Charmed (8 page)

The dragon that chased me at homecoming pops into my mind, and white-hot fear rips through my body.

“What. The hell. Was that?”

“Mierda,”
Cruz mutters.

“You keep saying that. What does that mean?”

“And I can’t even fly with the three of you,” he adds, ignoring my question. “This is awesome. Just great.”

The shape swoops down, landing with a thud on the patchy grass in the yard across from us.

I gasp. Shrieks rise from the captives in the van.

The thing looks like a cross between a monkey and a bat. Its bony, fur-covered body hunches over in the grass, a long tail curling up between glossy, leathery wings. It watches us with beady red eyes, smiling with a mouthful of too many sharp teeth.

“Get in the van,” Cruz orders.

He doesn’t have to tell me twice.

I dive inside the van, sliding the door closed just as the thing leaps toward us. I jump back from the door and land in the girl’s lap. She shoves me off, sobbing so loudly it’s practically all I can hear.

Cruz holds out his hand. Flame bursts from his palm, but Bat Boy takes flight before it can hit. I don’t see where the creature has gone until its paws slam against Cruz’s back and pin him to the ground. Panic overwhelms me—if Cruz dies,
we’re all dead—but in a flash, he disappears. The bat is still sniffing confusedly at the spot where its dinner had been when Cruz materializes behind it. Blood trickles out of the claw holes in his broad shoulders, and sweat has pooled in the hollow of his back. He holds a long knife over his head, its blade glistening in the moonlight as he prepares to strike the bat’s wing.

Smart
, I think. He wants to take away its ability to fly.

Cruz brings the knife down swiftly, but not before the bat whips around. The knife stabs into the ground, making a dull sound I can hear clearly even through the glass. Bat Boy hisses, baring its teeth, eyes flashing a murderous red. It lunges at Cruz, claws reaching to wrap around his throat. They fall back in a tumble of bodies. A loud
snap
splits the air, followed by an unearthly wail. I have to look away, cringing at the thought of what could have made that sound.

“I just want to go home,” the boy next to me cries, his hands clasped in prayer.

“I love you, Mom,” the girl cries as messy tears pour down her face.

My chest knots up. I don’t know what was going to happen to these people wherever it was Cruz was taking us, but I do know that if they die right now, it will be because of me.

I have to do something.

I scramble to the door.

“What are you doing?” the girl screeches. “Don’t go out there!”

I hop out of the van. My landing sends up a puff of dirt, but neither Cruz nor Bat Boy seem to notice. Cruz twists out from under Bat Boy’s grip. He heaves for air, his face a mask of rage, his rippled chest smeared with dirt and gleaming with sweat.

Now’s the time.

I sprint across the road, my head down against the biting night wind. When I reach the other side, I whirl around and cup my hands around my mouth.

“Hey!” I yell.

Bat Boy’s head snaps up. The creature has grabbed hold of Cruz again, and hoists his body over its head, as if ready to smash him.

“Over here! Catch me if you can!”

It drops Cruz so fast I swear I hear bones crack; then springs into the air.

I spin around, but I don’t make it a step before a clawed talon digs into the back of my shirt.

This wasn’t one of my best ideas.

“Help!”

My body folds over like a rag doll as I’m pulled into the sky. The ground shrinks below me at an alarming rate until the van and Cruz lying unconscious in front of it are just a couple of black specks on the road.

Bat Boy drops me suddenly. I don’t have time to brace for the fall before I land on the sticky black shingles of a roof. A wet nose sniffs at my ears, fur itching up against my cheek. I shriek and roll away.

“You got one. Excellent.”

I look up at the sound of a voice. There’s a woman on the roof.

Bat Boy curls back its lips, baring razor teeth.

“That’s enough,” the woman says, her unstyled black Mohawk blowing in the breeze. She pushes off the spire she’s been leaning against and walks over. As she nears, I notice a cowbell nose piercing, spiked collar necklace, and heaps of dark eye makeup that make her look like she just blew her life savings at Hot Topic.

“There are still more down there,” she says, flicking a dismissive hand at Bat Boy.

It ignores her, bending its fanged mouth toward me like it just can’t stop itself from getting one little taste. Its hot breath makes me gag.

“Go on, before he wakes up.” She gives the bat a swift kick in the side. It hisses, but the woman doesn’t flinch, and it finally takes flight.

I look frantically after the bat as it retreats.

“Hey.” A boot lands in my side, knocking my breath out of me. I curl into myself, tasting something metallic in my mouth: blood.

“Who are you?” the woman asks.

I can’t even find breath to speak. The kids in the van. What’s going to happen to them?

The woman bends down and takes my chin in her hands, snapping my head up so that I have to face her. “Did they tell you why they kidnapped you? Give you any idea what they’re using you for? Why all the humans?”

I cough up a mouthful of blood.

“Spit it out!” she yells, shaking my head.

A splitting pain shoots into my temples. I gasp, instinctively grabbing my head. I squeeze my eyes shut against a sudden rush of tears. I’ve never felt a more intense pain in my life. I wonder if I’m having a stroke. I can feel the woman standing over me, hear her words floating around my head, but the more I try to grasp onto them, the further and further away they get. I vaguely feel another boot in my side before everything goes black.

I
have the nightmare again—the one with Mom tied to the chair. This time a tiger paces around her. It makes a low rumble that causes the fur on its chest to vibrate. Mom draws back into her chair, shaking with fear as tears pour down her cheeks. She whimpers into the rag stuffed in her mouth. The tiger reaches out a paw and claws at her face. Three long slashes cut down her cheek.

I scream.

“So you survived.”

The words pull me back to reality, and the nightmare fades to black. I flutter my eyes open. My head pulses against cold stone, exhaustion pulling at my body so intensely I
can’t move an inch. The witch from the boardwalk stands over me. Her hair hangs down over her bony face as she watches me with a measure of disinterest mixed with annoyance.

I’m back at the Black Market. I never would have believed I’d be so happy to see the creepy witch, or to be in her basement lair.

For a split second I feel satisfied. I traveled to Los Demonios and made it back safely—haters can suck it!

And then I remember that the point wasn’t just to survive—it was to save Paige. And my euphoria evaporates.

The woman shuffles out of the room. I try to sit up, but it’s just too hard, and I sink back onto the stone floor.

“Where are you going?” I ask, then let out a raspy cough that tastes of blood.

Clanks echo from deeper in the cave.

Los Demonios. I can’t believe I survived that place. Everyone said it was dangerous, but in the span of an hour or so, I almost got killed on three separate occasions, if you don’t count the freaky goth woman on the roof. She wasn’t exactly friendly, but I can’t say for sure she wanted to kill me. More like she wanted to beat answers out of me.

Her words reverberate through my head.

“Did they tell you why they kidnapped you? Give you any idea what they’re using you for? Why all the humans?”

What does it all mean?

The witch comes back with a goblet of pink fluid and some
mystery capsules, which she sets down in front of me before moving back to continue watching. I could lie here forever, but the promise of potential painkillers is making me salivate. I flatten the palm of my uninjured arm against the floor and force my body up. It feels like my head is weighted with lead, and my movements are sluggish, like I’m coming out of anesthesia.

Cruz’s dirty T-shirt is still wrapped around the crook of my right arm, making it hard to bend, so I pick up the goblet with my left hand and bring it close to my face, taking a whiff of the pink fluid. I cough at the unexpected acrid scent.

“It’ll make the pains go away,” the witch says, reading my mind.

I eye the capsules. Taking unmarked pills from a stranger seems like something I probably shouldn’t do, but surely if she wanted to kill me she could have done it when she was slicing me up with a rusty dagger.

Still coughing, I pop the capsules in my mouth, throwing back half the liquid in one gulp. I almost spit it out, but force it down my throat. And then I sit there, panting, until the urge to vomit finally passes.

“Get up,” the witch says, then disappears back into the tunnels again.

I realize the pain and the sluggishness are gone.

I get up and follow the witch upstairs.

The cab rolls to a stop. It’s four a.m., yet all the lights are on inside my house. Anxiety grips my chest. Aunt Penny’s probably been up all night worrying about me. Maybe she even called the cops.

“I got places to be, lady,” the cabbie complains.

I consider asking him to drive right past the house, maybe drop me off at the park so I can sleep under the slide or something. Even going up against Bat Boy again seems appealing compared with going inside right now.

But I’ll have to face Aunt Penny sometime. And so I fork over the cab fare, take a deep breath, and climb out of the taxi.

She’s on the front steps before he even pulls away.

Marvelous.

“Where the hell were you?” she screams, storming down the driveway. “And where the hell is your car?”

Aunt Penny’s eyes fall to the bloodied T-shirt wrapped around my arm. She circles me, taking in my disheveled appearance, and I can tell from her intake of breath the moment she discovers the ragged hole in the back of my T-shirt from where Bat Boy sank its claws into me.

“Oh my God, what happened?”

“I got mugged,” I say. Though I practiced it a dozen times in the cab, it still comes out with the ring of a lie.

“Bull. What really happened?”

She moves to touch my arm, but I pull it back.

“I got mugged,” I repeat.

“Where?”

“The movies.”

“You went to the movies?” she asks incredulously.

I nod.

“So you called the cops, then?” She crosses her arms over her chest, challenging me to lie.

I hold her stare.

“You got mugged and beat up and your car was what, stolen? And you never called the cops? Where were you really? Who did this to you?”

I exhale, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Can you just…not? I’m so tired. I just want to get cleaned up and go to bed.”

She shakes her head. “I’m so sorry to inconvenience you with—”

The outside lights next door flick on. Mrs. Abernathy appears on the porch.

“Everything okay?” she asks.

“Fine!” Aunt Penny calls cheerily. “Just typical teenager stuff. Thanks for asking!” She turns to me. “Inside,” she growls out of the side of her mouth.

I groan as I follow her into the house. As soon as the front door clicks closed behind us, she swings on me.

“Do you have any idea how worried I was? Do you even know what time it is?”

“It’s around the time you usually roll in from the clubs,” I say, and immediately regret it.

Her face twists into a mask of anger. “Used to, Indie. I don’t go out anymore because I have responsibilities now.”

“Sorry to ruin all your fun.”

She points her finger inches from my nose. “Don’t. Just don’t. You don’t get to make this about me right now.”

I bite my lip to keep from saying anything else. I’ve never seen Aunt Penny this mad, and I do feel sort of guilty for making her worry.

Her hand hangs in the air a moment longer before she lets her arm drop to her side. She turns so that her back is to me, but not before I see the brightness in her eyes. Her shoulders shake with silent tears.

“Aunt Penny,” I say, hesitantly touching her shoulder.

“I thought you were dead,” she sobs.

My gut twists. She lost her sister and she thought she’d lost me—she must have been out of her mind with panic.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Totally safe. I’m…sorry I made you worry. But I’ll get my car back, okay?”

“I don’t care about the stupid car!”

I gasp at her outburst.

I’d half expected her to soften with the apology, but she swings around on me again, her face ugly with anger. I take
a step back. Aunt Penny may look like your typical L.A.-type bar star, what with the blond hair and manicure, but she can really go from zero to ghetto in sixty seconds.

“This isn’t going to happen again,” she says. Not a question. A statement.

“Okay, I’ll try to be more—”

“No,” she interrupts. “This
won’t
happen again. You won’t run off like this. You’ll go to school and actually
stay
at school. You’ll get good grades and you’ll go to college. And if you don’t? If you don’t follow my rules exactly as I’ve laid them out? You’ll go to witch boarding school.”

I bark a laugh.

“I’m dead serious,” she says. She holds her body so still that if she weren’t standing up I’d wonder if she was breathing.

“Is that even a thing?” I ask. “Witch boarding school? Did you just make that up?”

“Don’t you wish,” she answers. “It’s a thing. And it’s where you’ll be going if you don’t follow my rules.”

“But Paige—”

“But nothing,” she interrupts. “I’ve spoken with the Family. They’ve agreed to help search for Paige. This isn’t your problem anymore. You’re a teenager, and it’s time you started acting like one.”

“This is all really funny coming from you,” I say. “You just ‘grew up,’ when? A few weeks ago? And the Family—you
really
think they’re going to help us? They don’t give a
rat’s ass about us. Don’t you remember what happened last time?”

“It’s not your problem anymore,” she repeats.

I want to argue. I want to shake her until sense comes back, or some semblance of the old Aunt Penny. But I can tell by the fiery look in her eyes that she won’t be argued with right now. And though I have serious doubts that a witch boarding school actually exists, I can’t say for sure that it doesn’t. And the last thing I need right now is to get sent away from Los Angeles. I need to get back to the boardwalk and the witch. I need to get back to Los Demonios to look for Paige.

I
don’t
need Aunt Penny on my back.

“Fine,” I sigh. “I’ll follow your stupid rules.”