Witching Hour

by Skylar Finn

  “She won’t find out until we’re already safely back in Mount Hazel and I have the combined resources of my family to convince her stubborn self why she shouldn’t start dating someone new when there’s also coincidentally a serial killer making the rounds in her neighborhood,” I said.

  “All right,” he said, resigned. “But I can’t help but feel this has the very large potential to end in disaster.”

  We went to the front of the wine bar. Fortunately, it wasn’t the kind of place with reservations, and it looked like we’d be able to grab a couple of seats at the bar, which wrapped around a panel of mirrored class in a rectangle. Half of it was concealed from the patio where Tamsin was currently drinking and laughing with Cristo, but still faced the door. It was the perfect vantage point to stage our stakeout. And it was happy hour.

  Just as we were about to grab seats at the bar, I heard my name and froze. Cameron and I turned to see Montgomery Dupont making his way towards us, a jaunty patterned scarf tied tightly at the nape of his neck. Was anyone aware it was summer besides me?

  “Hello!” he exclaimed brightly as I glanced around wildly to see if our cover was blown. Cameron shuffled his feet awkwardly next to me. “Getting some wine?”

  “Uh, yes,” I said. “We were just gonna grab seats at the bar.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Montgomery. “Come and sit with me, my two new favorite people.”

  Short of turning and running down the block, potentially losing Tamsin while we repositioned ourselves and reconfigured our plan, I couldn’t see a way out of it. I cast a sidelong look at Cameron, who looked equally helpless and trapped. Maybe Montgomery could provide us with a cover, if we did run into Tamsin: we were just meeting up with a friend, coincidentally at the very same place she happened to be on her date with Cristo.

  “Come on, darlings, I don’t have all night.” Montgomery threw open the door and swept ahead of us like a tiny, magnificent schooner. “Wine waits for no man. Or woman!”

  Montgomery threaded his way through the tables, clearly a veteran of this particular establishment. When he reached the patio, I stopped with dread, Cameron plowing into me from behind. Montgomery glided straight to the table where Tamsin sat with Cristo.

  22

  A Voice in the Dark

  The expression on Tamsin’s face gave new meaning to the expression if looks could kill. Hers could have melted Cameron’s magical water ice on a cold day in January. She was incensed.

  “Hey there, party people!” exclaimed Montgomery as he approached the table and pulled out one of the squashy red velvet chairs for himself.

  “Montgomery, old friend,” said Cristo, smiling broadly. His teeth were sharp and white, like a shark’s. “So wonderful to see you again.”

  “What a coincidence,” said Cameron weakly. Silenced by Tamsin’s death glare, I said nothing, hovering awkwardly behind the others.

  I sensed discomfort radiating from Tamsin on a couple of levels: one, the fact that I had clearly showed up to babysit her, and two, the embarrassing fact that Cristo had obviously planned to meet Montgomery here, and it wasn’t the date she initially thought it was. I didn’t have to read her mind to feel the humiliation and fury emanating from it. I tried to block it out.

  “What are you doing here, Sam?” She didn’t smile at me so much as bare her teeth at me. “Shouldn’t you be following Peter around?”

  This stung like a slap in the face. It was also completely out of character for Tamsin, who was never catty or vitriolic. I thought I saw her expression soften slightly at the hurt on my face, but it dissipated when I replied, equally acid-toned, “Oh, I don’t know. I guess we just felt like being heinous, irresponsible brats for the night.”

  “We actually just felt like having a glass of wine,” said Cameron with a nervous laugh. “This place is getting rave reviews on Yelp.”

  “If you count Yelp for anything,” said Montgomery dismissively, apparently as oblivious to any tension as Cristo, who was presently sniffing his glass with an expression that bordered on reverential. “Yelp is nothing more than bored and vindictive schlubs with too much free time on their hands, complaining about the food because someone forgot to bring them a dinner napkin.”

  “If they are merely being vindictive, are there not better outlets for this?” asked Cristo. “This sounds like a paradox you have proposed, my friend.”

  Montgomery, however, had already moved on to his next topic of interest: Tamsin. “You truly are an icon,” he said to her. Tamsin’s sulky expression shifted slightly as she tried to smile. “I’ve never been remotely interested in design before, but I would definitively change my stance on that if you modeled everything I made.”

  I felt Cameron bristle beside me. “Not just anyone can--” he started, but Montgomery rolled right over him. He turned to Cristo. “Wherever did you find her?” he asked.

  “She is my student,” said Cristo in his weird, indecipherable accent. “My best student.” I masked my revulsion by taking a sip of whatever was in front of me and immediately gagging. It was so dry it had become the opposite of liquid. “She is also my muse.”

  At this, Tamsin’s misgivings seem to melt away entirely, and she favored Cristo with a dreamy-eyed and frankly vomit-inducing expression of utter adoration. “I am?”

  “It is a little, how do you say it here? Traditionalist, I believe the expression goes. Or out-of-date, maybe. Maybe not so PC. But I believe that an artist is nothing without a true muse. I have had many muses, but Tamsin is...authentic.”

  Montgomery nodded as if this made perfect sense while Cameron looked at him cock-eyed and I drained my glass to avoid saying what I was thinking. Cristo’s attention shifted to me regardless.

  “And you, cousin of Tamsin, my auditor friend,” he addressed me. “I would be so happy if I could take your photograph someday.” The smile dropped right off Tamsin’s face. Whatever he’d said to mollify her had now been abolished. Like she didn’t resent me enough as it was. I wanted to punch him.

  “I’m sorry, Cristo,” I said. “I have a severe allergy to having my photo taken.”

  Tamsin looked mortified. She shot me a dirty look from across the table. Cristo, however, only laughed merrily. “A muse with a sense of humor!”

  “I’m not your muse,” I mumbled, barely audible. I didn’t want to piss Tamsin off even more than I already had, but it was hard to censor myself even that much when I wanted very badly to lift the corkscrew from the table and plunge it into Cristo’s kohl-rimmed eyeball. Was he seriously wearing eyeliner?

  Montgomery, finally noticing something was awry, hastily lifted a hand to flag down the passing server. “Can we get some menus over here?” he asked. To the table at large, he said, “I don’t know about the rest of you folks, but I am just dying for a crudité.”

  Forty-five excruciating minutes later, most of which had been filled by Cristo and Montgomery taking turns talking about themselves, Cristo rose suddenly and unexpectedly from the table.

  “I despise to leave such magnificent company,” he said grandly. “But I simply must get back to my studio and finish my current project, or it will never happen. Certainly not if I continue to imbibe these marvelous and remarkable spirits.” He laughed heartily.

  I stared at him. It was like he learned English from a badly-written 1800s pulp novel that a time-traveling tourist had left in one of the baskets Cristo handwove and sold in whatever imaginary fairy book village he’d come from. It was less the way a normal person would talk and more the way some extraterrestrial being imagines humans sound as it tries to disguise itself, undetected, among the populace.

  Tamsin looked shattered. However stung I’d been by her earlier jibe, my heart broke for her a little bit. I knew how much it hurt when an evening has taken on a paramount importance in your mind, only to realize that the person in it has completely different ideas about what is and isn’t happening. I imagined her limping back to her dorm in her hopeful heels, and I hurt more
for her than anything she could say to lash out at me.

  He patted her on the head like a golden retriever. I think he was a little bit drunk. “I’ll have your project graded for you on Monday,” he assured her before lurching away, listing slightly as he threaded his way through the tables. He called back over his shoulder, “Lovely to see you all! I have already taken care of the billing!”

  Montgomery dabbed daintily at his lip with a linen napkin before excusing himself. “I just need to powder my nose,” he said, exiting his seat. It seemed to me this could be a polite metaphor for any number of things, but I didn’t have time to speculate on what those might be before Tamsin whirled on me and Cameron, her face filled with wrath.

  “What are the two of you doing here?” she demanded. “I can’t believe you crashed my date with Cristo. He just left. It was supposed to be just the two of us, and you guys drove him away.”

  I marveled at the speed and efficiency with which she pinned Cristo’s early exit on us. It was obviously vastly preferable to realizing he’d probably never intended to take her on a date in the first place. Ordinarily, I would have let it go and played scapegoat so she’d have one less thing to feel bad about, but these were not ordinary times.

  “Tamsin,” said Cameron, gently but firmly. He apparently felt the same as I did. “We were not trying to ruin your ‘date.’” Here he employed the same air quotes he’d chastised me for earlier, in such a firm way it was clear he wasn’t going to let the we-ruined-your-date storyline fly, either. Tamsin blanched beneath her make-up as the sarcasm behind “date” registered.

  “We are here because we are concerned for you,” I said. “We are here because a much older man who is supposed to be teaching you is inviting you out for drinks when there is a killer on the loose and another girl in your class just disappeared.”

  “Cristo has nothing to do with that!” Tamsin thundered. “How dare you accuse him that way?”

  “How do you know?” I asked her.

  “What?” Her head swiveled on her neck like Linda Blair’s, and I shuddered.

  “How do you know it wasn’t him?” I asked bluntly. No sense in pulling punches. The patio was fairly empty, but had just enough patrons that she was unlikely to make a full-on scene by having a total meltdown. Nor would she dare turn either of us into toads. I had no doubt I would be the first in line.

  “Because the night that Bea Wilson died, I was with him,” she said defiantly. Cameron sighed, face in hand. “I was posing for him. In his studio.”

  I tried not to imagine what that entailed, flashing back to the series of photos I’d seen of her hanging up outside the darkroom. They were clearly not self-portraits.

  “Even if he’s not a murderer, that doesn’t make him a good guy,” I said. “Tamsin, you’re not in Mount Hazel anymore. You’re young and beautiful and talented. People will prey on you, if they only get the chance. How well do you know this guy?”

  I expected her to leap across the table and throttle me, but her eyes misted over at my description of her and she struggled to maintain her composure.

  “Sam,” she said, in what I perceived was her mature, adult voice used to convince her mom when she wanted something unsavory. “I appreciate that you have my best interest at heart. I really do. But I’m an adult now, and that means I can make my own decisions.” She gave me a pointed look and I remembered our conversation in the car. I wanted to kick myself for saying that now.

  “I can’t have you and Cameron following me all over the city, trying to keep me safe,” she continued. “I’m not some ignorant child who can’t figure out reality for myself. I’d appreciate it if you guys would recognize that. Since it’s obvious to me that you won’t, I want nothing to do with either of you till you figure out how to do that. Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Don’t come by.” She got up, shoving her chair out. “And definitely don’t even think about following me.”

  I watched as she shoved the patio gate open and went unsteadily weaving up the sidewalk. I tried not to cry. Tamsin and I never fought. And if we weren’t speaking, how could I be sure she was safe? I was mad at myself for getting caught; mad at her for being so stubborn and obstinate during a time of crisis. Not everything is about your burgeoning independence! I wanted to scream after her. Instead, I sat and looked at my hands.

  “Well.” Cameron cleared his throat. He reached for the unopened bottle of wine that Cristo had paid for and left on the table. He slipped it into his black leather satchel. “That was a wild success.”

  I walked up the street to Peter’s, lost in my miserable thoughts. I wanted to text Tamsin to see if she’d made it home safely, but knew I would get no response. And that was only if she hadn’t blocked me.

  Cameron and Montgomery had headed back to his shop to split Cristo’s expensive bottle of wine. They invited me to come, but the thought of a wine hangover on top of my current misery was more than I could face tomorrow.

  It was dark by the time I made it back to Peter’s. There was a light on in the café on the ground floor, and I could see Amelia inside sweeping the floor. I flashed back to what I’d seen when I got off the bus. I tried to push it out of my mind, but I couldn’t. It was like when you already feel bad about something, and every new thing you see reminds you of something even worse.

  I tried to reassure myself and talk myself out of the feeling: Tamsin will come around, everything will be fine. We’ll get to the bottom of what’s going on, we always have before. My own thoughts cheered me up only marginally, if at all. I knew Peter was asleep upstairs, but I wasn’t selfish enough to wake him up in the hopes he might make me feel better. I was starting to regret my decision not to take Cameron and Montgomery up on their offer of wine.

  I heard a rustle of bushes in the park behind me. I turned to regard the wrought iron fence. Was it someone’s dog? There was no wind on this stagnant summer night, so it couldn’t have been a breeze. What if it was Lindy?

  Sam...Sam...I heard my voice spoken not out loud, but in my mind. I stepped closer to the bushy green hedge, its branches pushing through the fence like arms reaching out. Under the circumstances, I should have been running up the block, screaming hysterically. Yet I felt unable to turn away.

  Sam...As I watched with mixed fascination and horror, the hedge parted. The fence melted as if it was no more substantial than butter, then parted like water running downstream on either side of a rock.

  Instead of running, or doing anything productive and logical at all--like screaming my head off and running into the coffee shop for help--I stood stock-still on the sidewalk. I stared helplessly as a dark shape emerged from the shadows and stepped toward me.

  23

  Probably Not Detroit

  The figure pushed back the thick red velvet hood of its cloak: Suki. I stared at her, my mouth hanging open.

  “Greetings,” she said. “I apologize for my sudden appearance. I would have given you fair warning, but I have unfortunate news.”

  “Couldn’t you have taken a bus?” I asked when I regained my ability to speak. I mean, did she seriously need to leap from the bushes, dressed like an extra from The Crow?

  Suki looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Why would I do that?” she asked, genuinely curious. She glanced around. “Is there somewhere safe we can go to talk?”

  We were right below Peter’s and he was probably sleeping, but I didn’t want to run the risk of waking him and having to explain the presence of this cloak-wearing individual, talking about the end of time.

  I glanced through the window into the coffee shop where Amelia was now mopping. “Let’s go in here,” I said.

  Amelia glanced up when we entered. “Hey, sorry, I know you’re closing,” I said apologetically. “We’ll be out of your hair in just a few minutes.”

  “It’s okay, I’m just cleaning. We don’t officially close for another twenty minutes.” She smiled kindly. “Take all the time you need.”

  The coffee shop was empty. All t
he chairs were up, so we slid into a booth. “What’s going on?” I asked. “Where’s Lindy? Did you find her?”

  “Lindy has escaped,” said Suki. “We tracked her to the location you showed me, then she slipped through our hands like so much water in the ocean. But I’m afraid that isn’t the least of our troubles.”

  “There’s more?” I asked with dread. I glanced over my shoulder. Amelia had her earbuds in as she mopped, humming along with whatever she was listening to.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” said Suki. “The truth is that I knew who you were before you even stepped foot into our home. We were waiting for you.”

  I felt a chill skate down my back. “Waiting for me? What do you mean?”

  “We know you are the ancestor of Samantha Black, and that you possess great magic,” she said. “Magic you have not yet learned to wield, but a greater magic than anyone who walks the earth--even Janice and myself. And that is no small thing. When we came here seeking the Never Was, we knew we would need a powerful ally. We thought, with our forces combined, we could contain the menace currently threatening time.”

  “You mean Lindy?” I asked.

  “Not just Lindy,” she said. “We knew there was a Never Was here, of course, but what we didn’t realize was that the problem was far more grave. Shortly after our arrival, the council informed us that Father Death had escaped his prison. He is on the move, looking to re-form his army of shadows and perform the ritual he was prevented from completing those many years ago.”

  “You’re looking for Father Death?” I said. This was so much worse than what she originally said.

  “We believe he has come here seeking shadows, and a heart for his ritual,” she said. “That heart and the spell, if he succeeds in performing it, will cease the flow of time. We have no magic that will undo it. It is an act of pure destruction. Everything will come to a standstill. The only measure of time will be what Father Death decrees. He will become the master of age and death. He will grant immortality to those who serve him, and instant death to those who don’t. He could age you into the grave with a snap of his fingers.”