Witching Hour

by Skylar Finn

  I remembered the black shrouded figure that Cameron and I had seen when the clock struck twelve and all of time had ceased. “The thing that we saw, dressed in black, that was him?” I demanded. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “We thought that finding the Never Was would be enough to lead us to him,” she said. She sounded remorseful. “We thought if we could limit your involvement as much as possible, we could keep you safe. We question even our ability to stand against Father Death: he is ancient, and holds an ancient power. We have inherited power to defeat him directly from the last person to do so, but that was many centuries ago. He has certainly learned some new tricks since then.” She shook her head. “For a young witch, a new witch, it seemed like certain death. But then, you have also inherited a great power as well.” She looked at me expectantly.

  My head was spinning. I could barely take in what she had told me. Even so, I still felt a little defensive. “Aren’t you my age?” was all I could think of to say.

  “I am a hundred years old,” said Suki. “Looks are deceptive. Time flows differently for Janice and I. She is five hundred and seventy-five. It is our duty to live outside of time in order to protect it. It is a long and lonely path, but no matter. We all must fulfill our fate.” She smiled kindly at me, as if to say there was really nothing to do but accept the inevitable of getting zapped by Father Death when I tried to stop him from completing his monstrous time machine.

  I glanced over at Amelia. She was dancing around with the mop, singing into the handle, still oblivious.

  “What say you, Samantha Hale? Descendant of Samantha Black, Aurora Black, and member of one of the most powerful covens alive today? Will you fight alongside us to prevent a great evil from sweeping the globe?” She looked at me expectantly.

  What do you say to that? No? Go away? I need to find an anniversary present for my boyfriend, and this is really hurting my game? I wanted more than anything to get up, walk out, and pretend that I had never met Suki, that she was just some maniac in a cloak wandering around the neighborhood and popping out of bushes, but I knew she spoke the truth. This was my heritage, and there was no getting out of it. If I refused, I would be risking the lives of everyone I loved and turning my back on countless others I didn’t.

  “What do I have to do?” I asked.

  Peter wasn’t home. He left a note on the fridge on the marker board: he was chasing an anonymous tip with his co-worker and didn’t know when he’d be back, but told me not to wait up. I tried to go to bed, but my mind was racing and sleep was an impossibility. I tried texting Tamsin, then calling. She didn’t answer. I left her a voicemail and a lengthy message that whatever her anger at me, it was nothing compared to what I had just heard, and we needed to discuss it immediately.

  I texted Cameron, whom she was slightly less mad at, and he reassured me he’d spoken to her after she got back to her dorm and that she was safe. But it still didn’t change the conversation that I’d had with Suki.

  Suki said that we would have to perform a counter-ritual to stop Father Death from ceasing time and entrap him as Mother Time had once done. She said that he would make himself scarce prior to the ritual and would be nearly impossible to find. He knew they were in the city and looking for him. She still believed that finding Lindy again would be the key to leading them to Father Death, ideally entrapping him before the ritual could commence.

  “How do you know when he’ll perform it?” I asked. “He has a heart now, Bea Wilson’s. He could do it any time, right?”

  “It seems likely to us that he will wait for the longest day, the summer solstice: a day of great power, and ideal for performing powerful, binding magic,” she said. “As for your friend, I doubt that one heart will be enough. If this were only a simple dark ritual with a single goal, it might, but what he is attempting to do has never been done. I have no doubt in my mind that it requires multiple hearts. I have followed the story in the paper, which suggests that he has at least two. Three is a magical number. I’m certain he’ll seek at least one more.”

  Tamsin, I thought. Peter. Any number of innocent unsuspecting people who lived in the city. Suki asked if I could find Lindy again, by going to the tea room and waiting for her to appear. She wanted me to distract her after sending Suki a message so that she could appear with Janice, trap Lindy, and use her to find Father Death.

  I agreed, of course. What else would I do? But I had a very different plan. I would find Lindy, this much was true. But if Father Death was looking for another heart before the solstice, that meant the people I loved were in danger right now. I knew that my best chance of protecting them lay in finding Father Death. And I had a pretty good idea of where to start.

  “Are you finally going to tell me what you’ve been so secretive about?” asked Cameron when I showed up at the shop the next morning. Peter had come in at dawn and was still asleep. I’d left immediately and staked out Tamsin’s dorm until I saw her leave for class, hair in a messy damp bun, glasses on, coffee in hand. Then I made my way to Cameron’s.

  “I’ve been trying not to push you,” he continued. “I figured you’d tell me when the time was right. Is now that time?”

  “My family are witches, and so am I,” I said. “I believe you have powers too, and I need you to help me. What Suki and Janice told you is true. Father Death is going to stop time after he finds another heart. I believe that heart will be Tamsin’s. I believe Father Death is Cristo. And now we have to stop him.”

  Cameron was clearly still a little buzzed from the night before, which I thought might contribute to the accepting state he was in. But there was more to it than that.

  “I always wondered if there was something more,” he mused. “Something more than meets the eye. When it was just those power outages in my building, I didn’t really think too much of it, you know? When my water ice didn’t melt, I got a little more excited. I always wanted to believe that there was magic in the world. Something unseen. I dreamed that maybe it would come to me. I don’t remember much of when we met in Mount Hazel, but the dreams I had afterward! They were remarkable. About worlds I’d never seen. Things I’d struggle to remember when I woke up, but they would just fade away.” He placed his cold-pressed juice on the counter and gave a little nod. “I believe you, Sam. Whatever I can do, I will.”

  “Help me find out the truth about Cristo,” I said. “We need to know who he is and where he comes from. Because it’s probably not Detroit.”

  We waited outside the Fine Arts building. Tamsin emerged, alone, and made her way up the block, her head down. I remembered what Bea told me about her class resenting her, and I felt sad. She still wasn’t speaking to me or returning my messages. I marveled at her hard-headedness under the circumstances, but Minerva had warned me that Tamsin’s stubbornness was beyond reckoning. Once she made her mind up about something, it became impossible to get her to do otherwise.

  It was just as well. After I spent the night considering the likely identity of Father Death, I realized I wanted Tamsin to play no part in this. Suki had implied we might not survive this fight, and the less Tamsin had to do with it, the better. It was for this reason that I didn’t want my family involved, either. I didn’t want them swooping in from Mount Hazel only to be destroyed. If what Suki said was true, then maybe my help would be enough. Maybe I was the only one who needed to risk my life in order to stop Father Death.

  I signaled to Cameron once Tamsin had disappeared from sight. I was relieved to see she wasn’t with Cristo. Ideally, he was still upstairs and we could follow him and find out where he lived--if he even lived anywhere at all. I remembered the empty storage space that Lindy had claimed was her home.

  We snuck up the back staircase. I remembered the way to Cristo’s classroom from my previous visits with Tamsin and Bea, and we went to the wing that held the darkroom and his class. The hallway was empty and I wondered if we were too late and everyone had left for the day.

  Bea emerged from the classroom without o
pening the door and I gave a little jump. “There you are!” she said brightly. I wondered at her good cheer until she continued. “That cousin of yours just ran out after class ended like she couldn’t stand to look at Cristo. What happened? Did he reject her?”

  At the eagerness in Bea’s voice, I wished, not for the first time, that I could cause bodily harm to a ghost. I remembered the slump in Tamsin’s shoulders when she realized she wasn’t on a date with Cristo and felt saddened. Or maybe she’d finally grown some sense and taken my warnings to heart. Either way, I was glad she wasn’t there.

  I ignored Bea’s questions and went to the door, peering through the glass with Cameron close behind me. “They’re still there?”

  “Are you kidding?” Bea came up beside us and looked over my shoulder. “Cristo’s class goes on for ages, even after it ends. We all line up at his desk to ask him questions and then he usually asks one of us to model for him at his studio after. The last couple of times it’s been Tamsin, but not today.” She smiled triumphantly. I didn’t understand why. It’s not like it would be her instead. Maybe the thought that it would be anyone but Tamsin was, for her, enough.

  Through the glass, a gaggle of girls dressed in black crowded around Cristo’s desk. He sat on top of it, swinging his short legs, a look of absolute pleasure etched on his features.

  “Gag,” said Cameron. “What a total peacock. I’ve known men like him before.”

  “Assuming he even is one,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” asked Bea.

  “I have a theory about Cristo,” I said. “Just a working one, mind you.” The girls were so absorbed in Cristo, and he was so taken with basking in the glow of their attention, no one even noticed two strange weirdos and a ghost at the window.

  “What’s your theory?” asked Bea.

  “I’ll let you know about an hour from now.” The last thing I needed was another Cristo loyalist, defending him even in death.

  “How will we know an hour from now?” asked Cameron. “Even if we follow him, we probably won’t be able to get into his building without attracting a lot of attention to ourselves. Look how easily we got caught yesterday. I guess we could wait till he leaves and try to sneak up the fire escape, but we’re going to have to be pretty sure of what apartment it is before we go clambering around outside of people’s windows.”

  “You’re going to Cristo’s?” Bea sounded excited. “I could take you there. I’ve modeled for him before, and I dropped off an assignment at his place once.”

  “Do you think we could get in and out before his little post-class rap session here is done?” Cameron asked.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. But it doesn’t matter, because we’re not going to follow him.”

  “We’re not?” he said, startled.

  “Well, you’re going to follow him,” I clarified. “When he leaves with me.” I remembered Cristo’s eyes on me at the wine bar. I would be so happy if I could take your photograph one day.

  “Wait, what?” Cameron looked at me aghast.

  “I’m not going to follow him,” I said. “I’m going to walk right up to him, walk straight into his apartment with him, and find out once and for all who the real Cristo is.”

  24

  Crimes and Misdemeanors

  Cameron reiterated, several dozen times, what a terrible idea this was.

  “You said he was still looking for a heart!” he exclaimed. “You’re going to go into his apartment murder studio when you think he might be a killer? Are you insane?”

  “I won’t get murdered,” I said, more confidently than I felt. “He doesn’t murder people when they pose for him, he waits till later on. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he have just murdered Bea after class instead of having Lindy ambush her in the park?”

  “That’s a pretty thin theory to stake your life on,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t like this, Sam. I think it’s a really bad idea.”

  “Of course it’s a bad idea,” I agreed. “And that’s why it will work. No risk, no reward. Listen: you’ll go up to his fire escape after Bea explains to me where it is, and I’ll unlock the door for you while Cristo’s setting up in his little studio or whatever.”

  Bea had described the layout of the apartment to me, and I was certain that if I excused myself to use the bathroom while Cristo was readying his camera and lights in the studio, I’d have time to unlock the window that led to the fire escape for Cameron.

  “Then, while he’s distracted shooting me, you’ll have time to sneak around and find some kind of hard evidence,” I continued, well aware of my unfortunate choice of words. “I’ll use it to convince Peter to get in touch with his police contact so they’ll get a search warrant for Cristo’s apartment. Then, while he’s sitting in a holding cell, Suki and Janice can perform the ritual to send him back to his magical prison forever.” I smiled triumphantly, pleased with my own brilliance at uniting both the magical and non-magical world in order to trap Cristo.

  Cameron stared at me as if I had gone insane.

  “You seem to be taking it on faith,” he said at last, “that we won’t die horribly at any given point in your highly questionable plan.”

  Cameron hid behind an ugly pottery display while I knocked on the door, Bea hovering wistfully beside me. She wanted an opportunity to see Cristo again, in spite of my adamant insistence that he was a depraved murderer.

  One of his student hangers-on opened the door, regarding me with curiosity tinged with hostility. “Yes?”

  “I’m here to see Cristo,” she said. Her eyes raked me from head to foot, openly envious now. Is this his girlfriend? I heard her think. I repressed shiver of revulsion at the thought.

  “Cristo?” She called over her shoulder without taking her eyes off me or moving out of the doorway. “There’s someone here to see you.”

  As usual, he seemed to glide across the ground as if he had no feet. “Cousin of Tamsin!” he exclaimed when he saw me. “How wonderful!”

  A sour look crossed the girl’s face. Not only did Cristo know me, I was also related to Tamsin.

  Cristo beckoned me into the classroom with a sweeping gesture and the girl reluctantly moved from the doorway. The remaining cluster at his desk swiveled their heads to look at me. Waves of contempt seemed to radiate from them. It was unnerving. I didn’t know how Tamsin dealt with it.

  “What brings you here today?” Cristo asked, looking sincerely interested.

  “I reconsidered your offer to take my picture,” I said, hoping that I sounded at least somewhat believable. “And I realized, what bigger honor could there be than to pose for an original work by Cristo?”

  Cristo beamed. “So glad you came around,” he said. “I assure you, it will only appreciate in value over time. My work goes up by the minute.” Cristo laughed. The girls sighed. I gagged, then pretended to cough.

  “Such an honor, really,” I repeated. “That’s why I just had to come over and see you, to see if your offer still stood.”

  “Why, but of course,” he said. “Anything for a cousin of Tamsin. Looks like we will have to adjourn for the day, girls.” They issued a collective sigh, sagging in defeat and filing out.

  Cristo pulled on his black blazer with a little flourish. It was eighty-five degrees out. “Come with me, my auditor friend,” he said grandly. “I will lead the way.”

  I followed him from the classroom, glancing over my shoulder. Cameron snuck from one ugly display to the next, keeping close tabs on us. Bea, my faithful and ever-present, unwanted sidekick, drifted passively along beside me.

  “Just so you know,” she said sweetly, in an obvious attempt to unhinge me. “Cristo always asks his subjects to pose nude.”

  “Over my dead body,” I mumbled.

  “What was that, Cousin of Tamsin?” he asked, opening the door to the stairwell. I was relieved he still didn’t know my name and had little interest in finding out, which made it easier to conceal my identity so he couldn’t hunt me down later
on.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said. “What exactly will this entail?”

  “I’m thinking of doing things a bit differently this time,” he mused as we reached the sidewalk. “Usually, I just do traditional sort of portraits. But with you, I’d like to add you to my series. How would you feel about posing in a ball gown--without your head?”

  “What?” I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. Behind us, I saw Cameron stick his head out of the alley and retract it.

  He laughed at my expression. “Not literally, of course! I will use Photoshop to remove it later, just as I have with the others.”

  I felt like he could have been talking about the hearts he’d stolen. I thought back to what Cameron said about the foolhardiness of my plan. I wondered if now was the time to back out. Then I thought of Tamsin: alone, unwilling to believe me, and still so certain that Cristo was her salvation. I had to find something that would make her see he was a dangerous fraud and a possible murder suspect.

  Cristo didn’t live far from the school, in an old factory converted to lofts. It was one of those places where people pay copious sums to have exposed brick walls and large silver pipes in the ceiling so they can tell their friends how raw the space is. His floor plan was troublingly open, which might have made it difficult to execute our plan. But the “studio” was in a small alcove towards the back, while the door to the fire escape was on the opposite end of the loft near the bathroom. It would be risky, and we were at a high risk of being caught, but it was possible.

  Cristo pulled an ostentatious taffeta and chiffon ball gown from a hanging rack in the corner and presented it to me with a flourish. It was hideous, like something a wedding cake decoration might wear.