my life?
Before I left for home that night, Lyssa called me to the back. She was now beyond shock and sadness and brewing a dangerous brand of angry revenge.
Josh looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. I couldn’t tell if he had known all along that Lyssa had some strange extracurricular activities, or if he had involuntarily married a witch. As always, the shaggy hair said he knew, but the sweater vest begged to differ.
Their daughter, now a set of pink frilly clothes and a hat and sunglasses wrapped around the nothingness inside, rested in Lyssa’s arms. My sister looked me hard in the eye. Her words seemed too calculated.
“Do what he says, Annie,” she said carefully. “Bring Kendra back here, even if you have to raise her from the dead. And don’t tell dad—he doesn’t know about any of this. He’s kind of under a protective spell, and as long as he doesn’t find out or invite it in himself like you did, Charlie can’t touch him.”
Pursing my lips, I nodded. The little family pushed out of the room and left without another word.
I closed up shop, loaded my supplies into my car, and drove home. I listened to the radio part of the way, but it only seemed to cloud my thoughts further, so I shut it off.
Lyssa had been adamant about summoning Kendra, but the fierceness in her eyes made me think that she had a plan. Whatever it was, it was better that I didn’t know. If I knew, Charlie was going to figure it out too soon.
So I drove, trying to calm myself by saying that all I had to do was follow his directions. Twelve years in the public school system with nearly straight As told me I was good at doing just that, and I tried to let it be a comfort. Everything was going to be okay.
It wasn’t. I don’t know how I knew. This was one of those things, like my mother’s death, where there was going to be a before time and an after time. This was the after time, and there was never any going back.
Even demons couldn’t turn back the clock.
“And this is the reason I hate witches…”
I jerked the steering wheel and nearly went careening into a ditch, but Charlie reached over and grabbed ahold of it just in time. As I slowed the car, he steered us to the side of the road and then shifted the vehicle into park.
“There’s never just one witch, because it runs in families. And where there’s family, there’s drama. Although I suppose Kendra and I were two peas in a pod for some time late in our association. It never lasts, though. You have questions for me, Thorn. Ask.”
He reached over and took the keys from the ignition, and then leaned back against the door, setting his feet in my lap. He was so tall that his legs were still bent a little. The silence that surrounded us without the hum of the engine pressured me to speak.
“My niece—”
“She’ll be fine,” Charlie said quickly. “I’m sorry for the scene, but I don’t take well to individuals of a certain belief system. If we were talking about people, and not demons, then would you side with anyone who claimed a certain class of people needed to be enslaved for their own good, Thorn?”
“No,” I said simply. He had a point.
“And that’s why I like you,” he said. “Little Rosie will be fine. It was a demonstration, that’s all. As long as your sister stays out of my way, I’ll lift it in a week, and we’ll go from there.”
“I want it lifted now.”
“Oh, I know you do,” he withdrew his legs and sat up properly. “But your sister is up to something. She’s done something so that I can’t read her thoughts, and that tells me that she needs a little more time to come to her senses. So she gets to stay in time out.”
I nodded. I don’t know why, but it was a huge relief to know that Lyssa had pulled herself together after the earlier scene she had put on. I kind of wished she had shared the spell with me to block thoughts from Charlie, but I supposed that if she had, Charlie might have retaliated by bailing completely. And then Gates, Jennifer, and Rosie were just going to be stuck cursed forever.
“And?” Charlie asked.
“And what?”
“And ask,” he said, looking me in the eye. “You want to know where I go, so just ask. I told you, this relationship must be predicated on trust, Thorn. So if you want something from me, it doesn’t hurt to ask.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “I want you to undo all the curses and then leave forever. Can you do that?”
“I could,” he said cheerfully. “I won’t, but it didn’t hurt to ask.”
“Can I have the book back?”
He didn’t play dumb. He knew exactly which one I was talking about. “No, you may not. Not even for a deal, and not even for a bridge, so don’t bother trying. Some things are even more important than me, Thorn, if you can imagine.” He leaned in a little closer, and his expression became more serious. “But you want to know where I go. And where I go is back to the Other Side.”
“The Other Side?” I asked. “Hell?”
“Where the demons are,” Charlie gave a cold smile. “It’s not nearly as nice as you think it is, Thorn. We live there, but all of our sustenance, all of our food, is over here. And unless we have a bridge, getting here and staying here takes a great deal of effort. It’s weakening me, Thorn.”
I tried to suppress the first sentiment that came to my mind, but I failed. Even though Charlie said he wanted honesty and trust between us, I doubted that it would make him happy.
“Pity,” I said sarcastically.
Charlie frowned a little, and then looked down and nodded. He took a deep breath before looking back up at me.
“It will be, if I burn out while your friends are still cursed,” he said. But the way he said it… it wasn’t a threat. He seemed to genuinely lament it. “If I run out of energy, then I’ll go back there, and I won’t be able to come back unless someone much better than you performs the summoning.”
“Kendra,” I filled in.
Charlie nodded. “Kendra. Thorn… Annie, I don’t think you understand. The union between a demon and a bridge is unbreakable from my end alone, and Kendra is still my bridge, but she’s banished me. She’s slowly starving me. I am dying a slow death that I don’t deserve, and the only way for me to stop it is to find Kendra immediately, or to get a new bridge while I look. I am sorry for what has happened to your friends—”
“What you did to them.”
“—what I did to them,” he said begrudgingly, and with a little growl in his voice. “But I’ve been screwed over by one Hawthorn too many, and I can’t let it happen again. Help me find her, and I will set things right. You never have to see me again, unless you want to.”
“I won’t be you
r bridge,” I said with finality. “And I don’t get it… if this thing with Kendra is so unbreakable, then how could I summon you to begin with?”
Charlie’s eyes glimmered. “I would say natural talent, but I doubt that’s the case. Your blood relation and my desperation probably helped, but it’s like grasping at straws for me. It’s exhausting to be here, and letting myself fall off the cliff every so often is a relief.”
“What did you do to Kendra,” I asked, “To make her banish you?”
Charlie frowned and shook his head. “I won’t tell you that. It’s between me and her, and it’s complicated.”
I nodded, looking down, and we fell into silence once again. Charlie stared at me. I knew he was analyzing my thoughts.
“It’s the deals,” he said. “We survive on making deals. But they won’t sustain me with Kendra constantly pushing me away. I need her to lift the banishment, or else sever the bond between us. It would be best if I could find a new bridge, and quickly, but I can’t force you to do that for me. Just help me find Kendra, and you’ll have my eternal gratitude, Thorn. And I do mean eternal.”
I sighed. Lyssa had told me to do what he said. Whether it was a part of her plan, or just a way to keep me safe, I didn’t know.
“I don’t have much choice, I suppose.”
“You have every choice.” Another sickly grin spread across Charlie’s face. “You could wait me out. A week or two, and you won’t see me very often. A month, and I may be gone for good. You could accept that Rosie is invisible, and your friend is a cat, and Jennifer Wilmot will die. And all of it will be a tragedy, but you will have ridded this world of one more demon. You could say to yourself that I deserved it for the things I have done, and that you have spared the world a greater evil. But you would be judging a man for how he acted in his most desperate hour, Thorn, and I swear to you that I haven’t always been evil. I am capricious, but I can do good, too.”
