Hexed (16 page)

“N
o!” I stretch a hand toward the screen, tears streaming down my face. “No, no, no, no, no.”

Bishop tenses beside me, and we drop to the floor. My feet haven’t even touched the carpet when Bishop releases me from his grip and disappears. I sink to my knees, drained of the will to even stand without support.

Bishop materializes behind Frederick’s seat. Frederick tries to run, but Bishop snags him around the neck, and they both jerk violently left to right as Frederick struggles against his captor. Jezebel struts up to them, holding a coil of thick rope in one hand and swinging the noose in the other.

“Saw you were a fan of rope,” she says, a sneer spreading across her face.

I look away just as garbled choking sounds fill the theater. My stomach lurches. Something surges up my throat, and I puke. I puke and puke and puke until there’s nothing left to bring up, not even bile, and my throat stings and I’m heaving for air, and I don’t even bother to wipe away the mess dripping down my chin.

I don’t know how long I spend like this, sobbing as I stare at the oily spots floating in my puke, until a shadow falls over me and breath rushes against my ear.

“It’s over.” Bishop scoops me up like he doesn’t mind that I’m covered in vomit, and all the while I want to tell him, “Of course it’s over—Mom’s dead. Her life is over. My life is over,” but I can’t form words, because that’d involve moving my lips and jaw and that’s too much to think about, too much to bear. So I just stare into his dark eyes, and he stares back, and I feel nothing, nothing, nothing. He bends down and kisses me on the forehead. It registers that his lips are soft and that I didn’t think they would be, and that Jezebel is his girlfriend and he just kissed me, but that’s it.

“We hanged him.” There’s pride in Jezebel’s voice, like I should clap her on the shoulder or jump up and down to celebrate.

I look to where she indicated and instantly wish I hadn’t. Frederick hangs from a rope tied to the rafters, his arms dangling lifelessly. His head is bent unnaturally to the side, and his skin is so purple it might be called black. And his eyes—they bulge out of his head, staring at me unblinking and making a whole-body kind of fear rise through me. Even dead he has control over me.

“We used rope,” she says. “Get it? Just like he used on Bishop and your mom.”

I glare at her.

“What?” Jezebel says. Her confused expression clears. “Oh! You want to give it a go?” She holds out her hand, and a knife appears in her palm. I recoil from it into Bishop.

“Jezebel, for Christ’s sake.” Bishop gestures to the screen.

She rolls her eyes, and the knife disappears. “What? It’s only fair.”

Fair. That’s a funny word. Is it fair that I get to live, and Mom doesn’t? That she was the one to die when she wasn’t even a witch, when being a witch is all she ever wanted? The injustice of it fills me with so much rage it tears open a ragged hole in my chest, consuming me, eating me from the inside out. And yet, when I open my mouth to scream or cry or
anything,
no sound comes out.

I watch Jezebel as Bishop carries me down the aisle, and I realize that I do actually feel something stronger than anger and sorrow and pain: hate. I hate the Priory for what they did, and I hate Jezebel. If she’d just pushed Frederick to let Mom go when she had the knife to his temple, instead of leaving the theater, Mom wouldn’t be dead.

We’re almost out the door when a thought hits me.

“Wait!” I manage, grabbing on to the doorframe for leverage. “What if it’s just a trick? We need to get her out. We need to check if she’s okay!” I’m frantic with the sudden idea that it’s all been some horrible joke the Priory played on me in an attempt to get their way.

But Bishop just shakes his head.

“B-but you can fix her, right?” I ask, hope laced through the words.

Bishop looks away quickly.

I grasp his shirt. “You can fix her,
right
?”

“Jezebel knows a lot of people,” he says. “She’ll find someone who can get her out of the screen.”

“And then?”

“And then you can bury her. It’s the best we can do.”

I close my eyes right as the doors swing shut behind us.

I don’t know how we find Paige. All I know is that by the time we spot her huddled in an alley a few blocks from the theater, a mess of snot and tears, the sun has crept up over the horizon, and the sky has turned the dusky gray blue of dawn.

“Indie!” She barrels into me so hard it would knock the breath out of me if I had any left.

She searches my face, and all her happiness at finding me washes away. “Your mom, is she … ?”

I give a tiny shake of my head; the simple act forces a painful groan out of me. Paige pulls me against her and lets me cry into her shirt. And then the three of us wearily stagger down a newly awakened Hollywood Boulevard without saying a word.

The car’s right where we left it in the parking garage. It still works, even after the beating it took. So there’s that. I lie in the backseat of the Sunfire, my head resting in Paige’s lap. I don’t remember the car ride, or falling asleep, or being carried up to my room, but it all must have happened, because when I blink my eyes open next, I’m in bed. The sun spills light through the windows, and Bishop is fast asleep in the wooden chair at my computer desk, his head tucked uncomfortably into his chest. I remember Mom, what happened, and my heart aches so intensely it chokes the breath out of me. I burrow back under the covers until sleep dulls the pain.

B
ishop is gone. A block of sunlight streams through the window, warming my cheeks and lighting up the dust floating above my bed. Cicadas chirp a morning chorus. Children yell and squeal as they play in their yards, and someone nearby mows their lawn. Today’s just another day. My world came crashing down yesterday; my gut and my heart and my head hurt so profoundly I can’t imagine a worse pain. Mom is gone and is never coming back, and today’s just another day.

I want to scream. I want to scream until this hole inside me goes away.

Knuckles rap softly on my door, and Paige pokes her head inside. “Oh good, you’re up.” She steps inside, only to shift awkwardly at the entrance.

“Is she really gone?” I whisper, so quietly I’m surprised she hears me.

She climbs onto the bed and pulls me into a hug. I want to scream, but instead I cry.

We stay in bed all day.

I wake Wednesday morning to clanging in the kitchen. For a bittersweet moment I think it’s Mom, but reality rears its ugly head as I wake fully, and I remember she’s dead.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. My bones creak from underuse, and when I stand, I waver for a minute before finding my balance. A film coats my teeth, and my bladder feels like it’s going to explode.

I leave Paige snoring in bed and slog across the hallway to the bathroom. Mom’s toothbrush glares at me from the holder next to the sink. I know if I pull open the shower curtain, I’ll find her special smelly soaps sitting in the rack under the showerhead. The ache inside me roars to life. Getting out of bed was a bad idea.

But I do want to know who’s in my kitchen. I walk downstairs toward the sound of pots banging and find Aunt Penny elbow-deep in pancake mix.

“I’m making pancakes,” she helpfully points out.

I try to force a smile, but it’s like those muscles don’t work anymore.

Aunt Penny angrily whisks the pancakes with a cheerful smile. It’s so bizarre to see her smiling right now that I sink into a chair at the kitchen table and just watch her. Paige walks in moments later.

“Hope you’re hungry!” Aunt Penny says.

With a flourish she places a heaping platter of crumbly pancakes on the table. Paige bravely forks one onto a plate and cuts a small bite, while Penny eagerly watches.

“Well?” she asks as Paige swallows.

“You probably should stick to acting,” Paige finally says.

Aunt Penny’s smile breaks away and she dissolves into tears that leave her gasping for breath.

“I was just joking!” Paige cries. “Oh my God, I didn’t think you’d get so upset.” She looks to me for help.

“I just don’t get it,” Aunt Penny hiccups, messy tears streaming down her face. “Why Gwen?”

I plug my ears like I’m five. I just don’t want to hear this. But of course I do anyway.

“What have the police said?” Paige asks.

“That it was a random crime,” Penny answers, shaking her head. “A mugging gone bad.”

It’s a ridiculous story, but with just one glance I know it’s the story Paige and I will run with.

Aunt Penny tears at her hair. “How could she leave me? I don’t know how to do this without her. I don’t know how to raise a kid!” She takes a deep breath and sobers up, chewing on the corners of her fingernails as she paces the kitchen. “My apartment is too small for three girls, let alone four. I’ll have to move in here. I wonder what the mortgage payments are for a place like this. Indie, do you know what the mortgage payments are? Oh God, why did I quit the Bistro? The tips weren’t
that
bad. I wonder if they’d take me back if I apologized about the whole plate incident.”

And then it hits me. Aunt Penny is my new guardian.

It turns out funerals are the hottest social event next to prom. Hundreds of people show up, the whole of Fairfield High crammed into the pews and packed along the walls like sardines in a can. Devon sits a few rows behind me, dressed in the same dark navy suit and salmon tie he wore to his uncle Leonard’s funeral last June. A few spots over from him is Bianca. If this had all happened a month ago, it’d be her sitting next to me instead of Paige. The few feet separating us feel like miles. And though I’d never give up Paige’s friendship—not in a million years—a small part of me wonders if this tragedy will be what brings Bianca and me back together. If this will be the one thing that makes her realize what a terrible friend she’s been, makes me somehow find it in my heart to forgive her. But I shake off that thought almost as quickly as it comes.

The priest drones on in his heavy monotone, and I don’t feel bad about tuning him out. Mom wasn’t even Catholic and wouldn’t have wanted a church funeral—a fact Aunt Penny just couldn’t understand and I didn’t have the energy to fight. And so I count the panes in the stained-glass mural, wondering who does that for a living—stains glass for churches—so that I don’t have to think about what I’m doing. Which is attending Mom’s funeral.

At some point, the priest must have said my name, because everyone is looking at me, and Aunt Penny gently nudges me forward. The church grows so silent you can’t even hear a single rush of breath as I reach the altar. I pull my carefully folded note out of my pocket, but I can’t get past “My mom was,” no matter how many times I try. The entire congregation erupts into sobs at the sight of my raw emotion. It’s almost like they’re here because they care about me. Almost.

I stay just long enough not to be rude, carefully avoiding Bianca and Devon (I don’t want to talk to them in a vulnerable state, lest I end up forgiving them both), and then I slip out the back and wait in the car until Aunt Penny and Paige find me.

And then Friday. There are no more official funeral preparations to take care of, and the casseroles have stopped coming, and everyone’s left the house—even Paige, because she isn’t as lucky as me and doesn’t get a whole week of bereavement leave—and Aunt Penny’s off taking a business class to learn how to run an occult shop she has no interest in running but has to because how else is she going to raise me? And I sit down at the kitchen table and realize that Mom really died. That she’ll never come back. And that I am alone. Cold hands reach out for me, threaten to pull me into a dark place where I might never escape, and I let them.

It’s like I’m trapped in a block of ice that nothing can penetrate. Everything around me is just a blur of color, a flash of movement, garbled sounds I can’t quite decipher and don’t want to. Time passes like sludge.

I burrow under the covers of Mom’s bed and breathe in her scent, which still clings to the fabric. And then I take out my cell phone and listen to Mom’s voice-mail message—“You’ve reached Gwen. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can”—over and over and over, until sleep finally claims me.

Aunt Penny comes in every now and then to leave food on the dresser and to try to coax me to come downstairs for this reason or that, but I don’t get out of bed. I don’t care if I starve. I wish I’d died too.

I wake at an ungodly hour to the sound of low murmurs outside the bedroom door. I sit up and rub the sleep out my eyes just as the door swings open, and Aunt Penny and Paige are there.

“I’ve had enough of this,” Aunt Penny says. Paige just shrugs apologetically.

I lie back down and roll onto my side, defensively pulling the covers up to my chin. But Aunt Penny marches to the end of the bed and yanks down the covers so that I’m exposed in my pajamas.

“Hey!” I yell, sitting up and reaching for the blanket.

“Look, I’m sorry to have to do this,” she says, holding the blanket away from my reaching grasp. “I know what happened was terrible, really terrible, but I care about you, and I can’t watch you do this. It isn’t healthy. Yes, your mom died, and I’m sorry about that—you don’t know how sorry I am. But you have to get out of bed. And for God’s sake, woman, you have to shower.”

Paige throws open the blinds, and offensively bright light streams in the window. It’s almost like she’s on Aunt Penny’s side or something.

“Breakfast is waiting downstairs,” Aunt Penny says. Reading my thoughts, she adds, “It’s takeout from Coffee Bean, so you have no excuse.”

Paige follows her. The door clicks shut, and I’m left gaping at the empty space. I have the feeling that I should be mad—it’s only been a week since my mom was murdered. But I’m not mad.

I amble downstairs toward the scent of coffee and fresh bagels. In the kitchen, Paige and Aunt Penny have their backs to me as they bicker about which station to watch on the little TV. They speak to each other in the way that only longtime friends do, and I have to wonder how long they’ve been doing this—conspiring to get me well. Something sparks inside me. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but a tiny hole has chipped away at the ice block, and a sliver of light streams inside.