Chapter Ten

The world shifted as Kara fell backward.

Bloody Ray with his cleaver blurred out of existence, becoming a part of the stone wall where the door to the kitchen was moments before. Kara’s back instinctively flexed to brace for impact, but the floor sank an extra foot beneath her. The shock against her spine forced the air from her lungs and set off sparks of light behind her eyes. She scrambled backward as she struggled to breathe. When her shoulders hit something solid, she curled into a ball and covered her face with her arms until she could breathe again.

No attack came.

Kara unfolded and breathed in herbs and wood smoke. The air felt cool and damp, like a wine cellar, and the only source of light and heat was the cheerful fire in the stone hearth. Instead of wood, carefully mortared flagstones made up the floor. Above, she heard Ray’s screaming through the dark boards overhead.

Poor Ray. He could be obnoxious, but he was a sweetheart. Gentle and warm and thoughtful, even when she picked on him a little too much.

“Guilt looks good on you.”

Kara’s shoulders jumped. How she missed the square table and chairs to her left shocked her almost as much as seeing the red and silver-haired woman smiling at her. Dressed in a simple low-cut, long-sleeved black dress, face half lit with the orange glow of the fire, she looked younger than Kara supposed her to be. She even seemed friendly.

In a row in front of her sat a bottle with a cup, a crystal ball resting in a brass stand, and a wooden bowl with a spoon.

Kara blinked and made a show of inspecting herself while searching the room for a weapon. “I don’t know what you mean.”

The crystal ball turned black.

“Uh oh. Try not to lie, dear.” Her eyes bored through Kara with the same imperious stare as Ally. In fact, if Kara didn’t know better, this woman could be Ally’s aunt or older sister. She nodded at the chair. “Sit.”

“I’d rather not.”

The woman’s eyes fell to the crystal ball. It stayed clear. With a shrug, she said, “I wouldn’t either. Consider your options, though. You just fell through a floor as if it wasn’t even there after being chased through my kitchen by your crazed, dismembered friend. You’re in a room with no doors, no windows, and no clear escape. Yet here you are, safe and sound, until you piss me off.” Sinister shadows danced with flickering firelight on her cheekbones and angular jaw. “Don’t piss me off, Kara. Sit down.”

Kara flinched at the sharpness of her words. Judging by the distance between her and the glass bottle, and the bottle and the woman’s head and neck, Kara didn’t think she could kill her without a struggle. Fighting a potentially powerful supernatural being—a witch or something else—probably wouldn’t end well for her. Accepting this, she sat down and bided her time. Something would open up. A chance to escape or kill this woman; whatever she had to do to survive.

“How do you know my name?” she asked the woman.

“A spider knows every fly that lands in her web. How else would she be able to discern which one to eat and which ones to set free?” The smile she gave Kara was warm and intended to set her at ease, but Kara shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. “Put your hands on the table.”

Kara placed her hands, palms flat, onto the table and held onto the tension in her elbows in case she had to pull away from the flash of a blade.

“Lovely. Thank you.” She placed her hands on the table in front of Kara.

“I know who you are,” Kara blurted. Terrified butterflies crowded her stomach, so she needed to say something to catch the woman off-guard and give herself something of an upper hand, if there was one to be had.

A bit of black clouded the crystal ball, but it remained otherwise clear.

“Interesting.” The woman meant it. Kara surprised her. “This should be fun. You ready?”

“For what?”

The woman smiled. “If you want to ask a question, you drink.” She indicated the bottle of clear liquid. “If you lie to me, you eat.” The wooden bowl she pushed in front of Kara looked and smelled like fresh soil. “If I ask you a question and you don’t answer it, well”—she produced a pair of gold balance scales and a curved knife shaped like a narrow fang—“a pound of flesh, so to speak.” She eyed Kara up and down. “There isn’t much of you, and a pound is a lot more than you think it is, so be smart about this.”

Kara swallowed and tried to not stare at the knife. She could reach it if she was fast and something distracted the woman. Keeping her talking felt like her only option. “If I don’t want to play this little game?”

“Oh, you have no choice, dear. You can’t move.”

And she couldn’t. No matter how hard she struggled to move them, her hands stayed glued to the table and her feet to the floor. She wriggled and writhed until tears stung her eyes, but not even the table or chair moved under her weight.

Trapped.

Kara caught the disgust on the woman’s face as Kara thrashed in her chair. She looked at Kara like an uptight babysitter having to deal with the crying child. Kara decided that the moment she got a chance, she’d claw that look right off her face.

The woman held up a finger until Kara accepted her situation and stopped fighting. Knife in hand, she regarded Kara with the sort of warm indifference she got from the barista at her local coffee shop. “I could probably cut you a little to show you how serious I am. Maybe take a fingertip or a hunk out of those pretty cheeks of yours, but you don’t strike me as a woman easily threatened. You were the bitch of your friend group growing up, weren’t you?”

Kara bit her tongue and leveled a venomous stare at the woman.

“Kara, please don’t make me start taking skin. This doesn’t have to be violent. Nobody has to bleed. But if you don’t answer my questions, then I will start with your face and work my way down.” The point of the knife poked a divot under her eye. When Kara leaned away, the woman simply followed her with the knife until Kara reached a point where she couldn’t lean away any farther.

She didn’t want her face taken. Not scarred.

Kara squealed. “Yes,” she answered.

The woman looked back at the crystal ball and, satisfied, pulled the knife away. “Was that so hard?” She walked over to the fire and, without gloves or any protection, removed the steaming kettle from the hook and poured two cups of tea she stirred with a bunch of herbs. Putting one glass in front of Kara and one in front of herself, she said, “Have a sip. Be careful, though. It’s hot, and I know you’re thirsty.”

Kara found she could move her right hand, but hesitated to pick the tiny cup off the saucer. “But I didn’t lie.”

The woman took a sip. “You didn’t, which is why you aren’t eating.” Her finger hovered over the bottle of clear liquid. “If you have a question.” Over the dirt. “If you lie.” Then the knife. “If you don’t answer. That,” she pointed at the tea, “is because I’m hospitable.”

“Hospitable? You cut Ray to pieces.”

“I didn’t touch Ray.” The woman sucked her teeth when the crystal ball went black. “Well, I helped. A little. It’s a shame, too. But there aren’t many innocent men with a hunger to be sated.”

Kara had no clue what she was talking about.

The woman pulled a heaping spoonful of what looked like coffee grounds from the bowl and shoveled it into her mouth. A sour look creased her brow as she chewed. “It’s not so bad after the first few seconds.”

Kara didn’t know what to do. If this was some kind of psychological game, she was probably screwed; she wasn’t as smart as Mickey. And if this was some kind of elaborate interrogation, what was the woman after? What shouldn’t she reveal to her? For someone willing to do what she did to Ray, she must think Kara was somehow useful. Otherwise, what would be the point of keeping her alive and giving her tea?

“What do you want with me?”

The woman shook her finger and pointed to the bottle. “Questions have a price.”

Condensation dribbled off the tall bottle. There didn’t appear to be anything floating or strange about its contents, no sharp scent of anything acidic poisonous when she put it to her nose. She filled the transparent shot glass and waited for something to happen. Her stomach tightened.

Nothing.

Her tongue swelled and her throat tightened a warning when he brought it to her lips. The woman was impassive. Nothing on her face revealed either joy or desperation or any other emotional tell that Kara could read.

What else could she do? It wasn’t like she could make a run for the nonexistent door.

Kara drank. Nothing happened.

“It’s water,” she said.

“Amazing.” The woman took another sip of her tea. “I want you to answer some questions for me. If you answer them honestly, then I’ll let you go back to your friends. Simple.”

The crystal ball didn’t turn black.

“Okay,” Kara said. “Go ahead.”

“You said you know who I am. If you do, what’s my name?”

Kara shook her head and shrugged. “What is this? Rumpelstiltskin or something?”

The woman rolled her eyes and picked up the knife. Kara screamed when the blade pinched the skin below the cuticle of her pinky finger. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I’ll answer.”

The woman sat back down, but didn’t drop the knife. Instead, she added a pebble to one side of the scales.

“You’re Tabitha Blanchette. Your husband was Lesley Redding, the Arrowhead Skinner. Demons took over your body and demanded he go on a rampage, killing hundreds of men, women, and children to appease those demons.”

The crystal ball lost its luster as it filled with a stormy gray color.

“What’s that mean?” Kara asked her, eyes darting between the woman and the bowl. “What does that mean? I didn’t lie. That wasn’t a lie.”

“It’s fine,” the woman said in a soothing voice. “It just means you’re telling the truth as you know it.”

“As I know it? That is the truth. I read about it. I don’t know how you’re here or why you look so young or why you’re alive, but you’re her. Aren’t you?”

She shrugged and lifted an eyebrow at the bottle.

Kara drank again. This time, she noticed a hit of earthy sourness, like well water gone off.

Tabitha’s eyes blazed. “All of that work. Finding the right ones that nobody would miss or go looking for, then finding the right places to get rid of the remains where some idiot hunter or asshole on his snowmobile would stumble on them. Gathering the ingredients, learning the magic, casting the spells.” She downed her tea and spit out the grit at the bottom of the cup. “All of that work, and he still gets all the credit.”

Kara nearly choked. “It wasn’t Lesley, it was you. You’re the Arrowhead Skinner.”

“It’s just a name, really. Something to scare the people into staying the hell away from me.” She flashed the blade. “Even with a sharp knife, skinning a 200 pound man isn’t easy. You have to slide the blade between it and muscle for each inch you want to pull away cleanly. You can’t be rough with it like you can a moose or a bear; you have to take your time, otherwise people could blame it on a wild animal or some kind of accident with the threshing equipment. When you do it carefully — and I’m talking about keeping the eyelids attached — then it gets harder for people to blame it on anything other than another person, or for Christians to rave about demons and monsters. Fear is a useful tool when your privacy is important.

“It only took one skinning to get everyone’s attention. The rest died however I needed them to.” She went back to the fire for more tea.

The crystal ball didn’t change.

“So, are you a demon or a witch or something?”

Tabitha stared at the bottle.

Kara didn’t trust it. The tang reminded her of the time someone at a bar drugged her and had her halfway to his hotel room before Michelle, in all her curly-haired rage, beat him with one of her high heels until the rest of them dragged her and Mickey into a safe room and called the police. She had to be smarter about this. Tabitha had all the cards.

She shook her head. “Nevermind.”

Tabitha sat back down and wore a tight smile. “So you came here with six other people, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me their names.”

Kara wondered at that. Something about it felt strange. Off. If she knew Kara’s name, was there a reason she didn’t know the others’?

“Nic, Maddy, Shane, Ray”—she swallowed a lump—“Mike—”

The ball began to swirl black.

“Mikey. Michelle. Sometimes we call her Mike.”

Tabitha stirred her tea with the knife and seemed to accept Kara’s excuse. So did the ball. “The last one?”

The twitch in the corner of Tabitha’s eye gave something away. She was interested in Ally. “Alex,” Kara ventured. When the black swirled, she said, “Alex, Al, Ally. Whatever nickname you want.”

It stayed clear.

“What’s your nickname? Do you have one?”

“No. Kara is hard to give a cute name to. Mike, Mickey; Al, Ally; Nic, Nicky. Those all work. What would I be? Karrie?” She remembered the bottle and added, “That’s rhetorical. I’m not drinking.”

Tabitha nodded. “You haven’t touched your tea.”

“It’s hot. Maybe in a minute.” She had to deny herself, regardless of how thirsty she was.

“Would it bother you terribly if I killed all of your friends?”

The ease at which she suggested that made Kara’s stomach turn. “I don’t care,” she answered. “We haven’t been friends for a while.”

The ball swirled black and gray.

“There’s a lie in there.” Tabitha nodded to the bowl. “If you lie, you eat.”

Kara pulled the bowl closer and sniffed. It smelled like soil. “How much?”

Tabitha shrugged and clanked the knife against the bottle.

“Fuck,” Kara whispered and shoved a spoonful into her mouth. Soil. Gritty, earthy. It smelled like the woods in the morning. A campground on a lake. How it absorbed all of her saliva made it difficult to swallow, so she washed it down with the still hot tea. The mixture of earth and black licorice was not unpleasant.

“Which one is it?”

“Which one is it what?”

“Which one would you not like me killing?” She tapped the blade on the ball. “Black is a lie, gray is a sort of half-truth, so to speak. This means you’re fine with me killing one or more of them. So which one is it?”

Kara couldn’t speak. Was Tabitha asking her to choose who lives and who dies? She didn’t know Shane, and didn’t much give a shit about Nic at the moment. Maddy was innocent and sweet. Michelle she could take or leave based on the season, it seemed. Ray was already gone. That left Ally.

Her stomach crawled under her skin.

Another light tink sounded when Tabitha added a pebble to the scales.

“What is that? What does that mean?”

The bottle.

She drank. This time, the water tasted fresh, and it cleansed the dirt out of her mouth.

“It’s an accounting of how much you owe me. You sound like a reasonable woman, and it wouldn’t make much sense to cut you up while I’m trying to talk to you. So this is just record keeping.”

There were two pebbles already. Kara’s belly shivered at the horror of it. “Two pounds?”

“No, just two pebbles worth to even the balance.” Tabitha’s eyes sparkled with anticipation. “Do you want it to be two pounds?”

“No!”

“Then tell me which one it is you don’t want me to kill. There’s always the one you love more than the others, regardless of how you lie to yourself about loving everyone equally. Even mothers have their favorite children.” She twisted the knife in her hand. “I know.”

Kara swallowed and sunk deeper into her seat.

“Which one are you protecting? Who is it?” She stuck the knife blade under Kara’s chin and forced her to look at her. “How is it you know about me? Why would a young woman coming up here with her friends decide to focus on something so very specific?”

Kara trembled under Tabitha’s maddening gaze. “Because I was interested, and I wanted to scare them. You’re a ghost story.”

Tabitha looked at the crystal ball and raised an eyebrow. “Did you want to scare anyone in particular?”

“No. Just all of them.”

The ball betrayed her.

Tabitha slammed the knife into the table. Kara jumped and found her hands and feet once again, held fast by whatever power Tabitha wielded. Helpless to fight her off, Kara spat and sputtered as Tabitha squeezed her throat so hard she couldn’t keep her tongue in her mouth, and started shoveling dirt into Kara’s mouth. “I told you not to piss me off!”

Kara inhaled dirt and choked until dark spots crawled in her vision and her gag reflex kicked against her lungs, burying her apologies in the back of her throat.

Tabitha released her hold, and Kara vomited dirt onto the stone floor. “I’m sorry,” she cried as a string of filthy slime dangled out of her nose. “I’m sorry.”

“I am a patient woman, Kara. I’ve had to be. But don’t mistake that patience for weakness or some kind of tacit acceptance of your disrespect. I’ve made men weep for less.”

“I’m sorry.” Kara choked again.

“Who is it? A name.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know which one of you little bastards is here to kill me!”

“Kill you? We were just camping.”

Tabitha’s eyes sharpened, and she shook her head. “Oh no. Don’t think I don’t know magic when I smell it. One of you is full of and using the others to get to me. Who is it?”

“I don’t know.” Kara shook her head. “I don’t know. I swear to god.”

Tabitha took a heavy breath and reclined in her chair until Kara’s gagging and choking fit settled down. When it did, Tabitha’s face softened. She poured a half cup of tea from the fire and filled the rest of it with the water. Stepping next to her, she smoothed Kara’s hair with her fingers. “Here,” she whispered, handing the cup to Kara. “Spit onto the floor, if you must. I’ll clean it later.”

Kara swished the tea around her mouth and spat into the pile of wet and dirt.

Tabitha’s voice was low. Stern, but maternal. “Who is it?”

“How would I know who wants to kill you? We just wanted to go camping.”

“Not that. I want to know who it is you wanted to scare and what they did to deserve it.”

“Nobody,” she whispered.

A third clink landed on the scale. Kara flinched.

“Look at me.” Kara did, and Tabitha said, “I appreciate nothing more than loyalty. I don’t care much for bravery—dead soldiers are fools and living ones are just fools waiting to die. Being obstinate or mewling for forgiveness are other things I can do without, too. Loyalty to your friends, to your family, is the greatest gift you can give. But everyone, even you, has a threshold. A breaking point. Look at you right now, in that chair, crying, frightened. And all I’ve done is ask you a few questions, put a couple of pebbles onto a tray, and feed you a little dirt. I haven’t even started cutting yet.”

Kara bit down onto her lips to fight back the terrified squeal building in her. She was helpless. Tabitha was going to kill her. “Ally,” she said. “I wanted to scare Alex.”

She didn’t look at the crystal ball.

“Why? Did he hurt you?”

“No.” When the ball swirled black, she said, “Not physically, anyway.”

“Oh. It’s a broken heart, isn’t it? Is it love?” Tabitha pouted sarcastically. Her wicked laugh felt like barbs to Kara. “Are you in love with Alex, Al, Ally, and are angry with him for not loving you?”

Tears came unbidden to Kara’s eyes, and she looked away. Trying as hard as he could to convince herself, she said, “No.”

The crystal ball went black.

“Fuck you,” Kara spat.

“Aww.” Tabitha waved her hand. “You can have that one for free. But, tell me, what is Alex to me?”

Kara decided that if she was going to die anyway, she’d test her luck. “To you?” She shrugged. “I just wanted to tell a scary story by a campfire.”

The ball didn’t change.

She exhaled, long and slow. Nervousness and anxiety of her impending doom wrestled in her guts to the point she felt physical discomfort. A popping and a crawling within her intestines.

“I guess that’s good enough.” Tabitha walked around the table and pulled Kara’s chair out for her to stand. “It’s a shame we don’t have more time together.”

Kara felt tiny. She hated how easily Tabitha read her. From the beginning, that was her goal with Kara. To humiliate her. Make her feel small. That’s all Tabitha was after, her one shameful secret. It was never about any of the others. That talk about one of them coming to kill her was bullshit. She was just a witch or a demon who enjoyed torturing her victims.

Kara’s shoulders hunched and backside clenched as she waited for the knife to sink between her shoulder blades.

Tabitha spun her around and cupped her chin. As she smoothed Kara’s hair and wiped her mouth clean and cheek dry, she said. “Stand up straight, dear. Never let them see you weak, even when you feel it. Be proud and strong until you’re with someone who cares enough to let you be vulnerable with them without asking for anything in return.” She turned and pointed to the door that wasn’t there before. “Mind the stairs.”

Kara shivered. Was she letting her go? What was her play? Even if it was to kill her before she got through the door, Kara was going to take the chance to escape. Carefully, she tiptoed around Tabitha to the door, grabbed hold of the knob, and in one motion, opened the door and sprinted out of the room.