Eric stood on the stairs, listening to the sound of the woman’s heels as she walked away. When he heard the front door close, he hurried back down to the basement and threw open the wardrobe.
Holly was standing there, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed bright red, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She looked furious. “Oh. My. God!”
Eric stared back at her, stunned. “Um…” He wasn’t sure what to say. It wasn’t what it looked like? He could explain?
“That fucking bitch!”
He decided to run with that: “I know!”
He’d assumed she was watching them through the crack between the doors in the wardrobe, much as Hector must’ve watched the agents when they were torturing the poor woman in 1962. But how much had she missed? He tried to imagine what her view of his exchange with the freaky woman was. How much could she not see? How much could she not hear?
Surely it hadn’t seemed to her as if he’d enjoyed that.
Right?
“The nerve of her! I swear to God, when she kissed you I was this close to opening these doors and blasting that slut straight to hell!”
Eric was really glad she didn’t. Then they wouldn’t know that the agents were up to something at the high school. (And also, he was pretty sure that Holly’s thrust spell would’ve blasted both the woman and him to hell, given that she was standing directly between him and her.) But he didn’t say so. Instead, he said, “That was awful. Disgusting.”
She growled and stomped her foot. “Bitch! I can’t believe she’d do that to Karen!”
Karen. That was going to be an awful conversation. If she was still mad about that strip club nonsense, he was probably going to be in the doghouse forever over this. His stomach clenched at the very idea of her hearing that this woman had actually kissed him. And it wasn’t even his fault. He was the real victim. That woman seriously made his skin crawl.
He pulled his cell phone and the charger out of his pocket. “Any idea what the hell that was all about?”
THAT WOMAN WAS DEFINITELY AN AGENT. SHE HAD THE SAME FEEL AS THE OTHERS
Between that and all that talk about her “company,” he was confident she was right.
ALSO, SHE TOTALLY JUST GOT OFF THE TRAIN FROM PSYCHO TOWN
Eric nodded. That woman was nightmare fuel.
Sensing someone reading over his shoulder, he looked up.
It was the ghost woman, with her bloody eyes. She was standing right next to him.
He gave a startled yelp and jumped back a few steps.
She stared at him as if he were acting silly.
“Sorry,” he told her. “Startled me.”
She cocked her head to one side, as if pondering how she could possibly have been so frightening to him.
Holly cursed again. It wasn’t a very ladylike curse. It was quite vulgar.
Both Eric and the ghostly woman looked at her, surprised.
“Okay…” he said. “Let’s just focus on finding a way out of here. She locked us in.”
“Oh she thinks she did,” growled Holly. She stormed up the stairs and stopped in front of the door. Then she thrust her hands forward, as if she intended to shove the door out of her way. Instantly, it was obliterated in a flurry of flying splinters. The impact was enough to shake the entire bungalow. Dust rained down from the floor joists overhead and things crashed to the floor upstairs. It sounded as if pictures were knocked off the walls and dishes were spilled from the cupboards. “Come on!”
Eric started to follow her, but an icy hand gripped his elbow. He turned and found himself looking into the bloody eyes of the ghost woman. Her mouth moved, and he heard her voice, but those two things didn’t seem to go together. The words rang out inside his head and seemed to speed up and slow down, like a broken tape player, so that they didn’t match the movement of her lips and sounded like they were broadcasting straight from hell.
“When you see the broken girl dancing in the snow, follow the bones and you will find her.”
Then she was gone, as if she’d never been there at all. The only thing left was the cold place on his arm where she’d grabbed him.
Broken girl? Bones? What the hell was all that supposed to mean? Why were ghosts always saying random shit to him?
Feeling oddly rattled, he turned and started up the stairs after Holly. But as soon as he began to climb, he was startled by the woman again. She was lurking under the stairs, staring back at him through the space between the steps.
“She’s waiting,” she told him.
“Who’s waiting?” he asked.
But again, she was gone.
He lingered for a moment longer, wondering if the creepy ghost lady had anything else to say to him, then hurried up to the first floor of the bungalow.
Holly’s thrust had not only obliterated the door, he saw, but chopped a table in half and cracked the countertop. He’d seen thrusts magnified under a magical barrier, but he had no idea it could be so powerful on its own.
Had she become stronger since the battle at the farmhouse? Or had her anger intensified the blast?
Holly was already on the porch. He hurried to catch up with her. “Hey, wait for me.”
She didn’t respond. She was standing at the top of the porch steps, looking out toward the driveway. There were no cars to be seen. Mistress Janet was gone.
He stopped in the doorway and watched her for a moment. Her fists were still clenched at her sides. “Are you okay?”
“No. I’m not.”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“We need to get back to our cars.” She took off toward the driveway without waiting for a response.
He followed after her but made no effort to catch up. He fell behind and pulled out his cell phone again. Is she mad at me? he thought.
PROBABLY. YOU WERE JUST MAKING OUT WITH THE ENEMY
“I was not—” he blurted, then stifled himself and whispered into the phone. “I was not making out with that maniac! She was attacking me!”
WHATEVER, PERV
Are you kidding me right now? he thought. You’re inside my head. You know how awful that was. You were there!
SETTLE DOWN. I KNOW. I’M JUST GIVING YOU A HARD TIME
“It’s not funny,” he grumbled. “That was an awful experience.”
OF COURSE IT WAS
He nodded.
I’LL VOUCH FOR YOU
“Thanks.”
I WON’T EVEN TELL ANYONE SHE GAVE YOU A BONER
“I did not have a—” Again, he had to stifle himself.
HEHE
That was a bold-faced lie. Sure, she was attractive when he first saw her. Really attractive. Better men than him would’ve been extremely turned on by a woman like that. (And just maybe he was a little turned on by her. At first. A little.) But that woman was sick. She was disgusting. She got off on rape and murder and violence. She did not give him anything, except the creeps. But he refused to argue this point with her. It wasn’t an appropriate conversation to have with a thirteen-year-old girl. Even if she was going on fifty-two.
Holly turned off the driveway and stomped off into the woods ahead of him and he set out after her.
“She kept saying she could sense me and my ‘powers.’ I don’t even have any powers.”
IT SOUNDED TO ME LIKE SHE CAN SENSE PEOPLE WITH CERTAIN SPECIAL ABILITIES
“But I don’t have any special abilities.”
NO, I THINK YOU DO
“Huh?”
THERE’S A LOT OF THINGS YOU CAN DO. YOU CAN SEE THE UNSEEN, FOR EXAMPLE
“Sometimes.”
YOU HAVE PROPHETIC DREAMS
He nodded. Occasionally. (And they were a pain in the ass.)
AND SOMEWHERE IN YOUR BRAIN YOU HAVE THAT PROFOUND SECRET YOU FOUND THE DAY YOU MET ME. THAT KIND OF MAKES YOU SPECIAL
He still had no idea how that even worked…
AND IT GAVE YOU THAT HEALING THING
It did, but… He turned the phone around and looked at the back of his hand, at the bandage Diane had placed over the cut there. He peeled it back and examined the wound. It still looked perfectly fresh. It wasn’t healing nearly as fast as the injuries he received the day he first met Holly.
WHEN IT WORKS, I GUESS
He thought the rapid healing he did in Illinois was a result of that profound secret he discovered on his first adventure into the weird, but it didn’t always work so well. Not all injuries were so quick to heal.
Maybe it was only magic-related injuries that healed extra-fast.
He pressed the bandage back over the cut and turned his attention to the thickening brush.
“So that psycho woman thinks I’m like her and the other agents?”
SOUNDS LIKE IT
“What, does she just rip open her shirt and throw herself at any guy who might have the potential to be a psychotic killer? I mean, what the hell? Who gets turned on by stuff like that?”
WEIRD, PSYCHO, SLUTTY CHICKS WITH GOD COMPLEXES, APPARENTLY
“Apparently. And what the hell was all that ‘sexual energy’ nonsense?”
I’VE HEARD OF IT BEFORE. THE IDEA THAT SEXUALITY HAS ITS OWN ENERGY
“That’s really a thing?”
SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE IT CAN BE HARNESSED AND USED, LIKE MAGIC. IN HER CASE, IT SEEMS LIKE SHE BELIEVES SHE CAN UTILIZE SEXUAL ENERGY TO ABSORB AND SHARE POWER
“So it’s real?”
I CAN’T SAY FOR SURE. I NEVER BELIEVED IN IT, TO BE HONEST. BUT I ALSO DIDN’T BELIEVE IN MAGIC BEFORE WE MET HOLLY, SO WHO KNOWS?
That was true. It was a weird world out there. More and more, it seemed like anything was possible.
WE DO KNOW ONE THING, AT LEAST
“What’s that?”
WE KNOW WHO THE WOMAN WITH THE DEVIL HORNS WAS IN HOLLY’S VISIONS
He’d nearly forgotten about that. Holly’s divination. The spell.
IF THE HORNS FIT…
They did indeed.
The brush was growing too thick to keep talking. It kept catching on the charger cord. He slipped them both back into his pocket and focused on forcing his way back to the Top-Down Bar’s parking lot.
The woman claimed to be able to sense that he had “power” but not what that power was, precisely. She clearly hadn’t known, for example, that he was aware of the unseen. Or that he’d had previous experience with her “company.” She knew he was lying when he told her he’d never killed anyone, but she didn’t seem to catch him in any other lies. And he’d told quite a few. She acted like she knew all about him. But she genuinely had no clue that he was repulsed by her? She’d seemed perfectly confident that all she had to do was make a few dirty comments, stuff her tongue in his mouth and expose herself to him and he’d be her personal slave for the rest of his life. Even in the end, when she locked him in the basement, she must’ve known he’d escape. She didn’t even bother taking his phone from him.
It didn’t make any sense.
Finally, they reached the parking lot.
There was no one here when they went into the woods. Now, however, there was a drunk man stumbling between the parked vehicles. As Eric made his way to the driver’s side of the PT Cruiser, the man grinned stupidly at him and gave him a thumbs up.
“What was that all about?” he asked as he sat behind the wheel and dropped the cell phone and charger back into the cup holder.
Holly sat down in the passenger seat and looked at him, her pretty features still tightened with anger. “Probably something to do with that lipstick all over your face.”
“What?” He leaned over and looked into the rearview mirror. She was right. Mistress Janet left the evidence of that awful encounter all over his face.
Clearly, the drunk must’ve thought the lipstick was Holly’s…
Somehow he found that even more embarrassing than the truth.
He tried to wipe it away, but it didn’t want to come off.
“Here.” She reached out and turned his head toward her, then licked her thumb and began rubbing at it.
Mom spit. He felt five years old again.
But he didn’t dwell on it. Instead, he was distracted by the tears he saw running down her face. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just pissed.”
“Can we talk about it?”
She shook her head. “No. We need to find out what that nasty woman’s up to.”
“Okay.”
They were quiet for a moment.
Then Eric said. “You know I didn’t enjoy that, right?”
“What?”
“What happened back there. Her…attacking me like that. It was awful.”
She looked at him as if that were the craziest thing she’d ever heard. “Of course it was awful. I mean, gross! That woman was vile.” She shook her head. She still looked angry, but now tears had sprung to her eyes again. “Those things she said about Sylvia… It was sick.”
Sylvia’s death was a tragedy. Not finding a way to save her was arguably Eric’s greatest regret so far. And that woman had twisted it into a disgusting, perverted fantasy.
Of course it had upset Holly. He felt like an insensitive fool for thinking this was about him.
She wiped the tears from her face again. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re fine. Really.”
“I always try to put on a happy face for everyone,” she said. “But the truth is it was hard to leave my family behind. Especially after losing four of them. I guess I never had the chance to grieve properly.”
He wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t realized she was still feeling so much pain. It was like she said, she always presented such a happy face. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You and Karen and Isabelle… Everyone… You guys all make me happy. You really do. And I’m usually a lot stronger than this.”
“You are one of the strongest people I know,” he agreed.
She gave him a smile. “You’re so sweet.” Then she sniffed and sat up a little straighter. “But we’ve got work to do.”
Eric nodded. “She said she had business at the school. I’m guessing it has something to do with your vision.”
“The high school,” she agreed. She licked her thumb again. “Almost done.”
“Thank you.”
“Just promise me you’re going to take that crazy bitch down.”
He nodded. Contrary to what that woman might’ve believed, he didn’t like having anyone’s death on his conscience, not even vile, dangerous people like her. But it seemed that was the way these encounters were always fated to end.
His phone rang. It was Paul.
He’d nearly forgotten about Paul and Kevin. They were keeping an eye on Steampunk Monk. Hopefully they were having a better day than he was.
“What’s up?” he answered.
“We lost the son of a bitch,” said Paul.
“That’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
Holly finished wiping away the lipstick on his face and then took Hector’s letter from her pocket and held it out for him to take.
“How soon can you pick us up?” asked Paul.
Eric motioned at the glove compartment. That was the safest place he knew to keep them. “Right now, actually. Where are you?”
“Behind the thrift store on Willow Street, by the donations entrance. Hurry.”
Eric didn’t like the tone of his voice. “Is everything all right?”
“No. It’s not. It’s Kevin. He’s fucking blind.”