Witch & Curse (29 page)

Nicole chewed thoughtfully on the end of a fingertip. “We'll have to draw them off,” she said finally. “But we
can't
let them attach themselves to us—if we
do, they'll just ride us until they can get in contact with Tommy. The only way you'll ever be free of them is if you—or he—dies.”

Holly gasped.
“Die?”

Amanda was more concerned with the problem at hand. “Draw them off with
what
?” she demanded.

Nicole's pretty face split into a cunning grin. “With a little something of our own.”

Holly's eyebrows raised. “Oh?”

Nicole smiled even wider, until her teeth gleamed in the soft glow of the streetlights shining through the car's windows. “Learned a little something myself,” she said huskily as she dug through her purse, finally pulling out a small bag twisted shut with twine and a thin black ribbon.

“By example, from Tante Cecile. Okay, I'm going out. Don't make
any
noise.” She eased the door open and slid outside, watching the roof carefully. Holly and Amanda followed, taking extra care not to close the doors behind them, afraid even the slightest click would draw the attention of the spirit suckers.

Standing outside, Holly felt absurdly exposed, suddenly afraid that the black-on-black creatures thirty yards away could somehow see them, sense them, maybe even
smell
them. There was something hideous and terrifying about those things, much more so than
flying knives in the open daylight of a drugstore—at least then she'd been able to
see
what was coming at her, to understand what it could do to her. But these . . . she couldn't help but shudder.

Nicole's fingers delicately undid the knot holding the top of the small bag closed. When she spoke, it was barely more than a whisper on the breeze.

“Dark are the shadows in Dyad's light,
Heed as we beckon the evil one's bite.
Turn them to the creatures that we raise this night,
Sink them back to the earth before morning's light.”

As the last word passed her lips, Nicole swept the bag in an arc from left to right in front of the three of them. Black powder fluttered out and sparkled momentarily on the air, like finely ground obsidian. When it had settled soundlessly to the ground, Nicole took their elbows and pushed them back toward the car. “Inside,” she directed. “Quickly!”

“What did you do?” Amanda asked. “What was that?”

Nicole gave them another of her stealthy grins and pointed out the windshield. “Look!”

Following the direction of her finger, Holly and Amanda stared out the window. At first they saw nothing in the low light, then the ground itself began
jerking. Not too much, and not everywhere—just a spot over here, a circle beneath the bushes over there, a vague spot next to the walkway. All in all, about a dozen areas of quivering soil.

“What's going on?” Holly asked. “What—”

“Oh, gross,” Amanda said suddenly. “Nicole, this is
disgusting
.”

“But useful,” Nicole responded without missing a beat.

Closest to the car, at the edge of the street where they'd parked rather than pulled into the driveway, a half-decomposed rabbit was dragging itself out of a widening hole in the ground at the base of a tree. As they watched, more and more little animals, sad and dead, struggled up from their graves—a sparrow with a maimed wing, a rotting frog, a tiny, baby squirrel that hadn't survived its adolescence. And within seconds the noxious black shadows were flowing down the side of the house and covering the reanimated animal corpses.

“Nowhere is it written that spirit suckers have to use a human as a carrier,” Nicole said blandly. “Or even that a carrier has to be alive. They just go for the first moving thing. They can't control their carrier, and once they attach themselves, they're stuck, either until their carrier dies or they find their target.” She
shrugged, but it was clear she was pleased with herself.

“These little wild things aren't likely to go marching into Tommy's house—even dead, their instincts'll tell them to run and hide. And the spell will send them back to their graves at dawn.”

“Wow,” Holly said, suitably impressed. “That's excellent.”

“Thanks,” Nicole said. “Come on—let's go get our boy.”

They climbed out of the car, instinct insisting they still remain cautious and quiet. Tiny figures shrouded in cloaks of deeper black were dragging themselves off into the night, and the roof of Tommy's house looked clear in the wan moonlight shining intermittently through the clouds.

But only a few feet away from the porch, Amanda froze. “Oh, my God,” she muttered. “Nicole,
look
.”

Nicole jerked around and peered at the yard, trying to see what had spooked her sister so badly. “What? What's wrong?”

“It's Sailor Bunny.” Amanda's voice was filled with horror. “Oh Nicole, what are we going to do?”

“Sailor Bunny?” Holly lifted up on her toes, searching the darkness, but she didn't see anyone. “Who's Sailor Bunny?”

Nicole grabbed her wrist and yanked on it, hard. “Come on—we've got to get Tommy to open the door and let us in before Sailor Bunny gets to the porch. Before Tommy sees him!”

Holly's head jerked as she was hauled up on the porch after her cousins. “But who—”

“Not who,
what
,” Amanda said grimly. She raised a fist and began hammering on the front door. “Tommy, it's me, Amanda. Let us in, quickly! Tommy, come on!”

The panic in Amanda's tone made the hair raise on the back of Holly's neck. “What do you mean ‘what'?”

“Sailor Bunny was Tommy's cat,” Nicole told her in a tight voice. “He died a couple of months ago. I never thought about it, but I guess Tommy buried him in the wildflower patch at the side of the house.”

“Tommy, come
on!
” Amanda was practically screaming now. “Open the damned door!”

Something scraped dully along the concrete where the bottom step of the porch met the walkway. Amanda's throat convulsed, and she strained to see in the darkness below, even though she didn't want to. “So that means—”

“Sailor Bunny will want to come home,” Nicole said flatly.

Light suddenly flooded the porch, filling their
vision and temporarily blinding them. “Boy, am I glad to see you guys!” Tension leaked from Tommy's words. “Sorry I took so long—”

They didn't let him finish. Amanda shoved him back inside and Nicole and Holly were right behind her, twisting and slamming the door shut just as something heavy thumped against it.

Tommy staggered, then righted himself, bewildered. On the other side of the door, a steady scratching began, punctuated every few seconds by a faint, cracked sound that was half hiss, half mewl. “Wait—what
is
that? That sounds like . . . like . . .”

Amanda sighed and sent her sister a hard look. “Tommy, we have a whole bunch of things to tell you all at once. But . . . um, do you have a shovel?”

In Kari's apartment, Jer's coven was floating.

Glowing, too, shot through with light as was every other item—from the couch, to the lamps set here and there, to the smallest knickknack or picture frame on a side table. Each item in the room seemed to have a shifting, inner fire inside it. Even the ivy plants radiated golden-green where the vines twisted around their climbing poles.

Jer had never imagined such power, had never felt
strength like this, had had no inkling of what was to come when he and his friends had gathered and each of them had knelt on a corner of the deep velvet throw on which he'd drawn his pentagram. Now an earthy-smelling incense wafted along the air, and candles, two black, one white, and two red, tipped each point, but their flames were more like powerful torches than candlelight. His left hand clasped Kari's and his right was encased in Eddie's. Between Eddie and Kari knelt Kialish, and Jer could see him from below his own half-closed lids. Kialish's eyes were closed and his face, like that of his partner's, was utterly serene.

Perhaps that was where this surge of power, this incredible
energy
had come from—the two young men were inseparable, like two pieces of a puzzle made only for each other. Different from the traditional man-woman duo, perhaps it was this very uniqueness that brought with it a strange new force—

—like the unseen energy that was literally lifting them all off the floor. Jer smiled slightly and concentrated on the flames, trying to make them shrink, then grow again. To his delight, they obeyed, shriveling to almost nothing, then climbing high and strong at his mental command. Yes, this was a learning experience for all of them. And they would learn, all right, the four of them, explore not only the challenges of newly
discovered power that they could feed to each other, but other things, too. With that willingness to learn would no doubt come new power, and other things, too.

Like the ability to defeat his father . . .

THIRTEEN

WORT MOON

Act your will on those we've cursed
The Deveraux name will grow and spread
As we dance upon the Cahors dead
And poison the most innocent flower

Poisons to destroy, poisons to maim
Poisons to control, poisons to chain
Upon their knees our enemies fall
In defeat or death they obey our call

Tante Cecile had a vision.

She called and told Holly to go down into the basement of the Andersons' mansion. There she should find more history of the family, in the form of a journal much like the one Isabeau had deposited for Holly on the beach.

Yecch. Spiders
.

Holly shuddered and brushed away yet another cobweb dangling down from the low ceiling over the stairs as she made her way into the basement.

She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked around in some dismay. The basement was crammed to the rafters with an assortment of boxes, trunks, old suitcases, and bags. She sighed deeply. It was going to be a long and messy search.

It was too bad her cousins had gone out, Nicole to rehearsal and Amanda to the library to see if she could find some more books about witchcraft.

Where to start?

One would think the stack nearest the stairs would be the newest stuff, but judging from the thick layer of dust and the omnipresent cobwebs, it wasn't. It'd obviously been a long time since anyone had been down here; an empty glass stood on the windowsill, a grimy layer of dust floating in it. She'd have to remember to bring that upstairs when she left.

Intent on her task, she didn't hear the soft scrambling in the walls.

An hour later, she found what she had been sent for: a potential treasure trove of information about the feud between the Cahors and the Deveraux. The large book was old and bound with some kind of skin—
again with the yecch
—and her high school French wasn't quite up to the task of translating the archaic version of the language in the faded manuscript before her, but she caught enough words here and there to guess at the
meaning. The two surnames were there, no doubt about that . . .
foeu—that should be the ancient version of feu, or fire . . . yes, there was ignire in the same sentence, and taken together, that had to mean ignite. . .
.

A strange sound echoing in the quiet, a sort of clambering, as if someone were climbing up a gravel hill, broke her concentration. She looked around and cocked her head, listening intently. There it was again. It seemed to be coming from inside the walls.
Ewwww. Mice
.

Maybe the cats should sleep down here for a few nights, and decrease the surplus population
. She shrugged and returned to the ancient manuscript, trying to puzzle out a few more words. Then, with a sigh of frustration, she set it aside. Maybe they could find someone to translate it for them later, but she was at the limit of her linguistic ability.

She dove into the trunk again, this time pulling out a rectangular piece of black silk cloth. Carefully, she unfolded it to reveal a border of delicate lilies embroidered in silver, with a silver hawk in the center—the Cahors family emblems. She caught her breath. This was definitely another of the family heirlooms.

Wow. Something's riled up the mice, for sure
.

She peered at the walls, looking for mouse holes, but there was too much junk piled up against them for
her to see much of anything. She shrugged, and set the shawl aside on top of the manuscript.

They came when she was bent over the trunk, delving into its contents once more. Not mice, but rats. Large, brown, long-tailed rats. Dozens of them. Without warning, they poured out of the walls from behind the trunks, their claws clicking on the cement floor like a hundred miniature castanets.

Startled by the noise, Holly started up and banged her head on the trunk lid, dazing herself for a moment. In that short time, the rats had seemingly multiplied a hundred times—there were rats everywhere, and all of them were headed straight for
her
.