“We should see my little pumpkin pets soon. The ones that are going to eat your friends and family, I mean. Including your petite little punker girl.”
She whirled toward him in a sudden flourish, with mock-imploring eyes. “Oh, Dennis! Could you? Would you…have me as your bride then?”
She giggled like a coyote and patted his groin. “Of course you would. But first, the inn. To see my old friend Ysabella. Should be fun, no?”
She drew the flask and raised it to Dennis’s mouth. “Take a sip, lover.”
He did, hating and loving the taste of alcohol spreading across his tongue.
“There we are.” She lidded it and tucked it back in her cleavage. “If you need more, just reach right in and take it.”
Dennis remained silent, knowing any threat would be meaningless without a physical will to enforce it. But he did not give up hope, even as he felt his arms turn the wheel to take the hearse into the Blue Moon Inn’s parking lot.
“I want you to go up there to Ysabella’s room and kill her,” Violina said, thinking. “But I can’t decide how…Any suggestions?”
Dennis could not resist. “I bet if you had me tear you limb from limb, she would just be heartbroken.”
“That is good,” Violina began. “But only half of it, really. Hey! What if I had you kill all of her little friends right in front of her!?”
Dennis now regretted his satisfying burst of sarcasm.
“Let’s do that!” She opened the door and donned a raincoat over her robe, then popped up her umbrella. “Use this!” She handed him Matilda Saxon’s athame.
Dennis didn’t bother trying to swallow the rainwater this time, feeling more than a little foolish for ever thinking such a desperately contrived scheme would work in the first place.
Something told him Jill was up in that room, with Ysabella.
He tried to drop the knife, then to raise it to stab himself anywhere he could, preferably a vital organ or artery.
Violina sashayed into the lobby and rang the desk bell for service. “Should I do the talking, or…?”
Inn proprietor Lonnie Duckworth eventually appeared from the room behind the desk, his pristine blue oxford-cloth shirt wildly contrasting with his rumpled and stained, ill-fitting khakis.
“Hi, Lon,” charmed Violina. “We’re here to check on poor Ysabella.”
“She’s pretty sick, I think,” Lonnie said. “You sure you want to risk catching it?”
“I’m just afraid she might not be around much longer,” said Violina. “I…want to make sure I get my goodbyes out.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lonnie said. “Go on up.”
“Call the sheriff,” Dennis said.
“Huh?”
“Dennis has the worst sense of humor,” Violina explained. “Now, Dennis, don’t say another word to our host, naughty boy.”
He didn’t, because he couldn’t. But he stared pure intention at Lonnie, who stared back in confusion.
“Come along, Dennis,” Violina sang.
Dennis issued a strange grunt as he followed her to the elevator, further confusing the innkeeper.
Once inside, Ysabella raised a rebuking finger to his face. “You are testing the very limits of my patience, punk boy.”
She glowered at him like a cruel mother, and he was helpless to fire back with his Johnny Rotten–style sneer.
“You just take that little knife out of your pocket, mister.”
He did.
“Now. Let’s see you get all emo. Jab yourself right in the tummy with it,” she mocked. “Slowly.”
Dennis pressed the point against his stomach, hoping the elevator would open before he could pierce his leather jacket, that someone would be there when it did, so she would be forced to make him stop.
Better yet, if only he could trick her into making him stab her.
Alas, the elevator opened onto an empty hallway gently washed with ambient lighting.
“You can speak now,” she allowed. “Or cry. Whatever.”
She said he “could,” not “must.” He stoically resisted doing either. The point of Matilda’s athame finally pushed through the leather and pierced his lower stomach a half inch deep.
“All right, stop and pull it out, little boy.” She waved him forward as she stepped from the elevator. “Save the real stabbing for…”
A door opened at the end of the carpeted hall…and out stepped his mother. “Dennis?”
“Ma!”
“Your mother? Oh, my dark gods, this simply could not be better!” Violina clasped her hands together like an excited child preparing to blow out a birthday candle. “Run down there and stab her in the heart. Be sure and look her in the eyes until she stops moving.”
Dennis ran toward his mother, tears bursting from his eyes the way his stomach wound bled. “Run, Ma!” he shouted.
She stood there, perplexed. Bravo appeared, raising his ears in confusion at Dennis’s strange behavior.
Dennis raised the knife high, just as his mother was pushed against the far wall.
By Jill. The drummer covered her boyfriend’s mother, her petite back the only shield against the athame.
Someone else was at the door, with her hand extended toward Dennis. He stopped running so abruptly he pitched over Jill and Elaine like a triple-run hitter gunning for home. He landed directly on his face and lay still, bleeding from his nose into the patterned carpet.
Violina hadn’t the breath for a gasp. She had stopped laughing as abruptly as Dennis had stopped running, and it made her choke.
Ysabella stood strong and fierce, just outside her door, wearing an expression of such rage her eyes physically glowed like fire, her hair blowing back from a sudden hot wind.
Brinke stepped out beside Ysabella, sporting a decade’s worth of fresh crow’s feet and a streak of gray in her hair that matched Candace’s. “Go inside and rest, Ysabella. Let me deal with her.”
“Together, Brinke.” Ysabella grabbed her hand. “As we should have done from the start.”
Stella emerged and took Brinke’s other hand, but addressed Violina directly. “You should never have come to Ember Hollow, bitch.”
Violina quickly got over her shock and regained her imperious smile. “How sweet! The crone, the matron, and…the hippy.”
She clasped her hands together as if pleading. “I do hope you won’t hit me with an expelliarmus!”
She swept her hands sideways, unleashing an arc of hurricane wind that peeled the wallpaper and knocked the
