Then, slowly, wickedly, he smiled.
The blood started slowly, dripping down the walls in thin ribbons of scarlet. It thickened, surrounding everyone, and the ribbons turned to waves, spreading across the room, pooling at the feet of the White Rabbit. The only one untouched was the man on the bed. Cheryl tried in vain to cast a circle, spinning clockwise and pointing with her index finger, quickly pulling Callie inside its protective barrier. But it didn’t stop what was happening, and the blood kept coming.
“What are you doing?” Olivia demanded.
“Binding,” Cheryl said. “For protection.”
“It’s too late for that now,” Olivia said.
The blood rose higher and higher, and still the man kept smiling his Cheshire cat grin. Callie tried to run, but his blue eyes held her in place. She recognized them immediately. They were Paul Whiting’s eyes.
Callie screamed and jolted back to consciousness.
Paul was leaning over her. She gasped, scrambling out from under him.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I think you were having a nightmare.”
It was no mistake. His eyes were the same eyes she’d seen in her dream.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said again, now alarmed. “Your eyes were open. I couldn’t tell if you were awake or asleep.”
She stood up, willing herself to let go of the horrible images, but they were impossible to shake. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she said, backing away from him.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, confused.
Try as she might to think of a rational explanation, she was at a loss. All she wanted was to get away from him as quickly as possible. She was both frightened and embarrassed. There was no way to hide it.
They didn’t speak as they hurried back to his car.
“I’m sorry I brought you here,” he said as they drove away. “It was Ann’s idea. She told me there was something that she thought you needed to see.”
“Excuse me?”
“Last night. Ann said she’d had a vision. That I needed to bring you to see Norman’s Woe.”
Callie didn’t reply. She wasn’t scared anymore. Now she was angry.
They drove back to Pride’s Heart in silence. Callie was out of the car and heading for the butler’s pantry door before Paul turned off the engine. As she was reaching for the door handle, she saw Marta at the sink, holding one of the crystal glasses from yesterday’s dinner and looking at it curiously, then, as if deciding something, she smashed it on the side of the sink, jumping back as it shattered, as if immediately regretting her impulsivity. She pulled a small splinter of glass from her palm, and a tiny trickle of red ran down her fingers.
Blood. Callie forced her eyes shut against the image she’d seen on the wall of the castle, an image that was now forming on the pantry wall. When she opened her eyes, the image was gone.
“What was that?” Finn’s voice echoed from the kitchen.
“I broke one of Emily’s glasses.” Marta seemed at once surprised and worried.
Finn came into the room. “Are you okay?” He looked at the shattered pieces first, then examined her hands. “You’ve cut yourself.”
“I’m okay,” she answered, pulling her hands back, then turning to see Callie framed by the doorway, not moving, her face pale. “But she’s not…Callie, what’s the matter?”
Callie looked around. “Did Towner come back?”
“They’re not coming back,” Marta said. “Has something happened? Where’s Paul?”
“I’m right here,” Paul said, catching up.
“What’s going on?” Finn asked his son.
“I have to get back to Salem,” Callie said. “Does anyone know when the next train runs?”
Finn looked at Paul, waiting for him to offer. When Paul said nothing, he said, “My son, of course, will drive you.” He was looking at Paul curiously. “Won’t you, Paul?”
“Of course,” Paul answered flatly.
It was the last thing either of them wanted. But Callie had already made a scene. She went upstairs and gathered her belongings, her hands shaking as she quickly stuffed everything into the overnight bag. At the last moment she looked around the room for the packet of herbs, wondering if she had really thrown them into the fire or if that, too, was part of this nightmare she seemed to have been experiencing since she arrived. It was nowhere to be found.
She carried her bag down the stairs, and Paul put it in the trunk. This time he didn’t go around to open the door for her, nor did he reach across to help with the seat belt. They sat in the driveway in strained silence for a long time before he started the engine.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
Paul turned the radio on, raising the volume and erasing any possibility of further conversation. John Hammond’s cover of Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen” was playing. She closed her eyes, letting the music consume her, as they sped south. The air was cooling. She tried to relax, to let go of the earlier memory, but it was impossible.
Leah. She hadn’t known the answer when Rafferty asked the question, but she knew it now…Leah had definitely been in deep with whatever her mother and the two other goddesses were doing.
She remembered the red dress Leah was wearing as the Queen of Hearts, part of the Alice story they were all playing out that night. Callie shivered as she remembered the last view of her mother, Susan, and Cheryl, lying at the bottom of the crevasse, those same fanciful costumes soaked with blood. She’d spotted her mother’s Mad Hatter top hat first, then she’d seen the bodies.
Callie forced herself to breathe, feeling the chill of the deep blue waters of Salem Sound reaching ever eastward in the icy Atlantic.
That there is a Devil is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influences of the Devil.
—COTTON MATHER, On Witchcraft
Rafferty pulled the cruiser into his driveway and parked. The graffiti that had been sprayed on the oak tree was still visible, bleeding through the paint Towner had used to cover it. He got out of the car feeling as if he’d worked a double.
Rafferty had gotten May’s call this morning. His suspicions had been right. They were trying to move someone, but it hadn’t happened. There had been a tip, something that led May to believe the woman was in danger, and the tip had been right.
Rafferty still didn’t know the extent of May’s network. It was better that way, she said, and on that point he agreed. If he were ever questioned, ever called to help in a missing person search for a woman who’d escaped an abuser, he could only tell them what he knew. The less he knew about their network, this New Underground Railroad, the better for all concerned.