Third Time is a Charm

by Cate Martin

"Stop hurting him," I said over my shoulder. I didn't shout, but I spoke clearly enough for everyone still in that room to hear me.

  "Shut up," Stu said.

  I glared up at him then gave him my best manic grin. "You don't want to make me angry."

  "You don't scare me," he said.

  "Where's your friend?" I asked him. "The one in the hall? John, was it? The one who went upstairs to see what all the noise was about?"

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot then looked up at someone standing behind me. Probably not Mikey again; he seemed like he was looking for a management decision from Vinnie or Tommy.

  "Ignore her," Tommy said. "Gag her if you have to."

  "That won't stop me," I said as Stu started pulling off his own scarf.

  "You can't hurt me," he said, but he was hesitating to draw nearer to me.

  "Because you have me tied up?" I asked. My hands and feet were like cold, dead weights now. Even if I got myself untied, I'd be pretty helpless.

  "Because Vinnie has your wand," he said. "A witch is just like any other dame without her wand."

  "You're wrong," I said. "You're the one who can't hurt me."

  "Because of Evanora? The boss can handle Evanora," he said.

  "Not Evanora," I said. "Evanora's employer."

  He blanched at that, and I really wished I knew what I was talking about. Who was this mysterious employer?

  Then he got himself back under control, the scarf drawn tight between his hands as he moved in to tie it around my mouth.

  "But you're wrong about the wand thing as well," I said quickly. "I don't need it."

  "Sure you don't," he said with a smirk.

  Then my mouth was full of the taste of wet wool; the fibers itching my tongue.

  And through all of that, Otto was still writhing in pain.

  I struggled against my bonds again, but only because the feel of the scarf tightening around my wrists and ankles, the bite of that pain, it fueled the angry beast inside my chest.

  And then the anger took over.

  Chapter 19

  This time I deliberately didn't close my eyes. I just pushed myself into my altered state, never breaking eye contact with Stu standing over me.

  My vision was suddenly doubled. I saw the world as I normally did, but superimposed on that were the living threads.

  My scarf and Stu's scarf were both wool, something that had once been alive. That made their threads easier for me to see and manipulate than if they had been inorganic.

  It was ridiculously easy to break the threads. The scarves both crumbled to little fibrous puff balls and blew away.

  I stood up. Stu fell back against the wall. The look on his face was abject terror. Somehow, I doubted that was just from me magicking my bonds away. It seemed extreme for even what Otto had described before.

  I stepped forward and felt a surge of delight as he cowered back from me. I felt power coursing through me. The threads that made up my body were glowing brighter than a thousand enchanted objects.

  "Please," Stu said, trying to cover his head with his arms. "Don't hurt me."

  "Why would I hurt you?" I asked.

  I was pretty accustomed to finding the threads that corresponded to lungs by now. It was such a simple thing to reach into Stu's chest, catch hold of those threads, and just tweak them a little.

  Stu's eyes rolled up into his head, his knees buckled, and I stepped back as he fell to the floor with a crash.

  Then I turned around.

  I looked at the chaos of threads that made up the room. Otto in all of his pain and agony was the centerpiece. His threads were flashing like a warning light, a warning light with a dying bulb. Vinnie stood over him. Hurting him.

  Tommy was turned away, pretending not to pay attention.

  Neither of them noticed that I was free or that Stu was lying on the floor.

  Then the other two came back in the room. Mikey and Rob.

  "We got the car, but we can't find John," Rob started to say, but Mikey talked right over him.

  "What's with Stu?"

  It was almost as if they didn't see me. But they were between me and Otto. I stepped up to them and plunged a hand into each of them.

  They saw me then, their eyes widening in terror just before they too collapsed to the floor.

  "Knock her out!" Tommy demanded. I spun to turn my attention to him, but then a hand closed over my nose and mouth, an arm wrapping around my throat. Vinnie. I didn't struggle; I just smiled at Tommy.

  I mean, he couldn't see since my mouth was covered, but I think he knew. He could see it in my eyes.

  I had to reach through my own body to get to Vinnie. I had to take my time with it, to be sure not to get tangled up in any of my own threads.

  Vinnie gasped at my touch. For a moment his grip on me tightened. I wasn't breathing at the moment, but I felt a vague worry that he was going to snap my neck.

  Then his arm loosened and he too fell to the floor.

  I almost faltered then. The anger was starting to burn itself out. Perhaps if I had been the sort of person to nurse grudges, I would be better at this sort of magic.

  What was I thinking? Who wanted to be good at this sort of magic?

  Now the power was flowing out of me like water from a punctured kiddie pool. I grasped at it, summoned every bit of my will, and caught a hold of enough to break the once-living threads that made up the rope of Otto's bonds.

  I wasn't sure if that would do any good, as hurt as he was.

  I felt a sudden pain in my knees and realized I had collapsed. I looked down at my hands, purple-tinged from being tied too tightly for too long, but perfectly ordinary.

  The double vision of two realities at once was gone. So was the anger.

  I heard Otto yell and looked up to see him in mid-leap over Bannon's desk. That hadn't been a yell of pain that time; it had been a battle cry.

  Tommy screamed but couldn't run away before Otto was on top of him.

  "Always start with the fingers," Otto growled at him, taking one of Tommy's fingers and, without warning, snapping it with a sickening crunch. "If you're going to hurt a man, be sure he can't hurt you back."

  "No!" Tommy shrieked, and I flinched away from the sound of another finger bone snapping.

  "Otto, stop," I said.

  "Me stop?" he barked a laugh at me. "You've killed all the others!"

  "They're not dead," I said, although I wasn't sure about the one I had fed to the wardrobe. "I just stopped their breathing for a moment. They've passed out, but they'll be fine."

  "You scare me," Otto said. I looked into his eyes and saw that this was true. He was a mess of blood from a thousand shallow cuts, but that was part of a world he understood.

  I was part of another world altogether.

  "We should get out of here," I said, although I felt too weary to even get up off the floor.

  "We have to finish this," Otto said.

  "I don't want to kill anyone," I said.

  "Listen to her," Tommy said. He moved as if he wanted to sit up but Otto, still straddling his center of gravity, pushed him back down to the floor. "Remember the O'Connor rules."

  "What are the O'Connor rules?" I asked.

  "Something the St. Paul chief of police set up years ago," Otto said. "Criminals in St. Paul won't be hounded for their crimes provided their crimes don't happen inside St. Paul. You can run liquor over the border from Canada, rob banks in Minneapolis, kill people on some lonely stretch of road between here and Rochester, but as long as you behave in St. Paul city limits, the police here won't bother you."

  "That's messed up," I said. "And this Dapper Dan fellow enforces this?"

  "He works with the police, yeah," Otto said.

  "And if Dapper Dan knew what Tommy here had done?"

  "He'd be a dead man," Otto said, leering down at Tommy.

  I sighed. So tired. "And if you just reported him to the St. Paul police?"

  "They'd talk to Dapper Dan," Otto
said. "What outcome are you looking for here?"

  "Justice?" I said.

  "Justice would be shoving him inside that wardrobe," Otto said.

  "Please don't," Tommy said, hands raised.

  "These are bad people, Amanda. They're not going to stop being bad people just because you tell them to."

  "I can't risk changing time," I said.

  "I'll do it," Otto said.

  "No," I said.

  "Amanda, if I don't take him out now, he'll be back for me," Otto said.

  "I won't," Tommy pleaded.

  "Shut up, you," Otto growled.

  "No, you're right," I said. Even I could see that Tommy wasn't going to let a grudge go.

  Vinnie on the floor beside me started to stir.

  "We have to get out of here," I said, trying again to push myself to my feet. This time I managed it. "Tommy," I said in my most commanding voice. "You're not going to hurt Otto. You're, in fact, going to be sure that no one ever hurts Otto. Because if Otto is ever hurt, I'm going to come for you. Me and my fellow witches. What I just did here was nothing. They have far more power than I could ever hope for. Don't cross us."

  "Amanda, that's not going to be enough," Otto pleaded.

  "It will have to be," I said. But then I had another thought. "Tommy, you're going to get out of town. St. Paul isn't for you anymore. Pack up and move."

  "Amanda…" Otto said warningly.

  "Where?" Tommy asked, eager to please.

  "Manhattan," I sighed. "And take that wardrobe with you. Come on, Otto. Time to go."

  Otto looked like he wanted to argue, but in the end, he just leaned close into Tommy's face. "I'll be watching for you to go. Then I'm telling everything to Dapper Dan. You'll never be welcome here again."

  "I'll go," Tommy promised.

  Otto rapped Tommy's head on the floor hard enough to leave him dazed then stood up and walked over to me.

  I bent to reach inside Vinnie's coat and found my wand.

  My stomach roiled again, not liking the touch of my own wand. I stuffed it inside my own coat and tried not to despair over how much better I felt not having it in my hand.

  It wasn't the only part of me I couldn't bear at the moment.

  Otto took my arm and helped me out of the house, back across the street to the car. He was a bloody mess; I didn't know how he was walking let alone lending me support.

  He closed the car door behind me and walked around to get behind the steering wheel. His hand paused over the ignition uncertainly for a moment.

  "What you did," Otto said, not looking at me. "What you just became in there…" But words failed him.

  "That," I said, swallowing back a sob before pressing on. "That is the reason that Edward belongs with Ivy."

  And then there was no stopping the tears.

  Chapter 20

  Otto drove me back to the charm school and helped me up the steps to the front door where an anxious Brianna and Sophie were waiting.

  "What happened?" Brianna asked as she put an arm around me and guided me towards the parlor.

  "Otto!" Sophie cried. "You're bleeding. Everywhere."

  "Yeah," Otto said, already turning back towards his car.

  "Wait!" Sophie said. "You need medical attention."

  "I'll get it," he said. "Take care of Amanda. But get back home first."

  "Home?" Sophie repeated.

  "Just now, you'll all be a lot safer in 2018."

  "2018?" Sophie said, even more confused.

  "Crap, Otto," I said, pulling away from Brianna to go back to the door. "Evanora."

  "I don't know who she is," he said.

  "If you see her again, run," I said.

  Otto gave a humorless laugh. "The best advice for all witches, right?"

  "If you need us," Brianna said, "come back here and leave us a note. We'll get it."

  "But wait," I said. "Won't he be able to see the students, and them him, if we aren't here to trigger the protective spells?"

  Otto threw his hands up in the air. "I've had all I can take for one night. I'll be just fine. You three need to get gone."

  "Otto," I said, detaining him again. "Thank you. For everything."

  "Don't make it sound so final," he said. "We'll talk again."

  Then he got into his car and drove away.

  "You have a lot of explaining to do," Sophie said with a stern frown. "Do you have any idea how worried we were when you never came back?"

  "And with good reason, apparently," Brianna said, examining my neck. Her probing fingertips were finding every tender spot.

  "We do have to get out of here," I said. "I have a lot to tell you, but not here."

  They both frowned at me but didn't argue.

  Five minutes later we were back in the charm school kitchen with all the shiny modern appliances. Sophie filled the kettle to make us tea.

  "I can put some salve on that," Brianna said, once more examining my neck.

  "Later," I said. "I barely feel it when you're not touching it."

  "It looks like someone tried to hang you," Sophie said.

  "Close. Strangle me," I amended.

  "How did all this with the wardrobe get so far out of hand? You were just going to ask a few people if they recognized the man in the photo," Brianna said.

  "He was a gangster," I said. "Murdered by another gangster. Then there were other gangsters. And Henchmen."

  "This is why we don't solve crimes that don't have anything to do with us," Sophie said with a sigh. "You didn't need this kind of trouble."

  "Did you change anything historical?" Brianna asked.

  "Who knows?" I said. "I tried not to. I didn't let Otto kill anyone." I swallowed hard, not wanting to tell them just how close I had gotten to killing someone myself.

  "What is it?" Sophie asked, putting her hand on mine. "Did Juno find you again?"

  "No," I said, staring down into the steam rising from the tea in front of me. "I don't need Juno whispering in my ear to almost reach for power no one should wield."

  "What happened?" Sophie asked.

  "I don't know where I drew the power from, but I had so much of it I could do anything. I could have killed all those gangsters with my mind. I could see the threads that formed their bodies, minds, and souls. I could have undone them like unraveling a bit of knitting."

  "But you didn't," Brianna said.

  "But I wanted to," I said. I realized my hands were in fists, even the one still under Sophie's gentle touch.

  "But you didn't," Sophie said.

  "I thought that temptation came from Juno, but it's from inside me," I said.

  "Juno was exploiting that about you," Sophie said.

  "It's good to know that, actually," Brianna said with barely checked excitement. "We can work on some exercises to help you resist it."

  "Somehow I don't think that's going to work," I said miserably.

  "Why not?" Brianna asked, curious not defensive.

  "I've never felt anger like that," I said. "I was helpless. Otto was helpless. They were going to kill us both. Otto was… well, you saw him."

  "Anyone would be angry," Sophie said. "You were scared. They were making you feel that way on purpose. Of course, you were angry."

  "Angry might be too small a word," I said. "I actually saw red. It was like having a demon inside me. I could feel its heat inside my whole chest, and it was squeezing my heart, and I was just so angry." I realized I was starting to raise my voice and forced myself to take a breath.

  "Good, just breathe," Sophie said. "You've got this."

  "This isn't the same sort of anger," I said, unfisting my hands.

  "No, I think you're right," Brianna said. "What you describe, maybe it's not just a metaphor. Maybe there is something else going on with you."

  "How can you tell?" I asked.

  Brianna's eyes lit up, and I knew she was about to list off a thousand different examinations she could perform, or experiments we could try together.

&nbs
p; But before she could, we were interrupted by a knock at the back door. We all nearly jumped out of our skins. It was far after midnight, and even if the windless night hadn't been deathly silent, that would have been a very loud banging.

  "I'll look," Sophie said, getting up from the table and pulling her wand out. She kept it mostly hidden behind her back as she stepped into the solarium.

  She came back in a second later with Nick behind her.

  "Sorry," he said. "I thought you might all be upstairs and wouldn't hear a soft knock."

  "That's why the front door has a bell," Sophie said. Then she exchanged a little nod with Brianna. "We'll be in the library," she said as Brianna got up from the table, taking her cup and saucer with her.

  Nick looked like he had been about to say something but was distracted before the first syllable by the sight of my throat. All of the color drained from his face.

  "Is it that bad?" I asked, trying to catch my reflection in the darkened kitchen window beside me. "Brianna has a salve-"

  "What happened?" he demanded.

  "The man in the wardrobe was a gangster killed by other gangsters," I said. "They didn't appreciate me snooping into it. But it's all taken care of now."

  “Is it?" he asked with deep skepticism.

  "Yes," I said. "I think so. I haven't actually checked; I just got home." He was glowering at me steadily, but he wasn't saying a word. "What happened here?" I asked.

  "The body disappeared," he said.

  "Oh dear, that's awkward," I said. But those eyes drilling into me were relentless. "You don't think I took it?"

  "I don't know what to think," he said. "I have no clue what is even going on here. I think, I really think that I might be going insane."

  "You're not going insane," I said, but he didn't appreciate my tone of gentle humor.

  "Aren't I? Because no one else in the station even remembers that there was a body," he said.

  "What?"

  "At first I thought it was a joke. The medical examiner was having a little fun at my expense. But then Nelson didn't know what I was talking about either. And Nelson has no sense of humor at all."

  "How could a body just disappear?" I asked.

  "There is no record of it ever being logged in," Nick said. "I checked. The wardrobe either. And there's no case file for a body being found in that condo. Do you know what it would take to disappear all of that? What the consequences would be?"