13
Never sneak up on an irritated witch, sorceress, or conjurer.
—A Witch’s Compendium of Curses
At least I avoided punching anyone’s breasts. I did, however, blow up the glass globe on the porch light. This time, it was not my fault. People really had to stop sneaking up on me.
Stephen was sitting on my porch swing with his raincoat folded over his suitcase and flowers clutched in one hand.
“I just had to come see you, darling,” he said, his voice sleepy and hoarse from the strain of his long flight. “I know we left things in an awkward place. I wanted to apologize in person.” He pressed the flowers into my hands, a pretty but generic arrangement of roses, the sort of thing you could buy in one of those airport vending machines by the arrival gates. “Aren’t you happy to see me, at all?”
I offered him a stilted smile, accepting the flowers. “I just wasn’t expecting you.”
That was the feckin’ understatement of the century. I felt guilty. I’d expected to feel annoyed and embarrassed if I saw him again. But the interesting thing was that I wasn’t embarrassed at the thought of Stephen meeting my friends and judging them. I didn’t want them to meet him. He no longer fit into my life, which had expanded and changed and become so much more complex since the last time I’d seen him.
It would have been so easy to relent, to apologize for having been harsh with him, to go back to him and reclaim some sense of normalcy. Clearly, things weren’t going to work out with Jed, and I didn’t have a talent for being alone. But I couldn’t do that to Stephen. I was still angry at him, on some level, but he was a good man. I didn’t want to make him a consolation prize. At one point, I’d seen our future together, bright and clear, but I couldn’t look at him that way anymore. We were just too different. I’d spent so much of my time working to make him happy so he would stay with me and give me the kind of love I wanted so badly. I didn’t think about whether that made me happy or not.
Now I sincerely doubted it would.
“Penny told me all about you discovering your grandfather and your family here. I’m sorry you felt like you had to lie to me about it. I suppose that I deserved it, though, after the things I said.”
I arched an eyebrow. Why didn’t Penny tell me she’d told Stephen where I was? It wasn’t like her to share information with him at all. I stared him right in the eye as I said, “Yes, you did. But I am sorry for the things I said. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have hung up and called back the next morning.” I opened the door and ushered him into the living room. “Tea?”
He nodded. “Please, and then I’d like you to explain a few things to me.”
“I will; I just need something to do with my hands.”
I put the kettle on to boil and pulled out the bags of oolong, which he preferred. As my hands moved, I tried to figure out exactly what I wanted to tell Stephen. My chronically unhelpful brain was coming up blank. So I went with the “let it all just tumble out of your mouth” method.
“I didn’t tell you about coming here to meet relatives because I didn’t want you to have one more thing to hold against my family. I could almost hear you in my head. ‘Here we go, another dramatic debacle, courtesy of the McGavocks.’ You say those things so often I don’t think you even realize you’re doing it.”
“But even you make jokes at your family’s expense,” he protested.
“Yes, but I’m not serious when I do it,” I said, trying to think of a way to explain the principle of “it’s OK when I pick on my family, but no one else should try” to someone whose parents used an intercom to communicate dinner plans. “You know there are large portions of my life that I hold back from you—hell, I hold them back from myself—because I am afraid that you can’t handle them. And it’s not fair to either of us. I’ve only given you a partial, watered-down version of myself, and you shouldn’t want that. I want better than that for you, better than a half-relationship with a half-person. I just don’t think what we have works anymore.”
“Wait, I thought you were just angry on the phone. Are you really breaking it off with me?”
“I’m sorry, Stephen,” I said, rethinking the wisdom of handing him a cup of boiling-hot tea.
“Haven’t you wondered why I haven’t introduced you to my parents?” he sputtered. “I kept waiting for the weird shit I had to put up with to bottom out. I wanted to know how bad it could get. But it just kept getting worse! You want to know why I wanted to move with you to Dublin? Because I wanted to know whether you were someone I could consider proposing to. But you just kept putting me off! It doesn’t have to be this way,” he insisted. “If you could just draw some boundaries with that band of loonies, then—”
“Do you realize you’re actively making my point for me?” I asked.
“All right, all right,” he said. “I’m sorry, darling, I’m just upset. I don’t want to lose you. I will learn to watch my tongue, but you have to make some changes, too. We can make this work. Don’t you see how easily we could fit into each other’s lives?”
“Maybe it’s not about fitting into each other’s lives but making one life together. I shouldn’t have to feel like I should hide things from you. I can’t keep compartmentalizing and tucking away the bits of my life I’m afraid will upset you.”
“But I came all this way to see you.”
“I didn’t ask you to. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
And round and round we went, until I lost track of the time and our tea grew cold. We hashed through every angle of our relationship, my inability to separate from the family, his unwillingness to take my job seriously or meet my family halfway. Stephen got more and more upset as the conversation went along and I didn’t budge on splitting.
“I refuse to accept this,” he spat. “We love each other. If we’re not going to be together, it won’t be caused by something so silly. Lots of people don’t get along with their in-laws.”
I nodded to his cold tea. “Would you like me to warm that up for you?”
“Why do you keep worrying about tea at a time like this?” he asked, exasperated.
I cupped my hands around the mug, closed my eyes, and thought of what I’d thought and felt right before burning Jed. I dredged up that hurt, the red-hot singe of anger, and pictured the energy flowing from my heart down to my hands. I imagined heat traveling from my skin, through the mug, and into the liquid, moving the water molecules around at such a pace that the water boiled. I could see the surface rippling, steam rising from the cup. I could feel the energy building, gathering, pushing through my flesh and bone to do my will.
I opened my eyes and saw Stephen, mouth agape, horror-struck, as he watched his tea bubble and boil. It popped and hissed merrily even after I moved my hands away, the steam curling up toward us like misty fingers. I jerked my hands away from the ceramic before it split or exploded.
“This is what I am; this is what I can do,” I told him. “To pretend to be anything else would be wrong.”
“I didn’t know,” he whispered. “I knew your family claimed that they had mystical whatnot, but I never imagined. Have you always been able to do that? All this time?”
“Yes. Do you still want me, Stephen? Do you? Because I’ve been twisting myself into knots trying to keep this from you, but I can’t anymore. The people I’ve met here, they’ve shown me that you can’t shut yourself up and pretend to be something that you’re not. I’ve acted shamefully toward my own family because I was afraid of disappointing you or scaring you. You believe in facts and figures, and that’s fine. I don’t disagree that algebra exists. But you’re missing a whole big world out there. You’re blind to it because you’re afraid of what you might see.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, softly, stepping back out of range. “I can’t deal with this.”
“I know,” I told him. “It’s all right. I can barely deal with it. I’m sorry I lied to you.”
He stepped back to the kitchen table, slumping against it. “No, no, I should have guessed, I suppose. Your family took this far too seriously to be faking it,” he said, staring off into space.
A long, heavy silence hung in the air between us.
“So . . .” he started. “As far as breakup stories go, this will be different from my friends’ tales of sad-face text messages and requests that we ‘still be friends.’ ”
“Do you still want to be friends?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No.”
“All right, then.”
Stephen had questions, lots of them. I answered as many as I could without telling him about the Elements or the Kerrigans. I had the feeling that might make his head explode. By the time we finished talking, it was two A.M., and I felt guilty asking him to leave. He was calm and collected. He was Stephen, Lord of Rational Thought. So I made up the couch for him to sleep on.
The next morning, I heard him up before I rose. He left without saying good-bye. Not that I could blame him. This was an awkward way to end a relationship. I will say that he was classy until the end. He folded up the blankets and placed them at the foot of the couch. Nothing in the house was disturbed. We were over.
At least, that’s what I thought.
* * *
Without the distraction of Jed and with no leads at the shop, I threw myself into working at the clinic. I learned all of the patients’ names, their family histories, how they fit into the puzzle that was the Hollow community. It was nice interacting with normal people in a normal way, no magic, no intrigue. Dr. Hackett was no friendlier than he’d ever been, but he seemed to respect my skills.
Jed didn’t return to the house for nearly a week. He didn’t call. I didn’t see his truck parked outside. One might think this would be a good thing, that his absence would help me forgive and forget. But the less I saw him, the angrier I got. And then, of course, he did come home (to find a less-than-legal eviction notice on his door), and he was careful to avoid me. But every morning, I would find on my doorstep beautiful spherical bunches of little blue flowers—hydrangea—with a note that said, “I’m sorry.”
I took an inhuman amount of glee in practicing my mental firestarter powers on the flowers and leaving the wreckage on his doorstep. Efforts to confront him directly were met with silence and darkened windows. The man was far sneakier than I gave him credit for.
Unfortunately, my floral abuse resulted in overexerting myself, and I ended up draining myself completely for a few days. I was out of balance in so many ways, and it was definitely affecting the reliability of my powers. Some days, I nearly set the porch aflame with Jed’s floral offering, and others, I could barely warm a mug of water.
I redirected my anger into cleaning rather than pyromania, so the shop and the clinic were spotless. Well, the lobby and the reception area were spotless. Dr. Hackett didn’t need me to clean his office. Why he could keep that room perfectly organized but not the rest of building, I had no idea.
My energy continued to alternate between bottoming out and spiking at inopportune moments, like water sloshing over a dam. No lightbulb, ceramic cup, or window was safe around me. Jane informed me that destroying one shop window in a fit of witchy temper was written into my employment contract, but I would have to pay for the next one. This was odd, considering that I didn’t remember signing an employment contract. In hopes of finding some way to rid myself of Penny’s binding, I started reading more books from Jane’s shop on magic and psychic senses, faith healing, and holistic medicine. I read about magical bindings and how to undo them, noting how important psychology was to the process. I found several location spells, but they involved darker magic than I was willing to attempt. Whoever first looked at baby teeth and thought, “You know what, these could have magical applications,” was a sick, sick person.
I decided to try something counterintuitive. I stopped actively searching for the Elements. So far, Fire and Earth had fallen into my lap through bizarre coincidence, the latter accompanied by a sort of life lesson. (Never trust attractive, shirtless men in pickup trucks.) So instead of trying to force the issue, I was going to go with the flow.
For three days. And then I would go right back to my obsessive ways.
I had two weeks left. Two weeks, and I could go home. I missed my family with an ache so acute it sometimes stopped my breath. I would never take them for granted again. I would never again wish for Uncle Seamus to be struck dumb during football season. Or for Penny to stop trying to charm me into a happy love life. I wouldn’t wish for silence or solitude, because I’d had plenty of both since I’d arrived in the Hollow. They weren’t all they were cracked up to be. And I wouldn’t wish to be normal, because that was something I would never be. I was a witch. And as soon as I accepted that, my life would get easier—or whatever qualified as easier for a girl with magical powers and vampire relatives.
Of course, in keeping with the rules governing lost car keys and remote controls, the moment I stopped looking so desperately for the Elements, one of them fell right into my lap.
It had been a long day at the clinic, involving everything from stitches to psoriasis to a six-year-old who had managed to lodge a tiny Lego component in his ear. I locked the front doors to the lobby, shut down my computer, and shuffled my way back to Dr. Hackett’s office on tired, aching feet. Still, there was a smile on my face. I was happiest when I was working with patients, and I’d worked with a multitude that day.
Tugging a pen from my loosely twisted hair, I knocked on the door and poked my head into his office. “Dr. Hackett, I have those supply forms ready for your signature. By the way, some of the things you were trying to order are no longer manufactured. We’ve come a long way since leeches and quinine.”
“Smart-ass,” he muttered as I handed over the files.
“And the mail,” I added, placing the scant stack of letters on the lovely green leather blotter. Dr. Hackett was definitely old-school in terms of desk accessories. On one side of the blotter, he had arranged an aged Montblanc pen and a large glass globe paperweight. On the other, he had an antique silver picture frame, holding a picture of four young men sitting around a card table.
He reached into his drawer and pulled out a letter opener.
A letter opener with a long silver blade, a black enamel handle, and a milky blue stone set in the hilt.
“Sonofabitch!” I cried, staring at the athame as it flashed in the light.
Dr. Hackett jumped at my oath, dropping the blade onto his desk.
“I’ve been working down the hall from it all these weeks?” I exclaimed.
Dr. Hackett raised an eyebrow. “Beg pardon?”
I cleared my throat. “Dr. Hackett, where did you get that letter opener?”
Dr. Hackett glanced down at the athame, and his papery cheeks flushed. I glanced at the photo and realized that I recognized one of the figures in the photograph. “Dr. Hackett, did you know Gilbert Wainwright?”
Dr. Hackett grinned sheepishly. “Yes, we were classmates at Half-Moon Hollow High. We played cards every week with our buddies, Jimmy Mayhew and Bob Puckett.” He nodded toward the framed photo. “I found the letter opener at Gilbert’s shop, mixed in with some antiques, right after he died,” he said. “Miss Jane was clearing out the storeroom at the time, and there were boxes all over the store. It seemed like something that someone should hold on to, that it was special to Gilbert, or should have been. So I offered Jane a good price for it. I don’t think she wanted to sell it to me. She wasn’t finished with her inventory, and she wasn’t sure where the knife had come from. And I may have played the ‘old friend’ card a little bit. To be honest, I haven’t felt right about taking it since the moment I walked out the door, but I thought returning it would seem silly. I hardly ever take it out of the desk.”
She said she’d never seen it before! I was going to kill Jane Jameson-Nightengale.
“Would you mind if I took it back to the shop? It’s part of a personal collection, and we’ve been looking for it for some time. I can reimburse you whatever you paid for it,” I said.
He pursed his lips into a frown. “Why would you want it?”
“Personal reasons.”
He stared at me for a long time, studying my face. “Consider it a thank-you gift,” he said, pressing the hilt into my hand. “You have been a great help to me here in the clinic. And now I don’t have to get you flowers when you leave.”
I threw my arms around him in a fierce hug.
“You must really like knives,” he said, patting my back hesitantly. “Go on, have a good night.”
I raced to my desk, pulled an unbleached cloth out of my purse, and wrapped it around the blade. Three down. I’d found three Elements. Maybe if I wandered through random car parks in the Hollow, I would eventually trip over the bell.
“Thank you, Dr. Hackett!” I called.
“Good night, Nola,” he responded, sticking his head out of his office doorway. “And Nola?”
I paused on my dash to the front door.
Dr. Hackett grinned at me. “You have his eyes.”
* * *
“Jane! You’ll never believe it!” I called, racing into the shop. The door was unlocked, but I couldn’t see anyone on the sales floor, which was unusual. It was only 10:20. Someone had turned off all of the lights, with the exception of the track lights over the coffee bar. “Hey? What’s with the lights? If you close up shop, it’s a good idea to lock the door, you know!”
No response. I glanced down at the security-system panel over the light switch. It was scorched black, as if someone had zapped it with a cattle prod. In the darkened shop interior, the brass fixtures of the coffee machine dully reflected the street lamps. I reached for the light switch, and the hair on my arms rose. Before my fingers could make contact with the switchplate, I was nearly doubled over at the sudden throbbing pain in my head. It felt as if someone had kicked me across the temple with a steel-toed boot. Dizzy and sick, I swayed into the shop, bracing myself against the surface of a coffee table.
I heard a soft, wet moan from behind the coffee bar. I struggled to move my feet forward. There was someone here, someone in pain. I mentally shielded myself to keep from being incapacitated by the person’s pain.
“Jane?” I whispered, dropping the athame on the bar.
I turned the corner to find a slim male form with sandy hair.
“Zeb!” I shouted, dropping to my knees next to his crumpled body. He lay on his side, curled inward. His face was battered and bloody. His knuckles were bruised and swollen, as if he’d managed to fight back. I placed gentle hands on his shoulders, and suddenly, he was coughing and heaving, blood dribbling from his lips.
“Shh.” I pressed my hands gently against his ribs, trying to discern cracks or breaks. The blood appeared to be from a smashed lip and not any rupture to his lungs. “Try not to move too much.”
“Somebody hit me from behind,” he wheezed. “But I got a few swings in. One. I got one swing in.”
“Someone hit you over the head? How many times?” I asked. I crouched over him, examining him thoroughly.
“Don’t know,” he said.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on his body, bones, heart, lungs. He was bruised and battered, but nothing seemed torn. Still, I wanted him to be checked over. I could be missing something. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911, barking out the address and a brief description of Zeb’s injuries.
I placed my hand over his head and tried to picture his brain, the tiny networks of nerves and veins, the bones of his skull. I pictured smooth, solid bone and healthy tissue, but I couldn’t seem to settle long enough to send any energy his way. I could feel the heat gathering underneath my skin, but I couldn’t direct it outward. I shook my hands, as if they were faulty cigarette lighters, and tried again. But the magical signature was even weaker.
“This would be so much easier if you were a vampire,” I told him. “I could feed you some blood, and everything would just fix itself.”
“Jane says that all the time,” he mumbled as I tried to focus.
A bell tinkled toward the front of the shop. We both cowered against the sudden intrusion of light in the room. I sprang to my feet and grabbed the athame from the counter, brandishing it at whoever had just walked through the door.
I squinted against the light, but I could see now that the shop had been ransacked. Books were scattered on the floor, their pages ripped. The glass of the display cabinets had been smashed, and anything of value had been taken.
“Zeb? Nola!” Jane called as she came in, with Gabriel close at her heels, his face filled with concern. “What’s going on? Why does your brain sound like a car alarm, Nola? And when did we decide to electrocute the security system?”
“Jane!” I yelled. “Back here!”
Jane found me crouched over Zeb, trying to stabilize his head and prevent further injuries. Whatever color remained in Jane’s face drained away, and she seemed frozen to her spot on the floor, staring down at her friend’s battered body.
“What happened?” she cried, dropping to her knees next to Zeb and pulling out her cell phone.
“He said he was attacked,” I told her.
“Well, fix him!” she commanded me.
“I tried. It’s not working,” I told her, my voice cracking. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I checked him over, and his injuries seem minor. But I want a doctor to look at him. The trick now is keeping him awake and still. Why was he here alone?”
“Jane’s childe, Jamie, had a meeting with his parents, trying to mend fences,” Gabriel said.
Jane’s face went even paler as she surveyed Zeb’s injuries. “We went for moral support. Then we were supposed to meet Zeb here to talk about some plans he had for his and Jolene’s anniversary.” She glared up at me. “Did you see anything strange when you came in?”
“I don’t know. I came in and found him like this.”
“What about sounds, a weird smell, a car parked out front, anything?” she demanded.
“Look in my head if you want, Jane. The shop was dark and unlocked, and the security system was toast. But I didn’t see anyone there.”
“Jane, calm down,” Gabriel told her. “This isn’t Nola’s doing.”
“I’m sorry.” Jane grunted. “It just feels too much like before, with Mr. Wainwright and Andrea and . . . Gabriel, please call Jolene. She’s going to want to meet him at the hospital. Tell her Jamie will watch the kids if she wants to leave them at our place.”
Gabriel nodded and turned away to dial his phone. Jane was edgy and protective, hovering over Zeb, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. She asked him silly questions about his mother to keep him agitated enough to stay awake. I took the opportunity to look around the shop. The framed pictures were moved but intact. The register had been pried open, the cash taken out. Every single athame had been swiped from the display case. Most of the ritual candles had been knocked around.
Jane insisted on riding in the ambulance with Zeb, threatening dire consequences for the paramedics if they tried to stop her. As the ambulance pulled away from the shop, I marched to Jane’s office and checked the safe. Her desk was overturned, the papers and bits of glass tossed about on the floor. The safe door had been gouged and scratched, but it was closed. I spun the lock to the combination and yanked it open. The little wooden case was still inside, with the plaque and the candle intact. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I opened the drawer packed with white cloth and wrapped the knife, saying a quick and dirty version of the purification ritual. I didn’t have the time or the energy to do anything else. I secured the safe door and walked back to the coffee bar, surveying the damage with hot, wet eyes. Gabriel had said we had to stay so I could give my statement to the police.
All I wanted to do was go home and hit something. The shop had been torn apart with a purpose. The athames, the candles, the safe—all connected to the Elements. Had Jed done this? Was he so desperate to help the Kerrigans that he’d hurt someone I knew and liked? He’d been next door to me all of this time; why would he suddenly become aggressive?
Should I tell the police about him? What would I say? I believe my neighbor may have broken into this shop to steal ancient magical artifacts, but he assaulted my friend instead? I would end up answering a lot of uncomfortable questions, and I didn’t know if I could lie to the police. And what would I tell the others? If I told Jane or Dick about my suspicions, Jane would probably separate Jed’s head from his shoulders before she asked him any questions. I didn’t want to know what sort of creative revenge Dick would come up with, given even more ammunition against Jed.
I needed to handle this on my own. I didn’t want anyone else to be in harm’s way. Vampires or no, my friends were still vulnerable. I wasn’t going to let anyone else get hurt on my behalf. I leaned my head against the coffee bar. Zeb could have been hurt, badly. He had a wife and two beautiful little kids. Was it worth this? Was the power my family used worth the risk? The hurt?
What was I preserving, really? This stupid feud? Maybe my family deserved to lose its magical heritage if this was the cost. Maybe I needed to locate the bell just so I could burn the whole deal.
The arrival of Half-Moon Hollow Police Sergeant Russell Lane interrupted this self-pitying train of thought. He flipped open his notepad, ready to take a lackadaisical stab at recording my version of events. Gabriel stood at my side, giving Sergeant Lane the evil eye every time he questioned my motivation or ability to relate the story honestly.
“And you didn’t see anything?” Sergeant Lane asked. “Nothing? Not even someone walking out of the shop right before you walked in?”
“I’ve already told you I didn’t. Three times,” I told him.
Sergeant Lane closed his notebook with a snap. “Look, ma’am, I make quite a few calls at this shop, and the case files rarely get closed. That reflects against my productivity. And that makes me cranky.”
“Well, I’m so sorry to inconvenience you,” I deadpanned.
“I’m just saying, if you have information, you need to share it. Now, let’s go over it one more time.”
I sighed, prompting Gabriel to nudge my arm. Long pauses while Sergeant Lane scribbled down my answers left me plenty of time to think. I knew I was overreacting, thinking of destroying the Elements. I was shocked and hurt and felt guilty, and it was clouding my thinking. I’d come too far to give up now. The problem was that I’d resorted to lazy tactics to find the Elements. I would be much more proactive in finding the bell. Once I left town, no one here would be at risk.
Right. I shoved my sleeves to my elbows and crossed the room to the magic section. Jane had an interesting stock on darker magic, written from a purely academic perspective. Stuff that I’d never seen before, because, frankly, no one in my family would dare try some of the rituals involved. There had to be some sort of magic LoJack spell here somewhere. I didn’t care if I had to sacrifice a small goat or a car or something, I was going to find that bell. I was through with this bizarre journey through other people’s problems and past deeds. I flipped through the pages of Most Potente Magick, looking for keywords such as “location” and “lost object.”
Nothing.
I dropped the book to the floor. And another, when it didn’t give me the answers I wanted. And another. I tossed books over my shoulder, one after the other. Sergeant Lane was ignoring this erratic behavior while staring at a painting of a naked wood nymph.
Gabriel quietly stepped to my side. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing!” I snapped, tossing another book aside. “Because I can’t actually do anything. I can’t keep people from dying. I can’t keep them from being hurt. I can’t keep them happy or safe. I’m this walking time bomb of potential disaster.”
“Stop!” he ground out, grabbing my wrists. “Nola, just stop.”
I whispered, “I’m so tired of this, Gabriel. I really am.”
“This isn’t your fault,” Gabriel assured me as Sergeant Lane wandered out of the shop without bidding us good-bye. “This sort of thing happens a lot around here. One of us is always being sprayed with silver or shot with arrows. You know, when I turned Jane into a vampire, it was because a local drunk mistook her for a deer and shot her. Jamie had to be turned when he was run over by a car right in front of the shop. Our little family is a magnet for trouble. The remarkably underwhelming attentions of Sergeant Lane are the result of his repeat visits here at the shop. And Jane’s come a bit unglued because Zeb’s never been hurt before. He’s her oldest and dearest friend. She’s not angry with you, understand that. If anything, as soon as Zeb is recovering, she’s going to throw herself into the search for the final Element.”
“Right,” I said, nodding as I grabbed my purse from behind the bar. “I’m heading home.”
“Let me drive you,” Gabriel offered.
I shook my head. “You go on to the hospital, be with Jane and Zeb. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m calling Dick!” he shouted after me as I walked toward the door.
“I know!” I called back, entering the darkness on full steam, almost wanting something to attack me just so I could strike back at it.