his coffee like it’s super interesting.
“Circle’s getting bigger,” is all he says, and the problem that I couldn’t think of snaps into place.
“Shit,” I say. My head falls back so I’m looking at the ceiling.
“What?” Thomas asks. “What’s wrong?”
“The spell,” I reply. “The circle. We’ve got to be in the house to cast it.”
“Yeah, so?” Thomas says. Carmel gets it right away; her face is downcast.
“So Carmel went into the house this morning and Anna almost ate her. The only person who can be in the house safely is me, and I’m not witchy enough to cast the circle.”
“Couldn’t you hold her off long enough for us to cast it? Once it was up, we’d be protected.”
“No,” Carmel says. “There’s no way. You should have seen him this morning; she swatted him like a fly.”
“Thanks,” I snort.
“It’s true. Thomas would never make it. And besides, doesn’t he have to concentrate or something?”
Will jumps forward and grabs Carmel by the arm. “What are you talking about? You went in that house? Are you crazy? Mike would kill me if anything happened to you!”
And then he remembers that Mike’s dead.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to cast that circle and do that spell,” I think out loud. “She’ll never tell me what happened on her own.”
Morfran finally speaks. “Everything happens for a reason, Theseus Cassio. You’ve got less than a week to figure it out.”
Less than a week. Less than a week. There’s no way I can become a competent witch in less than a week, and I’m certainly not going to get any stronger or more able to control Anna. I need backup. I need to call Gideon.
We’re all standing around in the driveway, having disbanded in the kitchen. It’s a Sunday, a lazy, quiet Sunday, too early even for churchgoers. Carmel is walking with Will to their cars. She said she was going to follow him home, hang out with him awhile. She was, after all, the closest to him, and she couldn’t imagine that Chase was being much comfort. I imagine she’s right. Before she went, she took Thomas off to the side and whispered with him for a few moments. As we watch Carmel and Will walk away, I ask him what that was all about.
He shrugs. “She just wanted to tell me she was glad that I told her. And she hopes that you’re not mad at me for spilling, because she’ll keep the secret. She just wants to help.” And then he goes on and on, trying to draw attention to the way that she touched his arm. I wish that I hadn’t asked, because now he won’t shut up about it.
“Listen,” I say. “I’m glad Carmel’s noticing you. If you play your cards right, you might have a shot. Just don’t invade her mind too much. She was pretty creeped out by that.”
“Me and Carmel Jones,” he scoffs, even as he stares hopefully after her car. “In a million years maybe. More likely she’ll end up comforting Will. He’s smart, and one of the crowd, like her. He’s not a bad guy.” Thomas straightens his glasses. Thomas isn’t a bad guy either, and someday maybe he’ll figure that out. For now I tell him to go put some clothes on.
As he turns and walks back up the drive, I notice something. There’s a circular path near the house that connects to the end of the driveway. At the fork of it is a small white tree, a birch sapling. And hanging from the lowest branch is a slim black cross.
“Hey,” I call out, and point to it. “What’s that?”
It isn’t him who answers. Morfran swaggers out onto the porch in his slippers and blue pajama pants, a plaid robe tied tight around his extensive belly. The getup looks ridiculous in contrast to that braided, mossy rock ’n’ roll beard, but I’m not thinking about that now.
“Papa Legba’s cross,” he says simply.
“You practice voodoo,” I say, and he hmphs in what I think is an affirmative. “So do I.”
He snorts into his coffee cup. “No, you don’t. And you shouldn’t, neither.”
So it was a bluff. I don’t practice. I learn. And here is a golden opportunity. “Why shouldn’t I?” I ask.
“Son, voodoo is about power. It’s about the power inside you and the power you channel. The power you steal and the power you take from your goddamn chicken dinner. And you’ve got about ten thousand volts strapped to your side in that bit of leather there.”
I instinctively touch the athame in my back pocket.
“If you were voodoo and channeling that, well, looking at you would be like watching a moth fly into a bug zapper. You would be lit up, 24/7.” He squints at me. “Maybe someday I could teach you.”
“I’d like that,” I say as Thomas bursts back onto the porch in fresh but still mismatched clothes. He scampers down the porch steps.
“Where are we going?” he asks.
“Back to Anna’s,” I say. He turns sort of green. “I need to figure this ritual out or a week from now I’ll be staring at your severed head and Carmel’s internal organs.” Thomas turns even greener, and I clap him on the back.
I glance back at Morfran. He’s eyeballing us over his coffee mug. So voodooists channel power. He’s an interesting guy. And he’s given me way too much to think about to sleep.
On the drive over, the high from the events of last night starts to wear off. My eyes feel like sandpaper, and my head is lolling, even after downing that cup of paint thinner that Morfran called coffee. Thomas is quiet all the way to Anna’s. He’s probably still thinking about the feel of Carmel’s hand on his arm. If life were fair, Carmel would turn around and look into his eyes, see that he’s her willing slave, and be grateful. She’d lift him up and he wouldn’t be a slave anymore, he’d just be Thomas, and they’d be glad to have each other. But life isn’t fair. She’ll probably end up with Will, or some other jock, and Thomas will suffer quietly.
“I don’t want you anywhere near the house,” I say to snap him out of it and make sure he doesn’t miss the turn. “You can hang in the car, or follow me up the driveway. But she’s probably unstable after this morning, so you should stay off the porch.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he snorts.
When we pull into the driveway, he elects to stay in the car. I make my way up alone. When I open the front door, I look down to make sure I’m stepping into the foyer and not about to fall face-first into a boatload of dead bodies.
“Anna?” I call. “Anna? Are you all right?”
“That’s a silly question.”
She’s just come out of a room at the top of the stairs. She’s leaning against the rail, not the dark goddess, but the girl.
“I’m dead. I can’t be all right any more than I can be not all right.”
Her eyes are downcast. She’s lonely, and guilty, and trapped. She’s feeling sorry for herself, and I can’t say that I blame her.
“I didn’t mean for anything like that to happen,” I say honestly, and take a step toward the staircase. “I wouldn’t have put you in that situation. She followed me.”
“Is she all right?” Anna asks in a curiously high voice.
“She’s fine.”
“Good. I thought I might have bruised her. And she has such a pretty face.”
Anna isn’t looking at me. She’s fiddling with the wood of the railing. She’s trying to get me to say something, but I don’t know what it is.
“I need you to tell me what happened to you. I need you to tell me how you died.”
“Why do you want to make me remember that?” she asks softly.
“Because I need to understand you. I need to know why you’re so strong.” I start thinking out loud. “From what I know of it, your murder wasn’t that strange or horrific. It wasn’t even that brutal. So I can’t figure out why you are the way you are. There has to be something…” When I stop, Anna is staring at me with wide, disgusted eyes. “What?”
“I’m just starting to regret that I didn’t kill you,” she says. It takes my sleep-deprived brain a minute to
