They talked. Nick and Seraphina jabbed Erasmus with questions, and he answered each one in a more open fashion than I’d ever heard from him before. This traveling to the Netherworld had only been an idea before, but now it was shaping into a soon-to-be reality. Shit was getting real.
I saw Ed sitting with the coven, trying to follow, but he finally gave up and flopped down on the sofa next to me. “I have no idea what they’re talking about.” He stifled a yawn.
“Look, Ed. You’ve had a long day. There’s nothing you can do here. Why don’t you go home?”
He looked at his watch. “I guess so. I’ll have to be up in less than three hours. I might as well sleep when I can.” He rose, stretched, and waved his goodnights, though no one paid him any attention.
I laid my head back and closed my eyes. Until I could feel Erasmus presence hovering over me. “What?”
“Nothing. I have nothing to say.”
I didn’t bother opening my eyes. “Boy, your nothings are always pretty loud.”
“I take exception to that.”
“Are you telling me that you aren’t jealous that Ed was hugging me while we consoled each other?”
I could see him in my mind’s eye, grumbling, gritting his teeth, looking around suspiciously. He said nothing more, so I assumed he absorbed it.
When next I opened my eyes, everyone had gone. I didn’t remember falling asleep. I sat up and surreptitiously wiped drool from the side of my mouth. Nice. “Did everyone leave?”
Erasmus’ rich voice emerged from the shadows. “Yes. They all left an hour ago but will return in less than two hours.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Doctor Boone said not to.”
“What time is it?” I glanced at the clock. Four-thirty. “I guess I should get to bed for what little time is left.”
“I’ll take you.”
“I can do it—” But he’d already touched my arm and I found myself transported to the edge of my bed. “—myself. Dammit, Erasmus. You could at least ask first.”
“I’m sorry. Should I take you back downstairs?”
“No. I’m already here.” I yawned.
“Get into bed. I’ll stand guard.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I mumbled, stripping off my dress. So much for our romantic evening. I slipped off my bra and crawled into bed in my underwear and was surprised when the blankets were drawn up over me. Erasmus tucked the comforter up under my chin.
“I noticed you like it this way,” he said, somewhat embarrassed.
“If you’re supposed to be evil, you’re really terrible at it,” I murmured. I was smiling when I fell asleep. But when I woke about two hours later, I could already hear Doc and Seraphina downstairs. Erasmus must have let them in. Since I wasn’t opening the shop, there was no need to spruce myself up. I dragged myself into the bathroom for a quick shower, put on a sweater and jeans, and went downstairs to see what the witches were brewing.
They had obviously been there a while, because they were busily filling all sorts of spray bottles and tanks. I dove in where needed. When Nick and George arrived, there were even more bottles to fill. I looked around at all the containers that we had begun to load up into boxes and wondered if we could ever have enough.
Erasmus handed me a cup of coffee and I smiled in thanks. He gave me his usual smoldering look and boy. All I wanted to do was crawl back into bed with him. I grabbed his arm before he could turn away and planted a kiss on his lips. He stared at me, shocked.
I rested a hand to his fuzzy cheek. “Good morning. Sorry our date was cut short.”
He sidled closer, looked around to see if anyone was watching, and said very quietly, “I’m sorry too.” He glanced at the kitchen table once, gave me a knowing look, and turned to get coffee for Jeff, who had just walked in.
“No time for that,” said Seraphina, giving me an elbow and a wink.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you warming up to him?”
She glanced at him as he made his way around the perimeter of the room, glaring at everyone from under his brows. “It’s not what I would have chosen for myself—or you, for that matter—but he seems…genuine. He loves you, that much is clear.”
It still made my cheeks warm but I accepted it from her. I guessed we’d all had a change of heart in the last three weeks.
We gathered our sprayers. It was time to get out there and protect Moody Bog. We’d just closed the back hatch to Doc’s Rambler wagon when he turned to me. “Kylie, I don’t think you should come with us.”
I was taken aback. “Why not?”
“Because I think your time would be better spent hunting this wendigo with Mr. Dark. We’ll do what we can and you do what you can.”
Seraphina clutched my hand. “He’s right. Do your thing.”
Everyone was looking at me, poised by their car doors. I stepped away from the Rambler. “Okay. Looks unanimous.” I raised my arm and the crossbow sailed from the house to land neatly in my palm. “I’ll see you guys later.”
Like a switch turning on, they started moving again, starting their cars, and driving in opposite directions. The autumn sun on the rise peered between the trees.
Once they’d all driven away, I turned to Erasmus. “Let’s do this.”
I don’t know if I’d ever been as anxious to get rid of a creature as I was with this one. These things were affecting everyone now, not just me. And it was only going to get worse. Who knew what the Booke would release next or if it already had?
I stomped into the woods but then realized that all this noise-making wasn’t the way to do it. I slowed and walked carefully until the utterly silent Erasmus lightly touched my sleeve.
“Kylie,” he said. I don’t know what it was, but I always got a little shiver when he used my name. “You are attuned to the book as no other Chosen Host has ever been. You must listen to it now. It can help you find the creature. Stop and listen.”
Okay. Made sense, if anything did. I stood in the dappled forest, surrounded by trees that shed their leaves like a fluttering waterfall of gold coins. But the forest was also a dense maze of tangled shadows and twigs and foliage. I couldn’t even see or hear the road anymore. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and reached out to the Booke. I pictured the magical tendrils that tied me to it, and then I felt it like a soft caress, reminding me that it was there, waiting. It seemed to stretch toward the edges of the forest. My senses tingled with the sudden bombardment of awareness. All at once, I could tell exactly where a cricket was on a shiny leaf…or a bird clutching a high branch…or a salamander slipping into a damp bog. I couldn’t believe how alive the forest was, and then Erasmus whispered in my ear.
“You feel it now, don’t you? You see the forest as I see it.”
I nodded slowly. I didn’t want to open my eyes and have the sensations pass. Keeping my eyes closed brought everything into sharp focus as if I could “see” the whole thing spread out before me.
“Wendigo,” I whispered, searching for it in the map in my mind. All of a sudden, I was rushing forward, past cattails and reeds, over squelching bogs and grassy rises, and then deep into the darkest hollows of the woods.
And there, standing in a glade, I saw it.
My eyes snapped open. I began running.
I just went with it. I didn’t know how I knew. I didn’t stop to be amazed by it. I just went with gut instinct, running through bracken and fern, casting aside tangling bushes, leaping over fallen logs. And Erasmus was right beside me, a bright glow of pride in his eyes when he looked toward me.
There was the bog with the cattails and farther on, the shadowed hollows. The trees parted and I was at the edge of the glade. The wendigo was there. Its waves of pain and sorrow reached me, swept over me, but it did not affect me as it had done before. Doc’s spell held as I watched it pick its way over the grasses and ironweed in long, graceful strides, oblivious to me.
I drew the crossbow to my shoulder. It had already armed itself. Could it be this easy? I took careful aim and fired.
The bolt spiraled forward with a hissing sound and struck true. The wendigo reared up. I lowered the crossbow and saw the bolt stuck right in its chest, and that bright light began shooting through it.
The Booke arrived but instead of writing in it immediately, I watched the creature writhe and cry out. It looked at me with those saddened eyes even as light beams tore at its face. I wanted to see it die. I wanted it to go away. I snatched the quill from the air, jabbed at my other hand that was never going to heal, and began writing. Die, you miserable cannibal! I wrote. Go back to where you came from with your misery and shame and take your insatiable hunger with you…
I wrote in some other details, thinking that maybe a diatribe wouldn’t be adequate, and soon enough it began to burn away like a filmstrip catching on fire. And when I dotted the last “i,” it exploded in a shower of sparks and was no more.
I slammed the quill in the Booke, heaved it to the forest floor, and glared at it. I don’t know why I was so suddenly angry. Maybe it was the cannibalism that it had foisted on me and the innocent couple Ed had told me about. Maybe it was because now my coven was wasting their time spraying that anti-cannibal charm everywhere. Or maybe it was because I was damned tired of cleaning up what the Ancient Ones thought was a great joke: inventing the damned Booke to begin with.
I got my breathing under control and glanced at Erasmus. He had an orgasmic look to his face. I guessed a Chosen Host in charge fired his engines. Lovely.
“Come on,” I told him, holding the crossbow down at my thigh and marching back through the woods.
A weird screaming sound off in the distance sent a chill snaking down my spine.
“Already?” I whined.
“Yes. Something else from the book.”
“This is turning out to be very crappy week.”
He sniffed the air and turned in the direction of the eerie sound. “What is the expression? I think you said a mouthful.”