Blood Ties (38 page)

At first I thought Mandy had outed me. But I looked at her clueless face and realized she was still none the wiser. However, she reached into her console and pulled out an anti-Halloween booklet from her church. It was titled
Exodu
s
22:18
. She handed it to me.

“We just had them printed up and will be distributing them in October,” Mandy said.

I skimmed through the booklet. The narrative and scary pictures featured a defiant little girl who decided to go trickor-treating and ended up in hell instead.

“Gee, thanks for the gift. You shouldn’t have. Really,” I said.

“I’ve got an idea. You can tag along with me as I hand them out. It’s easy. Just put them under windshield wipers.”

I hopped out of that car in one seamless sweep. “Gotta go.”

“Hey, give me your phone number.”

“I don’t mean to be cold, but no,” I said while blocking out her clinging-crab energy.

“But I gave you a ride,” Mandy protested.

The last thing I needed was a zealous stalker with a girl crush. Plus her associating with me would put her life in peril, and I did not want to be held accountable for that. My response had to be swift, leaving nothing to misconstrue. I had to be cruel to be kind.

“Mandy, let me make myself perfectly clear. I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful pal for someone else. But you and me? It ain’t gonna happen. We don’t have anything in common, and, quite frankly, I can’t even stand to hear you breathe. You have as much chance of being my buddy as an apple has of turning into an orange. Therefore, disappear.”

Mandy didn’t get it. Filled with delusional, codependent hope, she said, “But with grafting and gene splicing, an apple
ca
n
become an orange.”

A slow, inarticulate groan slipped out of me, and I turned my back on her. However, she didn’t drive off, and was still making plans for our future together. “I’ll see you later,” she said cheerily.

Mandy was becoming a ridiculous memory as I scampered toward my reunion with James. Abstinence was not my friend, and my body had been craving his touch ever since I’d left.

Aside from hearing Mandy’s car creep away, I was glad to be back in the stillness and solitude of the country. And I was amazed that the plant was still as fresh and vibrant as it had been when I’d stole it from the Three Sisters.

I traipsed down the driveway, relishing the utter peace and quiet. But as I got closer to Aunt Evelyn’s house, I was struck by how
something
was off—way off. Everything was too quiet. No squawking birds. No chirping insects. Not even the rustling of the wind. I walked faster and arrived at the mailbox. Its lid was wide open from the eruption of envelopes stuffed inside.

All I could think was,
James
. Without any hesitation I ran toward the house. The first thing I saw was the screen door lying busted up on the porch. The main door was off its hinges too.

Shit… This is bad.

I dropped my bag and pulled out my wand, but I never let that plant go. I cautiously peeked inside both the minivan and James’s car, hoping like hell no one was dead inside. Though nothing was amiss with the vehicles, the house was a very different story. I slowly climbed the steps and got a closer look at the screen door. It was punched up with holes, and the mesh was torn away at the corners. As I made my way to the front door, large chunks of broken glass crunched under my feet. It had been busted out from
inside
the house. Because the front door was diagonally leaning across where it should have been standing, I had to crawl into the house through a gap at the bottom.

All I could hear was the unnerving drone of the refrigerator. I didn’t have to go too far before I saw a blood-scrawled taunt on the wall: “COME AND GET HIM.” The letters were tall and uneven, as if written by a madman in an insane asylum. Holding the plant and the wand was a hindrance to me, so I had to make a choice between the two. I chose my wand. I secured the plant in a desk drawer, knowing that if I became endangered, I could make my way back to it. And then I went deeper into the house.

There was blood, so much blood, as if the house itself were bleeding out. No piece of furniture was left unturned, and body-sized holes peppered every wall. Bookshelves were broken like they’d been karate chopped in half. Fluff billowed out of scored slices in the sofas and couches. I skimmed the wall like an undercover cop going into a raid. At every door I made a sudden roll into its framework, with my wand ready to go. I went through every room on the first level and found no one. I swung open the door leading to the basement. A slight yellow undertone from Addison’s grief tendrils still inhabited it. I went down anyway, braving the possibility of being stung again. But there was no one down there either. It looked exactly the same as the last time I’d seen it.

I started toward the upper level of the house. I had to be extra careful because the posts and banister had had been ripped off the staircase. The creaking steps under my feet prevented me from launching a sneak attack, so I had to be ready for anything. I made it to the top floor and headed down the hall.

I peeked into Aunt Evelyn’s room. Her bed, covered in a flowery duvet, was neatly made, with an open book pyramiding on the pillow. I stepped out and closed the door behind me, figuring I wasn’t going to let something run out of there at full speed.

Julie’s bedroom was next. I pushed the door open with my wand. I saw her sitting on the side of the bed, keeping watch over Aunt Evelyn. Julie was all messed up. Deep cuts and contusions were spread over her exhausted body. Her dislocated shoulder was set in a homemade sling, and her face looked like it had been gnawed on.

However, Aunt Evelyn’s condition was worse. She was in a semi-coma, and almost unrecognizable from a blow to the head. Her entire face was swollen like a balloon, and her eyes were totally blacked out. She probably needed a ventilator for the staggered breaths that clicked out of her mouth. Someone else’s blood and flesh were still wedged under her nails, and her wrist bore multiple abrasions from defending herself.

I rushed over and dropped to my knees, holding Aunt Evelyn’s ice-cold hand. “What happened?”

Julie was in so much pain, it hurt to even speak. “Catherine’s protégés ambushed us. They had some mighty powerful magic on them that made them invisible. Grace, those protégés are wicked strong. I don’t know what kind of magic Catherine is using, but they’re almost unbeatable.”

I knew what kind magic Catherine was using. She was using my magical power that she’d hijacked from my blood, which she’d obtained during our last confrontation.

Julie’s eyes were fighting sleep. She hadn’t had a decent night’s rest since she’d started keeping vigil over Aunt Evelyn. I could see that one of her cuts was bleeding. It was obvious she needed stitches. I didn’t care if she still resented me; I was going to care for her.

“Julie, let me fix that for you.”

I found a tiny, plastic sewing kit in a dresser drawer and picked out some beige thread and a needle. I then searched the room for alcohol. Instead I came across some antiseptic Aunt Evelyn had been given when she’d had her ears pierced at Claire’s Boutique. I held the needle over a tissue and poured the antiseptic right on it.

“This might hurt a bit,” I said. I expected Julie to knock my hand away from her face in anger, but she calmly sat there and let me close her wound. She stared at me as if she was thinking about everything that had gone down between us.

“Thank you,” she said humbly.

“For what?” I asked.

“For putting up with my bullshit. I know I’ve been tough.”

Was this an actually apology? With Julie it was hard to tell. My stitching started to zigzag as I tried to figure it out, but that didn’t stop me from agreeing with her. “Yeah, you have.”

We both chuckled, and then Julie put her hand on my lap.

“Grace, I’m sorry for all I put you through. I was jealous of your relationship with James. I thought he was taking my best friend away from me, and I was fucking pissed about that. And then when I lost Hari, I took it out on you. Can you forgive me?”

“I already did.” I didn’t want to disrupt this profoundly sentimental moment, but I did need to know something.

“Where’s James? I haven’t seen him yet.”

Julie looked at me so sincerely, preparing me for bad news. “They took him. Catherine has been waiting for more than twenty years for a showdown with you. She’s taking every opportunity to savor it. She wants you to suffer as much as possible.”

“So that’s what that scribble-scrabble message was about. Alright, if that’s the way she wants it, that’s the way she’ll have it. I’m going to go get James and bring him home safe. That’s not a problem for me, but a humongous one for her.”

I finished the stitches with a crude knot on Julie’s face. I got up ready for battle, as if I already knew where Catherine was.

“What do you think you’re doing? You don’t even know where to go,” Julie said.

“Logically James has to be in the vicinity if Catherine is goading me to come and get him,” I said with my muscles flexing.

“Despite what you might think, Grace Valois, you are not invincible. You need help. I’m not going to let you deal with that old hag by yourself. Give me a chance to rest up and get stronger, and we can roll out together.”

“Plus we’ll have Addison for backup,” I said.

Julie’s head dropped. “Addison is dead.”

“What?”

“They killed her.”

I lost my balance and plopped down on the bed, not wanting to believe we had lost another member of our team. “Where is she?”

“Do you really want to do this right now?”

“Why not? It’s going to hurt no matter if it’s now or later.”

Julie wobbled to her feet and I followed her to the back porch. Addison’s body was wrapped in a blue bed sheet that had turned purple from all the blood. I put my hand over my mouth as the awful smell of decay triggered my gag reflex.

“I was going to bury her, but I was too tired and sad to do it,” Julie said.

“We’ll do it together.”

We went back inside and found handkerchiefs to tie around our faces in an attempt to block out the putrefaction. Then we both grabbed an end and took Addison to the clearing where James and I had almost made love for the first time. I dug while Julie took a much-needed break.

It took me an hour to dig that six-foot hole. I jumped into it, and Julie gently and respectfully lowered Addison into the ground. I took a quick squat and used my new strength to jump out of the hole. We held hands, said a prayer, and covered the body with dirt. It seemed like such a mundane, anticlimactic ending for such a dramatic life.

“Goodbye, Addison,” I said to the mound of dirt. Julie and I turned back toward the house. As soon as we got there, I ran her a steamy bath and took the liberty of washing her hair and back for her. As I took the washcloth and squeezed water onto her skin, I was appalled to see how her back looked like she had been whipped. After I cleaned her up, I helped her into her favorite shorts and T-shirt, and got her into bed.

“I missed you,” Julie said through a yawn. We kissed, and I pulled the covers over her. Before her head hit the pillow, she was sound asleep.

To alleviate my anxiety, I decided to clean. I swept up the broken glass, ripped-up sheetrock, and tiny bits of tchotchkes. I mopped the floor with pine-scented cleaner to take the edge off the funk of rotten blood and soured sweat. I wiped the walls down to remove the massive amount of blood smear, but ended up just making them turn a repulsive pinkish brown. What furniture I could salvage, I put right-side up and back in place.

I dragged a full trash bag to the kitchen. Of course there was cleaning to be done in there too, but I was thankful for it. I went right to washing the dishes in the sink, scrubbing hard to remove dried-up, soft-boiled yolk from breakfast some days ago. Wiping my dishpan hands on my shirt, I went to the refrigerator and started throwing away food that had gone bad. I came across a Styrofoam container with “Addison” written daintily across the top. I couldn’t even cry; I had no more tears left in me. I tossed her leftovers into the trash without a second thought. All I knew was that I was going to get my man and kill Catherine once and for all.

But how was I going to locate her? It wasn’t like I could ask random people, “Hey, do you know this witch bitch named Catherine?” I thought about just driving around Massapequa, but seriously, it wasn’t not like Catherine was hanging out at Duane Reade. Maybe I could simply lie low and wait for another attack.

As I weighed my options, I tossed the trash bag into the refuse container behind the house. I went back inside and saw I had not dumped the contents of the dustpan into trash. I put another bag into the can and started to dump the dustpan’s contents into it. However, I noticed some yellowish, Chicletlooking thing falling in. I dug it out. It was a tooth, and I sensed it belonged to Tamara. I figured Julie must have knocked it out in the scuffle.

This was the boon I needed to help me locate Catherine’s lair. I took the tooth to the parlor and sat on the couch. I closed my fist around it and concentrated. Cloudy visions of a cul-de-sac drifted through my mind. The images became more detailed. I saw a house with a realtor lockbox on the door. There was a murky basement that felt like much death had occurred there. And then I saw James, tortured and near death. My psychic tour ended with a glimpse of a street sign: Tunglemans Court.

I finally knew where James was.