Business was a series of calculated wagers you hoped would pay off but could never quite be certain wouldn’t come back to bite you in the ass. With a soft click, I shut my laptop, shoved it into my bag, and walked through the shop, flipping the lights off as I went. I locked up, listening to the reassuring thunk of the deadbolt sliding home. The wooden sign above my head groaned lightly in the wind, a forlorn soundtrack accompanying the steady clap of my heeled boots against the brick street as I walked down the pedestrian mall.
The night was lively, the fall Friday evening full of couples strolling hand in hand and young college kids equipped with fake IDs, eager to con their way into dark dive bars. I took a shortcut down a quieter side street, cutting across town toward The Witches Brew Tavern. Florence was already there — I knew this because she’d been texting me for the past twenty minutes on five minute intervals, telling me to get my nose out of my ledger books and into the real world. My phone buzzed again in the depths of my bag and I fished it out without breaking stride.
Around the corner,I texted her, peering down at the screen.Be there in two.
Great!she replied.We’re in the back.
We?
Flo, rather suspiciously, did not answer.
With a sigh, I rounded the corner — and nearly leapt out of my skin as something bolted from the shadows no more than five feet in front of me. My heart sailed up into my throat. My phone clattered to the street, skittering dangerously close to a sewer grate. It was only when a feline screech split the night that I realized it was not Mickey the lumberjack nor a terrifying monster but a black cat, crossing my path. (If I’d been less distracted, I might have remembered that old superstition about black cats and crossed paths and the bad luck that would surely ensue as a result. But, as things stood, I was in a rush and paid little mind to old wives tales)
Cursing my own jumpiness, I bent to retrieve my phone from the gutter. I heard something rustle the fallen leaves behind me and turned, expecting to see the cat again.
Instead, I was met with a trio of cloaked figures.
My eyes widened and my mouth gaped, but there wasn’t even time to scream. A pale hand emerged from the swathes of black fabric. Something was cupped in the outstretched palm — a pile of greenish silver dust that glittered even in the low light of the alleyway. The strange sight momentarily stunned me into stillness. Like a fool, I stood there, paralyzed in place as the middle figure in the trio bobbed forward, bent toward the aloft hand… andblew.
The dust exploded into a cloud that hit me directly in the face. There was no defending against it, no scrambling out of range. It shot up my nose and down my airway, filling my lungs with a searing sort of heat.
My nostrils stung. My throat burned. The phone in my hand fell back to the alley as my fingers went numb. My strength gave out in one abrupt instant. So did my knees — I felt them hit the asphalt. My last thought was not of my attackers or what they were going to do to me, but about the irreparable tears I’d no doubt just ripped in my favorite pair of fancy French silk stockings.
Then, everything went dark.
Chapter Eight
I’m more of a dog person.
- Gwen Goode, forced to hold a newborn
When my eyes opened, I found myself bound to a wooden chair in what appeared to be a basement. My head was pounding, my mouth parched. I had no earthly idea where I was or how I had gotten there.
Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. Though thewhereremained a mystery, thehowwas immediately apparent; all evidence pointed to the cloaked trio huddled in the corner across the room from me, backlit by an alter of various chunky taper candles burning brightly. Melted wax from many previous lightings had hardened in dry rivulets that pooled on the edge of the table and hung toward the stone floor like stalagmites. (Or was itstalactites? I could never keep them straight. Geological formations weren’t my forte.)
From the looks of it, my kidnappers had not yet realized I was awake. Their attention was fixed on one another, not on me. I aimed to keep it that way, moving only the tiniest amount as I tested my wrists against the thick rope that looped around each arm of the wooden chair in which I was propped. They were tied firmly and, besides, I still felt weak as a newborn kitten from whatever powder I’d inhaled back in the alley. For now, all I could do was observe though slitted eyelids and eavesdrop as if my life depended on it.
Because… it might.
Hellfire and brimstone.
“She’ll wake soon,” one of the figures was saying in a hushed — and decidedly feminine — voice muffled by her voluminous cloak. I thought there was something rather familiar about said voice, but I couldn’t be certain. I strained my ears to catch the rest of her words. “…wish you hadn’t gotten me involved. It’s far too risky.”
“You know full well, we had no other choice!” Another of the trio said. Also female. “This is a last resort. Should we fail…”
“We will not fail,” the third woman interjected. “Because we cannot. The survival of the coven depends on it. Onher.”
Hold on a second…
Coven?!
Did she saycoven?
As in coven of…witches?
Great. Just freaking great. I’d been kidnapped by the cast of Hocus Pocus. Probably the same practitioners who’d left that horrifying sacrifice in my alleyway yesterday. This, I thought, did not bode well for my survival. A series of images flashed through my head — five glossy photographs on a metal interrogation desk. Cat, rooster, goat, pig, donkey. Would I be the subject of the next crime scene snapshot Detective Hightower added to his case file?
I hoped not. I didn’t want to die. Not at all, not ever, but especially not chopped into pieces with a pentagram of my own blood traced around me by a cabal of psychotic pagans.