Instead, I reach inside the booth and unhook the latch for the swinging door.
Candles bathe the small room in flickering orange light. At the back sits a worktable scattered with pots and pickle jars filled with colorful liquids and questionable foodstuffs. The dark walls are cluttered with crooked shelves and clocks of every shape and size. A large chipped sink sits to the right, stained with what I hope is red paint and not something else, and across the cobblestone floor from it is a stone hearth. Perfect for cooking children and ex-cheerleaders.
The woman is gone. There’s a door set into the back wall. What the hell, I decide. I cross over to it in two long strides, grasping the cold knob in my hand.
I open it.
The candles from inside the booth cast just enough light that I can see the faint outline of a staircase twisting down into a black hole. Following her is a Bad Idea. But the woman knew I needed help. The promise that maybe, just maybe, she knows how I can save Paige drives me to take a melting taper candle from the shelf and hold it out in front of me like a weapon as I descend the stairs. This is how horror movies begin, I think.
The temperature immediately drops as I go down, and the scent of damp earth fills my nose. As my eyes adjust to the dark, the room begins to take shape—“room” being a massive overstatement. The place looks more like a cave. The candlelight casts shadows across the rocky walls and glints off the stalactites hanging from the low ceiling. Shadowy passageways snake off from the main room, twisting in different directions. There must be tunnels running under the entire boardwalk.
The warm wax of the candle molds to the shape of my hand as I walk.
“What is it you want?”
I leap at the sound of the witch’s voice and whirl around, trying to locate her. I gasp when the whites of her eyes light up a darkened corner to my left. What the hell is she doing, just standing there in the dark?
There’s a quiet pop, and then the small flicker of a flame appears in the witch’s cupped hands. She reaches up to light a lantern overhead. The flame spits as it comes to life, illuminating a long worktable in the middle of the space strewn with even more bottles and jars. The witch takes a mortar and pestle and begins grinding what looks like black rock.
I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t. I realize I haven’t answered her question.
“My friend,” I start nervously. “She’s been kidnapped.”
The witch doesn’t react, just continues crushing the rock with surprising strength considering her arthritic-looking hands.
“We think she’s in Los Demonios,” I add.
I expect her to jump down my throat at the mention of the place, but she just says, “What makes you think that?” as though I were commenting on the weather. I instantly like her more.
“We did a locating spell. It should have worked, but we picked up nothing.”
“And you want to get her out,” she replies.
I nod.
“I know of a way,” she says.
My heart skips a beat. “You—you do?”
“It will cost you three thousand dollars.” She lays the pestle down and pats the worktable until she finds a funnel, which she uses to feed the ground black crystals through the narrow opening of a bottle-green jar.
Three thousand dollars. I don’t have three hundred dollars, let alone ten times that.
“I don’t have that much money,” I say.
“Well, then you’re not going,” she says, mimicking my voice.
I bite my lip, scouring my brain for a way to make this happen. In a flash, I remember the lockbox Mom kept on the top shelf of her bedroom closet. My college fund. Anytime I used to bug Mom about keeping so much money in the house, she’d bring up the Depression and how everyone who put their money in a bank lost everything, while the smart people who kept their money under their mattresses prospered. I’d tried to tell her that a robber was a bit more likely than another Depression, but Mom was steadfast in her ways. There’s got to be close to fifteen thousand dollars in there.
Mom would lose her mind if she knew I’d taken money out of the fund she’d worked so hard to save. For a brief moment I consider trying to find another way to come up with the cash, but then I think, Oh, who am I kidding? Mom’s dead. And anyway, she would have been okay with it if she knew what I was using it for. Not to mention I’m almost halfway through the school year and I haven’t even glanced at an SAT prep book.
So I’ll do it, I decide. Borrow the money.
The thought crosses my mind then that maybe this lady is swindling me. What does a witch needs money for? Bishop has a mansion funded entirely in money he magicked into existence. Surely she could do the same.
“Why not just conjure money?” I ask.
“I can’t.” She doesn’t elaborate.
Has the Family punished her too, I wonder? Is that why she looks so prematurely old? I want to ask but decide that it may be taboo.
“Are you sure it will work?” I ask.
She glances up for the first time since I came down here, and then goes back to her work. I guess that’s a yes.
The enormity of it hits me. I found a way. A real way to get to Paige. If only Bishop were here to see how much I’d accomplished on my own, all without his help.
Jerk.
“I’ll do it,” I say.
She gives a terse nod at my big announcement.
I shift my weight to my other foot. “Aren’t you going to warn me about how dangerous this is? How I probably won’t come back, and yada yada yada?”
“Do you want me to?” she asks.
I think about it, then shrug. “No, I guess not.”
She lays her pestle down again and uses the funnel to add more ground rock to the jar. “Come back when you have the money.”
“I want to do it now. Can’t I pay you later?”
“No.”
“Why not? I’m honest. I’ll get you the money.”
I realize right away the answer to my own question: because I might not come back.
I chew the inside of my cheek. I want to do it now. I’m worried that if I leave, rational thought might take over and I’ll be too scared to return.