To Make A Witch (7 page)

“I should go with you to speak to the White Lady so we can plan how to proceed against this threat. My aunt’s no good to anyone in the state she’s in right now. She almost never leaves the apartment anyway. The cars and people confuse her and she forgets who she is.”

“Is she safe here alone?”

Michel shrugged. “We need to find out who wants the bones of witches so my aunt can deal with them before they have a chance to strike.”

“We’re parked around the corner,” Ava said.

He nodded. “I’ll just lock up the shop.”

As Michel prepared to close the store, my eyes were drawn back to the painting of Baron Samedi on the wall. The combination of elegant clothing and a skull-painted face was almost lewd, but there was something familiar about it too. “Is the Baron real? Miss Benoit said she saw him when she was attacked.”

The young man glanced at the painting. “I have no doubt that whatever he truly is, the Baron is very real.

“And what about the loa—the spirits? Do you believe they’re trapped on another plane of existence, forced by your rituals to obey you?”

Michel hesitated. “I don’t know that I believe in life after death in the traditional religious sense. I do know that just like the Baron, the entities we call the loa are real. And the Gates of Guinee keep the loa from entering our world.”

I had to swallow three times before I could speak. “But what if they
are
the spirits of the dead? If the gates are opened, could the dead come back to life?”

“I don’t know, but whoever stole Marie Laveau’s bones has someone special in mind to bring over to this side.”

I pointed at the picture. “Baron Samedi—but Claire said she saw him, so maybe he’s already here.”

He shrugged. “I’ve heard of sightings of the Baron before. Maybe he’s able to appear briefly, but can’t stay permanently. Death always draws him back to the gates.

We were all staring at the painting now, considering the thought of such a creature making this world its home.

Michel closed up the store and followed us down the street to the dean’s SUV. I let him sit in the front, and to his credit, he only clutched at his seatbelt the first time Ava ran a stop sign. They continued the murmured conversation they’d begun in Adelaide’s apartment, but I ignored them. I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility of a magic that might allow the spirits of the dead to return to this world.

Stephen. Stephen. Stephen. I tapped my fingers on the window in time to his name.

“That’s funny,” Ava said as we drove through Westover Academy’s entrance.

I unclicked my seatbelt and leaned forward. “What is it?”

“The school’s technically closed for the Christmas holidays, so we should have had to buzz in to get the security guard to open the gate.”

“Maybe someone else came in and they forgot to close it.” But as we parked in front of Stradford Hall, there were no other cars.

“What time is it?” Ava asked.

Michel pulled out his phone to check. “Two.”

She looked out across the lawn, frowning.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The guard on duty always checks the front perimeter around now.”

“How do you know that?”

She arched an eyebrow at me. “Trust me, sneaking out requires knowing exactly when and where security will be at any given time. It’s actually a scandal. There’s a lot of Fortune 500 progeny here. The least the security company could do is randomly vary their schedule, but safety’s loss has been my gain.”

“Let’s check inside.”

With a gentlemanly gesture, Michel opened one of the front doors and held it for us to go in. “Are the lights usually off?”

Ava shook her head. “No. Maybe the dean went to the hospital to see Miss Benoit.”

I peered down the darkened hall. “We have her car, remember? She said she was going to reinforce the warding spells she’d placed around the school.”

“Maybe she’s out back.”

“Let’s check her office, just in case.” As we walked down the hall, I stopped abruptly.

“What?” Ava asked.

The picture of the Witch of Endor was hanging ever so slightly askew again. As I adjusted it, my breath caught in my throat. On the surface of the glass, across the figure of the witch, were two deep scratches.

Without conscious thought, I was running down the hall. Slamming against the door frame of the reception area, I pushed myself across the room. The dean’s door was closed. I wanted to open it, but my body wouldn’t obey. Wrapping my fingers around the knob I turned it back and forth. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. When I completed the ritual, I could finally turn the knob one last time and shove the door open so hard that it banged against the wall. Ava and Michel pushed into the opening beside me.

Some things can’t be unseen. On the day I die, this will be the last image that passes before my eyes until darkness claims them.

Meat was thrown around the room—human meat. Gobs of flesh hung from the walls. Here and there was evidence: a fingernail, a hank of brown hair, a shred of silk cloth. Torn scraps of the portrait that had hung on the wall looked like they’d been tossed around the room like confetti. Splinters from the frame impaled pieces of fat in a ghastly parody of hors d'oeuvres on toothpicks

There was blood everywhere, but no bones, not a single bone among the ruin of what was once a living being.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A DEATH

I couldn’t move. Ava had stumbled away and I could hear her being sick behind me. The sound of Michel’s breathing was harsh, but his voice was controlled. “The White Lady?”

“Yes.” I wanted to, but I couldn’t stop looking. I thought the Crone was evil—I thought I was evil— but I’d never seen evil until that moment.

“The bones are gone.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded.

“H-h-how c-c-could s-someone do that? T-to a p-person?” Ava began sobbing and softly moaning.

As the smell of sickness mingled with the stench of rotting meat, darkness closed around me.

Michel caught me before I fainted and pulled me away from the carnage. Sitting me down on the couch, we stared at one another. His skin was ashy and his hands on my arm shook, but after a few moments, our breathing slowed and synchronized.

“No, no, no.” Ava was hunched over in a corner, rocking back and forth on her knees. A wave of complex emotion set my teeth buzzing. There was an intense desire to smash something, and beneath that, a shameful desire to smash it against Ava to make her stop.

Michel let me go and stood. “The shock is too much for her, but maybe I can help.

“How?”

He hesitated. “Bokur medicine.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of it, but the girl was silent now, and her eyes were wild and staring. It was worse than the crying and moaning. The Lacey I once was would have been filled with concern and compassion. “Do it,” was all I could manage now.

He pulled out his wallet. Inside was a translucent packet containing dark granules. “She’ll need some water.”

“I’ll go get it.”

“Are you all right to stand?” I stood to prove I was. Kneeling beside Ava, Michel cupped her cheek with his hand. She stared at him with uncomprehending eyes.

“I’ll be right back.” As I stumbled down the hall past the picture of the Witch of Endor, a glint of color on the floor in front of it caught my eye. Kneeling down, I ran my fingers across the flecks of green and gold and was shocked to discover they were scales of some sort.

By the time I came out of the dining hall with a glass of water, Ava and Michel were already sitting together on a couch in the foyer. He looked up. “She was able to take the medicine without water. I thought it was better to get her away from that room.”

Flashes of irritation and suspicion went through me, but I kept my face relaxed.

He took the glass from my hand and gave it to Ava. “She should drink something anyway.” Ava began drinking in big gulps.

“What did you give her?”

“Just a special herb enhanced with magic to create a mild sedative. It will help her function until her mind is able to process what she’s seen.” He took the empty glass back. “You feel better now, right Ava?” She nodded.

I sank into a chair. I was so tired. “What should we do?
Should
we call the police?”

Michel shook his head. “They’ll think we did it. At the very least, they’ll detain us all for questioning. I need to protect my aunt.”

“We can’t leave it . . .
her
there.”

“Don’t forget that you’re a target too. We need to get you somewhere safe.”

“But when one of the guards finds her, they’ll suspect Ava or me anyway. They know we’re the only ones on campus.”

“Lacey, I don’t think there’s anyone left alive here.”

I thought of the open gate and knew he was probably right. I needed to make a decision. “I know somewhere we can go, but I need to talk to Miss Benoit first. She was bitten by the same thing that killed the dean.”

Michel was instantly alert. “You know what did this?”

I held up the iridescent scales clutched in my hand. “Li Grand Zombi.”

Ava followed me over to the residence and up to our room while Michel waited for us in the SUV. I began to gather some clothes, and after a moment, she did the same. She didn’t speak though, and I worried that despite Michel’s medicine, she was in deep shock.

I looked around with regret. I’d already begun to think of the room as home. I didn’t know if I would be coming back, so I grabbed my scrapbook and the leather bag containing the harp of Binnorie. Stuffing my clothes in the bag, I grabbed Ava’s as well, and she trailed behind me back down to the SUV like a faithful puppy. I held the back door for her to get in and then dumped the bags at her feet.

Why do some people get to fall apart while the rest of us have to put on our big girl panties and go on? As I got in the front seat, my compulsions made me put the key in the ignition and take it out three times before I was able to turn on the engine, but I finally did it.

Michel was staring at me and I could feel my face flushing. I had everything precious to me in the leather bag on the floor of the back seat, so why shouldn’t I just get on the next plane home? The death of a witch I barely knew wasn’t really my problem.

Not my problem. Not my problem.

I didn’t finish my personal incantation; I let it hang there, uncomfortable and incomplete. The image of Elisha Dalton’s torn and chopped up flesh was an itch in my mind that I couldn’t scratch; a picture frame that couldn’t be straightened; a ritual that I couldn’t complete.

Or could I?

Knowing I was doing the right thing—knowing I was doing the stupid thing—I opened the door and got out.

“Where are you going?” Michel yelped.

“I can’t leave her like that.”

“We have no idea how long we’re safe here. Someone will show up with a delivery or the next security shift will arrive. At some point, the cops are going to be all over this place.”

“I have to go back. It won’t take long, I promise.”

I didn’t wait for him to protest again. I returned to Stradford Hall and entered the darkened building. Moving deliberately, I counted my steps in threes until I stood outside the reception area of the dean’s office. The recitation of numbers in my head had placed me in an almost trance-like state; I felt as if I was floating above my body, watching myself. It made me wonder if the dean’s spirit still lingered near her remains or if it had already fled to the place of peace and rest I’d believed in growing up. Maybe she had joined the loa and would spend eternity obeying Voodoo queens and bokurs.

I wondered who would miss her. Her daughter was dead, but she’d mentioned a cat. The thought of that cat waiting for her master to come home bothered me, and I was pushed back inside my body.

I went inside. Searching through the drawers of Claire’s desk for something sharp, I found a letter opener. Telling myself to think of the slabs of protein in front of me as
things
, not a person, I drew the letter opener across my left palm three times, gasping in relief as I made the third cut. The wall to my right was sprayed with blood and gore. I pressed my hand against it.

The Crone had used my blood for many of her spells. Blood was a balance of all the elements—fire, water, air—bound by the spirit or will contained in the body. With blood magic, you weren’t constrained by specific words and actions needed to create specific outcomes. With blood, you could control the elements, if your will was strong enough. There was always a price to pay, but by using someone else’s blood, some of that price was passed on to them. The Crone had used a lot of my blood. I sometimes wondered if that was why I felt so dead inside—if the price I’d paid for her magic had made me less than human.

“Round and round and round we go. Where we stop, nobody knows.” I didn’t know why the words to the rhyme had come to my mind. I wanted to laugh, but didn’t let myself.

With the power of my blood and the White Lady’s combined, I called on one of the Crone’s spells written on my very bones to answer. There had to be something useful. As Cailleach, the great hag/queen of winter, half the spells she’d stuffed into me were ones of pale destruction. It probably would have hollowed me out and left me mindless, but she could have saved herself from Morgan and Boudica using one of those spells. Instead, she allowed Boudica to cut off her head.

Self-pity coursed through me. If the Crone and I had succeeded in freeing the dragon Melusine and delivering it to Merlin, I would have been rewarded with enough power to fill the empty, yawning cavern of my heart. But the Crone loved Morgan—her one-time daughter—and wouldn’t stand against her. I was less than nothing to the Crone, just a consolation prize when Rhi refused to be her apprentice. The Crone had left me with nothing to fill what my brother had torn out of me when he died.

Rage burned through self-pity until it was nothing but a curling wisp of smoke. I remembered who I was. I was Lacey McInnis—top student, head cheerleader, good girl—and I didn’t do self-pity. Maybe my love for Peter couldn’t fill me. The Crone’s acceptance would have been a drop of water in an empty pit. Triumphing over Rhi would only have brought me brief satisfaction. But this spell could fill the aching void.

“Ebb, flood, and ebb: I know

Well the ebb, and well the flow.

And the second ebb, all three,

Have they not come home to me?”

It was a spell to return three-fold whatever I desired, and I desired the Crone’s cold power. I conjured in my mind the picture of the symbol that had once burned on my shoulder and felt an answering pain deep underneath my skin.

The white destruction of winter filled my body.  I embraced it and let it build until there was no way to contain it and it erupted through every pore in my skin. My screams filled the school as every atom of the White Lady was obliterated from creation by white fire.

When the blizzard of power passed and I could feel myself again, I discovered that I had fallen to my knees. I looked up. The room was empty of any trace of blood or flesh. Stumbling to my feet, I noticed something I’d completely forgotten on the dean’s desk—the Crone’s laptop. Amazingly, it had survived everything unscathed. I tucked it under my arm and left. I didn’t look back.

Michel was watching me with a frown on his handsome face when I returned to the SUV. Ignoring him, I stowed the laptop in my bag on the floor of the back seat, careful not to lean it against the harp of Binnorie. There was a faint, haunting sound and my heart skipped a beat, but that was all. The harp still had nothing to say to me. Ava didn’t move when I slammed the door; she was slumped across the seat and seemed to be sleeping.

“What happened?” Michel asked as I slipped into the front.

“I took care of it.”

“How?”

“How did you help Ava? I’m a witch. You of all people should know better than to ask my secrets.” As I said it, I realized it was true. No matter how hard I’d been trying to find my way back to the old Lacey, she didn’t exist anymore. I was a witch. There was no denying it any longer.

Michel looked away. “Sorry.”

I didn’t respond as I put the car in gear and drove through the academy’s front gate. Michel gave me the directions to the nearest hospital. I just hoped it was the one Claire Benoit had been taken to. Focusing on the unfamiliar roads, I tried to ignore the warmth on my shoulder that told me a twisted black symbol might have appeared there.

I resented it. The Crone’s magic was lodged inside me like a parasite. I thought of the beautiful silver swirls on poor Elisha Dalton’s skin and hoped that there was more than one kind of witch. But even the dean had begun her career by terrorizing motorists as the White Lady.

When we entered the hospital complex, Michel directed me to a deserted corner of the parking garage. “Wipe down the steering wheel and the handles with your sleeve. Have you ever been arrested?”

“Of course not.”

“Good, then your prints won’t be on file.” I stared at him. “We have to leave the SUV here. We can’t be seen with the White Lady’s car.”

“You’re right. I didn’t think of that. Thanks, Michel.”

“For what?”

“For helping me deal with all of this.”

We both looked back at Ava. I was surprised to see that her eyes were open. Michel smiled and she smiled in response. Reaching over the seat, he brushed her hair with his fingertips. “C’mon, chère. We need to leave the car now.” She nodded and sat up—soft, compliant, and so different from the restless, vibrant girl I’d come to know.

I got out and hoisted our bags on my shoulder. Michel led us through the garage and into the hospital by a circuitous route, silently pointing to several security cameras mounted on the ceiling.

At the main desk, I gave Claire’s name to a tired looking admin and she checked her computer. “Sorry, Claire Benoit was examined and discharged shortly after admittance.”

I groaned in frustration. “We have to know what she saw. Maybe I should go back to the school in case she shows up there.”

Michel shook his head. “You shouldn’t go back there.”

“We shouldn’t go back,” Ava agreed.

When the woman at the desk looked at us with an expression of curiosity on her face, Michel took Ava’s arm and pulled her away. Flashing the woman an innocent smile, I followed him back out the front doors.

He hailed a taxi. As it approached, he kept his voice low. “We’ve wasted enough time. Either you or my aunt are the next target. Given her state of mind when we left, it might be better if I go to her alone. Hopefully, she’ll be herself again and will have a plan for what we should do. You said you had somewhere safe to go?”