Witch & Curse (24 page)

ELEVEN

DYAD MOON

Passion burns and fire grows
We triumph now over all our woes
We cast our foes upon the pyre
Burn them now with Hell's own fire

And now we plant in maiden's heart
Indecent thought for it to start
Tempt the lords of castles great
That from your passion may grow hate

School was a rush and a crush the next morning, and a refuge from everything that was happening. The Deveraux had nothing to do with her school—neither brother went there—and she felt a little safer here than at home.

After she'd gone to bed, her heart about to burst from her chest, she managed to calm down and convince herself that everything that had happened could be explained in a natural way. People's cars did have
mechanical problems, after all. And this was Seattle, not Amityville.

And I have the broken arm to prove it
, she thought sarcastically as she and Amanda moved through the halls of the high school.

Time to admit it: Magic is real, and it is taking over our lives
.

“Hey,” Amanda blurted, shocked to a standstill. She slid a glance toward Holly, and the two girls moved more closely together.

Jer walked toward them on the path to the gym bordered by tall privet hedges. He was dressed from head to toe in black and carrying a long black leather coat.

Oh, my God
. She was terrified, and exhilarated. Her body was electrified.
He used magic on me. He . . . he's a warlock
.

Just like everyone says
.

“How's your mother?” he asked Amanda, staring at Holly's arm.

“Okay. Well, no.” Amanda shifted her weight. Then she glanced from Holly to Jer and back again.

There were circles under his eyes, and his beard growth was longer than usual. He said, “I'm . . . I'm not going to let anything happen to you.”

She stared up at him. “Something has already happened,” she said slowly.

They regarded each other. He reached out a hand . . . she began to take it . . .

I'm drowning in his eyes
.

His chest rose and fell and he licked his lower lip, almost as if he were a vampire about to sink his fangs into her neck.

The bell blared, startling Holly out of her reverie.

Amanda said, “Come on, Holly,” and took her arm.

Jer looked as if he were about to say something. Then he nodded silently, and walked away.

Holly was terrified.

“Holly,” Amanda said, swallowing hard. “Um, I used to have this friend,” she said tentatively. “Her aunt was into voodoo.”

“Is that what you think this is?” Holly asked.

They stopped walking. “I don't care if we're late,” Amanda said. “We're not saying the word we need to say.” She took a deep breath. “
Magic
.”

Holly took an equally deep breath. “Warlocks.”

Then Amanda raised her brows. “Witches?”

Holly studied Amanda's arm, and then her own. She felt so numb, so frightened, as if someone had just told her she had one more hour to live. She looked back up at her cousin and said, “Maybe we should call
your friend. Did you pack your cell?” Pagers and phones were not allowed on campus.

“Of course not,” Amanda said bitterly. “I'm the good one. Nicole's the one who breaks all the rules and gets away with murde . . . everything.” Amanda turned white. “Oh, my God.
Nicole
.”

Holly stared at her. “Amanda, you don't think Nicole set your mom's car on fire . . . ?” She swallowed. “When I saw her and your mom, with all the sticks . . . they were doing
good
stuff. Making wishes for happiness and love for us.”

“We have our cats for that,” Amanda said sarcastically. She bit her thumbnail. “How long have they been doing stuff like that, with the sticks and all. They had a whole secret society going. What else have they been doing?”

“Amanda, I know it hurts that they didn't include you, but they were doing things for
good
. Why would your own sister try to set your mom's car on fire?”

Amanda burst into tears. “Because Nicole and I know about her and Michael Deveraux. They're sleeping together! Oh, God, Holly. My poor father. He knows, too, and it's killing him. So he goes to work and makes more money so she can buy all her makeup and her stupid jewelry . . . I hate her sometimes. I just want to kill her. . . .”

“I know, I know,” Holly soothed. She felt herself on the rapids again, trying not to drown. “But you wouldn't really kill her, Amanda. You don't have it in you. And neither does Nicole.”

Amanda sank down on a stone bench and started sobbing. Holly put her arm around her shoulders and they sat together for a while. While Amanda cried, Holly tried to make sense of it all. Her attraction to Jer, all the weirdness . . . was Jer trying to hurt them?

But he just said he won't let anything happen to us
.

“Let's get out of here,” she said. “Ditch school and . . . I don't know, go to the mall.”

“And call my friend,” Amanda murmured.

“Yes, we'll call your friend.”

They found a pay phone, but Amanda realized that she didn't have the number with her, and the directory couldn't find a listing for Cecile Beaufrere in New Orleans. They agreed to look in her phone book as soon as they got home, but they couldn't go there yet—school was still in session, and Amanda's mother would realize that they had ditched.

“If Mom's even home,” Amanda had muttered hotly. She started to cry again.

Holly tried to distract her. Bargains were to be had at drugstores, so they went to the Rite Aid at the mall
first. It was such a mundane, everyday place—kind of like one's own garage—that Holly figured they would be safe there.

In the basket dangling from her right hand was a bottle of nail polish and two pairs of tights, and for the moment her mind had blocked out the dark problems of Michael Deveraux and magic and death; when she turned down the housewares aisle on her way to the pharmacy area, the only thing she was thinking about was vitamin C and should she buy regular or buffered?

Something whacked her hard on the back of the head.

Shocked, Holly whirled as a blue plastic Tupperware container clattered to the floor.

“Hey!” she said sharply. “Who threw that? Not funny!” She waited but there was no answer, of course—kids, probably. Sometimes they found the oddest things funny. Once when she'd been twelve she had ripped all the labels off the cans in her mom's pantry; at the time, she'd thought it was hilarious, but now she could understand why she'd spent a week grounded in her room.

She sent a final glare over her shoulder toward the other end of the empty aisle, then shook her head and put the Tupperware back in its spot on the shelf.

There was a stinging along the back of her right
arm and she jerked as a glass—real
glass
—bounced off her elbow and shattered at her feet. Another one zinged off the shelf, catching her high on the forehead.

Everything on the shelves around her began to tremble.

She turned in a slow circle as drinking glasses shook and a large display of kitchen knives rattled ominously. Inching backward, turning, turning, turning . . . she had maybe fifteen feet to go when the rattling changed to chattering and a sort of charge built up around her.

“Amanda?” she cried.

At the same time, a young woman turned into the aisle. She was pushing a baby carriage.

“No! Go back!” Holly yelled.

Startled, the woman yanked the carriage to a halt and stared at her. Around Holly, the merchandise on display suddenly quieted. Was it over? She said to the woman, “I'm sorry. You must think I'm on dru—”

Everything seemed to fly at her at once.

Holly screamed and dove for the floor, landing painfully on the arm still bound by the sling. Her basket thumped in front of her and she grabbed for it and yanked it over her head as everything from plastic tumblers to kitchen spoons pelted her. Knives, measuring
cups, eggbeaters—in a cartoon it would have been funny; girl as a crippled, three-legged crab trying to scuttle away from a rock storm. The only thing that was the least bit in her favor was that everything whipping off the shelves appeared to have been sent to where her head had been, without regard for her change in elevation.

She screamed again as something large and sharp landed point-down on top of the basket; she felt it scrape across her scalp. There was more screaming going on—the woman down at the other end, other customers and employees who'd come running to see what all the noise was about and then freaked out. All Holly could do was desperately clutch her way across the debris-strewn floor toward the end of the aisle. She'd made it to within a few feet of the aisle's end when everything went suddenly, blessedly quiet.

Too terrified to stop, Holly propelled herself the last of the distance and spun on the floor, peering from beneath the protective covering of the basket. The shelves were empty, or nearly so. As she and the others stared, one lone item, a heavy wooden rolling pin, rolled to the edge of the next to the bottom shelf and paused, as if it were seeking its target but couldn't find it. Finally it swung back and forth a few times,
then simply fell over the edge and was still.

Heart pounding, Holly cautiously lifted the hand-basket off her head and looked at it. A chill ran up her arms when she realized what had made it feel so heavy on one side—there were almost a dozen knives sticking point-first out of the top, as if they had found the space above her head and just
dropped
.

Holly threw the basket away from herself as a couple of people reached out to help her to her feet. She ached in too many places to count, and she was probably going to be bruised all over by tomorrow morning. Before she could finish getting her bearings, someone was leaning into her face, his angry words filling her nose with a cinnamon-scented breath mint.

“Look at my store,” the man shouted. “The cops are on their way, and you'd better have an explanation!”

Holly scowled at the man, a short guy whose face was flushed with anger. His
store
? She'd very nearly been killed here, and all this jerky drugstore manager could think about was his
store
?

“What kind of a place is this, anyway?” she demanded in a loud voice. “You stock your shelves so that a truck goes by outside and everything falls on the customers? It's not even safe in here—why, I ought to
sue
you!”

The manager gaped at her, his face going from anger-induced pink to the color of unflavored yogurt. “W-what?”

Holly leaned down and swept up the knife-studded basket, then brandished it at him. The blades vibrated menacingly, and the growing crowd of people around them gave a collective, “
Oooooh!
”

“I come in here for a pair of tights and
this
happens? Is this some kind of
joke
? Yeah, let's have the police hear about this, all right—in fact, I can't wait for them to see this!” She looked around. “Where's my cousin?”

“Excuse me, please.”

Holly turned to see an older man, more distinguished-looking and with a close-cropped, thinning head of hair making his way through the crowd. “Julian,” he said with a deceptively cool smile toward the shorter man, “go in the back, please. I'll handle this.”

Julian—whose name tag Holly now noticed said
ASSISTANT MANAGER
—seemed to shrink a little, and he nodded. “It was vandalism,” he muttered.

The new arrival eyed Holly critically. “Are you all right, miss? Shall I call an ambulance?”

“Holly?” Amanda ran over. “Oh, my God.”

“Get me out of here,” Holly whispered.

Amanda reached down and clasped Holly's hand.
Energy jolted through Holly. Amanda felt it too.

Once they got outside, Amanda said, “Some kind of barrier kept me from getting to you. I couldn't move. I'm so sorry.”

Holly's legs wobbled. “Don't feel bad. What could you have done?”

“Taken your hand,” Amanda said.

The two looked at each other, each revealing the burn mark that showed their strange bond.

“Do you think . . . think it might have made a difference?”

Amanda nodded. “Let's go home and call my friend.”

After everything that had happened, Cecile Beaufrere was not home. Amanda left a message on her voice mail, to the effect that she “really, really, really needed to talk to her about, um, stuff like in New Orleans. And hi, Silvana,” she added.

Nicole, who of course didn't know what had happened, started wheedling to go to The Half Caff after dinner. A local band was playing, and apparently that was the signal to the local kids to show. She reminded Holly of the cats, batting and mewing for something they wanted.

“But, Daddy,” Nicole whined, stomping around
the living room, “everyone's going to be there!”