Charmed (13 page)

Awesome. I’ll probably die from a bacterial infection before I save Paige.

I’m pulling off the useless gauze when I see movement flash through the sky. Three people land hard in the wet sand across from the hut.

One guy wears an oversized T-shirt, and a bandanna over his shaved head. A man with huge dreadlocks that reach halfway down his back and a jaw almost as hard as the body visible beneath his white tank top glares at me with contempt (or excitement—it’s hard to tell). The lone woman wears a high ponytail, a sports bra, and a smirk I don’t have to try hard to decipher.

“And what do we have here?” Sporty Spice says.

Please be a sorcerer, please be a sorcerer
.

Magic bubbles hot in my stomach, the instinct to fight them almost too much to ignore. But if the plan is going to work, I need them to think I’m a human, and so I bite down on my lip until I draw blood. The heat doesn’t go away.

“Wh-who are you?” I ask. The warble in my voice is a nice touch, though I didn’t plan it. I scrabble back as they approach, but there isn’t really anywhere I can go. They circle the hut like sharks scenting a bloody meal.

“Come on down, little girl,” Eminem calls up. The rest of them cackle.

“We promise we won’t hurt you!” Bob Marley says.

Yeah. Right.

I spin around, trying to follow their movements.

I don’t notice that Eminem has vanished until he’s right behind me, breathing down my neck. I shriek, which is apparently really funny. Sporty Spice rolls in the sand, kicking up her feet.

“How did you do that?” I ask. “Where am I?”

“Ah,” Eminem says into my ear, making a shiver pass through me. “We got us another one. Lex?”

The girl rolls up into a tiger crouch.

“Let the fun begin,” Bob Marley says. He rubs his hands together.

Fun? What the hell is that supposed to mean? The sorcerers seemed bent on kidnapping humans, and Goth Woman seemed to want answers. These three? They seem like they want blood.

“Don’t be nervous,” Eminem says. “Let’s just go down for a little chat, shall we?”

He scoops me up so fast I gasp, then lobs me over the side. My scream lasts only a second before a pair of hard
arms cushion my fall, then spring me out like we’re practicing one of Bianca’s basket tosses. I manage two disoriented steps in the doughy sand before someone grabs my arm and violently pulls me back. I stumble, just as a boot crashes into my ribs. I keel over, too stunned to feel pain. And then it hits me, white-hot pain bursting from my side, and my mouth opens in a soundless scream.

The guy behind me shakes with laughter. I force my body out of the fetal position and desperately try to pick myself up off the ground, but then a boot strikes the center of my back. I splatter face-first onto the beach, taking in a mouthful of sand. I cough and gag as pain splits my spine, my vision blurring at the edges. The last thing I see before darkness overtakes me is a boot coming for my temple.

I
wake up to the face of God.

Actually, I think it’s Jesus. His face is painted in an elaborate mural on the arched ceiling and surrounded by gilded halos and pink-cheeked cherubs. If my brain weren’t banging against my skull so hard that my ears ring and if my ribs didn’t feel like they were recently kicked in by a size 9 shoe—oh, and if not for the raised voices volleying swears back and forth at each other somewhere not far away—then I might think I’d died and gone to heaven.

I keep very still, trying to hear the conversation going on before anyone notices I’m conscious. I catch only bits and pieces.

“It’s our standard agreement.”

“That was before—”

“They’re getting desperate. Haven’t you seen—”

“She’s worth more than that now.”

“—probably can get them to toss in Santa Monica.”

“After you three idiots roughed her up?”

A scuffle breaks out. I struggle up on my elbows, and a voice nearby cries, “She’s awake!”

Before I can get all the way up, a dozen faces surround me, looking down from above. They exchange knowing looks with each other. I recognize the three from the beach among the group, but the rest are new faces. They range in age from early twenties, like Sporty Spice (I’m being generous here), to pushing sixty, like the guy wearing one of those really bad Hawaiian shirts that dads are famous for sporting on hot vacations, although he looks like he could probably bench-press me. I shrink under their assessment.

“Not so bad,” Eminem says.

“Are you kidding?” someone pipes up. “Her damn face is purpler than a friggin’ eggplant.”

“They won’t care about that,” Sporty Spice says. “They just want a warm body.”

“And how do you know that, huh?” The one who said that is a girl with a messy pixie cut wearing an oversized plaid shirt that comes down to her knees. “You have intimate knowledge of the sorcerer’s plans?”

Her words are like a blow to my stomach: they’re rebels.

What now?

I clear my throat, fighting to keep calm when they turn to face me. “You’re Zeke’s people?” I ask, remembering the name Cruz used for the leader of the rebels.

“How did you know that?” Sporty demands.

“How
do
you know about Zeke?” Bob Marley asks.

The rest of the rebels glare suspiciously at me.

Crap. How
do
I know that? Revealing my confrontation with Cruz doesn’t seem like the best idea.

They wait for an answer I don’t have. I think fast.

“I—I overheard it,” I lie.

Pixie raises her eyebrows, so I continue.

“I was checking out that hut on the beach when I heard voices outside. I hid before I could see their faces, but I heard their conversation. They said something about this guy named the Chief and this other guy named Zeke.”

A few people bark laughter. I don’t know what’s so funny.

“Zeke’s a woman,” Sporty explains. “And you’re lucky she’s not here or you’d be in for it.”

“Oh.” I remember Goth Woman from the night of the Bat Boy attack—maybe I came face to face with the leader of the rebels and didn’t even know it.

“What happened to your arm?” Sporty asks.

“I got mugged yesterday,” I answer easily. I’ve said it so many times it almost feels like it’s true.

She assesses my wound for a long moment. “I think she’s lying,” she finally says.

“I’m not,” I say.

“None of us were down at the beach earlier. We were all here for the meeting. How could you have heard anything?”

I swallow. “Well, maybe it wasn’t one of you?”

“This is rebel territory,” she says. “Who else would you have heard?”

“I don’t know,” I answer.

“Jason did see that guy nosing around the pier last week,” a ginger guy says. “Maybe the Chief’s sending spies.”

The group breaks out into loud arguments. I don’t know what’s going on, but I feel really weird lying on the ground while the whole thing unfolds above me. I push myself up, and no one stops me.

I’m standing in front of an altar. Arched stained-glass windows refract colored beams onto the wooden pews stretched across the room, lighting up dust motes that float in the still air. If it weren’t for the sleeping bags, pillows, and empty Coke cans littered around the church, it’d probably be beautiful.

I realize that the last time I was in a church was for Mom’s funeral. The thought makes my chest constrict. The irony that I might be having my own funeral soon isn’t lost on me. I miss Mom so bad it hurts in a place I didn’t know existed before she died, but I want to live a long and—hopefully—happy life. I don’t want it all to end in this place.

The arguing settles down, and it seems like they’ve come to some sort of decision. One that makes Sporty Spice very
angry. She storms out of the church, the double doors smacking open, then closed in her wake. A few other people leave less dramatically, while still others separate into small groups, conversing in low tones and casting glances my way every now and then.

I wonder if I should make a break for it. I start moving slowly down the wide aisle between pews.

“Don’t even think about it.”

I gasp, turning to find Pixie staring at me with a very unimpressed look on her face.

“I wasn’t—”

She raises her eyebrows, and I stop myself from saying anything else. It’s very obvious that I
was
.

“Do you need food?” she asks.

Like I’d eat their food. “No thanks.”

“It’s safe,” she says, guessing my train of thought. “We wouldn’t, like, poison it or anything.”

Right. Because the people who just beat me to a pulp are above that sort of thing. But anyway, I don’t think I could eat even if I were sure the food wasn’t laced. My stomach is a ball of nerves. I wonder idly if it’s like this with criminals on death row, when they get to eat anything they want for their last meal.

“How about some ice for that head?” she asks.

On cue, my head gives a violent bang from the inside. I decide there’s no possible way she could kill me with an ice pack, so I murmur an assent. I expect her to leave, but
she just holds out her hand and an ice pack materializes. Of course. I hesitantly reach out and take it from her.

“Any chance you have some bandages where that came from?” I ask meekly.

She rolls her eyes, but complies. I try not to cry with relief when she hands me a huge roll of clean white bandages and a tube of antiseptic ointment.

“Thank you so much,” I gush.

She doesn’t answer, just turns around, her long flannel shirt flapping as she struts toward a door behind the altar. I sit in a pew and get to work cleaning up my arm. When I’m done, I press the ice pack against my temple and think.

I could use my magic right now, but there are so many people spread out through the church that I couldn’t guarantee to get them all if I caused another earthquake or even the wind thing. It’d be as easy as one person noticing my attempt at escape for me to get killed. I need to wait until the room thins out, or they take me somewhere else. I just hope my magic still works then.

I watch the room, quietly assessing and hoping to come up with a better plan. The ice pack drips cold water down my arm. There isn’t a clock in this place, but the light slanting through the stained-glass windows shifts, changing the shadows across the room. My stomach growls loudly.

Pixie returns and hurls a box of Ritz Crackers at me without pausing her steps. I’m not expecting it and bat the box away from me like it might be a grenade. She looks at me as
if I’m challenged and then goes over to stand with a group of men.

When she’s not watching, I crouch down and pick up the box. I’m biting into my third stale cracker when the back doors open, and all the noise sucks out of the room.

Two people stand in the doorway. One of them is a woman in her late forties. She’s approximately the size of a tank and sports eighties-style peroxide-blond feathered bangs, too much makeup, and a leather vest (if she carried a purse, it’d be football hold, even if the purse had straps). The other person is the blond guy with the trucker hat who made the crude advance when Cruz had me in the back of the van.

Sorcerers.

I should be thrilled—this is exactly what I wanted—but as they stride down the aisle like they own the place, my stomach does a flip. I drop the box of crackers.

The rebels pull together at the altar as the sorcerers approach. Tension radiates through the air in palpable waves.

“You got us some humans?” Trucker Hat says.

“One human,” Hawaiian Shirt answers.

“Just one?”

“Take it or leave it, Ace,” Bob Marley answers.

Trucker/Ace/Whatever His Name Is locks eyes with Marley, who responds by sticking his rather large chin up at him. For a minute I’m sure they’re going to come to some sort of testosterone-fueled blows, but then Ace glances at
me. He pauses, and then his face lights up with a huge smile. Dread washes over me as he saunters toward me.

“Hey, I remember you,” he drawls.

I shrink back into the pew, as far from him as possible.

“You’re the girl went missing from Cruz last week, huh?”

His twangy voice sends shivers down my spine.

He takes another step closer, but Pixie appears out of nowhere and blocks his path.

“Not so fast,” she says.

He looks her up and down and gives a dismissive shrug. Pig.

“Your part of the deal,” Pixie says. She pokes him in the chest with her bony finger, even though she barely comes up to his shoulders. I decide I like her.

Ace eyes me over her shoulder, barely paying attention to her. My heart beats hard.

“Santa Monica or nothing,” she says. “Safe passage for any rebel. We find a human, we’ll turn ’em over, but no Chieftains on our land.”

“Fine,” Ace says quickly. Pixie is too shocked by his easy agreement to hurl an insult back at him before he passes around her. I scramble to my feet, stumbling backward, but he snatches me by the waist. The grin he gives me makes his green eyes sparkle and bile rise in my throat.

“You’re coming with me, little lady. And this time, you
won’t
get away.”