Regan looked back over one shoulder, her face mostly shadow. “I’m not.” I was confused, but I figured Regan knew that. I also had to assume that she knew what she was doing.
The door in the former garage was unlocked and Regan preceded me inside, turning on lights. The house looked cheery and homey, not like two people were under a black-magic spell in the master suite. There was a pile of blankets in front of the TV in the great room, as if this was where Angelina had nested, holing up to wait through the long hours when I hadn’t bothered to call her back. Because my life was so much more important and my problems so much more urgent than hers. Guilt stabbed me again, poking another hole in my soul.
I hunched my shoulders and followed Regan into the new room at the back of the house. She turned on the light and stood in the doorway, studying the scene. Big Evan was wearing a T-shirt and oversized boxers, lying on his back, one hairy leg and a strip of belly exposed, snoring loudly, one arm out toward Molly. The knuckles of his closed hand grazed her cheek. Molly was curled on her side, facing Evan, most of the covers pulled to her side of the bed, her feet drawn up, hugging a pillow.
Regan stepped to the side of the bed. “Help me turn Mol to her back.” She threw back the covers, exposing Molly’s pale blue nightgown and sock-covered feet. The smell of sleeping bodies, sweaty and too long unmoved, fluffed into the air. Regan turned Molly’s shoulders and head; I straightened her legs. I lifted her hips and positioned them in alignment. It was like moving a freshly dead body. The thought made my chest ache and I slid my hand around Mol’s foot, just to be making some small contact. I stared at the garnet earrings in her ears. They were the same pair Molly had been wearing all week. Regan said, “Now I have to stab her.”
“You were serious?”
“Yeah. If you’re right about Evangelina, then she used blood magic on Molly and only blood will undo it.” She looked me over, her brows going up, and her tone wry. “I see I don’t have to go looking for a knife.” She held out a hand.
“Every blade I have is silver-plated,” I said, placing a short, narrow-bladed throwing knife into her hand. “Only the edge is steel.”
Regan shrugged. “I’m not a witch, so I can’t tell you if there’s a difference, or which metal I should use. I just know I have to use the pointy part.” She uncurled Molly’s fingers and extended her index finger. Regan adjusted her grip on the handle and stabbed down, one quick prick. Molly didn’t wake. She didn’t even flinch. Blood rose in a shimmering button at the tip of her finger. Regan raised the finger and smeared Mol’s blood all over the earrings front and back, leaving blood smears on her sister’s lobes and several fresh drops on the musty-smelling pillowcase. Then Regan removed the earrings. She dumped a glass of water into an orchid blooming on the bedside table, and squeezed more of Molly’s blood into the glass where it thinned in contact with the remaining water. Regan dropped the bloody earrings with a soft clink of stone-on-glass and carried them from the room.
I pulled a small, delicate chair over and sat gingerly on the pillow-top seat, afraid my weight might break it. Molly’s finger was still bleeding and I wrapped it in a corner of the sheet, applying pressure. She looked exposed, vulnerable, and I pulled the linens back up, covering her. Holding her hand, I looked around the room. The new bedroom was painted a soft blue-green, the color of the water around the keys in Florida. The comforter was deep teal with peacock-toned shams, and throw pillows in shades of aqua, mint, and teal. The room was pretty without being frilly, the kind of room a woman decorates when a man shares it. Orchids were in the windows, all blooming, as if she kept the best for this room.
Molly murmured and rolled over. I let her hand go. A moment later she groaned. And sat up. Blinked. And looked at me. “Son of a witch on a stick,” she said, her voice rough.
Beside her, Big Evan rolled over and got to his feet, lumbered to the bathroom, moving stiffly, mumbling something about needing to, “. . . piss like a racehorse.”
“Jane,” Molly whispered, her eyes on me, going wide. “Regan?”
“Get dressed. Meet me in the great room,” I said, and I moved quickly out of the room. Which sounded much nicer than to say I scurried like a rat. Big Evan hadn’t closed the door to the bath and there were some things I simply did not need to share.
I went out to the SUV and carried the children to the house. Amelia took Little Evan to his room offering to change his diaper, thank God. I went to the guest bath and added a pad of washcloths beneath the strap over my wound before settling with Angie on the oversized couch, holding her to me, rocking back and forth. Thinking. The motion caused me a good deal of pain, but it seemed an appropriate price to pay—a penance of sorts. Though I had been raised nondenominational protestant, not Catholic, guilt is something all Christians understand.