I moved my head closer to hers, until I could feel the cold chill from her aura on my scalp. She turned her head to the side and placed her icy lips over mine. I closed my eyes, and for a minute we were like a normal couple, and my mind raced to what we could have been if the cancer hadn’t taken hold of her.
Katie pushed back. “The cancer was what brought us together,” she said. “I wouldn’t have changed those memories for anything. I loved more in those few months than most people do in a lifetime.”
“I love you. I will always love you.”
“No, you won’t. That’s kind of the point.”
“I know, but it’s just a thing to say.”
“Ugh!” the dowager said. “Is this display over, yet? Can we get on with it?”
I nodded, turning to her. “Will it hurt?”
She shook her head. “No. When I’m done it will take the hurt away.”
She snapped her fingers and my body became white hot. I felt something creep up my bones. My mouth opened on its own, and a stream of glittering pink light flowed out of it toward Vermilda. She opened her mouth, and the pink glitter flowed into it. As it did, her teeth turned from spiked to square, and her arm turned from a claw back into a delicate hand.
“How do you feel?” Samantha asked, as she helped me to my feet. “What do you feel?”
I looked over at Katie, and I started to cry again. This time it wasn’t for what was said, but for what was lost. “Nothing. I feel nothing.”
Vermilda and Katie were wrong. It wasn’t better to lose the love I felt in my heart, no matter how much it hurt. It was so much worse to feel nothing.
Chapter 48
It’s hard to describe the completely hollow feeling after having all the feelings you held for the love of your life sucked out of you. Every time I looked at Katie on the ride home, I felt nothing. I remembered the memory of feeling something at one point, but now there was just…nothing. When I looked back at Samantha, I felt friendship. When I looked at the road, there was fear and panic. When I looked at Katie, though, there was nothing, like wind flowing through the hole in a wooden log. I felt the emptiness as it brushed against my soul.
“Are you okay?” Katie asked. I was pulling off at the exit that led to the Witch’s Brew. “You haven’t talked much since we left the dragon lady.”
“I’m fine,” I replied. I braked at a red light. With the car stopped, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “No, that’s not true. I’m not fine.”
“What can we do?” Samantha asked.
“Let’s just finish this, okay?” I pushed on the gas when the light turned green.
It hadn’t been storming on the highway, but as we neared the Witch’s Brew, dark storm clouds were gathering. A bolt of lightning crashed before us in the street. I swerved to avoid it, convinced that I would head straight into oncoming traffic.
But there was no traffic. None at all. In fact, I hadn’t seen any cars since we exited the freeway. The lights were off in all of the houses we passed, and even the street lamps didn’t flicker. There was nothing but darkness, the occasional flash of lightning, and the headlights from our car.
“This is eerie,” Samantha said.
“I agree,” Katie added. “I’m creeped out, and I’m a ghost.”
When we reached the strip mall, we found the only store with lights on was the Witch’s Brew. The door had never been locked before when we came, but when I went to turn the handle it wouldn’t budge.
“Frank!” I shouted. “Let us in.”
“Go away, demon!” Frank called from the other side of the door. “I won’t succumb to you!”
“I’m not a demon!” I banged on the door louder.
“That’s what a demon would say!”
“Just let us in!” Samantha shouted.
“Oh, so you can change voices now. Very clever.”
Katie tried to move through the door to the other side, but a green forcefield bounced her back. “Ow.”
“That’s right, demon. You can’t get in here. My ward game is powerful.”
“It’s not a demon. It’s Anna, Katie, and Samantha.”
“Prove it.”
“How?”
“Tell me something only I would know.”
“Um, you have a creepy elevator in the back of your store,” Katie said. “And a crazy weird dungeon thing underneath your store, too.”
“Yeah,” I added. “It’s filled with gross monsters and stuff…”
“Really?” Samantha asked. “I wish I’d seen it. It sounds awesome.”
I flashed a smile. “It was kind of awesome.”
There was shuffling behind the door, and then it opened to reveal Frank, pale white and shivering like he had hypothermia.
“Thank the gods it’s you,” he said, wrapping me in a hug.
“We’re not really that kind of friends,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said, letting me go. “It’s just been a freakshow out here since you left. Come in before something eats you.”
Frank pulled Samantha and me inside and shut the door once Katie had joined us. The inside of the store looked nothing like the neat, tidy place we left. There was barbed wire laying across a metal enclosed counter, and large wands and guns pointed at the door from every angle. On the floor was more barbed wire which glowed pink and green. Frank stepped over everything carefully on his way behind the counter.
“Sorry for the mess. You know how it is.”
“No, we don’t. What happened here?”
Frank slammed his hands on the metal counter. “Well, I’ve always been prepared for the end of the world. All my cabinets and shelves have these metal barriers which can surround them the moment any danger comes my way.”
Above the roof, a crow cawed, but at least a hundred times louder than I had ever heard one squawk before. “What was that?”
“Those are the murder crows, or at least that’s what I’m calling them. They’re fifty feet tall and armed with great black eyes which shoot
