We all look up at the ceiling as though there’s anything to see but more cement. I take a step toward the stairs, but Dayton stops me.
“You’re the only one of us with anything to lose,” she says gently. She holds her palm up. “Give me your walkie. I’ll check it out.”
I slip the walkie-talkie out of my pocket and hand it to her. I feel a tightness in my chest as I watch her skip up the stairs.
“It’s probably just FedEx,” Riley says, sensing my concern. “Who knows what else I bought?”
I nod, hoping she’s right. After all, what reason could anyone have to follow Caleb Treadwell to an abandoned house?
“Caleb,” I say, “where were you the night of Saturday, October seventh?”
He swings his head to look at me. His relief at seeing June hasn’t made him any happier to talk to me. His mouth twists into a sneer. “My dad and stepmom were on an overnight trip to Napa. I was with June for most of the night. She called Dayton for a ride home at around midnight or one.”
June moves too quickly for me to stop her. She topples over the grimoire, pulling the ceremonial dagger out. She must have hidden it there when I was outside. The ruby in the handle flashes as she whips the blade toward Caleb, the silver tip pressing into the raw patch of skin at his neck. He hisses in pain, tears starting to roll down his cheeks again.
“It’s just your eczema,” she whispers. She tosses the blade away, and her nails scrabble for his collar, stretching the cotton down toward his shoulder. Red welts and broken skin trail over his collarbone. She looks over her shoulder at me. “It’s not a curse, Camila! It’s a rash!”
“I told you it was a rash!” I say.
“You made it sound like he grew scales or was shedding his skin like a snake!” she says. She turns back to him, pressing her fingertips to his chin. “It wasn’t you, was it? You didn’t hurt me?”
“Of course not,” he weeps. “June, I missed you so much—”
She leans forward, setting her forehead against his. “I missed you, too. I’m so sorry. I had to know for sure that it wasn’t you. I can’t remember . . .”
“What the fuck?!” I shout, but June and Caleb don’t look at me.
The walkie-talkie clipped to Riley’s pants gives off static and then Dayton’s voice. “Hello? Um. There’s a problem up here.”
Riley turns her back to the rest of us, whispering into the speaker. “If it’s raccoons again, I told you to use the broom and chase them out of the house. Binx can’t fight them. They have thumbs. He doesn’t. It’s not a fair fight.”
“No, it’s people,” Dayton squeaks. “Old people. Like, a lot of them. On motorcycles.”
“On what?” Riley asks.
Underneath the sounds of Caleb’s wet nose breathing, I can hear the rumble of engines revving. A lot of engines. And then a bang, like a heavy book falling to a hollow floor that makes me shiver and jump.
A gunshot.
The walkie-talkie static dies.
“Go to the woods and wait there,” I say to June and Riley. I can feel them both start to argue with me, but I hold up my hands. “Stay out of sight unless it looks like I need help.”
I don’t wait for them to agree. All of us scramble up the stairs while Caleb shouts after us. The candles in the kitchen have mostly guttered out. The back door is open, and I run through it and down the porch steps. The air is bracingly cold against my sinuses, and it freezes my brain.
At the base of the driveway, there are motorcycle headlights burning blindingly bright—a dozen suns attached to roaring engines. Women stand next to their motorcycles, some still in their helmets, some not. Dayton is gone, and I pray that she escaped the gunshot.
As my eyes adjust, I see a woman at the front of the motorcycle gang holding a long black shotgun. Her hair is braided into a long rope that might be white with bleach or time. As I take a step toward her, she motions to the others, and they shut off their engines. The sudden silence seems to have echoes of its own.
“Hey, Toby,” I say, my boots crunching in the dirt. Sweat builds between my fingers. The sight of the shotgun terrifies me—this is the first gun I’ve seen outside the glass cases in Walmart’s sporting department—but I have less to fear than the dead girls. No one goes to jail for shooting a zombie. I’d have to really fuck up for Toby to decide to kill me in cold blood. Even Cross Creek PD couldn’t ignore a shotgun blast to the head. I don’t think.
“Evening,” she says with a chivalrous tip of her head to me. “It’s a shame you have to meet the rest of my coven this way, but we’re here to put a stop to the aberrations you brought to our town.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask. I can feel the girls pass out of my protection. Good. I hope they keep running. “You . . . what? Sensed a disturbance in the Force?”
“I watched a three-hundred-dollar chunk of hematite leave my store,” Toby says stiffly. “What could you possibly need that much grounding for? I know you didn’t think it was just pretty. You knew what it could do. And there have been sightings of the three dead girls all over town. In broad daylight. At your school more than once!”
“You’re a big fan of the Fairmont Informant?” I say.
I look at the women behind Toby. Dayton was right. They’re mostly older, none younger than forty. No one else seems to be armed, although who knows what’s hiding in the bags and hidden compartments of their motorcycles. Maybe they all have switchblades tucked inside their boots. One woman removes her helmet as I look at her, revealing fluffy blond hair and a pinched expression that hits me like a slap in the face.
My jaw drops, and I realize I must look like a kid seeing Mickey Mouse take his head off at Disneyland.
“Dr. Miller?”
“Hello, Camila,” she says. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you I am also a practitioner of the craft. I’m not allowed to discuss my religious beliefs at work. I wish you had accepted my or Toby’s offer to come to us with your problems, rather than taking matters into your own hands. While magic of this scale shows that you wield an incredible power, you’ve also proven reckless and wholly untrustworthy, two things that a bruja cannot afford to be.” She says bruja with the first two letters rolled and the end with a staccato flourish on the ha.
Oh lord. She must be one of those white women who orders in Spanish at Mexican restaurants.
“I’m a witch,” I say coldly. “Brujería was beaten out of my ancestors by Spanish missionaries a couple hundred years ago. There’s nothing but scared Catholics behind me.”
“Multiple students have come to me saying that June appeared to them as a ghost,” Dr. Miller says, continuing her favorite game of ignoring everything that comes out of my mouth. “I thought it was a shared delusion—”
“Shocker,” I say.
“But the details were too specific. The smell of her broken skin, the way her eyes glowed white. And then I saw you leaving campus with two girls in the car. The blond girl in the baseball cap you were with at the school memorial and one with brown bangs, fitting June Phelan-Park’s description. I had to tell the coven. You’ve put the whole town in danger, Mila.”
“They don’t eat people. This isn’t a monster movie.”
“They’re an abomination,” Toby says.
Different religion, same words. It might as well be Riley’s mom wearing that motorcycle jacket.
“Where are the undead?” barks one of the other biker witches. Her face has wrinkles so deep I could lose a finger in them, but her hair is coal black. “They need to be put back to rest to return order to the universe.”
“The whole universe?” I snap. I’m so tired of adults using hyperbole to try to keep me in my place. I’m not crazy. I’m not too angry. I’m fine just the way I am. I have the power to bring back the dead and force the truth out of the mouths of murderers. “The whole Milky Way Galaxy is out of whack because there are a couple of girls on a living holiday?”
“It’s against the will of the Goddess,” Toby roars.